by Bec Linder
* * *
The next few days were a blur. I had taken a day off work for the drive up to Willard and back, but I still felt too guilty about my trip to San Francisco to take any additional time. And so, for several days in a row, I woke up far too early after far too little sleep and spent the morning and early afternoon running around to various government offices before I left for work. My mother was sleeping on my couch and making vague noises about how she didn’t want to be any trouble, which meant I had to spend time reassuring her that she was no trouble at all and that I was happy to have her stay with me—for a very short time, until she was able to get her own apartment.
She understood. We’d had that argument years ago, about how she couldn’t stay with me long-term. That was the first time I successfully set any boundaries with her, and it had been excruciating. She cried and told me I was a terrible, ungrateful daughter. But I had held fast, somehow, and now it wasn’t even a question, beyond a few half-hearted mentions about how nice it would be for us to live together for a while.
“I’m sure it would be nice, Mom,” I said, filling the kettle with water to make coffee, taking care to keep my voice light and even. “But that isn’t going to happen. We’ll find you a place of your own.”
“Maybe I’ll get a dog to keep me company,” she said, a little wistful.
What a terrible idea. I would have to nip that one in the bud. She couldn’t even take care of herself, much less a helpless animal. “Not right now,” I said firmly. “We can talk about it again in six months.”
I didn’t like it, having to be the adult in my relationship with my mother. I had memories of her, from my childhood, as a capable, confident, ambitious woman. But life had changed her, and now she was hesitant, uncertain. Always looking to me for approval or advice.
That was just how things were, now.
Max found her a place in a private group home for women recovering from substance abuse. He called me when I was at work on Monday evening, and I went into the alley out back to talk to him, my phone pressed close against my ear. “It seems really nice,” he said. “The director gave me a tour, and I spoke with some of the residents. Most of them said they would rather be living on their own, but that it’s not bad for a group home. They said it’s helping them stay sober. It’s in a big house up by Columbia. We could go look at it tomorrow, if you’d like.”
I could have cried with gratitude. Here I was, frantically submitting applications, waiting on hold to speak with my mother’s parole officer, and Max had solved my biggest problem. I didn’t even know he had been looking. “Max,” I said.
“I don’t know how your mother will feel about the other residents,” he said. A pause. “A lot of rich ladies. I don’t know if that’s going to be a problem…”
“She can hold her own,” I said, a little offended on my mother’s behalf. It wasn’t like rich people were an entirely different species.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry if that was out of line. I like your mother. I don’t want to send her somewhere that she’ll hate.”
“She’ll hate it no matter what,” I said. “But it’ll be good for her. Max. Thank you.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, but he sounded pleased.
We went the next morning, while my mother was meeting with her parole officer. The home was everything that Max had said: bright, orderly, well-run. We met with the program director, a kind and gregarious middle-aged woman, who gave me a tour of the house and showed me the room where my mother would stay. It was a private room, with a small attached bathroom and a full-size bed, and a window that overlooked the back garden. It was nice. Homey. I could see my mother living there.
The director took us downstairs to the living room and introduced me to the women there. Many of the residents had left for their jobs already, but a few of them were still hanging around, drinking coffee and watching the news. I spoke with three of the women, and they all gave positive reviews of the home. One of them told me that this was her fifth group home, and that group homes in general sucked, but this one sucked the least.
“Sounds like a glowing recommendation,” I said to her.
She grinned at me. “What else did you expect? I like having my own apartment and walking around in my underwear whenever I feel like it. But the State of New York thinks I need supervision.”
Max had been hanging back through all of this, not saying much, letting me do all of the talking. When I was finished, I went over to him and touched his elbow. He looked down at me, a question on his face.
“You were right,” I said. “It’s nice. My mother’s been in group homes before, but they were all state-run facilities, and they weren’t… Well, she wasn’t happy at any of them. But I think she might be happy here.”
“Or if not happy, then at least not particularly disgruntled,” Max said. “I’m glad. Beth, I hope you’ll let me pay for this.”
I grimaced. That was the problem: bright, orderly, well-run group homes came with a price tag that made me blanch. “I can afford it,” I said. And I could—as long as I worked seven days a week and ate a lot of ramen.
Max gave me a skeptical look. “I know you’re not a charity case. I want to do this for you. The money is nothing to me. Okay? It’s selfish on my part, really. I’m happier when you aren’t so stressed out about your mom. This is a present for myself. You want to keep me happy, don’t you?”
I pushed at his chest, laughing and shaking my head. “You’re impossible. Fine. If you want to make it rain, go ahead. Just… don’t tell my mom. Her pride has been wounded enough already. I’ll tell her I was able to get some sort of grant through the state.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, and we shook on it.
My mother moved into the home two days later. She had one suitcase full of clothes and a cardboard box with toiletries, a few framed photographs, a lamp. All of her worldly belongings. I carried the suitcase, and Max carried the box, and my mother followed behind us with her purse slung over her shoulder. We climbed the staircase to her room on the third floor. I glanced behind me at one point, foolishly checking to see if she was still there, and saw her looking all around, a little nervous, a little hopeful.
