by Anne Dayton
My stomach is rumbling, and my eyes feel sticky as I make my way down the stairs. I need some tea, and hopefully there’s something in this house to eat. We usually leave for church at nine thirty, which gives me an hour to get ready. I pad across the carpet and into the kitchen, my socks slipping a little on the linoleum as I turn the corner.
“Oh.” Dreamy blinks and takes a step back as I enter the room. She’s slicing green onions at the counter, and Ed is standing next to her, leaning his backside against the fridge, arms crossed over his chest. “Zoe.”
Ed flushes. “I hope we didn’t wake you, Butterbean.” He flashes a small smile, revealing his crooked front tooth. “Your mom and I were just talking.”
“Hey.” Part of me wants to hug them both good morning, but something holds me back, some unseen tension. Maybe it’s that neither of them makes a move to hug me first. “I guess everybody’s up early today.”
“Yep.” Ed scratches at the stubble on his chin. The syllable hangs awkwardly in the air.
“You got in late last night.” Dreamy says quickly and pastes a grin on her face, but the lines around her mouth show that she’s clenching her teeth.
“I was out with the girls.”
They both stare at me, as if waiting for something to happen.
“I think I’m going to make some tea.” I move toward the cabinet above the sink, and Dreamy ducks out of the way. “Have you guys had breakfast?”
They look at each other as if they’re not sure of the answer.
“Not yet,” Dreamy says at last. “Look, Zoe, why don’t you go on upstairs and get dressed? I’m making that potato and green onion frittata.” It’s not really a frittata because it’s held together with tofu, not eggs. Dreamy and Ed are vegans, but it’s one of their better dishes. “By the time you’re ready, it’ll be on the table.”
I’m not a child. I can see what’s happening here. She wants me to go away so they can finish whatever tense discussion I interrupted, but because she’s my mom, and because I don’t know what else to do, I obey. I lay the box of tea bags down on the peeling Formica counter and turn to go just as the glass door slides open.
“What’s going on?” Nick brushes the back of his hand across his forehead and steps inside. He pulls off his work gloves and looks around. He catches my eye, and I shake my head. He smells like manure.
Dreamy lets out a long breath. “Okay, this wasn’t really how I wanted this to happen, but I guess we might as well do this now.” She gestures to the table. “Why don’t we all take a seat?”
I follow her to the dining nook, pull out a chair, and sit at the scarred kitchen table. Ed lowers himself down across from me and leans his elbows on the table. Nick sighs and takes off his work boots, then finally joins us, tossing his gloves in front of him. I don’t know what his problem is. Maybe he’s really tired or something.
“I guess this won’t come as much of a surprise, really. You know we’ve been having problems recently.” Dreamy speaks slowly and carefully, enunciating a little too much, like she’s rehearsing her lines for community theater.
Ed slides his big weathered palm across the table and grabs my hand. I used to find the calluses on his hands comforting, the knotty bumps familiar. Even as a child I could shut my eyes and trace our shared history in them, but right now they sort of sicken me. They’re only more evidence of how rough and uneven life is.
“Dreamy and I still love each other very much,” he says as my stomach turns over.
“But we’ve decided to get a divorce.” She rubs her fingernails across the scarred wooden tabletop. “It’s not something we’re happy about, it’s just . . .” She turns her palms up. “It seems like it’s the best thing, considering, well, you know, everything.”
The room is silent except for the soft ticking of the clock above the sink.
Ed clears his throat. “You have to understand that this has nothing to do with you.”
I pretend I don’t hear him. This has everything to do with me.
“We thought . . .” Dreamy falters. “We wanted you to know that you can talk to us, either of us, any time, about this. About anything really. We don’t want this to change . . . anything.”
The ridiculousness of this statement is so astounding I don’t know what to say. This changes everything. It can’t not.
Nick runs his fingers through his sweaty hair. “If that’s what you have to do, I support you.” He stands up and slides across the linoleum in his stained socks. No one says anything as he walks across the kitchen, into the living room, and up the stairs. The railing shakes as he grasps it and pulls himself up to the second floor. A moment later he enters his bedroom and slams the door.
“Zo?” Ed bites his lip and rubs his gnarled palm over the back of my hand. He waits, watching me, his eyebrows raised. His face, so full of expectation, is the last thing I see before I burst into tears.
***
Ed is filling cardboard boxes when I decide the walls of my room are pressing in on me. I’ve been lying completely still on my bed, listening to them unload Ed’s closet through the paper-thin walls, since the big announcement. I can’t cry. I’m in total shock. He’s moving to one of the tourist motels on the beach. I have so many questions—when will I see him again? What about the horses? What about holidays? Do I have to go to the motel on the weekends?—but I can’t bring myself to ask any of them. Instead I’ve been lying here, praying my heart out, begging God for help, for healing, for a miracle. Dreamy and Ed are just going through a rough patch. God needs to work on them, show them what they’re risking.
