by Sara Zarr
“I’m not. But it’s Saturday morning, and she hasn’t been down yet. Maybe she’d like coffee in bed. I have to go upstairs anyway.”
The truth is that one of the three times I got up to pee in the night, I heard a sound coming from Jill’s room. A gasping. At first I thought she had Dylan in there with her, but when I stopped to listen as hard as I could, I knew what it was. Crying. The kind of crying that takes over your whole body and makes your head hurt and your ribs sore. You think you might throw up. You try to bury your face into blankets or pillows to keep from being heard, but when you do that you can’t breathe, you start to choke. So you pull away and gulp in air, then try to hide your face again, quickly. That’s the sound I heard.
It made my own lungs empty out for a second, hearing her. My body remembered what it was to cry like that. I went back to bed and pictured myself in my room in Council Bluffs, six months ago, gulping air and clenching layers of blankets in my fists. No one in the world should have to feel like that. Not even Jill.
It’s been one week since we went out together and she felt the baby. She’s almost ignored me since. It’s like it never happened. I’ve tried not to feel hurt. It’s hard.
“Jill?” I ask, tapping lightly on her door.
“Go away, Mandy.”
“I have coffee.”
There’s no reply.
“For you,” I add. “Your mom showed me how.”
After a few seconds the door opens a crack, and Jill’s forearm snakes out. I pull the mug just out of her reach. She opens the door wider and looks out. “Are you going to let me drink it or what?” Her eyes are puffy. There’s a pimple near the corner of her mouth. She’s wearing regular clothes, like she slept in them all night.
“Can I come in?”
“Mandy,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut. I can tell she’s trying not to blow up at me. I want to say the right thing that’s going to make her see me as somebody who sincerely feels bad for her. Because that’s what I am.
“I heard you crying last night.”
She opens her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Me neither. I thought this would help.” I extend the mug. “That’s all.”
She takes it. “Why do you want to come in?”
Because I’m lonely, I think. Why does anyone ever want to be with another person? “I thought maybe you’re lonely,” I say.
Jill touches her mouth. Her eyes shift away. “Not really. But okay.” She pushes the door all the way open and gets back in bed. I look at the futon chair. Without someone to help me, I don’t think I can sit in it, let alone get up.
“Here,” Jill says, reaching to flip back a corner of the blanket at the bottom of the bed. “Sit against the wall. Put your feet under.”
I do what she says and watch her sip her coffee. “How is it?”
“Pretty good.”
“We’re out of cinnamon.”
She watches me over the rim of the mug.
“I mean, you’re out,” I say. My feet feel under the blanket for the warmest spot, and I accidentally brush against her foot. “Sorry,” I say, jerking mine back.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jill draws herself up to sit cross-legged. “So what are you up to today?”
“Same as always.” I smile. “Nothing.”
“What would you be doing today if you were back in Omaha or Iowa or wherever?”
“Same.”
“I mean, like, if you weren’t pregnant. Say you were back home and this”—she waves her hand toward my belly—“had never happened. What was your life like before? I mean, did you have a job or were you living at home or what?”
Jill’s never asked me this many questions, been this interested in my life. Probably it’s because she doesn’t want to talk about herself or why she’s sad. Maybe if I talk about me, she’ll talk about her.
“I lived at home with my mother and her boyfriend. Sometimes I worked for his company, helping him with billing or entering stuff on the computer.” Kent liked it when I came to his office and sat behind the front desk. Contracting customers liked to see a pretty girl, he said. Half the time he forgot to pay me. But he would take me out to lunch. If we ran into anyone he knew, he’d always say, “This is Mandy.” He never explained that my mother was his girlfriend.
“What about for fun? I mean, going out with friends and stuff?”
I finger the edge of the comforter. “My two best friends, DebAnn and Lucia, sometimes we’d all go out.” I imagine going to a movie with them, sitting in the theater with DebAnn’s coat taking up an extra seat and Lucia with her earbuds in, staring straight ahead. DebAnn and I did spend a Saturday together, once, when I gave her twenty dollars to take pictures of me with her digital camera so I’d have something to send Robin. “Do you have friends?” I ask Jill. I only want to change the subject away from me.
Jill laughs. “God, Mandy.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like—I just never see anyone here. And all those people signed your yearbook.”
“When did you see my yearbook?”
I pat the blanket where it rests on my belly. “I think maybe your mom showed me?”
“The answer about friends is: not really. There’s Dylan, and the people at work. I used to have a couple of good friends and a lot of what you’d call friendly acquaintances. The friendly acquaintances disappeared when my life got tragic, and the good ones sort of got tired of being treated crappily.” She looks at her mug. “So it’s not just you I’m an ass to. I’m sure that makes you feel tons better.”
“It does.” Maybe not tons. But some.
“We’ve patched things up, I guess, but… I don’t even know if any of us like each other anymore.”
“What about Clark?”
“Who? Oh.” Jill nods. “Yes, there’s Clark.”
Her face goes complicated, and maybe she’s had enough of me. “Well, I’m hungry.” I work my feet out from under the covers. “I think I’ll go down to eat.”
“Wait.” Jill sits up straighter. “Can I ask you something?”
