by Lisa Tucker
Over time, the visits to David and Courtney would become one big clump—Sandra couldn’t remember if something happened in the winter or the spring, the sixth visit or the ninth, the flat-tire drive or the ice-storm drive, a weekend she called a “short vacation” or a midweek trip using her personal days—but she was positive that there were a lot of moments like this when everything seemed good. And when she added up all these positive times, she rested easier, convinced that her son’s new family would be all right.
Later, she couldn’t believe that she’d let herself forget what she’d learned in her marriage: it’s not the happy parts that will tell you what will happen next. No matter how much you want them to, the happy parts—as long as they’re only parts, and easy to recognize precisely because they’re not the normal state of things—can only give you heartache. Even the good memories they provide aren’t really good, because every one just reminds you of what you were too dumb to see at the time.
Sandra refused to believe that it was David’s fault, what Courtney did. But she had no problem blaming herself for not figuring out what was going to happen and stepping in to stop it. Courtney was a twenty-three-year-old kid. Her parents were always too busy to visit. So the only adult around was Sandra, and her failure to save her son’s first family would always be like a weight she carried on her back. And it literally aged her. She got arthritis by fifty, her hair turned gray, and her energy level dipped, never to come back.
Fifteen years later, she still hadn’t cut back her schedule as a geriatric nurse, though she felt older than some of her patients, and much older that her sixty-one years. Luckily, her eyes were fine and she had no problem negotiating the traffic as she made her way to the quaint little suburb where Courtney lived. She knew David was wrong to suspect Courtney of taking his son—because she knew Courtney. It was the only secret she’d kept from David, who had changed so much over the years, sometimes she barely recognized the boy he’d been in the man he’d become.
Sandra didn’t plan to deceive him, but someone had to take care of Courtney when she got out of the hospital. Her parents had essentially disowned her: what she’d done was a stain on their ordered life with their fancy friends. So Sandra found her an apartment in Philadelphia, nursed her back to something like sanity, and even helped her find a job as a technical writer. She saw her less often in the last few years, but they still kept in touch. Courtney never stopped being grateful for what Sandra had done, and for her forgiveness.
The row house where she lived had a heavy iron door knocker. Sandra picked it up and dropped it twice before she accepted that Courtney wasn’t home. It was a nice day, cooler after yesterday’s rain, so she decided to wait on the porch swing. It was only two o’clock. Courtney usually got off early on Tuesday, but maybe she’d had to run some errands. She’d never remarried; she had no roommates. She lived alone, in a life not that different from Sandra’s.
A breeze blew up and the wind chimes on the porch were singing. Courtney had planted a little garden in the front yard: pink dahlias surrounding a white hibiscus, with yellow roses on the vine that climbed on the porch rail. It was a peaceful place to wait, but Sandra’s hands were throbbing from her arthritis, which was always worse when she was nervous. Her stomach hurt, too; she wished she hadn’t eaten lunch, though of course at lunchtime, she hadn’t known what had happened yet.
She closed her eyes and thought of her grandson, Michael. He barely knew her, because David wouldn’t let Sandra take the boy anywhere unless he was also with them. Sometimes she got confused, trying to remember what Michael was like when he was little. She’d stare at a picture of him, but in her mind, she’d see the other baby, the one she knew so well that she could quiet him with just a coo and a touch.
She had so many regrets. What if she’d told Courtney the truth that day in the restaurant? Sometimes you won’t understand your child. Maybe you’ll wish—just for a moment—that you’d never had them. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t die for them in a second. They become everything to you; of course that hurts sometimes. And even when they leave, they’re always there, inside your mind, imprinted on your body: the arms that held them, the voice that sang to them, the eyes that cried for all their heartbreaks, from skinned knees to lost loves. So sure, I guess it’s a hard truth, when you get right down to it. There is no you anymore without them.
