I walked to my bed and stretched out across it, symmetrical, with my feet pressed to the bedposts and my head locked against the headboard. I closed my eyes and tried to block it all out, the mall and the bathing-suit woman and my mother’s face as the door swung to close on her. I tried to think about anything to block out the sound from my vent, so clear, and what I knew they’d be saying about me as soon as my mother got back downstairs.
“What’s wrong?” That was Ashley.
“Nothing.” My mother didn’t sound like herself, her voice quiet and even. “Let’s get back to this bridesmaid problem.”
“What did she say to you?” Ashley said, protective now. “God, what is her problem lately? She’s impossible to deal with. I swear, it’s like she’s purposely doing it so close to the wedding just to ruin it....”
“It’s not about the wedding,” my mother said quietly, echoing my own words. “Just leave it alone, Ashley. You’ve got enough to worry about.”
“I just think she could wait to have her nervous breakdown until next week. I mean, it’s not like we don’t have enough on our hands, and it’s pretty selfish, really.”
“Ashley,” my mother said in a louder voice, sounding tired. “Leave it alone.”
I lay there and listened as they talked about Carol, the difficult bridesmaid, who was supposed to fly in that afternoon but apparently had called earlier to say she had broken off her own engagement just this morning and was therefore too hysterical to attend. They went round and round, coming up with plan after plan, none of which would work. I looked at the clock. It was only eleven-fifteen.
And I was still expected to go shopping with my father, to pick out the Perfect Gift for the Perfect Wedding. It was too late to cancel; my father had his faults, but he was always punctual. I went to my bathroom and washed my face, looking at myself under the greenish fluorescent light. I looked sick, haunted, which I felt was appropriate so I just left my face as it was, without applying any makeup or touching my hair. I was still in my work clothes as I crept downstairs, and out onto the porch to wait for him.
I heard the car before I saw it, the purring of the engine as it zipped around the corner and onto my street. He pulled up in front of the house like he always did and then beeped twice. I sat in the swing, watching him without moving. I wasn’t sure if he could see me.
He sat in the car a few minutes longer, fiddling with the radio and smoothing his hand over his new hair. He beeped again. Still I sat there. I wanted him to come up to the house. I wanted him, I realized, to finally approach it and cross that imaginary line that had been drawn the day he packed a suitcase and left while I was at school, taking with him all his sports stuff and clothes and the stereo, which left a big hole on the wall of the living room. I wanted to watch him walk up the front steps, across the lawn he’d kept so neatly mowed all those years, to our front door and to be a man about it, not a coward who sat in his shiny new car at the curb, outside it all. I sat and watched my father, daring him to do it. To come claim me as he’d never done since that day, not lurking on the outskirts of what had once been shared property, waiting for me to cross the line myself, the line I hadn’t even drawn.
He beeped again, and I saw my mother’s face appear in the window beside the door, peering out at him. He backed up and turned the car around in our driveway, his head still craning to see if I’d appear—whoosh—suddenly, like a bouquet of roses from a magician’s hand. My mother held the curtain aside, watching. I watched too, hidden in the shadows of our porch, as he slowly pulled out, coasted by with one last searching look, and then gunned the engine before disappearing. Whoosh.
Chapter Twelve
The first thing I felt when I woke up was that it was hot. Very hot. It was the middle of August and every day was hot, but there was something about that day that made it stand out. I’d napped without covers, having kicked off my light blanket and sheet, but still felt sticky and warm even with my fan pointed right at me. Outside, the sun was still blazing. I’d woken from a bad dream, one of those confusing ones where nobody is who they start out to be. Someone was leading me down my street, showing me things. First it was Lewis, in one of those skinny ties, but then his face changed to Sumner’s. Then, as I turned away and then back, it switched again, to Lydia Catrell‘s, only she was very old and tiny, hunched over, and shrinking before my eyes. I woke up suddenly, confused, and remembered everything that had happened earlier in one great rush of colors and images flying past in a blur. I curled up smaller, pulling my pillow in close, and buried my face. This had been the longest day of my life. Everything was loaded with consequences, the wedding and the weeks to come; I wanted to sleep through it all. But the sun was spilling through the window, shiny and hot, and it was already one o’clock. It felt like forever since I’d climbed into bed after my father drove away, locking my bedroom door and ignoring my mother’s voice as it whispered in the hallway outside. The earlier part of the day was fuzzy and distant, like the dream that was fading quickly from my head.
I stayed in bed for another hour, listening to the noises of my house. I heard Ashley next door, rustling around, doing the last bits of packing. Every once in a while it would get very quiet, and I wondered if she’d stopped to think about leaving. I wondered if she was sad. Then I’d hear her taping another box shut or making another trip downstairs, dragging something behind her. My mother and Lydia were in the kitchen, their voices high and chatty, against the tinkling of teaspoons and that humming excitement of something big getting ready to happen. I lay in my bed, feet to bedposts, head pressed to headboard. I lay as still as possible, pushing my back into the damp sheet beneath me. And I tried to think of the quiet that would come later, after tomorrow and the honeymoon and Europe, when there would be only me and my mother treading these floors and everything would be different.
