It was the same street she had walked a few months before the day she saw Jacob in court for the first time. In her Minnesota winter uniform, a heavy sweater, wool slacks, and dressy boots, she was relatively warm, even without her coat. She had walked several blocks before she started to wonder if anyone would notice she was gone. She couldn’t remember if she had any appointments scheduled. At that point, she could barely remember what day it was.
From the first day on the job, Amanda had realized there was a line drawn between “us” and “them.” She supposed it was how they all tolerated all the painful things they encountered. Her coworkers were devoted advocates for the kids they worked with, and oftentimes the parents too. But consciously or unconsciously, right or wrong, there was a line between workers and clients.
Was she more upset because she was a victim, or was it the fear of having her life exposed? In Terrance, she was always being asked whom she was related to, when she graduated, or how she fit into the town that its residents fiercely claimed as their home. Would anyone still think she was competent if they knew who she really was?
As she walked, she listened to her boots squeak on the hardened snow. The air was cold, but not frigid. The tears running down her cheeks made her face colder. She was oblivious to her surroundings until a car pulled up next to her, moving with her slowly on the deserted residential street. She started to feel nervous, like she was being followed, until she looked over and saw it was Jacob. He parked and motioned for her to come over. She looked at him, not moving, so he got out.
“Hey.” He was carrying her coat. “When you hung up on me, I thought I better come over and apologize. Max said he saw you leave out the back door without your coat …” He put her coat around her shoulders, holding the lapels together in front to keep the coat on. “What happened?”
Amanda shook her head, too ashamed to tell him anything. She looked down, trying to hide her tears.
Jake put his arms around her and held her tightly. Amanda held her breath, trying not to cry anymore. “Max told me you had a rough day yesterday. He said to tell you to just go home for the day if you needed to.”
Victim. Pathetic, pitiful victim. Too weak and pathetic to work. She shook her head, both at the thoughts running through her head, and the suggestion that she just go home. She couldn’t admit to Max that she was weak. She tried to stuff down the sadness and shame, but her feelings wouldn’t squash down the way they used to. They were on the surface more and more lately, and she had no idea how to handle them. Every emotion she had seemed to knock the life right out of her.
Jacob pulled back and tried to look at Amanda, but she avoided his eyes. He could still see her jaw clenched, holding back tears.
“Whatever it is, Amanda, it’s okay.” He stroked her hair. “Let’s go to my place, and I’ll make you some lunch. We can sit around and watch MTV all afternoon.” He was going to take the afternoon off to be with her, but all Amanda really wanted to do was go home and go to bed.
“Just take me home,” Amanda whispered. “I just need to get some sleep.”
“No. You can sleep at my place. You’re not going to be alone.”
He always knew just what to say.
* * *
Jacob warmed up some of Trix’s homemade wild rice soup, and they ate on the couch sitting under blankets. They watched MTV, and then switched over to the game show network to watch a Price Is Right marathon. The soup, the blanket, and the company made Amanda start to relax. Jake always had an amazing way of being with her and tolerating her being emotional.
At some point, Amanda dozed off on Jake’s couch. When she woke up, it was nearly dark out. Jake was sitting on the floor by the couch, working on his laptop, but stopped when he saw Amanda sit up.
“Feel better?”
Amanda nodded, embarrassed.
“What happened, Amanda? You looked so sad.”
Amanda let out a heavy sigh. She was so tired of feeling this way. So tired of feeling pathetic and alone. She was becoming her own worst enemy because she was letting her history get the better of her every time it became an issue. She hated people feeling sorry for her, but the person who felt the sorriest for Amanda was always Amanda.
“I’m okay, Jacob. I was upset, but I’m over it. I’m ready to move on.”
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
Marlys actually wore a boa to her discharge meeting.“I know I got a long way to go,” she said, enunciating her words clearly and proudly, “but I’m here today and I’m sober today, and that’s alls I can do is take care of to-day.”
Marlys’ primary counselor, Mavis, nodded. Mavis was in her early sixties, and she had been a counselor for over twenty years after becoming sober herself. Amanda knew this because Mavis talked about her own sobriety almost every time they talked about Marlys. “That’s right, Marlys. So tell your social worker what you’re going to do to stay clean and sober tomorrow and the next day …”
Marlys turned to Amanda, sitting at the table in the conference room at the outpatient treatment center where they were having their meeting. The only other person in the room was Glady, the court appointed guardian ad litem who was assigned to the case to look out for the best interests of the kids. Glady was in her fifties and African American, and she had a calm and competent demeanor that gave her instant credibility with clients and providers.
“I’m already going to the NA or the AA almost every day. I still needa job, but I know there’s a meeting somewhere every day, and I need my meetings. I also needs to stay on my medication so I don’t get so depressed about my past and all the things I’ve did.”
“The medication is a biggie,” Mavis said. “Shame is a big trigger for you, and you started handling that shame much better when you started your meds.”
“Amen,” Marlys said. “I’m ready to be a new person, a new sober person for my kids.”
Amanda nodded and took this as her cue to speak up. Meetings like this intimidated Amanda because people like Mavis were so experienced, and she knew Mavis could immediately tell if she said something stupid.