FIVE
As hard as it was for Kyra to believe now, she couldn’t deny that back in college, Zachary Barnes had been the kind of boy that attracted girls. He had long black hair and a stubble beard that made him seem cool, especially as he was from Seattle, which seemed strange and exotic even before the city became the cool center of the world thanks to grunge bands. He also seemed more grown up than other college boys because, in fact, he was. He’d spent six years in the army before he’d started at UMKC. He’d been out of the country, the first person she’d ever met who had.
Zach was often quiet, making him seem mysterious, like he knew things that other people didn’t. Kyra thought he was wiser than every other boy at school—but he wasn’t wise enough not to fall in love with Amy. It was almost the first thing he did at college, right after he signed up for his premed courses: he started dating the pretty girl in line behind him at the registrar’s office. He wasn’t deterred when he found out that pretty girl wasn’t in line to sign up for classes but to withdraw from school. He didn’t tell her it was a mistake, because Amy could still make anything sound like a good idea, even quitting college after only one year to follow her dream (when did this become her dream?) of becoming a singer.
If only someone had thought to get Amy to a psychologist when she started having problems during freshman year. It was obvious even at the time that Amy seemed hell-bent on reenacting their mother’s life, but Kyra didn’t know why and she didn’t know any psychologists. When Amy told Kyra that their mother had wanted to be a singer, too, and this was why she’d left them, it was news to Kyra, and she was mystified how her sister could know this when she didn’t. Amy wouldn’t say, but she glowed as she talked about their mother’s voice. “It was so beautiful. I only hope I can sound half as good as she did.”
Kyra didn’t remember her mother singing, not once. Though she must have sung hymns at church and carols at Christmas and “Happy Birthday” at least a few times a year, her voice hadn’t stood out at all. Sometimes Kyra thought Amy was making all this up, creating a better, glamorous, version of their mother. But the strange part was that Amy didn’t need their mother to be talented, because Amy’s own voice had always stood out. Even when the two girls sang along with “We Are Family,” Amy sounded as good as the famous sisters who’d recorded the song. She’d been picked for every solo in grade school, and her high school chorus teacher had begged her, each year, to try out for the musical, but she was working and saving money for college and she didn’t have time.
Zachary Barnes wanted to help Amy, and Kyra had given up trying to argue her sister out of her “dream.” He knew a guitar player, a guy who called himself Peanut. Peanut’s band was doing gigs in town, nowhere fancy, but they were making a living doing cover tunes. When Zach brought Amy to one of their rehearsals, Peanut decided they could use a “chick talent.” And just like that, Amy wasn’t a student anymore; she was a singer in a band.
Zach and Amy had been dating for nearly a year when Amy broke his heart. The first time. It was at a bar on the Country Club Plaza, the most upscale place Amy and the band had ever played. Kyra had just finished the last finals of her sophomore year, and she was only at the bar reluctantly, because Amy had begged her to come to the gig. She was sitting at a table by herself, as far away from the music as possible. The waitress was already annoyed that she was only sipping a Coke. If she’d been closer to the stage, the waitress might have carded her and thrown her out.
As always, she was impressed by how good her sister sounded, belting out pop songs like “We
Didn’t Start the Fire,” and “Right Here Waiting.” But the song that moved Kyra the most was Amy’s cover of George Michael’s “Faith.” The song wasn’t actually about religion, but the happy, up-tempo chorus line about having faith made her feel lonelier and strangely lost, like she wasn’t sure where she belonged. It was partly because she and Amy hadn’t been to Mass since they moved to Kansas City, but it was also because she felt like she didn’t even know her sister anymore. Who was this girl standing in front of these four men Kyra had barely spoken to? Amy called the guys in the band her “mates.” Kyra was almost positive she’d slept with Peanut, and she suspected she’d slept with Tim, the drummer, too. Amy rehearsed with them at a run-down house in the suburbs, and often, she was gone all night. She said they were “jamming,” but she came home smelling of weed and sex. When she woke Kyra to tell her how well it had gone, she seemed drunk or high or both. Kyra tried locking her bedroom door, but it didn’t work. Amy would knock and beg, “Hey. Let me in, okay? I have to tell you about the coolest thing! I want to give you a morning hug, too, you goofball!”
