Hold Still

by Lynn Steger Strong

  “I’ve been charting out To the Lighthouse,” she said to Maya at dinner, “trying to figure out how it’s formed.”

  “How great!” Maya said. She hadn’t touched her food and was staring at Caitlin. She felt her daughter’s eyes on her.

  Caitlin began to speak again. She was explaining the shift that happens in the “Time Passes” section, how she was trying to understand how to make large swaths of time speed up, then slow down.

  “Have you ever had long hair?” asked Ellie, interrupting. She had turned toward Caitlin and her mouth pursed a bit as she appraised her face; Caitlin took another bite of the orzo with spinach and chicken Stephen had cooked.

  “I’m sorry?” said Caitlin. She smiled at Ellie, looking briefly back at Maya, who sat slightly confused, then scared.

  Caitlin was round around the edges. She was short, with thick thighs and a belly, her face a perfectly full moon.

  “Your hair,” said Ellie again. “Has it ever been long?” There was something in Ellie’s voice, the flatness of it, like she was trying at something. Maya held tight to the edge of the table and begged her daughter silently to reel herself back in.

  “Of course.” Caitlin laughed, and reached up to the dark blond nubs that sat atop her head. “When I was at LSU. It got so hot in summers. I had a friend who was a physicist and she convinced me she understood angles, so she cut off all my hair.” She looked at Maya, who smiled back. “We’d had some wine.” Then back to Ellie, “I liked how easy it was, so I only went shorter after that.”

  “Ha,” said Ellie, clearly not amused.

  Caitlin reddened. She wore a purple T-shirt and jeans that pulled at the pockets. Her eyes and mouth were small. Maya thought it might be worse to scold her daughter. She wasn’t sure what to do or say to make it all stop there.

  “El …”

  Her daughter interrupted her, still looking right at Caitlin. “It’s slimming, you know, long hair.”

  Caitlin looked down at her plate. Maya stood, then stopped a second, not knowing which way to turn.

  Caitlin had recovered valiantly. She’d initiated a conversation with Stephen about his Germans, talked soccer—she’d been a defender in high school—with Ben. Maya waited until she’d left and both Stephen and Ben had gone upstairs to confront Ellie. But when she found her, in her room with her charcoals and a large piece of thick white paper, Ellie was already crying, saying she was sorry, saying she didn’t know why she’d been that way. Maya had no choice but to pull her in and comfort her, worrying only for a moment that she might still need to scold her for a thing she still wasn’t completely sure her daughter knew she’d done.

  The apartment is a twenty-minute walk east from the subway. Maya’s just about at the water by the time she finds the address. She walks up four flights of stairs and hears the sound of bongo drums coming from the floor above, a sloppily strummed banjo, and smells the sweet smoky scent of weed. There are shoes outside each apartment, a stroller folded up in the corner across the hall.

  She used to live in an apartment almost exactly like this, those few months before her dad died and then again before she married Stephen. The first summer after school she’d hardly left the apartment. She spent nearly all her time locked up in the tiny space where she knew she could be sure that she’d be left alone. She had no air conditioner and no TV, just an old stereo, a fan, and loads of books. In summer she would point the fan right on herself and lie naked on the floor most of the day. She took cold showers every few hours, walking around with the windows open, tying her hair up in a knot to keep the water in. She’d read and nap; she’d sit very still and listen to the cadence of the footsteps of her neighbors and try to imagine whatever it was they did every day. The family below her had three kids, shoved into the same tiny crooked studio as hers. She peeked whenever she could, when their door was open, as she was coming up or down the stairs. They were all stacked in there: beds on top of beds, shelves on top of shelves, with pots and pans and clothes and shoes all mixed in. They had twin girls and an older boy; the girls would clod along in their brother’s hand-me-downs, those thick-soled athletic shoes that look oversized even when they fit. She always knew when they were coming up the stairs, the clop-clop of their feet, and then, almost every time, one of the kids would either laugh or scream. A lot of nights, she’d hear them coming in from wherever it was they’d been, late for children, ten, eleven, sometimes later, and then the smells would waft up through the open windows, all sorts of spices she’d never even thought to dream of, curries and onions so thick her eyes would run. And Maya would lie on the floor of her apartment, which felt huge with the image of all those stacks inside her head. And she’d wonder how she could shape her face or hold herself in just the way that would get them to knock on her door and ask her to come fold in with them.

