by Brit Bennett
“So are you going?” Shadi asked. “To the wedding?”
“I guess I have to,” she said.
“I can always go with you,” he said.
She heard the smile in his voice even though his back was to her. He hinted about this often, visiting home with her and meeting her father. Their friends teased them about marriage but she always avoided the topic of a deeper commitment. Besides, his mother liked her but she wanted Shadi to marry a Muslim girl.
“Okay,” Nadia said when he’d announced it. “What do you expect me to do about that?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just think it’s funny.”
“My dad wants me to marry a Christian boy,” she said. “It matters to some people.”
She felt annoyed by the way Shadi hinted about the future. He’d just received a job offer from Google but, he’d mentioned once, almost slyly, that if she wanted to move back to California after graduation, he could transfer to the Mountain View office. She’d laughed at his underestimation of the expansiveness of California. Didn’t he know that Mountain View was an eight-hour drive from San Diego? Still, it scared her, his willingness to pick up his life and follow her. She’d fallen for him when he wanted to become an international reporter, flying on choppers into war-torn countries. His independence liberated her. But now he was going to work in an office and she felt crushed already by his hopes for her. As graduation approached, she found herself picking fights with him more, like when she told him she didn’t plan to walk at commencement. Shadi told her she was being selfish.
“Graduation’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about everyone who cares about you. Don’t you think your dad wants to see you walk?”
“Don’t you think it’s none of your fucking business?” she said.
She didn’t want to walk if her mother couldn’t be there to watch her. Her mother had never gone to college but said she would someday, always someday. When the Palomar College catalogue came in the mail, she would lean against the countertop, scanning the bold titles of courses she would never take. Once, Nadia’s father had thrown out the catalogue with the rest of the junk mail and her mother had almost rooted through the trash can for it before her father said he’d already taken it to the dumpster.
“I thought it was trash,” he’d said.
“No, Robert, no,” her mother said. “No, it’s not trash.”
She’d seemed desperate, like she’d lost more than a catalogue that arrived in their mailbox every six months. By then, her mother was too busy with work and family to return to school, but she’d always told Nadia that she expected her to go to college. She reminded her of this when she checked over her math homework or chided her for her sloppy handwriting or quizzed her on reading assignments. Nadia knew she was the reason her mother had never gone to college and she’d wondered if, after she left home, her mother might finally go. Now graduation seemed silly. Why should she dress in a cap and gown and sweat in the sun, when her mother was not there to pose in pictures with her and cheer when her name was called? In her mind, she only saw pictures they would never take, arms around each other, her mother gaining little wrinkles around her eyes from smiling so much.
Nadia apologized to Shadi that night. She slipped inside his bed naked and he groaned, rolling toward her, stiff before she even touched him. She tasted the salt off his skin, the ticklish spot on his neck, as he fumbled in the nightstand drawer. She was on the pill but she always made him wear a condom too.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asked after.
“I hate when you do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Ask what I’m thinking. As soon as you ask, my mind just goes blank.”
“It’s not a test,” he said. “I just want to know you.”
Later in the night, she shrugged his arm off her. She felt sweaty with him hugging her all night. Sometimes she wondered if she only loved him when it was cold, in the middle of winter when everything was dead.
—
AUBREY EVANS’S entire life boiled down to the places she’d slept.
Her girlhood bed with its pink princess headboard, pullout couches in relatives’ living rooms when her father left, the backseat of her mother’s car when hospitality ran out, the trundle of Mo’s daybed when they’d moved into a new apartment, her mother’s bed because she hated to sleep alone, her own bed after her mother’s boyfriend moved in, her own bed where her mother’s boyfriend touched her, the bed in her sister’s guest room where she’d escaped, and now Luke’s bed, where they had never made love. His non-making-love bed was her favorite. The department store normalcy of his blue plaid bedspread, always a little mussed as if it’d just been sat on. There wasn’t much else in his studio apartment: a wicker basket from his mother, now filled with free weights, a crumpled pizza box jutting out of the trash can, Nikes lined up near the door, wooden cane propped against the wall. The first time she’d visited him in his apartment, she’d frozen in his doorway, unsure of what to do. They had never been this alone before—in a place that belonged to no one else, where no one else had a key and might interrupt. Luke had gestured toward his bed.
“Sorry,” he’d said. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”
So they’d sat on his bed and watched a movie. Other things they did in his bed: ate pizza on paper plates, played cards, played Madden with the injury setting turned off, watched the Super Bowl, listened to music from her tinny laptop speakers, held hands, kissed, argued, and prayed. They had slept together, as in beside each other. She’d fallen asleep on pillows smelling faintly of his cologne and he’d curled against her, kissing the back of her neck as she drifted off. But she hadn’t felt afraid. All beds told stories, and Luke’s told a different one. She pressed her ear against his pillow and heard no rage. Just the rustling of his covers as he scooted close to her and her own thudding heart.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “All that stuff about the party.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
“Tell her to stop if it’s too much. My mama’s like a runaway train once she gets going.”
“She’s just trying to help.”
