Impossible

by Nancy Werlin

  A magic seamless shirt

  A magic seamless shirt

  A magic seamless shirt

  Reading this, a little click happened in Lucy's mind. The song, the family song, "Scarborough Fair." In her insanity, Miranda appeared to believe that the directives in the song were somehow instructions to her. Personal instructions.

  Tell her to make me a magical shirt.

  Whoa boy.

  After seeing this, Lucy wondered if she could even bear to go on reading. But then she told herself: If she can live madness, I can read it. I owe Miranda that much.

  Maybe Miranda was insane before she was pregnant, Lucy mused. Maybe she was born that way. Maybe growing up without parents who loved her had made her crazy. Or maybe being pregnant and alone had pushed her over the edge.

  Lucy gritted her teeth. She focused on the saner entries. The crazy entries, lucidly, were relatively few.

  And the fact was, there was also a wonderful story embedded in the diary. Craziness aside, sadness aside, the diary was also the story of Miranda's relationship with the one true friend that she felt she had ever had, and this was, of course, Soledad.

  Lucy read about her foster mother with tremendous interest. First, Miranda had been distrustful of any possible female friend. She had been badly let down by the girl called Kia whom she mentioned at the beginning of the diary. When Miranda confided in Kia about her pregnancy, Kia had suggested an abortion. She turned away from Miranda when Miranda spurned the idea. She had refused to understand.

  Lucy looked up from the diary again at that point and cupped her chin in her hand. She had to admit that, had she been there, she'd have agreed with Kia. If her friend Sarah Hebert were pregnant and came to Lucy for advice, Lucy would certainly think of abortion. Perhaps she'd even urge it.

  Miranda had spurned the thought—possibly out of craziness. But how could Lucy be anything but glad? She was here, and alive, because of it.

  It was a strange moment. Thank you, she thought. Thank you, Miranda.

  Thank you, Mother.

  After a while, Lucy forced her attention back to the sensible entries in the diary, back to the formation of Miranda's friendship with Soledad.

  The friendship began in the fifth month of Miranda's pregnancy, after Miranda had run away from home and THEM. She ran because Kia's rejection had been only the first of several cold reactions that led—inexorably, it seemed to Lucy, as she read the painful scrawled passages—to Miranda's decision that the best and only thing for her to do was to steal money from THEM and run away.

  Miranda then lived in Boston however she could, hoarding what money she had left. She stayed occasionally in homeless shelters, sometimes in cheap motels, and sometimes living harum-scarum with other teens, who'd offer her a sofa or the floor. And then one day, Miranda went to a free prenatal clinic that Soledad was running in Jamaica Plain.

  Miranda wrote:

  I met someone today, a nurse. Her name is Soledad I wish she was my mother. She's not nearly old enough for that, of course. She could be my older sister, though, if I had one.

  Her eyes. Her smile. The way she listened I felt like I could tell her everything, and she wouldn't judge me. I know that's not quite true and that I can't tell her the truth about the baby and about what I have to do, my impossible tasks, but I can tell her everything else. I in going to see her again.

  And then, three weeks later:

  I finally told Soledad I didn't have a place to live. So now I do. Now I am here, with her and her husband, Leo. They have given me their spare bedroom. It has a bed and a chair by the window and a built-in bookshelf.

  I feel safe here.

  CHAPTER 20

  When Lucy finally turned on her cell phone, it showed messages and missed calls. Her parents had been worried. She sighed. Gripping the diary in one hand and Pierre's leash in the other, she walked home. She was not a child. Why should she have to check in? Hadn't she reassured them enough already?

  She had thought she was in control, but when she found Leo waiting by the back door looking out for her, and Soledad a few steps away with worried eyes, she blew up.

  "Why are you hovering like that? Can't I be alone for a few hours? I left a note. I said I was fine. I even had Pierre with me. And now I'm home, right when I said I would be. So why are you leaving me seventeen million messages? Was there some emergency? Huh?" Lucy was panting by the time she finished, barely aware that Pierre had taken refuge under the kitchen table.

