The One Thing

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  There were a thousand ghosts living in that room.

  Outside, a car door slammed and a pitiful yowl sliced through the morning like a gunshot. Completely spooked now, I crept downstairs, pausing in the entryway. Someone pounded on the front door, and I squawked and jumped out of my skin. “Who’s there?” I hollered.

  “Maggie? It’s Lauren.”

  Lauren?

  I folded my arms across my chest.

  “Maggie?” Lauren repeated.

  I knuckled my forehead. “What’s going on, Lauren?” I said. I was aiming for snarky, but my mouth betrayed me. The words came out wobbly.

  “Can you open up? I’m having a bit of a...situation with Sophie and I need your help.”

  I crossed the entryway in three steps and flung open the door. “What’s wrong with her?” I practically yelled.

  There was a long pause in which I wondered whether Lauren was still there. Then she said, “Um, I think Sophie should be the one to tell you.” Lauren led me to her car, where Sophie was having some sort of wild breakdown. As we came to a stop by the open driver’s side door, Lauren said, “I thought maybe since you...um...have been through some difficult times, you could help her.”

  What I really wanted to ask Lauren was how she’d known I’d even gone through difficult times. I wanted to ask her why she thought I’d actually made it through those difficult times. I wanted to inform her that if Sophie weren’t bawling in my driveway, I wouldn’t have bothered to open my front door for her. But I didn’t have time to give Lauren a speech on loyalties, because she half pushed, half guided me into the driver’s seat.

  I fell into Lauren’s car with an oomph and then sat there for a moment, chewing on my bottom lip. I’d always been a little awkward with this sort of thing. The rough waters of the Estrogen Ocean were not easily navigable. Besides, the last time Sophie and I had spoken had been miserably uncomfortable. Finally, and so Sophie could hear me over her crying, I basically shouted, “So. Having a crappy day?”

  “Shut. Up.” The words sounded odd coming from her mouth—about as natural as Mother Teresa calling Gandhi a dumbass—and I couldn’t take them seriously.

  “I don’t shut up well,” I informed her. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”

  She just sobbed harder.

  “Aw, come on, Soph. It can’t be all that bad.”

  I could hear her breathing, all quick and jerky, like hysterical people in the movies. I tried to reach for her hand, to pat it or something—or whatever girls do in situations like these—but when I finally found her fingers, she flinched away from me and basically yelled, “Remember the other day? When I came to your house?”

  How could I forget? “Yes,” I said.

  “And you asked if I had a cold?” she went on, her voice screechy. “Because I sounded stuffy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’d been crying all morning. My period had been two and a half months late and I’d just taken a pregnancy test.”

  Given everything that had been happening in my life lately, I thought nothing could shock me. But when I realized what she was saying? I was shocked. “You’re...” I began, but then stopped. The two words I was going to end my sentence with were knocked up, but I figured they were probably a little inappropriate. Nevertheless, they were the only words that seemed to fit. Forty-year-old schoolmarms could be “expecting,” and thirty-five-year-old women could be “pregnant,” but high school girls? Well. They were “knocked up.” Which was something I’d expect from Lauren, not Sophie.

  “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?” Sophie wailed.

  I jerked out of the car, slamming immediately into Lauren. “She’s knocked up,” I said brilliantly.

  “Yeah,” Lauren whispered, “and I just...I mean, I’m supposed to be at practice in, like, fifteen minutes and I don’t know what to do. Could you...?”

  “Could I what, Lauren?” I hissed.

  “I don’t know. Keep her here with you for a while? Talk to her? I mean, this is just...I don’t really know what to say.”

  I stood there for a moment, trying to process her words. Trying to process the fact that she’d brought Sophie here just to get rid of her. Then I pursed my lips together and made a little gesture in the air, like, Just go.

  Sophie and I went to the backyard and sat side by side on a pair of cracked plastic seats that dangled from an old swing set, stiff grass poking at our ankles. When we were little, we used to spend hours upon hours out here, just dreaming and talking and hanging upside down. Back then I never would’ve imagined we’d be sitting here like this. Different in so many ways.

