There are a few things I’d like to tell her myself. Like I’m sorry. And Please don’t hate me. And If you would just let me explain . . . “The thing is, I’m actually not allowed to leave my house right now . . .” I let the words trail off, knowing how awful they sound, but not wanting to explain any further.
“Could I come there?” Jane says the words in a rush. “I mean, if it’s okay with you, of course. I don’t want to impose.”
“Um . . .”
“Yeah, maybe that’s not the best . . .”
“No, no.” I’ll ask Ma to take Angus to the movies or something. She hasn’t been out in weeks and, considering the situation, I think she’ll be reasonable. I give Jane the address and hang up.
MA’S LEERY ABOUT going out with Angus, but when I tell her about the phone call with Jane, her face softens a little. “What do you think she wants?”
“I’m not sure, really.”
“Are you going to apologize?”
“Of course I’m going to apologize.”
“All right,” she says. “But don’t let her stay too long. I get nervous being out there right now. Especially with Gus. People know who we are. And they’re . . . you know, still talking.”
“Oh, they’ll talk about this one forever, I bet.”
“It’s not funny, Bird.”
“I’m not laughing, Ma.”
I pull on clean pants and a light V-neck sweater, brush my hair, and hold it back with a wide headband. There’s no reason why Jane shouldn’t see me in my usual scrub uniform, but for some reason, I don’t want her to. Something’s changed between us; I can feel it.
Whatever it is, I want to be ready.
IT’S A STRANGE sensation to have Jane on the other side of the doorstep when she rings the bell. She looks a little weird without Olivia in her arms, but no, that’s not it exactly either. She’s dressed differently, in khaki pants, a soft blue cowl neck sweater, small gold hoop earrings. She’s put on a little makeup, too—some black eyeliner, a little concealer under her eyes, peach blush. She looks . . . good. Rested.
“Hey,” I say, letting her in. I can barely make eye contact; it is so painful. “I have some tea set up in the kitchen.”
“You look nice,” Jane says, sliding her feet out of her shoes and arranging them neatly inside the door. “I’ve never seen you in anything but your sweats.”
I smile, wondering why I’d been so quick to assume all this time that her “no shoes inside the house” rule had only been meant for me. “Yeah, well I’m not really working right now.”
She drops her eyes and follows me into the kitchen where I’ve set up Ma’s china teapot, white with pink roses, and matching cups and saucers. In the middle of the table is a small plate of Oreos, which were the only cookies I could find in the pantry and which, in traditional Ma fashion, I have spread out like a fan.
“Oh, how sweet!” Jane says, sitting down in one of the chairs. “I hope you didn’t go to too much trouble.”
“No, it’s fine.” I sit down opposite her, and immediately reach for the teapot, grateful for the diversion. Neither of us says anything as I fill her cup and then mine with the steaming liquid. I put the teapot back down and pick up the saucer of cookies. Jane takes one and smiles at me. I drop my eyes and replace the saucer. “God, Jane, I’m just so sorry.” The words come out in a squeaky rush.
Jane leans forward. “I didn’t ask to see you so that you could apologize, Bird. Although I’m glad you did, and I accept.”
I inhale, shuddering faintly.
“Mrs. Ross came to see me yesterday,” Jane says. “And she told me a lot about you.”
Oh, I can only imagine.
“She thinks the world of you, you know. As a mother, a woman.”
I lift my head, blink.
“She does,” Jane says, as if sensing my skepticism. “She said those exact words to me. And I agree with her. I do. I think you’re a really good person, Bird, who made some bad choices.”
“That’s generous of you,” I say, and I mean it. “Thank you.”
“It might be generous,” Jane says. “But I think it has more to do with the fact that I know what it’s like to make a few bad choices myself.” She laughs lightly, picking up her teaspoon and stirring her tea. “Actually, you might say I’m the Queen of Bad Choices.”
“Yeah, well. No one’s perfect.”
