Little Panic

by Amanda Stern

  “I love sharing my iPad with you, but when you take it without asking, it makes me not want to share it with you anymore.” She looks at me, stunned. “And that feels terrible, because sharing my things with you makes me feel close to you. So if you like sharing my things with me, you have to ask me before just taking it, okay? That’s what sharing means.” She nods.

  “And if you’d asked me, I could have told you how sensitive the screen is, and that you need to use the pads of your fingers and not your fingernails when you play games because your fingernails scratch the screen, making it hard for me to read. Scratches don’t go away.”

  Her face turns red. “I’m sorry.”

  “You are forgiven. But you get where I’m coming from about sharing, right?”

  She nods, gets off my lap, and then looks at me for a long minute. “I really like how you handled that,” she says.

  This kid cracks me up; she makes my face detonate into idiotically large smiles. “I’m so glad.”

  I look at Javier, who looks kind of shocked. “How did you know how to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I just explained things in a way I wish people had explained things to me as a kid.”

  But that’s not all of it. I wanted Javi to see that I’d be a good mom, that if he decides he’s on board for another kid, he’s doing it with someone who knows what she’s doing, even if I’m just winging it for now.

  “That was awesome.”

  I smile, proud of myself, and then realize that I just did something easily with Frankie that I’ve found painfully hard with adults: set a boundary. She didn’t push back and try to turn my no into a yes; rather, she accepted it, and the entire exchange leaves me with an unfamiliar feeling: grounded.

  I can do this. I can be someone’s parent. Or maybe it’s Frankie who makes me a good parent because she’s the very person whose parent I want to become. I never considered how happy another person’s child might make me, but here she is, filling and overflowing the empty mom part of me. Frankie is enough. She’s more than enough for me. If I am lucky enough to help raise her, maybe I wouldn’t need to have my own child. I’d already have her.

  * * *

  One day Frankie invites her friend Cecilia to sleep over, but the afternoon she’s supposed to come, there’s a terrible rainstorm, and Cecilia doesn’t call. When she’s a half hour late, Frankie calls her, but no one answers. She tries every ten minutes for the next hour—nothing. By 3 p.m. the weather is clearing, and Frankie is beginning to spiral.

  “Let’s take a walk,” I say. “We’ll get ice cream.”

  On the walk to town, Frankie is distraught. “She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore. She never wanted to sleep over in the first place and now she’s avoiding me.”

  “You know, I don’t know much, but I do know this. Our worries are almost never right. When we assume someone is thinking or feeling one way about us, usually the worst and most personal, our assumptions are almost always wrong.”

  “Well, what else could it be?” she asks. We come up with some ideas: Maybe the power went out, or the phone lines are down, or her parents had other plans.

  “I’m telling you, there are a million reasons for things and guessing never works. When you find out the truth, you’ll be frustrated at how much time you wasted worrying needlessly.”

  Poor Frankie is on edge all day, getting worse and worse as the hours go by; even making cookies and playing Boggle doesn’t help.

  It’s 6 p.m. by the time the phone finally rings. As soon as Frankie hangs up, she skips into the kitchen, beaming with relief.

  “You were right,” she says. “Cecilia’s phones were knocked out. Her dad’s bringing her over now.”

  “See?” I say to her. “What did I tell you?”

  “But how did you know?” she asks.

  “A lifetime of overthinking,” I answer with a wry smile.

  Every day with Frankie little explosive pockets burst open with revelations. Being able to give her what I needed someone to give me when I was her age feels like a course correction, and every exchange leaves me feeling a bit sturdier in the world.

  I find myself falling more in love with this little girl. I am less certain about Javier, which is a problem, but the thing I am most certain about is this feeling inside me, a grounded calm, of being a member of a family where I’m not the frightened child, but the knows-what-she’s-doing mom. One night when I’m walking out of the carrel, I stop, halfway through the bathroom, hypnotized by the sound of Javier’s and Frankie’s laughter floating up from the kitchen, which arrives at the same time as the smell of simmering garlic and the sizzle of lamb chops. The family feeling I have is powerful, and I’m struck hard by the sensation. My entire life I thought I could never get anything right, that every effort would result in failure, but here I am, in an actual house, with a child and a partner, and a sense of purpose unlike any I’ve ever had. To raise a child with someone—to raise this child with someone—feels like my calling. I’m so overcome by emotion that I sit down on the toilet and tell myself that even if this doesn’t work out, even if I never have a family of my own, I’ll have had these four weeks to experience what it would have felt like, and for that I will always be grateful. When I stand up, I am convinced I will do anything it takes to make this last.

  Once Frankie is in bed, I ask Javier whether he’s talked to Meredith about next year, about our living upstate. He says he and Meredith haven’t talked yet, but they will, they will. I am frustrated. It’s becoming clearer that Javier doesn’t really want to make plans for the future. He doesn’t like clarity. He likes living in the in-between, the whatever-happens. The metaphysical space Javi relishes is a place I dread, and I bat it away every time it nears. This, I think, is the definition of incompatible, but I do not want to know this. Not right now.

