She was going to slap his shoulder, but the gesture didn’t come off pal-ish as she’d meant. She sort of brushed it instead. Her fingers tingled where she’d touched him. He looked at his shoulder and back at her. Now he looked confused.
“I’ll be there,” she promised.
When she let herself quietly in the door, she saw the flickering blue light of the television in the living room. She tiptoed in to say good night to Greta, but she was already asleep in the armchair, her head lolling. In front of her was perched a tray on a stand with the remnants of her dinner. Friday was her TV night. It made Bridget sad to look at her. Her life was so small, and so simple, and so completely unremarkable. Could Bridget ever fit into a life that small?
And then she couldn’t help thinking of Marly. Marly’s life had never been small or simple. With Marly, you woke up to a different world every day. Every hour had been remarkable, good or bad. Did living big mean ending up like her?
Standing there in the living room, where Marly had preened with a thousand dates and Greta snoozed in front of the television, Bridget wondered whether it came down to the claustrophobic choice between dying beautiful or living ugly.
Tibberon: Lenny, I’m happy for you and Kostos. But please don’t tell me you did it. Can’t handle that right now.
Lennyk162: Didn’t, Tib. Don’t be scared. But I can’t lie. I wanted to. It may be soon.
It was late. Carmen had spent all afternoon and evening at Lena’s. Her head was full of love and passion—Lena’s love and passion—and it was thrilling but threatening, too. It was one more thing to separate them from their common childhood.
By the time Carmen got home, her thoughts stretched out, forward and backward, in a full and sentimental way. It made her miss her mother and yearn for her, even though Christina was lying in the next room.
Carmen pulled on a sleeping T-shirt and brushed her teeth, and then she crawled into her mother’s bed. It was still, even when they were at odds, the softest place in the universe. Christina rolled over and propped her head on her elbow. Usually on nights like this, she would rub Carmen’s back, but tonight Carmen didn’t wriggle in quite that close. She didn’t deserve it yet.
“Mama?”
“Yes?”
Carmen sniffed a little. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay.” Christina had probably known this was coming sometime.
“Remember the Sunday when you were still with David and you thought he didn’t call all day?”
Christina thought back. “Yes,” she said.
“Well, he did call. I rewound his message and a new one recorded over it by mistake. I should have told you the truth, but I didn’t.”
From the look on Christina’s face, there was anger, but it wasn’t right up close. “That was a shabby thing to do, Carmen.”
“I know it was, and I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for that, and I’m sorry for the awful things I said. I’m sorry I made you so unhappy.”
Christina nodded.
“I’m sorry I ruined it for you and David. I wish I hadn’t.” Carmen’s eyes filled up. “I don’t know why I did it.”
Christina still didn’t say anything. She had a knack for waiting out Carmen’s lies.
“Okay, I do know why I did it. I was scared it would be the end of you and me.”
Her mother reached over and touched her hair. “You made mistakes. But you aren’t the only one,” Christina said slowly. “I did too. I let it go too fast. I got carried away.” Christina’s eyes were fixed tightly and intently on Carmen’s face. “But listen to me, nena. There could never be an end of you and me.”
Carmen felt a tear dribble down her elbow and soak into the mattress. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
“Have you wanted to meet a David for a long time? This whole time of just being us, have you been lonely?”
“Oh, no. No.” She petted Carmen’s head like she had when Carmen was a child. “I’ve been so happy being your mother.”
Carmen felt her chin quivering. “Really?”
“More than anything else.”
“Oh.” Carmen smiled shakily. “I’ve been happy being your daughter.”
They both rolled onto their backs and looked up at the ceiling.
“Mama, what do you want?”
Christina thought for a while. “Falling in love is a wonderful feeling. But it was scary how it took me over. I don’t know if I want that.”
“Hmmm …” Carmen considered the cracks in the plaster molding.
“What about you, sweet? What do you want?”
“Well.” Carmen lifted her arms in the air and locked her elbows. She examined her hands up there. “Let’s see. I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me. That’s not really fair, is it?”
Christina shrugged. “You’re the daughter. I’m the mother. It’s not meant to be fair.” She laughed. “I don’t recall you changing any diapers.”
Carmen laughed too.
“Oh, and one other thing.” Carmen rolled back onto her side, facing her mom. “I want you to be happy.”
She let her words sink down upon them. After a while she wriggled in close enough for her mom to rub her back.
Bee,
I send you the Pants full of love and strangeness. I’m living in another world here. I know you’ll understand, Bee, because you live here too. I don’t just mean doing major things with a guy, although I understand a lot more about that now. I mean putting yourself out there in the way of overwhelming happiness and knowing you’re also putting yourself in the way of terrible harm. I’m scared to be this happy. I’m scared to be this extreme.
But you are here with me, Bee. I always wished I were as brave as you.
Love,
Lena
If the missing and wanting had been hard before, it was nearly unbearable now. It felt to Lena like the multitude of her thoughts and dreams and fantasies about Kostos weighed down the hours and made them go extra slowly.
