by Susan Perabo
She sat silently in the car with her father. They watched her grandparents negotiate the revolving doors with their rolling bags and then they were gone.
“Are we going for Christmas?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You wanna go?”
She imagined the drive, her safe place, her middle seat, her brother with his iPhone, the box of car stuff, the sound of her parents’ voices in the front seat. She imagined them in the van in the dark, the lights splashing on the windows. It made her feel hollow inside, the thought of all that time, all those miles, with her family.
“Not really,” she said.
“I guess we’ll see,” he said. “I guess we’ll see where everybody is. I guess we can decide at the last minute if we have to.”
Her phone buzzed in her purse. A text from Becca: r u coming? were here.
She looked at the text for a moment, then out the window. She watched a plane’s steep ascent, imagined the strangers inside, gazing down on their tiny van.
Can’t come, she replied. Family thing.
K. I’ll txt later
“What’s up?” her father said. “Big plans?”
“I guess I’m just going home,” she said.
“No shopping?”
“Nah. Something came up with them. I think I’m just going to crash.”
“You need anything?”
“Not for crashing, no.”
“Then home we go.”
He turned up the radio and she knew she was safe. She trusted his silence. Unlike with her mother, there was nothing lurking under her father’s silence. Sometimes Meredith wondered why they’d ever gotten married, and sometimes she wondered why they stayed married. It was two different questions, with two different answers. Or maybe two hundred different answers. How could you share your life with someone, forever, especially someone who was so different from you? If two became one, like the cheesy songs always said, what happened to what was left over?
•
“I’m cold,” Lisa said.
The skin around her eyes was pasty, and the space between her top lip and her nose was raw from the rough toilet paper. How many rolls of toilet paper remained? At some point they would surely run through it all, and then what? Meredith stood up.
“Wait,” Lisa said, but not very convincingly. Meredith’s knees cracked as she stretched and stepped out of the tub. She swung open the door of the cabinet below the sink. It was empty but for the crumpled corpse of a daddy longlegs. She closed the cabinet and opened the medicine chest. There were a few cellophaned Pepto-Bismol tablets and a flat tube of travel-sized toothpaste.
“I’m freezing,” Lisa said.
There was a single hand towel, dingy, stained, probably once yellow. Meredith pulled it off the towel rack and draped it over Lisa’s middle. Even Lisa smiled at this.
“Thanks,” she said. “Much better.”
“Take my sweater,” Meredith said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, really.” Meredith pulled her sweater over her head and laid it across Lisa, spreading the arms carefully over Lisa’s bare shoulders. Now she stood in her bra by the tub. She had nothing else to offer and Lisa’s teeth were chattering.
“This is dumb,” Meredith said. “I’m going to go get a blanket.”
“Where?”
“Out there. On the couch.”
Lisa shook her head. “No. There’s not one there. I’m pretty sure.”
Meredith couldn’t remember. She could hardly conjure the couch in her mind. She realized that she couldn’t recall the last time either she or Lisa had left the bathroom.
“It’s okay,” Lisa said. “Really. I’ll be all right.”
Meredith bent down and put her lips on Lisa’s forehead. This was what her mother had always done to test for fever when she was younger. Her mother claimed the hand was a poor indicator, that only the lips could tell for sure. She and Evan had spent much of their childhood illnesses swatting their mother away. “Get a thermometer,” they always said. “Please. A thermometer.” And eventually she had.
“You’re burning up,” she told Lisa, standing. “Seriously. I’m going to get a blanket.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’ll just take a sec. I’ll be right back.”
“Meredith?”
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“He’s not even out there,” Meredith said. “When’s the last time you heard him?”
Lisa shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Me neither,” Meredith said. Still, she turned the knob quietly and eased the door open.
“Meredith?”
She turned back, exasperated. “What?”
Lisa wiped the blood from under her nose. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “I’ll be right back. It’s gonna be okay.”
The apartment was dark and quiet. What time was it? She couldn’t see any light behind the living room curtains, so it must have been nighttime. She didn’t think he was home, but to be safe she felt quietly around the couch in the dark, not wanting to turn on any lights. She recalled the blanket that was piled on Lisa’s lap their first morning in the apartment. Where had that blanket gone? What had that blanket even looked like?
Well, it was obvious where she could find a blanket, even if it wasn’t that one. She went back to the little hall. The bedroom door was a few inches ajar, as usual. She crept to it and pushed it open slowly. She had never been in the bedroom before, never seen more than just a slice of it.
There was a figure in the bed. She could not see it well, but there was a little light from the parking lot, and as her eyes adjusted she could see that the figure was the man. He was asleep on his back. His mouth was open. He was shirtless, and Meredith remembered that she, too, was shirtless, and as soon as she remembered this goose bumps ran across her stomach and down her arms. There was only one blanket on the bed—a royal-blue fleecy thing—and it was on the man, though only up to his waist, and thrown over him haphazardly as if by someone else. It was not tucked in. One swipe and it was hers. One swipe and she could be back in the bathroom and Lisa could be warm.
