“No, you will not.”
I put on my best commanding voice. “And you, Sophie, will not try to get off the toilet without help today. Curt told me to make you respect your limits.”
She holds my elbows to steady herself again. “Keep your eyes on my face, put me back together, and flush without looking.”
This time, I obey.
After we wash her hands, Sophie leads me back to the bed, where I lift her legs onto the mattress and tuck the blanket around them. In an eighty-degree room.
“It’s just a bad day, is all,” she says. “Tomorrow will be better.”
I certainly hope so. “Right. Last week you were walking down the block. Tomorrow will be better.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Sophie nods. “Tell your mother she has something new to be proud of.”
No matter how hard I bite my lip, I can’t stave off the tears. Sophie looks at me, expectantly, but I can’t speak. Saltwater rolls down my face and my mouth is brackish with fresh blood and tears.
“Graham?”
I’m supposed to be taking care of Sophie. I was supposed to be taking care of my mom.
“Graham, what is it, son?”
Anything louder than a whisper would make me start wailing. “My mom died.”
Sophie tilts her chin downward and slowly pats the edge of her mattress. When I shake my head, she nods and pats it again. She can’t quite reach me, but I want her to. I want her to know. I want my mother. And in the absence of my mother, I want a mother. Someone to tell me I’m not alone. To lambaste my foolish decisions. A mother to promise there will be an end to this Burlington fiasco.
Instead, sitting beside Sophie, I get a mother’s love. She strokes my back and says the right things—my mother loved me, she will always be with me, her love and her pride live in me—and Sophie knows. She knows not to ask, not to push. She knows how raw I feel, and she doesn’t pretend anything will ever make it better.
And, by some divine miracle, Sophie doesn’t tousle my hair. She just rubs my back until I run out of tears. And she doesn’t chastise me for snotting on my sleeve.
Because mothers know when you are so low you just can’t keep it together anymore.
Sophie is having difficulty keeping her eyes open. The room shifts, and again Sophie is the child. She claims she won’t need anything else before Curt comes home and excuses me for the afternoon.
I would prefer to stay here, with the understanding of a mother, even though she isn’t mine. I could close my eyes and, just for a minute, imagine that her hand is Mom’s, rubbing slow circles around my back. Mom has done that a thousand times. Every time I vomited. Every time I was hurting from Gary. Every time we were the only thing each of us had in this world.
I would prefer to pretend with Sophie, but she’s firm.
I close the door behind me, and I’m alone again.
THIRTY-ONE
Tuesday is another day off. Curt is stumbling through some vintage Mario game while I half-concentrate on my book. Someone bangs on our front door at about ten in the morning.
Curt focuses on Mario. “S’open!”
“I’m so sorry,” Kat says about a thousand times, tripping over herself as she enters. Same short shorts. Another Sharpie shirt. Hair still amazing.
Curt hits pause. “I told you on the phone it was fine.”
“I know, but I wanted to see Sophie and apologize to her, too. Is she up?”
“Probably awake in bed.”
Kat disappears behind Sophie’s door and I dive back into my book. I’m down to the last two pages when Kat rejoins us in the living room.
“Thanks, Curt. I needed to see her. I’m headed to the library now. Do either of you need anything?”
Without looking away from the TV, Curt says, “Take that one with you. No library card, and he goes through books like water.”
My face feels hot, as if reading is an embarrassing hobby.
Kat sizes me up, literally, from head to toe. “Do you have a bike?”
“Mine’s in the shed. Combination is 2-7-1-3. Go.” Curt’s Mario flies through the clouds.
Kat opens the shed, dusts off the bike, tests and inflates the tires, and adjusts the seat.
“I can do that, you know.”
She keeps working. “Working helps my stress level. I’m so embarrassed. I have never missed a day of work. I’m never late. After yesterday, Sophie will always think I’m unreliable.”
“I doubt that.”
Kat points her bike toward the street and yells over her shoulder, “Stay close.”
