Safe with Me: A Novel

by Hatvany, Amy

  I click on my profile’s inbox to see if any other avatars have interacted with mine, and suddenly, an instant message pops up on my screen: “Hey Sierra. I’m Dirk. Saw you take down that giant zombie yesterday with one shot between the eyes. Nice work. Want to build an alliance?”

  My fingers poise over the keyboard, hesitant. I tend to only message with other girls in the game, forming virtual friendships with people I will likely never meet, but this is the first time my avatar has been contacted by a boy. How could I not respond? His avatar is handsome, a blond-haired, black-leather-clad boy with bright blue eyes and a strong jaw. It’s almost eerie, how human he looks. In Zombie Wars, you can design how prominent you want your cheekbones, the shape and color of your eyes. Computer graphics are getting crazy realistic, and it’s totally what I want to major in when I get to college.

  I check out his avatar again and wonder if he’s this attractive in person or if, like me, he has a reason to hide behind the screen. “Thanks,” I type, and for some reason, my heartbeat speeds up. “I like yours, too. Been playing long?”

  “Just a couple of months,” he responds. “A friend turned me on to it, since he knows how obsessed I am with Zombieland.”

  “That’s one of my favorite movies!”

  “Best movie ever made. Well, beside The Matrix. And Star Wars.” There is a pause, and then he sends me another message. “So, what do you think? Want to partner up?” He ends the question with a winking smiley face, and I blush.

  “Sure,” I reply, and before I can read his response, there is a loud knock on my bedroom door.

  “Maddie, honey? Can I come in?” This is a new thing for my mom, having to ask to enter my room. When I was sick, she just came and went as she pleased, oftentimes even sleeping on the bed next to me instead of with my dad. But once I had the transplant and started feeling better, I asked her to knock, and—probably more difficult for her—to stay in her own bed.

  “I’m kind of busy,” I call out to her, trying to mask my sigh.

  Dirk sends me another message: “R U still there?”

  “One sec,” I type. “BRB.”

  “Doing what?” She opens the door enough to stick her head inside. When she sees me with the laptop, it’s her turn to sigh. “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s put that away and go for a walk.”

  “Later, okay? I’m journaling.” One of the counselors I had to talk with after the transplant encouraged me to keep a diary about how I was feeling through the whole process. She told my mom about it, too, so now, whenever she catches me on the computer and gives me a guilt trip, I tell her I’ve been writing about my feelings, which usually makes her back off. “Can you close the door behind you, please?”

  She stares at me with the hazel bordering on light-green eyes she passed down to me, blinks a couple of times, then quietly exits. My gut clenches, hating that I might have hurt her, but wishing she had something other than me to keep her busy during the day. What will she do when I go back to school? Dad won’t let her work, I know that much for sure. The one time after my transplant that she suggested she was thinking about getting recertified as a paralegal, or how she might want to go back to school and become a lawyer, he totally lost it, throwing a chair across the room. A few inches to the left and he would have clocked her with it, which I’m pretty sure was exactly what he was trying to do. Not that she’d ever admit that about him. She’d make some excuse about what a tough childhood he had . . . how his father used to beat him and how he never really worked through his anger about that. “That’s bull,” I told her once. “Why don’t you just leave him?”

  “Because I can’t,” she said quietly, staring at me in a way that made me think that there was a damn good reason she hadn’t left, and the only one I could come up with was me.

  The message box on the screen blinks at me, and I look down to see that Dirk has asked me another question. “So, how old are you IRL? You’re not really some gross forty-year-old guy wearing underwear in his mom’s basement, eating Cheetos, are you?”

  “LOL! No, definitely not,” I answer, then pause before addressing the issue of my age. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “That’s cool,” I type. “I’m nineteen.” I land on this age because it’s closer to my own than the twenty-one I’d listed as Sierra’s, and it also gives him a chance to pass on hanging out with me in Zombie Wars since five years younger might be too much for his tastes. “Almost twenty,” I quickly add, and then I wait for him to respond.

