by Barbara Hall
He looked into his lap. He said, “I thought it would help you understand her.”
“No, Dad, it’s the other thing. It makes me wonder if I knew her at all.”
“Are you blaming her?” he asked.
“No.”
“Because if you are, I don’t know you at all.”
“You’re right about that.”
He stood and started picking up the pages, one by one, whipping them from the floor to his chest, like plucking oysters, each one of which contained a pearl.
“It was not her fault. She did the right thing. She wasn’t a saint but she was good. And she was the bravest person I ever knew.”
“And I’ll never be her.”
He straightened up and held the papers close to him and fixed his gaze on me.
“You are part of her.”
“I’ll never be as good.”
“That,” he said, “is a choice.”
He took the papers and walked out of the room and left me alone, just like that, with the bird bracelet and the candles. And all the history and guilt and anger and sadness bouncing off the walls and me feeling like I was coming apart, dissolving like paper in water, and I grabbed my head and pulled on my hair and cried without making noise.
SIXTEEN
and Officially Three Days
• 1 •
So. Jamba Juice. A date with a boy from the cemetery. It was kind of hard to get excited about that after the night I had had.
But it was the only thing I could think about that had a chance of keeping me awake during science and Latin and oh, my God, history, with Ms. Kintner dressed like a corporate Barbie and talking about how horrible we were to the Native Americans. We all felt bad about it but she actually cried, and I wanted to say, Look, I’ve got genocide right in my own family, in my DNA, so buck up. I didn’t say it.
It was bad enough to think it.
See, being a privileged liberal private-school girl, all those stories about atrocities were just stories to me. They were my politics. My father’s politics. But for the first time that day, watching Ms. Kintner cry all over her Calvin Klein suit (which I’m sure she got at Ross Dress for Less), it was suddenly real for me and I felt the way-too-familiar lump forming in my throat. I knew I couldn’t actually cry, because the girls would see it and ridicule me—they were all doodling in their notebooks and thinking about lunch. They wouldn’t have understood and they couldn’t feel the way that I felt. Because I was picturing all those Indian people, mothers and daughters and fathers and sons, dying in the middle of their ordinary days, just because someone wanted to live on their land. And I was picturing a red-haired girl going down a well because she knew too much and was going to mess up a perfect life, which was nothing but a lie to begin with. And I was picturing my mother, not much older than me, getting on a bus and riding into a mystery, which became her freedom and her life and eventually me.
It was too much.
And I didn’t want to give my father the satisfaction of knowing I was thinking that way.
The letter had changed me. That’s what he was hoping for. He was hoping it would make me see my mother as a hero, as an even greater person than I imagined or remembered. But I wasn’t there yet. I was just trying to process it, to get to know her all over again.
What he hadn’t counted on was that it changed how I saw him. I saw him as even sadder and more stuck in the past. And I saw that what he expected of me was completely impossible.
So I stared out the window and thought about Mick.
I couldn’t remember what he looked like.
I couldn’t remember if I liked him or had any interest in seeing him again.
But I did remember that he was an artist and I liked that about him even though his fingers were stained from charcoal pencils, which was either gross or cool, I couldn’t decide.
And I knew that I needed to do something that afternoon to distract myself. I couldn’t stand the thought of sitting in my room with that letter somewhere in the house and a father who didn’t get me, and all those thoughts bouncing through my brain and the music on the iPod only making it worse, making it more dramatic and heartbreaking. I was too wound up to surf and probably the only thing I had the stamina for was drinking a fruit smoothie with a guy my age.
I hoped he would do the talking.
As I was leaving school, Zoe and Talia caught up to me and asked where I was going and I didn’t think quickly enough to lie to them.
“Oh, cool, that’s fun, let’s go,” Zoe said.
“No, I have to go alone.”
“Why?” Talia asked with big eyes, ever searching for a drama.
“Because. Don’t make me tell you.”
“Tell us,” she said in a hiss, looking around.
“I’m meeting someone. A boy.”
She sucked in a breath. “The one from the cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“Gothic.”
Zoe said, “We won’t make trouble. Let us come. We’ll hide in the back.”
“Please, you guys.”
They frowned and pouted and finally relented. I watched them walk off and I felt bad and wanted to apologize but decided not to. I didn’t feel sorry. I just felt a little more grown-up than I was accustomed to being. Telling the truth and all. Knowing they’d get over it. Not trying to make them happy so they’d like me. Was this what the rest of my life was going to look like? All these mature choices?
Thanks, Mom.
I walked into Larchmont village. I didn’t pay attention to anyone. I just watched my shoes and tried to come up with an opening line. Maybe he wouldn’t show. That would be a relief.
But he was there. Standing out front. Hands in his pockets. Pacing a little. Smiling when he saw me. Cuter than I remembered, and I wanted to run.