  "Three messages." Leo looked startled. Lucy had not had a tantrum since the age of five, when she'd thrown herself on the floor of a department store in an attempt to convince Soledad to buy her a "fun fur" muff. "We weren't really worried. Well, just a little, and your mother felt—"

  Soledad cut in. "So sue us for worrying!"

  Lucy discovered that she was standing with her feet apart and her arms clutched in front of her, holding the diary. Her chest was heaving. She saw Soledad's eyes fix on the diary, on its faded purple covering.

  Soledad said slowly, "Lucy? What's that? It looks familiar."

  Lucy felt her anger drain out of her. In that instant she knew she had not really been angry at her parents. She had just needed to scream.

  For all the good it would do.

  "Zach found it at the bottom of Miranda's grocery cart." Lucy's throat felt a little raw from having just yelled, but she knew that was not why she was whispering. She kept her arms wrapped around the diary. She watched Soledad as she looked at the diary with slow-dawning recognition.

  Then Soledad looked back into Lucy's face.

  Lucy nodded. "Yes. It's Miranda's diary from when she was pregnant with me. And some of it was written when she was living here with you." She sank down into a kitchen chair.

  Leo drew up another chair for himself. "You said Zach found it?"

  "Yes. He hasn't read it, though. I did, today, after he gave it to me. That was why I needed to be alone."

  Leo's and Soledad's mouths formed into identical little O's of understanding.

  Soledad too sat down. She pushed her fingers through her hair, biting her lip. "What's in the diary, Lucy? Can you say?"

  "You never read any of it before?" Lucy asked. "When Miranda lived here and was writing in it?"

  Soledad shook her head. "I knew she kept a diary, but I respected her privacy. And then when she disappeared, the day after you were born, she took her diary." Her eyes flickered to the purple book. "I haven't seen it since."

  Lucy thought of the crazier passages in the diary. Had Miranda kept her elf and faery fantasies private even from the people who had taken her in? It seemed likely, though Miranda had taught Leo the "Scarborough Fair" song, which seemed to be entangled somehow in her madness.

  She thought of the pages that had been torn out of the diary. Where were they? What had been in them?

  Her parents were watching her.

  "In the diary," Lucy said, "Miranda says she loved you. Both of you, but especially Soledad." She looked at her mother. "She wished you were her sister."

  She saw Soledad's eyes flicker shut for an instant. "I'll never forget the first time I saw her," Soledad said. "She came into the clinic like some starving wild animal who expected to be chased away. She was so heartbreakingly young. Just your age now, Lucy. I couldn't bear it. I've seen so much since then, but the expression in Miranda's eyes—to this day I've never seen anyone look quite so haunted. And she looks just the same to me now, every time I see her. But thinner and even more desperate and beaten down. And when I remember how cocky I was back then, that I could help, I—well, my own arrogance-stuns me, and I—Lucy? Lucy, are you okay?"

  Lucy had bent over suddenly, hard, at the waist. She sat up. "Yes. Sorry. I've just been feeling queasy lately. It's all been so much. One thing after another."

  "You can say that again," muttered Leo. "And you blame us for worrying?"

  Lucy drew in another deep breath and let it out slowly. "It's a mess of crazy talk, Miranda's diary,
" she said frankly. "She makes sense some of the time and some of the time she doesn't. I'll show you later." But even as she said the words, doubt infused her voice, so that the statement sounded more like a question. She wasn't sure she wanted to … expose Miranda—so fully. Even though her parents knew so much already about Miranda. In some ways, more than Lucy ever would.

  "You don't have to show us," Leo said promptly, sensitively. "If you don't want to."

  Soledad said nothing. Lucy could feel the intensity of her stare. She knew without being told that Soledad wanted to read the diary. She needed to give her mother something, Lucy thought. She picked her words carefully. "There isn't any information about my father in the diary. She says she didn't know his name. And she lived with foster families from when she was a baby. She never mentions any of their names either. The very last family she was living with, right before she got pregnant, she just calls them THEM."

  Leo nodded. "That fits. Miranda never talked about her family, but when we tried, she said there wasn't anybody. Right, Soledad?"

