The Things We Keep

by Sally Hepworth

  “My eyesight,” Ms. Donnelly explains. “It’s terrible. I’m always reading things wrong. Perhaps you’re not at 82 Forest Hills Drive. Perhaps you’re at 83? Or 87?”

  I swallow. “Uh…”

  “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’m sure that’s what is says. Eighty-seven. I do apologize.”

  “Ms. Donnelly—”

  “Please,” she says. “Call me Kathy.”

  “Kathy,” I say. If we weren’t on the phone, I’d have grabbed Ms. Donnelly and hugged her. “I don’t know what to—”

  “It’s not easy, being a single mother,” she says, and I hear the kindness in her voice. “Tell Clementine we’re looking forward to seeing her on Monday,” and she hangs up the phone.

  * * *

  That afternoon, when Rosie arrives, she looks terrible. Blue circles ring her eyes, and her lips are peeling. Clearly I’m not the only one this has been taking its toll on. She gestures for me to follow her into the nurses’ room, and I do, passing Clem cartwheeling along the hallway on our way.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say to Rosie as soon as the door shuts. “I feel terrible.”

  “Why? You took all the blame.” She lifts her bag off her shoulder and falls into a chair. “I’m surprised to see you, actually. I thought Eric would have—”

  “He gave me one last chance. He thought last night was the first time it happened.”

  “Wow. That’s good, I guess.”

  “Did you know about Clara?” I ask.

  Rosie’s expression is guarded.

  “It’s okay, she told me she’s dying,” I say.

  Rosie’s head falls back in her chair, and her eyes close. “Yes, I knew. She has breast cancer. Very advanced.”

  “How long has she got?”

  “I’d like to say months,” Rosie says, her eyes still closed, “but I suspect it’s more like weeks.”

  Even though Clara told me herself, it’s still shocking to hear. Weeks. Could it really only be weeks?

  “She wants to reconcile Laurie with her sister,” I say. “Apparently, they dated before he met Clara and she’s been carrying the guilt around all these years for stealing Laurie away.”

  Rosie opens her eyes. “I’m sorry to say it, but I doubt she’ll get the chance.”

  It isn’t good news, not at all, but for some reason this pleases me. The idea of Clara handing her dying husband over to her sister in her final days is something I can’t seem to stomach. “So what happens now?” I ask.

  “What do you mean, ‘what happens’?”

  “With Anna and Luke,” I say. “What happens now?”

  “Well, we don’t have a lot of choice, do we? We’re going to have to keep their doors locked. We can’t very well let them be together after what happened today.…”

  When I don’t respond, Rosie looks up.

  “Can’t we?” I whisper.

  Her eyes bug. “You’re not serious, Eve? After all this trouble? After Eric said this is your last chance?”

  “I know it’s not ideal but—”

  “Eve, I like my job, okay? I can’t put it at risk anymore, I’m sorry.”

  “But … I promised her.”

  Rosie looks like she wants to see through the skin on my forehead and into my brain, where perhaps she’ll get a clue of what is going on in there. Perhaps for this reason, I decide to spit out the thought that’s been spinning around in my head all day.

  “It’s just that … if another person kills themselves because I left when they needed me … It will kill me.”

  43

  Clementine

  Cartwheeling makes your head hurt after a while. It’s been almost twenty minutes, and May and Gwen are still watching. I’m starting to think that if I don’t stop, we might be here all night. I tell them I have to go, and they give me a little clap and shuffle off. Then I peek around Rosie’s door, looking for Mom.

  “So what happens now?” Mom is saying.

  Rosie says, “What do you mean, ‘what happens’?”

  “With Anna and Luke. What happens now?”

  “Well, we don’t have a lot of choice, do we?” Rosie says. “We’re going to have to keep their doors locked. We can’t very well let them be together after what happened today.…”

  “Can’t we?” Mom says.

  There’s quiet for a moment, then Rosie says, “You’re not serious, Eve? After all this trouble? After Eric said this is your last chance?”