She was living outside herself, living for when they could be together. That was what she had wanted so badly to avoid. But Lena realized now, maybe that was just how much love cost.
When he’d called her on Monday, she had literally caressed the phone. She would rather have listened to him breathe for an hour than hang up.
When he’d called Tuesday, she had giggled for an hour and a half, causing herself to wonder whether the real Lena was perhaps locked up in a closet somewhere with duct tape binding her mouth.
He hadn’t called Wednesday, and when he called on Friday, he didn’t sound right. His voice had a flatness she hardly recognized. “I’m afraid I may not be able to come this weekend.”
She felt suddenly dizzy. “Why not?”
“I—I may have to go back.”
“To go back where?”
“To Greece,” he said.
She gasped. “Is your bapi okay?”
He was silent for a minute. “Yes, I think he’s fine.”
“Then why? What?” She was too intense. She was hurling herself at him like a cat on a cockroach. She wished she could hold back.
“Some other business at home that came up,” he said slowly. “I’ll explain it when I know what’s going on.” He didn’t want her to ask any more.
“Is it bad? Will everything be okay?”
“I hope so.”
Her brain was fervently concocting possible explanations that wouldn’t be devastating to her.
“I have to hang up,” he said. “I wish I didn’t.”
Don’t go! she wanted to scream at him.
“I love you, Lena.”
“Bye,” she said inevitably.
He couldn’t go back to Greece! She would die! When would she ever see him again? The one thing getting her through up to now had bee
n the thought that she only had to wait until Friday.
She hated this. The uncertainty. The powerlessness. She felt as though he had blown a gaping hole in the expected path of her life. The sidewalk now ended just a few yards ahead.
Effie stood in the doorway of her room. She had on her running shoes. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Lena shook her head. She closed her eyes hard to keep the tears inside.
Effie appeared at her side. “What is it?”
Lena shrugged. She gathered up her voice from somewhere near her ankles. “I think that being loved by Kostos is even harder than not being loved by him.”
“Your grandchildren used to come visit here, didn’t they?” Bridget asked Grandma from under her hat at breakfast.
Grandma chewed her toast. “Oh, yes. Every summer until they were almost seven. And I used to go up north to see them for six weeks every winter until they were five.”
“Why did you stop?” Bridget asked tentatively.
“Because Marly asked me not to come.”
“Why, do you think?”
Greta sighed. “Things were starting to go downhill by then. I don’t think she wanted anybody looking too closely at her life, especially not me. I had too many opinions about the children, and neither she nor Franz wanted to hear them.”
Bridget nodded. “That’s sad.”
“Oh, honey.” Greta swayed in her seat. “You can’t know how sad. Marly loved her children, but she had a hard time. She used to go to bed after she fixed them lunch, and by the time they were eight or nine, I suspect she went back to sleep after breakfast. She’d get overwhelmed halfway through sorting the laundry and leave it on the machine for days until Franz got around to it.”
Bridget pressed her palm to her cheek. The kitchen darkened as the sky outside grew overcast. She remembered her mother lying in bed through the afternoons and evenings. She remembered her mother getting upset and frustrated by the buckles of Bridget’s sandals or the tangles in her hair. Bridget had learned to be careful about spills and recycle her clothes, because they took a long time to come back from the wash.
“Why did … they stop coming? The kids, I mean.”
Grandma rested her elbows on the table heavily. “To tell you honestly, I think it was because I was having bitter disagreements with Franz. I knew Marly was in trouble, and I worried about her all the time. Franz didn’t want to see the things I was seeing. I told him Marly needed the help of a doctor, and he said no. I told him Marly needed medication, and he disagreed. I think he was mad at me, so he took the kids away. He told me to stop calling. To leave Marly alone. I couldn’t do it.”
Bridget noticed that Greta’s lips quivered. She patted her old lady hands fixedly.
“And I was right to worry. I was right to, because—”
Bridget stood up so fast she almost knocked her chair backward. “I’ve got to do something upstairs. Sorry, Greta. I just remembered. I better go.”
She went up the steps without looking back. In the attic the first thing she saw was the box, the one she’d been putting off. In her dreams she was Pandora. She imagined that the box was a yawning black hole between her and her childhood, and that once she opened its flaps, she would fall into it and die.
Bridget lay in bed and listened to the storm brewing outside. She fell asleep for a while, and when she woke up, she was looking at the box again. The sky was darkening. She could practically feel the barometer plunging.
She watched the wind flutter the eyelet curtains. The gray sky seemed to turn the floor gray in its image. She loved this room. She felt more at home here than in any place she’d ever been. But still there was that box. She peered out the window at the nervous landscape.
She went over to the box and opened it. Now was a good time to get it over with. She wanted to prove to herself that it wasn’t really so scary. And if she didn’t do it now, when would she do it? She had to get to the end of this story.
