* * *
“Got nothing but Karen’s stuff for the time being,” Sadie explains, rooting through a dresser in the room where she’s staying. A guest room, with a pullout bed heaped in quilts that I think somebody actually sewed. The walls are yellow. Happy yellow. Sadie sits next to me on the bed, half-dressed in flannel pj pants and a wireless bra, a sweater lumped on her lap. She doesn’t seem to have the strength to put it on.
“Em said she was going to the post office right away.”
Sadie seems satisfied by that. The sweater stinks. Old-lady-lavender. I can’t stand it. Lurching up, I seize her towel off the dresser. But where to put it? Too much carpet and wood.
Sadie gestures for me to drop it on the floor, so I do, trying not to stare at her ribs. The belly button charm I didn’t know she had.
She picks at the black polish on her toes. “So, it’s good to see you. You look well.”
“I don’t feel well.” For precision: I currently feel like a lot of things. Just not that.
“I regret”—Sadie keeps picking nail polish, dreads obscuring her face—“don’t have time to list them all, frankly. But I especially wish I’d been more honest with you about the drugs. I meant to, but then it seemed like… you were so innocent. Naive, to tell the truth. And then when you told me you’d never drank, never smoked pot, I figured… I guess I was terrified you might think less of me.”
My weight makes the mattress fart as I sit back beside her. “I’m not mad at you about the drugs,” I say quietly. “And you’re not the first person to call me naive. That honor goes to Lindsay.”
It’s like Sadie wants to smile but doesn’t have all the pieces. She doesn’t look like a rock star anymore; even a retired one. Just bony, and fragile and sad in a way that makes me want to push away from her, even though I’ve also never wanted to hold her so bad.
“She’s your Teddy, then,” Sadie says.
Possibly. But also… more.
So much more.
I suck my cheek. The curtains are tied, and the view, despite the stuffiness of the room, is spectacular. You can see the entire valley spilling out below, including the twinkly village, the ice-choked gray river that I crossed to come here. “That’s the Hudson,” Sadie says as I get up for a closer look.
“How’d you know I was thinking about that?”
She chuckles. “Me and Mack saw a whale in it once, when we lived on the west side.”
“What?” I look at her. “A whale? What kind?”
“Dumb one, obviously. We were walking along the Greenway. It was late, after midnight, and suddenly Mack points out at the water and—I didn’t know what I was looking for at first. You know how it can be at night, and Mack sometimes… but then he grabs my shoulders, all, ‘Look, Sades! Look!’ and no shit, there’s this massive goddamn whale out there in the river.”
Likely a humpback. Their migration routes take them up the Atlantic, straight to Canada. “What’d you do?”
“Watched it. We both did. His arm was around my shoulders, right, and I could feel his heart slamming against me and this giant whale out there breathing and I thought, This is it. This is the happiest I’ll be in my whole life.” She wipes her eyes. This furious brush of her knuckles. “We never told a soul. You going to ask Teddy if he remembers that?”
Well, that’s precisely what I’m starting to realize. The exact trouble with justifying your existence around somebody so famous and so gone.
As beautiful as Sadie’s story is, as much as it could reveal about my father, I’m not going to pull it apart this time. I’m too exhausted to go in with my Koda scalpel, dicing details to figure out exactly who my father was. I don’t want to know that he saw a whale with Sadie, or put his arm around her shoulders. I don’t even want to know anymore if he was talented, to tell the truth.
I must’ve sat back down, because I feel the quilt beneath me, and Sadie kneeling, her wet cheek pressed against my knee. Hesitantly, I touch her callused fingers to my lips.
Which was it, Dad? Guitar or bass? Six strings or four? I don’t care.
None of that reveals who you would’ve been to me.
CHAPTER 30
I FEEL THE SILENCE BEFORE I step off the elevator. The doors shut behind me, and there are no footsteps. No Mom in my face, demanding to know where I’ve been or what the hell I was thinking. Silence coats everything—kitchen and great room, silvery city views—like a layer of dust. The carpet, too thick to begin with, squishes beneath my wet shoes. I click on a lamp.
