I sit for an hour, getting up every five or ten minutes to peer down the hall to Amy’s room, as if by staring long and hard enough, I might be able to see through the closed door to what’s happening inside. Please let her family talk some sense into her. If she won’t even listen to them, then I’ll know for certain that we’re beyond rock bottom.
I get up for another door check and Margaret is walking toward me down the hall. The door to Amy’s room is closing behind her—Celia and her dad are still in there. “Let’s go get a coffee,” Margaret says, wrapping her long silver cardigan tightly around herself.
She says nothing as we walk down the hallway, wait for the elevator, and head toward the cafeteria. Walking behind her after we exit, I notice that she and Amy have the same bouncy stride.
We pass a couple of doctors on our way into the cafeteria. “Thank you!” Margaret smiles at them as they hold the door open for us. She sounds so cheerful. It’s as if a doctor just told her, We got all of the tumor out and the lymph nodes are clear! or It’s a healthy baby boy! I’m awestruck by the way that she can pretend like she hasn’t just received the kind of news that could knock a person off of the trajectory of her life forever. I think of my own mother, whose state of mind at any given moment was transparent and always available for public consumption. She talked too loudly in restaurants and movie theaters and didn’t care who heard her, barreled through crowds, knocked things off of tables without noticing. My father said that she moved through life like a linebacker. Being with other people’s mothers always makes me miss my own a little more than usual. I can’t help but compare.
We sit. Margaret dumps two creamers and two sugars into her coffee. “Amy always jokes that I like my coffee like dessert,” she says. She taps the plastic stirrer against the edge of the paper cup and then sets it neatly on a napkin to her right.
“Waverly,” Margaret says slowly, as if she’s feeling the sound of my name on her lips for the first time. She looks across the vast room. We’re not the only somber pair sharing coffee.
“I just want to know where my little girl’s gone,” she says quietly. “Ever since I got your call I have not been able to stop wondering what I could have done to contribute to this. Did I not show her how to stand up for herself? Did I not teach her self-respect, and how to make others respect her?” She says others like it’s a dirty word. I know what it implies. “You know how we women are, or, I don’t know…” She runs the tips of her fingers over her lips, thinking. “Maybe I’m too old-fashioned. I always pushed our girls to have good manners, to treat people well. Now I’m wondering about all of the things I should’ve been teaching them instead of reprimanding them for not getting their thank-you notes out fast enough or worrying over what they wore to school.” She shakes her head. “Girls,” she says, almost like she’s lamenting the word.
“Margaret, you can’t blame yourself for this,” I say. “You’re a wonderful mother. Amy always says so. She’s said that if she can do half the job with Emma that you did with her and Celia and Claire, then she’ll know that she used her life well. More than once, she’s told me about how you used to sit together at the kitchen table and talk after school while she did her homework. It’s obvious that it’s a wonderful memory for her.”
“Thank you,” Margaret says. Her hand shakes as she raises her cup to her lips. “Davis says that we should hire somebody to investigate him, to see if there’s anything else in his past that might help put him away. As difficult as this is on all of us, I think it’s the worst for Davis…to be a father and to have another man treat your little girl this way. It’s awful, Waverly.”
I grab a sugar packet off of the stack on the table and start turning it in my hand. “How did you know?” I ask, thinking of what she said when they arrived. “Did you know?”
“Well, I never suspected anything like this,” she says. “Never. If I’d known that this was going on, I would have been up here a long time ago.”
I wince. Why didn’t I say something?
“Mike was a little stoic, but he was always polite to us,” she says. “I wondered about his background and why we never heard more about his mother, but I thought he was just private. I wasn’t thrilled with the way that he treated Amy the last few times I saw him. He seemed to criticize her, and I thought that if he was doing it in front of us, then it must be worse in private. But I never thought that something like this could happen, not until you called. And then it was strange: I called Celia immediately after I talked to you, and right away, she said, ‘He did it.’ It too easily made sense. Do you understand what I mean? It was like I’d known it subconsciously, like my body had intuited it before my brain could, because I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been.”
“I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you.” I can’t look at her as I say it. “I should have called you.”
“No, no. Don’t feel sorry. I understand why you didn’t.”
“No, I should have,” I say. “It was silly of me to think that I was being loyal to her by keeping her secret.” I take a tiny sip of my coffee and then push the cup aside. My stomach is churning with acid. I haven’t eaten anything in well over twenty-four hours. Cafeteria coffee is the last thing I need.
“Waverly, what should we do?” Margaret says. When I look up at her I can see how frightened she is. This is not the same woman who’d gathered her family around her a day earlier like a general leading her army into the battle of their lives. Now she just looks empty.
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice breaking. “There has to be something.” Trying to form a conscious thought is beginning to exhaust me. My emotions are ricocheting from one extreme to the other. My worry is so deep that I want to yank Amy out of that hospital bed and take her somewhere where she’ll find herself again. I love her so much. But at the same time I’m so frustrated with her that I almost wish I didn’t know her at all. I guess, in a way, I don’t.