I got up and showered, ran my hands across my body under the stream of water. Since I’d grown taller I hated looking down at myself; at my skinny legs, the knees poking out; my big feet splayed flat against the floor like clown shoes, ten sizes too big. But now I drew myself up to full height, pulling in a breath that spread through me. I thought of giraffes and stilts, of my bones linked carefully together. Of height and power, and gliding over the heads of the Lakeview Mall shoppers to touch those fluttering banners. As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.
“Hey,” Ashley called out as I passed her open door on my way downstairs. “Haven. Come here a second.”
I went in, immediately aware of how small her room looked with the dresser almost bare; the closet door open revealing empty shelves and racks; the bright spots of wallpaper where things had hung contrasting now to the faded rest of the wall. She was standing by her bed, folding a dress over one arm. She said, “I need to talk to you.”
I stood there, tall, waiting.
She looked closer at me, as if she’d suddenly realized something she’d missed before. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“You look different.” She put the dress down in a box at her feet, kicking it shut. “Do you feel okay?”
“I’m fine.”
She was still watching me, as if I couldn’t be trusted. Then she shrugged, letting it go, and said, “I want to talk to you about earlier.”
“What about it?”
“Haven,” she said in that voice that meant she was feeling much, much older than me, “I know it’s been hard for you with the wedding and all, but I’m concerned about how you treated Mom. It’s hard enough for her right now without you freaking out and turning on her.”
“I’m not freaking
out,” I said curtly, moving back towards the door.
“Hey, I’m not through talking to you,” she said, walking quickly to block my path. I looked down at her, realizing how short she really was. She was in shorts and a red T-shirt, with a gold chain and matching earrings. “See, that’s just what I’m talking about. It’s like all of a sudden you just don’t care about anyone but yourself. You snap at Mom, and now this attitude with me....”
“Ashley, please,” I said in a tired voice, and noticed how much I sounded like my mother.
“I’m just asking you to keep whatever is bothering you to yourself, at least until after tomorrow.” She had her hand on her hip now, classic Ashley stance. “It’s very selfish, you know, to pick these few days for whatever adolescent breakdown you’re choosing to have. Very selfish.”
“I’m selfish?” I said, and found myself actually throwing my head back to laugh, Ha! “God, Ashley, give me a break. As if everything in the last six months hasn’t revolved around you and this stupid wedding. As if my whole life,” I added, the light, airy feeling bubbling back up inside me, “hasn’t revolved around you and your stupid life.” It didn’t even sound like me, the voice so casual and cutting. Like someone else. Someone bold.
She just looked at me, the gold engagement ring glinting on the hand she was shaking at me. “I’m not going to let you do this. I’m not going to let you get me started on this day, because I have too much to deal with and I’m not in the mood to fight with you. But I will say this. You better grow up and get your shit together in the next five minutes or you will regret it, Haven. I have planned this day and done too much for too long for you to decide to ruin it purely out of spite.” Her hand went back to her hip, her lip jutting out.
“Oh, shut up,” I said in my bold voice, stepping around her and out the bedroom door, then going down the stairs before she even had a chance to react. I was floating, the air whooshing through my ears all the way to the kitchen, where I found my mother and Lydia drinking coffee. They both looked up at me as I came drifting in, with the same expression Ashley had when she’d first called me into the room: as if suddenly I was no longer recognizable.
“Haven?” my mother said, turning in her chair as I reached for the Pop-Tarts and broke open a pack. “Is everything okay?”
“Just fine,” I said cheerfully, lining up my tarts on the rack of the toaster oven. Upstairs Ashley was banging around, boxes crashing to the floor.
My mother and Lydia exchanged looks over their coffee, then went back to watching me. I concentrated on the toaster oven. After a minute or so Lydia asked, “Why don’t you sit down and eat with us?”
“Okay.” I took my tarts out and then sat down across from them and started eating, aware that they were still staring at me. After a few seconds of self-conscious nibbling I said, “What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” Lydia said quickly, shrinking back in her chair. I thought about my dream where she’d been tiny tiny tiny.
“You just seem upset,” my mother said gently, scooting her chair a little closer to me to suggest allegiance. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” I said in the same gentle voice. “I don’t.” And I went back to my Pop-Tart, envisioning that tether stretched to the limit, fraying from the strain, and then suddenly snapping into pieces, no longer able to hold against the force of my pulling away from it. I looked at my mother, with the same hair and same outfit and same expression as Lydia Catrell’s, and thought, You go to Europe. You sell this house. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t care.
“Haven,” my mother said in a pleading voice, placing her hand over mine. “It might make you feel better.”