  The next day, Frankie asks me to pick her up at the Arc Cafe, but when I get there she grabs my hand. “I want you to meet someone.”

  On the way up the stairs, I realize what’s about to happen, and my mouth dries. In an office, down a short hallway, two women are seated at computers. I recognize the skinny, vaguely French one as Meredith. I smile and shake her hand. She doesn’t stand up.

  “This one likes you a lot,” she says drily.

  “I like her a lot, too.”

  “You getting a lot of work done?” she asks.

  “Yeah, it’s been great,” I say, forcing a smile. “Super productive.”

  “Awesome. Cool.” She smiles, but instead of lighting her face up, the smile seems to harden and darken her features. I don’t like her.

  “You’re meeting my mom! I’m so happy you’re meeting my mom!” Frankie sings.

  I smile and make an awkward exit. Later I tell Javier I met Meredith and he says he knows. He ran into her.

  “Oh. What’d she say?”

  “She said you were cute. So, what’d you think?”

  “Of Meredith?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  Before I can figure out how to answer, the phone rings in the other room, and Javier leaps for it. He doesn’t return. Ten minutes later, when I go in the kitchen, he’s sitting at the side table on the phone, giggling. He sees me and covers the receiver.

  “What’s up?” he asks.

  “Nothing, I just…we were in the middle of a conversation.”

  “I’m just talking to Meredith. We’ll talk when I’m off,” he says.

  I go upstairs and lie down, suddenly depressed. Meredith is everywhere. Javier is sitting directly under the bed I’m lying on, talking to his ex-wife, and while I can’t hear what he’s saying, I can hear how he’s speaking. Gooey and baby-voiced, the same way he sounds when he’s talking to me. When he’s off the phone, he comes up.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say, still lying down. “I just…I’m not sure where I fit in here.”

  He groans a little bit. “This ag
ain?”

  I sit up. “Again? When was the first time?”

  “Let’s talk about this later. I need to stop by my house and pick up some pans. Do you wanna see it?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say. Things feel heavy.

  I feel inside out in a way I can’t quite unravel. When my dad married Sallie, he called us less. When they had kids, I felt like an afterthought. That feeling of being rejected and replaced has followed me all my life, and I feel it now, on this small island in Maine. Only I’m being replaced by someone Javi never seemed to have left, and I don’t like how familiar any of this feels.

  From the outside, the house is gorgeous and looks like it’s holding up well, but the inside is crumbling. The wallpaper is falling off in strips. There are holes large enough for small dogs to fall into. It smells like mold or mildew, and our feet stick to the floor as we walk. “Still needs work, obviously, but we’re getting there.”

  “How long have you had this place?” I ask.

  “About twenty years,” he says.

  That tells me everything I need to know about Javier. Not only is he slow to change, he doesn’t want to change. However things were is how they will remain.

  We sit on the couch. Our coats are on; it’s freezing in here.

  “So how was meeting Meredith?” he asks.

  “Not that easy,” I admit.

  “This doesn’t work for you,” he says.

  “No, I didn’t say that. It’s just a lot to handle.”

  “This is too much for you to handle,” he says. Clearly, he wants it to be too hard for me to handle. “She’s part of the deal,” he continues. “If you want me, you get Meredith. Until Frankie is eighteen, we’ll be talking every day. We’re friends. She’s a good friend.”

  Earlier in our relationship, he was “stuck with her” until Frankie was eighteen. Earlier, she wasn’t his friend; she was “Frankie’s mother.” I don’t mind if they’re friends, I’d actually prefer it. What I mind is that every story he tells changes, and the ground I once assumed was solid softens with each telling; I don’t know how long I’ve been sinking. I push away a thought I don’t want to hear—Javi is trying to get me to break up with him.

  With Javier, I feel insecure, but with Frankie I’ve never felt such connection. Everyone always says when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you’ll know. And they’re right: With Frankie, I know. I want to spend the rest of my life being her parent.

  I want to stop writing when she comes home, when she pops her head into the writing carrel; I’ve started calling it F o’clock. I’ve never been like this before. Until now, I’ve resented anything that’s threatened my writing time, because to me, writing is my family, my security; but with Frankie, I feel no resentment. If anything, I am more efficient, knowing that by the time she’s home, I’ll be free and clear. She is the family I am choosing, but I know that in order to have her I need to get Javier to choose me.

  I’m nearly done with the next book in the Frankly, Frannie series, and I’m taking a nap during a break when Javier accidentally wakes me.

  “Sorry,” he says, mid-tiptoe to the closet.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “I already went.”

  “Where to?”

  “Meredith’s. We decided about next year,” he says. “They’re gonna stay here. They’ll probably move off the island when Frankie starts sixth grade.”

  As he’s telling me, I realize that I didn’t factor into the decision. Despite all the conversations about selling Jersey City and living upstate, he’s planning his future without me, because his future is with Meredith and Frankie. I sit up as I realize that all this time I’ve been living his life, on his terms, and everything I’ve said I wanted has gone ignored. Yet even though I should take this realization and walk out, I know I won’t; I need Frankie in my life. I tell myself I’ll find a way to handle the bad stuff. I roll over and don’t respond.

