Who Do You Love

by Jennifer Weiner

  That morning I found Brenda sitting on the couch of her still mostly empty apartment, on the twelfth floor of a fifteen-story building. Her eyebrows were plucked into thin arches; her eyes were heavily lined with black pencil. Her thin hair clung to her scalp and face in sticky clumps, her breath smelled like stale coffee, and her two-bedroom apartment had already acquired its signature scent of cigarette smoke and unflushed toilet, with accent notes of fast food and dog. Brenda’s pride and joy was a Siberian husky, a dog she’d told me she’d paid a breeder a thousand dollars for, whose breath made you think that a small rodent had crawled inside her mouth and died there. The dog, who was large and white and named Whitey, spent most of her time curled up asleep at Brenda’s feet, and at least once every ten minutes she’d let loose a long, mellow-sounding fart, like a low note on a clarinet.

  “Who pays a breeder a thousand bucks for a dog when you can go to any shelter and get a dog for free?” I’d asked Amy during one of our dinners. We’d go out together, once a week, and were methodically working our way through all the cuisines in New York City. By then we’d sampled Ethiopian, Italian, Thai, and Korean. We were eating Indian that night, samosas and saag paneer and tandoori chicken. Amy had given me an indulgent smile and said, “Oh, grasshopper, you have much to learn.”

  I shifted on the couch. Brenda pinched the sleeve of my jacket between two long-nailed fingers. “This is real nice,” she said.

  “Thank you.” The jacket wasn’t anything special, but it would, I hoped, look formal enough to command some respect from the women I worked with, most of whom were older than I was. Lucky for me, my parents had bought me a leather tote when I’d graduated from Beaumont, and it was still in good shape, big enough to hold a day’s worth of case files, my wallet and keys, and the tape recorder and camera I needed to do my interviews or document conditions at a client’s home.

  Brenda let go of my jacket and toyed with her hair.

  “How have things been?” I inquired, keeping my voice intentionally mild. I’d learned, from shadowing Amy for three months, how to keep judgment off my face and out of my voice, and to try not to ask a question unless I knew the answer. When I’d arrived, I’d used the bathroom, where I had spied with my little eye a man’s razor and a can of Barbasol next to the sink, and whiskers in the bowl. Her oldest son was eighteen, small for his age, with no beard that I could see.

  Brenda slid her gaze sideways. She knew she wasn’t supposed to have another adult with a paycheck sharing the apartment that had been approved for just her and her children. She also knew, or at least I guessed she did, that the amount of work and red tape it would require to evict the boyfriend was such that the agencies involved would probably decide to look the other way, in the event I decided to blow the whistle.

  “What’s the story, morning glory?”

  She shifted on the couch. “It’s just a friend who’s visiting. A guy I knew from my old job.”

  I didn’t speak and kept looking at her. Another thing Amy had taught me was that strategic silence could be a social worker’s best friend. And it worked. Brenda kept talking.

  “I just thought he could help out. With the bills. I’ve got electric, water, gas, cable . . .” She raised a finger for each utility, as if I was unfamiliar with what it cost to live in an apartment. Fresh paint on her nails, I noticed with annoyance. Brenda couldn’t get it together to feed her kids breakfast most mornings or to make sure they got to school half the time, and her phone was constantly being turned off—not safe, I told her; if there was an emergency, she’d need to be able to call 911—but she always found time and cash for a manicure. A manicure and a man, and she usually got pissy when I called her on it.

  “Is this friend Brian that we talked about last time?”

  Brenda chewed on her lower lip. Brian-that-we-talked-about-last-time, Brenda’s latest gentleman caller, had been crashing on his brother’s couch, technically homeless. “He just needs a place to stay until he’s back on his feet,” she’d told me. Back at the office, I’d learned that Poor Brian had a lengthy criminal record, including burglary, larceny, and violation of a Protection from Abuse order, and that he owed thousands of dollars in child support.

  “Brenda,” I said.

  She raised her chin and said, “I’m a grown-ass woman. I can see whoever I want, and you need to respect my choices.”

  Deep breath, Rachel.

  “Do you understand why it’s not a good idea to have Brian move in?”

  “Because I don’t know him very well,” she muttered.

  “Because he has a criminal record,” I said. “Because his last girlfriend said he’d beaten her children.”

  She straightened her neck. “Brian and I talked about that,” she said. “He said that was just his ex making trouble for him, because she’s crazy.”

  “Isn’t that what every guy says about his ex-girlfriend? ‘She’s crazy’? Isn’t that what your ex is probably telling his new girlfriend about you?” I wondered if that was what Andy, somewhere, was saying about me.

  She nodded, but she didn’t look happy. “Fine, I’ll tell him he has to move out.” Almost immediately she winced, realizing her mistake. “I mean, I’ll tell him he can’t move in.” Which meant, of course, that Brian had already moved in, and that she probably had no real intention of telling him to go.

  If it had just been a guy, I might not have cared. But this was a potentially dangerous guy. That I cared about.

  “You know you’re not supposed to have another adult here. And I know how much you love your kids, how you’d never put them at risk or do anything to hurt them. Brian might seem terrific, and he might have turned his life around, but we don’t know that. You wouldn’t want to have to find out the hard way that you were wrong. You’re too good a mom for that.”

