All That's Left of Me_A Novel

by Janis Thomas

  I take a breath. The me from three days ago would never have had such ugly thoughts about her husband.

  The me from three days ago wasn’t supporting this family, I think. But the me from three days ago certainly had other unflattering things to say about her husband, didn’t she? Things that had nothing to do with money.

  “What are you doing today?” My question is a sharp arrow, which Colin deftly deflects.

  “Working, of course,” he replies, his tone ambivalent. “No days off for writers.”

  I’ve heard him say this before. I bite back a scathing comment about the perpetuity of his work equaling failure and that failure often needs a day off.

  Although I sense that I am psychologically prepared to spar over this issue, I refuse to engage with my husband. Because I am still trying to comprehend the aftermath of my wish, if it really came true. Colin’s authorial prowess, or lack thereof, seems insignificant compared to Katie’s presence—her shining, lovely presence—in the kitchen this morning.

  Unknowingly, my daughter offers more clues about our new actuality.

  “Oh, Colin,” she says, “you don’t have to worry about next weekend. Simone’s mom is going to take us to UPenn for a tour. I don’t think Simone really wants to go there, but she says she wants to see it, too.”

  My reaction is reflexive and based upon yesterday’s Kate. Not this morning’s Kate. Because this morning’s Kate is an alien to me. “Honey, I wouldn’t get my hopes up for UPenn, what with your SAT scores and all.”

  She rolls her eyes again. “Yeah, like twenty-three hundred totally stinks, right?” She shrugs. “I think with that and my 4.9, chances are good. You’re the one who said that, Mom.”

  I did, back before that boy changed everything. But that boy has been erased. Not from the planet, like Richard. Just from my daughter’s life.

  I take a moment to thank my lucky stars, God, the fates, the universe. Whoever or whatever is responsible for granting my wishes.

  Thank you for giving me back my daughter.

  Colin glances at me, still expectant, then shrugs and moves toward Josh and Katie. He gives Josh’s hair a perfunctory ruffle, then leaves the room. A moment later, I hear the door of his office slam shut.

  “We’re done with breakfast,” Katie announces, setting the almost-empty bowl of oatmeal on the table. I match her by setting down the half-eaten yogurt.

  “I’ll get Josh ready,” I say.

  “That’s okay, Mom. I’ll do it.” She leans in to Josh and smiles at him. “Let’s get it done fast so we’ll have time to get a smoothie before your appointment.”

  “Who’s buying?” I ask.

  My son and daughter turn toward me and say in unison, “You are.”

  A buzz sounds from my cell phone, and I move from the counter and withdraw the charging cord. The caller is Owen, and I hesitate. But then I remember that in this new life and new world, I have the upper hand. I answer.

  “This is Emma Davies.”

  “This is Emma Davies,” he mocks. I recognize his tone. Likely my ex-husband is already on his third Bloody Mary.

  I bury the impulse to be conciliatory and remind myself that I need not appease him. “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want, Emma. I want to see my daughter.”

  Josh guides his chair out of the kitchen. Katie hangs back and gives me a questioning look.

  “That’s not going to happen.” I smile reassuringly at her and she reluctantly follows Josh.

  “I’m coming over right now,” he hisses. “You can call the cops if you want, but I’m coming.”

  “That’s fine, Owen. We’re just leaving for an appointment. We won’t be here. From the sound of your voice, I would suggest you take a cab.”

  I end the call and take a deep breath. That felt good. I go upstairs to change into something appropriate for a morning at the salon. My new power wardrobe offers me many choices.

  EIGHTEEN

  Irony. In a new world, in a new life, a parallel universe not yet decoded or defined, irony is an ambiguous thing. Mimi’s is downtown, across the street from Lettie, the psychiatrist—my psychiatrist. The smoothie shop to which Katie referred at breakfast is down the block from Paw-Tastic Pets and the antiques shop. Is this irony? Coincidence? A series of unrelated circumstances connected by a scorched mind searching for threads of consistency in her newfound inconsistence? I don’t know.

  I pull the van into a metered space fifteen yards from Paw-Tastic Pets. I don’t encounter any feelings of déjà vu, possibly because I rarely drive the van, but more likely because my sense of reality is skewed. When you aren’t sure that the events you experienced the previous day actually happened, it’s impossible to feel déjà vu.