“Mom?”
Nothing.
God. Where is she?
I bend to unlace my All-Stars. A lock of hair slithers into my eyes and I swipe it back, smelling Pantene.
“Koda.”
I jerk. Mom’s at the hall entrance, blue robe and a chignon again. One look at her, the bones jutting in her face, and I know I’m done for.
“Didn’t you get my texts?” I say. “I told you not to worry—”
She turns and goes back to her room.
* * *
When my eyes unstick, it’s practically noon. I lie for a moment in the blackout curtains’ manufactured darkness, uneasiness spreading through me. The smell emanating from outside my room doesn’t help. This vague, familiar odor that I can’t place, thick in the air and the back of my throat. My phone is somewhere under the covers. I fell asleep with it cradled against my cheek.
In the kitchen, Mom frowns over a mixing bowl, chrome appliances glinting ferociously in the late-morning sunlight. She doesn’t look at me as I approach the breakfast bar, slide uneasily onto the stool across from her. “Good morning,” I try.
Usually, Mom ties her hair back to cook, but today, it’s brushed out over her shoulders, so red it throws sparks. I fold my hands, bracing for her to yell, slap me, like that day at the hospital. She licks her thumb and turns a page in the cookbook propped on the counter.
A funny feeling flickers through me. I push onto the balls of my feet, trying to make out the recipe. “You’re cooking?”
Snow drifts lazily from the sky. Even winter is over winter.
“Mom?”
She grabs the mixing bowl and pivots, her back to me.
“Mom.” The slaps of my bare feet echo as I join her, almost gouging my hip against the counter. She hasn’t made anything but smoothies since we moved. “Mom? What are you doing?” Her mouth dips. I am useless. As irrelevant as the pazzos yammering at her elbow in those old clips. “Please,” I beg. “What’s wrong?” Finally, she glances my way. An incidental glance as she wipes the wooden spoon on a rag.
“Nothing’s wrong, Koda. I’m making brunch.”
“Brunch?”
She keeps wiping the spoon.
“But… aren’t you mad at me? Aren’t you upset?” Stupid questions. She must be furious. It’s just that this is a mood, a Mom, I don’t recognize. “I broke a rule. I… I ran away—”
“You must have seen the news.”
“What news?” I haven’t been on my phone at all. But then Mom looks at me, really looks, and the flickering sharpens to a sting. I sprint to my bedroom, return to the kitchen with my phone. Mom’s expression remains maddeningly neutral as I scroll through it.
Blogs got the scoop. Candids of me in Grand Central—Koda Rose Grady strolling through the grand concourse, gawking at the departure board. Bystanders argue about which stops I peered into, mock my futile disguise—“A sweatshirt? Come on. Mack’s a legend around here. We know what his kid looks like”—even though that was an accident. Literally how I dress. The article continues: The impulsive getaway appears to be just another in a string of incidents involving the late rock god’s troubled daughter and his equally troubled ex, Sadie Pasquale. Although Miss Grady’s ultimate destination could not be verified, it seems more than slightly coincidental that she would travel upstate hours after news broke of Sadie’s latest rehab stint.
My eyes fill and I shut them, savoring the tiny burn. Of course I was spotted. Of course. W
hat’s next? Ever since we moved here, the thinnest membrane’s existed between me and the rest of the world, and now it’s been torn open for good. “That’s not fair,” I say. “There’s no connection between me and Sadie. Not anymore. I”—it’s almost too painful to say—“I said goodbye for real this time. For good.” Mom sticks a finger in the mixing bowl and licks it, my phone on the counter between us.
“Maybe you should have thought of the consequences of your actions beforehand, Koda. Time after time, I swoop to your rescue, and yet none of my efforts really seem to work in the end, do they? No matter what, you’re bent on doing things your way.” She pushes the bowl aside and smiles. A silk-rose smile. “Let’s do that, then. Let’s see how it works. You are, after all, so grown-up.”
My stomach tightens.
Mom shuts her eyes. I watch her throat kick around a little before she says, “Please set the table.”