  “I know it’s not ideal,” Mom says, “but—”

  “Eve, I like my job, okay? I can’t put it at risk anymore, I’m sorry.”

  “But … I promised her.”

  It’s quiet again. I wonder if they have noticed me standing there. But then Mom continues. “It’s just that … if another person kills themselves because I left when they needed me … It will kill me.”

  I snap back from the door. The hairs on my arms and legs stand on end. It will kill me. The thought of Mom dying, too, is so scary I can’t breathe.

  It takes me a few moments to figure out what to do. Then I head for Eric’s office.… Miss Weber always says that if you find yourself in trouble, find someone in charge to help you. But when I get to Eric’s office, he’s not there. I climb onto Eric’s chair. Next to the phone is a list of numbers, and I choose the one that says “Eric’s Cell.” As it rings in my ear, I look through the crack in the door. Rosie is arranging everyone’s medicine in baskets on the cart. I want to scream, What are you doing? Didn’t you hear Mom say that something was going to kill her? Then I hear a deep breath on the other end of the phone. “Eric speaking.”

  “Eric!”

  “Yes.” A pause. “Who is this?”

  “It’s me,” I say. “Clementine.”

  “Clementine? What are you doing in my office? Where’s your mother? Is everything all right?”

  “No,” I say in a small voice. “Nothing is all right.”

  “Clementine, honey, is your mother there?” he says.

  “No!” I say. “I mean, yes. But you can’t talk to her. Eric, I need your help.” I take a deep breath. “Rosie said she has to lock Anna and Luke’s doors, but Mom said she doesn’t want to. She says, if she does lock them … it will kill her! And I don’t want her to die. So can’t we just unlock the doors? Please?”

  I’m breathing hard now, but Eric is quiet. I wonder if he’s still there.

  Eric is quiet for a few seconds, which makes me nervous.

  But finally, he says, “Why don’t you sit tight, Clementine, and I’ll be right there? Then we can sort this whole thing out.”

  * * *

  The doorbell rings as soon as I put down the phone. Wow. Eric must have run the whole way. I zoom out of the office past Bert (who makes a noise like geez or sheesh or something), past Rosie and her medicine cart, and don’t stop until I get to the door.

  “Eric,” I say, throwing the door open. “Thank you for—”

  I freeze.

  “Clementine, is your mother home?” Miranda’s mom says, and then just pushes past me into the house. Miranda’s mom is really fat, and her cheeks are pink from the cold. As I close the door behind us, I start to worry. What is she doing here? Did Miranda tell her about our fight this morning? She keeps walking farther into the house, staring at everything she passes—the lamp, the vase, the walkers lined up in a row.

  Finally Mom appears. “Andrea.” Mom’s face goes pale. For a few seconds, I wait for her to say something, but Mom just stares at her like she’s a talking goose.

  “I got your address from the class list,” Miranda’s mom says. “I’m here to talk to you about your daughter. Today was the third time she hurt my daughter, and I wanted to let you know I’m putting in an official request to have her removed from the school.”

  Mom looks at me.

  “I didn’t hurt Miranda!” I say. “I promise, Mom.”

  “Don’t lie,” Miranda’s mom says. She gets up close to my face, and her mouth is mean. “I saw Miranda’s knee
, it has a huge bruise. You tripped her.”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “She tripped herself.”

  Miranda’s mom opens her mouth again, but Mom steps between us. “You heard Clem,” she says angrily. “Miranda tripped herself. And I’ll ask you not speak to my daughter. Speak to me.”

  I want to hug Mom. Mom doesn’t usually speak angrily to other grown-ups. I try to catch her eye to smile, but she just stares at Miranda’s mom.

  “How about I speak to you about this address you provided to the school, then?” Miranda’s mom says. She starts to walk again, peering around the corner at a row of walkers. “Since this is obviously not your house.”

  Mom doesn’t move, but her face changes. No one says anything for a while.

  “It’s a residential care facility,” I say, to fill the silence. “Mom is the cook. We live in an apartment. It’s small and brown, and there’s a pizza shop right underneath!”