  Even before the door opens, Maya is accosted by the smell of garlic, onions, and grilling meat. Caitlin grabs hold of Maya before she’s fully through the door. She’s lambent, of fire, Maya thinks, as Caitlin leans toward her, so fresh and full of life. She’s begun to grow her hair out and has it pulled back with a neon scarf; large chunks fall around the scarf and stick to Caitlin’s neck and ears, curling at the ends. Her full round cheeks are flushed and there’s a film of sweat above her upper lip. She’s always had a defiant sort of doughiness that has, while maintaining nearly all its substance, gotten somehow firmer in the months since Maya saw her last. Her breasts heave freely beneath a smocked beige linen dress with intricate dark green embroidery and her feet are bare, with matching green toenails.

  The door opens into the kitchen. There are three pans working on the stove. Everywhere, the remnants of Caitlin’s cooking sit: clear glass bowls coated with the last bits of spices and finely chopped cilantro, colorful plastic measuring spoons, onion and garlic skins, cutting boards, and knives still wet from work.

  It’s freezing outside, but warm in the apartment. The smallness of the space and with the oven and three burners going, Maya’s quickly peeling off her coat. The bed’s pushed against the wall between two tall windows. Maya can see the staggered lines of projects across the street along the river and a large covered-for-the-winter community pool. Caitlin has set up a card table beside the bed and surrounded it with a hodgepodge of chairs—one yellow and thinly stuffed, one folding, one simple straight-backed wood—and a wooden bench along one side. The bench’s seat is covered with pillows from the bed that Caitlin’s tied down with some silk ribbons that look as if they might also serve as belts. An old red sheet serves as the tablecloth. The walls are all the same thick beige paint of nearly every New York apartment that has seen too many occupants, layer after layer of not quite white that seems to come out from the walls and hang just over the moldings, threatening, at any moment, to come down in dusty, spackled chunks. There are crooked plywood built-in bookshelves and the books are doubled up, balancing precariously close to the edges; Maya stands near to one of the shelves and runs her hand along the spines. The apartment is hastily ordered, but the remnants of prolific mess remain. Maya can make out piles of clothes underneath the bedframe, maybe a bowl and at least one plastic water bottle, balls of dust still lurking in the corners of the room. Books are piled on the small table by the bed and on each windowsill, and on the desk piles of paper sit slightly askew.

  “It’s my first dinner party,” says Caitlin, watching Maya’s eyes scan the room and settle on the table, set for five: wine glasses and simple white flatware, a sweating-in-the-warm-air water pitcher, filled with a bottom layer of mint and fruit.

  “I had to improvise,” Caitlin says, motioning toward the table. She has a wooden spoon in her left hand and is sautéing kale with onions and garlic. A pile of steaks, left to rest and slathered in what looks like some kind of cilantro pesto, sits on the last bit of counter space.

  Maya hands her the bottle of Sangiovese she’s brought. Caitlin holds it a minute, then grabs a wine key and passes the bottle back to Maya. “Perfect,” sh
e says. “You want a glass?”

  Maya tears the foil slowly. She turns the screw into the cork and pops it out. Caitlin passes her a glass and Maya’s careful with her wrist, twirling the bottle up in order that no drops fall.

  “Thanks,” says Caitlin. She looks expectant, her eyes staying on Maya as she sips her first glass.

  “How are you?” Maya asks.

  Caitlin shrugs. “Okay,” she says. She stops, as if the room, or something just outside the window, will tell her how she really is. “Good, I think,” she says.

  Maya smiles at her, watching her hands deftly work the spoon, then cover the steaks with a white dish towel while they rest. “How’s the writing?” Maya asks.

  Caitlin shakes her head, but there’s a smile forming on her lips. “Okay,” she says. “You know.”

  “I don’t,” says Maya. She can’t imagine the courage it must take, stories all her own. “Tell me.”