“True.” Jane nods. A moment passes. “You know, before I got married, I was a drug addict.” I freeze in my seat, stare across the table. Maybe Ma was right about her. “Pills, mostly,” she continues, “although honestly, I’d do anything I could get my hands on. I was a total mess. And then I met Richard, who changed everything. I’ve never loved someone the way I loved him.” She shrugs, as if such a thing is perfectly understandable. “I literally forgot about everything except being with him. Including the drugs. Plus . . .” She looks at something out the window, past my head. “Well, you know, he would’ve never loved me back if he knew I was a drug addict.” She blinks. “But it was easy, giving them up. For him. To be with him. To be his wife, carry his children. It was all I’d ever wanted. All I’d ever dreamed.” She looks down at the table, runs the tip of her finger around the edge of her Oreo. “Except that for the last five years, there hasn’t been a single day when I haven’t thought about taking them again.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No, I did.” She nods. “A few times. Once, after the twins were about a year old, and then again, a few years after. But it was just Amytal—sleeping pills—and even though I was popping a lot of them, I got it under control pretty quickly. I had to. I had little kids I was taking care of now, whose lives were my responsibility. Plus, we go to La Jolla for a month every summer, and to Paris for two weeks in the winter. Richard’s always counted on me to take care of things and get those trips in order.” She pauses, lifting her teacup to her mouth and taking a shaky sip. “But something changed after Olivia came. I could feel it in my bones a few days after I delivered her, which sounds so awful, I know, because the only thing you’re supposed to be thinking about then is your new baby and how much you’re in love . . .” Her voice trails off as she shakes her head. “But it was there, right in the middle of my chest, as big and awake as a . . . a storybook monster.”
“What was?”
Jane blinks. “That thing,” she says slowly. “That absolute, unequivocal, don’t-even-try-to-argue-with-me thing inside me that said ‘this is not my life,’ and ‘this isn’t what I wanted,’ and ‘no one even asked me if I wanted to have kids in the first place!’” Her voice gets incrementally louder with each word until, on the last one, she is almost shouting. She brings her hand to her mouth quickly, embarrassed, but I shake my head.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, because it is okay. “I get it.”
“Yes. I kind of knew you would.” Her voice is full of wonder, looking at me. “I really did. Isn’t that funny?” She takes a sip of her tea again. “Anyway, it wasn’t something I understood. Or I guess I should say I understood it, but it made me feel so terrible, you know? Like I was just an awful mother, a terrible, disgusting person. And it definitely wasn’t something I could have brought up with Richard.” She sighs, and I can hear the weight of it. “Overnight practically, I went back to popping Vicodin like they were candy. The fact that I wrenched my back just gave me an excuse to take more of them. By the time you came around, I was so addicted again that I was literally watching the clock until I could take another one. Plus, I started counting them—incessantly—to make sure I had enough.” She shrugs, looking up at me. “That was how I caught the missing ones. You know, that you took.”
Wow. Ma used to say that you never knew what was behind closed doors and damn if she wasn’t right. Jesus. Jane Livingston, a drug addict. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather. But why is she telling me all this? Aside from counting out her pills and figuring out that I took them, what does all the rest of the story have to do with me?
<
br /> “So . . .” I look down at my tea, wondering what to say. “Are you okay now?”
Jane shakes her head slowly. “I’m leaving for a treatment program tomorrow. I’ll be gone for thirty days. I’ve never been to one, can you believe that?” She picks up her Oreo, studies the chocolate lettering on the front. “I’ve always just had the willpower to make myself stop. Or maybe it was fear . . . I don’t know. But I know I can’t this time. This is too big. What I’m feeling inside is too big. I want to be there for my kids, but I need help.”
“That’s incredible . . . I mean . . . that you know that.”
“I don’t know how incredible it is.” Jane smiles. “But I do think it’s treatment or nothing. And if I choose nothing, I’m pretty sure I’ll lose.” I hold her gaze for a few seconds when she says that and I know she means it. “You know, I might’ve gone along like this, counting and popping Vicodin for another ten years, if something hadn’t happened. I don’t know what it is exactly,” she says slowly, fiddling with the neckline of her sweater. “But I think it had something to do with you.”