“About your kids … I think we’ll be ready to increase your visits now that you’re done with primary treatment.” Amanda opened her file and pulled out the caseplan for Marlys. “We said at the last meeting that your visits would increase to all day, and we’ll start working toward unsupervised visits in the next few weeks …”
“Weeks! I ain’t waiting weeks! I’ll have my apartment next month, and then I want them home.” Marlys sat up straight in her chair and leaned forward with her eyes bulging. Glady sat back slightly in her chair.
Amanda cleared her throat and felt herself turning red. “I know you do, Marlys, but we need to make sure that, uh, that you aren’t going to, uh, I mean that your treatment has really worked …”
“You see!” Marlys yelled, banging her hand on the table. “Nobody thinks I’m gonna do right. Everybody’s expecting me to fail. Why should I even try?”
Mavis sat back and crossed her arms. “You’re being a victim, Marlys. You don’t need your social worker’s permission to get sober. This has to be about you taking care of yourself.”
“I done all this for my babies, but she’s the one who decides what happens to my babies. I can’t get my boys back until she say so.”
Amanda cleared her throat again. “The law says that I have to try to get your children back to you …”
“The law says! See! You don’t think I’m doing nothing. You’re just doing what the law says. Did the law say that my babies’ daddy don’t hafta pay me no child support? No. The law says he s’posed to, but he don’t pay nothing. When you start getting the law to make him pay, then you can use your laws on me.”
“Don’t argue, Marlys,” Mavis said, “It gets you nowhere. Your drug addiction got you into this place. Not his failure to pay child support. You’re blaming again.”
Amanda closed her file, and cleared her throat, trying to sound more authoritati
ve and confident. “Marlys, I really do want to get your boys back home. This is a great step that you made, getting through treatment like this. We just have to make sure it’s really going to work this time, because you have relapsed before, and we don’t want to let that happen again. I’m not saying that to make you mad. I’m just trying to talk about it so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Glady spoke up at that point. “We all know that kids do best with their mamas, as long as their mamas are healthy. We want to help you be healthy so you can be the best mama.”
Glady’s words soothed Marlys enough to help her settle down and talk about the next steps.
They ended the meeting with the agreement to meet in a week, during which time Amanda would set up a more intensive visitation schedule and parenting education for Marlys during her visits. Marlys hugged Amanda before she left, tearily thanking her for “being a bitch when I needed a bitch.”
It was the end of the day, so Amanda decided to go straight home instead of bringing her file back to the office. The treatment program was in a strip mall next to Target, and Amanda felt the store calling her. She decided to go to Target and look for some winter clothes on clearance.
She wandered around the women’s clothing section looking at sweaters and wishing that she had a reason to buy a swimsuit that was already on display for winter vacationers. Several people in her office were going to Mexico or Florida on a cruise or just to a resort. Amanda didn’t have the funds or the vacation time to do anything other than take an afternoon off and sit in the hot tub at the Y. Her mood had improved in the past month after she had joined the Y and started running almost every day. It was a good distraction from the stress of her job, and the feeling that her head and all these crazy memories were messing with her. She still drove by the house with the gnomes, but she didn’t have the energy to do anything more about it.
Amanda found a blazer and slacks on the clearance rack that she picked up and thought about trying on. She carried them with her as she continued to wander, when her phone vibrated in her purse.
Dinner tonight? The message was from Jacob. He had been wrapped up in a trial he was working on, so they had not seen much of each other since the day he picked Amanda up on the street.
Somewhere cheap, she replied, thinking of her credit card bill that she was still paying down from Christmas and Lucy’s wedding. She wandered to the shoe section and tried to find shoes to match the makeshift suit she was considering. Some spikey boots were on sale, but she wasn’t sure if they were right for court. Her phone buzzed again.
You’ve always been a cheap date, but we’re not going to DQ tonight. I’ll pick you up at 6:30.
K, she replied, and dropped the phone in her purse. Looking down at her suit, she knew that if she was going out for dinner she didn’t have extra money for clothes anyway. But she couldn’t leave Target without something, so she grabbed a cinnamon scented candle and headed to the front of the store. There were at least a dozen men in line, holding cards or flowers or another small gift. Then she noticed the paper hearts hanging from the ceiling and remembered that it was Valentine’s Day.
* * *
Back at her apartment, Amanda stared at her closet with no idea of what to wear.
He called her a date. A cheap date, but a date nonetheless. And since it was Valentine’s Day, restaurants would be full of couples. Knowing this, Jake asked her to go to a restaurant with him, on Valentine’s Day. Did that make this a date? Amanda had been enjoying their friendship, but she had never noticed him making any moves toward anything other than friendship. The night her mother died flashed in her head, and her face flushed with the memory of being in bed with Jake. Sharp and bittersweet, and she rarely let herself go back to that night, but for a moment it was all there: sounds of summer outside the open window, a whiff of Trix’s lavender fabric softener on the sheets, Jake’s sweaty grip on her bare shoulders. And then there was the shame. Many people probably used sex to comfort themselves after a loss, but she still felt guilty. She was also just simply afraid. Jake told her he loved her, but she didn’t believe him. And then she ran away.
