“It wasn’t your fault. That guy is…”
“Yeah.” She looked up into my eyes. “What about you? You still going to UNM?”
“I got a scholarship to UNM,” I said. “A little one.”
“That’s awesome. Maybe we’ll both go there.”
It sounded so good right then, going to UNM with Syd. We could go back to the way things were before. We could be together. I could even take up again my practice of avoiding Nick Allison on campus. Everything could go back to how it was.
“I also got into Brown,” I said.
Her mouth was a giant O. “Oh my god. Mir. That’s amazing.”
“I’m going there.” I must’ve just been waiting to say it to Syd, because when it came out of my mouth, I knew it was true. “It’s so screwed up. Nick got into Harvard. But he’s going to UNM.”
“Nick.” She shoved my knee. “You in love? Or whatever?”
I nodded and choked up. “I screwed it up. He’ll never speak to me again.”
A car pulled up. “Ah shit,” Syd said, sitting up. “That’s her.” She was suddenly nervous.
“It’s okay.” I reached out for her hand. “I want to see her.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Yeah.” We sat there on the couch, watching the door.
I heard the car door slam outside.
I turned to her. “Why did you come here, Syd?”
“I dunno,” she said, staring at the door. She turned to me. “I needed my mom.”
We heard the three steps. The door opened. Then she saw me. “Miranda! I wondered whose car that was!”
Patience looked old. That was the first thing I noticed. But she was the same. She opened her arms and I got up and went to her and we hugged. She was skin and bones and smelled like wine and cigarettes.
It was exactly how I remembered her smelling.
“Hi,” I said.
She wasn’t going to end the hug anytime soon. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s you. I’ve been telling Syd to call you. She finally called you.”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“Leave it alone, Mom,” Syd said from the sofa.
“Oh, Syd,” Patience said as she looked me up and down. Her eyes rested on my feet. “Look at those shoes.” She took my hand and stepped back as if to get a better look, taking me in as if I were wearing a ball gown or a wedding dress instead of running pants and an unwashed twenty-year-old T-shirt. “My goodness gracious.” She sighed. “You’re grown-up, Miranda. You’re an absolute beauty.”
Now. My father loved me. He went out of his way to show it. But he’d never have stepped back to look at me this way. He wouldn’t even know how. It was a pure mom move.
A sudden, strong wave of grief came over me as I stood there in the middle of Patience’s dark, empty living room. For the first time in so long, I missed my mother.
I didn’t just miss having a mother in general. I missed having mine. The one who was not standing there in front of me in this moment. The one who’d driven away one morning while I was at school, taking the universe with her.
“You okay, sweetie?” Patience said, looking concerned.
I nodded and turned to Syd and she stood up and came over and seemed to understand why I suddenly had tears in my eyes. She put her arms around me. “They’re all right shoes,” she said, and I laughed through my tears. Then Syd reached over and slipped the purse off Patience’s shoulder and hung it on a hook behind the door. She pointed to the couch and Patience obeyed, walking across the room and sitting down.
“How long are you staying?” Patience’s face was lit up like a child’s.
“I can’t stay.” I looked at Syd. “But maybe I can come back? For a visit. Maybe this summer, after graduation. Before I go to college.”
Syd frowned and nodded. “That’d be awesome.”
“You’re welcome any damn time, my girl,” Patience said. She sat back against the couch cushions and crossed her legs and looked at us in seeming awe. “Look at you two.”
Syd and I looked at each other. “Here,” Syd said, linking her arm with mine. “I’ll walk you to your car.” She turned back to Patience. “Did you eat the sandwich I left for you?”
“I don’t believe I did, no.” Patience hopped up.
“Eat it,” Syd said.
Patience ignored Syd. “Oh, Miranda.” She came over again and edged Syd out of the way and gave me another big, bony hug and a kiss on the cheek. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” I said. “I’ll see you again soon.”
“Okay,” she said. Then she leaned in and whispered, “Thank you. For everything you’ve done for Syd. She’s lucky to have you.”
Syd looked down at the carpet. “Okay, come on,” she said. “Wrap it up.” She swung open the front door and the late afternoon sunlight poured in. “And turn on the lights,” she said to Patience as she walked out and I followed.
“Okay,” Patience said, watching us go.
It wasn’t much of a walk to my car. I turned and hugged Syd and by the time we separated, I was crying again. “Okay,” I said, trying to get my shit together.
But then we just stood there. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. The idea that Syd could turn and walk back into that trailer was more painful than anything I could imagine.
“You should go,” she said. “I’ve gotta force that woman to eat a sandwich.”
“Yeah. My dad’s having a coronary in Española.”
“He came with you?”
“No. He told me to stop at a rest stop outside of Socorro this morning. And I told him I would. But then I kept going. So I guess he drove to my uncle Benny’s. And now he’s praying the rosary, waiting for me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You kept driving. That’s really cool. That took a lot of balls.”
