Inevitable and Only

by Lisa Rosinsky

  It was weird, sharing kitchen space with Dad, helping him make the same dishes we always made together for ACT. I didn’t feel like talking, so I put my headphones on and listened to music while I mashed sweet potatoes and chopped vegetables.

  And where was Elizabeth? Volunteering at a soup kitchen with a group from church.

  I told Raven about that the next afternoon, after the Woodburys arrived for our ACT celebration. Raven and I escaped up to my room while Renata and Ruby were still taking their coats off and unpacking the salads, desserts, and drinks they’d brought. They kept exclaiming over Elizabeth, how much she looked like Dad and Josh, and I just couldn’t stand it.

  “I mean, she acts like she’s the dictionary definition of the word ‘perfect.’ Seriously, going off to a soup kitchen while Mom and Dad and I were slaving away cooking and cleaning here? What’s she trying to prove?” I collapsed onto my bed. “I am so sick of sharing a room. So sick of her. And you know what? She’s not even as perfect as she pretends to be. Did you know she smokes?”

  Raven’s eyebrows shot up. “Elizabeth? No way.”

  “So like, what else don’t we know about her? What other secrets does she have? I mean, I feel like I can’t trust anyone in my family anymore.” I groaned. “Ugh, I shouldn’t have told you that. About Elizabeth smoking. I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  Raven shrugged. “So what? I’m your BFF. You’re supposed to tell me everything. Besides, she’s kicking my butt on debate team right now. And even more besides, I’m on your side, girl. She stole your family, then she stole your true love, even though he turned out to be a—”

  “Ready to go back downstairs?” I interrupted loudly, and Raven turned to see that Elizabeth had just walked into the room. Raven stretched her face into a big, fake grin and said, “Hi, Elizabeth!”

  Elizabeth said, “Ross wanted me to tell you that we’re all ready for dinner.” I wished I believed in a god, so I could pray that she hadn’t overheard us. It didn’t seem like she had. Still, Raven and I exchanged glances as we hurried down the stairs.

  Once we’d all gathered around the table, Ruby filled our glasses—Josh, Elizabeth, Raven, and I got sparkling cranberry-apple cider—and we toasted.

  “To ahimsa,” Ruby said, and we all echoed. As the eldest woman present, Ruby was supposed to give the toast, but this year she asked Dad to do it. “You have such a way with words, dear,” she told him.

  So Dad led us off, no particular Voice, just Serious Dad: “The word ahimsa, as you all know, is Sanskrit for nonviolence. To do no injury. To cause no harm. This Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving, we will meditate on this truth: that the violence we inflict on others is a manifestation of the violence within ourselves. Guilt, shame, disappointment—these are all forms of self-violence. When we cannot forgive ourselves, we inflict self-violence. And it is only by learning true unconditional love, compassion, and reconciliation for ourselves that we can learn to live truthfully and compassionately with others.”

  I snuck a peek at Mom, expecting her to be glaring daggers at Dad. She wasn’t. The expression on her face looked like the way I feel when I’m reminding myself that I don’t do crying. Which, like I said, is something I inherited from Mom in the first place, so she’s supposed to be the master of it.

  Huh. I hadn’t seen her look at Dad like that in a long, long time.

  “To paraphrase Gandhi as Keats would’ve put it,” Dad continued, “truth is ahimsa; and ahimsa, truth. Let us join hands and hold each other in the Light.”

  “Thank you, Ross,” murmured Ruby, and we all bowed our heads. The brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, carrot-beet fritters, vegan pumpkin lasagna, and apple pie were all keeping warm in the oven, and their scents mingled and swirled around the table, making my mouth water and my stomach rumble.

  After a few minutes of silence, someone usually spoke up. That’s how a Quaker prayer service works. This time, it was Mom.

  “Would you say grace for us before we eat, Elizabeth?” she asked, surprising everyone.

  Elizabeth looked especially startled. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to disrupt the—I mean, I don’t know how to say a Quaker grace. Or a, um, Sanskrit one.”

  “We like the one you usually say just fine,” Mom said, and I had to take another look at her face to make sure she was being sincere.