  As the days on the island draw to a close, I know more clearly than ever that this is the life I want. I can spend half the year on this island and half in New York. I can alternate months; I don’t care how we make it work.

  Abi and Abu come up during the last night of our stay, followed by Javier’s sisters and their partners. The house is chaotic and bustling and I love it. Javier announces that he’s off to read the latest revision of my story, but instead of finding a quiet place to read upstairs, he plops down in the center of all the activity.

  At dinner that night, his father asks Javi about what he read, and I’m eager to hear Javier’s response, remembering how effusive he was about the earlier, less-polished draft. I want him—both of them—to think I’m talented.

  “Uh…” Javier stalls. “It needs work. It was better before.”

  My mouth splits open.

  “This was a revision?” Abu asks.

  “Yeah. Something got lost, I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t like it as much.”

  “Maybe you should give it to Abu,” Valentina turns to me and says. “He can help you with it.”

  I want to say that I don’t need help with it. That it’s a good story. That Javier loved the story when he read it the first two times, and he’d said as much. I am shocked and hurt by his disloyalty.

  We pack that night and then crawl into bed. He can tell I’m upset.

  “You know, maybe it was just that I read your story when it was so hectic,” he offers. “I think that’s why I didn’t like it that much.”

  “Too bad you didn’t say that at dinner. Now your family thinks I’m a bad writer.”

  “Nah,” he says. It’s an unconvincing sound. “How much time you need in the morning?”

  “Probably an hour,” I say.

  “Okay, I’ll wake you at eight.”

  When Javier wakes me, I putter around a bit before getting dressed. Soon he stomps up the stairs and into our bedroom.

  “What are you doing? We’re all waiting for you,” he says.

  “What?” I ask. “For what?”

  “For the ferry. We have to leave.”

  “You said you’d give me an hour!”

  “It’s nine fifteen; we don’t have an hour,” he says.

  I don’t understand why he didn’t wake me at eight, and although it’s my fault I didn’t bother to look at the clock, I’m angry at time for not alerting my body that there’s a leaving on the horizon, angry at my body for not counting time to me the way it always has.

  I throw everything into my bag, feeling the agonizing pressure of the others’ waiting for me, like Melissa and my class when I couldn’t tell time.

  We rush to the ferry, where Frankie hugs me tight and cries when we leave. On the ferry, we wave and wave until she’s not a girl anymore, but air. Javier and I are taking two separate planes home, and he’s leaving first thing in the morning for Atlanta for six weeks. When we get to the ferry terminal, we have two hours together before saying good-bye. It’s snowing hard, and I go to the bathroom to put on my long johns. When I come out, he’s on the phone.

  “Probably like half an hour,” he says. “Yeah, awesome. Okay, see you in a bit.” He hangs up and looks at me. “I’m gonna go meet up with Sam for a while. I’ll go to the airport from there.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I thought we were going to spend this time together. We won’t see each other for six weeks.”

  “We’ve just spent an entire month together,” he says.

  “Yeah, but we barely spent any time together alone,” I say.

  “I haven’t seen Sam in months. We’re not far from his house, and I want to see him.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know. Go to the airport,” he says. My body crimps like someone kicked the back of my knees. I don’t even know where the airport is. We’re on his turf, and he’s leaving me to fend for myself because he doesn’t want to fend for me anymore. I breathe; maybe he just wants to see Sam. Maybe there’s nothing more to it.
His phone rings and when he picks it up, he turns his back to me, walking away to talk in private. When he returns he looks disappointed and annoyed. “There’s a big snowstorm coming. Sam says we should go straight to the airport and I’ll see him another time.”

  We drive to the airport in silence. When we get there, all the planes have been delayed. We check in anyway and walk to our gates together, but we can’t seem to ease into each other’s company. Soon Javier gets restless.

  “I really need to get home and get my gear ready,” he says. “I’m thinking I might just drive.”

  “In the storm? I’m not sure driving is the best idea,” I say.

  “Got a better one?” he snaps.

  I don’t say anything, and he leaves to look for a car to rent. I’m sickened by the sense that he’s trying to get as far away from me as possible. He returns with car keys.

  “Now I just need to find out how to get my luggage back,” he says.

  “Do you want me to come with you? Or do you want to say good-bye now and I’ll just see you when I see you?” I ask, dizzy and confused.

  “Whatever you want,” he says. “It doesn’t matter to me.” The inside of me staggers backward.

  “You’re acting really strange,” I say. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. If you want to come, come. If you don’t, don’t. But whatever you decide, you need to decide now because we have to get our luggage.”

  “Okay, I’ll come,” I say, and we hurry to retrieve our bags, and then to the car. I slide into the passenger seat and plug the buckle into its socket for that satisfying click.

  “Maybe this is a mistake. Are you sure you don’t want to fly while I drive?”

  I just had the most expansive, glorious month with him and his family, and now he’s acting like he never wants to see me again.

  “What the hell is going on?” I ask. “Instead of hanging out with me, you want to see Sam. Instead of driving back to the city with me, you want me to take an airplane. What are you trying to do?”