Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  Verity, though, took the question seriously. “I’ve seen people taken off the ventilator after more than a week and they’re just fine,” she said.

  Robin looked at her. “That’s good.”

  “But . . .”

  “But.”

  “Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Every hour she’s on that thing, the weaker she gets.”

  Robin swallowed hard. “Have they talked about trying to wean her off it?”

  “She’s on light sedatives, but from what I’ve heard, she hasn’t given them anything.” Verity looked at her. “She doesn’t react. Doesn’t move.”

  “Maybe she would if they took her off the breathing tube,” Robin said.

  Verity shook her head. “If they thought she’d survive it, they’d do it.”

  Tears began to well in Robin’s eyes. She’d almost have preferred a cliché, but then again what had she expected? The woman’s name literally meant truth.

  “Ms. Diamond.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You love your mom, don’t you?”

  “Very much.”

  “Before she got in here, you spent a lot of time with her?”

  “She was . . . she is my best friend.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “You’re lucky.”

  Robin nodded.

  “Have you told her everything you need to tell her? Because . . . you know . . . if you haven’t, I’m a firm believer that they hear you. A part of them hears you, even when they’re like this.”

  Robin’s gaze stayed on her mother’s placid face. “I have told her everything,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure she’s done the same.”

  Verity put a hand on her arm and gave it a quick squeeze—a gesture Robin might have found patronizing in the past. “Be with her,” the nurse said. “Hold her hand. Let her know you’ll be okay no matter what.”

  “I don’t know that I will be okay . . .” Robin said. But Verity had already left the room.

  Robin glanced at her watch. 10:00 A.M. On any other Monday at this time, she’d have been at a morning meeting at the Daily Culture office, listening to the reporters pitching ideas, taking notes as she thought about this week’s film column. Such a different world she used to live in four days ago.

  She couldn’t remember whether or not she’d called in sick to work, couldn’t imagine herself ever returning. The thought of putting on something other than a T-shirt and yoga pants, of making up her face and getting on a train, of traveling that far from the hospital and talking and thinking about movies for God’s sake, about anything other than what was happening to her mother and why it was happening and who had done it to her . . .

  Robin had forty-five minutes before she was supposed to meet Quentin Garrison in the cafeteria, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to speak to him anymore. She didn’t necessarily feel like hearing what he’d told her father. She didn’t know if she was strong enough for what he had to say.

  She pulled a chair up next to the hospital bed. The room was curtained off, and on the other side of it, she could see the shadows of broad, dark-clad shoulders. Police guards. In case the killer came back to finish the job. Or, at least, that’s what she had assumed. Thinking about it now, with all these strange new fears in her mind, Robin wondered if they were out there to make sure her mother didn’t escape . . .

  She took her mother’s hand in her own and gripped it tightly, hoping, as she always did, for the slightest squeeze back. Nothing.

  Robin watched her face, so utterly still, the breathing tube taped to her lips—something Mom never would have stood for had she been aware, the way it infantilized her, like a bottle shoved into a baby’s mouth.

  She listened to the sound of the ventilator, trying in her mind to liken the hollow whoosh of it to something other than what it was. Closing her eyes made it easier. Without the visual, the ventilator could be the sound of someone deep breathing while meditating, or the sound a seashell makes when you hold it up to your ear.

  Of course, it isn’t the seashell that makes that sound—it’s your own blood, moving through your body. But there had been a time in Robin’s life when she hadn’t known things like that.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and she was a kid again, at her family’s summer rental in Sarasota, Florida, Mom tanned and strong and smiling, handing her a conch shell she’d found on the beach. Put the shell up to your ear, Robbie. It wants to tell you about its home.

  Robin opened her eyes. She kept Renee’s cool, limp hand in her own like a gift she didn’t want to part with. “Tell me about your home, Mom,” she whispered, in a voice too low for the police guards to hear. “Tell me who you are.”