Amanda pulled in a deep breath and tried to calm down. She had been out for dinner many times with Jake, although it was usually a casual happy hour that extended far enough into the evening that they both were starving and ordered food. This felt different. He’d called it a date.
Just because he called it a date didn’t mean that she had to consider it as anything other than another night out with her friend. Amanda went on three dates with a guy in college who clearly had a thing for her, but Amanda was so uncomfortable with his obvious interest that she never allowed him to even hold her hand. After three dates and not a speck of interest in him returned, he gave up. Amanda didn’t want Jake to give up on their friendship, but she wanted him to clearly know that this was a night out as friends.
Amanda turned away from her closet deciding not to make the effort to change clothes, not just for a night out with a friend.
* * *
Jake arrived a few minutes before 7:00 and came up to her apartment just as Amanda was pulling on her coat. He knocked and then opened the door, which Amanda had not locked.
“As you see, I can clearly let myself in, as can any intruder who wants to harass you when you don’t lock your door.” He stood with his hands on his hips in the entryway and glared at her seriously.
“Hello to you too.” She folded her arms and waited for the argument. Jake dropped his hands by his side and shook his head.
“Just want you to be safe,” he said, almost to himself. He seemed to be willing to drop the nagging for now. “Ready to go?” Amanda followed Jake to his car, which Jake had left running so it was warm.
“You look nice,” Jake said a touch formally. Amanda looked down at her sweater and pants that looked a little wrinkled and tired after she wore them all day. She couldn’t remember Jake ever commenting on her appearance before.
“Just my work clothes,” Amanda said a little too brightly. Jake took a road away from downtown, so Amanda asked where they were going.
“Out to the lake,” he said. “There’s nowhere fun to eat in Terrance.” She nodded and looked out the window. Yep, this was a date.
* * *
They went to the Boater’s Inn, a restaurant on Lake Pepin just over the border in Wisconsin. It was a new place that had just received excellent reviews in the Star Tribune. It was crowded and there was a wait for a table, so they went to the bar. Amanda ordered a glass of wine, and Jake a diet coke. He led her to a tall table near the window that overlooked the now dark lake. She couldn’t help staring at his drink. Once again, he was abstaining, and it had happened enough times in a row that it was clearly not a coincidence. She pictured the pill bottles in his medicine cabinet he didn’t know she had seen.
“Great view, huh?” Jake said, motioning at the darkness.
Amanda nodded, trying to decide if she was going to mention his teetotaling.
“Being here reminds me that I didn’t get on a boat once last summer,” Jake said. “We should go waterskiing next summer. Michael has a great boat when he’s home to use it.”
She nodded again. “How’s your diet coke?” she asked pointedly.
“Refreshing,” he said. “You ever skied before?”
Amanda wanted to say something sarcastic to remind him that her life had been far too dysfunctional for such pastimes, but she was trying to get rid of the “poor me” attitude, so she just shook her head. They looked out the window in silence for a moment.
“How have you been feeling lately?” The question was blunt, and her tone was clear that she meant more than his general health. He looked straight at her with his eyebrows raised slightly, and his jaw clenched just enough for her to notice. His cancer had become a touchy subject, only because they hadn’t spoken of it since they had become reacquainted.
“I’m good,” he said. “How are have you been feeling?” Her shoulders
dropped, and she looked down. Obviously the subject was not open for discussion. He said he was feeling fine, and that should have been enough. But it wasn’t. His reaction meant something was going on.
“My sisters are great waterskiers,” he went on, filling the awkward silence. “Both of them wanted to be part of the Tommy Bartlett Water Show at the Dells.” The Dells— actually the Wisconsin Dells—and Amanda had participated in this Midwestern tradition. The Dells was actually a tiny town and an area in the middle of Wisconsin that had become a family vacation haven because of its many waterparks, minigolf courses, and waterski shows.
The conversation stayed away from Jake’s health and lack of drinking, and they both relaxed. Amanda didn’t order another glass of wine because she felt strange about drinking when he was pointedly not drinking. After nearly an hour they were seated in the dining room, which was soothing beige and white and decorated with sailing paraphernalia. It felt like a breath of summer in the depth of winter.
Amanda had pasta and Jake had a steak, and they both had a nice time. Despite it being declared a date and the earlier awkward discussion, they finally relaxed and chatted easily about the upcoming Twins season, politics, and William and Lucy. William had been updating Jake on Lucy’s progress almost obsessively. Lucy had been emailing less, but Amanda was working hard not to take it personally. She knew Lucy was uncomfortable, stressed and scared, so Amanda had been calling more. Lucy sounded wearily pleased every time Amanda called, so she knew it was her time to be selfless with her friend.
“Will sounds just nervous,” Jake said. “It’s like he’s tiptoeing around Lucy for fear that walking too loud will put her into labor.”
“Nine months is way too long to be pregnant,” Amanda said as though she had some sort of first-hand knowledge. “I hope she goes the second the baby’s healthy enough to be delivered.”
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