The Nearness of You

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  Eloise had been so hot, so sick. It had taken her months to recover. Suzette had taken a leave of absence from work and sat at Eloise’s bedside, reading to her or just holding her hand while they watched cartoons. If Eloise woke and Suzette wasn’t there, Eloise would scream in terror. What had happened to Eloise in the year and a half before she came home? Had she spent her infancy in that awful motel? Who had fed her? Had she been held, rocked to sleep? How had Dorrie allowed Eloise to become so very sick?

  Suzette would never know.

  But as she learned to care for Eloise—changing her diapers, listening to her babble, rushing to her when Eloise woke in the night—a slow, sad realization of how badly Suzette herself had been parented came over her like a shadow. When she was small, Suzette had had a nightmare about wolves. She’d screamed for help, for her mommy. But no one had come. In the dark, on that night and so many others, Suzette had accepted that she was alone.

  But Eloise was not alone.

  Carolyn had forgotten to bathe Suzette. Suzette bought her daughter bubbles and ducks and colorful washcloths, kneeling by the tub each night, rubbing sweet-smelling Eloise dry in thick towels. Carolyn had not remembered mealtimes, but Suzette rushed home every night to make it to the table, reminding Hyland to buy organic vegetables and milk. Suzette’s wounds felt less raw as the years went on. As she became a mother, Suzette herself slowly healed.

  The pilot’s voice announcing turbulence brought Suzette back to the present. She opened her eyes, startled, realizing that she had forgotten the lesson she should have learned on the night Eloise arrived.

  Suzette remembered the ride to the hospital. She had sat in the backseat, clutching Eloise as Hyland drove like a madman. Eloise had been dressed in a faded, peach-colored dress. On her feet were cheap sandals. Her hair was combed, but stuck to her hot, red cheeks. When she opened her eyes, she focused on Suzette.

  Suzette’s life until that moment had been structured to avoid a surprise, to ward off a miracle. But Suzette had finally stopped struggling, and Eloise had come.

  In the years since, Suzette had reverted to her old ways, trying to control Eloise, trying to protect her and make her safe. And here she was again, flying across the world to manage her daughter.

  If Eloise wanted to find Dorrie, Suzette realized, it wasn’t Suzette’s job to stop her. It was Suzette’s job to give Eloise the facts and step away. Maybe Suzette could even return to Alberto and the team in Sudan. Maybe, if she let go of Eloise, Suzette could find a place for herself.

  As soon as Suzette’s plane touched down, she checked her messages. There was one from Meg, whom Suzette had called from Khartoum. Meg, who had fought breast cancer for three years (Suzette buying Meg ridiculous wigs at the costume shop during her chemotherapy), had recently been declared cancer-free (they’d celebrated with so many margaritas that Suzette had had to call Hyland to drive them home). While Suzette was airborne, Meg had sent five text messages. Every one read: This is not your fault.

  Suzette waited to deplane, crushed in between exhausted, overripe passengers. It was very late at night in London. As soon as Suzette got off the plane, she bought a cup of tea, tossed back her medication. Feeling blue was one thing; feeling suicidal was quite another.

  The cup with its elaborate cardboard sleeve was warm in her hands. It was hard not to think of the throngs of hungry people she’d seen in Sudan as she walked by café after gleaming café, all closed for the night.

  There were hours until her connection to New York. Suzette sat alone at the gate. The lights of departing and arriving flights were small fireworks against a velvet sky. Suzette stared at her phone, desperate for a connection. She dialed her daughter.

  As the phone rang, Suzette tried to figure out what to say, what message to leave for Eloise. But then, to her surprise, Eloise answered.

  13

  Eloise

  The drug dealer and I had been sipping from his flask for a few hours, sitting close to each other, when my phone rang. The side of his leg was warm against the side of my leg. I picked up my phone and saw that it was Suzette, calling all the way from Africa to yell at me. I don’t know why, but I accepted her call. I took a big gulp from the flask. “Oh, hi, Suzette,” I said.

