She was glad she’d dressed up in a new lime green skirt and white cotton blouse; it was trendier than what she usually wore, but the aunts, who’d been just about to leave for the airport, had all approved. Her mom managed to come far enough out of her funk to say she looked “really great” in her new clothes, which made her feel guilty and deceptive. Aunt Beth was probably right—she should tell her mom she liked a guy, if only to start warming her to the idea that she was seeing someone.
“Unbutton your shirt,” Kyle said. “Be my model.”
She started to undo the buttons. “Wait. These are just for you, right?”
“Just for me,” he said, aiming the camera at her.
From there, it was easy to shed the shirt and show off the lacy white bra, also a recent purchase—with the skirt and top and a few other lacy things—charged to her mom’s credit card. She’d cleared the shopping ahead of time, and even had a plan for excusing the airline and hotel charges when they showed up: she’d speculate that whatever looked wrong to her mom was the result of identity theft. Simple.
“Now the skirt.”
Kyle took out a small vial of pills while she undid the skirt’s hook and wiggled it down over her hips. Feeling bold, she struck a pose for him. “You like?”
He stood up and grabbed her hand, pulled her to the bed. “Feel how much I like,” he said, moving her hand to his crotch. He liked it a lot.
Holding up a tiny yellow pill, he said, “I got these great ’ludes, which you can try if you want, but don’t, like, think I’m pushing ’em on you, right? They extend the trip is all.” He popped the pill into his mouth, swallowed without water. “But it’s cool; you might not be ready for this stuff.”
She tried to assess the offer sensibly. He’d just taken one, so how bad could they be? She was ready—to prove it, she grabbed the vial and shook out a pill herself, popped it into her mouth just like he’d done. Such a tiny pill couldn’t do any harm.
But then the drug took hold, and she would only remember, later, hard-edged flashes of what happened in the time afterward: Posing in her underwear. Posing without. Sex toys from Kyle’s bag. A knock on the door while she lay with hands and feet bound loosely in playful bonds—“A friend,” Kyle said, going to the door. Then Kyle inside her in every way possible. Was the friend still there? She couldn’t remember seeing anyone, and no one else was there when the drug began wearing off.
Time slowed to a catchable speed, and Savannah looked at the bedside clock.
“Oh my god,” she said. “I am so busted!” It was almost one AM.
She dressed fast, then found her cell phone and saw missed calls from both of her parents’ phones and Rachel’s, too. Panic rose in her like a flash flood. What could she tell her parents? “You need to take me home.”
Kyle, still naked, went to her. “Oh, babe, hey, I’m sorry. I—we—overdid it. Whew! What a ride, though!” He ran his hands over her breasts and then down, reaching under her skirt. In her ear he said, “You are the hottest little thing I have ever seen.”
The heat of his mouth tickled her ear, and his words pleased her—but she felt ashamed too. How could she have done all those things willingly? Was she that kind of girl? “Hey…those pictures—”
“Are my treasure.” He pushed her hair back and kissed her neck.
Unsure of what was real and what she might have conjured up, she wanted to ask if someone really had been there watching them. Had Kyle only talked about how sexy it would be if somebody watched them? But she didn’t ask. Best to let it go for now, think about it later when she felt more balanced, more sober.
Kyle drew her hand down to his erection. Again? Every part of her was sore, used.
“I really need to go home,” she whispered, tears rimming her eyes.
“Five minutes,” he said, pushing her onto her knees. She didn’t know how to tell him no.
Forty-six
MEG WAS AWASH WITH RELIEF WHEN SHE HEARD SAVANNAH COME HOME. She stood up from the living-room sofa, pushing off with her good arm.
“Where in God’s name have you been?” Her relief drained away instantly and she was filled just as quickly with anger, now that she knew her child was safe.
Savannah looked past her, to where a trio of potted palms framed a corner of the room, and said, “With friends.”
Brian, who’d been waiting up too, said, “Not with Rachel.”