She’s fast. Like, race fast. At the very end of the street, she levels her pedals and stands on them, shaking her head in the wind. This is summer.
Burlington is zipping past me, and I feel alive again. I could just as well be chasing Jill on our bikes, though we haven’t ridden together since middle school.
Outside the library, Kat locks our bikes to a dull gray rack.
Fifteen minutes later, I have my typical stack of assorted nonfiction and she’s checked out a pile of journals. I’m ready to mount my bike and head back, but Kat has other ideas.
“Want ice cream? Ben & Jerry’s is a five-minute walk, tops.”
Kat leads me down College Street. We could be in any small town in the world, just two friends, hanging out.
“So, you can tell me, Kat. Was it true? You had a family emergency?”
Kat stares at me, mouth agape. “Why would I make up something like that?”
“I dunno. Maybe so you didn’t have to help Sophie use the bathroom?”
“Curt said you stayed with her. How was that for you?”
How can I put this nicely? “I don’t think I could do your job, that’s for sure. It seems like she needs more help than just you.”
“We get by.”
A pastel display of sweets beckons from a cupcake shop. I want to stop, but Kat’s heart is set on ice cream. We turn on to Church Street, a brick thoroughfare that allows only pedestrian traffic. Shops and bistros line the sidewalks. Mom would have loved window shopping here. To her, envisioning the perfect occasion for a dress, or salivating over a menu, felt like a real afternoon out.
Kat leads me into Ben & Jerry’s and treats me to a scoop of Cherry Garcia. Outside, we settle on the brick sidewalk, our backs to the building.
“So, why you? How did you wind up taking care of a woman old enough to be your grandmother?”
She licks the drips of her Chunky Monkey in a way that is not entirely unsexy. “Sophie and I are friends. When she and Curt decided she needed help, I volunteered.”
“Yeah, but why? I mean, how did it start? Your family’s in New York, right?”
“They’re in New York now. My parents moved to Burlington when I was sixteen. Sophie’s old house was in our backyard, and I think she liked having a girl around. We bonded. Back then, Curt basically saw me as a nuisance. Now I help with his mom.”
“And your parents?”
“They get tired of cities pretty quickly. They left Burlington in the middle of my senior year.”
“And you stayed here.”
Kat nods. “I was accepted to the university, and finally—finally!—I knew I could be in the same place for more than a year. Sophie let me stay with her until school was out. Then I got a job and rented a room.”
“And when did you start working for Sophie?”
She glares at me. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m trying to figure you out. I mean—I’m trying to get to know you.”
Kat guffaws. “There’s not much to know. I go to school a lot. I study a lot. I live with two people I hardly see. Working with Sophie pays the bills.”
“Not your parents?”
Another laugh. “Definitely not them. Basically, they think I’m an unambitious mess. It’s going to take me six years to finish school and they think I should take on a load of debt and push through in four.”
“You’re more patient than I am. I’m taking my AP credits to Tulane and hope to get out in three.”
“I’m just enjoying the experience.” Kat smacks her arm. “I hate these damned mosquitoes.”
I assume mosquitoes are a regular fixture of Burlington summers. Kat doesn’t appreciate my pointing that out.
“They’re always awful, but this year they’re especially bad.”
We’re sort of in the way of lots of people, but Kat acts like she owns the curb. Shoppers walk around us to get wherever they’re going, and she just keeps talking. We tend to our ice cream, discussing loads of other things, most of which are trivial. I marvel at the fact that I’ve never eaten Ben & Jerry’s in a cone. In Ohio (or, you know, Georgia), we just buy the pints.
Kat says, “I never really thought about that. I guess it’s a luxury.”
“Thanks for the scoop, by the way.”
Kat’s whole face changes when she smiles. When she’s not focused intently on whatever it is she’s always focused intently on, Kat is radiant.
“No problem,” she says. “Thanks for the conversation. Most of my casual chitchat is with Sophie, so this is a nice change of pace.”
The change of pace is welcome. I bite through my cone and consider how our respective lives have merged into this moment. “Kat, your job is really hard.”