I grabbed her hand again. “I need to know that we’re going to stay in touch. I can’t not know how you are.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know. I’ll call you. I promise. I’ll get a phone. You’ll be the first to know.”
I took a deep, shaky breath. “Can I come back? For real? To see you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’d be—” She teared up again and nodded. She stepped in and gave me a strong, fast hug, then pulled away. Then she turned back to the trailer and I watched her walk across the road and climb the rickety stairs. She looked back at me and waved. Then she opened the door and disappeared inside.
I saw the lights go on in the kitchen and I stood staring at the window for a moment, immobilized.
Then I got in the car and turned around and drove back down the weird, empty road, through the town and on toward the highway, toward my dad, who I missed right then as much as I’d ever missed anyone ever.
* * *
Before I got onto Route 84, I pulled off the road and looked at my phone. My dad and Letty had been texting all day, multiple times an hour. But Nick had only texted once, this morning, a few minutes after I’d driven away.
What’s going on?
After that, nothing.
I’d screwed up irreparably. I knew now for sure.
I sat in my car and tried to think of what I could do, what I could say. It felt like something someone else had done, kicking the door and walking away and driving off without a word. But it wasn’t someone else. It was me. There was no getting around that.
I’m sorry.
I tried to think of something else to say, but I couldn’t.
* * *
When I pulled onto the highway, the sun was low in the western sky, and blinding. It was like the universe had exploded against my windshield and I was driving into the huge, shimmery mess it’d left behind. It was perfect, really. It felt like I was driving into a golden convergence of all my crap, a swirling accumulation of unanswered questions and bad ideas, lost causes and mysteries and desires with no end, all those wounds, healed and unhealed and unhealable, the big griefs and the little griefs, the gre
at truths lying just outside the reach of my understanding, all those planets out there bursting with life my father would likely not live long enough to know for himself, and in the hot center of it all, the endlessly greedy heart inside my chest, consuming everything, the good and the bad, so dumb in this way, and yet so beautiful.
Nick and his tuxedo with the hole in the pocket and the father he wanted to keep secret. I didn’t want it to be happening.
And Syd, the most brilliant person I’d ever know, scrubbing the linoleum countertops in the tiny kitchen of her mother’s trailer, looking out onto a sea of onions.
The sick smell of wine and cigarettes that followed Patience everywhere, and would likely follow her right up until the end, until it consumed her entirely.
And my mother, the great blank space at the center of my life, forever leaning on a pew with her long black hair fallen into her face, somehow obscuring my own view of everything.
What was she like now? Allowing myself to wonder, even for a second, hurt like hell. My mother was a person in the world. She was real. And she was gone. My dad was right. There would never be a someday. Waiting for someday wasn’t an option for us. I suddenly understood why people used the word heartbreak. That was just how it felt: a deep fissure, opening, cracking open. And not just for me. For all of us. For Nick, for Syd, for my dad. It was just so heavy, all this crap we’d have to carry forward into our own lives. It was cumbersome and expensive. And yet still, we’d have to find a place for it. There was no other way.
You come to a point.
My dad.
I thought of my dad. His heart—his actual heart. It was a real thing, beating right now inside his chest, two hours away from me, totally the most normal thing in my life, the most reliable.
I’d promised to call him from the road.
I called.
It rang once, and he was there.
“Mir?”
I tried to sound like I wasn’t crying. “It’s me.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said.
The tears and the bright sun made it nearly impossible to see anything in front of me through the thick haze reflecting off my dirty windshield. I squinted through it until my eyes found the white lines on the highway.
“I’m on my way.”
20
It was sunset when I pulled up to Benny’s. The sky was a hard blue cut through by stacks of pink and orange clouds. Stepping out of the car, I had the feeling that if I could only get quiet enough, I’d be able to hear it.
I checked my phone again. Nick hadn’t written back. I thought of all those next times. I’d squandered them. I tried to find a place for this new pain, this brand-new baby grief, but there was nowhere to put it.
I’d just have to carry it.
The house looked exactly the same as it had the last time we’d been here a few Christmases ago, like a house in the middle of a major renovation. Only the goat population in the side yard had grown. When I closed my car door, the goats looked up, curious. Two had escaped their enclosure and threatened to approach, but after a moment they went back to eating the tall grass at the edge of the dirt road. I was glad to be out of the car. My feet were killing me.
My dad appeared, a tall, dark figure against the light pouring out of the front door. The screen door clapped shut behind him. He stood there with his hands on his hips. He looked tired and his hair was wet. He must’ve just taken a shower, which meant he hadn’t taken one this morning, when he got home from his run to find me gone. “Why are you wearing those shoes?” he asked.
I looked down at them. “It’s prom,” I said, as if that were a good enough answer. “You see this sunset?”
I didn’t know if my dad was planning on launching into a lecture about responsibility right then or if he intended to wait until later, when he had more time and perhaps access to a whiteboard.