“There has to be something we can do,” Margaret says again. It’s as if we think that something will come to us if we just keep repeating it over and over. She crumples one of her napkins and wipes her nose efficiently. She clears her throat. “We just have to.” She looks across the table at me. “Because if we don’t…”
“I know.” I nod solemnly. “If we don’t.”
A family sits down next to us—a mom and dad and two little boys. The mother sets down the tray in the center of the table and the boys attack, grabbing for a plastic-wrapped honey bun, a bottle of juice, a paper container of French fries. The mother and the father each tap their straws on the table to rip the paper wrappers, neither of them noticing that they’re moving in sync. Margaret and I both watch them.
“Tell me what’s happening with you,” she says when she turns back to me.
“Me?”
She glances back at the family. “It might be nice to talk about something else,” she says.
Oh, of course, I think. She doesn’t want these people to hear about Amy.
“Well,” I say. “There’s a lot to catch up on.” I tell her about the business and the money and then, finally, Larry. And when I get to that part, she does something I never would have expected: She laughs.
“What?” I say.
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. It’s just…” She puts her hand to her mouth and shakes her head, still giggling. “It’s just that you’re missing the point.”
“I don’t understand.”
She laughs again. “I don’t mean to be patronizing, hon. I’m sorry.” She takes a breath and swallows, gathering herself. “Do you know that Davis and I have been married for forty-four years? We got engaged the day after our high school graduation. We’d known each other all of our lives. We grew up just around the corner from each other, went to the same school, the same church—but I didn’t know him in the sense that you’re talking about. I wasn’t ‘sure’ about him. I’m still not. He could leave me tomorrow for that cute redheaded nurse who’s working with Amy.” She laughs. I
t’s good to see her laugh. “But that’s all part of the fun. You grow together and apart; you make mistakes and you solve them. And with each year that passes, you learn more—about yourself and about each other—and hopefully love each other more, too, despite all of the things you’ve done wrong. That’s unconditional love. Real, true, can’t-be-replicated love.”
“Yeah,” I say, a little breathless. “I don’t know why I never thought of it that way.”
“Try not to worry so much,” she says, reaching across the table and patting my arm. “Things work out.” She looks at me, realizing the irony of what she’s just said. “We can only hope, right?”
I nod. “I guess that’s all we can do.”
When we get back to the waiting room, Davis tells us that there’s no update. He and Celia talked with Amy until she got drowsy and then left to let her sleep. I say good-bye. I need to check in with work, even if it’s just to quickly pop in and make sure everything’s running smoothly.
As I’m turning to go, I see Margaret and Davis embrace. I can’t imagine what they’re feeling. They must’ve dreamt so much for their daughters—graduations and weddings, grandchildren, the simple hope that they would be happy. What’s happened to Amy must be crushing.
I think of my parents, whose constant mantra was, “We just want you to be happy.” Growing up, it was a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I loved knowing that I didn’t have the kind of parents who expected me to become a lawyer or go to a certain school, but I also occasionally wished that they’d give me more guidance. Neither of them offered an opinion when it came to my future. They didn’t care what I wore or worry over whom I hung around with. I’m certain that if they were alive now and I went to them with questions about my business or my relationship, they’d say what they always had: “We just want you to be happy.”
Listening to Margaret talk, I realized that I’ve been trying too hard to make that happen. My parents didn’t give me an ultimatum. It wasn’t “be happy or else.” But even before they died, I looked at it that way. I suppose it’s partly because I’m an only child. I always felt I was their one shot, so I had to get everything right. When they said, “We just want you to be happy,” I didn’t feel relief or comfort. What entered my mind was one relentless, aggressive, forever question: How? How? How?
My entire adult life, I’ve been struggling so hard searching for this sort of higher, enlightened perfection. But really, after talking to Margaret and watching her and Davis together, I realize that all I need to do to make my parents proud—to make myself happy—is to stop second-guessing my blessings, stop thinking that the grass is always greener, and know how lucky I am to have my particular messed-up, mucked-up life. I learned when Mom and Dad died that life is precious, but instead of using that lesson to be grateful for every extra day I get, I’ve been trying to mold my life into some superfantastic, errorless masterpiece. I realize now that all they really wanted for me was to have my own one-of-a-kind life. I ought to start embracing it.
Outside, I find my car and slump into the front seat. Before I put my key in the ignition, I grab my phone and punch out a text to Larry: I love you.
Just as I’m about to shift into reverse, my phone buzzes back. I love you, too, his message reads. Come home.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Two weeks later, I am sitting with one of my customers, chatting about whether the red velvet cupcake trend is here to stay, when I feel my cell phone vibrate in my front pocket. “I’m sorry, I need to take this,” I say, pushing myself up from the table. It’s Margaret, calling with her daily update. I hit the “answer” button on my phone with one hand while I clear an empty coffee mug from a nearby table with the other. “Hey, Margaret,” I say, dropping the dish in the plastic tub just inside the door of the kitchen. “How’s she doing today?”
