Girls in Trouble: A Novel

by Caroline Leavitt

  “I’d like that,” Eva said, and she meant it. Even after Eva hung up, she sat by the phone, and then she got up and went to Anne’s room, and knocked on the closed door.

  “Honey? Do you want to talk?” she asked. “Can I come in?” She opened the door. Anne was on her bed, writing, papers around her. “Do you want to talk?” she repeated, and Anne shook her head.

  “You lied to me,” Anne said. “How can I believe anything you say to me now?”

  Eva felt her life was out of balance. Sara wouldn’t see a lawyer now, but things still hadn’t turned out right, because now neither one of them really had Anne. Eva didn’t try to push Anne into talking to her; instead she began to leave her little notes, the way she used to, tucked in her lunch bag, on the refrigerator, simple things. “Hope your day is great!” “Made your favorite lunch.” “I love you.” She glanced into the wastebaskets, but the notes were never there, and fool that she was, she told herself Anne had read them, that maybe Anne had even saved them. Like I would, Eva thought.

  One day at school, the parent of a little boy had come to the school furious and, instead of talking to Eva first, had gone right to the principal to complain that Eva hadn’t let his son do his special job of door holder that day. “Because he kicked another boy,” Eva explained, “he has to learn there are consequences.” But even though the principal had mollified the parent, she lectured Eva about being more on top of things.

  “He kicked a boy!” Eva repeated.

  “Perhaps you should have called his parents and told them of the incident, rather than letting them be surprised,” the principal said. “Perhaps you should have been prepared.”

  Perhaps you should ride to town on a broomstick, Eva thought, but she stayed pleasant. “Oh absolutely,” Eva agreed.

  She drove home, irritated, upset that she had lied to the principal, that she had pretended to go along with her. She stopped at the bank to get money. “You lied to me,” Anne had told her. Oh yes, another thing she hadn’t been prepared for.

  Eva made a decision. She went to the safe-deposit box and got out all the letters and photographs she had saved when she and George had first contacted Sara. She hadn’t looked at them since the day she brought them here, not knowing what else to do with them, and she couldn’t look at them now. She stuffed them into her school book bag, wedged between her lesson plans and her appointment book. She didn’t know what had possessed her to save all of them, and a few times she had even considered throwing them out, but she had never been able to. They didn’t feel like hers anymore, and they didn’t need to be under lock and key anymore, either. What did she have left to hide?

  As soon as she was home, she went to Anne.

  “Anne,” Eva said, knocking on her daughter’s door. She could hear music. “Anne!” she called louder. “This is my house.” The thought flew in her mind. It was a thing her mother used to say to her when Eva was an adolescent acting up, disturbing the equilibrium. “This is my house and as long as you live in it, you live by my rules.” Well, she thought, who said rules were right?

  Eva, book bag in hand, opened Anne’s door. Anne was on her bed, headphones on, books around her. A storm of paper was on the floor. She sat up and blinked at Eva.

  Eva began taking the letters and photographs out of her bag and placing them on Anne’s bed. “These are for you. I should have given them to you years ago.”

  Anne looked at her quizzically. “What’s all this?”

  “Go look,” Eva said.

  There were the first letters from Sara, written to George and Eva. There were copies of all the letters George and Eva had written to Sara. “Dear birth mother,” it said, and Anne stared at Eva. Eva rubbed her arms as if they were cold. “What can I say, I’m a pack rat. I never could throw anything out,” Eva said.

  Anne lifted up a photo. Eva and George, when they were young, standing next to Sara who was round and as big as a beach ball. She picked up another photo, a faded one. Danny, swaggering in blue jeans, his thumbs hooked into his belt loops. And then there was a photo of Sara holding Anne up, the two of them staring at each other. “Oh my God,” Anne said, and then Eva sat on the edge of Anne’s bed.

