How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  She beats the eggs, adds flour and milk, not measuring anything. “Is Jill up?” She holds the whisk in front of her face and studies the way the batter drips.

  “No.”

  “Let’s get her up. These are best hot and fresh.”

  When she doesn’t move from the counter, I realize she means I should get Jill up. Jill, who said I’m just an incubator. “I think she’ll like it better if you go.”

  Robin laughs, slicing ham into thin strips. “Oh, don’t let Jill scare you. She’s exactly like her father—all bark and no bite. Knock on the door nice and hard and say ‘crepes.’ She’ll come out.”

  Upstairs I stand outside Jill’s door and listen. Maybe she’s already up and about to come out and I won’t have to do anything. After a minute of nothing but silence, I knock on the door twice. “Crepes!” Then I turn and go down the stairs as fast as I can in my condition.

  When I get to the bottom, the baby moves. Not like a kick. More like a roll.

  All of a sudden I see her. I see her at five years old, coming down these stairs sideways, one step at a time, holding on to the railing with both small hands. She’s wearing pink pajamas, the kind with feet built in, and she has Christopher’s dark hair and my light eyes. She calls out Robin’s name—she calls her “Robin.”

  But reality is she’ll call her “Mommy.” I didn’t think about that before.

  Where will I be in five years? How far away from here, and from her?

  These are questions I maybe should have thought about harder a few months ago.

  All through breakfast Jill reads a comic book. Trying to make conversation to show her I’m not mad about what she said to me, and showing Robin I’m not scared, I say, “I used to like Sailor Moon. That was the only comic I read.”

  Jill gives me a look of disdain. She and I haven’t been in the same room since she yelled at me on Thursday night. “This isn’t freaking poser-ass magical-schoolgirl anime. It’s a graphic novel. It won awards.”

  “Jill,” Robin says, but she’s not really upset. She’s reading, too, one of her magazines.

  “What’s that about?” I ask Robin.

  “Hmm?” She looks up. “Alternative transportation models going forward into a post-oil age.”

  “Oh.”

  It’s good that my daughter will be with smart people. My mother says it’s better to be pretty than smart, but I don’t know. Lately I’ve been trying, in my head, to put things in the opposite order of what my mother says. Being nice would come first. Then smart. Pretty is last. Or, why can’t you be all of them? If you’re pretty, does that mean you can’t also be smart and nice? I think Robin is all three. Jill is two out of three. Maybe she’s nice, too, just not to me. I don’t care. I only care that she’s nice to my daughter, her sister. So I need to make sure not to say or do anything else that will make her mad.

  When I go to the fridge for milk, I say, “Can I get anything for anyone while I’m up?”

  Robin says no thanks. Jill doesn’t acknowledge that I talked. I guess she needs more time.

  Dear Alex,

  I know you probably only just got my last letter and haven’t had time to write back. Or maybe you haven’t even gotten that yet because you could still be traveling. You could be on a train right now.

  Well, I am settling in here. The family I’m giving the baby to is very nice. It’s a mother and daughter. There is no father. And I know that’s not perfect, but this family acts like a family with a father. By that I mean there’s a ghost of a father still here. He died not that long ago, and you can tell they’ll never forget him, never ever stop missing him. Not like my family, which I bet has already forgotten about me.

  I do wish they would talk about him more, but it seems like it makes them sad.

  For a second today I had the thought that I would like to keep the baby. Robin, the lady who is adopting, sat down with me this week to talk about emotions and psychology and all of that, and she’s constantly telling me it’s normal to have mixed feelings right now. I’ve never really had any, though, until today. They were short. Anyway, it’s an open adoption and I can visit the baby if that’s how we decide to do it. It’s not set up legally that way, but we trust each other.

  Sometimes I see the future and it’s like I’m a blank. I mean I know what I’ll look like, that I’ll exist. But I don’t know who I’ll be or who will be with me. At least I know who I’m not and who won’t be with me. I won’t be my mother, or with someone like her boyfriend. That is a guarantee.