No wonder Zach loved Amy. Although she was no longer the good girl she’d been, she was still so sweet and affectionate. Whenever Kyra was unhappy—at least on the rare occasions when she couldn’t hide it—her sister worked so hard to cheer her up. She went to the bakery and got a half dozen of the giant cinnamon rolls Kyra loved; she spent hours straightening up her room and the rest of the apartment, knowing that Kyra got depressed when things weren’t put away; she gently brushed Kyra’s hair and worked it into braids. Kyra suspected that even her sleeping around was mostly driven by her desire to make the guys happy, to give them what they wanted, especially since, as she said, shocking Kyra, sex was “such an easy thing to do for someone.” Everyone loved Kyra’s sister, even the girls who otherwise would have called her a slut. Kyra did, too, though Kyra’s love had become stern and unforgiving. She truly believed Amy was in danger of ruining her life. And then Amy announced that she was going to do another stupid thing, something almost as bad as quitting school: she was going to break up with the one boy who really cared about her.
Zach didn’t know—or wouldn’t let himself know—that Amy was sleeping with other people. When she told him she was busy, he accepted it. Maybe because she still asked him to come over at least two nights a week. Often, she would ask for his help with something like a leaky faucet in the apartment or the battery of her car, and then she would make him dinner and let him spend the night. Kyra could hear them laughing and moaning. Her face would turn bright red; she usually fell asleep with her pillow smashed over her ears. When she woke up in the morning, she got dressed and left the apartment as quickly as possible, so she wouldn’t run into him in the hall. She didn’t want to see his skin warm and pink from sleeping in her sister’s bed, his hair tousled from her sister’s touch. But she wasn’t aware that she liked him that way. She hadn’t let herself consider the possibility, because she was so convinced that Zach was the only thing standing between Amy and utter chaos.
“I know you’re going to be mad at me,” Amy said. She sat down at Kyra’s table and took a big gulp of Kyra’s soda. The band was on a break. She seemed too hyper, as she always did at her gigs, but she claimed it was simply the excitement of performance. “You think he’s good for me, and I know you’re right. But I’m not ready for this. I’m going to have to tell him I just think of him as a friend.”
Kyra was stunned into speechlessness, but Amy quickly changed the topic to Kyra’s finals, which Amy claimed she was sure Kyra had aced. “You’re the star of the math department, Miss 4.0. You can say what you want about me”—she smiled a half smile—“though I wish you wouldn’t . . . but you are an unqualified success.” She grabbed Kyra’s hand. Her fingers were so warm, even though she was wearing a low-cut tank top and a skirt that barely covered her thighs. Her blond hair was longer now, with a blunt cut that made the ends look very sharp. Sharp enough, Kyra thought, to give someone a paper cut, except of course it would have to be called a “hair cut,” which made no sense.
Kyra never considered herself the star of the math department, yet it was true that she’d already taken an upper-level proof class and done well. She and Amy had started math together, in the same section of the same course, their first semester at UMKC. Kyra had gotten a perfect grade, while Amy had ended up with a C in that class and Bs or Cs in all her others, though she’d worked much harder than Kyra. That was the beginning of the end, as Amy stopped trying only a month or two later. She started saying things like “I’m not very smart” and “I’m not the type to be in college.” After all her plans, she let UMKC go with as little thought as she gave to selling back her books at the end of the semester. Unfortunately, she was following their mother here, too, though their mother had hung on for three years, while Amy decided to leave after only one.
“I’m not going to say anything bad about you,” Kyra said slowly, “but I think you’re making a huge mistake. He’s really smart and sensitive and—oh, cripes.” It was dark in the bar, but Kyra recognized Zach coming toward them with the big smile he reserved only for Amy. When he smiled like that, Kyra thought the whole world seemed better.
“Hey, babe,” he said, and sat down next to Amy. He leaned over to give her a kiss, but she turned her face so he was forced to kiss her cheek. It was the first time she’d done this, so he had to be confused. Amy must have sensed that and thought the best thing would be to tell him right then. Or maybe she just wanted to get it over with. Whatever her reason, Kyra felt terrible that he had to hear this in a crowded bar, with Amy about to go on stage.