  “We were our own odd little family,” Eva said. “We did everything together at first. Went to the doctors, went to dinner, sat around sipping lemonade in the backyard.” Eva fingered one of the photos. Sara, young and startled looking, Eva with one arm around her, the baby on a picnic blanket, twisting her head, looking toward Sara. “I loved her,” Eva said simply. “And not just because of the baby. I really did love her and want her in our lives.” Eva traced a finger over the photo. “But not as much as you did. Whenever you saw her, you just about went crazy. You cried when she left the room, lit up when she reentered. She used to make up these little songs for you and all she had to do was hum a few notes when you were cranky and you would calm. I’d try and you’d get restless. It made me jealous sometimes.”

  “It did? You got jealous?”

  “Of course I did.” Eva nodded. “Sometimes I picked you up and you would scream and I’d take it personally.” Eva put the photo down and studied Anne. “I spent so much time reading child care books, talking to other mothers, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. I always thought maybe because I was an older mother, my instincts were rustier. Or sometimes I thought it was because I didn’t give birth to you, maybe I had to study harder at raising you. It’s taken me all this time to realize maybe I was so busy trying to force connections between us that I just didn’t let you be yourself. That just because we were so different didn’t mean we couldn’t have a bond. I just felt I never had you, so how could I let myself risk losing you to Sara, or to anyone? How could I let you go?”

  Anne looked at her so hard, Eva faltered. “What do you tell her about me?” Anne finally said. “When she calls?”

  Eva shrugged. “I tell her that you’re here, or you’re at school.”

  Anne fiddled with a photo. “And what does she say?”

  “She says she wants to talk with you,” Eva said.

  “You’re friendly again all of a sudden?”

  “We have a common bond,” Eva said quietly. “You.”

  “She’s not really interested in me. She wouldn’t take me with her,” Anne said.

  “I wouldn’t have let her,” Eva said. “It wasn’t her choice to make.”

  Anne pushed the photographs away from her. “It wasn’t my choice to make, either.”

  “You can throw them away if you want to,” Eva said, going to the door to leave. “They’re yours now. And anything you want to ask me, anything you want to know, you can ask me that now, too. No one’s going to lie to you now about anything.” Then she stepped out into the hall, closing Anne’s door, leaving her alone with the letters, which Anne promptly kicked to the floor.

  At four in the morning Anne bolted awake. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, waking and drifting again, and now she was really up. She leaned over the bed and clicked on her table lamp, surveying the mess of papers.

  She had been so furious since she had come home. She had waited for Danny to call her, to check and see if she had gotten home all right, the way any father would, the way George certainly did. When she was half an hour late, George was on the front porch, his car keys in his hands. “I was ready to call out the search party,” he said, and he was only half joking. But Danny hadn’t called. The phone had stayed silent. She had waited for Sara to show up, in a car, the motor running, bags packed, ready to take her, just the two of them, off someplace, but the only cars that came up her street were the neighbors’ cars, old and familiar and going nowhere more exciting than to work or the supermarket. The phone rang and rang, but it was never for her, it was always for her mother. Mail came, bills and advertisements and magazines. Everyone was living another life.

  She swung her legs over the bed, the floor cool against the soles of her feet, making her toes flex. The house was so hushed, it was a little spo
oky. She switched on another light and her gaze darted around the corners of her room, the way it had when she was a little girl and so scared of ghosts she couldn’t speak. There were the letters, still scattered on the floor where she had left them. She’d throw them out. She’d burn them. She’d rip them into confetti. Lies. All of it lies. She crouched, gathering the letters up, and then she saw a small red heart drawn in the corner of a page. She saw Sara’s name, surrounded by exclamation points. Her legs wobbled and she hinged down onto the floor. She glanced at the paper. It’s the middle of the night, it said, and I don’t know what to do. Well, it was the middle of the night here, too, and suddenly, she didn’t know what to do, either. She didn’t feel angry anymore, but confused and sad, and so lonely she couldn’t bear it. Maybe she could read a few letters before she decided what to do with them. She picked up one of the sheets, pale blue parchment, and slowly unfolded it.

