by Amy Hatvany
I nodded, pressing my hand over my mouth. Bree was the only person I’d told about how much Mama cried, how many things I had to do to help take care of her. I knew she was depressed, even when she tried to hide it behind bright smiles and chirpy laughter. Maybe she hadn’t been sick at all. Maybe she just didn’t want to be alive anymore. Maybe Max and I were just too much work for her to handle and when she found out that Grace and Dad were engaged, it finally convinced her he’d never come back to her. Maybe she just gave up. And maybe it was my fault because I told her she’d be fine.
I dropped my hand back to my side, not wanting to think about any of this. I couldn’t stand to consider that I’d failed Mama—that she’d been asking me for help all along and I let her down. I wanted to relieve the sharp, biting pain in my chest. I’d always known it was possible my dad would want to marry Grace, but it was always distant, in the future, like the idea that I’d someday go to college or get married myself. I thought about everything nice Grace had done since we met her, suddenly convinced she was manipulating me the entire time, trying to impress my dad so they could get engaged. She didn’t really like being with us. I’d seen the tension etched across her face since Mama died. I knew that having us around wasn’t part of her plan. We were a burden, a means of getting what she really wanted all to herself—my dad. I tried to remember the last time he had come into my room on a Saturday morning to tickle me awake and came up empty. He stayed in bed with Grace now, and Max and I got up on our own and poured ourselves bowls of cereal. I didn’t understand how he could choose her over us—how anything could be more important to him than just being my dad.
“If Grace thinks I’m going to call her ‘Mom,’ she’s out of her mind,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“But you do kind of like her, right?” Bree asked. Her words were halting and unsure. I could tell she was trying not to make me mad.
“No,” I said again, unable to hide my annoyance. “I put up with her. There’s a big difference.” This wasn’t exactly true. I’d been feeling grateful to have her around. Yet every time I moved a step closer to Grace, I could almost feel Mama’s hands on me, trying to hold me back from the woman Dad loved.
Bree sighed. “Okay. If you say so.”
She didn’t believe me. She didn’t understand that Dad brought Grace around so he didn’t have to be there. So he could spend all his time at the restaurant and leave us all alone . . . again. “How would you feel if your dad married the Blond Hose Beast?” I asked her. “If you had to call her your mom?”
Bree snorted. “Well, first of all, I would never call her that, even if she tried to make me. Which she wouldn’t, because she hates the idea of being old enough to be anyone’s mother.”
“Yeah, but—” I began, only to have her cut me off.
“And second, you can’t even begin to compare Grace against the girls my dad falls in lust with. He just keeps replacing my mom with a younger, trashier version of her.” Talking about her parents that way, Bree’s voice was almost as bitter as mine had been just a moment before.
I didn’t argue with her, knowing she was just repeating the same words she’d heard her mother say about her father’s many girlfriends. “I just don’t want them to get married,” I said quietly. “I just want my life to go back to the way it used to be.”
Bree sighed. “But you know that it can’t . . . right?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I looked around the living room, which was illuminated only by the muted gray light from the front window. It didn’t look any different than it had when Grace and I came to get Mama’s cake recipe—Dad hadn’t had time to hire movers to pack up the rest of our stuff. It didn’t seem to matter now, why I’d come here today. What mattered was the fact that every grown-up in my life seemed to lie to me. What mattered was that outside of Bree, I didn’t think there was anyone left I could possibly trust.
Kelli
My baby is dead. In the months that followed her brief stay at the hospital, Kelli turned this phrase over and over in her mind. The memory of her baby’s thin cry pierced through her lungs, making it feel impossible to breathe. They never let her see Rebecca. She never got to say good-bye.
None of the doctors or other nurses talked with her about what happened; when they came into Kelli’s room at the hospital, her parents spoke with them in low tones, shielding Kelli from having to deal with any of it. Her father brought more paperwork for Kelli to sign. She scribbled her name and didn’t ask why.
“This is all for the best,” Francine said when she wheeled Kelli out to her parents’ car. “It’s hard, but you’ll get over it, I promise.”
Get over it? Kelli thought. Is she insane? She didn’t respond, not knowing what to say to a person who believed that a baby’s death could ever be for the best.
Once home, Kelli immediately entombed herself in her bedroom. She rolled around beneath the covers, forcing herself to sleep the days away. She felt too broken and vacant to do anything else.
“You need to eat,” her mother said one evening, about two months after they’d brought Kelli back. She held a tray with chicken soup and saltine crackers.
“No,” Kelli said, the word muffled by her pillow. Her blond hair was greasy and had begun to fall out in thick clumps. Her body was wasting away. When she looked in the mirror, she could see the xylophone of her rib cage and the sharp knobs of her joints pushing against her skin. She drank water, barely nibbled at the food her mother brought her, and slept. That was all she could manage.
Her mother would not be deterred. She set the tray on the dresser and came over to sit on Kelli’s bed. “Everything will be okay. You’ll forget soon. You can start over.”
“Not without her,” Kelli said. “Not without Rebecca.”
“You have to let her go,” her mother answered. “She wasn’t meant to stay with you. You made a mistake. A horrible mistake. And God is giving you another chance.”