  Katie sits in the back seat next to Josh, who is seated in his wheelchair. They are discussing which smoothie each is going to get. Peanut butter banana chocolate? Strawberry mango? I make Josh smoothies almost every day—he is unable to eat anything that requires a great deal of chewing or that which might choke him—but he never shows me a fraction of the enthusiasm he shows for the frozen concoctions from Smoothie Palace. My kids are practically tittering with glee behind me.

  I pull the key from the ignition, and the van shudders and rumbles before falling still. I gaze through the windshield at the storefronts. The smoothie shop, Paw-Tastic Pets, the antiques shop. I think about Dolores, the old woman with the twinkly eyes and surreptitious wink and knowing grin who may or may not know something about me, although I’m not certain what that something might be, or if there is any truth to my supposition.

  “Uh, Mom, are you waiting for an invitation?” Katie snipes.

  “Yaaa, Maah, ah y’ wayie fah ah ivitayah?”

  “All right, already. Hold your horses.” The phrase tumbles out of my mouth. For an instant, I am transported back in time to when my children were both under ten. We did things together back then, went places, shared time, before I went back to work and before adolescent hormones wreaked havoc on both their lives in vastly opposing ways. I didn’t feel the drudgery back then, the dread about leaving the house and foraying into the world with them. They were my babies, one upright and lovely and charming, the other slouched and bent in a wheelchair, but also lovely, also charming, because his smile was as sunny as hers.

  It still is, I realize, as I gaze upon them in the rearview mirror. Josh has Colin’s coloring, and Katie her father’s. But if you look upon them long enough, you see that they look alike, almost exactly, when they smile.

  I get out of the van and circle to the curbside door. By the time I open it, Josh has turned his chair to face outward on the hydraulic lift. I depress the button on the inside of the door and the lift descends to the sidewalk. As soon as his wheels hit the concrete, Katie is out of the van and trotting beside him toward the smoothie shop.

  “Something with protein,” I call to them, but my words are stolen by the breeze and lifted toward the blue heavens. Katie and Josh don’t even glance in my direction.

  I lock the van manually—the vehicle is over ten years old and most of the mechanisms are either tired or expired. My alarm fob is useful only in that it is large enough not to be lost easily. As I follow the kids to the smoothie shop, I glance at my watch. Ten thirty. Plenty of time before Josh’s appointment at Mimi’s. Enough time to drink our smoothies and . . . and . . . what? Is there enough time to take a moment and peer into the window of Paw-Tastic Pets to see whether Charlemagne/Charlie still inhabits the display kennel? Enough time to sidestep from the pet store to Dolores’s novelty shop to see if the miniature house—my house—has been sold to some overprivileged child who will love it for a fortnight then cast it aside?

  What am I doing downtown?

  Kate reaches the smoothie shop first. She opens the door and holds it for Josh, and my son glides through the entrance as though this is a usual event for him, a ho-hum activity in his life. When was the last time I brought my son downtown? The memory escapes me. When d
id I stop taking him on adventures? When did I start relying on the celluloid pictures I capture on my phone to broaden his horizons, and how could I be so foolish as to think that my cell phone images could offer him a wide view of the world and a vicariously fulfilled life?

  My ruminations come to a halt the moment I enter the air-conditioned smoothie shop and my gaze lands on him.

  I’d recognize him anywhere—the slick jet-black hair produced by shoe polish or Miss Clairol, although he would never admit to the latter; the meek concentration of stubble just below his lower lip that strives to be a soul patch but is soulless and stupid and craves the swift flick of a sharp blade to wipe it from his angular face; the watery, puppy-dog eyes of a sociopath that flash from adoration to malice in an instant. That boy. Just another customer in line for a smoothie on a Saturday morning.

  My heart pounds. My right hand grips the van key so tightly, I fear my palm will bleed.

  I wish she’d never met that boy.

  Oh, I could kill myself a hundred times in a hundred different ways. I should have tailored the wish to include the past, the present, and the future. I wish, I wish. If only I could go back and re-wish, but some innate and primal part of me knows/feels/understands that the wish is what it is, and it stands as it is, and cannot be altered.