  “Dear birth mother,” it began. Anne couldn’t stop reading. She settled back against the bed, and picked up another letter. It was like reading a novel about herself in letters. Real and immediate, a whole other missing life unfolding before her, a drama centering around her that she couldn’t even remember. Sara’s letters were so desperate it made Anne feel scared to read them. Eva’s letters were so effusive, so full of longing and need that for a moment, Anne didn’t recognize the letters as her mother’s. There was her father’s scribble, and a little drawing he made of the house so Sara would know what it looked like. Anne traced a finger over the drawing. It was as if everyone suddenly had identities she knew nothing about. She sifted through the photos and then her hand stopped. It was just a snapshot of her and Sara lying together on a blanket in the grass, facing each other. She must have been nearly newborn in this photo because she was so impossibly small, curled in a tiny blue dress, a pacifier taking up most of her lower face. But the thing that struck her was the way she was looking at Sara, eyes locked onto Sara’s eyes, her face alert, full of wonder, and Sara—Sara was radiant. We look like we’re in love, Anne thought. She stood up, studying the picture.

  Anne found her wallet, and slid the photo into a pocket. She put her wallet back in her purse and returned to bed, and shutting her eyes, tried to sleep.

  At school, everyone just thought she had been out sick. “Feel better?” one teacher asked, and Anne shrugged, because the truth was, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t wear the red bandana in her curls anymore, the way Sara did. She didn’t dress the way Sara had, but she didn’t dress the way she used to, either. Her clothes felt wrong. She felt wrong, so she ended up belting an old dress of hers with the red bandana. She clipped back one side of her hair and let the other be wild, and then staring into the mirror, she felt as if she were transformed again, only she wasn’t sure into what. In the cafeteria, Flor flopped down beside her, picking at the hot dog school lunch.

  “No food for you?” Flor said. “Are you on a diet?”

  Anne shook her head.

  “Did you have the flu that’s going around?” Flor asked her. Anne shrugged, because how could she explain anything to Flor that Flor’d understand?

  Flor waved her fork thoughtfully at Anne. “Girl, snap out of it,” she advised.

  Anne couldn’t snap out of anything. She dreamed through her classes, sneaking peaks at the photo in history class, and then again during math, and every time she looked, instead of feeling comforted, she felt more and more confused. She couldn’t concentrate, not in English, not in gym, not even when she was called to the guidance counselor’s office to talk about college. The counselor pushed brochures of colleges at her. “Is going away to college something you’re interested in?” the guidance counselor probed. It was the second time someone had mentioned that to Anne. Anne studied the first brochure, a brick building covered with ivy, a bunch of kids with their heads thrown back, teeth as even and boxy as niblet corn, laughing as if they had heard the funniest joke in the world. “Writers don’t have to go to college,” Anne said. “They just have to live.”

  The guidance counselor blinked at Anne. “You don’t think going to college is living?” she said. “Believe me, some people go just for the experience rather than the education.” She pushed the brochures toward Anne. “How do you think you’ll write if you’re waitressing all day long? It sounds romantic, but believe me, it’s not.” Anne thought of going away, of being so far away she’d never have to come home, and then to her amazement, she felt a sudden clip of fear, as if there were nowhere now where she might feel at home, no people whom she might really belong to. “Take the pamphlets,” the guidance counselor said. “You never know how you’ll feel about this later.”

  That night, Anne couldn’t sleep again. The college pamphlets were in her purse. She hadn’t even been able to take them out and put them on her desk. The letters and photos were still on the floor. She sat at her desk and tried to write but couldn’t. Everything coming out of her pen sounded fake. “Write about what you know,” her teachers told her, “that will make it real.” But she suddenly felt as if everything she had ever known had been wrong, that she didn’t really know what was true anymore, and maybe no one else really did, either. She crouched down and dug out all the letters Eva had given her and sifted through them. There, at the bottom, she pulled out a notebook. A journal. “I felt her kick today. I am in love.” Sara’s writing. Anne put the pen down and padded into the kitchen, glancing at the clock. Two. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Hello?” Sara’s voice was groggy with sleep, and as soon as Anne heard it, she gripped the phone tighter.