  Do you know who you’ll be in the future? And who you’ll be with?

  Yours,

  Mandy (from the train)

  It’s only a first draft. When Robin and I were e-mailing back at the beginning of the year, I got used to writing my letters out in my school notebook first, then typing them, then checking them against books, then retyping them. The mail doesn’t go out again until Monday, so I have plenty of time to change it. I fold the paper and put it inside one of the magazines Jill brought me on my first day here, which I’ve already looked at but like to look at again. Magazines—and TV, too—help me think about who I might want to be.

  The house is quiet. Jill went out after breakfast, and Robin is in her office downstairs. I’m sitting on the bed with pillows propped up behind me so I can see not only the tree outside my window but the next house and the one after that.

  I look back at the week.

  I got here and Robin didn’t change her mind.

  I saw the doctor and the truth came out and Robin didn’t change her mind.

  I fought with Jill, but Robin said not to worry, and it seems like things with Jill could stay like they are and it won’t make Robin change her mind.

  I could start to believe that she never will. That this is actually going to happen. That this could be my sure thing.

  Jill

  Dylan comes over to study on Sunday, and it’s almost like old times. Like we never broke up and got back together and broke up again, or fought, or went through whatever it is we went through. Me being angry and sad. Him trying to make me feel better. Me saying “But I don’t want to feel better” and asking to be left alone. Then there was the Grady thing.

  To make a point, I let Dylan see me leaving school last June with this fifth-year senior, Grady, who’d always been after me. Grady drove me to his house and, as soon as the door closed behind us, pushed me up against it and proceeded to kiss and grope, and I stood there in my own little petrified forest of detachment, not responding, until he pulled back and asked, “What?”

  “I’m grieving.”

  “I know. Before your dad died, there’s no way you would’ve gotten into my car.”

  And we ended up on opposite ends of the couch while he played Xbox and I texted Dylan a hundred apologies.

  Over the summer we got back together, technically, but the whole time I could tell he was still mad at me, and I was still sad, and neither of us was enjoying any of it. Meanwhile, Laurel and Cinders tried to be there for me. I mean, they more than tried. They really were there, like, all the time. E-mailing sympathy notes and sending Facebook gifts and constantly taking me out for coffee. Dragging me to parties to keep my mind off things. Dropping by the house to “check in” and see how I was “holding up.” Dylan was doing all this, too, plus talking talking talking about it. Wanting me to “express my grief.” Telling me over and over that he was there to listen. Hugging me all the time, until I couldn’t stand the feel of his hand on my back. Looking at me with soul-bruisingly sad eyes that said, How is Jill ever going to get through this?

  It was all too much.

  Fourth of July weekend, Dylan and Laurel and Cinders took me to Confluence and sat me down by the water and told me they were worried. It had been three months and I needed to talk about it. I needed to cry. It was time to lean on my friends, not shut them out. Each of them took a turn telling me what was wrong about how I was handling the whole deal. An intervention, basically.

&nb
sp; It wasn’t as if I hadn’t cried. I just chose to do it privately. In fact, I’d been crying all weekend.

  My dad loved the Fourth of July. It was the perfect holiday for him, combining patriotism, world history, and grilled meats. So he’d get the flag out of the garage, where it had been properly folded and stored since Memorial Day, and I’d help him put it up. I always acted like it was this big pain. The year before he died, we got in a fight about it because I wouldn’t get out of bed at the crack of dawn to help him like I’d done every year of my life until then. I just wanted to sleep. He came into my room and pulled the sheet off me, raised the blind. I should have gotten up. But I pulled the sheet back over my head, and he said, “Jilly, let’s go. It’s a good day to be an American.” I could have said, “Give me five minutes.” I could have said, “Coffee first.” Instead, I muttered something completely rude. I think it was, “Eff America,” and the room got quiet and when I tossed the sheet back, finally, he was gone, without so much as a reminder to try a little tenderness, because this went way beyond my usual bad manners.