  Miranda’s mom was still looking at the parlor, but now she spins around. There’s a moment of silent grown-up language, where they speak with their eyes instead of their mouths.

  “So you don’t live here?” she says to Mom. She’s smiling a little, but it’s not a nice smile. It’s a tricky smile. “Do you even live in the school district?”

  I start to wonder if I’ve said the wrong thing.

  “No,” Mom says. “We don’t. After Richard died, I couldn’t afford a place in the area, and I didn’t want to move Clem from a school she loved after she’d already lost so much. But the good news is, thanks to your daughter, Clem doesn’t love her school all that much anymore.” I watch Mom, but she doesn’t look at me. “Now that I think of it, I should also thank you. Thank you for being such a narrow-minded, mean-spirited bitch. Thank you for having such a mean-spirited bitch for a daughter. It will make the move so much easier.”

  I gasp and so does Miranda’s mom. “Bitch” is a bad word. And there’s another noise, too—a scream. There’s a crash, like glass breaking, and Mom turns and sprints down the hallway. At the same time, the door opens. And Eric walks in.

  44

  Anna

  Seven months ago …

  I’m lying on my sleeping-bench, daydreaming, when Jack appears in my room. His face is all wrinkled and lined and his hands are out in front like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

  “Anna, we need to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s private. Let’s go to your room.”

  “This is my room.”

  Jack wipes his face in his hand and presses his eyelids together. “This is the parlor, Anna.”

  “Oh.” I glance around. Yeah. I’m lying on the long chair-thing. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  I’m glad Jack is here because I don’t think I’d have found my way back. Everything looks the same. White walls, pale green furniture, hallways leading to doors. Doors to where? I wonder. Where oh where do all these doors lead?

  Inside my room, we sit.

  “Dr. Li called this morning to tell me the results of your blood test,” Jack says. He’s wearing a black thing, sliced in the middle with a white bit and a pink stripe. A tie! This is what he wears to work. Jack doesn’t usually visit me on a workday. I wonder what he’s doing here now?

  “So?” I ask.

  “You really have no idea what I’m about to tell you?”

  “No.”

  Jack sinks to his knees in front of me. I take his face in my hands. “You look like Mom,” I say.

  Jack smiles weakly. “You look like Dad.”

  “Remember when you told me that if I cut off all my hair, it would grow back straight?”

  A small, surprised laugh explodes from Jack. “You remember that?”

  “What girl doesn’t remember being bald?”

  Jack looks at me for a long while. “When it started to grow back, you had an Afro that would have made the Jackson Five proud. That was actually pretty cool.” He keeps looking at me, but his gaze slides toward my stomach, and his eyes grow sad. “You’re pregnant, Anna.” Jack puts his hand on my stomach, smoothing my clothes so they sit flat.

  My belly looks round, like an upside-down bowl. Jack looks at it for another moment, then drops his head onto my knees. When he lifts it again, his cheeks are wet.

  “You mean … there’s a baby in there?” I point at the upside-down bowl.

  He nods. I curve my hands around my belly, the way Jack did a moment ago. “A baby?”

  Jack closes his eyes. “Oh God.”

  I watch him. He looks upset. It makes me upset. “You’re worried because of the Alzheimer’s.”

  “Yes, Anna.” Jack can’t even look at me. His brow is heavy and he keeps wiping it. It takes a moment for me to realize what he’s worried about. I’m not going to be around for long. Who will look after my baby when I’m gone?

  “You’ll look after my baby, won’t you?” My voice rises and cracks. “After I’m gone. Will you bring it to live with you?”

  Jack removes his hand and looks at me. For a moment, I think he’s going to say something important; then he just sighs. “Of course I’ll look after the baby, Anna.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I need to talk to Eric,” he says after what feels like a long time.

  “Okay,” I say again, because I also have someone I need to talk to.

  Jack sighs a few more times and looks at me a lot. Then he shakes his head and leaves, using that power walk he has. It’s pretty good, that walk. Intimidating. I want to tell him so, but he’s gone. And anyway, I have somewhere to be.