I look at her, waiting.
“How come you didn’t get an abortion?”
She’s probably been wanting to ask me that since the first day at the train station. That’s the question I feel, or have felt, whenever she’d look at me with that mix of anger and disgust. Why didn’t I get an abortion. Why can’t I just make it, and me, disappear.
“I almost did. My mother wanted me to.”
She took me to the doctor to have it done. We planned it for weeks. I didn’t argue, because arguing with my mother never changes anything. Then the morning of it, after Kent left for work, pretending he didn’t know where we were going, we got in my mother’s car and I closed the door behind me and stared up at our apartment building, in our apartment community, with its broad range of amenities. I knew when I got home after that, everything would go back to the way it always was. Me and DebAnn and Lucia alone at our table. Kent showing me off at work like I was his girlfriend and maybe starting to come back into my room at night. My mother not seeing me. It would be like the fair and the cornfield and Christopher had never happened. I’d have the memory and nothing else, and then eventually the memory wouldn’t even be real. I knew this because that’s how my memories of things that happened with Kent worked. Enough time would go by in between that I’d think, Did that really happen? Did I dream it? Am I crazy?
So when we got to the doctor, I told him I wanted to keep the baby. My mother yelled at me. The doctor told her to calm down, that it was my decision, there wasn’t anything either of them could do if I was sure about what I wanted.
I didn’t yell back at my mother. When I’m angry or scared or upset, I don’t yell. I stay quiet. I’ve seen how she is, how she would get with Kent and with me and with other people, like if someone at the pharmacy got in the wrong line or asked too long a question, or if someone on the bus accidentally bumped her. I’ve watched her my whole life, the way peopl
e react to her. It doesn’t actually help you get what you want, yelling and being like that. It only makes people think bad of you.
Sometimes it’s more powerful to say nothing and keep still.
After I told the doctor I was having the baby and, yes, I was sure, there was nothing more to say and I let them yell about it.
“Why didn’t you go through with it?” Jill asks.
I shrug and touch my belly. “I wanted my life to change.” I thought I could save this one, I think, feeling her roll against my hand. And maybe mine.
Jill’s brows go up. “Well, it’s changing, all right.”
“I know.”
“One more question,” Jill says.
“Yes?”
“I wonder… I mean, do you think she and I will get along?” She bends across her bed to tap one finger very gently on my belly. “Do you think she’ll like me? A little bit?”
“Probably,” I say.
Jill lies back down, her neck bent at what looks like an uncomfortable angle against her pillow. “Only probably?”
“Eventually. Liking someone takes time, is the way it is with some people.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll try to be patient.”
Jill
On Sunday, I wake up after noon, and if I weren’t starving, I would pull the covers back over my head and stay here in my death spiral of self-loathing. I’m not sure I’ve hit bottom yet; let’s see how far I can go.
My phone shows four missed calls and eleven texts from Dylan in the last forty-eight hours, and two calls and one text from Ravi in the same time period. He hardly came into the store last week since our coffee date. I’m scared to listen to his voice mails or read the texts. I can imagine: The first one is a “call me” voice mail, the second is probably “I decided we can’t be friends, because I realized whoever I thought you were sophomore year, you’re not.” The text would be: “Just wanted to let you know I quit Margins so that I never have to see you again.”
I’m sure Dylan’s are nice and concerned and practical, like wondering if we’re riding to school together tomorrow. Ever since the diner last Saturday, we’ve been being extra polite to each other, extra lifeless and rutlike.
I shove my blinking phone into my desk drawer and head downstairs.
Mom’s at the table, working on her laptop. “She lives,” she says to no one.
“Where’s Mandy?”
“I convinced her to take a walk. It’s lovely out, by the way. She only left a couple of minutes ago; I bet you could catch up to her if you got your shoes on fast.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” I open the fridge and find half a leftover baked potato, on which I dump some shredded cheese before putting it into the microwave.
Still mousing and clicking, Mom asks, “What’s with all the sleeping, Jill?”
“I’m on drugs.”
She laughs a little. “You are not.” She closes her laptop and feels for her mole, watching me mash up my lunch. After a hesitation, she says, “I’m worried about you.”
It’s hard for her to say that, I can tell. It scares her. Because this is where typical post-Dad Jill would say “Well don’t” or “It’s not your problem” and storm off, leaving her unsure how to react.
I add salt and pepper to my potato, mashing, stirring. The glimpses of a better self—with Ravi and Mandy over a week ago, when I felt the baby rolling and swimming and dancing… with Mandy yesterday morning when she brought me coffee and it occurred to me that being worthy of a sister’s love would be a good thing—have been just that: glimpses. I can’t catch her, that better Jill. I can’t hold on.
Dad was my mirror, and without him I can’t see myself.
The contents of my bowl become blurry. “Yeah. I had a hard week.”
My constant inner dialogue about what a wretch I am has been distracting. I’ve locked my keys in my car once, and left the headlights on once, draining the battery. I got my work schedule wrong on Wednesday and received a panicked call from Annalee while I was fifteen miles away buying a new pair of sneakers. Yesterday after my conversation with Mandy, I went downstairs, ate cereal, and put the milk away in the cupboard instead of the fridge. Mom found it later while getting a snack.