  “Maybe I can take you out for your birthday,” his message reads, and I smile wider, thinking how desperately I want to live in this world rather than my own.

  Hannah

  The morning of the salon’s grand opening, Hannah drives to Sea-Tac airport to pick up her parents. They insisted on flying over from Boise for the event, but Hannah knows it’s really just an excuse for them to check up on her.

  After Emily’s funeral, she went back to the farm for a few weeks, curling up in her childhood bed for most of the days she spent there. Her mother tried to tempt her with her favorite foods—fresh strawberry ice cream, bacon-wrapped meat loaf, and chicken potpie—as though calories could serve as some kind of magical antidote to grief. She managed to nibble on these offerings, but only to placate her mother. She couldn’t taste a thing.

  In the evenings, Hannah sat on the wraparound porch with her father, numbly staring out at the blossoming vegetable garden. In the old wooden swing, its joints creaking with each push forward and fall back, he would hold her hand and talk about Emily. “Remember her face when she learned how to open a pea pod?” her father asked. “ ‘Look, Pop-Pop,’ she said. ‘Pea seeds!’ ” His hands shook and a tear rolled down his creviced, sun-weathered cheek. “What was she . . . four, then?”

  “Three, I think,” Hannah whispered. Of course she remembered. Her mind was flooded with memories—made sodden by them. The first time Emily rolled over and then, six months later, when she pulled herself up to stand next to the couch. Hannah remembered her daughter’s regularly skinned knees and her red apple phobia after seeing Snow White. She remembered the way Emily had let go of her hand the first day of kindergarten, her Hello Kitty backpack over one shoulder as she walked bravely down the hallway to her classroom, one white kneesock sagging around her ankle. “I can do it myself, Mama,” Emily said, and Hannah glowed with pride that this pink-cheeked, bright-eyed child was hers, sure of herself in a way that many girls seem to lose track of as they journey toward adolescence. At twelve, Emily was already beginning to lose her girlish shine, jaded by the prepubescent hormones raiding her blood. She posted a Do Not Enter sign on her bedroom door; Hannah had to ask permission before tucking her in for the night. Long, deep snuggles were replaced by short, cheek-brushing kisses. Emily no longer talked freely about her days; Hannah had to grill her for even the smallest details. One night, a few days before the accident, Emily slammed her bedroom door, furious that Hannah wouldn’t let her go to the mall alone with her friends. “I hate you!” Emily screamed. “I wish you weren’t my mom!”

  Hannah was already missing her daughter when she died, mourning the years that had so quickly passed them by. She was grieving whatever it was that allowed Emily to pull away so soon, so easily. That, of course, was before Hannah knew how deep real grief could go.

  “She was an amazing girl,” Hannah’s father said, roughly wiping at his tears with the back of his free hand. “God just gained another angel.”

  God is a selfish bastard, Hannah thought. In the end, she left the farm after Labor Day, unable to manage her parents’ sorrow on top of her own. She also couldn’t handle their not-so-subtle suggestions that she should make her stay at the farm a permanent move. Though she emailed and talked with them on the phone at least once a week, today would be the first time she’d seen them in over six months. She’d gone back to the farm for Christmas, but only because they had pleaded with her. The truth was, without Emily, she would be al
l too happy to pretend that holidays no longer existed.

  Pulling up in front of the airline’s pickup lane, Hannah sees her parents already standing by the curb with their bags. They will stay at Isaac’s house on Mercer Island, since she no longer has the space to host them. Her brother said he would come to the opening, too, but he wasn’t sure what time, since he was flying in from a business meeting in Los Angeles and would be on standby.

  “Hello, sweetie,” her mother says, pulling Hannah into a tight embrace. She has a clean, soap and water smell that conjures up memories of Hannah’s childhood: nights spent shucking corn with her mother in the kitchen, stirring enormous pots of what would become endless jars of blackberry jam. Pulling away, her mother cups Hannah’s face with both hands. “You look good.”

