“Oh good, we’ve upgraded him to a coat. A winter furnace.”
The sun, I think. But I don’t want to give Madison any more ammunition. “Can you just be serious for a minute?” I say.
“Yes, yes, sorry.” She swipes her hand in front of her face as if magically changing her upturned lips into a straight line. “Serious now.” But then she says “neat” again under her breath and throws herself back onto the couch cackling.
“Madison!”
“Jube! I’m sorry. It’s just— OK, seriously now.” She snickers on and off for a few more seconds and then tries again. “Why didn’t you just tell him about your condition? Before now?”
“Yeah, because that’s such an easy conversation to have.”
“Well I think it’s an important one—so he doesn’t go wiping mayonnaise off your face and accidentally put you in the hospital.”
“That’s dramatic.”
“Well you don’t know. You said yourself you never know how your body will react.” She fixes me with a serious look. “Come on, why didn’t you just tell him?”
“I don’t know.” I start studying and then picking at a hangnail that’s been getting caught on my gloves. “I guess I was afraid he would think I was a freak or something, or not want to be around me anymore.”
“Well that’s ridiculous. Who wouldn’t want to be around you? You’re the funniest person I know. Especially when you’re on drugs.”
“Ha-ha,” I say.
“Seriously, though. If you like him—if you want to kiss him—don’t you think you should at least try out this treatment the doctor was telling you about? Maybe you’d be able to—”
“No,” I cut her off. “It’s just a shot in the dark. If they can even find the protein—if their theory is even right to begin with—there’s no guarantee it would even work. And it would take months, if not years, to find out. Anyway, it doesn’t even matter. The way I acted yesterday, I’m sure I won’t be seeing Eric again anytime soon.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Madison, no,” I say again, more firmly this time.
After a few minutes of silence, she stands up. “Go. Get dressed,” she says, shooing me with her hands. “We’re going on our adventure, because I dropped all the kids at Donovan’s, even though it’s not even his night to take them and I had to listen to him bitch at me for a full twenty minutes about it.”
I throw my head back. “Ugh. I really don’t want to. Can you at least tell me what it is?”
“The movies.”
“The movies? That doesn’t sound like much of an adventure.”
“But it is! It’s a three-D one. With dinosaurs. Did they even have three-D movies the last time you went to the theater?”
I stare at her.
“Oh, and the snacks! When’s the last time you had movie theater popcorn? It’s been at least nine years, I know, which is completely unacceptable.”
I sigh. “You are not going to leave unless I do this, are you?”
“No,” she says. “It’s part of my charm.”
AT THE LIBRARY Monday afternoon, Louise is in a heightened state of steady panic.
“My son-in-law is gluten-free, my granddaughter hates anything green, and my daughter is now, apparently, a vegetarian—what am I going to make for Thanksgiving? Air?”
She clacks away at the computer, searching for various recipes and muttering under her breath. I add a concerned “Mm-hmm” here and there, but I’m not really paying attention. Aja didn’t come today. At four thirty, I told myself his bus was running late. At five thirty, I thought maybe he was sick and stayed home. But now it’s almost seven, and I have to accept reality—that I told Eric and Aja to get out, and they did. And they’re not coming back. I know it’s for the best, that it’s what I wanted, but still.
“Oh great, it’s the Cat Sisters,” I hear Louise say under her breath, and when I look up, she’s already out of her chair and halfway to the back room. I turn my head toward the door. Stalking to the circulation desk are two of the largest women I’ve ever seen, in height and weight. My eyes widen, not just in surprise, but to take the whole of them in. And then, when they’re still about five paces away, it hits me. An unholy stench that smells like a mix between raw sewage and ammonia. I close my mouth to keep from tasting it.
