Love, Aubrey

by Suzanne LaFleur

  Gram had pulled some extra blankets from the trunk in the attic, so I climbed back into bed under the colorful layers of afghans and quilts. I found my mittens on the nightstand and put them on, and tugged a fleece cap over my head.

  When Gram came in to announce it was nearly noon and I should get up, she laughed. Then she sat on the bed and said, “Sometimes I forget my Aubrey is a Southern belle.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked grumpily, pulling off the mittens and hat.

  “This kind of winter is new for you,” she said. “Did you know the heat’s on full blast?”

  I shook my head and smoothed down my staticky hair.

  Gram traced her fingers along the stitching on the top quilt, letting quiet settle in the room.

  “Gram?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Did you make resolutions this year?”

  She continued tracing and seemed to think. Then she said, “No.”

  I thought she must be lying, because she waited too long to answer. If she really didn’t have any, she would have said so right away. “Me neither,” I agreed.

  I was lying, too.

  Deciding not to think about Mom was easier than I thought.

  On Monday I didn’t think of her on the school bus while Bridget chattered away next to me.

  On Tuesday I didn’t think of her in language arts, where I took lots of notes with new, bright-colored gel pens I’d gotten in my Christmas stocking.

  On Wednesday I didn’t think of her at lunch, when Bridget kept track of every move of Christian Richards.

  But at night, when everything slowed down, and the house was dark, and the only sounds were the radiators ticking and Martha padding from one empty bed to the next, a lump grew in my throat. My eyes swelled with water, even though they were shut.

  Bridget was having a sleepy day. That’s what her mom called it, anyway, to explain why Bridget didn’t come to the door to let me in.

  “She’s on the couch. If you don’t see her, she’s hiding under that old blanket. She’s got movies on.”

  I headed through the kitchen to the living room, where a cartoon movie was playing. I sat down on top of the blanket mound.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Ehh,” Bridget responded. She pulled the blanket off her face. “Hi, Aubrey.”

  “Hi,” I said. “Can I watch?”

  Bridget nodded and scooted over a little.

  “Are you sick?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “I just feel like lying around.”

  “Okay,” I said. That made sense to me.

  So we lay around on the couch, and then we lay around on the floor and drew lazy pictures with crayons, and then we lay around on the couch again.

  Bridget’s mom came in and was surprised that we were still lying there.

  “Sweetie, what’s the matter today?” she asked Bridget.

  “Humph,” said Bridget. “Nothing.”

  “Mommy, c’mere,” Mabel called from the kitchen.

  “In a minute,” she yelled back. “Bridgie, let me see if you have a temperature.” Bridget let her mother feel her face. “I don’t think you feel hot,” she said.

  “Mommy!” Mabel called.

  Her mother said to Bridget, “Do you have any sniffles?”

  My stomach started to hurt. Maybe I was the one who didn’t feel good.

  I stood up. “Let’s play a game or something, Bridget. Some thing really long and good.”

  Bridget nodded, and her mother left, calling to Mabel, “Here I come!”

  We got out Monopoly. We read the directions and counted all the pieces and got out a calculator for just in case. I decided to be the banker and Bridget would give out the property cards. We played and played and I thought of nothing but Monopoly, of the little doggie I was moving around the board, and the hotels I built on the yellow properties. In the end, I won.

  I dreamed I could hear her. She was talking to me … no … about me. But who was she talking to? Dad?

  The clock on my nightstand said 10:15. The numbers seemed too clear for dreaming … 10:16. 10:17. And I could still hear her.

  “I need to see her,” she was saying.

  Me. She needed to see me.

  Someone else was talking, faintly, but getting louder.

  “No. Not tonight. You are not waking her up.”

  That was Gram, her voice angry. I could feel it filling the house and shaking me.

  It wasn’t a dream at all.

  I threw off the covers and ran to the top of the stairs. I stood there, listening, my heart pounding.

  My mother was downstairs.

  “Mama,” I whispered. But my feet were glued, glued to the old, cracked floorboards of Gram’s house.

  “I’m her mother. I need to see her.” She was pleading now.

  “You can’t take time off from your child and just pick right up! Aubrey has finally gotten some stability back in her life. You can wait until tomorrow to see her, and then she is going to school.”

  Mom didn’t say anything.

  Gram slammed something down. “You left her!” she yelled.

  “I know.” Mom’s voice sounded as if she was choking. “But I didn’t know then. I didn’t know. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t remember it.”

  My breath stopped.

  I had been forgotten. But she didn’t leave me behind on purpose. She didn’t know.

  I heard Gram starting to talk again, still angry, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying, just the harsh tones.

  Gram, stop being so mad at her, you don’t understand.

  “Mama,” I gasped. She would never hear me, my voice was scrunched up so small.

  “Let me see her!” Mom was nearly screaming now. “You can’t keep her from me!”

  But Gram was the one who took care of me. She was the one who remembered me, who found me, who every day made sure I was okay. Mom shouldn’t yell at her, either.

  But she was here now. She had come back for me.

  That must mean something.