  She sighed and stared at her hands, and finally managed a small and reluctant nod. I wasn’t sure she meant it, but for now it was the best that I could do. The hell of it was that the system didn’t operate on possibilities and potentials. You couldn’t pull kids out of a house because you thought they might get hurt. You’d have to wait until they did.

  I flipped to a fresh page on my clipboard. “Let’s talk about Dante. He was absent twice last week.”

  Brenda cast her gaze down toward the rip in her couch. “He had an ear infection.”

  “Middle ear or outer ear?”

  Brenda fiddled with her own lobe. “Uh . . .”

  “Did you take him to the doctor?”

  Eyes down. Nod.

  “Do you have a receipt? We can probably get you reimbursed for the copay.”

  “Somewhere,” she mumbled. “Unless I put it out with the recycling.”

  “If I call the doctor’s office, are they going to tell me you were there?”

  Mumble.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  She raised her chin and met my eyes. “I didn’t take him in. I called, I talked to a nurse, she said we’d just be sitting there for four hours like we did last time, and Jim at the bakery said I couldn’t leave again or he’d fire me, and besides, I knew what was wrong. Even if I did go and we sat there, they’d just give us antibiotics.”

  This was probably true, but sick kids needed to go to the doctor, and Brenda needed frequent reminders.

  “So what happened?”

  She squirmed. “I gave him antibiotics.”

  “Where’d you get them?”

  “Leftovers.”

  “From the last time he had an ear infection?”

  Mumble mutter mumble.

  “Brenda, I’m sitting right here and I can’t hear you.”

  She raised her face, eyes flashing. I must have sounded like every teacher she’d ever had, every boss who’d said, “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”

  “I had some left over.”

  “So you gave D
ante your old medication? Did you have an ear infection?”

  “Yeast infection. But what’s the difference? An infection’s an infection.”

  Oh my God. I tried to keep my face still while I scribbled a note and pulled out my phone. Brenda took advantage of my distraction to flip on her TV.

  “About Dante,” Brenda said after I’d gotten him an appointment at the clinic to have his ear looked at the next afternoon. I gave her a look and she turned the TV off. “You think I can get him tested for ADHD?”

  “Why? What’s up? Did one of his teachers say something?” Of Brenda’s three kids, Dante was my favorite. A grave, polite little boy who, on the day Brenda had moved in, had held the door open for me and then plodded along next to me on a walk to the playground, his pace and posture those of a little old man. Twice he’d asked how much farther it was, and one time, he’d stopped to catch his breath. He wasn’t as heavy as some of the kids I’d seen—he was carrying perhaps ten extra pounds, most of it on his belly—but my guess was that the only exercise he got involved his thumbs on his handheld videogame.

  “Nooooo.” Brenda stretched the word like chewing gum. “But, I dunno. His grades aren’t great. I think he has a hard time focusing.”

  “Do you have the TV on when he’s doing his homework? Does he have a quiet place to sit and work? Remember we talked about that?” She nodded. My guess was that in this house the television was always on. My further guess was that Brenda wasn’t interested in Dante’s lack of focus or poor grades as much as the additional three hundred bucks she’d get every month for a child who’d been diagnosed with a disability, the way Nicky, her oldest, had been years before. The money was supposed to go for educational support—a classroom aide, an after-school tutor, visits to a psychologist. But the system was so stretched that there was no structure in place to check on how parents actually used the money. I suspected that the extra cash she’d gotten for her oldest son’s diagnosis was sitting right in front of us, with a sixty-inch screen and surround sound.

  “I just wish Dante had a shot,” I’d told Amy the week before. It was Friday afternoon, the end of the day and the workweek, but she was lingering over a pile of paperwork. Leonard was at the hospital that weekend, and Amy was in no hurry to go home.

  “Brenda dropped out of school when she was fifteen because she was pregnant. Her mom had her when she was eighteen. She’s got three different kids from two different guys, and the only thing she cares about is finding a new boyfriend.”

  “Forget her.” Amy ran her hands over her hair, which was perfectly smooth, then straightened her stack of files. “Sorry to be blunt, but she’s not going to, you know, take classes at CCNY and then go to Harvard. And realistically, her kids might end up making the same choices she did.”

  I thought about quiet, serious Dante, with his choppy at-home haircuts and his round glasses; the way he had used the Model Magic I’d bought him to make a mobile of the solar system, with the planets strung up on fishing line. His big brother’s plan to join the army had been foiled by his arrest record, as had his ability to get a job, so Nicky still lived at home, along with Dante’s sister, sixteen-year-old Laurel, who reminded me, in a way that tore at my heart, of Bethie Botts. Laurel had the same untended skin and greasy hair, the same cold gaze and resentful expression, combined with body language that telegraphed “Leave me alone.”