One of the women slams a stack of books onto the desk in front of me, and a flurry of animal hair flies up from the force and settles back down on the counter. Cat hair. Cat Sisters. The nickname is starting to make sense. “You new?” she says in a voice so deep, I look up at her wondering if I mistook their gender. Save for a few coarse whiskers on one’s chin and their linebacker statures, they definitely appear to be female. As I study them, I notice their outer clothing—a worn tan overcoat on one and a very large sweater on the other—is covered in cat hair.
“I am,” I say, still trying not to breathe.
“Our books come in?” the other woman says, her voice as gruff as her sister’s.
“Um, what books are those?” I ask.
“The Winged Dragon series. Special-ordered ’em from Ling Ling.”
I continue to stare at her, perplexed.
“You know, that Oriental girl.”
I pause, wondering if I should point out how rude it is to call a person of Asian descent Oriental, and then deduce that if they are in the habit of calling Shayna “Ling Ling”—either to her face or behind her back—they probably won’t care. I push my chair back, grateful to put space between us. “I’ll just go check,” I say. The woman’s frown deepens and her sister’s does too, as if they’re of one grumpy mind.
When I enter the back room, I see Louise standing over a box of pastries on the counter leftover from the morning. She has a blueberry scone up to her mouth. Her eyes widen when she sees me and she freezes midbite. “Sorry to leave you so suddenly,” she says, crumbs falling to her blouse. “I just needed to, um . . . deal with a library emergency.”
“Ha-ha,” I say, heading over to the shelf where we keep the books on hold.
“How are the Cat Sisters today?” she asks.
I stare at her. “Um . . . rude.”
“Yep. That’s them.”
“And smelly,” I add.
“Isn’t it the worst?” She smiles, revealing bits of pastry stuck between her teeth.
Irritated, I don’t reply, grabbing three large books that have been rubber-banded together. The cover of the first one has a large fantastical dragon breathing fire over a modern cityscape. I take them back out front and hold them up for the Cat Sisters.
“Found ’em,” I say.
“Took you long enough,” the one with the overcoat mutters.
I clench my gloved fist and sit down, then take the proffered library card from the sweater-garbed one and start the checkout process. When I hand the books and card back over and they finally leave, I take a deep breath of unpolluted air and stare at the blank computer screen in front of me, trying to part the haze of self-pity that’s done nothing but build on itself since the movies.
An ear-piercing screech jerks my head like a marionette to the children’s section. A little girl, her head wrapped in neat rows of braids and beads, sits on the floor, howling and clutching her knee. “IT HORTS! IT HORTS!” she says in her childlike speech.
“Shh,” says her mom, standing over her. “I told you not to run in here. Get up, sweetie, you’re fine.” That only causes the girl to cry harder. Trying another tactic, the woman’s body collapses accordion-style, until she’s eye-level with her daughter. “Let Mommy kiss it,” she says, gently bringing the girl’s leg up to her mouth. The girl whimpers, her hysterics subsiding, and she crawls into her mother’s arms. The two of them join like they’re playing a child’s game of chance: paper covers rock.
Other children in the section carry on, pulling books from shelves. Roger pecks away at his computer keyboard, oblivious to the pair, but I can’t tear my eyes away from them. Their flagrant display of affection. T
he palpable love that courses from mother to child as natural as a river flowing downstream.
My lungs contract in my chest, the giant’s fist back to exact his revenge, and I can’t—
“Jubilee?”
I look up into Eric’s olive eyes and wonder how long he’s been standing there.
“Are you OK?” he asks, his face a mask of concern.
And it’s the sight of him, the warmth in his voice, that causes water to spring to my lashes, my vision to blur. And I realize that no, I’m not OK. I’m not OK at all.
“My mom died,” I say, my voice cracking on the word “died.” And then, I feel my face crumple like a poorly made sand castle and I start to sob.
SITTING IN THE front seat of Eric’s car, I blow my nose loudly on a tissue he gave me. We’re still in the library parking lot, but I’m not sure exactly how I got here, except that he said he was there to drive me home and it struck me as such an unexpected kindness that I began crying even harder, drawing Louise out of the back room. I assume they exchanged some looks and then someone handed me my coat and bag and I followed Eric out the front door, barely keeping my eyes trained on the back of his coat through my tears.
