Safe with Me: A Novel

by Hatvany, Amy

  Olivia took what she hoped was an inaudible, measured breath. She knew what he needed to hear. “I think you’re wonderful. The most generous man a woman could ask for.” She looked up, then reached over and grabbed his hand. “I love you so much, James. I know how hard you work for us . . . how hard you work for our baby girl. I am the luckiest woman in the world.”

  His expression softened, and minutes later they were upstairs in their bedroom. He disrobed her carefully, running the tips of his fingers over her skin, making her feel like every nerve was a lit sparkler. He moved her to the bed, took off his own clothes, and then joined her, taking care of her before he moved behind her—the only position that was comfortable for her this late in the pregnancy. Olivia moaned the way she knew he liked her to, the way that helped him finish, and she waited and waited for the end to come. After twenty minutes, when it still hadn’t, she wondered if he really had had too much to drink at the office.

  “It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, “if you can’t.” She thought she was giving him an out. She thought she was being generous.

  But then James stopped moving, grabbed her by the waist, and wrenched her over onto her back. A sharp, twisting pain shot through her belly. She cried out, but before she could speak, he slapped her once, hard, across the face. Olivia closed her eyes and saw bright splotches of stars. She tried to keep from crying.

  James dropped to her side and put his mouth up against her ear. “You don’t tell me what I can and cannot do.” He bit her earlobe until she yelped again. “Do you understand me?”

  Olivia nodded, her chin trembling as she fought the tears in the back of her throat. James just hit me. He hit me, he hit me. She repeated the words over and over in her mind, until eventually, they held no meaning. She rolled away from him and pulled the covers up over her naked body. She felt his eyes boring into her back, but she couldn’t look at him. She was too afraid of what she’d see.

  The next morning, after he’d slept in the guest bedroom, he brought her breakfast in bed. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, placing the tray carefully over her lap. He’d made her scrambled egg whites with feta cheese and tomatoes—her favorite. “I squeezed you some orange juice, too,” he continued, holding up the small glass before reaching out to caress her belly. “Can’t give this sweet girl too many vitamins, right?” He smiled at her, the same wide, charismatic grin he’d given her the first day they met.

  Olivia stared back, searching his face for some evidence of remorse for what he’d done. Some proof that she hadn’t just imagined that moment in the dark. “Can you bring me a mirror, please?” she asked him.

  He frowned. “What for?”

  “I must look a mess,” she said, reaching up to flatten her hair. “I just need to put on a little makeup.” She smiled, and he brought her the lovely antique silver hand mirror he’d bought for her birthday. She took a deep breath, readying herself for a bruise on her face, some mark that would confirm that she hadn’t been dreaming, but there was nothing. Her cheeks were rosy from sleep, and though her eyes were a little puffy from crying, no one, not even she, would have believed that James had slapped her.

  He left for work soon after, and later that day, two dozen long-stemmed yellow roses arrived at the house, followed by an email confirming that a flight had been booked for her mother to come for the shower. In the end, though, her mother was too ill to travel, afraid her aching hip joints wouldn’t be able to withstand a six-hour flight. “We’ll take the baby to see her once it’s born,” James promised Olivia that night. “She needs to see her grandchild.” He was drunk, Olivia told herself. He didn’t realize what he was doing. Just this once, she could let it go.

  This morning, after he left her alone to take their daughter to her first day of school, Olivia knew she had to let it go again. It had become an art on some level, navigating her husband’s moods, reading his expressions and bodily tics. Much like a poker player, Olivia memorized James’s “tells,” the twitch beneath his left eye, the strange light in his eyes, the shadow across his face—minute signs that gave his impending reactions away. She knows that to some extent, Maddie has learned to read her father, too, but she can push him farther than Olivia can. Though he sometimes raises his voice at his daughter, though his eyes flash and his fists curl up in frustration, he never hits her. At least, he hasn’t yet. Olivia believes that if James ever does hurt Maddie—even if he threatens to hurt her—that will be the catalyst for her to finally leave. Until then, she knows if she does, James will take Maddie away from her. It’s not what he’s said that makes her know this—it’s who he is. He wouldn’t let Olivia leave him without taking something from her, too.