“Nice outfit” was his opening line.
I was in uniform, of course. That’s what he was referring to. The short gray skirt and the white polo shirt and the sneakers and the blue hoodie.
“Great way to kick it off, ridiculing my look.”
His smiled broadened. “It’s not your look. And anyway, I mean it. It’s sexy.”
Well, that was good enough to shut me up, so I just stood there staring at him and here’s what I eventually came up with:
“You didn’t bring your drawing pad.”
He shrugged. “I’ve already drawn you.”
Now I was really stumped and feeling like I was either in love or being stalked.
“You drew me? That day?”
“It’s more of a sketch. Does that weird you out?”
“A little.”
“I just thought you were interesting.”
“I prefer sexy.”
He shook his head. “Pretty. That’s the right word.”
That actually made me blush and he saw it and we both laughed.
“I think it’s time for a fruit drink,” I said.
So I ordered a banana something and he ordered an orange-raspberry something and he paid and we sat down at a table. We sucked on our straws for a minute and couldn’t think of anything to say. The place was riddled with Hillsboro girls and some of them I knew and they spoke to me and raised their eyebrows in a question, gesturing with their heads toward Mick.
“I’m going to be the talk of the school on Monday,” I said.
“Well, it’s good to have a reputation.”
“It is?”
“What’s that Oscar Wilde quote? ‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’ ”
I laughed. “You go around reading Oscar Wilde?”
“No, I go around reading quotes. It makes you sound smart.”
We smiled at each other and sipped our drinks.
He said, “So tell me your story.”
I looked at my banana concoction and had no idea where to begin.
“No, you first,” I said.
So he told me his story. It was reasona
bly dramatic, the drug addict father who died alone in a hotel near San Francisco. And his mother, who worked as a nurse in a maternity ward. She was funny and smart, he said, and other than marrying her father, she had made good choices. She worked in the maternity ward because she loved babies. Looking at them reminded her of the resiliency of the human spirit (his words, or her words, not mine). She was often tired when she got home and they never seemed to have enough money, but they got by. They had a lot of friends in their apartment complex and sometimes they had block parties on the street where he lived in Westwood. His mother babysat on weekends to make extra money and he had a part-time job washing dishes at a restaurant. His goal was to get into something called Risdee—Rhode Island School of Design, he explained—and eventually make it as either a fine artist or a graphic designer. He didn’t care about getting married or having kids, but he figured that was because he was too young to think about it. He did want to fall in love, though, he said.
“What kind of guy are you?” I asked. “You actually say the ‘l’ word out loud and you tell girls they’re pretty.”
“Oh, I’m not normal. Did you think I was normal?”
“I guess not.”
“Normal is too easy. Everybody does it.”
He told me some more. He read books and he was going through a Kurt Vonnegut phase. His favorite subject in school, besides art, was math, and I made a face and he laughed. He loved music, all kinds, but his current favorites besides the Beatles (he said he didn’t trust anyone who didn’t like the Beatles so I quickly told him the John Lennon preschool story) were Green Day and Weezer and Queens of the Stone Age. He also loved the blues and soul music from the sixties. The Stax singles, he said, and Motown, and Phil Spector. I told him I loved all that music myself and it was my father who had turned me on to it.
“What about your mom?” he asked.
“She loved that music, too.”
“But what did she turn you on to?”
It was hard to answer. He saw my expression change and he didn’t fall for the fake smile I produced to cover.
He said, “I’m sorry. Bad topic.”
“Yeah, stay away from the dead mother on the first juice date. That’s definitely for a food or movie date.”
He said, “I’ll just let you bring it up when you’re ready.”
I said, “My mother wasn’t who I thought she was.”
“In a good way?”
“I don’t know.”
We were quiet for a moment. I sucked on my banana drink and it felt cold in my stomach.
“What about the Clash?” I asked him.
“Oh, yeah, possibly the greatest rock band of all time.”
But the music portion of the discussion was over and the conversation just died. It got quiet. I knew it was time for my story and I knew I wasn’t prepared to tell him.
I didn’t want to keep it a secret, but it was too much. It was too big and I couldn’t trust a stranger with it.
I felt a little of what my mother must have felt when she saw Noah the first time. She wanted to know him but was afraid she’d never get the chance. Because she was too damaged. She had too much history. She couldn’t ask him to take it on.
I was a generation apart from the bad seed in my family. And Mick had a drug addict father so he ought to understand.
Still, I wasn’t brave enough.
So I just told him the obvious, that I was a Hillsboro girl and my father was a lawyer and we were die-hard liberals. I took a chance and told him about how I wanted to cry in history class thinking about the Native Americans.
He said, “Aristotle said something to the effect that war will end when everyone is dead. It seems to be the natural state of things. Human nature.”