He’s silent for what feels like a record amount of time as I honk and blubber and wail. When I finally begin to calm down, I dab at the flow of snot with the tissue and take a few deep breaths, my shoulders shuddering. Only then does it occur to me to be embarrassed at the spectacle I certainly am.
I glance over at him, sitting stoically in the driver’s seat, his left hand clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, his right hand resting calmly on his thigh. I take another deep breath.
“Sorry . . . about . . . um . . . all that,” I say, my voice still wobbly.
He turns his head toward me. “No, it’s fine,” he says. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
“Well, it was a couple of months ago.” I sniffle and wipe my nose again. “I guess it all just kind of hit me at once. That probably sounds ridiculous.”
“No,” Eric says. “It doesn’t.”
We sit in silence for a little longer.
“Were you guys close?” Eric asks.
“Not really. I hadn’t seen her in nine years. I kind of hated her, to be honest.”
Eric narrows his eyes at me, and I know he’s listening, waiting for more.
But how to explain my mom? She smoked and wore tight blouses and was obsessed with men and money. She made fun of me for sport. She treated me like I was her roommate. And that’s when I finally put voice to what’s been bothering me for so many years.
“It’s just . . . she left me.” I swallow, trying to soothe my raw throat. “Left me right when I needed her most. Right when—” I think of Donovan and the humiliation, but I know that’s not all. It’s not what’s causing my hands to tremble and my bones to feel hollow. And then the woman and child from the library flash in my mind and my chest splits wide open like a skull hitting pavement. “She never touched me. Ever. Not after I got diagnosed. I mean, I know she couldn’t give me regular hugs and kisses. But she could have—I don’t know—put on gloves and rubbed my back or patted my head, for Christ’s sake! Or . . . or . . . I don’t know—wrapped me in a blanket and squeezed me tight.”
I know I’m rambling, but I’m a burst pipe now, with no control over my words gushing out. “She acted like I was a pariah. I mean, I was used to that, the kids at school treated me like one, too. But my own mom.” Rivulets of tears are falling from my eyes, mixing with the blobs of snot coming from my nose, but I don’t care. I wipe my face with my gloved hand and lean my head back on the seat, letting the tears fall, until it doesn’t feel like I have any left. I sniff.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
He doesn’t respond. I glance over at him again, but he’s just sitting there, like he’s made of bronze or something. Why am I telling him all of this? I’m suddenly so embarrassed by my admissions, I want to jump out of the car and pedal my bike far away.
“Will you say something?” I ask.
Eric shifts in his seat and massages his jaw, as if, with a little elbow grease, he could rub the prickly black hair that’s sprouted right off his face.
“Soooo . . .” He stops rubbing and turns to me. “You wanted your mom to suffocate you?”
I stare at him. I know my thoughts were all over the place, but seriously? That’s what he latched on to? But then, a small grin cracks the side of his face. I try to narrow my eyebrows—how could he joke about this? But his smile is contagious and I’m powerless to stop myself. A giggle escapes my lips, and then another one. And then I’m full-on laughing and I wonder if I look as manic as I feel.
I try to catch my breath, but my body’s on autopilot now, alternating between laughing fits and light sobs, and I have to let it run its course. When I finally start to calm down, I expect Eric to say something else or start the car or do something, but he just sits there, staring out the windshield.
So I sit there too, the silence in the car building until it becomes so deafening, I squirm in my seat, searching for something—anything—to say to break the weird tension that’s settled in the air around us. Then Eric clears his throat.
“You know, one time when Ellie was little—like six months old—I took her over to Dinesh’s apartment.”
I stare at him. “Dinesh?”
He glances in my direction, as if he’s just realized I’m there. “Aja’s dad,” he says. “My best friend. Well, he was my best friend.” He turns his gaze back out the windshield.
