by Gayle Forman
“Oh,” I say, swallowing. “I didn’t realize you had two accidents.”
“I’m not sure why,” Hannah replies coolly. “I told you about it at the NA meeting. Were you even listening?”
“Of course I was.”
“What did I say?”
“I didn’t memorize it.”
“I don’t need it verbatim, Aaron, but what was the gist of it?”
I scramble to come up with something that will appease her, that will undo the damage I’ve seemingly done. But I can’t remember anything. It’s all muddied up with memories of Sandy. “You got in the accident. You got addicted to painkillers.”
“That’s it?”
“No. No. Your parents didn’t want to face up to your addiction. They wanted to think you were perfect.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know what else. What else is there? Oh, I forgot the most important part. You’ve been sober almost a year.”
“Why is that the most important part?”
“A year. It’s a big accomplishment.”
“You make it sound like I’ve crossed some finish line.”
“Well, maybe not that. But getting closer. And a lot of people don’t make it that far. My brother sure as shit didn’t.”
At the mention of my brother, Hannah quietly curses, shaking her head.
“What?” I ask.
“Pull over, please.”
“Where?” We’re in the middle of nowhere. Just miles of dry, dusty road.
“Anywhere. I’m getting out.”
“Why?”
“Stop the car, Aaron.”
“Hannah, if I said something wrong . . .”
“Stop the fucking car, Aaron.” Her voice is a quiet growl.
I pull over. “Look,” I begin. “I clearly did something wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t have come down, so soon into our relationship, and without asking. I see that it seems a little nuts—”
“Why are you here, Aaron?” she interrupts.
“I told you. I came to see you. To know you.”
“If you really came to see me, if you knew me, even a little bit, you’d have understood that this is my first visit with my family since I left. How hard that is for me. And you wouldn’t have made it harder.”
“No! That’s the last thing I want to do.” I reach for her hands. In spite of the heat, they feel cold.
“Then why are you here?” she repeats.
“I came to see you.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I’m in love with . . .”
She silences me with a slice of her hand in the air. “You don’t know me well enough to be in love with me.”
“Don’t say that! I’ve been in love with you since the minute I saw you. And you felt it too. Our connection. You said so.”
She shakes her head.
“You can’t deny it. We just had the most amazing two days together. You found me my perfect song.”
She takes off her seat belt and turns to me. “Tell. Me. Why. You’re. Here.”
“Because I love you.”
But Hannah knows something can be true and still not be the truth. She says, “You know, I’ve been around addicts long enough to know when someone’s hustling me.”
“I’m not hustling you. And I’m not an addict. My fucking brother was the goddamn addict!”
I see the words come out of my mouth, like a poison vapor. I can see them enter Hannah’s bloodstream.
“Like I am a goddamn addict.”
“No! You’re nothing like him. You didn’t choose to become an addict. You didn’t ruin your family’s life.”
“No one chooses to become an addict.”
“Sandy did! Over and over again! He chose drugs over us. You want to know why I’m here? I’m here because you’re the first good thing that’s happened to me since my brother got sick. Since our family business went under. Since my mom was so broken she had to leave and my father came apart. You’re the one good thing, Hannah. And I’m so tired of bad things. I know they’re inevitable but I want a good inevitable thing. And that’s you.”
And then the dam breaks and all the years of anger and fear and sadness and loneliness and guilt come pouring out of me in a torrent of tears and snot.
Hannah gathers me in her arms. “Oh, baby,” she croons as she rocks me back and forth. All I want is to stay in this embrace. Never go back to the store, to Ira, the Lumberjacks, Chad.
We stay that way for a while and then I guess the relief of it, and the exhaustion of the past few days, catches up with me because I fall asleep.
When I wake up, the light’s different. Softer. The air in the car feels warm, intimate, the two of us enclosed in a bubble. If we could stay here forever, I would.
“Hey,” I say, wiping some drool from my cheek. “How long have I been out?”
“A couple hours,” she says.
There’s a crick in my neck that I try to massage out.
“Here,” Hannah says, reaching over to rub it for me.
I close my eyes. “That feels good.” Hannah massages a bit more. “I’m sorry about losing it before. Laying all that on you. There’s just a lot going on right now.”
“I can see that. And I’m glad you were honest with me. It clarified some things.” She stops rubbing and I open my eyes.
“Like the guy you got involved with is clueless when it comes to romance and relationships?”
“Oh, that was clear from the jump,” she says with a rueful smile.
I lean in closer, wanting to bridge any distance between us. I kiss her. Her lips are warm and soft, but after a second she pulls away. “I have to tell you something.”
I might be new to the girlfriend thing, unpracticed in relationships, but I know I have to tell you something is a precursor to an asteroid. I have to tell you something is what Ira told me when they put Sandy in rehab the first time. What Mom told me when she had to leave.
“Please, don’t say it.”
She says it: “I can’t be involved with you.”
“No. NO! You’re the one thing in my life that makes me feel good.”