“Me?”
“Don’t get freaked out.” She smiles, embarrassed. “But I’ve been watching you. Not in a stalker kind of way or anything. More like a ‘how does she do it?’ kind of way. It’s just . . .” She fumbles for a moment, groping for words. “I know how much you have on your plate. I know what happened to your family. With your father. And now you have Angus, and you work so hard cleaning other people’s houses, just to make ends meet. And then that day that I was a mess because I didn’t have my pills, you were so kind to me, Bird. You were so wonderful with Olivia, putting her in a bath, getting her all calm again. You didn’t have to do that.” She shakes her head, uses a fingertip to press a tear from the corner of her eye. “It just got me thinking, you know?”
“About what?”
“About how little of my life I was living. And how much life you always seemed to be squeezing out of yours. It made me want to be more like you, Bird. To be that kind of person.”
I am aghast. Mute. Who’s to say what kinds of things people see in one another? Even if they are the very things that we never glimpse in ourselves?
Jane laughs, a short burst of nerves. “I don’t have it all wrong here, do I? You do try to live your life well, don’t you? Or is that my Vicodin daze?”
I stare at the table, shake my head slightly. I want to live well. Maybe on the whole I do. Except when life gets in the way. Then I don’t do very well at all.
“Well, I don’t think I am wrong.” Jane sits up a little straighter, takes a gulp from her tea. “I think you’re pretty amazing.”
“Is that why you dropped the charges against me?”
She nods almost imperceptibly. “Like I said, I know what it’s like to make bad choices. But I don’t want either of us to have to live with this one for the rest of our lives.”
“I . . .” My head shakes on its own. “I just don’t know what to say. I . . . I just hope someday I can return the favor.”
“Maybe . . .” Jane looks up at me cautiously, shyly. “Maybe you could come visit me. At the treatment center. It’s in Reading, which is only about thirty minutes away.”
I look at her. And for the first time, I see her the way I saw myself up in the attic last night—a little girl inside the woman, still lost, still trying to figure it out. How is it that I feel such shame when I glimpse that part of me, and yet sitting here, realizing the same thing about Jane, all I feel is empathy and compassion? Maybe the answer isn’t pointing fingers or tallying our wrongs. Maybe the answer is holding out a hand and steadying one another until we figure out how to walk again.
“You know, now that I’ve told you all this,” Jane says, “I may as well just tell you everything. I’ve wanted to be your friend for the longest time, Bird. I mean, from the minute I met you, I thought you were funny and interesting and capable. I know it must sound pathetic, a thirty-four-year-old woman saying something like this, but I don’t really have friends. At least not here in New Haven. All my friends from college moved away a long time ago. And it’s hard to stay in touch when the kids come and you have so much on your plate, you know? It just gets so . . . lonely.”
I reach across the table, put my hand over hers. “I’ll come visit. At the treatment center.”
Jane looks up, her eyes rimmed with tears. “You sure? I mean, you don’t have—”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.”
Chapter 39
Father Delaney opens the door to the rectory when I ring the bell. “Bird.” He says my name softly, making no move to hide his surprise. “Come in.” He’s dressed in his usual black pants and sneakers, a soft black vest sweater over a T-shirt. No collar. He takes a seat in a chair in the corner, indicating the other with a nod of his head. The room is small and white; a copper crucifix is attached to the wall behind him. “How have you been?” he asks. “How’s your mother? And Angus?”
“We’re okay.” I sit down carefully, sliding my hands under my thighs. “I just wanted to come by and . . . apologize.”
“What is it that you’re apologizing for?” Father Delany clasps his hands.
Ma’s words ring in my ears. “For desecrating a holy space! For letting evil in! Changing his underwear!”
“For . . . you know, for helping . . . James.” I pause for a moment, shake my head. “Well, no, actually, I’m not really sorry for that part.” I glance up. “I mean, I apologize if that offends you, but that’s just how I feel. I really don’t think I did anything wrong by helping him.”