I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I was thinking, stuffing pieces of Pop-Tart into my mouth one by one by one. Her hand was hot and snug over mine as I pulled it away and pushed my chair out from the table. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped as Lydia Catrell pulled further back in her chair. “I don’t care, okay? I just don’t care.”
“Honey,” my mother said, and I could tell by the strain in her voice she was really worried now.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her, unable to meet her eyes. I ran to the back door and out into the garden, slipping across the pathway past the blazing colors and smells, the tendrils reaching out to touch my skin, the mix of everything so sweet and humid, thick and stifling. I hit the edge and kept going, down the street past the Melvins’ and out of our neighborhood altogether, past the Lakeview Mall with all the cars lined up in its parking lot in nice, even rows. I was someone else, someone bold, my feet finding the ground beneath me as I thought only of putting distance between me and what I’d left behind.
I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I had no job and only three dollars in my pocket, so I spent an hour walking around downtown. I bought an orangeade and spent a half hour on a bench sipping it, wondering if there was ever going to be any way for me to go home. I imagined the house itself in pieces, brought to the ground by my bad attitude. I imagined a crisis meeting convening as I sat there in the park, with Ashley and Lewis and my mother and Lydia and my ex-boss Burt Isker and my father and Lorna, all of them debating the question What on Earth Has Happened to Haven? Only Sumner would be on my side. Over the space of just one summer he’d managed to breathe life into me again, just as he had all those years ago. And now I was playing hooky from my life there on that bench, on the day before the biggest day of my sister’s life, and I didn’t even care. I imagined their faces as they sat around that table, voices clucking with concern. I was causing a Crisis.
I called Casey. She was off phone restriction and back in her mother’s good graces after tap-dancing lessons and family therapy. When she heard my voice she said, “Hey, hold on. I’m switching phones.”
I was at a pay phone, watching a crazy man talk to himself on the bench I’d just left. I held on.
“Haven.”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” She sounded incredulous, even as she whispered. “Your mom called here three times already, looking for you. They’re freaking out over there.”
“She called you?” I said.
“She thought you’d come here. She told Mom everything, and I overheard. My mom talks so damn loud.”
“What’d they say?” I was the center of serious mother talks.
“Well, your mom asked if you’d been around and my mom said no, so then your mom goes into this whole thing about you freaking out at work this morning and then fighting with Ashley and running out of the house, and she’s just frantic because she thinks you must be on drugs or something, she’s not sure....”
“Drugs?” I repeated. “Did she really say that?”
“Haven,” Casey said matter-of-factly, as if she knew so much about these things. “They think everything is drugs. They do.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I said, offended.
“Well, that’s not the point. So apparently your sister is going ballistic and your mom and Lydia are combing the neighborhood looking for you and the rehearsal is at six-thirty and they think you might ditch that too, so it’s just imperative that they find you before then.”
“The rehearsal dinner,” I said. Of course. I was a bridesmaid. If I hadn’t been, I doubted an all-points bulletin would ever have been issued.
“So what is going on?” Casey demanded. “Where are you? Tell me and I’ll come meet you.”
“Nothing’s going on,” I said. “I’m on my way home.” I didn’t know if that was true, but I didn’t want Casey meeting me. I liked this freedom and I wasn’t ready to share it.
“Are you sure?” she asked, sounding disappointed.
“I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Wait. At least tell me what happened at work. Your mom said she thought you’d assaulted a customer or something—”
“Later,” I said to her. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said sullenly. “But are you all right?
At least tell me that.”
“I am,” I said. “I just have some stuff to work out.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, call me if you need me. I’m just here practicing my tap dancing.”
“I will. ’Bye, Case.” I hung up and glanced around the small park I’d been hiding in. There were families out with their kids, college students throwing a Frisbee while a big, dumb-looking dog chased after it. I wondered if the Town Car was cruising the streets downtown, Lydia hoping to catch a glimpse of me so that I could be rustled up and dragged to the rehearsal dinner. I was throwing everything out of whack, and I knew it. I was like a fugitive, running from some indefinable force made up of my mother’s worried eyes and Ashley’s whining and Lydia’s Town Car, sucking up my steps even as I took them. It was late afternoon now, and hotter than ever. My shirt was sticking to me and I needed somewhere better to hide.
I was standing at the crosswalk, squinting, when I heard it. That humming of a car, coming around the corner behind me and then down the street, with Sumner behind the wheel. He stopped at the light, too far away to hear me even if I’d had time to yell his name. The light changed and he pulled away, one hand balanced on the steering wheel, the other arm hanging down the side of the car, drumming his fingers. He took off, I watched him go, blending with the other traffic until he turned onto a side street just a little way down. I started walking.
I found him at the senior center, a small building at the end of a long street of minimalls and office complexes. Everything looked very new and very clean, as if it had been hastily assembled the day before. Sumner’s car was parked right next to the door, in a space marked FRIENDS.