CHAPTER 31
I’VE BEEN AT THE MAGAZINE’S head-quarters for exactly five seconds when an assistant I don’t recognize accosts me with a sandwich.
“Mother’s orders,” he explains.
“I know.” It’s multigrain. I thank him and continue to Mom’s office, working the crust off beneath slippery wax paper.
“Figured you’d run off again,” she says as I drop my backpack by the sofa.
“No. I decided to walk.” Cold air has been feeling better and better lately, helps clear my head.
Mom looks angry. Walking has not been part of the arrangement—I’ve been taking taxis here after school—but now I thought of it, so it will be. That’s part of our agreement. Her whole, let’s do things your way. I sink onto the sofa, and the leather squeaks accommodatingly. Mom continues studying whatever fashion quandary is currently laid out on her desk.
Apologizing won’t help. I’ve said sorry five thousand freaking times in the week that’s passed since I got home. Last night was the worst. I went into her room, bawling for no reason other than that I suck, and have lost everybody, and there’s nothing in the world, nothing, I can do to win Lindsay back. She was right about Sadie. About all of this. I should’ve understood that. I should’ve listened.…
Haltingly, I unwrap my sandwich. Pesto. Roasted red peppers. Mozz. Inexplicably, my vision blurs, and I take a breath. Let it out slow.
Mom doesn’t talk to me while I eat, but composes herself in increments, tugging the various strings of her body until her mouth inches up and nostrils quit flaring. It creeps me out how she can do that. She flexes her fingers, and every knuckle cracks.
“Mom.”
She waves at the mess I made on the coffee table. “Clean that up.”
Rolling my eyes, I ball my trash up and head for the next room—a kitchen with a microwave and espresso maker, for her use only. The trash can is against the wall.
At first the flowers don’t register. All I see in the trash is my wad of wax paper, and beneath that shreds of color—yellows and browns and reds. “Whoa,” I say, my voice sounding strange even to me in the tight, airless room. “Who are these from?” She pitched the whole bouquet. I lift it carefully, dusting off coffee grounds. Not the greatest flowers. Pretty, because who would give flowers that aren’t, but the sleeve is thick plastic, like I’ve seen wrapped around bouquets outside bodegas. I stroke the scraggly petals. “What are these called?” I ask, turning. At the desk, Mom remains motionless, sun on her face. “Black-eyed whatevers, right?”
A card is tucked inside. Well, more of a note. I unfold it.
KODA—
FORGIVE ME
The bouquet tumbles from my hands. I lunge after it, scrambling for a cup, a glass, but it’s no use, the cabinets don’t have anything tall enough. Mom approaches.
“Cut them.”
Noise in my head.
“Honey, hang on. You can cut the stems.”
I let her do it. We place the glass of flowers in the center of Mom’s desk, and then I pull up a chair beside hers and we sit together, her knee resting periodically against mine. After a minute, I scoot the flowers closer to the sun.
“They wouldn’t let her in,” Mom says. “Security escorted me downstairs to the entrance. If you hadn’t decided to walk, you might not have missed her.”
I ignore that. “How did she look?”
“Like Sadie.”
I pinch a petal between my fingers.
“She asked about you. I told her you were fine, we were both fine, and she just smiled at me, like—I don’t know, like she knew I was lying. She’s so hard to read.”
“Sometimes.” Her texts, though.
I’ve been deleting those all week.
“Why did you put them in the garbage? Did you not want me to see them?”
Mom gets up and shuts the cabinets. Pours a glass of water, inspects her cuticles. “I don’t know what I was thinking, Koda, other than that I wish we’d never come here. This is hard for me. Letting you do your own thing, after all that’s happened—and knowing you’ll eventually make more mistakes. Knowing my first instinct will be to fix them, but accepting that sometimes the best I can do as a parent is step back and let the consequences fall how they may. Should I have invited Sadie to wait for you?”
“I don’t know,” I say quickly. “I don’t know what I’d say. I didn’t know she was back in the city. Ted—that’s who she’s been staying with, the bassist—”
A funny smile. “I know who Teddy is.”