  He is a few patrons ahead of Katie and Josh. He is not alone. Two unwashed, tattooed, loudmouthed compatriots flank him. They are boisterous and embarrassing. I am embarrassed for them and their awkwardness, which they mask with bravado and puffed-up chests and gesticulating arms.

  I move in front of Katie and Josh, hoping to block my daughter’s view of him. My children are staring up at the menu, even though I’m sure they have already made their decisions. But I don’t care, as long as Katie’s eyes don’t meet his. Again with the intuition thing, which I shouldn’t trust based upon my experiences these last few days, but I really believe that if Katie looks at him, meets his eyes, the cycle of destruction that began ten months ago, and was undone by my wish last night, will begin anew.

  “Maybe we ought to forget about the smoothies, guys, and get over to Mimi’s.” My voice wavers slightly, but my kids don’t notice. They are too focused on the myriad choices of icy treats at their disposal.

  “No way, Mom.”

  “Yaaa, ’o waee,” Josh mimics his sister.

  “We have plenty of time.” Katie withdraws her cell phone to confirm her statement. “It’s only 10:32.”

  I lower my head in submission. “Okay. What are you getting?”

  The boys, he and his cohorts, reach the front of the line. They spend a few minutes taunting and teasing the harried Smoothie Palace employee, asking inane questions about the freshness of the ingredients and the nutritional value of several of the smoothie options.

  I’m desperate to keep my children’s attention on me. “Well? What’s it going to be?”

  “I think I’m going to get the Caribbean Sunrise,” Kate announces. She mentioned the drink in the van, so her choice is no surprise, but I ooh and ahh my agreement.

  I lean down to Josh. “What about you, honey? What’s it going to be?”

  I don’t know how long it’s been since Josh has been out and about and free of the confines of our home. Kate’s reemergence into his life is not a reemergence at all, except to me. Have we been here recently? I sift through my mind, but, again, the new memories, if there are any, are yet to be created. But Josh is glowing; his eyes burn with the fire of liberty. He is happy, truly, wholly happy. He is downtown with his sister and his mother, getting smoothies before a haircut, like any other kid would do. His smile is effortless.

  “Muhee,” he says. Monkey.

  “That’s perfect, isn’t it?” says Kate with a laugh. “A monkey smoothie for monkey man.”

  “Yum,” I say. “I hope you’ll let me have a sip.”

  “Ah’cose, Maah.” Of course, Mom. “Ye byee.” You’re buying.

  Kate moves forward as the boys move to the right-hand counter where the finished products are administered to the waiting crowd. I catch a glimpse of him as he claps one of his friends on the back and snickers in agreement with whatever insult the other just made about the girl behind the counter. They are cruel and mean-spirited, these boys, but I recognize their charisma, his charisma. They suck energy from the room and draw attention to themselves because they are so present. I catch sight of my daughter as she catches sight of them. My throat constricts as I see her gaze roam across the shop toward him.

  I brush the strap of my purse from my shoulder, covertly overturn it, and allow it to fall the floor, then yelp with feigned surprise. “Oops!”

  Katie’s head snaps toward me, and she looks down to see my purse and its contents littered across the vinyl tiles.

  She gives me an exaggerated eye roll, then grins. Simultaneously, we drop to our knees.

  “Way to go, Mom,” she says as she reaches for my wallet and my cell phone. As I grab my checkbook and travel pack of tissues, I use my peripheral vision to track the boys’ progress. They are at the counter, grabbing their smoothies. Katie continues to pick up the detritus from my purse, lipsticks and hand sanitizer, a package of Motrin, a stray tampon so old the paper cover is yellow and frayed.

  “Jeez, Mom, I wouldn’t use this if I were you.” She shoves the tampon into my purse quickly before anyone can take notice of it. I couldn’t care less if the entire world sees my ancient tampon. As long as their eyes don’t meet.

  Kate is starting to rise to her feet, but the timing is off, because he and his friends are heading toward the exit and if she stands up right now they will practically crash into each other and then . . . and then . . . it will all be over.

