“Jealous? You think I’m jealous? Did you hear anything I just said? You never asked me what I wanted for Mom. You never ever asked me anything about her. I’ve hated the baby because Mom died and he lived, but he’ll never...” I start to laugh then because he is so wrong, we are all so wrong and broken and I am not laughing so much as crying, I push away from the table and I am standing in the kitchen, I am looking at Dan and it is all pouring out, all of it, everything I’ve kept inside is pouring out.
“He’ll never see her. Never, and when’s the last time you hugged me? Do you know, Dan? Because I do. It was the morning Mom died. After she died, you were there and I was there but it was like we didn’t know each other. You made your choices and we came back here and that was it. You go through the motions, you take me to see Mom and talk about how worried you are. But I saw you in that nursery. You were thinking about the baby. You whispered Mom’s name. You were thinking about her. But me...you’ve said you won’t get rid of me, but that’s all. And I get it, I do. You’ve got a baby coming, and I was just part of the deal with Mom. You can forget me, and you did because when she died, you didn’t talk to me about anything. You never even looked at me.”
“Emma...” Dan’s face is pale. “She’d just died and it wasn’t supposed to happen. We had plans, so many plans, and then I saw her die, I saw my wife die and I didn’t—Emma, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you, but I do love you. Those aren’t just words.”
“But they are,” I say. “They’re just words and that’s all they are and I lost two people when Mom died. I lost her and I lost you. Your son will get you and I—” I break off and look at my hands, see how they are knotted together.
“I loved him,” I say. “I wanted a brother, I liked picking out nursery stuff, I even wanted Mom to be happier about it, I wanted her to be like us. But then she died and everything became about him. You get up every morning for him, not me, and I...the thing is, I did believe in those words once. In I love you. I believed that you did, and that you were—you were my dad. But you stopped being that the day Mom died. You just stopped everything.”
I am so tired now. I have said everything inside me, and Dan is just standing there staring at me, and this is what broken is.
I’m so tired. I just want to sleep. I just want to forget, even if it’s only for a while, that I saw what I did last night.
That I have told Dan everything and my reply has been silence.
I walk up to my room. I look back once and Dan is still standing in the kitchen. He is still silent.
I don’t bother to lock my door when I get to my room. There’s no need. There never was. I just wanted to pretend that Dan wanted to come and get me. That I was the one keeping him out when the truth is he was gone from the moment I got to the hospital and said, “What happened?” and Dan said, “Your mother,” like he didn’t know me.
The whole time, when we sat there and he talked to the doctor and made his choices, during all those terrible hours when she was first gone, he never once looked at me.
40
I wake up to the sun shining in my eyes and it’s not like earlier, it’s not pretty. I sit up and look at the clock.
It’s almost time for Dan and me to be at the hospital. I take a shower, not bothering to wash my hair, and get dressed. As I walk out of my room, I take the padlock off and put it on my dresser. I don’t need it.
I just wanted to.
I go downstairs knowing what I will see. I will see a house that is a house and not a home, and I will be alone because Dan and I have said everything and I’m sure he doesn’t want to pretend anymore.
The time for pretending ended the second I called him on it.
I take a deep breath.
Everything is out now, everything about what we used to be and what we are now, and I finally get it. I see that this is what Caleb’s life is like.
Caleb is alone like I am and he can’t fix it but he understands and together we are—together, we are less alone. We are friends. We are—
I think of the noise he made last night when I kissed him, of the warmth of his skin.
We are something that could be.
I will go to the hospital on my own. I’ll see Caleb. I...will I even be allowed to see Mom? I don’t think Dan would stop that. He’s not cruel, he’s just gone.
Except he isn’t.
He is in the kitchen, still standing where I left him.
“Dan?” I say, and he turns to me, looks at me like he used to, like he did back when I looked at him and saw part of my family.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry,” and then he is hugging me and I don’t stiffen. I think I will but I don’t because I know Dan’s hugs and I have missed them. I have missed him.
Words can lie but hugs can’t. You know when they are real and this is real and Dan is here and that means he didn’t leave me, that he’s not going to send me away to Mom’s parents or to some boarding school or just kick me out.
It means the Dan I knew is here. That I still matter to him.
“I got lost,” he says. “When Lisa died, what you said is true. I’ve been pretending with you and she was my heart, my world, and she would hate me for how I’ve acted.” He pulls back and looks at me. “I won’t leave you again, I swear.”
I look at him. I want to believe him. I want to believe him more than anything because everything seems good now but I believed him before too.
“I—all right,” he says when I am silent. “I’ll prove it. I’ll be here. And I’m going to keep being here. But there is one thing you have to know, that you have to hear. I’m not sorry for the choices I made about your mother and brother. I do know it’s what she would have wanted. Do you hear me? I know.”
“No. You believe.”