  “It’s me. It’s Anne.”

  She couldn’t believe she was doing this. She didn’t even know what she wanted to say.

  “Anne! Are you okay?” Sara said. “Is everything all right?”

  “You want me to call another time—”

  “No, no—don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up!” Sara interrupted.

  No one spoke for a moment. The wires hummed.

  “I read your letters,” Anne said. “The ones you wrote to Eva when you were pregnant with me. I read the ones she wrote you, too.”

  “The letters—” Sara said, her voice full of wonder. “She kept the letters—”

  “She gave them to me.” Anne’s lips were dry and she licked at them. “Why did you lie to me?” Anne finally said. “Why did you act like you were going to be a part of my life?”

  “I didn’t lie. I’m still a part of your life!”

  “How? How are you a part of it? You don’t live near me. I thought you came down here for me!” Anne felt a fresh flare of anger. She breathed hard. “You didn’t have the right to just show up! To say things you didn’t mean, to screw everyone up!”

  “I never meant to hurt you,” Sara said. “I needed to find you. I couldn’t think about anything else.”

  “You found me. Then you left me!” Anne cried.

  “I didn’t leave you! I just had to leave Florida. That’s different.”

  Anne sat down on a chair by the phone, resting her head against the counter.

  “What does that even mean?” Anne said. “Are you coming back here to visit? Are you inviting me to come there?”

  “Would you want that? I’d be there now if I had the money to get there,” Sara said slowly. “And I’d invite you in a flash if your parents would allow it.”

  “Why is it up to them?”

  “Because they’re the ones who got to raise you. They get to make the decisions.”

  Anne shut her eyes.

  “Would you let me call you?” Sara asked. “Could I write you? Or you write me?”

  “I don’t know,” Anne said. “Maybe. Maybe I will.”

  “Anne?” said Sara. Her voice was like the skip in one of her father’s old records. “We all always loved you.”

  Anne quietly hung up. Never had she felt so far away from everyone. From Sara. From her parents who were sleeping in the bedroom.

  The kitchen felt so empty that when she tur
ned around, she was startled to see Eva, in robe and bare feet, a sheet of paper in her hand, and then Anne couldn’t move. “Have you been here the whole time?” Anne asked, and Eva nodded. “You heard what I said?” Anne asked, steeling herself. Eva nodded again, but she didn’t look angry. Instead she just stood there. “I read the letters,” Anne said. “Why did you save them?”

  “I saved everything.”

  “Did you reread them?”

  Eva shook her head. “No, I don’t think I can.”

  “Then what’s that?” Anne asked and Eva lifted up the paper. “I did my own rereading,” Eva said, and then Anne saw Mr. Moto’s scrawl on the page.

  “That’s my story,” Anne said. “The one you both hated. But I threw it out.”

  Eva shook her head. “I took it out of the trash. I thought maybe you could read it later, compare it to what you were writing now and see how you’ve improved—an old teacher’s trick.” She folded the page carefully, as if it were something to be treasured. “It’s wonderful, Anne. I should have seen how wonderful it was. I was so wrong—”

  Anne started to cry. Eva slowly walked over to Anne and put her arms about her, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even move except to keep her arms about Anne, so warm and steady, Anne felt herself softening, and she finally rested her head against her mother’s shoulders. Eva held Anne for as long as Anne needed to be held and for the first time, too, Eva let go of Anne first.

  George left work after half a day. One of his patients, who arrived two hours late, complained that she had to reschedule. “Maybe I should find another dentist,” she said.

  Ordinarily, he’d have put his smock back on. He’d have his hands back in her mouth, examining her jaw, taking film. He’d care about his practice more.

  “I can recommend one, if you need,” George said, and left his dental smock hanging on the door, and the woman’s mouth slowly closed.

  He drove home to his daughter. Let his patient reschedule. Let it all go to hell. He wanted to see Anne.