by Eli Lang
I stumbled down the stairs the next morning, almost more tired than when I’d gone to bed. I should have felt awesome. I’d gotten laid, Cara was gorgeous, and she wanted to see me again. But instead I only felt guilty. I hadn’t told her the truth, even if it didn’t really matter in the long run. And what I wanted was all tangled up in what I owed her, and Tuck, and I couldn’t sort it out.
What I wanted right then, without thinking further than the next few minutes, was to get a cup of coffee and pour some caffeine into my system before I staggered into the shower. But both of my parents were sitting at the breakfast table. Mom was sipping her coffee, and Dad had a book flat on the table. Mom’s eyebrows rose when she saw me, moving higher up her forehead than I personally thought eyebrows had any right to go. Dad glanced up from his book, then back at the toast he was eating with the other hand.
Mom cocked her head to the side. “Your hair looks like a rat’s nest.”
“Oh, fuck me sideways.”
“Ava!”
She looked so completely scandalized that part of me wanted to laugh, but I was too tired to find enough humor. I closed my eyes and tipped my head back and begged for patience. I didn’t have any of that to find, either.
I opened my eyes and stared right back at her. “I don’t care what my hair’s like, Mom. It’s honestly probably one of the last things on my mind. I don’t care if I look tired. Because I am tired.” I inched my way across the kitchen and grabbed a mug. I wanted to cling to the coffee maker, but I was sane about it and just poured myself a cup. I glanced over my shoulder at my parents while I rummaged through the drawer for a spoon. “I’m so tired. I don’t know what I’m doing. You really did a number on me last night, you know? All this stuff you want me to be, and you forget that I already am someone.” I almost told them, then, all of it. How they’d smothered me. How I’d met a gorgeous girl and I was fucking it all up because I couldn’t even manage to fall in love like a normal person. Because I’d chosen to fall in love with the man who had made me who I was, and now there wasn’t any way for me to undo that, despite how I wanted to so badly. How I wanted to go home, because it was the only place that I felt safe, but somewhere between yesterday and today, I’d started dreading it. Had started dreading seeing Tuck again, seeing the hole I’d created for myself by loving him, and not being able to do anything about it.
I stuck the spoon in my mug and stirred, vigorously enough that coffee spattered on the countertop. I turned around, the spoon still in my hand, and waved it through the air. I thought I saw my mother flinch, and somewhere in the back of my mind I realized I was probably still flinging coffee around her immaculate kitchen. My mother’s mouth was hanging open. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her quite so speechless, not like this. It should have been hilarious. It wasn’t, though, and it made me shut my mouth instead of saying whatever I’d been about to. I wasn’t even sure.
My dad closed his book, the movement careful, deliberate, and he pushed his coffee cup a little away. “We only want you to be happy.”
I bit my lip. “I know. I really do know that. That’s what makes it so . . . terrible. You have no idea what makes me happy. You’ve never known. You’ve never bothered to find out.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond, or for my mom to shut her mouth and pull herself together. I felt awful that I’d said anything at all. I hadn’t meant to. I’d just been too tired to hold it in. But the expressions on their faces told me I should have tried harder. I turned and hurried up the stairs, my coffee clutched between my hands, careful so I wouldn’t spill any of it. I shut my door behind me and slumped down against it. And then, while I drank my coffee, I couldn’t stop myself from inching my hand up to my hair, to feel how bad it might actually look. To know what my mother had seen.
The next time I came down the stairs, showered and dressed and ready to go, there wasn’t anyone there. We’d planned to all go over to my grandmother’s house together, but when I poked my head into the garage, I saw that my dad’s car was already gone. I didn’t know if my mom was still here, or if she’d gone with him, and I didn’t stop to find out. I grabbed my own keys off the counter and headed out.
When I got to my grandmother’s house, I could hear people upstairs moving around. Zevi and my dad at least, and maybe my mom, and I didn’t want to have to see or talk to any of them. Not even Zevi. Not right now. I snuck past the stairs as fast as I could, hoping no one would come down and catch me, and when I got to Gran’s room, I shut the door behind me and slumped against it.
She was sitting in her chair, sorting through her clothes, and she looked up at me, then at the door, and raised her eyebrows. The gesture was so like my mother’s and so not that it startled me. Curious where my mother’s had been all demanding. But the type of curiosity I knew I wasn’t supposed to ignore.
My grandmother had never been someone I’d gone to for help. She wasn’t squishy hugs and cupcakes, although she did make a pretty fantastic peanut butter cookie. She wasn’t the person you went to when you needed sympathy, because she was more likely to tell you what you should do about your problems—another way she was like my mom. But she was good at listening too. And maybe that was all I really wanted. Someone to listen to me.
I raised my hand and shoved it through my hair. Not so rat’s nest-like now, huh, Mom? It fell through my fingers to swing at my chin, and when I shook my head a little, I could feel the cut edges of it against my skin.
“I had a . . . thing, with my parents. This morning.” I waved my hand through the air. I wasn’t sure if I was trying to describe how bad it was with the gesture, or make it seem like it was fine.