“Anyway, we were still in college and I wanted to prove to him that fatherhood hadn’t changed me—wasn’t going to change me—so I packed all her stuff in a diaper bag and went over there to watch soccer, like we always did, maybe have a beer or two.
“About halfway through the match, Ellie has this massive blowout. I mean huge. Poop was everywhere. All up her back, over her legs, it was getting all on Dinesh’s bedspread where I was trying to change her.” Eric chuckles. “I remember he was standing behind me yelling, ‘Mate! Mate! Get her off! That’s where the magic happens!’
“So I need to wash her off, right? That’s the only way I’m getting her clean at this point. I take her into Dinesh’s bathroom, sit her in the sink, and turn on the water. It’s freezing cold and she starts screaming. I mean, she’s so loud and I just want to make it stop and the poop is everywhere, so without really thinking I just turn off the cold and turn on the warm. But I didn’t remember that Dinesh’s water got hot, like scalding hot, really fast. And then Ellie starts screaming again. And when I realized what I’d done, I snatched her out of the sink, but her skin was already burned. Not third degree or anything, but it turned bright red. I wrapped her, poop and all, in a towel and just held her, telling her over and over again how sorry I was, until she finally started to calm down.”
He turns to me again. “What I’m trying to say is, there is nothing worse—I mean nothing—than seeing your child in pain. And knowing you caused it? I still feel the guilt for burning her like that. And I can hear her screams plain as day.”
“But she was OK,” I say.
Eric nods. “Yeah, thank God. Listen, I don’t know your mom. But I do know, if doing something that minor to Ellie made me feel like that, I can’t imagine what it would be like to know your actions could cause something worse to happen to your child. And to know that she did hurt you, for years, before you got diagnosed. That her just loving you was causing you pain.” He shakes his head.
I stare at him, feeling like Mary when she sees the secret garden for the first time. Eric has given me a perspective I’ve never considered before—maybe she was so scared of hurting me again that she couldn’t bring herself to touch me at all. It sounds so nice, like such a plausible explanation, and I want to believe it with all my might. But I can’t get Mr. Walcott out of my head: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
And then something el
se occurs to me. I narrow my eyes. “How did you know that? That it took years to get a diagnosis?”
“I, ah . . . Aja showed me that article about you. In the Times.”
I look down at my lap, my face getting hot. He starts the car and puts the gearshift in reverse. “He thinks you’re famous.”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, well, he also thought I was an X-woman or whatever you call them,” I say. “He’s got quite an imagination.”
“Tell me about it,” Eric says, pulling out of the library parking lot.
We ride in silence for a minute, until I muster the courage to tell him what I’ve been thinking. “I, uh, I didn’t really expect you to come today.”
“Why not?”
“The way I acted on Saturday? I wasn’t exactly . . . kind.”
He shrugs. “I told you I’d give you a ride home until you get your car fixed. I keep my word.”
I nod, unsure how to respond. What did I expect him to say—I couldn’t stay away from you, like some cheesy line from a movie?
He takes a deep breath and runs his hand through his hair, mussing it even more. “Listen, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I almost . . . well . . .”
I lean forward an inch, my breath held tight. Almost kissed me. Say it.
He doesn’t.
The awkwardness sits between us—the proverbial elephant in the car.
“Well, I won’t . . . I promise I’ll keep my distance from now on. You don’t have to worry about me.”
I sit back, wondering why I’m not relieved by his assurance. “So where’s Aja?” I ask, changing the subject. “Why didn’t he come today?”
“He had therapy. It’s usually on Thursday, but it got changed.” Eric glances over at me and sees my raised eyebrows. “It was mandated, from the near-drowning-incident thing. Connie took him. I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of.”
“Ah.”
“I was going to tell you on Saturday, but then . . .”
“Right.”
A pause, and then Eric says: “You know, you’re really good with him.”
“He’s a good kid. Smart. And funny! God, that story about how he got his name?”
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