It would work out. It would be fine.
Maybe Max was right. Maybe this time would be different.
We went into the room. I set the suitcase on the floor at the foot of the bed. My mother entered behind us, peering around, touching her fingers to the bedspread, running her palm along the windowsill. She went into the bathroom, and I heard the sink faucet turn on. I exchanged a glance with Max. If she didn’t like it, I wasn’t sure what our Plan B was.
She came back into view and stood in the doorway of the bathroom. I couldn’t read her expression.
I held my breath.
“This is a lovely room,” she said. “And a lovely house. I like the director. I like that woman we met in the stairwell. I think I’ll do very well here.”
I exhaled. “I’m really glad, Mom.”
“Thank you both for finding this place for me,” she said. “Beth, I wish your grandmother were here to see the woman you’ve become. She would be so proud of you.”
“Oh, Mom.” I felt my eyes start watering, and raised one hand to cover my mouth. She came over and put her arms around me. It was a little awkward, still, hugging her, but good. I was glad to be doing it.
I snuck a glance at Max. He was covering his own mouth, but he was doing it to hide a smile. That jerk.
We left my mom there to settle in. I promised I would be back tomorrow to check on her. We walked out of the home onto the sidewalk and I felt lightweight, free. My mother was in good hands, and I could stop worrying about her, maybe. Or at least stop worrying quite so much.
And I had Max to thank for all of it.
I slipped my hand into his. He looked down at me, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m so… This is usually really hard, and you’ve made it so much easier for me, th
is time.”
He smiled, and bent to kiss me. There was a shadow in his eyes that I didn’t understand. “Anything for you, my Bee.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Max
The letter I wrote to Beth, the letter that Renzo never delivered, was scribbled on a piece of paper torn out of a spiral notebook I stole from a drugstore two days after I learned about my sister’s accident.
Rosemary was twelve at the time: old enough to walk home from school by herself. Her school was only ten blocks from home. Perfectly safe for a smart twelve-year-old on the Upper East Side.
The man who hit her was talking on his cell phone. He said he didn’t see her. He was, my mother told me later, distraught.
I didn’t know any of that at the time. It was January, and I was holed up in a coffee shop, reading a newspaper left by a previous customer while I waited for Renzo and Beth to finish taking showers at the shelter. The article was a brief paragraph tucked away at the back of the business section. Noted businessman’s daughter in coma after car accident. Recovery uncertain. Rosemary—
The background noise of the coffee shop faded, masked by the sudden roaring in my ears.
That couldn’t be right.
Rosemary Langdon, 12, daughter of—
Stop.
Rosemary Langdon—
I folded the newspaper, very carefully, and set it on the counter beside me. Rosemary. I hadn’t seen her in six months. And now she was—
God.
A coma. Those were bad, I knew. Sometimes people didn’t wake up. Sometimes they woke up, but not for years. Sometimes they woke up and didn’t remember anything and had completely different personalities.
My parents would be devastated. I imagined my mother crying in Rosemary’s empty bedroom. And my father, going to work like nothing was wrong.
The bagel I had just eaten sat in my stomach like wet cement. I had to go home.
I sat there until Beth and Renzo came in, unwinding their scarves and laughing, snowflakes caught in their hair. They were excited about something. Beth sat beside me and started telling me a story, her features animated, her hands sketching out abstract shapes. I nodded and made appropriate noises.
I would be leaving her soon.
It was cold as hell that day, and the snow kept falling harder and harder. We panhandled for a while, but the bad weather kept people off the streets, and there wasn’t enough foot traffic to make our efforts worthwhile. Finally, Renzo articulated what we were all thinking. He stood up, hitched his backpack over his shoulder, and said, “Fuck this. I’m freezing my ass off, and we’ve only made two dollars in the last hour. I’m going home.”
“Thank God,” Beth said, climbing to her feet. “I didn’t want to be the one to say it.”
We went back to our squat, walking into the wind. I thought of Rosemary lying in her hospital bed, warm at least, and out of the snow.
Beth slipped her hand into my coat pocket. “What’s wrong?”
I forced a smile. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Just cold.”
“Okay,” she said, clearly dubious.
My gut churned. How could I lie to her?
How could I leave her?
We slept together that night, zipped together in our sleeping bags, her breath making a hot, damp patch in the hollow of my throat. She twitched in her sleep from time to time, and murmured in a dream. I lay awake, my arms around her, my face buried in her hair. It was clear to me that I couldn’t stay. I had to go home and be with my family. But the thought of leaving Beth behind kept me awake all night.
As I saw it, I had two options. One: leave without saying anything, go home to my family, never see Beth again, and think about her for the rest of my life. Or two: tell her the truth, and risk losing her anyway.
I didn’t like either of those choices.
I lay on my back, with Beth curled beside me, and watched my breath form a white cloud in the air above me. Mold stained the pitted ceiling overhead. At home, I had my own bedroom and as much food as I could eat. And Beth and Renzo would be here, sleeping in this abandoned building, cold and hungry. Self-hatred had me by the throat. Whatever I did, no matter what decision I made, someone would be hurt. Someone would feel betrayed.