  “Eloise!” she said. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you answered. Where are you?”

  “I’m in New York,” I said. “Manhattan. Central Park, to be exact.” There was a pause. I could practically hear her brain ticking, figuring out what to say. “Where are you?” I said.

  “I’m halfway to you, El. I’m coming home.”

  “What about your big operation?” I said, failing to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “Oh, honey. You’re more important. You’re more important than anything.”

  At these words, something in me eased. I was so tired.

  “Are you OK?” said Suzette. “Eloise, are you OK?”

  “I’m not OK,” I said. My voice was really quiet. “I’m really not OK at all,” I said.

  “I’ll be there in a few hours,” said Suzette.

  “Who’s my real mom?” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” said Suzette.

  “How come I never feel OK?” I said.

  “Are you…have you been drinking, Eloise? Have you been taking pills?”

  “Please don’t,” I said. “Just please don’t.”

  “OK,” said Suzette. “How can I help? Sweetie, just tell me what to do.”

  “I don’t know. I’m just so tired of feeling this way.”

  “It’s going to be OK,” said Suzette. “I’m here.”

  “But you’re not here,” I said.

  “I’ll be there soon, baby,” said Suzette. “I’ll be there so soon.”

  “Who’s my real mother?” I said. “Just tell me!”

  There was complete silence on the line. It was a moment that felt like an eternity. Suzette’s breathing seemed shuddery.

  “Who is my mother?” I said.

  “Me,” said Suzette. “I am your mother.”

  “Who is my mother?” I repeated.

  She was quiet, and then she spoke. “Your biological mother’s name is Dorrie Muscarello,” said Suzette. “She changed her name to Dorothy Black. She lives in Hyannis, Massachusetts.”

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “I love you, baby,” said Suzette. “I hope…”

  “You hope what?” I said.

  “I hope you find what you need,” said Suzette. I had never heard her sound scared, but her voice was small and terrified. I hung up on her.

  “What is it?” said the hot drug dealer.

  When I didn’t answer, he looked at me in a way that I realized he thought was sexy. My stomach twisted. He kissed my neck. “My name is Cory, by the way,” he said. “What’s yours?” His lips were cold.

  I shoved him away. “Do you have a car?” I said.

  “You got money, I got a car,” said Cory.

  I sat up, reached into my jacket for my wallet, and handed him a hundred dollars.

  “Where are we going?” said Cory.

  “We’re going to Hyannis, Massachusetts,” I said. I punched my real mother’s name—Dorrie Black—and “Hyannis, Massachusetts” into an Internet search, but her number was unlisted. “Damn,” I muttered.

  “What?” said Cory.

  “I’m trying to find an address, but it’s unlisted,” I said.

  He snorted, the sound a rebuke. “Give it here,” he said. “Who’re you looking for?”

  “Dorrie Black,” I said, repeating the name Suzette had given me.

  Within a minute or two, using God knows what illegal resources, Cory read off a street address.

  “Can you take me there?” I asked. My head was pounding from the contents of Cory’s flask, but my heart felt light. I was going to meet my real mother!

  “Why not?” said Cory. “Let’s do it. Let’s go to Hyannis. Hyyyyyyyannis, Massachusetts.” We both thought this was funny. It struck me that, as men
acing as he tried to look, Cory was also a lonely teenager.

  His car was in an underground garage. It took us a while to walk there. En route, I finished what was left in his flask. Cory’s hand hurt my hand. I tripped and he yanked me up. He seemed exasperated, but I didn’t care. When we got in the car, Cory turned on the heat. It felt nice. “You buckled?” he said, and I nodded.

  Cory pulled out of the garage and onto the street, exiting the city within a half hour. As he drove on some dark highway, I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes, it was the beginning of morning.

  “Well, OK,” he said. “We’re here.”

  “We’re where?”

  “Hyannis, Massachusetts,” said Cory. “Listen, Eloise? I don’t think you should drink any more.”

  “Is this happening?” I said. “It feels like all this is made up, like a stage set. You know what I mean?”