  So we all bowed our heads again, and Elizabeth began the words of her usual prayer. “Bless us, O Lord, and these your gifts—” She stopped, cleared her throat, started again. “Bless us, O Lord—” She broke off and I heard a chair scrape back from the table, and opened my eyes just in time to see her running out of the room.

  Everyone started talking at once. “What’s going on?” said Raven, and Renata said, “I don’t know, I think she went upstairs.”

  I pushed back my own chair and went up to our room.

  Elizabeth was curled up in a ball on her bed, her shoulders heaving. I hadn’t seen her cry since that first day we’d walked back from church together. Which, now that I thought about it, was kind of odd. I mean, she’d lost her mother. The only parent she’d ever known. Unless she was having private breakdowns with her guidance counselor, she must’ve been keeping everything incredibly corked up for the past few months.

  “Hey,” I said, sitting down next to her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She slapped at my hand, hard, shocking me.

  “Go away!” she said, and if my heart had skipped a beat a moment earlier when I’d walked into the room, now it threatened to jump right out of my throat. She sat up, her voice rising. “I don’t need you, any of you, your stupid forgiveness and self-love and blah blah blah. You don’t really believe in any of that, you don’t know what sacrifice is, what penance is, you don’t know anything you’re talking about.” Her voice broke off on a sob.

  “Elizabeth, what—”

  “And don’t think I don’t know you’re talking about me!” she screamed. “You and Raven, I’m not deaf! I don’t care what you think about me! I’m trying to live a good life—trying to do what’s right—it’s not easy, not easy when—” She broke off again, covering her face with her hands, crying so hard her whole body shook. Harsh, ugly, hacking sounds. I was afraid she was going to throw up.

  I realized I was holding my breath, as if by doing so I could erase all the things Raven and I had said about her earlier. “Elizabeth, I’m so sorry,” I started, but she cut me off.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I could barely understand what she was saying through the thick tears clogging her voice. “You just don’t get it.” And she picked up her pillow and threw it across the room as hard as she could. It hit the vanity table. Brushes, combs, bottles of perfume and nail polish went flying. She threw a book from her bedside table next. The pages fluttered as the book flew across the room, hitting the mirror, which cracked right down the middle. Then the mirror began to topple forward, as if in slow motion. I jumped up and caught it right before it hit the floor.

  “Get out!” she screamed, and I set the mirror down and started to back out of the room, just as Dad came rushing in.

  He took in the scene with one sweeping glance—the broken mirror, the book and pillow and bottles lying all over the floor. “Sweetie,” he said, “I’m here. Shhh. I’m here.” He went to her, where she was hunched on her bed, her face contorted and streaked with tears. She reached out for him and he wrapped his arms around her. “Shhhh,” he said, “shhhhh. Daddy’s here.”

  I crept slowly back downstairs.

  “What’s going on?” Mom said, meeting me at the bottom, her face pale.

  “I think they need some time,” I said. My ears were ringing, my voice sounded like it was coming from someone else.

  “Okay,” Mom said, nodding. “We’ll keep the food warm and … we’ll …”

  I waited. We looked at each other.

  “Josh!” she said, turning toward the kitchen. “What about some music?”

  Everyone at the table was looking up a
t the ceiling, their eyes wide. They must’ve heard the crashing from down here.

  Josh shook his head.

  “Come on,” Mom coaxed. “How about your Bach?” To Ruby, Renata, and Raven, she said, “Wait till you hear Josh’s Bach. He’s way above his grade level, playing like a high schooler. We’re very excited to see the results of his competition in a couple weeks …” As she went on, talking faster and faster, I saw Josh shrivel in his chair.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, “that reminds me.” I went to the front hallway and fished in my backpack, which I’d dropped by the door after school. “I got this for you the other day.” I handed her the print from the American Visionary Art Museum. I hadn’t realized I was going to give it to her, but in the moment, it felt right.

  Mom looked at the picture and her eyes softened. “Oh, mjia. Thank you. This is beautiful.”

  “It reminded me of you,” I mumbled. “You and Josh.” I didn’t say, And you and Dad.