He didn’t say a word; he just stood up and headed toward the exit. Amy was crying, but Peanut came over to tell her it was time to play again, and he hugged her and told her it was for the best. “We’re musicians. We can’t get entangled with day giggers, even cool ones like Zach.”
Maybe he was joking about the stupid day giggers remark, but it infuriated Kyra. She left to find Zach. He was walking down Nichols Road toward the parking garage. She caught up with him right as he was putting the key in the door of his old yellow Jeep.
“She doesn’t deserve you,” she whispered, and then she impulsively reached out and folded him in her arms. When she felt his shoulders moving, she realized he was crying.
“I love her,” he stammered. “I can’t stand to see her do this.”
Kyra thought by “this” he meant Amy breaking up with him. But no. He said something about Amy being in trouble, and Kyra figured out that he was worried about her sister. That was why he was crying. Kyra admired him so much at that moment. He was such a good person. She offered to go to his apartment with him because she knew he really needed someone to talk to.
He lived in a basement apartment not far from Kyra and Amy’s place. Kyra had never been there, but Amy had told her it felt like a cave and she was right. It was almost as dark as the bar, with only tiny windows near the ceiling and wood paneling on every wall. Zach said it had been furnished with stuff the owners of the house above him didn’t want. A beige Formica dinette set with two metal chairs. A brown-and-gray striped couch that was sagging in the middle. A yellowing white ottoman. A three-legged desk with a stack of schoolbooks serving as the fourth leg. A mattress on the floor in the corner, with the sheets twisted up and the blanket kicked to the bottom.
“I’m planning to move somewhere better at the end of the summer,” he said. “I just need to work and save up a deposit.”
“It’s fine,” Kyra said. She sat down on the far end of the couch to avoid the quicksand of the middle sag. “Our apartment isn’t perfect, either. Don’t worry.”
Kyra and Amy’s apartment was furnished with used stuff, too, from a thrift store, but the difference was their place looked pretty. They’d bought wicker baskets and wicker laundry hampers to store their books and clothes and shoes, and they’d painted their junk furniture white,
to make the place look airy. They’d made their own curtains from cloud-blue sheets. They’d covered all the walls with the musician posters Amy loved, and the clocks Kyra was always picking up at garage sales. She had seventeen clocks at this point: the biggest, an old white one rimmed in black, three feet across, that used to hang in the front hallway of some elementary school; the smallest, no bigger than a quarter with cardboard hands, painted green and curved like fingernail cuttings. Her favorite present for her nineteenth birthday was a clock that Zach had found for her: a plastic raccoon with the time in his belly. On the hour, the raccoon’s eyes moved and his tail swayed back and forth: twelve sways for twelve o’clock, etc. He said it was corny but Kyra thought it was perfect and she’d hung it over by her cuckoos and her clock with the lion’s mane.
Zach mumbled something about how much more comfortable he’d always felt in Kyra and Amy’s apartment, which Kyra thought was an obvious reference to how comfortable he’d felt being with Amy. When he got out an unopened bottle of whiskey from the metal cabinet over his sink, she didn’t disapprove. Of course he needed a little something to drown his sorrows. His heart was broken.
After he sat down on the other end of the couch, he poured the whiskey into two Welch’s jelly glasses. “Last night, I told her she has to stop,” he said. “I told her if she didn’t agree to quit, I was going to have to do it. She begged me not to, but I said, ‘It’s for your own good.’ I really thought she understood that I was only trying to help.”
“Do what?” Kyra said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He took a gulp of his drink. “It’s the one thing she made me promise I wouldn’t do.” He looked up. “I have to do it though. I can’t think of anything else to try.”
Kyra heard loud footsteps coming from the ceiling and what sounded like marbles being dropped. She wondered how Zach could study here. He was a very good student. His professors had told him that if he kept up his grades, with his experience as a medic in the army, he was a shoo-in for medical school.