  Soledad looked exhausted. "Yes. But I thought maybe she had family somewhere, even if she had her reasons for not claiming them. I thought she would stay here with us and there would be time to figure it all out."

  "She wrote that she has no family at all," Lucy continued. "That she was abandoned in the hospital by her mother when she was a baby. Sort of like she left me," she added. Another wave of nausea hit her. This time she stayed upright and tried not to show it.

  Again Leo picked up on what Lucy wasn't saying out loud. "Miranda knew we would take care of you," he said. "It wasn't really like she was abandoning you. And in her own way, she's always kept an eye on you ever since, coming back now and then. Also, there was that time we asked her to release you to us for adoption. I've wondered since then if she reacted the way she did because she wanted you. Again, in her own way."

  "That could be true." Lucy suddenly, desperately, wanted a glass of water. But she didn't think she could cross the kitchen right now to go get it.

  "You're very pale, Lucy," Soledad said.

  "It's been a strange day."

  "I know," said Soledad. "A lot of strange days." Then she was next to Lucy, pulling her up into her arms, hugging her, hard, just as if it would help.

  Magically, it did. Lucy's nausea receded. Lucy hugged Soledad back. And then Leo came over and it was a group hug, and Lucy found that she was laughing, even if it was laughter with a slightly hysterical edge, and so were they.

  They were family.

  When the hug was over, Lucy went to the refrigerator for some cold water. She said over her shoulder, even though she wasn't hungry, "Who's cooking tonight?"

  "Zach," Leo replied, "which means that we have to wait until he gets home. That shouldn't be long, but then he has to make it. Whatever it is."

  "Spaghetti," Lucy predicted. "And garlic bread."

  "Like you're much better," said Soledad. "We take turns, but face it, I'm the only one here who really cooks in a reliable way." She had sat down again and was looking at the purple diary, which Lucy had left on the kitchen table. She reached out a hand and laid it, gently, on top of the book. "I wonder where Miranda is right now," she said.

  Nobody answered.

  CHAPTER 21

  Zach caught Lucy's eye during dinner. She knew without him saying a word that he wanted to ask her about the diary. She supposed that this was understandable, and that he was actually owed some information. After all, he could have read it himself. So, even though she mostly wanted to be alone again, she volunteered to help Zach with the kitchen cleanup while Soledad settled down to watch a DVD and Leo went off to another gig. The dishwasher was broken again, so they stood side by side, Zach washing dishes, Lucy drying.

  Zach surprised Lucy. He didn't ask about the diary. He asked about her.

  "So?" he said in a low voice. "Are you okay, Luce? You seem all right, mostly, but I wanted to check."

  "I—yes. Yes, I'm okay."

  "You told your parents about the diary? Nobody said at dinner, and I didn't want to ask. It was one of those times when I realize they're not my parents and I should mind my own business. But—I don't know, maybe it was the way Soledad was watching you when she thought you were eating and wouldn't notice. Not that you ate much, by the way. She'll bug you about that later."

  "And you're not?" Lucy said smartly. She decided not to mention to Zach that she had not eaten because the meat in his spaghetti sauce smelled so bad. Everybody else had eaten it happily enough. She'd had a little plain bread instead.

  She said, "I told them about Miranda's diary just before you came home. And I spent today reading it." She hesitated. "I didn't say they could read it yet. I need time to take it all in. And to reread. Some parts I only skimmed. It was too much, all at once." She didn't mention the torn-out pages or the craziness. She took a dish from Zach and dried it.

  "Yeah," said Zach. "Don't let them pressure you. Especially Soledad. She means well and all. And you know, they don't even have to read it ever, if you want to keep it private. Right?"

  "They love me," Lucy said. They had fallen into an easy rhythm over the dishes.

  "But you still get to make your own decisions. Miranda's diary and whatever it says, that's yours now, unless Miranda shows up and wants it back. Soledad and Leo can advise you, sure. And you know I think the world of them. But don't let—"

  Zach paused for so short a time that Lucy might have missed it. But she had a hand out for the next dish, and he fell out of rhythm for that one instant.