I wait for the withdrawal. The sigh, the words of concern that mean nothing, and the hurt look that will show just that. Just hurt. Nothing past it. Nothing for me.
“Okay, Emma, you have your beliefs and they...they hurt me,” he says. “You make it seem like I never loved your mother, and that I somehow chose the baby over her. Do you really believe I don’t love your mother? That I wouldn’t do anything to have her back?”
I look at him.
“No,” I say, and my voice comes out rusty, the word squeezed from me. “I know you loved her. I just—why did she go like that? Why couldn’t she have at least said goodbye?”
And then I cry. Dan hugs me again like he used to, like he’s really here. Like I matter again. And it’s not perfect; it’ll never be like it was, there will always be the time I needed him and he wasn’t there, and I still can’t believe Mom would have ever chosen this silent, frozen life that isn’t one. I will always know the fear Dan saw in her wasn’t the fear that really was.
I hug him back, though. I don’t know if I will ever be able to live with how he shut me out when Mom died, but I do know that Mom loved him. That I loved him.
I know Mom still loves him, because that’s who she was.
I don’t love him like I did before, but I also know I’ve missed him even though I wouldn’t admit it. I know I’ve missed how things were.
And I believe he’s missed that too. I believe he’s missed me.
I believe he wants me around and that makes me feel something I haven’t felt in a while.
It makes me feel safe.
41
Mom was not a good storyteller. When I was little, her fairy tales always got mixed up and forever ended with “And then some things happened and everyone lived happily ever after. The end.”
“What things?” I’d say and she’d say, “Fairy-tale things,” and I started asking for stories from books, and I’m not sure who was more relieved by that, me or her.
Dan was always trying to get her to tell better stories. He
would say, “And then what happened?” when they first started going out, and even after they got married, even after it was obvious Mom would say, “Well, then we had a meeting and there’s some stuff that has to be worked out,” he kept trying.
And then Mom got involved in this big deal at work and suddenly she was full of stories. Unfortunately, they were all about forms and meetings and phone calls, and for weeks Dan and I nodded as she said, “And then I said, ‘Tyler, you find that spreadsheet—that’s the C one, not the B one—and get me those figures so I can fill out that 5673’ and then I took a break and ate an apple and it was one of those awful ones that look great but are all mushy and—”
She kept talking and Dan and I looked at each other and sighed.
“Hey,” Mom said. “I saw that. Is my story that boring?”
“Nope,” Dan and I said at the same time and Mom said, “You two,” and shook her head. “I feel like I’m on the outside here, the person who can’t be in the ‘tells good stories’ group.”
Dan and I both said, “No, they’re great!”—again at the same time—and Mom laughed and said, “Liars. But I love you both anyway. And this deal is important. The bit about the apple—that, well, okay that not so much.”
Dan laughed and I said, “You can’t be on the outside.”
“You haven’t seen you two making faces at my stories,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, you can’t be on the outside because you’re everything,” and Mom smiled at me and said, “Emma, a family is more than one person. That’s why it’s a family.”
And she was right.
But then again, she usually was.
I can still remember her, pregnant, sitting and watching TV while rubbing her stomach. I actually thought that was normal. But then I realized it wasn’t.
I realized too late that she knew our family would change forever.
But now, things might be okay.
She’d like that.
42
When Dan and I get to the hospital, I head for the waiting room.
Dan says, “Thank you,” and smiles at me.
I smile back, and who knew a day could be like this, so bad and so good? But then last night was the same too, so awful and then Caleb.
Caleb, who I’m going to see.
But when I step into the waiting room, I see Olivia.
I freeze, and Olivia sees it, I know she does, and it isn’t that I don’t want to see her or that I wish she was Caleb (although, a small, horrible part of me wishes she was), but that Olivia isn’t—
She isn’t supposed to be here.
Olivia is my link to the me from before. To how things used to be, and although everything has changed, the one thing that hasn’t is us.
“You don’t want to see me,” she says and she’s hurt, I know how her voice wobbles when she’s upset, when something’s happened that she doesn’t want.
“No, it’s not—I just didn’t think I’d see you,” I say, but she gets up to leave, and I see she’s done something to her hair after all, put in little braids along the front but they look nice, they have little bows at the bottom and I know Olivia probably wants them to be ironic but they look cute.
“Stop,” I say, and she sniffs once and then does, turning her face to the side like she does when she’s trying not to cry and this is the thing about her being here: she is so healthy. She is so normal. She doesn’t belong here and this is what I didn’t want. I didn’t want what was left of who I was to disappear.
“When you’re here I can’t—you’re my link to before.”
“Before? Oh. You mean before your mom died.”
I nod, and she says, “That’s why you’re always asking me about me, right? Why you only tell me a little about what’s going on with you?”