“What kind of thing?”
“Um.” I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want to tell anyone, because I knew it would sound ridiculous. It was no big deal to anyone except me. And I didn’t want to tell her about Cara yet, either. Maybe ever. But definitely not this morning.
Before I could answer, my grandmother held up her hand. “Never mind. I dare say it’s been a long time coming. I know your mother. I know how she can get under people’s skin. And I’ve been watching her get under yours for years. I’m surprised it took you this long to snap.”
I blinked. “Really?”
She gave a tiny shrug, then swept her hand at the books. “Come read. It’ll make you feel better to be lost in books.”
I couldn’t really argue with that, and I really didn’t want to talk anymore anyway. I found a bare patch of floor and settled myself on it, and went to work. It was already starting to feel familiar and comfortable, my hands on the books, their words and covers floating in front of my eyes, the inky, dusty smell of them, the soft noises my grandmother made as she moved around her room. It was a bubble, and I knew that, but I was happy to be in it.
We worked in silence. I’d have liked to turn on the radio or something—I wasn’t used to doing anything without music, but I didn’t think Gran and I would share the same opinions on what songs were good. Instead, I let myself get absorbed in reading the back blurbs of the books. If I was really interested in something, then I’d ask her, and break the quiet in the best way.
Someone, probably Zevi, had pulled down the last of the books and piled them on the floor. I reached for a couple of stacks that were new to me, books I hadn’t seen before. Most of them were by the same author, and I started reading the blurbs. They were fascinating, some kind of weird fairy tales for adults. I was about to ask my grandmother about one when I read past the blurb to the author bio.
There was something familiar about it. The way the author was described, the way the words jumped at me from the back cover. It felt like something I should know. And then I got to the part where the author’s school and work history was described, and it clicked.
I held the book up to my grandmother, and she stared back at me, waiting for me to ask about it, like I had with every other book. But I didn’t.
“This is you.” I flipped the book around and tapped the bac
k. She didn’t say anything, just kept waiting. “This bio, this is you. I’m right, aren’t I?”
It took her a long time to answer. I didn’t think she was contemplating lying to me. I think I had, honestly, and maybe for the first time ever, caught her without anything to say.
Then she nodded, once. “It’s me.”
“You wrote these?” I had to be sure. It seemed so impossible. I didn’t know why—anything was possible. But I felt like I should have known. All this time, growing up with her, spending all this time with her books, the books she loved, and the thought had never occurred to me.
“Yes.” Her voice was a little more wry now. She pointed at a stack near my right knee. “Those too, I think. I’m not sure where Zevi put everything.”
I lowered the book slowly. Part of me wanted to keep staring at it. It was a pen name on the cover, obviously, but the more I looked at it, the more I saw it as something my grandmother had picked to go on a book she’d written. It was a strange and amazing and slightly uncomfortable feeling.
“Were you going to tell me?” I turned to the other piles of books. Different titles. She’d written a lot. “Or were you going to let me ask you about them, and not tell me they were yours? Would I ever have known?”
She gave a little sigh. I thought she was trying to sound exasperated. But there was something else behind it. Some nervousness that wasn’t quite guilt and wasn’t really embarrassment. Suddenly, it occurred to me, what I had done. She’d had this secret, for however long—years, it must have been—and she had let me blunder into it. And I had. I’d ripped it open like it was my business to do. But I couldn’t help being angry about it. Or . . . maybe hurt was the better word.
“You’d have known eventually,” she said.
“So you weren’t going to tell me,” I pushed.
She raised her hands, then let them drop back into her lap. “I don’t know, Ava. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I hadn’t decided.”
I looked down at the book in my lap, ran my finger over the glossy cover, the name and title slightly embossed. Then I looked back up at her. “You asked me to help you. Me. You had to know I’d at least see them.”
She nodded. Her fingers kept picking through her clothes, tossing stuff in one pile or another. We’d been at this for days. It seemed like it should take less time, to clean out a house, to pack up someone’s stuff and move it here or there. But my grandmother had lived in this house for decades, with my grandfather, and then with another man, Henry, who I’d known even better than my real grandfather, and then, when Henry passed away, by herself. There were lifetimes in this house. Loves and losses, and even though it didn’t seem like a lot, it was. And Gran was being asked to sort through and decide what she wanted. I was willing to give her as much time as we had.
But I hadn’t ever expected to have a conversation that went like this with her.
“Yes.” She glanced down, then back at me, and I couldn’t quite tell, but I thought she was blushing. A hint of color, high on her cheeks, almost hidden by the gray and black hair she was letting fall in front of her face. “Ava. Do you remember when you came in here and told me why you understood about how I loved my books? Because you loved your drums the same way?”
I nodded. It had only been a few days ago. It wasn’t like I was going to forget so soon.
“That’s why I asked you. You and I are alike. Not in most ways. But in some.”