  “Melissa!” Renata said brightly. “Why don’t you play us something?”

  Ruby clapped her hands. “Yes, yes! Brilliant idea. We haven’t heard you play in ages, Melissa.”

  “Oh, now,” Mom said. “That’s because I haven’t practiced in ages. I’m sure I’m as rusty as a bicycle left out in the rain.”

  Renata and Ruby laughed.

  “Mom, go ahead,” I said. “I’ll watch the food in the oven and make sure nothing burns.”

  “Well …” She propped up my print against the vase of flowers in the middle of the table and went into the living room. We heard her moving milk crates around, shuffling through her sheet music. “How about some Mozart?” she called.

  “Lovely!” said Ruby, and she and Renata, Raven, and Josh followed Mom into the living room. Mom warmed up with a few scales, then launched into a piece I remembered her playing a long time ago. She stumbled a few times, laughed, tried again a little slower. Soon she was picking up steam, and when she finished the Mozart she transitioned into something jazzier. I checked on the food and turned the oven temperature down, and then I went into the living room to listen, too.

  By the time Dad and Elizabeth came back down, Mom was tearing up and down the keyboard. Raven and I were sitting on the couch, but Renata and Ruby had pushed the coffee table to the wall and were taking turns dancing with Josh, who was flushed but seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Elizabeth’s face was puffy and swollen, and she didn’t make eye contact with anyone, but she appeared calmer. Dad stood still for a few moments, watching Mom from the bottom of the stairs, where she couldn’t see him. Then he walked to the piano and laid his hands gently on her shoulders. Mom jumped a little and laughed, tilting her face up to look at him.

  “I think we’re ready to eat, although I’m sorry to interrupt this delightful concert,” he said. “Would you do us the honor of more music after dinner?”

  Mom smiled at him—a real smile. “Seems my fingers still remember a thing or two.”

  “I’ll say,” he said, then bent and—tentatively, I thought—dropped a kiss on her forehead. She didn’t kiss him back, but she didn’t push him away, either.

  We filed into the kitchen and Dad served the food, and the rest of our Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving was pretty normal. As normal as an Anti-Colonial Thanksgiving can be, anyway. Afterward, Mom played more piano, and Dad danced with Ruby, Renata danced with Josh, and I danced with Raven. Elizabeth disappeared back upstairs, and Dad shook his head when I started to ask if someone should go check on her. “She needs some alone time,” he said quietly. But he didn’t scold me and Raven for talking about Elizabeth behind her back, so I had to assume that she hadn’t told him that part.

  Mom played the piano for hours that night, even after the Woodburys left, and Dad sat on the living room couch and listened. The way she kept looking over at him, the way he smiled sometimes when she’d change to a new tune, as if it were an inside joke between them, some old memory—it felt like a private thing, somehow, so I left them alone. I didn’t want to go to my room either, with Elizabeth up there. So I took my laptop into the kitchen and watched a movie with my new headphones.

  Elizabeth stayed upstairs for the rest of the evening, and when I finally went to bed that night, she was already asleep. Or pretending to be asleep. So I couldn’t try to apologize again.

  I woke up early the next morning, hearing noises down in the kitchen. A delicious smell wafted up the stairs. I shoved my feet into my slippers and wandered downstairs to investigate. I noticed that there were no blankets or pillows on the couch, as there had been for the past few months—since Elizabeth had arrived. What was going on?

  Dad was making waffles and eggs and fakin’ bacon, and Mom was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, peeling oranges and arranging the sections on a plate. They were talking quietly and laughing.

  “Morning, Cadie!” said Mom, when she saw me standing by the table.

  Dad turned from the stove and held his spatula aloft. I recognized the telltale signs: Dramatic Monologue Voice. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Acadia is the sun.”

  “It’s too early for Romeo and Juliet,” I muttered. “What are you guys doing up so early?”

  “It’s nearly eight o’clock,” Mom said, “and anyway, I always wake up early when I go to bed late. Don’t know why.” She had dark circles under her eyes, but she was smiling.