“Oh, okay. Anyway, he said she’d have to have surgery. I thought he meant right away.”
“She does.” Mom sets the glass down. “And after she heals, another go at rehab. We discussed that a little—honestly, I think she’s more nervous about getting clean than having the doctors cut her up. But I told her about some of my friends who have been in recovery for years. Staying sober is hard, but she’s tough. I’ll pay, of course.”
When you’re in the ocean and a wave smacks you hard, hurls you forward only to rake you back again? Whatever words I’m looking for probably mean that. I go up beside Mom. She’s not crying, but her face is red, chest heaving. Her fingers are splayed across her mouth.
“Why?”
She shakes her head.
“But—”
“She’s so sick, Koda, but that’s only part of why I didn’t want you to meet her. Mostly, I was… I was afraid you’d blame me.”
I ask what she means.
“For everything.” Mom shrugs, helpless. “For her life. Eighteen years I’ve tried to convince myself, Sadie chose this. She chose to use drugs, but the way you talk about her—the way she talks about you—I could tell you were both helping each other through something huge.” She laughs. This breathy, shimmering laugh she bottles for parties. “Bigger than I’ll probably ever understand, right? But that’s okay. I have to be okay with that.”
I bite down on one callused fingertip, the most grounding thing I can think to do that she won’t see. “You could’ve helped me.”
Sometimes I think Mom’s as mirror-averse as I am. She looks up, turning from her reflection in the window.
“You could’ve told me more about my dad from the beginning,” I say. “You could’ve… I just wanted stories. Pieces of him that only I would get to see. I know you hate him, but—”
Her eyes widen. “I don’t hate him.”
“You—”
“I didn’t know him.”
My fingertip is still in my mouth. Mom pulls it away.
“We met at a party. I slept with him once, and whatever small talk we made before that, I—well, it’s gone. I remember different things from that night. Like, how windy it was on the walk home. Ridiculously windy, even for LA. I didn’t think about him at all. Even after I found out I was pregnant, I didn’t think about him. That was other people, pushing their concerns onto me. It was a chaotic time. I learned to live with it.” She shrugs. “I don’t mind that we were never officially ‘together,’ never had this grand romance like him and Sadie. The press treated it like this massi
ve ‘screw off, Mariah’ once she took him back, but that was all of their construction. Spin, to sell magazines. I never thought of it as Mack choosing her—there was nothing between us in the first place. I’m not embarrassed by my choices. I’m not ashamed. If you want to ask me anything… ask about that.”
I sneak a fingertip back in my mouth. These last two months, all I’ve done is ask questions. And now with every day that passes, I find out they were exactly the wrong ones. But—
“You could’ve brought that up yourself, Mom.”
She seems to think a moment. “Yes.” She tugs my hand away again, more firmly. “That’s probably true.”
Back at her desk, I help her get organized for her next meeting. It involves combing through a portfolio of concept sketches—the work of up-and-coming designers The Magazine might bless with a feature. One designer in particular catches my eye. Their clothes are so chaotic. Major themes include slashes. Splatters. “The pattern on this dress kind of reminds me of a whale.” A jumbo red swirl on the front, surrounded by speckles that could be plankton, if you squint hard enough.
Mom smiles, rolling sketches into a canister. “You would think it’s a whale.”
Actually, I don’t think that’s true. I haven’t thought about whales, really thought about them, since I met Sadie. Or before Sadie. When I got mocked into taking my posters down. I regret that. Mostly, though, I regret judging Lindsay for choosing Peter over swimming. Those choices, it seems to me now, happen so easily.
The sketches are almost all packed away. Mom eyes the whale sketch, half-rolled in my hand. “Honey, could you hand me—”
“I do have one question.”
She pauses. Nervousness glossed with a smile.
When we get home, I’m putting my posters back up. I’m going to ask even more questions. But I’ll start with her and my dad and that night. “I was just wondering… what you did after you met my dad. After you walked home.”
The Mythic Koda Rose Page 23