  But then when I went outside in my pajamas, he was there on the porch, with the flag, like he knew I’d come out, feeling like shit. And instead of yelling at me for being rude and maybe treasonous, he said, “Here, take this corner.”

  While Laurel and Cinders and Dylan were telling me to express myself, all I could think was that I’d trade them all for Dad, but how could I express that? There are so many pieces to grief. Sad pieces, angry pieces, guilty pieces, pieces of regret, and pieces that are a certain kind of pain that doesn’t even have a word.

  And that’s when I expressed myself by saying, “Leave me the hell alone.” They did.

  Then Dylan and I got back together once more, when senior year started. September always feels like this clean slate, an optimistic time. It was fine until the holidays, when I started having more memories of me being an insensitive jerkface to my dad: suddenly deciding to be a vegetarian the very moment he was carving the Thanksgiving turkey. Changing back to an omnivore two days later. Getting up halfway through our annual viewing of The Bishop’s Wife, even though I knew how much it meant to him, saying I was tired, then him catching me later that night playing The Sims on my mom’s computer. Stupid, childish crap like that.

  I don’t know why I had to be like that. Not only that time but a lot of times. It’s as if once you hit high school, you’re programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents. Why couldn’t I have simply helped him with the flag the first time he asked? I don’t know why. I don’t know why I do half the things I do.

  And when you can’t stand yourself, you don’t want people around who are constantly saying how much they love you, because you know you don’t deserve it. So I pushed Dylan away again until he came back for me, God knows why, on Thursday.

  Now, here we are, three days later, doing homework, and I’m not totally sure we should be back together. All that same stuff is still there, still un-talked about. Just older.

  The Black Keys rock from my laptop, and we’re sitting side by side on my bed, surrounded by books and Red Vines. Dylan shifts, exposing the corner of my sophomore yearbook, which he pulls out from under the covers and opens up. “Hey now. Our misspent youth.”

  “Oh yeah. I found that when I was cleaning my room this morning.”

  He glances around at the mess. “You were cleaning your room this morning?”

  “Sort of.” I think about what Ravi wrote. That I seemed smart and funny. What about nice? Did I seem nice? I take the yearbook from Dylan and flip to my class picture. “Am I nice?” I ask him.

  “Nice?”

  “Yeah, Dylan. Nice.” I jab at my smiling sophomore face. “As in not mean. Am I or was I or have I ever been?”

  He stares at my photo. “You’re definitely not fake-nice, which is good.”

  “Way to dodge the question. Forget it.” I slam the yearbook shut and toss it aside.

  “Jill. Come on. I guess I don’t really remember. You’re you. You don’t have to be nicey-nice to be a good person.”

  “But it helps.”

  I wonder what he’d think about my goodness as a person if he knew about my moment with Mandy the other day and my incubator comment. The truth is I’m ashamed of it. Mandy may be annoying, but she didn’t do anything other than get caught in my path at the wrong time. And the way she’s been avoiding me has got me wondering: Am I scary? I mean, I know I’ve always been grumpy and to the point, like Dad, but Dad was never scary. What I wish Dylan could tell me is if I’m a different person now, a worse one. Or if this is who I am, have always been, and I’m only now noticing it.

  I wonder if Dylan truly doesn’t remember or doesn’t want to say.

  We get back to homework, and after about ten minutes Mandy starts walking up and down the hall in this really conspicuous, distracting way until I hiss at Dylan, “Close the door.”

  He laughs. “Is this you trying to be nice?”

  I put my head back and groan. Mandy walks by again, refusing to turn her head and glance at us the way any normal person walking by a room full of people would.

  “Mandy,” I say out of exasperation. She stops and looks around as if my voice could be coming from any one of a hundred places in the house. “Um, in here.”

  “Yes?” She stands in the doorway. Her long, full hair—which she spends, like, an hour on every morning—is piled up on top of her head and held by a barrette. No one over the age of twelve should have a barrette on the top of her head. Plus, she always wears these horrifying flowered dresses that make her look like she traveled here from another, uglier era. At the same time she does manage to be pretty in a golden, wholesome way that even bad clothes and hairstyles can’t mask.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I’m fine.”