My brows were pinching together, and my throat was suspiciously tight. This was the wrong time to see my grandmother as anything more than a figure in my life. To see her as a person in her own right. Because this was the beginning of the end, and we could sugarcoat it however we liked, but we both knew it. She was failing and I lived across the country, and I didn’t want her to be anything more than she’d always been, because it would make it so much worse. It would mean I was losing something I hadn’t even known to look for.
“And Zevi?” I asked.
“I love Zevi,” she said, more bluntly than I’d expected. But that was how affection was with her. Something that simply was. “But he hasn’t found that thing to hold on to like you hold on to your music. Or I hold on to my words.”
She watched me while I stared down at the books around me, seeing them differently now. Not only the ones Gran had written, but all of them. I hadn’t really believed her, before, when she’d said these books were her life. But maybe they were. Maybe this was her heart.
“Don’t get sentimental,” Gran said, like she was reading my mind.
I took a deep breath. This was too much to take in, all at once. I didn’t know how I was supposed to be feeling. If I should let everything be like it always had been. If that was even possible.
“Why did you keep it a secret?” I asked her.
She shrugged, and her lips twitched up into something like a smile. “I think . . . I wanted something that was only mine. A piece of me, for myself.” She glanced at the door, then back at the books. “Some people knew. But not many.”
That made sense. And . . . it didn’t. These were published. It was obvious that other people had read them, and since she’d been published over and over, I was willing to bet at least someone had liked them. These books had gone out into the world. They hadn’t been only Gran’s at all.
“Ava,” she said softly, pulling me out of my thoughts. “We’re not done. We have a lot to do.”
I nodded, more to shake myself out of my thoughts than anything. I started piling the books she’d written into a box.
“Are you taking those?” she asked.
“I’m taking them all.” I looked up at her and found her staring at my hands, at the books disappearing into the box that would take them across the country. “Except the ones you want to keep,” I said, more gently. “I’m taking them all.”
She nodded. Then she pointed at one of the books she’d written, waiting in another pile. “Not that one. I want that one. For now.”
I pulled it out and set it aside for her. I wanted to ask her about it, ask why that one in particular. But I didn’t. Something about the way she looked at it made me think that, out of all of them, maybe that one held the biggest part of her heart. Maybe that one was the one that was, in some way, the most hers.
We went back to the way we’d been doing things before. I didn’t ask her about her books, except for once more, when a particular title caught my eye. “I’ll write you something about them,” she said, “and send it.” And that was the end of that discussion. I boxed them all up and labeled them to go to Tuck’s house, since, if I shipped them soon, they might get home before I did. He’d keep them for me until I got back. I asked her about other books, and stacked them in boxes—I was getting awfully good at it. Those books weren’t going to move around at all when they did get shipped. And by the time I stopped that evening and looked around, I realized I was mostly done. There were a few more stacks to go through, but my grandmother waved her hand at them and commanded that we do them tomorrow.
Zevi was still upstairs, and I went and called him down, and the three of us had dinner together, Chinese takeout that Gran made us dump out of the takeout boxes and onto plates so it would look like we were “at least trying.” Then Zevi wondered out loud if Gran would still be able to order Chinese when she was at the assisted living, and she told him, straight-faced, that she’d order any damn thing she pleased. And I laughed so hard I think I startled them both.
Later, when we were standing in the driveway getting ready to go, Zevi asked me if I wanted to go out, maybe catch a local show or a movie or something, but I shook my head and promised him tomorrow instead. I was in a weird mood, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted or needed, but I didn’t think I’d be very good company.
I hopped in my car, watched Zevi leave, and then I found myself driving again, like I’d been doing since I got here.
I kept getting distracted by the trees. They were so much bigger and taller than I remembered them—they seemed
that way every time I came back. And I’d toured the country, but we’d stayed on highways and in cities, for the most part. This town, the surrounding area, was by no means as rural as it got—the city was less than an hour away—but it was different than where we’d been. Or maybe I was just seeing it more, because it had been mine once. And these trees . . . They closed everything off. Made everything appear like it was covered in green. There were a lot of things I wasn’t happy about where I lived now, but I could see the sky. I could watch the clouds coming in and see the sunset and the stars. There wasn’t anything in the way of that. I didn’t think I’d ever want to trade those summer storms, watching the thunderheads building, for tall trees again.
I found myself, once it was almost dark, driving down the street where Cara’s dance studio was. I wanted to be surprised with myself, but I wasn’t. Annoyed, yeah, definitely. I could have called Tuck again, or Bellamy or Micah, instead of going to find Cara. But I wanted to avoid them for the moment, because I was afraid they might hear how twisted up inside I was. I’d thought about avoiding Cara for the same reason. Putting all of this behind me and pretending it hadn’t happened. Maybe that would be easiest. But Cara deserved more than that.
I’d told Cara I’d see her again, but seeing her again wasn’t the same as dropping in on her where she worked. It wasn’t quite stalker material, but it wasn’t really something you were supposed to do, either. I knew I should probably keep driving, go back to my parents’ place, and call Cara instead. But I didn’t want to go home. I’d managed to avoid my parents all day, and I wanted to keep doing it. And I wanted to see Cara. Just for a minute.