She reaches out to touch my face. “Funny. That’s how I used to feel about heroin.”
“It’s not the same. You’re not a drug.”
“Aren’t I? You’re using me to run away. And you’re keeping so many secrets. The fact that I didn’t see it, or chose not to see it, proves I’m not ready for a relationship.” She looks at me. “And neither are you.”
“We’ll get ready together. To be ready for each other.”
“That’s not how recovery works.”
“Don’t do this! Don’t throw this away. We’re meant for each other.”
“Why? Because I was reading some book?”
“Not some book! You were reading The Magician’s Nephew. You had ‘This Must Be the Place’ on your perfect-song mix.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It means we’re inevitable.”
“How?”
“Because that song,” I say, my voice breaking. “That was the song.”
“What song?”
And then I tell her the story. Of Mom and Ira meeting by the side of the road. The song that started our family. The inevitability of them. The inevitability of us.
When I finish, Hannah starts laughing. Like hardcore, holding her sides, tears down the face, laughter. “All this time,” she says between hiccups. “You’ve said you don’t like music.” More chortling. “But music is your origin. You literally would not exist without it.” She wipes the tears with the back of her hand and kisses me goodbye before opening the car door and turning to me one last time: “Aaron Stein,” she says. “You’re the most unreliable narrator I’ve ever met.”
A Grief Observed
It’s dusk when I pull into Silver City, but the light is blue, peach, purple. It’s Georgia O’Keeffe light. We don’t have skies like this in the Northwest. Not ever.
After Hannah left me on the side of the road, I grabbed the atlas to figure out where I was and how to get home. Then remembered I couldn’t go home.
And that’s when I saw how close I was to New Mexico. How close I was to the thing I’ve been running from. Turns out, no matter how fast or far you go, the inevitable always catches up with you.
I picked up my phone. And for the first time since she left, I called my mother.
* * *
The dogs start barking as soon as I pull into the driveway and get more frenzied as I come up the front walk. My olfactory bulb starts firing the minute Mom opens the door. It’s not just her smell—lavender and sandalwood—but the aroma of chicken soup wafting from the kitchen. Jewish penicillin, what she would feed us whenever we were ailing. I stand in front of this strange house, with these strange dogs, and it’s like I’m there and here, then and now, all places at once.
“Hello, my love,” she says.
“Hi, Mom.”
We just stand there, neither of us knowing what to do. Mom used to be a hugger, but we all used to be things we’re not anymore.
“Do you want to come in?”
I nod.
As soon as I go inside, the dogs switch from fierce guardians to adoring lap animals. Mom introduces me: “This is Terrence,” she says, petting an oddly shaped mutt. “He’s half Siberian husky, half Welsh corgi, and mostly blind, not that he lets that stop him. And this is Mindy,” she says, tickling a poodle under the chin.
Mom, Terrence, and Mindy lead me down a hallway decorated with Southwestern style paintings of buffalo, hawks, coyotes. The chirp of birdsong is everywhere.
“Noisy little shits, aren’t they?” she says. “They’re always like this before bedtime. You want to meet them?” Keeping the dogs at bay, she opens the door to a small bedroom full of large cages and a pull-out couch, the bed made up. “Getting their ya-yas out. Reminds me of how you boys used to be. So riled up, I’d have to sing you to sleep.” She stops, lost in the memory. “Sometimes the birds sing me to sleep.”
I step toward one of the cages; five colorful parakeets flutter about inside. I stick my finger through the bars. They all ignore me save for one, a small yellow bird with orange spots and a baby mohawk, who gently pecks at my finger.
“That’s Ramón.”
“Hi, Ramón,” I say.
“Want me to open the cage? He likes to perch on fingers.”
I nod.
Mom unlatches the little opening, whistling and warbling like she’s become fluent in bird-speak. It wouldn’t surprise me. She always knew how to talk to anyone.
Most of the birds ignore her, happy with their birdseed. Ramón stares right at me, eyes flashing.
“He’s pinning,” Mom tells me.
“Pinning?”
“Dilating and contracting his pupil. It’s a sign of how parakeets are feeling.”
“How’s he feeling?”
“Curious, I suspect.” And then, as if to confirm Mom’s hunch, Ramón flies out of his cage, landing on my shoulder.
“Wow,” Mom says. “I’ve never seen him do that before.”
“What do I do?”
“Nothing. Unless you want me to get him off you.”
I feel Ramón’s tiny claws clamping on to my flesh, like he’s holding on for dear life. “Leave him.”
“He must like your aura,” Mom says.
I roll my eyes.
“Laugh if you want, but the people who live here have a ton of animal behavior books. One I read said that parakeets can see UV light, which allows them to see people’s auras.” Mom pauses and reaches her finger toward Ramón, who gently pecks at her nail. “He must like yours.”
“Then clearly Ramón has terrible taste. Because if I have an aura, it’s puke green.”
“Well, if it is, Ramón likes it, don’t you?” she chirps.