  “Well, there’ve been some big life things happening,” says Caitlin. Her palm rests on her stomach briefly as she says this. Maya wonders. There’s no sign of a partner in the apartment. She’s noticed that Caitlin has so far left her wine untouched.

  “Of course,” Maya says, excited suddenly. She lets herself imagine it a moment, a child forming inside Caitlin. A whole new life from scratch.

  “I started tutoring a few months ago.” She moves back and forth between the pans with her wooden spoon and stirs and flips. She turns back to Maya. “It’s better, you know? I’m so happy to be teaching again.”

  Maya nods. “Of course.” She sips her wine again and tries to make out Caitlin’s shape beneath her dress.

  “Even if it’s mostly standardized tests.”

  “Can I do something?” Maya asks as Caitlin pours herself a glass of water. It would be too forward to tell her to sit down.

  “No. No, tell me about you. How’s school? How’re Ben and Ellie?” Maya stops breathing a minute. She watches Caitlin’s face to see if she knows.

  “Well,” she says, “Ben’s in his second year, but he might …” She wonders where the rest of the guests are. If maybe it could just be the two of them. Maybe she could just sit here quietly and Caitlin could help her to make sense of everything. “He might take a semester to figure some things out.”

  Caitlin nods. “I wish I’d been smart enough to do that at that age.”

  Maya smiles. She’s so glad to be with Caitlin now.

  “And Ellie?” Maya’s been quiet too long, she realizes. She looks out at the pool across the street, wants to ask Caitlin to promise to have her over to go swimming in the spring.

  Another time: Caitlin had come crying to Maya’s office after class, distraught. It was her second year. Maya thought school, at first, that she was overwhelmed suddenly by too much coursework. It was what she was meant to advise students on, but then they ended up dissolving over so much worse once she had them all alone. It turned out, with Caitlin, to be much messier than her middle-ages obligations. There was a boy, apparently, a man, as Caitlin said, but when Maya looked at any of them, mostly all she saw were boys. Caitlin said he was a friend in the department. She’d made advances. He’d snubbed her. “Never in my life,” she said, “have I actually tried to act on something like this.” She was twenty-four then, Maya knew. The idea that she’d never pursued a boy until then, it both shocked Maya and made perfect sense. And now this.

  “He’s my only friend here,” Caitlin said. “He’s allowing me to blame the alcohol, though I’d hardly had a beer. He’s trying very hard to act as if we’re all just fine being friends.” She gave no names. There was another girl involved, a friend of Caitlin’s, with whom she thought the boy might be in love. “Of course, she has no use for him,” said Caitlin. “She has no idea.”

  She was one of the strongest students Maya had ever taught, the brightest. Maya wanted so much to scrape all of the hurt out of her life and tell her just to focus, to show her somehow that the only certain satisfaction would come from her own mind. She wanted her not to be felled by so predictable a situation, to be a little less just like every other girl. “I don’t have anyone but the two of them,” said Caitlin. You have me, thought Maya, but that was different. She was too far away, too old. She reached across her desk to grab hold of Caitlin’s hand. “Honey,” she said.

  Maya could not remember now how she’d gotten to talking that day about Ellie, the drugs, the boys, the Trouble. It had felt like all that she could offer. She’d meant to make herself vulnerable somehow and maybe more available for Caitlin. She wanted Caitlin to see how lucky she was to know so clearly who she was. She hadn’t meant for it to all feel so exploitative. This was her daughter, after all. But nothing that she seemed capable of giving Ellie then was helping; she thought at least she could help Caitlin. She’d gone into greater depth than she ever had about her daughter to anyone. She knew Caitlin would listen. She told herself she was showing Caitlin what a gift it was to be herself and know so much.

  When she was done, though, she was no longer able to look directly at the girl in front of her. When she got home she didn’t look Ellie in the face either. She’d used one to help the other. She was pretty sure that neither would turn out better as a result.

  “She’s …” Maya says to Caitlin, not sure, still, how to say what Ellie is. She can lie or she can tell her everything. She wonders how Caitlin will react, if she won’t be surprised. She watches her, cooking, maybe starting to fill up with a child of her own, asking earnestly about this girl who was so rude to her. Maya takes the last sip of her wine and tells Caitlin everything.