She gets up now, and right when I’m thinking, Great, my own mother can’t stand my company, she says, “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”
When she returns, she’s got a big photo album in her hands and I know exactly what it is. She pushes her laptop aside to make space, and sets the album on the table. Sweeping a layer of dust off the gray cover with a napkin, she notes, “You used to look at this all the time.”
That’s not an exaggeration. I probably flipped through it every couple of weeks, imagining myself in his shoes, independent and free and in Peru, Argentina, the Netherlands, Morocco, becoming an adult.
“Mom, I can’t.”
The first page will be a map of South America. She opens to it and turns it slightly so that we can both get a good view. “You can.”
I know what’s on every page of that album. Used tickets from planes and trains. More maps. Postcards. Pages from his journal with his notes about the different stages of his trip. Receipts and a piece of paper money from each country he visited. There aren’t a ton of pictures of my dad, since he was traveling alone, but there are some: him standing next to a llama, at a soccer game, behind some booth at a colorful street market.
“He would have loved helping you plan a trip,” Mom says.
I haven’t moved since she brought in the album.
“Maybe this will give you some ideas.” She takes her hands off it and quietly slides her laptop back over. She pretends to be caught up in her work while I eat.
When I’m done, I pull the album closer and begin to turn the pages.
Later, I’m up in my room, catching up on my much-neglected homework, the door of my room closed. I hear someone on the stairs, and based on the slowness of the steps, I’d say it’s Mandy. I know for certain when the bathwater starts running. She takes these long baths—warm, not hot, because apparently hot baths are a no-no for those with child, according to Mom. Personally I’m not one for sitting around in my own filth, but Mandy claims it helps her think. About what, I’m curious. Lately I wonder a lot about what she’s thinking or feeling, and I have a zillion more questions about her life before she came here. If half the stuff she says is nutty, who knows what all goes on in her head, or what all she’s been through.
The house phone rings. And rings and rings. I open my door. “Mom?”
No answer. The phone keeps ringing. I run down the stairs and hear my mom come in the back door. “Jill! Please get that! My hands are full.”
“Can’t the machine get it?” I call back.
“It could, but evidently it’s not!”
When I get to the phone, near my dad’s chair, I’m irritated and breathless and half my “Hello?” is lost in a sneeze.
“Amanda,” this voice says, “where is the watch?”
I open my mouth to say, Yo, wrong number, but realize Amanda is Mandy, and this person, who sounds very much like a mother, thinks I’m her.
“Amanda,” she repeats. “Is that you?”
“Mm-hmm,” I say.
“Kent came over today foaming at the mouth, claiming I stole his watch.”
Hoping she’ll continue talking, I keep my mouth shut and am soon rewarded.
“You got away with it, you really did. Until you called. Did you think I wouldn’t get the number off caller ID and write it down? I can find you if I have to. Or tell Kent where you are. Not real bright, Mandy. But that’s what I expect from you.”
Wow. She’s not even talking about me, and it still makes my stomach hurt. The quieter I stay, the screechier she gets. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself? Kent thinks I took the watch! He practically ransacked my new apartment trying to find it, and accused me of doing it out of jealousy. Over you! It was just lucky that Phil wasn’t here….”
Mom comes into the living room, an onion in one hand and a questioning look on her face. I walk away with the cordless, holding a finger up, while Mandy’s mother rages on.
“Amanda Kalinowski, you get that watch back here by the end of the week or I will make trouble for you. I mean it.” Even her pause is angry. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Nope,” I say, and hang up. My heart pounds as I put the cordless back in its cradle. I do my best to hide all symptoms of stress when I look at Mom, who asks, “Who was it?”
“No one. I mean a robocall.” I put on a smarmy politician voice. “ ‘Hi! This is John Q. Asshole and I’m your congressional blah blah blah!’ You know how I like to talk back to the robots.”
She shakes her head and goes back to the kitchen, and I turn the volume on the machine all the way down. The last thing Mom needs is to get a threatening message from Mandy’s past. What would Dad do? He’d go straight to Mandy. He’d say, Okay what’s the deal with this watch, and what do we have to do to make your crazy mother leave us alone? He wouldn’t let it get out of hand.
Strengthened by the hour I spent looking at his photo album and by my determination to be the courageous person Mom says I once was, I go upstairs and slip into Mandy’s room while she’s still in the tub, and start searching. This watch must be some big deal. And of course there’s just as good a chance that she didn’t take it, and that this Kent person misplaced it or someone else took it or whatever, but when I think about it: If I were in Mandy’s situation, I’d sure as hell wish I had more than a few dollars in my pocket, doing what she did. Collateral. So maybe she’s not as out of it as I thought when it comes to real life.
The dresser drawers are sort of bare. All that’s in there are the clothes she and my mom bought together. What did she do with all her flowered dresses and polyester cardigans? Under the bed, I find her suitcase and think about the day at the train station—almost a month ago, now. How I instantly didn’t like her. Instantly wrote her off, had written her off even before she showed up. There’s nothing in the suitcase or in the smaller duffel bag. Totally cleaned out.