  I pick up a Red Vine and tear off a bite. “Because it seems like you want something. The way you keep strolling by.”

  Dylan writes in his notebook, Try nice, and angles it toward me.

  “Robin said I should walk.”

  “In the hall?”

  “It’s icy out.”

  Dylan shoves his notebook into my lap and asks Mandy if she wants a Red Vine.

  “She’s not supposed to have too much sugar,” I say.

  “Just one.” Mandy steps into the room and takes one from the big cylinder of them while smiling at Dylan. “I don’t want to interrupt.”

  “We need a break, anyway,” he says.

  We do? I write, shoving the notebook back, but he ignores it.

  “You can sit if you want,” Dylan continues, actually getting up off the bed, relocating a pile of my clothes from the futon chair to the floor, and helping Mandy lower herself onto it before he flops back down next to me.

  I try nice, a little tenderness, to make her feel welcome. “Are you warm enough? Do you want a blanket?”

  She rubs her hand over her gigantic belly. “I’m hot. The baby is like a little furnace inside.”

  Dylan rolls onto his stomach and inches over to the edge of the bed, resting his head on his folded arms. “What else does it feel like?”

  Mandy chews her Red Vine slowly, eyes blank. “What do you mean?”

  “You know. What does it feel like to have a baby in there? Is it weird? Or awesome? Or what?”

  I nudge him with my foot. “Dylan…”

  “What?” He lifts his head briefly to address me. “It’s not like I’m ever going to get any firsthand experience. I just want to know. I think it’s cool, what you ladies can do with your bodies.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  He looks back at Mandy. “Do you not want to talk about it?”

  “It’s okay. It’s hard to describe,” she says. “The main thing is it’s an honor. To have made life out of love.”

  Gag.

  But Dylan is totally into it. “Yeah, so what’s the story with that? The dad is okay with you giving up the baby?”


  Mandy blinks. “Of course.”

  “Of course?” I repeat, now interested. “You say that like it’s no big deal.”

  She turns her stare on me. “He wants what’s best.”

  “So,” Dylan says, “he signed a thing saying he gives up all rights or whatever? To never see it or have it know who the dad is? I don’t know if I could do that. I mean, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t.”

  In all the conversations Dylan and I have had about this whole situation, he’s never mentioned anything like this. I haven’t really thought about it, either, the dad. We wait for Mandy’s reply, but her stare has gone all distant and unfocused. “It’s not like that” is all she’ll say.

  “Not like what?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

  She wriggles on the futon, helpless as a turtle on its back. Dylan jumps up and holds out his hands. “Here.” She takes him by the forearms and, after a scary second during which it looks as if he’s going to fall down with her, they get her into a standing position.

  “I’m going to lie down for a while.”

  “Okay,” Dylan says. “See ya.”

  “Notice how she ignored my last question?” I say when she’s gone.

  “It’s probably totally emotional for her. Thinking about the father and stuff.” He’s already back to his homework. “Anyway, Jill, she’s here and this is happening. You gotta let go.”

  I know he’s right. But I don’t know how letting go works. And you could say the fact that he’s gotten back together with me three times even though there’s still something not quite right between us proves that he doesn’t, either.

  “I’m trying.”

  Mandy

  YOU’RE PROBABLY GETTING UNCOMFORTABLE AT THIS STAGE OF YOUR PREGNANCY, YET EAGER TO MEET YOUR BABY IN PERSON! A LOT OF FIRST-TIME MOTHERS START TO WORRY AT THIS POINT THAT THEIR BABY WILL NOT FIT THROUGH THEIR BIRTH CANAL! YOUR HEALTH-CARE PROVIDER CAN HELP YOU DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT YOUR BABY IS TOO BIG TO FIT THROUGH YOUR PELVIS. OTHER WOMEN WORRY THAT THEIR BABY COULD FALL OUT….