“Some days. But, you know? I don’t mind. And I sort of owe her.”
“How so?”
Kat stares at the brick facade across the street. “My parents are weird. I was this sort of, I dunno, commodity to them? They were always trying to craft this life that took them all over the place and when we moved here, my life slowed down. Sophie’s house, the old house, was like a sanctuary to me. I mean, it wasn’t peaceful. There were always a lot of people around, but it felt like a nest. Everything was always in the same place—furniture that had been there for ages, always comfort food in the cupboards, that kind of thing—and there was a routine. I really needed that. A sanctuary. Nevermind. It’s hard to understand.”
An inner tug-of-war erupts between my desperation to tell Kat I understand completely and my deeper desperation to keep my ugly childhood secret.
“I understand. Jill’s house is like that for me. It’s like breathing space. A homey place away from my family.”
Something clouds Kat’s expression.
Without divulging any of my family’s secrets, I describe Jill’s parents and brothers, and explain that I’ve always been like their fourth child. “I have breakfast there every Saturday. And, well, basically, whenever I can get away from my own house.”
Kat nods. “Does Jill understand you?”
“God, yes. I mean, she gets why I need to leave my own house and we just—we connect on a really deep level.”
Kat analyzes the asphalt. “That’s nice.”
“Sounds like we both are very lucky.”
She shrugs. “I guess. At this point, Sophie just thinks she needs to save me from a life of abandonment.”
“That sucks. Any time someone wants to save you, that sucks.”
Kat stares at me, wide-eyed. “Yes! As if I need saving!”
When she stands, I stand, too. She chucks a sticky napkin in the trash and we wander toward the library.
I ask her about college.
“There’s less bullshit than high school, you know?” Kat wants confirmation from me, but I’m not sure which bullshit she’s referring to. “Okay, so we read Hardy senior year in English lit. I don’t understand why Hardy can’t just make his characters long for sex instead of talking about feeding a woman strawberries. It’s bullshit. And poetry is worse.”
I couldn’t disagree with the poetry bit, but there’s something about imagery that appeals to me. Surely Kat, who doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve by any means, understands that sometimes a message should be muted. Or veiled.
“Now I can study whatever I want. It’s awesome.”
“And you’re studying microeconomics and American lit.”
“Yeah. Nursing, eventually, but I have to get some core courses out of the way first.”
“Why nursing?”
Kat definitely heard me, but pretends she didn’t.
“Kat?”
“It’s going to sound ridiculous.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She’s quiet. “I feel like people don’t see me, you know? One of the worst things we can do to people is not see them. Sophie thinks I need to be saved and Curt used to think I was a nuisance. People at school think I’m too busy for friendship or, worse, they see me as a threat to them, academically. No one really sees me.”
That makes no sense.
Kat unlocks her bike. “I know I’m going to have a small life, and that’s fine, but I want to really see people. I want people to know they matter to me, at least. I want them to feel seen and heard. Who gets to touch lives like that? Social workers, which would depress me to no end. Teachers, which would probably drive me mad. And nurses. Maybe a geriatric nurse.”
I get it. “Hence your tolerance for Sophie.”
“Hence my enjoyment of Sophie. She’s really quite fascinating. She had a great life a long time ago, and she changed it completely to raise four boys almost singlehandedly. And she did the bravest thing ever in divorcing Big Curt. When MS started taking over her body, she didn’t run back to that marriage. This is a strong woman, and hardly anyone notices.”
I certainly hadn’t.
“So, in this world where she often is tethered to her house or, worse, her own bed, I’m still interested in her stories. I still want her opinion. I notice her. I value her.”
Kat is proud of this. She also is proud of her T-shirts. Today’s Sharpie art is a caricature of Gene Kelly, who I am told was Kat’s very first crush. She lights up when she talks about him, even now.
And she loves her hair. Every girl I know covets someone else’s locks, but not Kat. She calls it her best feature.