“You know what’s going on. My mother’s dead and there’s a baby.”
“But you don’t want me here.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that—”
“I’m not Caleb Harrison?”
“What?”
“I’m not stupid,” she says. “I’ve seen you two and now everyone is talking about how you’re hanging out with Caleb and you haven’t said hardly anything to me about it even though I’ve asked and asked.”
“Olivia—”
“I get it, you’re talking to him and you’re looking at him and he’s looking at you and maybe he gets stuff I don’t because of his sister, but do you know how it feels to think that your best friend would rather talk to some guy she barely knows than you? And that I have to hear about it from everyone else! I mean, Anthony tried to talk to me about it. Anthony!”
“I’m sorry, so sorry, but it’s not like that. You do know everything, I swear. I just wanted part of my life to not be about this.” I gesture at the waiting room.
“So when you and Caleb talk, you just talk about your mom?”
She’s got me and she knows it, but then, Olivia knows me.
“More than just Mom.”
Her eyes fill with tears but she blinks twice, hard. “You weren’t in school today. What happened?”
“I saw Dan in the nursery last night. He was putting together a crib and I just—I had to get out of there.”
“I know. He called.” Olivia folds her arms across her chest, her little braids dancing as she does. “You went out? Caleb?”
“Okay, yes, I saw Caleb last night.”
“Don’t you want to know how I know? Don’t you think he was talking about it in school today?”
“No. I know he wouldn’t do that. You know because you know me.”
“And you know Caleb Harrison well enough to know what he would or wouldn’t say? Are you forgetting this is the guy who drove his dad’s car into the lake because he could?”
“No, I know what he’s done and yes, I know him,” I say, and Olivia sighs.
“All right,” she mutters. “I guess you do, because he didn’t say anything about you and him to anyone. You really weren’t worried?” I shake my head and she sits down. “Why didn’t you come see me last night?”
I sit next to her. “Because you really are the only person in my life who’s been there for everything. For before Mom died. For after. And you haven’t changed. Everything else has, but you haven’t, and I don’t want...” I swallow. “I don’t want you to change. I don’t want us to change.”
“But we have. Emma, we’re still best friends, but when your mom died, everything did change. You’ve changed. For starters, you’re for sure failing all your classes. And then there’s Caleb. Don’t you think I’ve seen all of that? What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?”
“Olivia,” I say helplessly, and she puts an arm around me.
“You’re my best friend,” she says. “That hasn’t changed. And I get that you need to not talk about your mom and your brother all the time and it’s not awful for me to talk about Roger. But you don’t have to go to Caleb Harrison to talk about stuff. You never would have done that—”
“Before. I know,” I say. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? That was before, not now. And he—I like him.”
“You do remember that he’s really messed up, right?”
“Who isn’t?” I say, and she looks at me for a moment.
“I want to say something really smart right now, but I got nothing. I hate that.”
“You don’t need to say something smart. You put up with me. You’re here. You’ve always been here.”
“Not here, though.”
“No,” I say. “But now you are. What’s it like?”
“Scary. Sad. You do this every day?”
“Yeah,” I say, and rest my head on her shoulder. “I like your braids.”
“We shouldn’t talk about m
e.”
“Why not? I want it to be you and me, not just me. You remind me that life is still out there.”
“And Caleb?”
I sit up and look at my hands. “He reminds me of that too, but it’s different with him.”
“Because he wasn’t there before. And because you think he’s hot.”
“I...yeah,” I mutter, scooching down in my chair and she scooches down too, fiddling with the end of one of her braids.
“So you and Caleb?”
“It’s—”
“Complicated?”
I nod.
“It’s always complicated,” Olivia says. “Roger’s ex-girlfriend is calling him. It’s not like what you’re dealing with but—” She picks at one of her braids. “And now I’m talking about myself again.”
“And you came here. You’re amazing, you know. Roger’s ex doesn’t stand a chance.”
“Amazing?” she says, and I grin at her.
“No, you can’t do anything else to your hair.”
“Should I leave?”
“No,” I say. “Stay.”
So she does, until Dan comes and it’s time for me to go see Mom.
43
Dan stops me before I go in to see Mom. He says, “Emma?” and I hear Something’s wrong in his voice.
My stomach twists. I know there is more hurt to come, but I don’t know what kind. I sag against the wall and look at him. I wish Caleb was here. I’m glad I talked to Olivia, I am, but Caleb knows what this is like.
“Is it Mom?” I whisper, and Dan shakes his head but slowly, slowly.
“She’s—well, the machines are working fine,” he says. “Some toxins have built up in her bloodstream but the doctor says that’s normal.”
He looks at me. “I hate how the doctor talks about her. It’s like once I made the choice to—once it was made, Lisa is...everyone here talks about her like she’s here and I catch myself thinking that I need to tell her something or...” He trails off.
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