“And that makes it okay?”
“Not okay,” he said. “Human nature. People are dark.”
I asked him if he believed in God and he said he believed in something but he wasn’t sure what. I agreed.
He looked at me as if he were studying an exotic bird. I looked away from him and thought about my mother, refusing to look at my father in the parking lot. I understood what that was about. The eyes were too revealing.
I was afraid he was seeing the darkness in me. Not just the history but my own personal darkness. That was so new to me, I had no idea what it was or how deep it went.
It went deep enough to make me unsympathetic toward my father.
It went deep enough that I was afraid I’d never be able to care about my social life at Hillsboro again.
I had no idea who I was.
I didn’t know if I’d risk my life for anything or anyone. I didn’t know if I would turn someone in to the police or if I’d even care that they were breaking the law. I didn’t feel anything strongly. I just wanted to fit in.
That was what the car had been about. Fitting in.
It wasn’t about freedom or mobility or even maturity.
It was being part of the pack.
A car would have been a very different thing for my parents. If they had had some form of transportation, they could have run away together. And they needed to run away. They were stranded.
I just wanted to fit in.
How was that for a realization?
My mother was a genuine avenger. She risked her life to say the truth. My father had risked almost as much to help her. And I wanted to fit in.
I stared into my drink. I wanted Mick. I wanted him to be impressed with me. I wanted him to be my boyfriend and take me to movies. I wanted a picture of him on my dresser. I wanted us to hold hands and laugh like normal people.
But I was afraid to want it.
I only had a few minutes to come up with something worth admiring. Some character, some courage, some depth. Something that showed I had some nerve and creativity and a taste for adventure.
“Where do you think your mother is?” he asked me suddenly.
“I thought you weren’t going to bring up the dead mother.”
“I’m sorry. I panicked. There was a lull.”
I smiled. “I don’t know.”
“Not in the graveyard, though.”
“It used to be the only place that I felt her.”
“Not anymore?”
I smiled and twisted the bird bracelet around on my wrist.
“Not anymore.”
He smiled and looked at the bracelet but didn’t ask.
“Where do you think your father is?”
He shrugged. “I never knew him well enough to wonder.”
“Did he leave you anything? I mean, do you have his belongings? Did he write anything down?”
“Like a letter?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Like a letter.”
“No, I wish he had.”
“My mother wrote one. I read it.”
It came out. Just like that. I wondered if the bananas in my smoothie were fermented, because I felt a little drunk.
“A letter to you?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t to me. But it was for me. In a way.”
“What did she say in it?”
“A lot. It’s complicated.”
“I’d like to hear about it.”
“I’d like to tell you. But not now.”
He smiled. “That means I’m going to see you again.”
“Yeah.”
“So the juice date is going pretty well.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
We stared at each other in a way that people my age are typically afraid to do. But he was different. I was different.
I wondered if my parents had stared at each other just this way.
I had always worried about dating—right up until this moment, in fact—because I knew my father wouldn’t be able to tell me how to do it. He wouldn’t be able to tell me how to recognize the right guy. He wouldn’t like anyone I brought home. He might even forbid me to do it. He might say, “We’re not like that,” or “We’re not from here,” or “You’re all
I have.”
So I tried to imagine what my mother would have said about dating and about Mick in particular.
I could almost hear her, but I knew it was really my own voice speaking for her.
Find someone special and don’t settle. Find him and stay focused. Find more than one and learn what you have to learn and when you’ve learned enough, get married and stay that way.
I smiled suddenly because these sentences crossed a line where they didn’t feel like mine anymore. Maybe she had always been talking to me. And I was learning how to listen.
What about Mick? I asked her.
I didn’t hear anything except a loud sucking sound.
He had reached the bottom of his orange-raspberry drink. We both laughed at the awkwardness.
“Do people ever treat you weird?” he asked. “I mean, because of her.”
“They did when I was little. Now it’s like a status symbol.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s strange at Hillsboro. We don’t get to wear regular clothes and we don’t have boys, so we find other things to be competitive about. Like grades and ancestors and strange history.”
He laughed. “In public school, it’s just the usual crap. Sneakers and iPods and you talked to my girl, I’ll see you in the parking lot.”
“And drugs, right? And people having sex in the bathrooms.”
He laughed. “Yeah, just a bunch of losers with no plans for the future.”
I felt my face turning red. “No, I didn’t mean that.”
“Sure you did. We know that’s how you see us.”
“Well, you think we’re all spoiled and stupid.”
He shook his head. “Just spoiled. But you’re different.”
I thought about it. “I wasn’t all that different. Until recently.”
“What changed?”
“That kind of falls in the dead-mother category.”
“Oh,” he said.
We looked into our empty drink cups.
“Want another?” he asked.