After I’ve begged and pleaded for a half hour straight, I slip my feet into sneakers and creep downstairs, avoiding touching the rickety metal banister that always squeaks. I tiptoe across the living room and make it to the door before I realize that no one is even paying attention. Nick is playing on his computer, and Dreamy and Ed are too wrapped up in their own drama to notice me avoiding them. With a sigh, I slide open the glass door, step out into the cool, moist air, and head toward Marcus’s house.
The path to his house is familiar, and somehow that’s comforting right now. My foot catches on a root, but I regain my balance quickly and start to walk faster, moving my legs quicker and quicker, and before I know what I’m doing, I start to run.
I take deep breaths as I go, filling my lungs and exhaling slowly, over and over, trying to focus on the rhythm of my breaths and the feel of my feet slapping against the hard earth. The more my lungs scream, the lighter my heart feels, and I pray, asking God to help me, to fix this whole thing, to make my parents love each other again. The only answer is the soft whisper of the wind sighing through the tops of the trees.
I slow down when I see Marcus’s house. I take a few steps, then bend over and clutch my waist, trying to gather big lungfuls of air. I walk up the steps to his front door and peer in the window over his kitchen sink.
The entire Farcus family is gathered around the kitchen table, hunched over a game of Monopoly. Marcus and his dad are exchanging pastel-colored money, and his mom is throwing her head back, laughing. There’s something sweet about the scene, too sweet. A little too perfect.
Marcus is who I should talk to. He’ll tell me everything is going to be all right. But I stay still, watching them, and I can’t bring myself to ring the bell.
I turn and walk back down the stairs, my shoulders sagging.
It only takes me a few minutes to get back to the house, grab my bag, sneak the set of keys out of the bowl by the door, and head to the car. No one notices.
9
Naturally, the parking spaces along Main Street are all taken on a Sunday afternoon, but I’m not in any state to drive around town for hours looking for one. I’m shaking, and my eyes keep filling with tears, and I know I’m not thinking rationally.I park next to a yellow-painted curb reserved for commercial deliveries and quiet the engine. I grab a scrap of paper from the dash and a pen from under the passenger side mat and scrawl, “Please
don’t tow. Life falling apart.” I swing my bag over my shoulder, open the door, and put my note under the windshield wiper. I barrel over to the bookstore and don’t glance back.
I can feel people staring at me as I walk down the sidewalk. My hair is greasy and matted to one side of my head. I’m wearing old jeans, cinched tight around my waist with a belt, and scuffed gray sneakers. My eyes are puffy, and I’m sure they’re bloodshot. But though I look like a zombie, I feel a strange sense of calm. Ms. Moore will know what to do.
My phone rings, and I see it’s Dreamy calling. I silence it, push open the heavy glass door of Bayside Books, and step into the cool air, then take a deep breath. The rich, earthy aroma of coffee wafts over the half wall that separates the café from the rest of the store. Bayside is not the only bookstore in town, but it is one of the largest, with high ceilings and richly painted walls. The tall rows of shelves, lined with books, usually give me a thrill.
I spot Ms. Moore at the information desk, leaning her elbows on the counter, staring at a newspaper and chewing on the end of a pencil.
My breaths begin to catch in my throat. “Ms. Moore.” I rake my fingers through my hair, trying to smooth it down.
She studies me for a moment, then drops the pencil she’s been using to—I can see now—work on the New York Times crossword puzzle. Without a word, she nods, folds the paper in half, and puts the Back in Five Minutes sign up.
“Let’s go,” she says, gesturing for me to follow her. It takes me a second to make my feet move, but I skip a little and catch up to her as she walks out onto Main Street.
“You’re just leaving?”
She nods.
“Are you going to get in trouble with the manager?” That last thing Ms. Moore needs is to get fired from another job.
“Maybe.” She looks to the right, then turns and starts walking toward the main part of downtown. Great. The last thing I need is to be around more people.
I step off the curb to dodge a woman with a double stroller. Within moments we’re crossing the historic bridge, and then Ms. Moore veers to the left and begins to carefully pick her way down the steep banks of Pilarcitos Creek.
I hesitate for a moment, thinking about how uncoordinated I am and wondering if there are snakes down there, but when she reaches the bottom I realize I have no choice. At least no one will hear us down by the creek. Carefully, with my arms out from my sides, I make my way down to the rocky bank.
“Now, what’s going on?” She pulls her short hair back into a tuft of a ponytail and turns to me.
The water burbles over the occasional rock and twig. Dreamy and Ed once launched a huge campaign to enact stricter legislation to protect this creek.
Where do I even start? I take a deep breath. “Do you believe in love?”
She tucks her hands into the pockets of her jeans and sighs. “Yes. Very much so.”
I consider her answer. She didn’t even hesitate. “Even though . . .” Ms. Moore hasn’t made a secret of the fact that she moved to Half Moon Bay after she broke off her engagement. “You didn’t . . .”
“It’s not that I didn’t love him, Zoe.” She’s always had this eerie way of knowing what people are thinking even before they say it. “That wasn’t it at all.”
“Oh.” I bite my lip. “So do you believe it’s possible to love somebody forever? To like . . . stay together and stuff, through all the bad stuff?” I’m tripping over my words because I’m not really sure what I’m asking here, but she seems to understand anyway.