  “Jesus,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “There’s the house, anyway. The address? Where you wanted to go? In Hyannis, Massachusetts? We’re here.”

  I sat up. We were parked in front of a trailer, like the ones I’d seen when my dad had once taken a wrong turn and we’d gotten lost in a bad part of Houston. A light was on in what looked like the kitchen. A woman in a fleece bathrobe was reading a book and drinking a mug of coffee. She was kind of chubby and had grayish, curly hair. I stared at the woman, who seemed completely engrossed in the story. She looked like me. Did she look like me?

  As I watched, a teenager with tattoos entered the kitchen. He was rubbing his eyes, wearing no shirt and a pair of low-slung jeans. I could see the top of his boxer shorts. He hugged the older woman from behind, and the woman lifted her face. I held my breath. Another person—a blond woman with her hair in two braids—appeared with a frying pan full of what looked like scrambled eggs.

  The boy with the tattoos walked to the window. He stood, stretching, and looked out. Could he see me? It didn’t seem like it.

  “Can I ask what the hell we’re doing here?” said Cory. He sounded kind of nervous.

  “No,” I whispered. I watched the trio eat, the whole scene made warm by the overhead light. Something inside me felt warm, too.

  14

  Dorrie

  In order to go any further in the story, I guess I have to go back. You deserve the truth, even though it casts me in a bad light. Please remember, as you read this (if you ever read this), that I was so young—only five years older than you are now. Please know that I did the best I could. Please forgive me, Eloise.

  We had spent the months of my pregnancy talking about what we would do after your birth—where we could live and how. It was going to be very hard to stay in the town where we’d been hiding. There were no job prospects for me, and Jayne needed to go to school. She said she wanted a new beginning somewhere where it snowed. It’s amazing to me that Jayne was twelve and yet I treated her as an equal. In fact, she seemed more mature than I. Taking care of her mother had made her both wise and immune to ordinary sadness. The challenges of begging for money and scrounging for food were no match for her. At night, she would put her ear to my belly, hoping for a kick. So we had a plan, of sorts: we would drive east (I wanted the sea) and north (snow for Jayne—she had never even seen it, hard to imagine now!) until we found a place where we could stay.

  I’ve said it, but it bears repeating: I wanted you, and still want you, so very much, Eloise. Missing you has been my worst pain. I actually tried to find a way to describe the pain right here…but there are no words. And what’s important isn’t my hardships—it’s that I love you. And hope you’ll let me into your heart, just a bit, just a tiny bit, someday.

  I’m sorry to say that I didn’t care about Hyland and Suzette. I was sure they would keep tailing me for the rest of my life, and I knew we could elude them. As long as I never went to Texas, they couldn’t take you from me.

  But then you were born. I held you in my arms. And when the pains began again, both Jayne and I thought it was what the book called “afterbirth.” The pain rose up, worse (it seemed) than before. And when it was over, Jayne held another baby in her arms.

  This was your twin brother. His name is Zane.

  15

  Eloise

  Cory and I sat by the beach. We had bagels with cream cheese and a small bottle of orange juice to share. I found I was ravenous. I ate my bagel quickly.

  “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here in Hyannis, Eloise?” said Cory. “You just like the beach?” he said.

  It was a beautiful stretch of sand, more vast and clean than any I’d seen in Texas. But I wasn’t thinking about the ocean. I was still feeling weird about seeing my real mother, if that lady in the fleece robe was my mother. I’d been too freaked to get out of the car, to go to her. She hadn’t wanted me, after all. When would I accept that?

  Cory shook his head. “Come here, Eloise,” he said. I don’t know why, but I obeyed. I let him put his arms around me. He kissed me, but it was too hard. I pushed him away. “Relax, Eloise,” he said, “relax.” He kissed me again.

  “Jesus!” I cried. “Stop it!” I said, “Stop!”

  Cory stopped kissing me. His eyes narrowed. “You’re nuts,” he said. “You’re fucking loony tunes, girl.”