  Olivia knows little about family law, but she doesn’t doubt that James has the power, money, and connections to take custody of their daughter away, so she stays. She stays and stays and stays, enduring whatever she has to so she can take care of Maddie. So her daughter will be okay.

  Her alarm goes off at six a.m. and Olivia silences it, then rises from the bed. She knows Maddie doesn’t understand why she doesn’t leave James. Maddie has never seen her father hit her mother—James is too smart to let that happen—but Olivia is certain that Maddie suspects. She is also fairly sure that Maddie thinks she’s a coward. But what her daughter can’t comprehend is how much strength it takes to survive a life like this. It’s a chess game—Olivia has to see ahead four, five, even ten moves to protect them both. It’s exhausting, really, to live like this, to second-guess her every breath.

  But this morning, James isn’t home, so for the moment she can relax. She can fix Maddie breakfast, she can help her pick out what outfit she’s going to wear. She can focus on what’s important—she can take her daughter to her first day at a new school.

  Maddie

  “I don’t want you to come inside,” I tell my mom, who has been hovering around me all morning like I’m two years old and might be in need of a diaper change. “I can find my classes, okay? I’ll be fine.”

  It’s a slightly overcast September day, and we are sitting in the parking lot of Eastside Prep, watching the other kids mill around the entrance to the school, talking and laughing and generally looking more at ease than I’ve probably ever felt in my life. The girls all seem impossibly pretty to me, with long torsos and hip-hugging jeans, and the boys swagger with their backpacks slung over one shoulder, most of them with wannabe-surfer haircuts, their bangs too long over their eyes. I glance down at the black leggings and tan baggy sweater I decided to wear and suddenly wish I’d made a different choice. I’ve lived in pajamas and sweatpants for the last eight years, so I pretty much have the fashion sense of a third grader. And even though I’m telling my mother I’ll be just fine, I’m positive I’ll never fit in with these people. Life is not a John Hughes movie, where the nerdy, weird girl ends up dating the captain of the football team. Life is me, sitting alone at a table in the lunchroom, wishing I could disappear.

  Mom shifts her body to face me. “Are you sure? You remember the school nurse’s name?”

  “Mrs. Taylor,” I say with a sigh. “And I will check in with her first thing so we can go over my med schedule.” Mom had visited the school last week, bringing the nurse a stockpile of all my prescriptions and strict instructions to call her if I show even a hint of a fever.

  “You remembered your hand sanitizer, right? You need to use it before and after every class and after you’ve been in the bathroom. Even after you wash your hands.”

  “God, Mom. Yes, I remembered it. You reminded me to put it in my bag, like, fifty-three times this morning.” Even though I am doing really well with my new liver, I’m still at a higher risk for infection from simple things like a head cold or the flu. If my mom had her way, I’d probably be walking around in a full-on hazmat suit. I glance over at her—she’s dressed casually in a swishy, knee-length, pale green skirt and snug white T-shirt—and I wonder if I’ll ever have her looks. Her hair is always the perfect buttery blond shade with lighte
r stripes around her face; her skin is clear, her body is lean, spray-tanned, and strong. She looks a little like Jennifer Aniston, which I know my father likes to brag about to his friends, but sometimes it makes me wonder if I was adopted.

  Grabbing my backpack from the floor, I lean over and give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll text you at lunch and let you know how it’s going, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says with a nervous smile. “I love you, honey. You’re going to do great.”

  “Thanks,” I say and have to fight off the tickle of imminent tears in my throat. I climb out of the car and make my way down the sidewalk that leads to the front steps of the school. I look up at the imposing building, which my father said used to be a monastery. The face of it looks like a church, with Gothic arches and intricate stained-glass windows. Last night, I looked up the floor plan online, so I would know how to get to the office and my classrooms. I signed up for AP English and trigonometry, world history, psychology, Spanish, and an advanced computer sciences class. Luckily, I get a free pass from PE, since there’s too much danger of being hit in the gut by a stray basketball or jabbed by an elbow.