Amy left the hospital five days ago with a strong prognosis. It looks like she will fully recover, though her doctors stress that she needs to get ample rest over the next few weeks while her body recovers. How she’s going to relax, I have no idea. Ever since she announced she was going home to Mike, her family and I have been a revolving door of worry, each of us taking turns auditioning our point of view on the matter at her bedside:
Her father: “Good men—men worth sticking it out for—don’t do this. He should be in jail, Amy. Why can’t you see that?”
Claire: “He’ll do it again, Amy.”
Celia: “Deep down, you know he will, Amy.”
Her mother: “If you’re so intent on working it out, why don’t you at least live with us while you do it? We’re worried about your safety, honey.”
Me, wringing my hands like an old woman: “Let him go to counseling first, like you’d planned, and then go back to him…think of Emma…talk to Kate…stay with Larry and me.”
All of us: “Why can’t you see what he’s doing to you?”
Despite our protests, she’s back at home with Mike, who, unbelievably, has been left almost fully responsible for her care. When she told her mother that this was what she wanted and that the decision was final, Margaret tried to get her to speak with one of the hospital psychiatrists, but she wouldn’t have it. There’s nothing any of us can do. So she’s home, being nursed back to health by the man who nearly killed her.
Her sisters had to go back to North Carolina to their families, but Margaret and Davis refuse to leave D.C. They’re at a Marriott behind a shopping center around the corner from Amy’s subdivision. Every morning, Margaret goes to Amy’s for a visit, takes Emma out to play, and calls me afterward with a report. She has not seen Mike. Amy refuses to let their paths cross, and it’s probably better that way. Her father, who’s reticent as it is, is so destroyed by what’s happened to the most ebullient of his three daughters that he doesn’t speak at all when I see him. Margaret says he spends most of his time in their hotel room, making calls and doing research about ways that they might be able to legally force Mike out of their lives once and for all.
But there’s really nothing that any of us can do. Mike pled not guilty the day after he was arrested, was released a few hours later, and because of Amy’s statement, the lack of evidence, and his clean record, the charges have been reduced to simple domestic battery instead of malicious wounding. It’s unlikely that he’ll go to jail at all. Instead, he’ll get “one year suspended,” which means that he’ll occasionally have to meet with a parole officer. He may as well have been caught speeding or stealing a pack of gum, and it’s nothing short of appalling that he’s free to do as he pleases. After everything that’s happened, I fear what that might be.
On the day that Amy left the hospital, I watched as a couple of nurses placed her in her father’s car as carefully as if she was a piece of antique furniture. Amy promised me, looking out from the dim backseat, that she would be in touch. “Call you tomorrow,” she said, smiling as if this was one of our usual good-byes, as if we’d just met for breakfast or gone for a jog.
Of course, she hasn’t called. I knew when she said it that she wouldn’t.
Now I worry whether I’ll ever hear my friend’s voice again. Amy knew that I’d talked to the police. I told her about my conversation with Lieutenant Dillon and how I’d given her my diary entries. I wanted Amy to see how serious this was. I pleaded with her to think about what she was doing. Every day, I call her cell phone and leave another message asking her to call me back, but she doesn’t. I’ve called the home phone, too, but on the one occasion that somebody actually answered, it was Mike, his “hello” as chipper as if he’d just popped up to grab the phone during a family game of Monopoly. I threw the phone down as if I’d just been stung. As much as I worry about Amy, I couldn’t bring myself to speak to him.
I hardly sleep. At night, my mind reels with horrible projections about what Amy is bound to face before long. The grout on our bathroom tile is cleaner than it’s ever been. The kitchen cabinets have been alphabetically organized. Larry begs me to come to bed, but I don’t b
other. When Kate called me close to midnight last night and heard my mixer whirring in the background—I was making lemon icebox cookies—she implored me to just get in the car and go to Amy’s. She even offered to pick me up and come along. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Everything else I’ve tried has proved useless. Why would this be any different?
“So it’s just the same as yesterday,” Margaret says, sighing heavily. “I guess he went out to pick up some groceries while I was there. Sooner or later, he’s going to run out of errands to do. He’s going to have to face us.”
“It’s telling that Amy’s so insistent on keeping you apart,” I say.
“And it’s frightening,” Margaret says. “You know he’s the one controlling everything, like she’s his puppet. I can’t imagine what he says to her.”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” I say. “How’s Emma?”
“She’s with me right now. We’re at the playground in the neighborhood. Swinging.”
I start to ask her whether Amy’s said anything about me, but I stop myself. Margaret knows that I call her every day, and neither of us can make sense of why she won’t speak to me. Margaret believes that she’s displaced her anger. She won’t let herself be mad at Mike so she’s made me the enemy—or he has. I’m the one who told her family and went to the police.
We hang on the line, both of us wishing that there was more to say, but as the days snap by, it’s becoming more and more obvious that we’re helpless. Until Amy changes her mind, there’s nothing that we can do. I say good-bye and tell her that I’ll look forward to talking with her tomorrow.
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