Hold Still

by Lynn Steger Strong

  The house is only a couple of miles from Annie’s. Small and flat-roofed, with grass dying in the front yard, the driveway cracked, stained orange and yellow concrete with weeds growing right up through.

  Cooper parks on the street and leads them to the side door that opens into the garage. Ellie tempers the desire to clamp a hand over Jack’s eyes. He stops her as Cooper knocks the first time.

  “Nor?” His small round face is scared. He holds tight—damp and cold, his short fingers hardly reaching past the base of her thumb—to Ellie’s hand. “I want to go home, Nor,” he says.

  She looks down at her feet, tan and slipped in flip-flops, her toes speckled with sand.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Soon, kiddo.” She tries to smile at him but turns back toward Cooper when she can’t. He’s knocked for a second time and is now looking impatiently, a bit nervously, toward Jack.

  He mutters something. The door opens: a very thin old woman in black stretch pants, yellow rubber clogs, and an oversized pink Hello Kitty T-shirt. Ellie stares at the thin veiny skin that covers her hands. The woman winces when she sees Cooper, not greeting any of them, just moving aside so they can come through the door.

  Ellie tries to ignore the tingling covering her whole body, the excitement, the knowledge that if she wants, she’s only minutes from relief. She keeps hoping for the guilt to override it, for the fear of falling back or the anger at herself. But all she manages is to work hard to temper her body’s elation, the knowledge that there’s something certain to look forward to.

  They enter the garage, which is thick with humidity and the smell of sour chemicals. Large and small pieces of thin glass shapes scatter the floor and the aluminum shelf that runs along the opposite side of the room. The glass is in all sorts of sheer sparkling colors; a single piece flows from red to pink to yellow, shaped like a massive trumpet, narrow at the bottom and rising into a wide round top. It could be a tulip. There are smaller pieces that are more intricate, animals, and twisting crooked shapes. Ellie wants to go to hold one. They seem too delicate, like they would shatter in her hands.

  Ellie squeezes Jack’s hand.

  “You like ’em?” It’s the first time the woman’s spoken. She’s standing close to Ellie. She smells like must and cigarettes, and the mold that grows in sheets left in the wash too long.

  “I do,” says Ellie, turning toward her. “They’re very beautiful.”

  The woman nods. “Thanks, yeah. It’s my real passion.”

  Cooper looks at her and she shrugs and nudges Ellie, leaning in close so Jack won’t hear. Her elbow sticks sharp in Ellie’s rib. “And it helps cover the other business I do.”

  Meth, thinks Ellie. Fuck. Her fingers itch, but she can’t mention it. She’s never tried meth, can’t admit any agency in this whole thing.

  She looks quickly, nervously, at Jack.

  The stench of chemicals is making Ellie dizzy. She stares hard at a purple glass alligator, wondering at the tiny perfect scales. She tries to think of how to not get high. She tries remembering how she got here, tries forcing herself to accept that she chose to be standing in this place, that she chose to bring Jack with her, that she is stupid and fucked up.

  “But that’s not what you all want,” the woman says, looking back at Cooper and then at Ellie; she has not once looked down at Jack. There’s a large gray plastic chest of drawers and shelves across the back wall of the garage and the woman very methodically goes through a drawer at waist level that Ellie sees is separated into lots of small glass-covered squares. The woman pulls out a plastic bag and nods toward it, facing Cooper.

  She looks at Jack for the first time, “Sciatica, sweetie,” she says, winking. “The boy and I both got it bad.”

  Ellie pulls Jack to her.

  Ellie counts, one, two, three, four, five, six through the clear plastic. Six. White-clean, one inch across, an eighth of an inch thick. She can see the stain on Dylan’s parents’ ceiling perfectly, the browns and blacks, the way they stuck to, settled down into, her eyes. She thinks of asking just to hold the pills. She doesn’t have to bring them with her. If she can see them, feel them close to her, that will be enough to keep her good.

  She keeps counting as the bag moves from one hand to the other, as Cooper steps farther from the woman. Onetwothreefourfivesix.