  THIS MORNING, AFTER hanging up with Quentin Garrison, Robin had washed her face, changed into a cleaner T-shirt, another pair of yoga pants. She’d brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back, put on her sneakers, and she’d driven again to her parents’ house—a repeat performance of the previous night. This time, though, she’d gone inside. Robin hadn’t thought about it first, not enough to prepare herself for what she might see. She was simply drawn in through the back door, into the kitchen as though by a magnet, then through the living room, where the shooting had taken place. The cops had removed everything they needed to, but they’d done a terrible job of cleaning up afterward, and so Robin had to make herself turn away from the chalk marks and the tape, the pushed-around furniture. The throw rug—a bright, handwoven thing her parents had picked up on a trip to India—was no longer there. She didn’t want to think about why.

  She’d hurried upstairs and into her parents’ bedroom, which she’d found nearly as hard to look at as the wreck downstairs. It was untouched, the bed still neatly made. Her parents had never gone to sleep that night, which of course she had known. But to see the bed like that. To see the drawers closed, the closets shut, the reading material on the two nightstands—a Lincoln biography for him, a stack of New Yorkers for her—as though the room still hadn’t heard what had happened, as though it were patiently waiting for the two of them to come to bed . . .

  It had been so much harder than she’d imagined it would be. But she’d gone there with a purpose, and so she’d headed straight for it—the top right-hand drawer in her mother’s dresser.

  This drawer of her mother’s held socks, tights, and stockings, and in the very back, a small wooden box filled with old keepsakes. Her father had no reason to know about it and most likely he never had. Robin, though, had known about the box since she was twelve years old. She’d caught her mother looking through it once and stayed in the back of the room like Harriet the Spy, watching. Her mother had been trying on a pair of earrings—big gaudy clip-ons made of painted seashells. Not Mom’s taste at all, which had piqued Robin’s curiosity enough for her to sneak back into the room and take out the box weeks later, when she was alone in the house . . .

  Robin had found it fascinating, the idea that her mother would have a tiny collection of things no one knew about, not even Dad. And for a few weeks during that hot, sleepy July between sixth and seventh grade, the box had been a summer romance—something Robin would sneak in to look at whenever she could and think about whenever she couldn’t. She’d never said a word about the secret box to anyone, just like she’d never said a word about her father’s pack of cigarettes. Grown-ups kept secrets, apparently. It wasn’t her right to reveal them.

  By the time September rolled around and school started again, she’d stopped sneaking in to look at it. The box became something she kept in the back of her mind in the same way Mom kept it in the back of the drawer: not thrown away and certainly not forgotten, but never dwelled on, never spoken of.

  This morning, Robin had opened the drawer and found that box in the exact same spot, as though no time had passed. She’d pulled it out, removing the seashell earrings and the add-a-pearl necklace, the souvenir penny pressed into an oval and embossed with a star and the word Corsica. She’d removed the tiny magnifying glass, the rainbow rubber ball, and a
few more pieces of costume jewelry—gently, as though these were living things, deserving of kindness.

  With the box mostly empty, Robin had found what she’d been looking for. She’d put everything back except for that one item—a Polaroid picture, so faded at this point, you could barely make out the image. She’d placed the box back in its spot and shoved the picture into her bag—where it still was right now.

  ROBIN LET GO of her mother’s hand. She unzipped her bag, removed the picture, and gazed at it—a girl with short blond hair, smiling for the camera. The girl was young and coltishly skinny, as though she still hadn’t found her true form. The photo was blurred, the blonde’s features almost completely faded, but Robin could make out the smile—her mother’s dreamy, warm, slightly crooked smile.

  Renee White couldn’t have been more than fifteen in the picture, but she looked as though she was trying to be older than that. She wore a halter top and tight jeans that were too mature for her and there was something about her stance too, the way she cocked her hip, that said less about her than the person taking the Polaroid.

  With her left hand, young Renee made the sign for “I love you.” With her right, she held a gun.