He stood on the porch a moment, then came down the steps and walked over and stood beside me. We leaned against my car and looked at the sky. I’d been dreading having to face him, to explain myself, but now I was so glad to be standing with him. So relieved.
“You okay?” he asked after a while, still looking at the sky. His voice was tired.
“Yeah.” I swallowed hard and tried to keep the monsoon of tears inside my face. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said. “I know you are.” Remarkably, he didn’t say any more.
“Did you talk to Nick?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“He hasn’t called or texted or anything.”
“He went and talked to his mom. He didn’t know where you’d gone, Mir.”
“I screwed up,” I said. “But I needed to see her.”
“I know,” my dad said. He looked down. “Nick told me.”
“Everything? About Syd? What happened?”
My dad closed his eyes heavily. “He told me everything. Yes.” He scooted over and put his arm around my shoulders. “He told me last night after you’d gone to bed. We talked. He’s been struggling with this for a very long time. You know? Nick is— He’s been handed a lot, Miranda.”
I nodded.
“Did you see Syd’s mom?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She looked awful, but she was the same.”
“God. Poor Syd.” He shook his head. “It’s so hard to see someone you love hurting.” I didn’t know if he meant me seeing Syd, or Syd seeing Patience, but both applied, really. I guessed it applied to him seeing me, too. In fact, it probably just went on like that forever, until all the hurting people had been seen by all the other hurting people and everyone had been accounted for.
“I want to see Mom, Dad.” I was surprised I’d said it, and surprised it’d come out sounding true.
“Yeah?” He tried to smile away the threat of tears. It didn’t work.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I’d need you to be there. You know? But yes. I would.”
“Ah, baby.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You know that might not be possible.”
“Oh, I know. Yeah. I know that. But I just wanted to tell you. I want to. Even if it’s impossible.” I leaned into him. “Because I never wanted to. Before.”
“Well. Wanting is good. I’ve found it’s sometimes almost just good enough.” He swiped his tears away. “It’s worked for me a lot of years.” He kissed the top of my head.
“You loved her, too,” I said.
“Yes. I did. Very much.”
We watched the sky for a minute. “Why do you think she left?”
My dad pinned his eyes on the sky. He wasn’t angry I’d asked. He drew a great breath and then let it go. “Your mom was a seeker. She was always looking for something. I don’t know what. I think she got lost. She lost herself. We lost her.”
“It sucks so bad,” I said.
“Yes, it does.”
“Hey.” I looked up at him. “Did I ever tell you how Luciana told me we reminded her of Curious George and the Man with the Yellow Hat? You and me.”
He laughed. “No. But damn. That’s pretty good.”
“Kinda. I guess. I mean, I have to be George. Who’s a monkey.”
“And the Man with the Yellow Hat is an imbecile.”
“And your point is?”
He laughed again. “Hey, well, now can I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I know ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ came out in 1987.”
“Oh god,” I said. “Not again.”
“I don’t want you to go through life thinking your father is anything less than a walking compendium of useless music facts.”
“Okay,” I said.
“My catalog is complete.”
“Dude. I get it.”
“No. That song—it was, like, our song. Your mom’s and mine. When we were really young, in middle school. Her folks said it was the devil’s music. We must’ve listened to it a million times. Until we knew all the words and we could sing it straight through.”
I looked at him.
“What? There are a lot of words in that song.”
“You’re telling me your song was ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’?”
“Well. Okay. When you say it like that.”
“That is so screwed up. And actually that is the devil’s music, now that you mention it.” He laughed. “No wonder she joined a cult.” I blurted it, and then felt bad. He smacked the back of my head, but I think he did it lovingly.
The sky had changed. It was getting dark. Warm light poured out of the screen door. “We should get in,” my dad said. “Letty’s got enough food on for an army, and the kids are bouncing off the walls, waiting for you.”
“I should take my dress in and hang it up.”
“You have your dress, too?” my dad asked as I opened the door to the car and grabbed it.
“Don’t ask.” I hung the dress over my arm. While I was in there, I gave Jude one last look, then closed the Lives of the Saints and tossed it into my purse.
“What’s that?” my dad said.
“Oh.” Part of me didn’t want to show him. It was my book—it was my only connection to my mother. It was all I had, and I feared that if I showed it to him, he’d take it away. It’d disappear, like everything else. “It’s a book.”
“Lives of the Saints,” he said. He put out his hand.
“Yeah,” I said. I took the book from my purse and held it out to him.
“Damn it,” he said, taking it. “I’ve looked everywhere for this.”
“I want to keep it, okay?” I said. “It’s mine.”
“Of course.” He flipped through the pages. He turned the book sideways and read something my mother had scribbled in a margin. He shook his head and laughed. “Damn. Your mom was funny. She was … something else.”
He closed the book and handed it back to me. “It’s yours.”
I put it back in my purse.
We climbed the stairs up to the porch. “Oh, and hey. I googled your thingies.”
“You did?” He stopped and turned.
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