  Cooper looks over at her. She knows she’s grinning. She steps farther from Jack again. Cooper nods at the old woman. He reaches into his back pocket and takes out a large wad of cash. He closes the pills into a fist. The old woman begins counting out the cash. Ellie counts with her and then counts six again. Cooper’s hand reopens. There’s a line along it, where the skin lightens. It goes from dark, dark brown to beige. She steps one step closer to him. He makes a fist again.

  “Fine,” says the woman.

  She goes over to the shelf and picks up the purple alligator, careful, and hands it to Ellie. The glass is as thin as Ellie thought it would be, almost weightless, but it doesn’t shatter as she holds it in her hand.

  “It’s a present,” says the woman. Ellie smiles, worried that she’ll cry.

  “Thanks,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

  The woman reaches up and touches Ellie’s cheek. The feel of her skin: cold damp wax paper. “Be careful, baby,” she says.

  Ellie shudders and steps back. She looks again at Cooper’s too-tan fist. She runs her thumb along the alligator’s scales.

  Winter 2013

  It’s dark out and cold. Maya puts on tights and shoes, her windbreaker and a band around her head. Stephen’s out and so is Ben. She brings a Metro and a credit card. She always does this when she doesn’t have a plan for where she’ll go or when she’ll feel like stopping, though she does, tonight, have an idea of where she might end up. She retraces the run she did with Ben just days prior. It’s different, though, in early evening. People, almost every one of whom looks younger than Maya, walk in packs of twos and threes down Smith and Court Streets. Smokers stand outside of restaurants puffing slowly, their hands chapped from the cold. The smells are different also. It’s dinner: instead of bacon, it’s french fries and grass-fed burgers, pizza slices, Thai spices, and the bitter stench of beer. She brushes shoulders with the groups that take up the whole sidewalk. She runs out into the street, hugging the parked cars along the bike lane, the cars in the street going past so close sometimes that she could knock their rearview mirrors out of place with her elbow or hand. Once she’s crossed the bridge, she goes east. She heads uptown through Chinatown, not willing to get close to the water yet. More smells, more people: raw meat, salt, lo mein noodles, the screaming of the street vendors as she reaches Canal. In SoHo, she gives up on Broadway. The packs of people walk in swaths of six and seven, shopping bags over their shoulders, tourists not paying attention, standing in line for street food and stopping to take pictures of lights and stores. Maya heads farther east to Lafayette and then to the numbered, almost to the lettered, avenues. She’s at Astor Place before she knows for sure where she’ll end up.

  She wants to knock on Caitlin’s door and be taken in; she wants to talk about her book, to pretend, just very briefly, that she’s hers.

  She’s at a stoplight, legs still moving, toes bouncing off the pavement; it’s just behind her, quiet, at her shoulder: “Maya?”

  It isn’t Caitlin, though.

  The voice is timid, unfamiliar. Maya almost runs the other way. She knows it’s her only because the hair is there still, falling in her face a little, thick and knotted behind her ears. There’s no baby this time. Maya looks quickly for her, underneath the coat Alana wears, but Alana’s bundled up and looks much smaller, though as she comes up closer to Maya, she’s retained her height and must turn her head down to look Maya in the eye.

  “Alana, hi,” Maya says. She is suddenly painfully aware of her shoes and tights, her too-thin legs. She’s not used to seeing people when she’s running. She’s used to, those few times she does recognize someone, running fast enough
, averting her eyes soon enough, to avoid having to interact.

  “I was running,” Maya says, because Alana still looks down at her but doesn’t speak.

  Alana nods.

  Maya watches two girls behind her share a cigarette. They hold the tip close to their lips in the exact same way, deliberate, pretending, long drags and short puffs out, playing at a thing they can’t quite shape.

  “I just left her with him,” Alana says. She’s crying now and shakes her head. “I just couldn’t take it and I left.”

  “Oh,” Maya says. She wants to tell her that she’s sorry, help her, lead her back to her apartment, and hold the baby to her chest.

  Alana grabs hold of her hair, one heavy chunk held with both hands. “I wanted. Fuck. I don’t know. I needed to be a free a while, you know?”

  “Do you want …” Maya stops. They’re standing in the middle of the sidewalk. People brush past, and Maya feels them look. “Let me buy you coffee?”

  “Yeah,” she says, shrugging. “Sure.”

  They duck into a place on the corner of Ninth Street. It’s dark, with small round uneven tables. A cappuccino machine whirs. “Coffee,” Maya says.