  As a kid, Robin had been unfazed by the gun, a small silver thing she’d fully believed to be a toy. But now, she didn’t know what to believe.

  Robin took hold of her mother’s hand again. She placed the Polaroid in it. “Who took this picture?” she whispered, thinking of the faded photo of April Cooper she’d seen online—a young, unsmiling girl with blond hair like Renee’s. “Was it Gabriel LeRoy, Mom? Did Gabriel take your picture?”

  Robin started to tremble. She knelt down and placed her cheek against her mother’s cool wrist, the hand at her neck like the hand of a mannequin. “Was it Gabriel?” Robin’s voice cracked, and soon she was crying silently, each sob sinking deep into her abdomen, a bottomless, never-ending despair. The Polaroid dropped to the floor. She watched it through the blur of her tears and imagined it burning.

  Robin cried until she was simply too tired to cry anymore, and only then did she hear it. A low, soft moan. Robin froze. Looked at her mother’s face. Took her hand again. Squeezed it again, expecting nothing.

  Mom squeezed back.

  The squeeze was weak, but it was real. “Verity!” Robin yelled. “Doctor!” And within moments she was in the hallway with the guards, one of them bringing the radio to his lips, contacting the station. “She’s waking up,” she was telling them, telling anyone she could. “My mother. I think she’s waking up.”

  ERIC SURPRISED ROBIN. When she called him at work to tell him that the doctors had said her mother seemed to be stabilizing and that they were in the process of weaning her off the ventilator, she’d expected, at the most, some encouraging words and a promise to come home early tonight. But instead, he’d taken the train back immediately, making it to the hospital cafeteria around the time Quentin Garrison was supposed to show up.

  Robin stood up, surprised and relieved that it was Eric, not Quentin, calling out her name. There was only so much tension and uncertainty she could handle, and she’d had her fill for now. Eric, though . . . He’d come home.

  He took her in his arms and she held him tightly and lost herself in the rare feeling of not being alone. “How is Renee?” he said. “When can we see her?”

  “I’m hoping soon. The nurse promised she’d come get me.”

  “I told you,” he said. “I told you she’d be okay.”

  “Eric.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re not in trouble, are you?”

  He pulled away, his features tensing, as though he were bracing for a blow. “What do you mean?”

  Robin stared at him. She could tell they weren’t on the same page. “You left work in the middle of the day. I don’t want you to be in trouble with Shawn.”

  Eric’s face relaxed. “Oh, I can handle Shawn,” he said. “He’s the last thing you need to worry about.”

  “What’s the first thing?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.” She sat back down. He sat across from her, taking both her hands in his. “Renee’s life is more important than Shawn,” Eric said. “You’re more important than Shawn.”

  Robin gripped Eric’s hands and shut her eyes and thought of her mother, the rise and fall of her chest. “I hope she makes it.”

  “She will,” said Eric. “I told you. She has to.”

  Robin opened her eyes and gazed across the table at her husband—those sparkling blue eyes that had roped her in from the first time she’d seen him, sitting across the table from her in RW1, which stood for Reporting/Writing 1—the most time-consuming class in journalism school. He’d winked at her—winked—and she’d told herself that he was too pretty, a player, not to be trusted. He’d spent the better part of that year convincing her otherwise. He’d been single-minded back then. Believing fully that if he willed it, it would happen. And it had happened. Of course it had. They’d had sex for the first time after talking all night, sharing their corniest dreams, their most embarrassing experiences, their goals, their fears, their deepest wishes . . . Unrealistic as only young, in-love people can be. This is going to make me sound like a jackass, Eric had said, but I want to write stories that save lives.

  She smiled at him, remembering the earnestness in his voice, wishing she could bring back that night, when there were no filters between them and no secrets, when there were no unexplained late nights or suspicious Twitter exchanges. When nothing went unsaid and all they both wanted was to know each other thoroughly.

  Eric said, “I think it’s going to be hard for her to go home.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your mom . . . I mean. Because of everything that happened there. Your dad . . .”

