I Must Have You

by JoAnna Novak

  I nodded, squeezing a grimace into a grin. “She’s going to be fine. Watch out, um, or tell your mom to watch for black ice on the ride home. Pretty gnarly. I mean, nasty.”

  “Good. That your mom’s okay,” Lisa said flatly. She topped her head with the hat. Her gaze fell onto the magazine in my lap. “See ya on Tuesday, Ellie McBeal.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”

  ··

  On a whiteboard outside Anna’s room, someone had written, in big turquoise bubble letters, “ANNIE.” The only respectable association I had with that name was Little Sure Shot, Annie Oakley, one of the many groundbreaking women we’d studied a couple years ago in Headways. Her, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Blackwell, Sojourner Truth: that was my heritage, bold and unstoppable.

  I stepped inside, willing my boots not to squeak on the tile. The room was dark—my mom was in the half closer to the door than the window. She was separated from another bed, another person, maybe another woman, by a creamed-corn yellow shower curtain on a curvy metal runner attached to the ceiling. That’s where Anna’s eyes were—looking back and back and back, like she was trying to stare into her brain.

  “Mom,” I said. I was used to her spacing. She could be hunched over a notebook and not notice me blasting “Who Let the Dogs Out?” at full volume on all the CD players in the house. This time, though, I needed to bother her. My uncles would be up any minute. They’d just wanted to give me some one-on-one time.

  Anna coughed and turned toward me. I stepped closer. I kept my face relaxed, the way I’d stayed cool looking at Ethan’s crotch, the way I’d let Lisa bite me. My mom’s face was swollen, gauzed here, purple there, abraded everywhere, like she’d picked a scab and bruised herself on a boiling cauldron. I couldn’t see her arms or legs under the hospital gown except to see their shape: very small. Not much bigger than mine.

  “Baby,” she mouthed.

  “Can I sit down?” I said. Next to her bed was a pine dresser, cruddy, with a red plastic tray like they gave you at McDonald’s. There was a Styrofoam cup with a straw sticking out of it.

  Anna tried to move. She let out a moan.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m good. Are you okay?”

  “Where’s your father?” she whispered. Her eyes closed and squeezed. I expected a single tear or something poetic to appear on her cheek, but nothing did. Her skin just stayed ugly and purple. Even her lips were mangled looking, brown red and shredded.

  “Marky and Fernán are coming up. I guess—is Dad coming home?”

  “Probably.”

  “When—when do you think you’ll get to come home?”

  I waited while she breathed—it sounded like work. I couldn’t keep looking at her. I didn’t want to be the girl who made her mom feel self-conscious or sorry for herself. I counted the pleats on the shower curtain. Thirty-six.

  “A … a couple days,” she said, finally. “You—do you want to stay with Lisa?”

  My mom didn’t know. She didn’t know my dad was on his way home, that he’d be flying over Beachy Head. She didn’t know my uncles had made me food, peanut butter cookies and something called pernil that I’d sniffed and disregarded. I leaned over Anna, holding myself up, my hands planted on the scratchy hospital sheets. She closed her eyes again. Bruises as a natural substitute for eye shadow? I thought. For all my vegan clients. Now Anna’s single tear came—followed by another and another. I kissed her forehead, on the purplest part. She was my mom. She didn’t know I had other friends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ALL MY THANKS TO NOAH Ballard and Alexandra Hess for their faith and savvy, and to everyone at Curtis Brown Ltd. and Skyhorse Publishing who helped give this book a spine.

  I am grateful to the academic institutions that afforded me time and welcomed me to their literary communities, and to Kathryn Davis, Kellie Wells, Kathleen Finneran, and Noy Holland for encouraging and challenging my practice. To Barbara Tannert-Smith for teaching me about scenes, and to Glen Brown and Scott Eggerding for their unwavering confidence. Thanks to my peers and readers Dan Bevacqua, Andrew MacDonald, Hannah Brooks-Motl, Tyler Flynn Dorholt, and Amanda Goldblatt, who each practices art with a verve and grace that inspires me. To my family for caring for me. To Shannon Buckley and Courtney Napleton for loving me. And to Thomas Cook, my partner always, in everything.