  “Thanks,” Hannah says, though her voice strangles on the word. She knows “You look good” is her mother’s code for “You look too tired and too thin and I can’t believe you haven’t come home in over six months.” Just like when her mother said, “I support you no matter what you decide to do,” after Hannah informed her she planned to skip the whole husband and marriage gig and go it alone as a parent. What she really meant was, “No man will ever marry you if you already have a baby. You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.” But then her mother held Emily for the first time, and Hannah knew it didn’t matter how she became a grandmother—it only mattered that she was one.

  The truth is that Hannah did date after Emily was born, thinking someday she might be able to get over Devin cheating on her, but she didn’t introduce her daughter to any of the men with whom she spent time. She kept her parenting and dating lives separate, wary of bringing a man into Emily’s life who might disappear on them both. She clung to what the experts said about the perils of dating as a single parent, how they cautioned against inserting someone into your child’s life without some kind of assurance of long-term commitment. None of her boyfriends, even those she dated for more than a few months, made her feel safe enough to truly open up her heart and risk getting hurt again. She wonders sometimes if Devin’s infidelities damaged her ability to trust to the extent that she can’t fall in love. Once bitten, forever shy.

  Her father hugs her next, and after getting their bags into the trunk, Hannah starts to drive them toward Isaac’s house. “I thought you might want to get freshened up before the party,” she says, after telling them where they’re headed. “I’ll come back to get you in a while.”

  “We’re just fine, honey,” her father says from the backseat. “It’s only an hour flight.”

  Hannah glances at him in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure? I’m going to be pretty busy. You might get bored.”

  “We’ll help,” her mother says, reaching over from the passenger seat to pat Hannah’s arm. She notices the back of her mother’s hand, the skin creped and veined, a sharp, painful reminder that her parents won’t be around forever, either.

  Hannah tries to keep from sighing, knowing that they mean well, but that their “help” might add an extra fifteen minutes to each task. “Okay,” she says, attempting to sound cheerful. “Great.” She directs the car to I-405, heading north to Bellevue. Her father hums a nameless tune, a habit Hannah grew accustomed to years before. Wherever her father is, whatever he is doing, he is likely humming. That, along with the rooster’s crow each day and the buzz of crickets at dusk, made up the sound track of her youth. She misses it sometimes, the simplicity of that life, but she also loves the quicker pace of living in a bigger city—the restaurants, the theater, the museums. She also loves having the mountains on one side of her and the ocean on the other; if she wanted to, she could ski and go swimming on the same day. She’s not sure she could give that all up.

  “Have you thought any more about moving back to the farm?” her mother asks as they pass through the Renton S-curves. Last year, her mother had campaigned the hardest for her to make the move. “You can open a small salon here,” she suggested. “The women of Boise could use a little glamour.”

  Now, Hannah grits her teeth before speaking. “No, Mom.” Really? She’s here less than twenty minutes and already pushing the subject? Hannah realizes it’s getting harder for her parents to handle the heavy labor on their property. Her father hired a foreman to manage the dairy business, and several laborers to take care of the two hundred acres of potatoes and corn. They have always wished for one of their children to someday take over the farm, but neither Hannah nor Isaac has any inclination to live in the country. Still, they are her parents, and Hannah feels guilty knowing that if she or Isaac doesn’t move home, as her parents age, they’ll likely have to sell the farm off, parcel by parcel, in order to survive. At the very least, they will have to fully turn its operations over to someone else, relinquishing to a stranger what they poured their hearts and souls into through the years. Hannah knows that, because he built the success of the property out of ten small acres he began with over forty years before, this prospect breaks her father’s heart.

  “A change of scene might be good for you,” her mother says, wringing her hands together in her lap.

  “Marcy . . .” her father says, a hint of warning in his tone.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Hannah says, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. She glances over to her mother. “I have a change of scene. I already moved—remember?”

  “I’m just worried you did that to avoid your grief,” her mother says. “Packing away all of Emily’s things like that, pretending she never existed—”

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” Hannah snaps. Her voice is raw. She clears her throat so she won’t cry. How can she explain how she feels to them? How can she tell them that she’s worried if she is surrounded by Emily’s things, the weight of the memories might crush her? If she goes through Emily’s clothes, her toys, her books, that she simply won’t be able to survive? Having put her daughter’s belongings into storage is keeping Hannah alive; having them around her might end her.