She lifted a corner of the blanket. No, not a swipe. Surely that would wake him. Gradual was better. Gradual and he wouldn’t even know it. Then she could return it later, in a few hours, before he woke up.
She took a step backward and the blanket slid a few inches below his waist. He was wearing underwear, the black boxers Meredith had seen before. She stood still for a moment, then she took another step backward, then another. Every small step drew the blanket down a few more inches: past his thighs, then his knees, then his hairy blank shins. Finally, with a little lift, it was over his toes.
The man lay motionless in the bed. Maybe he was passed out drunk. Maybe that was why he was so still.
Meredith backed all the way into the hall, dragging the blue blanket, then gathered it into a soft bundle in her arms and turned to the bathroom. The door was closed.
She did not recall closing it.
She put her right hand on the doorknob and turned. The knob turned one inch and stopped. The door was locked.
“Lisa,” she whispered.
No sound came from inside the bathroom. There had never been a quieter place than this apartment. It was as if the whole thing was frozen in time, a tomb, a relic. Meredith looked back into the bedroom. The feet, unmoving.
“Lisa,” she said, a little bit louder. She tapped as quietly as she could with the tip of her index finger, not daring to make a fist, not daring to knock.
“Lisa. Come on.”
Lisa was sick. She had lost a lot of blood. So now maybe she was unconscious, lying there in the tub, unable to move. But if that were the case, then who had locked the door?
Meredith tried the door again. Maybe it wasn’t locked. Maybe it was just stuck. She gave it a shake. It rattled against its frame. Still the knob did not turn. She checked the bedroom.
The feet, unmoving.
“Lisa,” she said.
She shivered, pressed the blanket to her bare stomach. The apartment was as cold as a cave. She made a fist. She knocked.
“Please. Come on, Lisa. It’s me.”
•
Dinner was what her mother always called catch-as-catch-can, leftovers heaped on a plate and each person’s individually microwaved. You were responsible for your own meal. They ate at the kitchen table. Meredith thought her mother looked horrendous. She looked like she’d wandered from the wreckage of a plane or something. Was this the result of last night’s blowup? Where had her mother been all day anyway? Right, she remembered, the old folks’ home, whatever it was called. Probably not a very happy place. But her mother didn’t just look sad; she looked sick.
“Can I please spend the night at Becca’s?” Meredith asked, sliding in the “please” as a favor, a peace offering, even.
“Who?” her mother asked, squinting slightly.
“Becca Nichols,” Meredith said, annoyed. How was it even possible, after last night, that her mother had forgotten Becca again?
“They were supposed to go shopping,” her father explained quickly. “But it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah,” Meredith said. “So she wondered if we could do a sleepover instead.”
“Maybe she could come over here,” her father said.
“She invited me over there,” Meredith said. “There might be other people, too.”
This part was a lie. When she’d texted, Becca hadn’t said anything about other people. But who knew? It was always possible there might be other people. She hadn’t said there wouldn’t be other people.
“Hey, is that Amy Nichols’s sister?” Evan asked.
“Yeah,” Meredith said, too late realizing why he’d asked, then trying to backtrack. “I mean, maybe. I don’t know.”
“She almost had her baby in the library on Wednesday. No joke. Somebody ran for the nurse. But it was a false alarm.”
“Her sister’s pregnant?” her father asked. “How old is she?”
“Her sister’s not my friend,” Meredith said. “She doesn’t even really like her sister. I don’t even know if that’s her sister. It’s a common last name.”
Her parents exchanged looks across the table. Now it would come, she thought. Now it would come. Bring it on, she thought. Try to tell me what I can’t do. Try to tell me you know anything about me. You don’t know where I spend my days. You don’t want to know where I spend my days. Tell me I can’t go and I’ll tell you that it could have been me, should have been me, was me. Tell me I can’t go and I’ll tell you what he did to Lisa. Bring it. She looked at her mother. Bring it.
“Fine,” her mother said softly.
Her father turned to her mother, surprised. “Are you sure? We could—”
“It’s fine,” her mother said.
“I—” Meredith started.
“Go,” her mother said, looking at her squarely. There was something wrong with her mother’s eyes. It was like her mother had seen something terrible, and it had actually done something to her eyes. Suddenly Meredith wasn’t sure what she should do, if she should even go to Becca’s. She recalled that night after Evan’s second surgery, her mother crying in the kitchen, alone. And then, unexpectedly, she pictured Lisa, shivering in the bathroom, alone.
“I don’t—” she started.
Her mother looked away and shook her head. “Please,” she said. “Just go.”
•
Meredith could not stop looking at Amy Nichols’s belly. She had never been so close to someone so pregnant before. It was ridiculous. It was like she was pretending to be pregnant and had stuffed a beach ball under her shirt. It didn’t look like it could possibly be real, like a body could even function like that.
“It’s kicking like crazy,” she said to Meredith. “You wanna feel it?”
“I’m okay,” Meredith said.
She and Becca were sitting on the couch and Amy was propped in a recliner.
“Really, it’s totally cool. Come on. You should feel it.”
“You should, Meredith,” Becca said. “It’s super weird.” Her phone buzzed and she took it off the arm of the couch, glanced at it, and laid it back down.