  “Just give me the pills,” I said. “OK? Give me the Special K.”

  Cory exhaled, shaking his head. “No way,” he said.

  “Why not?” I yelled. “Give me the pills!” The need in my voice scared me.

  “Listen,” said Cory. He swallowed and looked down. When he met my eyes again, he looked younger, and scared. “I stole the pills from my dad, OK? He’s a vet. A veterinarian, not a Vietnam vet. Not a Gulf War veteran. He gives these pills to animals, OK? I think we should just go back to the city.”

  “I can’t go back,” I said. “I can’t ever go back.” I realized as I spoke that this was true. If I contacted my mother or father, I’d be sent somewhere a lot worse than Pringley. I started crying.

  He shook his head slowly. “You’ve got issues,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, lying back down and staring at the cloudy sky. “That really is true,” I said. A lot of weird and painful emotions were bubbling in my blood, and it was like a bunch of glass shards were poking me from inside. Was my mother the lady in the fleece robe? And who were the others, the boy and the lady with the braids? Instead of feeling better, now that I was here, I felt worse. I simply wanted to feel less, to feel nothing. “I guess I just want the pills,” I said.

  “Eat your bagel,” said Cory. “Let’s just stay here awhile, watch the waves. You want to go back to that trailer park?”

  “That was my mother,” I said.

  “Who? The lady in the trailer?”

  I nodded glumly.

  “Wow,” said Cory. “This is a fucking trip, I’ll tell you that.”

  “I need to be alone,” I said.

  Cory rose. “You know what? Fine. I’m trying to be here for you, but to tell you the truth this is way too fucked up.”

  “Can you leave me the pills?” I asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “You’re going to kill yourself,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”

  I reached into my jacket, got my wallet, and handed it to him. He opened it.

  “There’s three hundred dollars here,” he said.

  “Take it,” I said. “Just give me the pills.”

  He made a dismissive, angry sound. He stood up and went to his car. I was crying, staring at the waves. I’d lost whatever energy had gotten me here. When I’d seen those three people in their kitchen I’d felt like…I’d felt like I wanted to walk in. I wanted to have some scrambled eggs with them. Ha! I was a disaster.

  Cory tossed my empty wallet and a paper bag to me, started his car, and drove away.

  I picked up the bag, shook it. The rattling of the pills made my stomach ease.

  16

  Dorrie

  For almos
t two years, we stayed in Louisiana and cared for you both. I took my mother’s maiden name. Nobody slept much. It was very, very difficult but it was possible. It’s a blur to me now: the feedings, the swaddling, the crying, and…moments of absolute beauty, staring at your sleeping face. In our dilapidated but hidden house, you learned to crawl and then to walk. You began to babble, saying nonsense words. Your brother said, “Mama,” pointing to me, but you never said the word. You hugged me, though, ran to me with your uneven gait and collapsed against me, encircling me in your pudgy arms.

  And then, one sunny and mild day, you stopped wanting to eat. You got a fever; it climbed to 100 degrees, then 102. Tylenol and ibuprofen did nothing to bring your temperature down. You remained terrifyingly still, opening your eyes once in a while and looking at me blankly.

  Your brother would not leave your side. He lay next to you on the mattress you shared, touching your face. If I tried to pick him up, he howled until I let him go, then crawled back to you again.

  We went to the library, and I stayed with you and your brother while Jayne ran inside and typed your symptoms into the library computer: the fever, the rash, the way you shuddered once in a while, as if you were having a seizure. Your brother cried, but you were silent. Jayne returned from the library and told me we had to go to the hospital. If you weren’t brought to a hospital, you could die. But if we took you in, the Kendalls would find us. I knew they would take both babies away.

  I fed your brother. I tried to feed you, but you would not eat.

  Jayne remained calm. She was quiet, and then presented her solution. “We can bring Zelda to the Kendalls,” she said. “We can bring Zelda to the Kendalls, and they’ll make sure she gets well. They’ll never know about Zane. We’ll be free.”