  A wave of other students practically carries me down the long hallway to the office, where I know the nurse is waiting for me. The walls are covered with posters: IF YOU BELIEVE IT, YOU CAN BE IT! and THE ONLY WAY PAST IS THROUGH! The words are set against impressive nature scenes, waterfalls and deep canyons, and are meant to be inspirational, but because they remind me of the lab at the hospital, they end up irritating me instead. There are a few other kids standing at the desk, so I get in line behind a girl with thick, cascading red curls and a purple checkered book bag slung over her shoulder. She turns around when my backpack accidentally brushes against her.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say. Her face is peppered with tiny freckles, and I think she’d be pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way if she weren’t wearing so much makeup. Her eyes are thickly lined in black and her lips are sticky with bright pink gloss. She has on jeans and a long, tight green T-shirt with the word Aéropostale scrawled in sparkling white letters across her chest.

  “No worries.” She looks me over. “You new?” I nod, and she snaps her watermelon gum—I can smell it—before speaking again. “Cool. I’m Hailey.”

  “I’m Maddie.” She seems friendly enough. Maybe this won’t be as hard as I thought.

  “Where’d you transfer from?”

  “Um, I’ve sort of been homeschooled by a tutor for a while. Since fourth grade, actually.”

  “Really? Are your parents like, way religious or something?”

  I feel my face flame and I clear my throat. “No. Not at all. I just . . . well, I’ve been sick a lot, like in the hospital so much that it was just easier to have a tutor so I wouldn’t fall behind. That’s all. But I’m better now, so I’m . . . here.”

  Hailey raises an eyebrow and leans away from me the tiniest bit, but enough for me to notice. “Sick with what?” From the look on her face, it’s clear she’s worried I’m contagious, that simply standing next to me puts her at some kind of risk.

  “I had a bad liver,” I say. “But I got a new one last year.” I’m not prepared for her questions; the truth tumbles out of me before I can stop it.

  “O . . . M . . . G.” She spells the letters out with a notable pause after each, then widens her eyes, as though I just told her I had a third leg or an extra breast. “That’s kind of creepy . . . isn’t it?”

  “Not really.” I shrug, and attempt to appear confident, when I actually sort of agree with her. It is creepy, if I let myself think about it too long, the fact that I’m carrying around another person’s organ inside my body. That a twelve-year-old girl had to die to save my life. I wonder about her sometimes, what she was like, if I would have wanted to be her friend. I wonder how her parents are doing, if part of them hates me for living when their child is dead. The transplant coordinator told me I could write them a thank-you letter—anonymous, of course—but when I asked my mom if I could, she told me my dad said no.

  “Why not?” I asked, and she shook her head.

  “Your dad just wants to protect us, honey,” Mom explained. “He’s worried if the donor family found out who we are, they might ask for money.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I said, not actually knowing if this was true, but I didn’t think that the kind of people who would take their daughter off life support in order to save other lives would also be the kind of people to turn around and blackmail us after the fact.

  “You never know,” Mom said with a small shrug. “I know it’s hard. I want to reach out to the mother of the donor, especially. Tell her how grateful I am for what she did for us. But we have to respect your dad’s wishes, okay?”

  I could tell that she thought it was crappy of Dad to not let us write to the family, too, but the truth is, I haven’t been able to figure out what I’d say even if I could. Anything I come up with in my head sounds cheesy or I’m sure would make them feel worse than they probably already do. I feel pretty guilty, actually, knowing that I got to live when their daughter died, and I wonder if they’d even like me, if they’d wish someone else had been saved. It’s a weird sort of pressure, feeling like I have to live up to a memory of a person I didn’t even know. It’s hard to feel worthy of this kind of gift. I mean, really, how do you find words to thank someone for saving your life?