  We didn’t talk at first. Not because we had nothing to say, but because we had so much to say. So for the longest time, we stayed there and sorted through our thoughts—Sophie’s tears drying and my shock ebbing. I curled my little finger around the warm metal chain, listening to a pair of blue jays squawk at each other in the far corner of the yard, listening to Gramps bang around in his apartment, listening to my neighbor’s sprinkler. Finally Sophie took a shuddering breath and said, “I never told you this before. I just didn’t know how to bring it up, and I didn’t want it to change the way you saw me, but...” She stopped, cleared her throat, and started again. “I was adopted. My birth mother was sixteen when she had me, Maggie. Sixteen. I wouldn’t be here if she’d, you know...”

  I nodded, understanding the subtext. “How does Jason feel about you not having an abortion?”

  “I haven’t told him that I’m pregnant yet,” she admitted quietly, “haven’t even told my parents. I—I guess I kept hoping that maybe it would all go away if I ignored it. I guess I’m just terrified, you know? I mean, I have to tell my dad.”

  I nodded. Sophie’s dad was a hardass, had been for all her life. Sophie had forever been the one with the early curfew, the one not allowed to wear miniskirts, the one with all the rules.

  Sophie went on. “And besides that, things are already stressed at home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She paused for several beats. There was still this hesitation between us—this sharp, broken shard of glass that neither of us knew how to touch without getting sliced open. Finally she said, “My parents have been fighting a lot.”

  “Sophie, I’m so sorry,” I breathed. “You should’ve told me.”

  “Yeah. Well, the arguments didn’t get really bad until right around the time you lost your eyesight. I figured you had enough going on.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded. It’s not like my family is perfect,” I muttered. “Do you think they’ll work it out? Your parents?”

  A little bit of air shot out of Sophie’s nose, and she said, “Well, I can tell Mom is trying, but Dad has been so distant. I’m terrified that this will be the thing that finally breaks them up.”

  “Sophie, you can’t worry about that right now. Like it or not, this is happening. You have to tell them.”

  “I know,” she murmured. “I just don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Sure you can,” I said. “When you get home, just barrel in and tell them—before you can talk yourself out of it. You know, tear off the Band-Aid as fast as possible.”

  She sniffled. “That’s not me, Maggie. That’s you. I wish you could just...do it for me.”

  My response was timid and weak and flimsy, but it was a response all the same. “Why don’t I go with you?”

  The night was properly silent by the time Gramps dropped us off at Sophie’s, too silent for the two of us to be walking knowingly into a shitstorm. I took her porch steps slowly, soundlessly, and when I stepped into the house, I paused. I’d spent half my life bursting through these doors. I’d enjoyed Fourth of Julys eating watermelon on Sophie’s back porch, banked hundreds of hours under blanket forts in her mother’s sewing room. I knew the squeaky spots on their floor, the garlicky scent in the kitchen. Now, though, the house seemed different. It smelled like too much take-out food and caked-up dust. And as we walked into the living room and
sat on the couch, I turned to Sophie, cleared my throat, and whispered, “Where is everyone?”

  Beside me, Sophie unloaded a sigh. “Mom is probably upstairs reading. And I guess Dad is working late, as usual.”

  “Ah.” I pianoed the Chopin-Clarissa jig on my leg for a couple minutes. Which, I came to find out, is a really long time when nobody’s talking.

  “Distract me,” Sophie blurted suddenly. “Tell me something unrelated to parents and babies. Please.”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Well, I went to a Loose Cannons concert a few days ago.”

  For a moment I got the impression that she was gaping at me. “Are you freaking kidding me?” she said in a choked whisper. “Did you just...stumble on it? The concert?”

  “Something like that,” I muttered, not wanting to get into the specifics. “Anyway, it was amazing.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Sophie said. “I mean, Mason Milton’s voice is like...”

  I swallowed. “Yeah. It’s perfect.” And it was. He was. And now he hated me.

  Sophie went on. “I heard he started dating Hannah Jorgensen, like, a couple months ago.”