“I didn’t say ‘with Rachel.’” Savannah’s face was thick with stress, and she looked like she’d been crying.
“Are you hurt?” Meg asked, going to her. Savannah wouldn’t meet her eyes, but everything in her posture spoke of defeat. “Do you want to talk to me alone?”
“I’m fine—okay? I’m fine. I’m just really tired.”
“You’re just really grounded,” Brian said, going to the kitchen and turning off the lights. “Don’t even think about making plans for the rest of the weekend.”
“Fine!” Savannah yelled, still standing at the edge of the Chinese wool rug as though the rug defined a force field she couldn’t enter—or didn’t want to enter, Meg thought. As though inside the field would be questions, challenges, perhaps consequences even worse than what Brian had just doled out.
“Honey?” Meg asked, crossing the rug and taking Savannah’s hand; her anger was gone now too, replaced by concern. She’d seen women who’d been abused, who’d been sexually assaulted—they looked a lot like her daughter did right now. Shifty eyes, slumped shoulders, an air of trauma that you could smell on them like skunk.
“I’m going to bed,” Savannah said, pulling away. “I’m fine,” she said again, and Meg wondered who she was trying to persuade most. Something had happened, for sure; how many times had Savannah said fine in a minute’s time? Her vocabulary was much broader than that. Although at one forty-five AM, who was their most coherent? Maybe she was just exhausted—maybe she’d argued with a friend, or a guy. Maybe she’d done something responsible, like refusing to ride with a friend who was drunk, and decided to walk home. Meg tried to believe that her own suspicions were the biggest problem, that Savannah was, as she said, fine.
Watching Savannah escape down the hall, Meg waited until she heard the slam of the bedroom door before telling Brian what she thought might be going on.
“I’ve seen the markers on other women—she could’ve been assaulted or bullied or…or…or something like that.” Saying it aloud scared her, made her ache for her daughter. Where had Savannah been, really?
Brian came and sat on the arm of the sofa. “Or maybe she’s trying to look pitiful so she won’t get in as much trouble.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m saying it’s possible. I mean, you heard her—she was surly. Probably figured we’d be busy with your sisters and never even notice she didn’t get home on time.”
“She knew they were leaving this evening,” Meg said, shaking her head. “This is so unlike her.” She looked down the hallway. The three-part gold-leaf crown molding along the ceiling caught her attention; it had cost three times what she’d paid for a semester’s college tuition. So much money, and for what?
Brian said, “Let’s deal with her in the morning. I need a break from all the stress—and you must too,” he added. Was he alluding to the ALS, in addition to her father’s kidney surgery, her sisters’ visit, their daughter’s first curfew violation? If so, it was his first foray into that neighborhood since their talk Wednesday morning. They needed to discuss what it meant to all their lives, get into the heavy details—not now, of course, but soon.
“You go ahead,” she said. “I think I’m going to sit up for a little while longer, until I feel calmed down. I’m not sleepy.”
“I’ll stay up if you want, but I’m supposed to tee off at eight.”
“No, you go ahead. Set your alarm.”
He stood, started for the bedroom, then paused as if he was going to say something—but apparently thought better of it and went on.
MEG T
OOK A GLASS, A BOTTLE OF GIN, A PEN, AND HER JOURNAL OUT TO THE screened porch. Savannah needed time to calm down—and she did, too. She sat in her favorite chair, breathing the humid night air deep into her lungs, trying not to think of them weakening the way her arms and leg were doing.
She wrote:
Savannah, I’m torn right now, wanting to go to your room and find out what happened to you tonight, yet remembering myself at your age and the ways I protected my own privacy. Would you welcome my concern or shun it? Although I’m worried that you’ve been harmed in some way, I realize I’m probably overreacting. It’s so hard to let you be the pre-adult you’ve become….