“What, then?” Father Delaney’s voice is gentle.
“Well, I guess I’m sorry I was dishonest. About the whole Forty Hours thing and using that to pretend that I was coming back to church and all that.” I tuck my legs beneath my chair self-consciously. “I feel really bad about not being straight with you. About being misleading.”
“I appreciate your apology,” Father Delaney says. “Thank you.”
He rests one of his ankles over the other knee, and I study the outline of his black sneakers for a moment. The tracks on the bottom are coated with dried mud; one of the laces is loose.
“Did you know him?” Father Delaney asks suddenly. “The man in the loft?”
“Yeah, I knew him.” And then, in a rush: “I loved him actually.” I take a breath when I say this, realizing for the first time that I have never admitted such a thing before to anyone, not even myself, but that the admission has opened something in me, let something in. I sit up straighter, feel my breathing start to slow.
“So you knew him well, then.”
I blush, feel my lower lip start to tremble. “No, actually. I didn’t know him very well at all. But he saved me once, and . . .” I drop my eyes, fumbling for words. I can’t go there. I just can’t. Not with him. “What happened in the choir loft, Father, I mean, you’ve gotta know it just happened. Out of nowhere. I don’t know if was fate or coincidence, or what. But I came to the church that morning to pick up Ma’s sweater—you remember—and I heard a noise in the loft, and there he was.” My voice cracks, remembering. “At first I just ran, you know? I was so scared. I didn’t know what to think. But then I started thinking about all these parts of himself he’d given me a long time ago when I didn’t even know I needed it, and how they were right there in front of me again when I needed them more than anything. And that’s why I went back. That’s why I helped him. I’m sorry.” I bury my face in my hands, let them fill with my tears. “I’m so sorry, Father.”
He’s in front of me suddenly, crouched down on one knee, one arm draped around my shoulders. I let him hold me as I cry.
“No one’s ever loved me like that before.” It’s as if I’ve forgotten to whom I’m talking. Or maybe it’s the small weight of his hand on my shoulder, which feels like a release of some kind. Whichever it is, words are staggering out of me, pulled by an invisible line. “And it did something to me, you know, him loving me. It opened me
up, Father. I hadn’t even known how closed I was, how tightly I’d shut myself to everyone and everything until I met him. Until I started loving him, too. It changed everything. Everything! It was like I hadn’t understood anything at all about myself until I saw myself through his eyes. He told me I was beautiful, Father. That I smelled like petrichor.”
“Petrichor?” Father Delaney cocks his head.
“Yes.” I nod. “It’s the smell that comes out of the earth when it rains after a very long dry spell.”
“Ah.” Father Delaney nods.
“I miss him so much. Oh my God, I miss him.” Sobs overtake words, and still they push their way through. “There’s nothing I can do to bring him back, nothing at all, and some days when I think of going through it without him for one more second . . . I just . . . Oh my God, I don’t know. I’d do it all over again, every single part of it, even though I know it’s wrong, if I could spend one more day with him. One more hour.”
My shoulders hurt, and my back, too, by the time I am done, and still Father Delaney hasn’t moved. Finally, when I raise my face, stained and leaking, he gets up and grabs a few tissues off his desk. I take them gratefully, clean myself off, sit back with a shudder. I can tell he is getting ready to say something. He’s got that look in his face that he used to get when I went to confession as a kid: a sort of perplexed, thoughtful expression, as if gathering up all his thoughts and laying them out in front of him, like playing cards. He’s probably going to give me a speech, inform me in no uncertain terms of all the missing spaces in my life that can be filled only by God.
Instead, he says this: “I’m sorry it hurts so much. And that it’s been hurting so much for so long.” New tears spill over, running down my cheeks. “But let me tell you this, Bird. When you do something with great love, it can’t possibly be wrong. God says that—”
“I don’t believe in God,” I interrupt, still sobbing. “I don’t, I don’t!”
“But you believe in love.” Father Delaney reaches out, clutches my shaking hand in his. “You believe in love now, Bird, don’t you?”
The Odds of You and Me Page 30