  My feet became unglued.

  “I’m coming!” I put in the strength to shout, but the words floated away, teeny-tiny, as I hurried down the stairs.

  I stood in the kitchen doorway, blinking in the light.

  Gram looked livid when she saw me. Her face was bright red and her eyes were glistening and her mouth was clamped shut tight.

  But Mom crossed the room.

  She also had a red face and wet eyes. Her skin looked tired and stretched too tight, when it used to look creamy soft and gently smooth, and her dark hair, which had always been long and pretty before, was short and uneven. I didn’t recognize her clothes, or the dark winter jacket she was wearing over them.

  She stopped walking when she reached me. She smoothed back my hair. My scalp felt like it was waking up from a long time sleeping as her fingers gently touched me.

  She was looking at my scar. One thing she could never forget, could never not see.

  “Mama,” I said again.

  “Baby,” she said, drawing me close. My face got lost in her jacket. It didn’t smell like her; it smelled stale and smoky. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I found the gap in the coat and pressed my nose into her sweater. I breathed in more deeply and, underneath, she smelled like Mama, like the lavender soap she always kept in the bathroom. I started crying. She was here, real, finally.

  But under the relief there was something else, something dark and hard in the pit of my stomach, in the depth of my chest. My crying was not the crying you do when you know that everything is better now. It was the red, hot bawling of things that still hurt, hurt so much you can’t think. So I stopped thinking and it poured out of me, wet and noisy.

  Gram pried me away from her. She spoke softly. “Come, Aubrey, come upstairs.” She pulled me away from my mother, out of the kitchen. Mom sank into a kitchen chair as I left. Her face dropped into her hands in her lap.

  “Gram,” I s
aid.

  “Honey, I know, I know.” Her arm steered me up the stairs, to my room, and she put me to bed.

  Gram knocked on my door in the morning. I was already awake, lying on my stomach, one ear pressed into the pillow and one ear up, listening to the quiet in the house.

  “Time to get up for school,” Gram said.

  “But—” I began.

  “She’s sleeping,” she broke in. “And you need to go to school.”

  “But—what if—”

  “She’ll be here when you get back,” she said.

  My silence said enough.

  “I promise,” Gram said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I won’t let her go anywhere.”

  “How do I know?” I asked.

  “Have I let you go?”

  I shook my head into the pillow.

  “That should be enough. Get ready now.”

  Gram left me. I got up and dressed.

  Ten minutes later she came back to check on me and found me paused outside the closed door to the last extra bedroom at the end of the hallway.

  “Come on,” she said.

  Downstairs, she watched me pull on my winter layers and handed me a hot, foiled-wrapped, homemade breakfast sandwich.

  “Your lunch is in your backpack,” she said.

  I stood numbly in the doorway.

  “We’re going to talk today, she and I,” Gram said. “When you get back, it won’t be like last night.”

  I shrugged. “Fine. I—I’ll be at school, then, if anything …”

  “It’s going to be fine. I’ll see you after school,” Gram said, her eyes moving to the window. I looked, too, and saw the bus pulling up.

  I walked slowly across the lawn.

  “Aubrey!” Bridget called. She hurried to catch up with me. I didn’t turn or say hi. She stopped next to me. “What?” she asked.

  “My mom’s here.”

  After the world’s longest day of school, the bus finally returned me to Gram’s.

  The old car, the one that had been Dad’s before, was in the driveway.

  “Um, bye, Aubrey,” Bridget said. She had walked with me to the car. It was orange and small and beat-up. I put my hand on the trunk. It was dirty and left a film on the fingers of my gloves. “Does this mean … Did she come to get you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just—I mean, we haven’t even talked yet.”

  I rubbed the fingers of my gloves on my jeans to try to clean them. I swallowed hard.

  Bridget walked over to her porch.

  I let myself in the house. It was very quiet.

  I went first to the kitchen. I put my bag down, took off my heavy coat and boots, and helped myself to a cracker with cheese from a plate Gram had left on the table for me. After I finished chewing, which was hard because my mouth was so dry, I walked up the stairs and to the end of the hallway. Her door was open, and Gram was sitting on the bed with her. They were holding hands, talking softly. I pushed the door the littlest bit. It let out a creak to announce I was there.

  They both turned. Gram patted Mom’s hand and got up. She walked to the door and nodded to me. “I’ll call you down for dinner and to do your homework,” she whispered. I nodded.

  I walked to the bed slowly. Mom was wearing a pair of Gram’s pajamas. They looked funny on her because back home she always slept in big T-shirts. I guess she hadn’t packed for this trip.

  “What were you and Gram talking about?” I asked.

  “Just things, baby,” she said.

  Mom looked out the window. I sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the other way, the doorway.

  “Mama?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How are you?”

  She was quiet again, for a long time.

  “Sometimes I wonder if life is all about one moment. Everything before and everything after is about that one moment, and we are all stuck there. Do you know what I mean?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes,” I said.

  “I am stuck,” she said.

  I flattened my hand on the top quilt, pressing down the layers of covers. It seemed like my hand would sink forever.