  “Who’s Hannah Jorgensen?” I asked, my voice an octave or two higher than normal.

  “Mags. What rock have you been living under? The model? From New York City?”

  My mouth formed the word oh but I didn’t actually say it. I just tried it out on my lips. Not liking the way it felt, I left it somewhere in the middle of my throat.

  I wrapped my arms over my stomach and sank into the couch. Had I imagined the sparks between Mason and me the night of the Dead Eddies concert? Yes. I must have, yes. I’d been drunk. He was dating a model. End of story.

  Outside, a car door closed. Heavy footsteps clomped up the porch.

  “It’s showtime,” Sophie said, and then she laughed, an uncertain invention that sounded more like a bark. I could feel the hairs on her arms brushing against mine as we sat side by side on the couch and waited for her father to open the door. I tried to think of what to say, tried to dredge up one of the huddle speeches I’d given the team over the years. But my past seemed irrelevant right now, and so I did the only thing I knew to do: I stayed beside her and reached for her hand.

  Sophie’s father was drunk.

  He hadn’t started out drunk. He’d breezed into the house, all briskness and aftershave, shot us a hasty greeting, and then immediately retired to his den. I’d felt Sophie starting to have second thoughts, so I’d nudged her with my elbow. “You can do this,” I’d said, and she’d sighed resolutely and stood. And now, in the kitchen, her mother speaking in a voice laced with the sort of hurt and disappointment that I knew was absolutely killing Sophie, and her father screaming—holy crap he was screaming—I was beginning to wonder whether I’d given Sophie the wrong advice.

  Sophie was crying.

  Her mother was crying.

  Her father was yelling horrible things. Sophie was a disappointment. A tramp. An embarrassment. A failure.

  When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I lurched toward him. I didn’t know what I was going to do—take a swing at him, maybe?—but in the end it didn’t really matter, because Sophie pulled me back, wordlessly reminding me that I was there for only moral support.

  Her father paced in front of us, his shoes like gunshots firing off on the tile floor. And then he stopped. Everything went dead still. His voice suddenly disturbingly even, he told Sophie that she wasn’t his daughter anymore. Told her to pack her things and get out.

  Sophie said nothing.

  Why the hell wasn’t she defending herself?

  But as it happened, she didn’t have to, because her mother—loudly, clearly, fiercely—stepped in and screamed that if he was kicking their daughter out of the house, he’d have to kick his wife out as well.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. I could almost hear the walls lean in to hear her father’s reply: “Fine then. Go.”

  And so it happened, that terrifying thing that Sophie had known was coming. Her dad stormed out of the room, slamming doors in his wake. Her mom called a relative in Ohio and asked if she and Sophie could come stay. And as I stood there in the kitchen that night, arms wrapped around myself with Sophie’s silence ringing loudly in my ears, I knew with absolute certainty that I’d just lost Sophie for good.

  What sort of feeling came over me when I heard Mom’s car pull up at Sophie’s instead of Gramps’s, I wasn’t sure. But whatever it was, it warped my exhale into a long, quaking sigh. Stepping off Sophie’s porch, I walked across the driveway and fumbled to find the latch on Mom’s passenger-side door. Collapsing into the seat, I asked, “What happened to Gramps?”

  “Stuck at a poker tournament,” Mom said in the half-mocking, half-affectionate tone that she always used when she spoke about Gramps, an inflection that was as familiar to me as my own hand. “I was surprised you were here. I didn’t know you and Sophie were hanging out again.”

  I picked at the frayed hem on my shorts. I didn’t want to tell her about Sophie’s pregnancy or the confrontation with her parents or the way Sophie’s mom had stepped in to support Sophie. I didn’t want to tell her that the scene in Sophie’s kitchen had made me wish like hell my own mother had come to my rescue when I’d needed her most.

  “We aren’t really hanging out,” I said, swallowing over the clog in my throat.

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Are you?” I said, the words coming out so quickly that I hadn’t even had time to filter them. “I mean, I didn’t know you cared about my friendships.” I felt a lone, fat tear fall down my face, and I turned away from her.