“Absolutely.” A lock of hair falls down over her eyes, and she brushes it back. “Sometimes.”
I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. Tiny, almost microscopic bugs dance and skip on the creek’s surface.
“But shouldn’t people stay together?” I try again. “Even when things get hard and you’re not sure you love the other person anymore and stuff?” I find a large broad rock a little ways up the creek and plop down on it. “Don’t you stay with what you have? You don’t go off just because something better comes along or you don’t feel like being together anymore, right?”
Ms. Moore joins me on the boulder and lets out a long breath. “You’re asking some tough questions, Zoe.”
I nod.
“The thing about love is, the first rush is glorious.” I used to play down here as a child. Is the creek lower now because of the drought? Or have I just gotten bigger, and my perspective has changed? “You know that.” I flush, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “But after a while that feeling fades. You can’t sustain it forever. Love becomes something different, something deeper, more fulfilling, and that’s what makes relationships work for the long-term.”
“So you think people should stay together?”
Ms. Moore shrugs. “It’s pretty dangerous to make judgments about what other people should do, Zoe.”
We both fall silent, and I listen to the distinctive screech of a blue jay in the distance.
“So are you going to tell me what happened?” She says it so quietly I almost don’t hear her over the burbling of the water.
High above our heads, the Sunday shoppers and strollers are going about their leisurely day downtown, greeting one another, chatting about ordinary things. But down at the creek, it’s quiet and feels like our own secret world. The tall trees shade us from the afternoon sun, and the longer I sit here, the more in tune I am with the subdued chirps and twitters of the birds and bugs.
“Dreamy and Ed are getting a divorce.”
She nods, keeping her eyes trained on the stream.
“That doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.” She starts to say something more, then stops herself. I wait. “Sometime marriages don’t work out, and sometimes there are good reasons for that,” she says at last. “But couples don’t stay together for as long as your parents have without love.”
“But then how can they just throw it all away?” I shake my head. “They’re tearing our family apart. How can they decide that it’s all over, that they’re done trying?” My voice rises a little, and I can feel tears begin to sting my eyes. I didn’t realize I had any more tears left in me.
“I don’t know, Zoe.” She picks up a small rock and turns it over in her hands. “I don’t know what happened with your parents. But I do think sometimes love doesn’t look like we expect.” The blue jay pipes up again, squawking out an almost pained sound. “Sometimes it means loving the other person enough to let them go.”
I think about how much they’ve been fighting recently, about the sad stoop of Ed’s shoulders and the defeated look in Dreamy’s eyes. I think about Nick, and the matter-of-fact way he accepted the news this morning. Maybe they’re not really tearing the family apart. Maybe it’s been crumbling, bit by bit, for a long time, and I never noticed.
I zip up my hoodie as a cool breeze blows past us. Ms. Moore crosses her arms over her chest.
“So what you’re saying is there’s nothing I can do?”
Ms. Moore turns her head. “I never said that.” She unleashes the rock in her hand, trying to skip it, but it sinks with a satisfying plunk. “I never said anything like that.”
“But you said . . .”
“I said sometimes love means letting go.” She laughs and shakes her head. “But that’s not the only thing it means. Sometimes love means fighting for a relationship.”
I run my hands over the rough stone under us, and my finger finds a small indentation to trace. Talking to Ms. Moore makes my brain hurt.
“They may have given up on their marriage, Zoe, but that doesn’t mean you have to. If you want this badly enough, you have to go out and fight for it.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I think you do.” She gives me a sly smile. “I think if you try, you can come up with some ways. Make them spend time together. Force them to come together. Give them something to care about outside of themselves. If you really want to do this, you have to help them see that they don’t want to live without each oth
er.”
I try to follow a stray leaf as it makes a circuitous journey over the tiny rapids. It gets stuck briefly on a log, then breaks free and ambles past us and under the old bridge.
“You seem to know a lot about this whole fighting thing.”
“What do you think I spend my time doing?” She smiles slyly. “Every minute I’m not working at that bookstore, I’m working on my case, Zoe—talking to people, looking for legal loopholes, researching similar cases. I know I was suspended unfairly, and I know I want nothing more than to get back into that classroom.” She turns to face me. “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.”
***
I walk back to the car slowly. My muscles feel heavy and sluggish, and my mind is spinning in circles. I’m more confused than ever.
The crowds are thinning out, and the sidewalks are less packed now, but as I thread my way toward the car, I decide what I have to do next. I pull out my phone.
If I’m going to fight for my parents, I’ll need serious backup.
I scroll through my contacts and stop on Riley. I’ll try her first. She answers on the third ring.
“Riley, Dreamy and Ed are getting a divorce.” I take a deep breath. “I need your help.”
10
The bleachers shake as our quarterback throws a perfect spiral and a brawny senior catches the ball and rushes toward the end zone. He gets creamed at the forty yard line, but all around us people are stomping their feet and yelling. That’s a second down. I’ve been to every home game since freshman year, and most of the away games too, so I’ve managed to pick up the rules.