  I had been stuck, too. I was stuck when I was back at our house, by myself. I was stuck because I couldn’t have back what was gone, and I couldn’t go forward because I didn’t want to start forgetting. But then I had Gram, who made me move forward, even when I didn’t want to. And I had Bridget and Marcus, who made me want to move forward. My life might have been divided in two because of one moment, but I wasn’t stuck anymore.

  “You can get unstuck, Mom,” I said. “You can.” I reached for her hand and held it the way Gram had. I pressed each of my fingers, one at a time, into her fingers and waited for her to press back, but Mom’s eyes were looking out the window again.

  When I got unstuck, it was without Mom. Maybe her other side of being stuck would be without me, too. When I looked down at my hand holding hers, I saw that my knuckles had turned white.

  “Lissie,” Gram said, “I brought your dinner up for you.” She set a tray on Mom’s nightstand.

  I stretched. I had been sleeping, lying next to Mom on top of the quilt, but I didn’t remember falling asleep.

  “Come on down, Aubrey,” Gram said.

  I went with her without saying anything. Mom waved to me as I left.

  When I got to the kitchen, I saw the table looking as it did every night, with our plates, and pots and bowls of food. Tonight there was chicken and green beans and rice and corn bread, and it all smelled wonderful.

  “This looks good, Gram,” I said as I sat down.

  Gram looked a bit surprised. I usually didn’t tell her things like that.

  “Thanks, Aubrey,” she said. “Thank you.”

  She piled food onto my plate and passed it to me.

  I started eating, but I paused my fork in midair over the green beans.

  If Mom was back, did that mean this was over now? Would it be back to me taking care of her and my self? Would it mean a lonely, sad house and an empty fridge? What if she took me with her, but she really was stuck forever?

  I looked up to see Gram staring at me, so I speared a green bean and started to chew it slowly.

  I made it through three periods of the school day before I headed to the little office around the corner from the main office.

  “Hi, Aubrey. Everything okay?” Amy asked.

  “Yeah—I just—um … could I have a snack?”

  “Certainly.” She invited me in, and gestured first at the candy jar and then at the chair. “Sit and stay awhile.”

  I munched on the M&M’s. Amy faced me, showing me I had her attention, even though I wasn’t talking.

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Um.” I crunched M&M’s shells between my teeth. “My mom’s here.”

  I watched Amy’s face carefully, but I couldn’t tell if the news was a surprise or not.

  “Is she with you at your grandmother’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about her visit. Did you know she was coming?”

  “No. I don’t think Gram did, either. She just showed up.”

  “Were you happy to see her?”

  I looked into the candy jar and picked out just the yellows. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think this means I have to leave now?”

  “Why would you have to leave?”

  I scooped up a mixed handful of M&M’s and crammed them all into my mouth. When I realized she was still waiting for me to answer, I shrugged.

  “Aubrey, I’ve talked to your grandmother. She’s not letting you go anywhere until she’s ready, you’re ready, and your mother is ready. Do you feel like you’re ready?”

  I took my hand out of the M&M’s jar and thought carefully. “I really want to be with her.”

  Amy nodded. “Can I tell you what I notice about what you’ve told me?”
r />   I shrugged again.

  “It seems that you are worried about having to leave, even if you really want to be with her. It’s okay to feel both of those things. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love your mom if you aren’t ready to go, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t love your grandmother if you do want to.”

  I listened. But what if Mom and I both knew that I would never be enough? That I would never make her happy? Would she take me along anyway, and not love me?

  “Aubrey?” Amy asked.

  Chocolate-sweet saliva ran down the inside of my mouth to my throat.

  “Aubrey?”

  “I had too much candy,” I said, holding the jar out to her. “I’m going to be sick.”

  “I’m sorry!” Amy jumped up and took the candy jar, then grabbed the trash basket and set it in front of my chair. I leaned over it and waited. Amy patted my back.

  After a minute nothing had happened, so I slowly sat back up.

  When I got home, I headed straight up the stairs. I set my feet solidly on each step, and walked to the end of the hall, to the last door. I pushed it open. She was still there, lying in the bed, sleeping. Her hair was up in a ponytail. The hair tie was a thick purple one that belonged to me. Had Gram given it to her? Had she found it herself?

  I set my backpack down, then took off my gloves, hat, winter coat, and scarf, piling them on the floor as I stepped out of my boots. I walked to the bed and climbed in next to her, gently waking her up.

  “Aubrey,” she said, welcoming me. She was in bed in the middle of the day, but it was not like back home, when she would look at me and not see me. Now she was smiling and wrapping her arms around me. The room felt different, too. The window was open a crack, even though it was freezing cold out, so she could breathe in fresh air all the time. “Tell me about your day,” she said as I nestled into the down comforter she held open for me.

  So I told her. I told her about the pop quiz we had in language arts, about how Marcus had sat with us at lunch, about how Bridget had used to love Christian Richards and didn’t seem to anymore, all of a sudden.

  She listened. When I was done talking, she stroked my hair, setting her nose against it, breathing in deeply.