  “We have something important to talk to you about,” Dad added, in his normal voice. “We’ll wait till everyone’s down.” He refused to tell me any more details, so I went upstairs and shook Josh awake, then knocked on the door of my and Elizabeth’s room. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. When parents had been feuding as long as ours had, an “important talk” wasn’t usually a good thing—I had enough friends with divorced parents to know that. And yet, it was odd that Mom seemed so happy. Maybe she was just relieved to finally have an end in sight? Or—could I even dare to hope that something had changed?

  And was that even what I wanted? It was a crappy thing to think, but: Even if Mom somehow managed to forgive Dad … how would that change anything between him and me? What if everyone else figured out how to move on, and I got left behind?

  We all gathered at the table and Dad doled out generous portions to everyone. “Melissa,” he said, “should we make our announcement now? Or after we eat?”

  “Now!” I interrupted. “You can’t leave us in suspense.”

  “Very well,” said Mom, setting down her fork. “Dad and I had a long talk last night.” She wasn’t smiling now. My stomach twisted.

  “We’ve had a lot of changes in this house over the past few months,” she continued. “Big changes. And we’re all so very happy that you’re part of our family now, Elizabeth.” Elizabeth was looking down at her plate, and Mom reached over to squeeze her hand. Elizabeth looked up, startled.

  Dad continued. “But Mom and I have been drifting away from each other, and it’s hurting everyone in this family. So, we’ve decided that we need to take some time—” Here it comes, I thought, and I slid my hands under my legs to keep them from shaking. “—some time,” Dad was saying, “to heal together. We’re going on a vacation.”

  I sat on my hands, frozen. “So you’re not getting divorced?” I burst out.

  Mom reached over to put her other hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry that things have been rough recently. It’s been difficult for all of us, and I haven’t made it any easier. Dad and I have been together a long time, and we know we can fix things. We just need a chance to start over again.”

  Elizabeth looked like she was about to cry. “It’s all my fault,” she said, so quietly I barely heard her. “I’m so sorry. I know I’ve ruined everything—”

  “Elizabeth!” Dad cut her off. “Don’t say that, it’s not true.”

  “We love you, and now we can’t imagine this family without you, mija,” Mom said to Elizabeth. My heart squeezed in a fierce and unexpected burst of pride for
Mom. That was the first time I’d heard her call Elizabeth daughter. “Ross and I were having—relationship difficulties—long before you came to live with us,” she continued. “And it’s high time we dealt with that. I haven’t been myself recently. In many years, in fact.” She turned to Josh. “Mijo, Dad showed me that I’ve been pushing you too hard. And I’m so sorry. Can you forgive me?”

  Josh said, “I’m fine, Mom.”

  “No,” said Mom, “you’re not. I’m going to stop observing your lessons. You and Olga can prepare for this competition better on your own, without my interference, while we’re on vacation.”

  Josh’s eyes widened.

  “Wait,” I said, “when are you leaving?”

  “Next week,” said Mom. “Right after your play.”

  “But—that’s the week before Josh’s competition!”

  “Exactly. He doesn’t need me around, breathing down his neck. I’ve already called the Woodburys. They’d be delighted to host you—if that’s all right with all of you, of course.”

  Elizabeth nodded. “So, where will you be going?” she asked.

  Mom and Dad beamed at each other.

  “A long time ago, we set a goal for ourselves to visit all the major national parks someday,” Dad said, “and at this point, we’re running very far behind. So, we’re going to Yosemite!”

  My hand spasmed and knocked over my orange juice.

  “Cadie!” said Mom, jumping up to grab paper towels. “What is it? What did we say?”

  “Um,” I said, trying to cover my rising panic. Mom deserves to get Dad back. This is a good thing. Stop being selfish, Acadia Rose Greenfield. I pointed to Josh, then to myself. “Joshua Tree. Acadia Rose. Yosemite?”

  Mom and Dad burst out laughing.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said, smiling around the table at all of us, “I think our family is complete just the way it is.”

  I forced myself to smile back, but inside, I wasn’t so sure. Was I just supposed to pretend that this would fix everything that had gone wrong? I didn’t know what I wanted from Dad anymore. But this didn’t seem like enough.