With your aunts here, I haven’t had any time to write. The need to make this something substantial for you weighs on me; the sand in my hourglass seems to run faster every day, and yet I’ve said so little of what matters. I need my whole lifetime to guide you—that’s how it feels. When I was sixteen, though, I was sure I didn’t need my mother at all, and the idea that she might want to guide me even in my adult years would’ve seemed ridiculous. I would’ve wondered why she wouldn’t let go, would’ve told her to pick the most salient bits of wisdom and leave the rest for me to discover on my own. I wouldn’t have thought of how she was still learning lessons herself.
Meg used her left hand to pour the gin, saving her right for the work of the journal. The little inconveniences of the encroaching disease were adding up, but she was keeping her frustration in check, knowing that what would come, if she held out very long, was much worse—and if she couldn’t handle the little things, how could she hope to manage the bigger ones?
She sipped the drink, felt its heat move from throat to belly like a long wick set afire. The warmth settled in her stomach and she savored the feeling, thinking of when it too would move to the list of lost pleasures. “Stop it,” she told herself. She needed to stay focused on her daughter, and her task.
She continued:
It took Grandma a long time to see some of the errors of her earlier judgments—and I never knew, not until I read her diaries. She’d tried to tell me one of her biggest mistakes, as she thought of it, but I wasn’t ready to hear her. You might not be ready to hear some of my conclusions either; I know that. But try, Savannah. And get help when you’re confused or upset, when you can’t understand why in the world I did what I plan to do. My efforts to explain might need to be…supplemented. Aunt Kara remembers a lot of what I do about my childhood, about how it was for us, growing up. Manisha is a good resource for questions about my career and my disease—and you know she loves you like her own child. Dad should also be able to help—although he’ll be hurting, too.
For a little while anyway, she thought. And then he’d do his damndest to move onward and upward, as he liked to say, shrugging off the weighty albatross of her disease and suicide.
“Suicide,” she said aloud. Why did it have to have such a negative, desperate connotation? Most doctors believed in it, even if not all of them would say so publicly. Brian’s circle, though, was likely to see it as an act of madness. Would he?
Maybe it was madness. She might be one of those patients Bolin had talked about whose ALS defied conventional wisdom. Hope rose in her, but only for a moment; the disease was a wildfire in her now—but God, she hated to accept it! Why couldn’t she be one of the lucky ones?
When her wave of self-pity subsided, she regained her pragmatism and thought how if she couldn’t be lucky, she could at least remain in charge. A small comfort, but she’d take it.
Some people will question how I handled my illness and my death, and you might too. Your friends might not understand. People might say I was selfish, or that I’ll have committed the ultimate sin. Let me tell you up front: I don’t believe in the Christian hell—hell is here on Earth, in the mistakes we make, in the ways people suffer, in the bloodshed and famine and wars—in the insistence of our culture that a dying person can’t lawfully be aided in a merciful death. When you understand how ALS acts as an inescapable prison, how it can degrade a person, strip them of their humanity, their pride, their ability to be and do the things that define “living,” maybe you’ll understand why I chose not to put me, or you, through that.
Now I’ll get off my soapbox.
She stretched her hand, rubbed the weakened muscles, and frowned at how sloppy her handwriting had become. Her ability to hold and use a pen wouldn’t last a lot longer; well, she’d just switch to writing left-handed if she had to. Whatever it took to make sure she’d covered as much as she could. This would be all Savannah had of her.
Thinking of what to say next, she thought about Carson and their history. Should she encourage Savannah to get answers from him, too? She wished she knew how far to go with that subject. Savannah knew little about her relationship with him. But how important was it for Savannah to see that picture clearly anyway? Only if Carson was her father was it in any way essential. Right now Meg wasn’t sure there was any value in opening a box as fraught with harm as Pandora’s. Yet…in addition to the terrible things Pandora unleashed when she opened her box, she’d also found hope, waiting at the bottom. It wasn’t too much to ask that hope also be at the bottom of this box, if not for her, then for Savannah.