“You’ve become a bird person,” I say.
“I suspect I always was. I did name the store Bluebird Books.”
At the mention of the store my stomach clenches. Ramón flaps his wings in sympathy.
“But I never lived with birds before,” she continues. “I find them endlessly fascinating. We say birdbrain like it’s an insult, but as tiny as their brains are, they are remarkably intelligent animals. They can predict earthquakes. Storms. They go quiet in the moments before a cataclysmic event.”
Mom whistles and holds out her finger. Ramón jumps on, and she returns him to the cage. “It’s funny because the day I found your brother . . .” She trails off, latching the cage and unfolding a white sheet. “I woke up at dawn. Usually the birds are making a racket at that time, but they were eerily quiet.” She shakes the sheet out a few times before gently laying it over the cage. “I went into Sandy’s room, even though he hadn’t been home in days; if he had, I’d have been checking on him. I could never sleep when he was in the house. But he must have come in late, after we went to bed. When the birds were quiet, I just knew.” She pulls down the sheet and the birdsong falls silent. “I just knew.”
I can still hear the sound of her screams when she found him that morning. I’d known straightaway too: the inevitable had finally happened.
And I was relieved. The end had finally come.
But it wasn’t the end. Mom kept screaming. At the hospital where they pronounced him dead. At the morgue where they took his body for an autopsy. At the memorial service hardly anyone attended. Every morning she woke wailing, as if his death was happening to her over and over again.
“She needs time,” Ira told me. “She’ll get better in time.” But she didn’t. And every day that she didn’t, Ira got worse. He’d kept it pretty together through Sandy’s sickness, and even his death, but when Mom started to unravel, so did he.
A new dread descended over me, thick as the December skies. If this carried on, I was going to lose all of them. Not just Sandy, who was already gone. Not just Mom, who was halfway gone. But Ira too.
I began to wish Mom would just leave, the way I’d wished Sandy would just die.
And then she did.
And nothing got better.
Ira may be the Giving Tree, but the boy with the ax who chops him down, branch by branch—that’s me.
* * *
I fall asleep in my clothes without eating and wake the next morning to the sounds of the birds chirping away. I blink. The clock reads 10:34. Ramón is staring at me, his eyes pinning.
“You know the truth, don’t you, little buddy?” I ask him.
His eyes grow larger, smaller, larger, smaller.
I shuffle into the kitchen. Mom is staring at the refrigerator. “It’s Thanksgiving,” she says, pulling open the empty drawers. “I sort of forgot it was happening and now all I have is chicken soup and hot dogs. I suppose we could go to the market and see if there are any turkeys left.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not feeling very thankful.”
She turns to me. “Funnily enough, today I am.”
My stomach lets out a gurgle. I haven’t eaten since the Circle K in Phoenix. “Wouldn’t mind some chicken soup.”
Mom pulls out a Tupperware container and ladles some into a bowl, popping it in the microwave. As it heats, the smell fills up the kitchen, but this time it doesn’t transport me anywhere. I stay here. The microwave dings. She pulls out the bowl and plops it in front of me. “Eat up and have a shower. I borrowed some of the owner’s clothes for you because I couldn’t find any suitcase in the car.”
I swirl my spoon into the soup, chunky with carrots and onions and hunks of white meat, but no noodles. Ira is a firm believer that the only starc
h that should adorn chicken soup is a matzo ball.
“By the way, what’s my porch swing doing in the car?”
I take my first bite. It is salty and fatty and warm and it goes straight into my bloodstream. Immediately, I feel a bit better.
“That’s a long story.”
“Finish your soup. We’ll take the dogs out for a walk and you can tell it to me.”
* * *
The house is in the foothills of the Piños Altos, and we set up a steep, rocky trail. As we walk in the brisk, clear air, I let the story unspool backward, starting with the porch swing in the car, to the record selling, to the renovation, to the building of the ramp, to the night I met Chad and went and sold the store to Penny Macklemore.
Mom’s face stays neutral as I talk. Clearly, this is old news.
“Ira told you?”
“You sold the store out from under him. You think he wouldn’t tell me that?”
A fresh fist of guilt socks me in the gut. “I figured he might. The next time you called.”
Mom gives me a look. “Your father and I talk almost every day.”
“You call once a week.”
This time, Mom rolls her eyes. “I call you once a week, my reticent son. But I speak to Ira frequently. He calls me when he’s on his walks.”
“He does? I thought he was smoking pot.”
“Ira?” She laughs. “He’s too paranoid for that.”
“So if you talk to Ira every day, do you know about . . . ?”
“Bev? Of course.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
Mom unleashes the dogs. Mindy bounds up the hill, but Terrence stays by our side until Mom pulls out a bright yellow rubber ball. “I want your father to be happy,” Mom says as Terrence trots off after the ball. “He wants me to be happy. And we both want you to be happy. But when you’ve been through what we have, you start to understand that happy doesn’t always look like it used to. Family doesn’t always look like it used to. But it’s still family.”