  The key in my hand. I jerk my wrist and open my palm at the same time and the fob slides across the floor.

  “Oh, Kate, crap! My key.”

  She turns back to me and I jab my finger at the floor where the key fob has come to rest, then I sigh, as though the short distance to the key is far too great for me. “Please, Katie. Can you get it?”

  She shakes her head, then shrugs and moves toward the key. She bends over and retrieves it just as the electronic ping of the door sounds, signaling the boys’ exit.

  I’ve been holding my breath. My chest aches. I stand up and see that the boys—that he—is moving down the street. I allow myself to exhale. Katie hands me my purse.

  “Thanks, honey,” I tell her.

  “No, problem, Mom,” she says, patting my shoulder. In her eyes, I am already an old woman to be placated when I do something stupid. Okay. That’s okay. He is down the street. Their eyes didn’t meet. My daughter’s categorization of me stings less than her demise would. I’ll take it.

  “Let’s look at the puppies,” Kate suggests.

  My reaction is swift and adamant. “No.” I do not want to look in that window. Will not. Cannot.

  “Come on, Mom. We have time.”

  “Yaaa. W’ af tiee,” Josh agrees.

  I shake my head. “It’s 10:49.”

  “Mom, Lola’s always late,” Kate says.

  Josh is already steering his wheelchair down the block. Kate catches up with him, and I trail behind.

  “All right, fine,” I tell them. “Go ahead. I’m going to check my emails.”

  Kate and Josh reach the pet store window. I linger at the curb next to a streetlamp. I pull my cell phone from my purse, but I have no intention of checking my email. I have every intention of keeping a close watch on the street in case he appears again. A wide sweep of my surroundings reveals that he is nowhere to be seen. But his possible presence infects me with unease.

  “Oh my God, they’re so cute!” Katie exclaims as I pretend to peruse my cell phone. “Josh, look at that one in the corner. Isn’t he adorable?”

  I know without looking or seeing or being remotely near the window that she is talking about Charlemagne.

  “He’ ’ot scahpuhee uh-ow lie’ th es’ a theh.” He’s not scampering around like
the rest of them. “Maee he’ si.” Maybe he’s sick.

  “He doesn’t look sick,” Katie says. “Just sad.”

  I wish they’d never gotten that godforsaken dog!

  The door to the shop on the other side of Paw-Tastic Pets opens, and Dolores emerges. My cell phone slips from my fingers, but I reflexively grasp it before it hits the concrete. Dolores, wizened, her gray curls a helmet, lifts her head, then turns it my direction, much like a coyote sniffing its prey upon the wind. I try to look away, down the block, at my feet, across the street, but some otherworldly force prevents me from doing so. Our eyes lock, and for an instant, my whole body turns to stone, then to ice. I am unable to move. A hurricane of conflicting images of all my pasts and presents and possible futures swirls above my head and below my feet, and then pulls me into itself until I am the hurricane. And, like Dorothy, I’m hurtled toward Oz with no understanding of why this is happening to me.

  “Mom!” Katie’s voice shatters my fugue state and the storm disintegrates around me, shards of thoughts disappearing into thin air.

  Breathe, swallow, speak. “Yes, honey.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” Steady, Emma. “Why?”

  “You looked like you were going to pass out.”

  “No,” I say. Certain. Authoritative. “I just got a work email that kind of threw me. It’ll be fine.”

  She nods, but I sense her skepticism. “Bad news?”

  “No, honey. Nothing I can’t deal with.” If only that were true.

  “We should get to Mimi’s.”

  “Yaah. Le’s g’ sss Loah.” Yeah. Let’s go see Lola.

  I nod, then glance toward the antiques shop. Dolores is nowhere to be seen.

  NINETEEN

  We cross at the crosswalk and I see him immediately, standing in front of the comic book shop with a group of teenagers, smoking a cigarette and feigning importance. Katie has a smoothie in her hand and she’s talking to Josh about his hair and what he wants to do with it and seems completely oblivious to that boy and his friends. With a pounding heart, I manage to insinuate myself between her and the sight line that would include him, and steer Katie and Josh to Mimi’s without her catching eyes with him. Once we pass through the front door of the salon, I relax a fraction. But then . . .