After seeing Carson last Friday, Meg was convinced that even if he wasn’t Savannah’s father, he could be a good influence on her. If he wanted anything to do with a teenage girl he wasn’t otherwise obliged to know. She took a long drink of the gin, wishing it could help her untangle the matter, burn through the knots in her mind, in her heart. Didn’t Carson have a right to know he had a child—if he did? Didn’t Savannah have a right to know he was her father, if he was? Wasn’t it only right that Brian know Savannah wasn’t his child, if, in fact, that was the case? The risk of trauma to all three of them was high if Savannah was Carson’s—and yet, she couldn’t rightfully take her mystery with her to the grave.
But how to discover the truth? She’d need to get a comparative DNA test on Savannah and Brian, which she could do without Savannah knowing. A routine blood draw would provide the sample. Brian would have to be told—would have to consent—unless…unless she could get some kind of sample from him without his knowledge. Blood was ideal, but other things would do. Semen, for example. Which she could get without having to tell him a thing….
Was she capable of that kind of ruse? Was it any worse than the reason for the ruse in the first place? Probably she should feel ashamed of this willingness to deceive him—yet had her first deception done him any harm? He lived exactly the life he wanted. If she got the DNA comparison, secretly, and found he was in fact Savannah’s father, he would never even know there’d been a question. If the test showed otherwise? He would be livid, there was no way around that; the way she’d obtained the sample would be the least of it. So really, there was no reason to let him into the loop until and unless she had to.
Which didn’t mean that getting the sample for this purpose would be a pleasant thing to do. Her heart wouldn’t be in it, now more than ever.
Leaving her things on the porch, she limped through the house to see if Savannah had gone to sleep. When she reached the bedroom door, she listened carefully, even though no light showed around it. She heard the soft strains of guitar music—Savannah playing—and reached up to knock. But she hesitated: should she just give her daughter the time and space to handle whatever had happened herself? With so little time remaining for them, she didn’t want to create a hostile rift. Before she could decide, she heard a metallic melody—Savannah’s phone. She pressed her ear to the crack where the door met the doorframe.
“Hey…no, I’m sorry for overreacting…. I know you didn’t mean…yeah, I think it was a little too much…just tired…yeah?…Of course I love you too….”
Meg’s eyes widened. Who? Who did Savannah love?
“No, you keep it. I want to help…grounded…birthday party next Saturday…”
Then she couldn’t make out anything; Savannah must’ve hung up or g
one into her bathroom or closet. Meg stood there, stunned. Savannah had a boyfriend. A serious one. And she hadn’t even guessed…. How far removed she was from her own daughter’s emotional life! This truth sickened her.
Savannah had a boyfriend, and he was part of whatever went on earlier—and Savannah still loved him. They must’ve had a fight. What was “a little too much”? Had Savannah been drinking? That would explain the red eyes, the aura of guilt. Thank God it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared; thank God Savannah got home safely.
Meg left the doorway, deciding to wait for a better time to confront Savannah about all this. Tomorrow, perhaps, or within the next few days—there was no point doing it when they were both tired and moody. They’d have to talk about birth control too, as she’d meant to do last week.
Incredible. Savannah was in love.
Meg went back to the porch and took up the journal again.
There’s a story I want to tell you about when I was a teenage girl and fell in love. I thought I’d been in love before—in seventh grade it was a Cuban boy named Rico; then there was this really funny guy, Neil, when I was in eighth…I went out with a few others too, but none of them were very good fits. Then, just before I turned sixteen, I finally recognized what had been right before my eyes all along. My real love was my truest and best friend—Carson McKay.
At the time, I swore I breathed for Carson’s benefit, and I couldn’t see a future that wasn’t filled with his laughter, his affection, with endless, perfect days of togetherness. He wasn’t thinking of a music career then, and I figured there was no use in considering any kind of medical career—but that was fine. We thought we’d partner with our parents in running the farms. Back then, I had no doubt at all that my vision of our future would come to pass.
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