“Other than my feet,” she says. “I have great feet.”
I can’t tell. Feet aren’t really my thing.
At the bike rack, Kat’s shorts don’t cover a millimeter of leg when she straddles her bike. Her legs are great the way Gretchen’s are great: lean and strong.
“I feel like taking the afternoon off from studying,” Kat says. “Where should we go?”
I’m not lugging around all my crap today, so it’s high time to go exploring. I have nothing to show for my eighteen days in Burlington. “Treat me like a tourist. Show me all your best stuff.”
“You’re on,” she says, and we’re racing again.
Hanging out with Kat is exactly like hanging out with Jill … except she’s not Jill.
To the beach, around campus, to the south end of the bike path and then the north, we see it all. A seedling sprouts in my mind: I can do this. Kat and Curt could be my people—my real friends, not just temporary stand-ins for the ones I’m missing. We could hang out and eat at the deli and maybe the university would accept me and I could live here. And what is four more winters, really? Burlington has everything I need: pick-up soccer, a free-ish library, thousands of potential new friends.
Burlington also has a science center.
“Let’s go on my next day off,” Kat says.
“When’s that?”
“Sunday?”
Sunday is definitely a day for friends. “Sounds like a plan.”
Over burgers at a little cafe, I pepper Kat with questions about her classes and how she spends her free time.
“What free time?”
That’s obviously rhetorical, so I veer us back to college-related conversation.
Two hours later, Kat leads me back to Curt’s house.
“See you in the morning,” she says.
After she speeds away, I change into my Chucks and go out for a jog. A few miles later, my legs start complaining about how I’ve treated them today, but I don’t care. I can breathe again. I feel like I’m back.
THIRTY-TWO
Thanks to Curt’s computer, I haven’t been to The Byte for days. And thanks to Curt, I have a little extra money and a whole lunch break to catch up with news from Laurel Woods.
The Byte is just the same.
Jill’s Instagram is bare, of course. In two days, it will be full of recaps from swim camp. I love debriefing her after camp. I’ve always secretly—or not so secretly—envied Jill’s weeks at camp. It sounds like one huge party, with grueling practices sprinkled between. Being a counselor is probably even better: no practices required.
Internet news is slow today. Gretchen is away in New York until tomorrow. Tucker doesn’t mention Jill at all, which is weird. He does share news about Grant, though: Doctors expect Grant to recover fully. Now let’s hope OSU coaches think he’s been punished enough.
Oh man. If Grant can’t play next year, he’ll be a wreck.
I need to head back to the deli in five minutes. Nothing from Gretchen, but a new one from Gary is staring me in the face: I Forgive You.
He forgives me? This I have to see. It won’t change anything, but I have to know.
I once read about a spy who could read letters through sealed envelopes. I wish I could hold a candle behind the monitor and see what he wrote without seeing what he wrote.
Sitting on this side of fear—where I feel like he can’t find me, and I know I have been smart about staying hidden—I just want him to disappear. Cease to exist.
I am so over this. There are some things in life you can’t take back: things you say, the way you make people feel, your youth when you’re sixty-five and can’t get out of bed by yourself. Gary can’t take back what he did to Mom. I can’t take back abandoning Gretchen in Jill’s kitchen.
But he forgives me? My fingertips brush the keyboard, flirting with the letters.
It’s kind of disturbing that he’s emailing me at all. Nothing will eclipse the fear I felt after he murdered Mom. Even an empty threat can’t make things worse. If he can’t track me through this email, there is no point in not opening it. Morbid curiosity lurks at my fingertips. I open the message.
A little pop-up box reads This image has been downloaded in HTML, but I can’t find the image. Instead, Gary has written pages of bullshit justifying everything from slapping me to murdering Mom. His lengthy exposition blames everyone—his parents, his old bosses and colleagues, our neighbors, my mother, and me—for everything he’s ever done. When I get to his forgiveness—for my horrid, irresponsible behavior, including scaring off Renee—I stop reading and log off.
Life Before Page 17