  “You can’t ever let yourself get stuck on one kid or one family.” Amy flipped open a compact and touched up her perfectly lipsticked mouth. Amy always came to work with lipstick on, that ruby-red slash the only makeup she wore. Dispassionate, cynical Amy, who underneath the guarded exterior was as tender as anyone I’d met. “Write ’em off.” I tried . . . but something about Dante had lodged in my heart. Browsing in a bookstore, I’d look at a children’s book and think Dante would like that. While I was watching TV, a commercial for a movie would come on the air, and I’d imagine taking him to the show, buying him popcorn, taking him out to eat after and asking if he’d liked the movie, and which star had been his favorite. Everything echoed: Dante reminded me of Keila, my little sister from college. Laurel reminded me of Bethie, with whom I’d had no contact since high school. Everyone and everything reminded me of Andy; eight-year-old Andy alone in the hospital, the first time I’d recognized the possibility of being the helper instead of being helped.

  “So can I get him tested?” Brenda asked.

  “I’ll ask my supervisor,” I said. Brenda’s face arranged itself into a pout. “You’re a wonderful mother,” I told her again, “and I know you and the kids are going to do well here.” She was smiling faintly when I shut the door.

  It was eight thirty in the morning. If I caught an express train I could be home at my sublet in the West Village in twenty minutes, take an hour to have breakfast, grab the yoga mat that I was forever leaving at my studio or the supermarket, and then go to the office.

  We were at Astor Place, just ahead of my normal stop at Bleecker, when the subway stopped. Something came over the static-clogged public address system, as fuzzy as the one in the hospital had been, but all I could make out was “this train will not be proceeding.” Sighing, I joined my fellow passengers streaming onto the platform.

  “Are they sending another train?” a young, perfectly barbered man in a tailored gray suit asked. There was impatience in the tone of his voice and the set of his shoulders: a swaggering Master of the Universe who couldn’t be detained in his quest for the buck. I watched a woman raise her cell phone to her ear, her eyes squeezed shut, lips moving, before she flipped it shut and shoved it back into her bag.

  By then, people were pushing toward the exits, some of them on phones, all of them hurrying. I joined the line, climbed the stairs, and stood in the street, in the eerie silence, and saw the pillar of smoke.

  “Oh my God.”

  “They’re saying a plane hit the Twin Towers,” a woman called.

  “Like, a little plane?”

  “A commuter jet.”

  “Where are you getting this?” asked the Master of the Universe.

  “My son’s an intern at CNN. He says eyewitnesses saw the plane hit. They’re evacuating both buildings.”

  “My husband’s there.” A woman, maybe a few years older than me, similarly dressed for business, looked around, wide-eyed. “My husband’s there,” she said again, as if someone had contradicted her, before pulling out a cell phone of her own.

  Then the street started shaking, a slow, low rumble that rose to a deafening pitch. I thought I felt the ground tilt. In my good Coach bag, my phone was ringing, and, without thinking, I reached for it, flipping it open and raising it to my ear.

  “Rachel? Rachel, honey, where are you?” My mom sounded the way she had when I was six, and she’d come into my bedroom to find me blue and gasping for breath.

  “Astor Place,” I said. “I was going back home on the subway. Do you know what’s going on?”

  “Daddy and I were watching the Today show.” As they did, every morning of their lives. “Two planes hit the Twin Towers. They’re saying it might be terrorists.”

  “Who’s saying that? If it’s Mr. Lifshitz, please don’t listen.” Mr. Lifshitz was the neighborhood conspiracy theorist.

  “CNN,” said my mother. “They’re saying that terrorists hijacked planes and they flew them into the World Trade Center; they don’t know how many people are dead . . .”

  I heard her voice start wobbling. “I’m fine, Mom. I’m okay.”

  “You need to get out of there right now, Rachel Nicole, right this very minute.” She was talking to me like I was six and she’d caught me picking my nose in front of company. The crowd in the street was frozen, still staring south, when we heard what we’d quickly find out was the first tower falling.

  “We need to get out of here,” someone said.

  Amy, I thought. Amy lived in Park Slope. I could
cross the bridge, go to her house, wait until the trains were running again . . . and if she was already in the office, I would find someplace, a coffee shop or a bookstore, and stay there until either she came back or I was free to go.

  Thank God I have sneakers in my bag, I thought as I started walking. Policemen with bullhorns were directing us toward the Williamsburg Bridge. Everyone seemed to be talking on cell phones. Some of them were crying. Thank God I have a bottle of water. Thank God none of the families that I know live down that way. I’d tucked my cell phone into my bra—a bad habit, Amy had lectured, and one that would probably either ruin the phone or give me breast cancer. Now I felt it trill against my breast.

  “Hello?”

  “Rachel?” I recognized his voice, even though I’d never heard it like this. Andy Landis sounded scared . . . and that, more than anything, made what was happening real to me.

  “Andy?” I started to cry. It didn’t occur to me to ask how he’d gotten my number. “Do you know what’s happening?”

  “Where are you? Are you somewhere safe?”

  “I was on the subway, but they stopped it, and we all got out, and I saw all the smoke, and then we felt it, and we heard. Is it true?” I was starting to shake, my whole body quivering. “Is it terrorists?”

  “Where are you?” he asked me again.

  “I’m going toward the Williamsburg Bridge. I was going to try to go home, but they aren’t letting anyone through.”