  “Are you sure?” her mother continues. “I was watching Dr. Phil the other day—”

  “Oh my god. Dr. Phil . . . really?” Hannah says. Besides baking and working in the garden, her mother’s favorite pastime is armchair psychiatry, trained only by afternoon talk-show hosts.

  “But, honey—”

  “Enough, Mom, okay? Can we please just enjoy the day? It’s important to me.”

  “Marcy,” her father says again. He reaches over the seat, squeezes his wife’s shoulder, and she finally falls silent.

  Fifteen minutes later, as Hannah parks in front of the salon, her mother leans forward to peer out the windshield. “Is that it?”

  “Yep,” Hannah replies as they extricate themselves from the car and approach the garden gate. She finished the landscaping just yesterday, shoveling wheelbarrows full of smooth river stones into the empty spots of the flower beds, thinking about how Emily, at seven or eight, used to sit in their driveway and put together small, ragged towers out of rocks: Yard Henge, Hannah jokingly called them. “Structural engineer in the making,” Isaac said proudly, when Hannah emailed him pictures of his niece’s handiwork.

  It’s a mallet to her stomach, every time, realizing that Emily is no longer anything in the making. All of her daughter’s dreams have vanished. She won’t be a large animal vet or a Broadway star. She won’t be an artist or a lawyer or a hip-hop dancer. She’ll never have her first kiss. Hannah won’t help Emily get ready for the prom, she won’t take her shopping for a wedding dress, or one day cuddle a grandbaby. What was a future filled with infinite possibility seems hopeless to Hannah now. There are moments when taking her next breath feels like a pointless endeavor.

  As Hannah and her parents make their way to the front steps, she notices that while she was gone, the caterers set up two round tables on the flagstone patio and the florist arranged the centerpieces. Small gatherings of chairs were placed in what will be shaded spots in the yard, so people can chat while they help themselves to the appetiz
ers. “It’s beautiful, honey,” her mother says. “I can’t believe how much work you’ve done since the last set of pictures you emailed us.” She is trying, at least, to make up for her comments in the car.

  “Thanks,” Hannah says. “The contractor Isaac recommended did a really amazing job. Let me show you inside.” She opens the front door only to find Sophie in the middle of berating one of the employees Hannah hired to work at this location.

  “You will not wear that disgusting nose ring during this party,” Sophie says to Veronica, a younger stylist with Crayola-red-hued short hair and pale, porcelain skin. Hannah interviewed her a few weeks ago, and Veronica’s portfolio of the color work she’d done was stunning enough for Hannah to hire her on the spot. Today, Veronica wears black leggings and a fitted white blouse. She also has a small gold hoop hanging from the center of her nose, above her upper lip. Sophie, as usual, is dressed in her signature snug black T-shirt and jeans.

  Veronica opens her mouth, but Sophie holds up her hand to stop her. “Uh-uh-uh, chérie. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care what you did at your other salon—here you will look clean and professional. You will not wear jewelry that makes you look like a bull. This is Bellevue, not the University District or the circus. We do not cater to the steam-punk, liberty-spiked crowd here. Am I making myself understood?”

  Veronica nods, as does Peter, the other stylist Hannah hired, looking a little afraid of Sophie, and then they head toward the back room to finish filling the small gift bags with salted caramels, various hair products and accessories, and coupons for services at both salons. Each party attendee will get one, and at last count before Hannah left for the airport, only twenty were finished. They expect at least two hundred people throughout the day.

  Hannah clears her throat to get her friend’s attention. She and Sophie had agreed Hannah would have complete charge of the second location, but clearly, Sophie still feels entitled to take the lead when necessary. Hannah finds this more amusing than annoying, wondering not for the first time if her friend’s bossy nature is the real reason she opts for having lovers instead of boyfriends. “I have lovers because I’m French, darling,” Sophie told her, when Hannah first brought the subject up.