Meredith had never felt a baby kick before. She got up and put her hand as lightly as she could on the peak of Amy’s stomach. Amy grabbed her hand and moved it down six inches and Meredith felt a little thump. There was no mistaking that something was in there. In truth, it made her feel a little bit like throwing up.
“Wild, right?” Amy said. “Sometimes she turns around and you can feel her little butt. So weird.”
“You know it’s a girl?”
“Yeah. We’ve already done up her room and everything. It’s really cute.”
“You wanna see?” Becca asked. “Let’s go see it.”
“I’m not going,” Amy said. “I’m not moving.”
Meredith followed Becca upstairs to the nursery. There was a crib and a chair and the white walls were painted with pink and purple clouds. She stood in the dark with Becca. Becca’s phone buzzed again but she didn’t look at it.
“It’s cute,” Meredith said.
“My mom says it will be less cute when there’s something crying in it. She said it’s all great until there’s a baby, and then it becomes a horror show.”
“Is your sister staying in school?”
Becca shrugged. “She says she is. I guess there’s a whole group of them. They have like a little club. They do their homework while they breastfeed or whatever.”
“I guess that’s nice,” Meredith said. “Who keeps texting you?”
“Oh, it’s Lisa’s mom,” Becca said. “She keeps asking me to come over for hot chocolate. She texts me like five times every night. Sometimes I go. It’s only like two blocks from here. But sometimes I pretend I didn’t get the text. I know—I’m shit.”
“She texts you every night?”
“Well, lots of nights. I go over there and just talk for like a half hour and then I say I have homework or whatever. Which is true.”
“What do you talk about?”
“She asks me about school and friends and stuff,” Becca said. “Sometimes we talk about Lisa, but mostly about other people, like who’s going out with who or whatever.”
“Maybe we should go,” Meredith said. She pictured Mrs. Bellow’s hopeful smile from the car window, imagined her at the kitchen table with her phone, texting Becca, then texting her again, then again. “It’s okay with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “I don’t mind.”
•
Mrs. Bellow met them at the door with the mugs of hot chocolate. They sat at the kitchen table and talked about Thanksgiving. There was a fire crackling in the fireplace, and the dogs were splayed on their sides in the open space under the fireplace, the tunnel that connected the living room to the kitchen. It was the perfect little cave, and Meredith knew Lisa must have spent countless hours under there when she was little. If she’d been Lisa’s friend they would have had a fort there and draped blankets over the side so the adults couldn’t see in.
“The kids were here,” Mrs. Bellow said. “With Peter. All they ate was mashed potatoes. We have so much turkey left. Do you guys want turkey?”
“No thanks,” Meredith said. “I actually just had some earlier.”
“We ordered way too much,” Mrs. Bellow said. “I’m just going to freeze it and save it for Christmas.”
“That makes sense,” Becca said.
There was snow falling outside. It was bitter cold. Winter had arrived abruptly—but didn’t it always seem that way, like one day it was just suddenly winter? Because it was, Meredith thought. Because there wasn’t supposed to be any space between one thing and the thing that was next to it.
“You want to go up to Lisa’s room?” Mrs. Bellow asked. “I don’t mind if you do.”
“That’s oka
y,” Becca said. “I told my mom we’d be back soon.”
“You should just go up for a minute,” she said. “I did a little work on it. A little redecorating. Got some cool frames. Put some pictures up. That kind of thing.”
“Okay,” Becca said. “Sure.”
They went upstairs, leaving Mrs. Bellow in the kitchen. Lisa’s room looked almost the same as the last time Meredith had seen it except that most of the pictures that had previously been Scotch taped to her mirror were now in sleek silver frames on the desk and the dresser. There was a framed photo that Mrs. Bellow had taken on her phone the afternoon Meredith had first come here, with all the other girls, the day her mother showed up. In the photo the four girls were sitting at the kitchen table and Amanda was absurdly making a peace sign. Then there was a framed photo collage with seven or eight pictures of friends and family, and included among the images was Meredith’s seventh-grade school photo which she could only imagine Mrs. Bellow had photocopied from the yearbook, because there was no reason why Lisa would ever have had a picture of her.
“Maybe we should call somebody,” Becca whispered. “Like one of her friends.”
“Is your mom her friend?”
“Not really. I mean, she knows her. But I wouldn’t say she’s really her friend. But this is weird.” She nodded to the xeroxed photo of Meredith in the photo collage. “No offense, but you know, that’s just weird. Like if Lisa ever came back to this room, she’d be like, Who the fuck is that?”
Mrs. Bellow appeared in the doorway. “What d’ya girls think?”
“It’s great,” Meredith said.
“Yeah,” Becca said. “I love it.”
Mrs. Bellow looked at her phone. “It’s pretty late,” she said. “And it’s snowing. Why don’t you guys stay here? I could call your mom, Becca, and just tell her you’re staying over.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” Becca said. “It’s not snowing that hard.”
Mrs. Bellow came in and sat down on Lisa’s bed. “Plenty of room,” she said. “It’s really no problem.”