  Alana orders tea.

  They sit far from the counter, in the back corner, farther from the door. Alana places her elbows on the table and lays her face, briefly, in her hands. Maya waits and sips her coffee. There’s a small line of sweat down her back from running, and she feels a chill run through her as she waits for Alana to look up again.

  “Honey,” Maya says again. “Your baby’s fine, okay? Just breathe.”

  Alana cups the shallow mug with both hands and holds the steam up to her face.

  “I’m not sure he even knows how to heat the breast milk.” Her chin drops to her chest.

  Maya laughs. “He’ll figure it out.”

  “The problems of the privileged, huh?” Alana says.

  Maya smiles, doesn’t answer.

  “I just left,” Alana says again.

  “It’s rough,” Maya says. “At first, especially. It’s really rough.”

  Alana pulls her tea bag from the water and wraps the string around it, wringing it, then placing it carefully beside her mug.

  “Bryant traveled the first couple weeks we had her,” says Alana. “I mean, he was there for the delivery and everything, and then for a few days after, but then he had some conference. And he just went. He got all weird about how little money he makes. I mean, we’re fine, you know? He’d never cared before, but he’s a not very widely read writer with an associate professorship. He’s been in the same rent-controlled apartment for thirty years.”

  She has patches of red beneath her eyes; they’re parched and swollen.

  “So, all of a sudden, he’s completely freaked out that he’s not rich. And he just leaves me there to figure out how to keep this kid alive.”

  She flicks the tag at the top of the tea bag’s string until it rips, holding the now-split halves between her fingers.

  “I remember thinking I’d made a mistake maybe.”

  Maya holds her coffee with both hands. She blows lightly into her cup so that the steam rises up and she breathes in. She nods and hopes Alana sees.

  “I mean …” Alana grabs her hair again; her hands fall back to her mug. “I’m sorry to do this to you,” she says.

  Maya shakes her head. She wants to tell her how grateful she is, to feel like she might help.

  “I just stared at her and thought, people make mistakes, you know?” Her thumbs line the edge of the table; hands, worn raw-rubbed cuticles on every finger, reach again for the mug. “I’m a capable, functional human. There has to be a way out of all of this. I thought maybe I was doing it wrong or something, that it couldn’t be as hard as it felt those first few weeks.”

  Maya shakes her head. She has known well this need to leave, but it was tempered, most of the time, by the slightly more immediate need to stay.

  “I don’t know anyone who has kids.” She looks again into her tea; her nose is long and a little crooked in the middle, almost bumps against her mug. “I’m twenty-eight. That’s old for where I’m from, but here I’m like a child bride. My friends feel too young to get married, much less have kids.” Her eyes are big and full, still splotched with red.

  “But he’s old, you know? It felt so urgent when we met, to make our lives right then.” She shakes her head. “It felt like it was this inevitable union. It felt like …” She stops. She looks past Maya to the door. “I’m supposed to be a fucking writer,” she says.

  Outside, people who all look like children walk past the large windows fogged at the edges, lit up by headlights and the overhangs and night-lit signs of bars and convenience stores, the antique shop next door. The kids are pierced in unexpected places; some wear heels and clothes not warm enough for the cold. They laugh in packs, walking quickly, bumping into one another, looping elbows, clutching hands.

  “You know, I used to pity her,” Alana says. “Caitlin.” She stops.

  “She was always so awkward, the way she used to follow Charles like some lost pup.”

  Maya has an image of Caitlin, cowed and crying in her office, then of Charles, his hand along her back.

  “And now …” Alana says.

  “Now …” Maya says. She looks past Alana; CUSTOMERS ONLY, reads a sign hanging from the knob of the bathroom door. “She has a book.”

  “And I have this person,” Alana says. “I’m in charge of a person.” She raises her hands, up out of her hair and in the air a moment, like she’s not sure where she might put them next. “How the fuck did I do that?”

  Maya laughs; so does Alana. She reaches for, then briefly holds Alana’s hand.

  “It gets better,” she says. She knows this is inadequate. She wants to give her more.