  “Of course I do,” she said quietly. She paused. “Maggie? Are you okay?”

  Still facing the window, I wiped my cheek with the heel of my palm. “I just wish,” I said slowly, thinking about my string of failed friendships, “that I’d done some things differently, is all.” Ambiguous as they were, my words were imploring, reaching for her, invisible fingers trying to stretch across the gap between us.

  “Don’t we all,” she said softly.

  Though the moment was awkward, this was the closest we’d been since I’d lost my sight, so both of us latched on to it like it was a single life jacket that we’d each crammed one arm into—it wasn’t enough to save either one of us, but it was enough to keep our heads above water for the time being.

  For a few minutes, there were only familiar sounds. The way Mom’s car squeaked as it came to a stop. The tick of her blinker. Finally she cleared her throat and said, “Mind if I run in to the dry cleaner’s to pick up Dad’s suit?”

  “No,” I said, a little too loudly. And then I wiped my palms on my shorts. “No, go ahead.”

  When she came to a stop in front of the dry cleaner’s, I stayed put, just shut my eyes and let my head fall back against the seat. It had felt odd, extending myself to my mother. All my life, I’d always followed her lead: she was tough, and I was tough. She played soccer, and I played soccer.

  She deserted me, and I deserted her.

  A car horn blasted. Startled, I flinched and jerked open my eyes. Then I covered my mouth with my hand.

  Because I could see again.

  A woman was trudging in front of the car in a massive puddle of brilliant white light, so dazzling that the air itself almost sparkled around her, millions of tiny diamonds. It was in stark contrast to her appearance. She was aggressively thin and wispy-looking, her bony shoulder blades jutting out beneath her blouse. Wrapped loosely around her head was a flowered scarf, which failed to conceal a thin line of bald scalp above her forehead. There was a rustle of movement to my right, and I saw my mom walking toward her, smiling, saying something to the woman that I could not hear. I sucked in my breath as I saw my mother for the first time in seven months.

  Mom’s normally cherubic curls were unkempt, bordering on frizzy. She had lines all over her face—creases wedged around her eyes and furrows pitting the corners of her lips—all pointing in the wro
ng direction. She looked defeated, from the slope of her shoulders to the way her mouth turned downward as she spoke. Her eyes flickered toward me and I looked away guiltily. By the time I turned back, the woman had walked away, taking her impossibly bright light with her, and my mother was starting toward the car, disappearing into my non-eyesight before she opened the door.

  “Were you talking to someone?” I asked as Mom started the car.

  Mom sighed, a sound that stole the oxygen from my lungs. “Yes. I was talking to Kelly Downs. The mother of one of the girls on my team? She has breast cancer. She’s been sick. Real sick. And—”

  “And what?” I said. They were only two words, but they barely worked their way past my throat.

  “Well, she’s dying, you know? And her doctors can’t do anything about it.”

  For a moment everything went perfectly still and I heard the world around me with flawless precision: the sharp click of heels hustling down the sidewalk, the sleepy jazz music drifting out of a passing car, the sound of a loose wheel on a shopping cart rattling through the parking lot. But mostly, I heard the one word that had jogged loose from my mother’s sentence, tumbling around some cog in my brain.

  Dying

  dying

  dying

  Awareness started filtering through me, ice slipping through my veins. I was shaking. Had to be. My knees were rattling against each other. I’d been denying it all along, of course. I’d denied it every time I’d hung out with Ben. I’d denied it when I’d seen that old man in the China Bistro. I’d denied it when I’d had that dream. Everything had pointed to it, but I’d been looking in another direction, terrified. But now I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t run or hide. Now I knew, with absolute chilling certainty, why I was seeing Ben Milton.

  He was dying.

  I fell into bed that night with my clothes on, praying for sleep that took forever to come. And when it did, I dreamed in random, sharply colored images. They flashed through my mind like jagged pieces of a stained glass window that were too splintered and confusing to assemble: a burgundy sunrise, a bright yellow rose, tired hazel eyes, a dove taking flight into a cerulean sky, jade sand slipping through an hourglass.