  Summer 2011

  “The atmospheric conditions have to be conducive to formation, in this case, summer and warm water.” This is not how five-year-olds should talk, but Jack’s reading from Weather.com as rain comes down in torrents and bangs loudly on the tin roof of the house. He has his laptop on his lap and refuses to look up at her. “Instead of the visible compactness of the hurricane, the satellite view of the tropical depression can often just resemble a large group of thunderstorms. But rotation can usually be perceived when looking at a group of pictures from satellites.” He has unlimited access to the Internet, and this is what he spends his time on. It’s been raining the past three days, since two days after Ellie’s arrival. It’s a tropical depression. Annie has promised the end is close. “Wind speed up to thirty-nine miles an hour.” She’s also explained this is one of Jack’s “things.” He looks everything up and recites the facts he finds. It is, Annie says, “his way of trying to feel more in control of life.”

  “Any higher than thirty-nine the depression is upgraded to a tropical storm.” He wears a hooded sweatshirt and purple shorts. He sits and scrolls, his feet up on the couch. He articulates his words very slowly and carefully. “Organized circulation and lower pressure are the first signs it has formed.”

  For the hundred millionth time since she got here, Ellie watches Jack and thinks about her mom. She’s all over this place and worse than ever, because here is where Ellie’s always loved her mother most.

  Magic happened to her mom in Florida. She was this other, happier, steadier person, so different from the person she was in New York. She woke them early in the morning to go sailing or watch the waves break. She didn’t mind that their dad often didn’t come with them. She cooked big elaborate breakfasts. Breakfast was the only meal that she could cook. She let Ben and Ellie stay up late watching movies, though she hardly ever let them watch TV at home. After a long day at the beach and everyone freshly showered, they’d all sit together, ordering a pizza and dozing through the sun-drenched afternoon.

  One summer: Ben was six and El was eight; storms threatened often, hurricanes, tornadoes, big whirling masses of green and gray and orange coming at them on the TV screen. They seldom actually hit. Ellie learned then about low-and high-pressure systems, the eyes and tails of storms. Each time Ellie worried, and her mom stocked them up on water and canned foods and filled the bathtubs. Each time, she
had some guy from down the road come and help her put up shutters. Usually their dad wasn’t there. This time they’d already heard the storm was missing them. Ellie sat close to her mom, and Ben was out back somewhere kicking around a ball, though it was dark and the ground was still soaking wet from that afternoon’s rain. The guy on the TV said the storm had turned within hours of the eye hitting, and Ellie’s mom explained to her again how the eye was the still and quiet that sat right in the center of the worst part of the storm. They sat and Ellie watched her mom’s breathing, slow again, as she wrapped a sweater around her chest and legs.

  And then the switch that happened sometimes in her mother. She was strong again, and looked over at El and smiled. “You want to see something amazing?” her mom asked. Ellie could never in her life say no to the face her mom made then. She called to Ben out in the back and he came running. He was flushed and asked if they knew if the storm was going to come.

  “Missed us,” said their mom. And she shook her head at Ben for asking with so much excitement. She found it wonderful, El knew, nearly everything her brother was. “Let’s go out,” her mother said.

  Ben looked at Ellie, then back at their mother. Ellie smiled at him. If Mom wanted to go out, they would. They packed into the rental—their mom always splurged on a convertible on the trips when their dad didn’t come. She rolled down the top even though the clouds were out and the wind was blowing, even though it was already very dark. Almost immediately Ellie worried her mom would be too cold with the top down. But she was smiling. Her hair was long then, and though she mostly wore it up, that night it was down and twisted in the wind.

  El sat up front and Ben got in back without anyone asking. When it was the two of them with their dad, it was the other way around. Their mom turned on her music, Jackson Browne this time, whom Ellie knew by the way her mom’s neck curved and softened as she sang along. They drove the six or seven minutes to the water. Ellie watched her mom, her hand over the side of the car and hanging, her sunglasses on her head to keep her hair from getting in her face. They crossed a bridge to get out to the ocean, and Ellie watched the chop of water underneath them, thick and frothy, rock the boats both moored and docked.