  Maya left once too, like this, much worse than this, she’d gotten on a plane. And not just for a day. She’d left for weeks. She’d just packed her bags and booked a flight. The kids were older. El must have been four, Ben two. Stephen left all the time, for conferences, for meetings, to see his parents on the Cape when Maya didn’t want to pack the kids up and drive eight hours for a two-day stay. But she’d never left them. She’d never spent a night away. Ellie was in preschool in the mornings. Maya was teaching three courses a semester and was home with the kids besides. The semester had just ended. Ellie needed from her always to be held often, even at that age. She would regularly crawl into their bed at night. It was the constancy that Maya needed to get free of. She’d told Stephen as she did it, but she’d not given him the option of asking her not to go. It was early May and the Florida house was empty. She’d rented a convertible and swum and read and ran and drove around. By the third day she’d been desperate for both her kids again, but that had only reaffirmed her need to stay. She called daily and talked to both children. Stephen seemed too afraid to ask much, what she was doing or when she might be coming back. She wanted to prove to all of them that there were parts of all of them that belonged to no one but themselves. She’d eaten almost every meal at a tiny local restaurant close to the house that served simple pastas and salads. She sat alone in a back booth and ate the same bland spaghetti with massive meatballs that she separated and cut up on a separate plate, dipping the warm rolls into the sauce that pooled beneath them on the plate. She was thirty-two and the same waiter, who must have been in his early twenties, would come and flirt with her each night, and she hadn’t disabused him. She’d smiled and laughed at his awkward jokes and halfhearted attempts at gleaning information from her, about where she lived or how she spent her days. He complimented her legs, and in the second week he complimented her tan. She realized she could have had this whole other life. That she could still have it if she chose. This had felt both imperative and terrifying.

  She thought of her mother more than ever, where she might be now. She’d met her once, the year she’d left Florida for grad school.

  She’d found the information in her dad’s
stuff while she was cleaning out the house. All those years, he’d been in sporadic touch with her. There were letters, a few emails. She’d asked about Maya, but had never asked to speak with her or sent anything for her to keep. Turned out she lived in New York. Turned out those months Maya had been there already and, possibly, in all the years that followed, she was never more than a few miles away. But this was the only time they’d meet.

  They met at a restaurant close to her mom’s apartment. Maya thought and thought about what to wear and then wore jeans and a plain T-shirt, not wanting to look as if she’d tried too hard. She wore sandals. It was June. She’d walked from her apartment west, then north, and waited half an hour. She was twenty minutes early, her mom walked through the door ten minutes late. Her mom wore three-inch heels, crisscrossed two straps—they slapped her feet as she walked toward Maya. She wore a long black skirt, a yellow tank top, her beige bra strap slipped out against pale freckled skin, and Maya stood, thinking, Mother, Mother, not.

  “Maya,” she said. Her voice was wrong somehow. Her eyes were large and darkly lined. She leaned in to kiss her. Maya pulled back, then leaned in too late.

  “Sorry,” they both murmured. She’d placed her hand on Maya’s shoulder. It was cold and Maya shuddered. She pulled it away quickly and Maya sat back down. Her mom pulled out a chair and held her hands on the edge of the table. Maya unrolled her silverware, placed her napkin on her lap, and ran her index finger down the handle of her fork.

  “Maya,” her mom said again. She wore bright red lipstick. A thin line of it rose above her lip on the left side of her mouth. Maya wanted to tell her to stop saying her name—she hadn’t earned the right yet. Her mother grabbed the saltshaker. Her arms were thin, her fingers short and nubbly, and her nails cut close to the quick.

  “How’s …” she tried again. “How are you?”

  Maya nodded. “Okay.”

  “I thought. I guess I’d stopped expecting.”

  A waiter came and took their drink order. Maya got water. Her mom ordered a white wine.

  The whole thing took less than an hour. Her mom asked awkward questions Maya didn’t want to answer. Maya asked her about painting. It was what she’d done when she’d left them, what she’d said she’d left to do. She said she “cobbled,” said she didn’t paint much anymore. Maya didn’t ask her why she’d left. Once she’d seen what she was, she didn’t feel the need to ask. When the check came, her mom waited a long time without looking at it. She sipped slowly on her third glass of wine. After an infinity of time passing and neither of them speaking, Maya finally paid the bill while her mom looked past her to the restaurant kitchen. As they left, her mom had once again moved to hug her and Maya had pulled away again.