“Still,” he said. “Once she gets going.”
They’d just returned from his parents’ house, where his mother had hooked an arm around Aubrey’s waist and ushered her around the backyard, explaining the layout for the bridal shower.
“Now, the waiters will be right there,” Mrs. Sheppard had said, pointing toward the center of the yard. “Not too close, though, we don’t want them hoverin’ over folks while they eat. Lou’s Catering wasn’t my first choice but you know John wanted to support Deacon Lou’s business. Of course, he had nothing to say the whole time I was planning things but he’s got all the opinions right before I book the catering. I hope Lou’s boys paid attention. I told them cranberry tablecloths but I just know they’ll bring red.”
If it was exhausting to worry about tiny details, it was even more exhausting to pretend to. Aubrey felt guilty for not caring about whether the tablecloths were cranberry or red. Mrs. Sheppard was working so hard to plan a beautiful shower for her, she should at least share in her concerns. But she had other worries. Months before her wedding, she had stopped sleeping. Like any big life change, it happened both gradually and all at once. At first, she shaved off minutes, falling asleep later, waking up before her alarm. Then an hour here and there as night fell and she lay under her covers, her laptop toasting her stomach, another episode of television reflecting off her glasses. Then big chunks of time, scoops of it, patches in the middle of the night when she woke to get water and tossed in bed and sat by the window and read her Bible until light cracked through the blinds. By April, she was only sleeping a few hours a night and those few hours made her feel more tired than if she hadn’t slept at all. She was unsleeping, and it wasn’t the wedding jitters like everyone tried to tell her. Sh
e had decided to invite her mother and she hadn’t heard back from her yet. She was both worried that she would and would not come.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Monique had said. The two of them were sitting around the kitchen table, which had been covered for the past few months in wedding books Mrs. Sheppard sent over. The war room, Kasey called it.
“Mo, relax,” Aubrey said. “She probably wouldn’t come anyway. Mrs. Sheppard said I might regret it if I don’t at least invite her—”
“So you want her to come.”
“I don’t know,” she said, although she had already imagined the reunion: her mother stepping off the train, carrying a small green suitcase, as the flaps of the past began to lift. Her hair would be shorter now, whipping around her head in curls tinted with silver. She would wear a coral cardigan buttoned all the way to her neck because the coastal breeze would chill her and she’d glance around the station, shielding her eyes from the sun, until she spotted Aubrey. Then she’d smile, and at breakfast, Aubrey would notice all the little things her mother did, the way she sliced her muffin diagonally, how she folded her arms when she was listening, the way she always chatted with the waiter when he checked on them. She would feel like a little girl again, enraptured by her mother’s face.
“Who cares what Mrs. Sheppard thinks?” Mo said. “She’s not your mother.”
“Neither are you,” Aubrey said. She’d felt gratified at first, but later, she felt sick, picturing the way her sister’s dark eyes had widened and filled. Her eyes weren’t one of the features they shared, inherited from their mother. Aubrey’s eyes were her father’s, a man neither of them knew. When she was young, Aubrey had cried when she first learned that they were only half sisters. It’s okay, her sister had told her, because I love you twice as much.
“Whose wedding is it?” Nadia had said over the phone that night.
“Mine.”
“And who gets to be the wedding dictator?”
“Me.”
“Thank you. If Mo doesn’t want to talk to her, she doesn’t have to. But it’s your wedding and you should invite whoever the hell you want. Life is short and if you want to see your mom again, you should.”
Aubrey dug her fingernails into her palm. She used to do this often when she first moved in with her sister. A bad thought appeared, and she made a fist, squeezing as hard as she could. Her sister would always grab her hands and rub them between hers, like they were just cold. On the edge of her bed, she opened her palm, watching the tiny, clear crescents turn red.
“You there?” Nadia said. Her voice sounded farther away.
“I’m sorry,” Aubrey said. She hadn’t even realized how insensitive it was to ask Nadia whether she should invite her mother.
“Why’re you apologizing? You didn’t kill her.”
“Still.”
“Don’t, okay?”
“Don’t what?”
“Treat me like some poor sad girl.”
“I’m not.” Aubrey paused. “I wish I could’ve known your mom.”
“Me too,” Nadia said.
Aubrey wondered if they were the only ones who felt they didn’t know their mothers. Maybe mothers were inherently vast and unknowable.
“How’s Michigan?” she asked.
“Cold as fuck. It’s still snowing. Can you believe that?”
“That’s what you get for wanting seasons.”
“Fuck that. Seasons are overrated.”
She liked listening to Nadia’s adventures in Michigan, how that first winter, her friends from Chicago had taken her to a Von Maur to find a coat and boots, how they’d laughed at her for being so fascinated with the Midwestern department store where a live pianist played as she slipped her feet into fuzzy boots. She had only fallen on ice once, her sophomore year on the way to a party, and she was proud that she’d caught herself with the hand that wasn’t holding the beer. Nadia had lived in other places too. Her summer internship in Madison at the state capitol, her semester abroad at Oxford, where she took weekend trips to Edinburgh and Berlin, how in Paris, she’d gotten caught by the Metro doors slamming shut on her backpack and a crowd of annoyed Parisians had to yank her free. Aubrey loved that story, the idea that the unflinchingly cool Nadia Turner would be so awkward in one of the most sophisticated cities on the planet. Maybe you didn’t know who you would be in the world. Maybe you were a different person everywhere you lived.