  Hailey’s voice pops me out of my thoughts. “Is that why your hair looks like that?” She wrinkles up her pert little nose. My face floods red and I run my hand over my head, wishing I could melt right into the floor. One of the side effects of my meds is thinning hair; it’s still long, but while I’d used a thickening shampoo and tried to tease it enough to make it look normal, apparently, I’d failed. Before I can come up with a proper retort, a woman sticks her head out of another office and calls my name. The nurse, I assume, who is expecting me.

  “See you later,” I mumble. What a bitch. If I’d been smart, I would have come up with a lie about moving or transferring from another high school and not said a word about the transplant. I wonder how long it will take for the whole school to hear all about the weird new stranger in their midst.

  I make it through my meeting with Mrs. Taylor, working out a schedule for me to come to her office two times a day—once after third period and once after lunch—so I can take my pills. I sit through homeroom/AP English, somewhat slumped down in my seat, grateful that for the most part, everyone seems to be ignoring me. A few kids give me curious looks, a few others say hello, but that’s it. The English teacher, Mr. Preston, assigns us To Kill a Mockingbird, which I’ve already read three times, so I tune out for the rest of the class. I wonder what Dirk (which he told me was his actual first name, chosen by his parents as a hybrid of the name of their favorite actor, Kirk Douglas) is doing right now. We chatted back and forth quite a bit over the last month, both inside the game with our avatars and on email and instant messaging. He sent me a picture of what he looks like in real life—kind of short, but muscular with a thick, wrestler’s build and blond hair. He wears glasses, but they’re the cool, funky kind, and he is definitely cute enough to date a girl way prettier than me. I sent him a head shot of “Sierra,” the same profile picture I use on Facebook, holding my breath as I waited for his response.

  “Wow,” he wrote in his email. “You’re hot and you like video games? How is that possible?”

  “It’s not, actually,” I probably should have said, and sent him a picture of what I really look like. But then he’d know I’m only sixteen and he wouldn’t want to hang out with me. I didn’t think it was that much of a big deal, lying to him. We’re playing in a fantasy world . . . and he is my fantasy.

  The bell rings and I’m forced to stop thinking about Dirk. I maneuver my way through the crowded hallway and try to find my locker. I’m standing off to the side, attempting to peek around a group of kids standing in front of what I think is probably number 387, whe
n a boy next to me looks over my shoulder at the piece of paper I’m holding.

  “You want the next row down,” he says, and I whip around to face him. He’s taller than me, with brown hair that hangs a little too long over his blue eyes, and wears a black-and-white plaid shirt with his jeans.

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay. Thanks.”

  “You new?”

  I nod, and he smiles, revealing shiny silver braces. “Cool. I’m Noah.”

  “Maddie.” I wait to see if he asks me about where I’ve transferred from, but he only gives me a short wave.

  “See you around,” he says, and then I’m left to push my way through the crowd to my locker. Voices echo off the stone walls, making me cringe. I’m used to the quiet of the hospital ward or my house; the excessive noise makes me want to cover my ears.

  I manage to make it through the rest of my classes without really talking to anyone else. I write down my assignments and organize my binder, really only excited about computer science, where the teacher, Mrs. Decker, promises we’ll be scripting our own programs before the end of next week. I text a quick, nondescript message to my mom at lunch—“I’m fine”—and take my meds at the office as I promised. At the end of the day, I stop by my locker to grab the few books I’ll need for my homework, and as I’m shoving them into my backpack, trying to ignore the buzz of people around me, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and see Noah.

  “Hey,” I say, trying to sound casual. I wonder why he sought me out again, but find myself sort of happy to see him. “What’s up?”

  He cocks his head to one side, and jerks his too-long bangs out of his face. “Is it true that you had some kind of organ transplant?”

  He must know Hailey. Either that, or she’s flapped her jaw to enough of the right people that the whole school knows about my operation. Sucking in a quick breath, I nod, not wanting to say anything more, but he keeps talking. “Which one?”