  But then he handed the dish to her, and continued. "Don't let what happened with Gray mess with this: You get to decide everything about your own life. You're in charge. Don't doubt for a minute that you can handle it."

  Lucy had not even thought about Gray that day; she had been so focused on Miranda. But as she stood at the kitchen counter with a dinner plate and a dishcloth in her hands, hearing Zach tell her not to doubt herself—

  She gripped the dish she was holding.

  Zach was waiting for her to say something. But she suddenly couldn't even wipe the dish, let alone speak.

  "Luce? Oh, Luce."

  Zach took the plate and towel from her nerveless fingers. Then he pulled her right into his arms, as if he'd done it a thousand times before.

  Which he had not.

  "It's all right. I didn't mean to make you cry. I'm sorry. But you can. Cry, I mean."

  "I'm okay." Lucy managed to choke it out.

  "Yes, you are." One of Zach's hands was rubbing her back. Even through her shirt, Lucy could feel that it was a little wet. His other arm was around her shoulders, holding her tighdy, warmly. Securely.

  And Lucy felt her bones and muscles lose their ability to hold her up. She closed her eyes. She put her arms around Zach's waist. She leaned into him and let him keep her upright while her shoulders shook. She didn't try to do anything about it. She let it all come out, and with the tears she acknowledged to herself that there was something else going on too. A fear that shimmered somewhere within her. An unease that now never left.

  Vaguely she hoped that Soledad would stay out of the kitchen. She didn't want her fussing.

  She just wanted to be held. Like this. By Zach, who she'd known forever. By Zach, who had just told her she was competent to take care of herself, but who was still there to hold her up anyway.

  Eventually she stopped crying. But Zach still held her. His collarbone was hard under Lucy's cheek. Lucy suspected her nose had leaked goop onto his Red Sox T-shirt. True, this particular shirt was a paint-smeared and sweaty mess already, but she liked it. Garciaparra. She could feel the letters under her hands.

  A vague memory stirred idly in her, but she couldn't quite grasp it. Not that it mattered.

  "Zach?" If she had so chosen, Lucy realized, she could have moved her hands from the name on the T-shirt and counted the vertebrae down Zach's back with her fingers.

  "Yeah?"

  "This shirt
you're wearing." Lucy found she could now talk almost normally.

  "What about it?" Zach was still rubbing Lucy's back. He was resting his chin on the top of her head. She hadn't realized he was so tall, but clearly, he was. "The paint on it's dry, I promise. It might be a little stinky."

  "It? Or you?"

  "Hey!"

  "You brought it up."

  "You were supposed to disagree. Or say you didn't mind."

  "You wanted me to lie?"

  "Well, yeah. I don't mind if you hurt my feelings, but this shirt is sacred."

  "Really? That's why you use it for work?"

  "Sweat does the shirt honor," Zach said piously. "It lows respect for Garciaparra."

  Lucy snorted.

  Zach grinned. And even though Lucy was not looking u him, she knew, because when somebody grins and your cheek is pressed against their chest, you can feel the smile light there in their body. Right in the muscle movement.

  Suddenly Lucy felt so much better that she was amazed. "Yeah. Get back to me on that theory when you have it a little more polished. But anyway, I was wondering about Garciaparra."

  "What about Nomar?"

  "You keep this shirt because you're still a fan?"

  "Oh, yeah," said Zach. "I'm not just loyal to the current Red Sox. The history's important. Also, when I was ten, I thought Nomar was, like, God. So I have nostalgia." He paused. "I remember buying this shirt. I got another one with it too, a Yaz shirt. I don't know what happened to it. I keep meaning to replace it. What's funny is that Yaz meant less to me than Nomar at the time, but now, it might be the reverse. The history thing. You don't get that when you're ten. That's when you only care about the current team."

  Yaz. The name plunked again on that same faraway chord in Lucy's memory. Zach and his Red Sox shirts.

  She let herself rest in Zach's arms for a long minute more. Then she pushed herself away. Zach let her go.

  And now Lucy felt slightly weird. Having hugged Zach. Having been hugged, and held for so long.