“Tell me your England story again,” she said, “about the boat.”
A punt, Nadia had explained when she’d e-mailed her. She and some friends had gone punting on the River Cherwell. She had been the only one brave enough to steer the punt because the other girls were intimidated by stories of the pole getting stuck in the mud along the riverbank and the boat overturning. So Nadia had steered while everyone drank Pimm’s and champagne, herself drinking more than she probably should have because it was so hot. She was tipsy and tired from pushing the pole, but she’d steered the punt the entire time, passing under the leafy trees. She did not flip the boat once. It was, Nadia had written, one of the best days of her life.
Over the phone, Nadia let out a low laugh. Aubrey imagined her in her Michigan apartment, sitting by a window, watching the snow fall.
—
A WEEK BEFORE her best friend’s wedding, Nadia came home.
She leaned toward the window as the plane descended through the springtime fog. Spiky tops of palm trees emerged, then the red Spanish rooftops that covered every home. The houses had been the first thing she noticed when she landed in Michigan—white with slate roofs, like the homes she’d only seen in movies, not tan stucco topped with wavy red. In the San Diego Airport bathroom, she fixed her hair while two women spoke Spanish beside her, and even though she could only understand snatches of words, she felt grateful for the familiar foreign sound.
When she stepped outside the terminal, her father waved from the curb. He was hard to miss—the only man nearby in a truck. She didn’t wave back but she started toward him, dragging her suitcase and balancing her coffee. She was wearing huge sunglasses, even though the sky was cloudy, and she felt cheated by the overcast sky, as if the city had known the sunshine was one thing she was looking forward to and had denied her of it anyway. As she neared, her father climbed out of his truck to help her with her bag. They smiled at each other, tentatively, as if both were afraid the other might not smile back.
“Well, look who it is,” he said.
“Hi Dad.”
He reached out to hug her and she hugged him back, an awkward, one-armed hug so she didn’t spill her coffee. He looked the same but a little older, his skin more wrinkled, his hair sprinkled with more gray. She wondered who cut his hair now.
“It’s funny,” he said, pulling onto the 5. “You drink coffee now.”
He smiled a little, nodding at her cup. She’d never drunk coffee before college. She’d tried a sip of her mother’s once but nearly spit it out. She’d expected it to be sweet, like hot chocolate, but it tasted bitter and gross. Now she couldn’t even drink hot chocolate anymore—she’d bought a box of it last winter to lift her spirits but it was so sweet, she threw it out. Airport Starbucks was barely coffee, and she already missed the French press at Shadi’s apartment, even though the first time he showed her how to use it, she’d rolled her eyes and said she wanted a cup of coffee, not a science experiment. But she didn’t tell her father this. She didn’t need him to know how many mornings she woke up at Shadi’s.
“Your friend,” her father said, “he’s flying in later?”
“On Friday,” she said. “I hope that’s okay.”
At the Detroit Metro Airport, Shadi had kissed her good-bye. “I know you hate going home,” he’d said, rubbing the back of her neck where her hair met her skin. “You’re a good friend.” She’d kissed him again because she wasn’t a good friend, not even close. A
good friend would not have to muster joy for her best friend’s wedding, a good friend felt it naturally. She felt anxious about this whole trip and she couldn’t decide if Shadi flying in to stay with her and her father made her feel better or worse.
“And your term?” her father said. “It went well?”
“It was fine,” she said.
“And you’ll get your diploma and everything?”
“They’re sending it here.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
“You’re not mad about that, right?”
He shrugged. “I would’ve liked to see you graduate,” he said. “But you gotta do what you think is best.”
She leaned against the warm windowpane as they passed the Del Mar lagoon. Shadi had called her selfish, but her father wouldn’t even admit that he was upset, and somehow, that was even more frustrating.
When they pulled up to the house, she followed her father, who insisted on carrying her suitcase, to the front door. She stepped inside after him and suddenly stopped. The house felt different, smelled different even, as if it were a living organism whose basic chemistry had changed. Could a house change its smell in a few years? Or had she just forgotten what it was like to be home? She glanced around the living room and realized what had actually changed. Her father had taken down the photographs. Not all of the photographs—she inched forward and spotted one of her on the coffee table, her high school graduation picture on the mantel. Just the photographs of her mother. Light rectangles marked the walls where she had been.
“How could he do that?” she asked Shadi later. “She’s my mother.”
She had never cried in front of him and crying into the phone felt as embarrassing as if he’d been watching. She crouched on the carpet by her bed, dabbing her eyes with her tank top.
“Maybe it hurts him to look at her,” Shadi said.
“It’s like she was never here. Like he never loved her.”
“I think he still loves her. That’s why it hurts so much.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.