Kelli rolled to look at her mother, blinking at the sudden influx of light. “I hate God,” she said. “I hate Him.”
Her mother looked as though Kelli had slapped her. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before speaking again. “You’re angry. I understand that. I’ve been angry with Him, too.”
This got Kelli’s attention. “You have?”
Her mother nodded. “When I believed I couldn’t get pregnant. Being a mother is all I ever wanted, and when it didn’t happen for so many years, I blamed God. I cried and yelled and turned my back on Him.” She gave Kelli a small smile. “It wasn’t until I accepted the fact that I wasn’t in charge of what happened in my life that He gave me you.” She reached out and touched Kelli’s cheek. “We can’t fathom what God’s plans are for us, we simply have to accept them and do the best we can. You need to go back to school. You need to get your life back on the right path.”
“I’m not going back there.” Kelli shook her head. She didn’t care what her mother said about God; she wanted nothing to do with Him. She also couldn’t imagine facing Jason or Nancy, or anyone else for that matter. She felt a thousand years old, distant from them in a way that could never be lessened. She’d lost her child, and there was no way any of the kids she knew would understand that. Her parents had strictly forbidden her from telling anyone where she’d been or what had happened to her. The weight of this secret was like a stone inside her. It felt malignant.
“You need your diploma,” her mother said.
“Then I’ll get a GED,” Kelli answered. “I’ll find a job and take whatever tests I need to take. I’m not going back to school.”
A few weeks later, when Kelli still wouldn’t leave her bedroom for more than a brief trip to the bathroom, her parents relented and registered Kelli for the necessary classes at the local community college. “Only if you eat something,” her father told her. “Only if you get out of bed every day. This nonsense has gone on long enough.”
Nonsense? Kelli thought. My baby dying is nonsense? “What if I had die
d when I was born?” she asked him, surprised by her brazenness. “How would you feel?”
He held her gaze for a moment, and she looked for a small crack in his usually impenetrable exterior, but he didn’t look away, didn’t drop his eyes to the floor, ashamed. “I would accept it as God’s will,” he said. “I’d find a way to move on.”
Something shut down inside her as he spoke those words, something that severed any feelings she might have had left for him. She blamed her parents for her baby’s death. She blamed them for sending her away, for letting the shame they felt be more important than their grandchild. Even if Rebecca hadn’t died, they would have tried to make Kelli give her up for adoption. Kelli would never understand why they seemed to hate her so much. That they hated her was the only explanation for how they treated her.
It was in that moment that she began to plan how to flee her parents’ world, and it was the thought of running away that fueled her to finally get out of bed. She began to eat more; she went to her general education classes at the college, relishing the anonymity the large campus gave her. When she turned sixteen, she applied for a cashier’s position at the local pizza place, and after a few months, the manager promoted her to waiting on tables.
On her first day as a server, a pretty girl named Serena trained Kelli. Serena took one look at Kelli’s black pants and white button-down blouse and said, “Oh, honey. You won’t make one red cent wearing that getup. These college boys want to think they might get lucky. The more you make them think that, the more beer they buy and the bigger the tips you get.” She winked, reached over to pull Kelli’s blouse out of her pants, and tied it into a knot over her belly button. Then she unbuttoned the top until her bra was almost exposed. “There. Much better. You need a short black skirt, too, okay? With knee-high boots. Trust me.”
Kelli took her advice and was stunned by the amount of money she made. She decided that her beauty was her only real commodity. No one could blame her for using it. She was asked out constantly, and after a while, she began to say yes, giving in to her need to be held, to feel like someone loved her even if it was only for the night.
“You’re using protection, aren’t you?” Serena asked her one evening, after she’d watched Kelli give a handsome boy with black hair her phone number. Kelli blushed but nodded. She insisted on condoms—she’d learned that much, at least.
Her life fell into a simple routine. She went to class in the mornings, studied all afternoon at the library, then worked five nights a week. “Will you join us for church?” her mother asked every Sunday morning. She and her parents moved around each other in wide circles; Kelli was home only to sleep and shower. She kept her grades high, her room clean, and her laundry done, determined to avoid their finding any more fault with her than they already had.
“No, thank you,” Kelli always responded, and her mother didn’t force the issue, perhaps understanding it was a battle she’d already lost.
One Friday night after she’d been home almost a year, Kelli was in the middle of setting a large pepperoni with olives in front of a customer when a noisy group of teenagers came in. She saw Nancy before Nancy saw her. Her old friend hadn’t changed—her jeans were too tight and her black hair was teased a little too much. Kelli scanned the other faces, worried Jason might be among them, but then she realized he’d likely graduated. As she approached their table, Nancy looked up and widened her brown eyes. “Hey,” she said, shifting around in her chair.
“Hey,” Kelli said, giving her a small, uncomfortable smile.
“You work here now, huh?” Nancy asked. Kelli nodded, and Nancy looked around, as though assessing the restaurant’s value. “That’s cool. How was the school you went to?” The tone of her voice made Kelli uncomfortable, as though Nancy might know the real reason her parents had sent her away.