The top layer was mostly pictures of the happy young family. Marly and Franz with their two blond babies. In the car, at the zoo. All the usual stuff. More absorbing to her were the ones with her grandparents. Bridget squinting in the sun on her grandfather’s shoulders, grinning big next to Greta, her mouth orange and sticky from a Popsicle. She smiled at the sight of the Honey Bees’ team picture. There she was with her boy haircut and her arm clamped around Billy Kline. The middle of the box was packed with her and Perry’s various art projects, and a pile of Perry’s disintegrating comic books. She threw a lot of that stuff away.
Under that were photographs Marly must have sent to her mother in the years after they’d stopped coming to Alabama. Bridget’s and Perry’s stiff-looking school pictures from third through fifth grades. There was a hilariously dorky picture of the Septembers from the summer after fourth grade. Tibby was still missing several teeth. Bridget sported the mother lode of braces, with little rubber bands stretching across the front. Carmen had her awful, floppy version of the Jennifer Aniston hairdo. Lena looked normal, but that was Lena.
The last picture was the sad one. From the date on the back, Bridget knew it had been four months before her mother died. Bridget guessed her mother had sent it to Greta to prove to her that she was doing just fine, but if you looked at it for even a minute, the illusion fell heartbreakingly apart. Marly’s limbs were too thin. Her skin looked as though it hadn’t seen daylight in weeks. Her pose on a park bench looked totally artificial, like she’d been set up at the Sears photo studio. Her smile seemed fragile and atrophied, as though she hadn’t moved her mouth into that shape for many months.
Bridget loved the Marly who glittered and preened, but this was the woman she remembered.
Bridget got up. She was fitful. Her legs needed her to walk around. The sky was as dark as if it were night. She flicked on her light, but it didn’t respond. The storm had knocked the power out.
Bridget went down the stairs to check on Greta. To her surprise, she found her huddled in the corner of the kitchen with a flashlight.
“Are you all right?” Bridget asked.
Greta looked shiny with sweat. “My sugar’s up. I’m having trouble doing the injection in the dark like this.”
Without thinking, Bridget strode over to help. “I’ll hold the flashlight for you,” she offered.
As she held it, she watched breathlessly as Greta readied the needle and poked it into her skin. Suddenly Bridget’s beam of light was tilting and scooting all around the room. Her hand was shaking so hard she dropped the flashlight and it banged across the floor. Her whole body was shaking. “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’ll get it.” Instead, she lost her footing and fell onto her knees in the middle of the room.
“Honey, it’s okay. I got it,” Greta said soothingly, but it seemed to Bridget that she was saying it from a great distance.
Bridget tried to get up, but her head was all wrong, her eyes were all wrong. She couldn’t focus on anything. She felt panicked, like she had to keep moving. She burst through the side door and out into the yard. She heard Grandma’s voice calling behind her, but she couldn’t focus on it. She kept walking.
She walked through the needling rain for blocks down to the river and then walked alongside it, on her familiar path. Walking didn’t feel fast enough, so she started running. The river was up, lapping against its sides. She felt tears dribbling from her eyes, mixing with and disappearing in the rain. The rain was so heavy, and suddenly she pictured her raincoat bunched under her seat on the Triangle bus, traveling the country, leaving her out here alone.
She ran and ran, and when she couldn’t run anymore, she fell on the ground and let it catch her. She lay on the wet, muddy bank and let the memories overtake her, because she couldn’t help it anymore.
There was her mother with the needle in her skin, white-blue skin. There was the hair, long and yellow, fanned out on the floor. There was her mother’s face that didn’t move even with the screaming, all the screaming. It was Bridget’s screaming. S
he was screaming and her mother’s face stayed still, no matter how Bridget shook her. And she screamed and screamed until somebody came and took her away.
That was how the story went. That was how it really ended.
A pigeon is the same thing as a dove. Did you know that?
—Bridget Vreeland
Sometime before sunrise, Bridget picked herself up and walked back home. She let herself in the side door and numbly walked up the steps to the bathroom. She took a long, blasting hot shower, wrapped herself in a towel, took a comb from her shelf, and walked down to the kitchen. She poured a big glass of water and sat at the table in the dark.
She was tired. She was dazed. She felt like she had died.
She heard footsteps on the stairs and then heard Grandma come into the kitchen behind her. Grandma sat down across from her at the table. She didn’t say anything.
After a while, Greta took the comb from the table and stood up. She walked behind Bridget and began combing out her wet hair, gently and slowly, pulling all the knots out from the bottom like a pro. Bridget let her head relax into her grandmother’s chest, and she let herself remember the many times Greta had done this before, always slowly, always patiently.
Bridget closed her eyes and let herself remember other things in this kitchen. Grandma fixing her bowls of cereal when she was supposed to be asleep, spooning in the cough syrup when Bridget had bronchitis, teaching her gin rummy and looking the other way when she cheated.
By the time Bridget’s hair was entirely combed and smooth, the sun had risen, casting light on the silky gold strands. Greta kissed her on top of the head.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” Bridget said in a fragile voice.
She felt Greta’s nod against her scalp.