  * * *

  And then, I’m out in the hallway again. White walls. White doors. Green sitting things. I pass a Latina carrying a pot of red food. The cook, I guess. She smiles on her way to wherever she’s going. I whirl in circles, looking for him, trying to get my bearings. On my second turn around, I don’t even know which door I came out of. When a bald man walks past, I sigh in relief.

  “You okay, Anna?” he asks.

  Anna! I give a little fist-pump. He knows me. “Yep. Have you seen … um…?”

  “Luke?” he suggests.

  I grin. That must be his name. Luke.

  “No,” the man says. I decide to call him Baldy. “He’s not in his room?”

  “Not sure,” I say. “Can you take me there?”

  Baldy is infuriatingly slow, but I tap along beside him because it’s bound to be faster than finding his room myself. Anyway, I’m too happy to be by myself. A baby. I repeat it in my mind a few times. A baby. Don’t forget this, Anna. You have a baby inside your belly.

  But when we get to his room, it’s empty. “Crap.”

  “Language,” the man tuts. “I’m headed to the parlor. Would you like to come and look for him there?”

  I’m about to say yes—after all, it has to be a better idea than stumbling around by myself with all these white doors—when it dawns on me. I know exactly where he is.

  “Can you take me to the … stepping-blocks that take you to the next floor?”

  He’s grumpy, this old dude. He sighs, loud and inconvenienced, and then starts walking. After a couple of clanks of his walker, he turns and says, “Well? You coming or not?”

  Geez.

  He takes me as far as the stepping-blocks and then says, “You okay?”

  “Sure am,” I say cheerily. “Thanks!”

  And then I’m climbing. A baby. Our baby.

  He will be in the upstairs room, I’m sure of it. It’s the perfect place to give him this news. I know it’s not all happy. We’re not going to live until our baby is a big person. But we’ll have created life. Life that will exist after we’ve gone.

  I climb up another set of stepping-blocks and walk into a thin-room with doors off it. One of the doors is open, and I peer inside. This is it! The room is full of large white mountains, but I ignore them and look for him. He’s not here. I look again, and that’s when I see the window-hole at one end. He must be through there.

  I
rush to the hole. I need to see him. As I walk through the hole, I bump into something. I have to duck down to get outside.

  “Hello!” I call. The sun is blinding and hot. “Hello,” I say again.

  I’ve forgotten his damn name again. I hear voices that sound like they’re a long way away, and other noises, too. A bird. The hum of a car. The laugh of a child. A child. My hands find my stomach.

  “Where are you?” I call.

  “Jesus Christ.” The voice I hear is faint, like it’s far away. “That’s a woman up there.”

  “Where?” someone says.

  “On the roof.”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Someone call 911.”

  Although I can hear the voices, I don’t know where they’re coming from. And I don’t really care. I still haven’t found him. I need to find him before I forget. The ground below me feels uneven, like I’m standing on a slant. I wobble. Nothing around me is familiar. I don’t think I’m in the upstairs room anymore.

  “Anna!”

  I recognize that voice. “Jack? Where are you?”

  “I’m down here,” he says. “Don’t jump. Please! I’m coming to get you.”

  A sweep of wind goes by, and I extend my arms, trying to steady myself. But there’s nothing to hold on to. Suddenly I see Jack. He’s standing on the green, looking up at me. He’s surrounded by people. None of them is the person I’m looking for.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  “Luke’s here, Anna!” Jack shouts. “Just stay there, and I’ll come and get you.”

  I hear him yell to someone to get Luke. That’s his name. Luke.

  Jack is doing the thing when he is angry but he’s trying to sound like he’s calm. He is probably lying about Luke being there. I can’t see him anywhere.

  “Where?” I ask.

  He looks around. “There!” he says, pointing. “He’s right there. Now, I’m coming up.”

  Jack disappears somewhere, and my eyes scan the green. I try to recall why I was looking for him. I hate it when this happens. I’ve got the feeling I went to quite a lot of effort to find him, and then … poof. It’s gone.

  I keep looking. Wondering. Then I see him, and it all falls away. My heart fills. And I step forward.