“It was good,” Kelli said. “It sort of inspired me to get my GED at the college instead of coming back to high school. I can’t wait to get away from this town.” She paused, watching her friend bob her head. “How are you?”
“Great. I’m great.” Nancy looked around to her other friends—people Kelli vaguely recognized but had a hard time naming. Part of her wished she could just sit down with them, feel like a normal teenager again. But when Nancy didn’t introduce her, Kelli grabbed her notepad and pen, understanding that she was not going to be invited back into this fold. She just didn’t fit.
“You guys ready to order?” she said, silently pinning her thoughts on the day she’d turn eighteen. The day she’d finally be able to make her escape.
Grace
“So, we’re on track for finishing up next year’s budget,” I told my staff members, standing in front of them in the conference room for our weekly meeting. “But we need to talk about beefing up our crisis line coverage over the holidays, because we all know violent incidents tend to increase this time of year.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “Anything else we should be thinking about doing?”
“Is there any way we can afford having a full-time staffer at the ERs?” Helen, one of my counselors, asked. “Maybe work with the major hospitals and see if they’d be amenable to it? It just seems like by the time we get there, the victim has disappeared and it’s too late to help them.”
I considered this, drumming my fingers on the table in front of me. “I don’t think we could hire anyone new right now, but that is a great idea. They have social workers, but they’re typically spread too thin to handle every domestic violence case that comes through the door. Maybe we could have you guys rotate one day a week there, working remotely?” Helen and several other counselors nodded, so I glanced over to Tanya. “Can you set up a few meetings for me with the managing nurses at all the major ERs? If I can get them to help me campaign, we’ll have better luck with the hospital board letting us in.” She nodded and made a few notes on the pad in front of her.
“All right, then,” I said. “What else? More ideas?” Before anyone could respond, my cell phone rang. A quick glance at the screen told me it was the kids’ school, and I immediately felt my pulse quicken, thinking maybe one of them was sick and I’d have to cut my day off even earlier than usual. Grabbing the phone, I apologized to everyone for the interruption and gestured for Tanya to continue the meeting without me. “This is Grace McAllister,” I said, then reluctantly left the room.
* * *
“I don’t care what the reason was,” I said to Ava as we pulled into the driveway of our house later that evening after taking Max to basketball and picking her up at the school. “You don’t skip class. Ever. If you’re upset, you go to the office and talk to the counselor. Not Bree, okay?” Victor hadn’t answered his cell, so the school had called me. Ava’s explanation to her teachers about crying in the bathroom with Bree seemed plausible, but the pout on Ava’s face now reeked more of annoyance at getting caught than grief over her mother’s death.
“I wish you’d stop telling me what to do,” Ava said under her breath.
“Excuse me?” I said. “What was that?”
She snapped her head around to face me. “I said, I wish you’d stop telling me what to do.”
I took a deep breath, trying to keep my cool but failing miserably. “Well, I wish you’d stop being so disrespectful. It’s totally unacceptable and I’m a little bit sick of it.” What the hell was going on with her? I wondered if her increasing bad attitude was grief-driven or hormonal, but at that point, I really didn’t care.
“Whatever,” she muttered as she flung open the car door and stomped inside, carrying her backpack over one shoulder.
“She’s cranky, huh, Grace?” Max said, piping up from the backseat with what I was sure he thought was helpful commentary.
“I think so, buddy,” I said with a heavy sigh. I dreaded the thought of telling Victor that she’d skipped class. Though I assumed he’d believe that she’d been in the bathroom, crying; I wasn’t so sure this was true. But voicing my suspicions probably wasn’t the best idea. Even though I k
new in my gut that we should have, Victor and I hadn’t yet talked about what happened in Max’s room. A week after the blowup, we were still walking a bit on eggshells with each other, exceedingly polite and seemingly going through the motions of our relationship. We slept in the same bed, but we didn’t make love; we talked logistics about drop-offs and pickups with the kids, and how things were going at the restaurant with Spencer’s reduced capacity.
Over lunch earlier in the week, I’d talked over my reluctance to confront Victor with Sam, but he’d been less than sympathetic. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure you need to stop talking with me about it and talk with your fiancé. What are you so afraid of?”
I shrugged and threw my gaze to the salad in front of me. “I’m not sure. Maybe I should just try to rise above it, you know? It just feels so immature, telling him I need him to choose me over his kids.”
Sam sighed. “You’re not asking him to do that. You’re asking him to show a united front. To let the kids know that you two are a cohesive unit, not something they can divide and conquer.”
“That’s a good way to put it,” I mused. “Hey. I have an idea. Why don’t you just talk with Victor for me?”
“No, thank you,” Sam said sweetly as he twirled the fettuccine he’d ordered on his fork before taking a bite. He waved his utensil in the air like a conductor in front of an orchestra. “This kind of bullshit is just another reason why Wade and I won’t be adopting.”
“I didn’t know you’d even talked about it.”
“We talked about not doing it. Same thing, I suppose. He’s too old, anyway.” I laughed. Wade was only thirty-two, eight years older than my brother, five years younger than me. But things were apparently different in “gay years,” as Sam once explained to me. “You have to add another six months for every year he’s been alive. So thirty-two is really forty-eight.”