It was hard to toss and turn in a sleeping bag, but I gave it a good shot. The room filled with gray light as dawn approached. I had to come clean. I was tired of lying. The guilt had been eating at me for months. In the end, I decided that I would take the coward’s way out.
That was why I wrote the letter. Shame, and cowardice.
My abusive foster father was, of course, fictional. I had lied to Renzo and Beth about my past. In the face of their real suffering, my reasons for running away were laughable at best. I was too ashamed to admit to them that my father was one of the richest men in the country, that my childhood had been happy, safe, and filled with every privilege that came with money and power. I didn’t know how to explain to them that I had run away because of—what? Ennui? Teenage rebellion? Or, closer to the truth: that I had realized how lucky I was, for no reason, and was still too immature to know how to handle my senseless good fortune. I felt guilty every time our housekeeper made me breakfast. Why did she have to work, and I never would? I thought I could solve the problem by leaving everything behind.
Pretty stupid. I was just a kid.
Morning came. Beth stirred against me, stretched her arms, yawned. I stroked her cheek, and she opened her eyes and look at me. “Max,” she said.
She said that every morning, in just the same way, like she was a little surprised to see me, or was reminding herself of my name.
I loved her.
The thought came to me fully formed, bubbling up from some primordial mental depth. This was no childish infatuation. She was the other half of me.
I thought I would die from the pain in my chest.
“Max, what’s wrong?” She frowned at me, and worked one hand free of the sleeping bag to touch my face. “You were being so strange yesterday, and now you’re acting even stranger. Are you feeling okay?”
She had given me an out, and I latched onto it. “Maybe not,” I said. “My throat sort of hurts. I might be getting a cold.”
“We’ll stop by the shelter today and see if they have any cold medicine,” she said. “I need to go by anyway and see if they have a spot open. If you’re sick, maybe we can convince them to switch our names.”
She was at the top of the waiting list, and if there was a free bed, I intended to make her take it.
“Too much talking,” Renzo moaned from his sleeping bag.
Beth and I smiled at each other. Renzo wasn’t exactly a morning person.
“Let’s go get coffee,” she said. “We can bring it back for him. He’ll be surprised.”
We were down to our last five dollars, but there was a bodega nearby that would give us free coffee as long as we didn’t go in more than once a week or so. We put our coats on and went down to the street. The snow had stopped, and the salt on the sidewalk crunched beneath our feet. I held Beth’s hand, even though her mittens were so comically large that I couldn’t feel her individual fingers.
“I used to get so excited about the snow when I was a kid,” she said. “School was never canceled, but I always hoped it would be. Once in a while my grandmother would let me stay home anyway, and we would go to the park and build a snowman.”
My heart clenched. It was a palpable sensation, like a fist closing. I wanted to know all of her stories, every single one of her childhood memories, but it was too late now. Our time was up. “We could build a snowman today.”
She shrugged. “I’m too cold. It’s hard to have fun when you’re only warm when you’re asleep.”
Another clench. How could I leave her here, freezing through a northeast winter, and go home to central heating and hot water? I had to. I couldn’t take her with me.
She went directly to the shelter from the bodega, and I went back to the squat with Renzo’s coffee. He
was still in his sleeping bag. There was no reason to get up. We didn’t have anything to do, no pressing engagements. I hadn’t expected the stark boredom of homelessness. We spent a lot of time sitting around waiting for something to happen.
But he sat up when I gave him his coffee, and took a careful sip. “Still hot,” he said.
“I wouldn’t bring you lukewarm coffee,” I said. “Bee went to the shelter, to see if they’ve got a bed for her.”
“We’re making her go, right?” he asked. “If she gets one.”
I nodded. “She won’t want to.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, fuck that.”
My feelings exactly. I drained my coffee cup and climbed back into my sleeping bag. It was too cold to do anything else.
I dozed. Some time later, I heard footsteps coming down the hallway. It was Beth, back from the shelter. She came into the room and stood between Renzo and me, hands on her hips. “You’re both still in bed?”
Renzo had a mummy bag that I had stolen for him, and with the hood of it pulled over his head, the only part of him that was visible was his grumpy face. “It’s cold,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re out of bed.”
“Important business,” Beth said. “Max, I got a bed at the shelter, so you’re going.”
I sat up, still wrapped in my sleeping bag. “Absolutely not.”
“Why does he get to go?” Renzo protested. “Why not me?”
“Because he’s getting sick,” Beth said.
Renzo gave me a skeptical look. “He doesn’t look sick to me. Anyway, Bee, don’t be stupid. Max is going to stay here with me, and you’re going to spend the next month sleeping indoors where it’s warm. And if you try to argue, we’re just going to pretend that we don’t hear you.”
She frowned. “If you think I’m going to run off to the shelter and leave you two to freeze—”
“La la la,” Renzo said loudly, sticking his fingers in his ears. “I can’t hear you!”
“Renzo,” she said. “Come on. You’re acting like a child.”
“Is somebody talking?” Renzo hollered. “I can’t hear anything!”