  “Yes. You’re probably right.”

  “If she wants to stay with us for a while. For as long as she wants, really, it’s fine with me.”

  “Eric.”

  “I know, I’m putting the cart before the horse. She’s not out of the woods after all, and . . . man, could I use any more pastoral-themed clichés?”

  Robin smiled. She stroked Eric’s stubbled cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

  She heard her name called again—by Verity this time. She knew it without looking up. “Ms. Diamond,” Verity said, and the sound of it made her heart pound.

  Verity had piercing dark eyes, a downturned mouth. She was a naturally somber-looking person, but when Robin looked up at her, she was smiling. “Mom’s off the tube and alert,” she said. “She wants to see you.”

  Robin jumped up from her seat, Eric along with her. His arm stayed around her shoulders as they followed Verity to the elevators, and Robin breathed deeply, thinking of new beginnings.

  Once they reached their floor and the elevator doors opened, Quentin Garrison crossed her mind—the fact that he’d never shown up for their meeting. But it was one fleeting thought of many. And when Verity briefly stopped her, showing her the old Polaroid she’d found under her mother’s bed and asking if it was hers, Robin was so intent on slipping it into her purse before Eric noticed that Quentin disappeared from her thoughts entirely.

  Twenty

  Robin

  “HI, SWEETIE.” MOM’S voice sounded deep and croaky, as though she were just getting over a terrible case of laryngitis. She looked frail still. But awake, animated. Without that tube taped to her lips, Renee White Bloom looked like herself again. It was thrilling, really, to see her breathing on her own.

  Eric squeezed Robin’s hand, and her eyes started to blur. “You’re back, Mom,” she said. “You’re back with me.”

  Robin moved toward the bed and took her mother’s hand in hers. She wanted to hug her, but she was aware of how frail she was.

  “You look so thin,” Mom said. “Have you not been eating?”

  Robin glanced at Eric. He smiled, and she smiled back. Classic Renee Bloom. Lying in a hospital bed having just come off life support, yet still f
retting over her only daughter.

  “Where’s Mitchell?” Renee said.

  Eric’s smile dropped away.

  One of the doctors stepped forward—a tall, distinguished surgeon with silver-framed glasses that matched the streaks in his black hair. He’d introduced himself to Robin in the hallway as “Dr. Wu, like the Steely Dan song”—an icebreaker he’d no doubt used hundreds of times in his career, but one that Robin still appreciated. She was positive she’d seen and spoken to Dr. Wu at some point early in her mother’s hospitalization, and he hadn’t bothered introducing himself at all. But now that Mom was officially no longer a goner, it was as though a human decency switch had been flicked and Robin merited not only introductions but classic rock mnemonic devices. “Mrs. Bloom,” Dr. Wu said. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  Mom’s gaze darted around the room, resting finally on Robin. “I . . . I had a heart attack?” She looked up at her with pleading eyes, like a grade-school kid trying to come up with the right answer.

  Robin was still holding her mother’s hand. Eric slid her a chair, and she eased into it without letting go, without breaking eye contact for fear of upsetting her more than she was about to. “There was a break-in at your house, Mom,” she said slowly. “You and Dad were both shot.”

  “Oh . . . Oh my God.”

  Dr. Wu said, “Why don’t you try and tell us what you remember.”

  She closed her eyes. Robin watched her mother’s gaunt face, the skin shiny and paper thin. This close, she could see it—Renee was nearly herself, almost herself but not quite, and Robin could actually feel how hard she was working to get there. “I remember . . . burning.”

  “Mom?”

  “Red and orange flames. Smoke so thick I couldn’t breathe . . . and demons. Little red demons dancing around . . . Oh . . . Goodness. I guess it was a dream.”

  Verity turned to Robin. “She did have a fever at one point,” she said. “Sometimes, the mind fills in the blanks.”

  Her mother’s hand was still in hers. “How are you feeling now, Mom?”