“She’s sick. I think she may be dying.”
She barks out a bitter laugh and rolls her eyes. “Is that what she said? She so full of bullshit.”
“No, Mallory. She didn’t say it. I just came from Bedford Hills and they wouldn’t let me see her because she was too weak from the chemo.”
Her jaw tightens and I swear she stops breathing. I wait until she says something to know whether it’s me going there that she’s stuck on, or whether it’s that Mom really is sick.
“What were you doing in Bedford Hills?”
“Visiting Mom.”
“Why?”
I slouch back into the couch. “Because I just was, okay? I’ve gone on the first of every month for years—ever since I moved out of here.”
Mallory’s face blanches. “She’s poison, Hillary.”
“She’s sick, Mallory! She’s looked really bad over the last six or seven months, but I just thought . . . I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “I guess I just thought she was getting old and all the drinking and smoking was catching up with her.”
“I don’t want you going back there.”
I shove out of the couch. “Tough shit.”
For a full minute she doesn’t say anything, then, “You really think she’s dying?”
“Yes, Mallory. I’m pretty sure she’s dying.”
She sags into the door frame but hate still runs through her voice as she says, “So, what are we supposed to do, just pretend she didn’t abandon you to the system? Just pretend that everything that happened to you there wasn’t on her?”
“She’s dying,” I say, slumping back into the couch. “I think maybe it’s time to forgive and forget.”
“I will never forget,” she says low through gritted teeth, and that’s when I realize this isn’t about me.
I straighten up. “What did she do to you?”
She looks at me a long minute, then spins for the kitchen. “Don’t go back there.”
I pull myself up and follow her. She’s at the sink, peeling a potato when I walk in. “So we’re just going to let her die all alone.”
She keeps peeling.
I move to the counter and pick up a potato. “You have another peeler?” I ask, pulling open the utensil drawer, but when I look up at her expectantly, I see the tears tracking down her face and dripping onto the counter.
“Mal?”
She swallows hard and sniffles, but doesn’t look up from her potato.
“What’s going on?”
Her whole face pulls tight and she drops both the potato and the peeler into the sink. “Do you remember the day I left?”
I mostly remember the yelling. “Sort of.”
She looks up at me with sad eyes. “You were only ten.”
Mom and Mallory were always fighting about something. I don’t think they knew how to communicate at anything less than a yell, and it usually ended with Mom hitting Mallory. But I remember, at the end of that fight, Mallory was gone and never came back. When I asked Mom, she said Mallory had gone to college. End of story.
“You went to college.”
She shakes her head. “Is that what she told you?”
“Yeah . . . didn’t you?”
She scoops the potato out of the sink and puts it on the counter. “Eventually. But that was just after graduation, Hilary. I was in the city until August.”
“Why did you leave, then?”
She hauls a deep breath, then looks at me. “Do you remember Doug?”
My mind does a quick inventory of the string of Mom’s live-in men. “The big blond one with the gold tooth?”
She nods. “It was graduation night. I was drunk and Carrie and her boyfriend gave me a ride home. Doug was on the couch, watching some old horror flick when I came in. I guess Mom was already passed out in bed.” She lowers herself into a chair, resting her elbows on her knees and holding her face in her hands. “I don’t really remember much . . . just that I stumbled into that little table behind the couch in the family room and knocked some things off it. Doug helped me up and sort of carried me to our room.” She looks up at me. “I don’t remember why you weren’t there . . . probably sleeping over at McKenzie’s or something.”
McKenzie. My friend from “before.” I’d forgotten about her.
“I remember he left and I started tugging off my clothes, but then I looked up and he was in my door, watching me . . .” A tear leaks over her lashes and she wipes her face with her palm. “I screamed, and Doug took off, but when Mom staggered in a minute later, and I told her what happened, she blamed me. Called me a tramp.” She looks up at me with the most tortured eyes I’ve ever seen. “I wanted to take you and go. I wanted to get us both out of there.”
It feels like I’ve been kicked in the gut. “But you left me.”
“I was only seventeen. When she threw me out a few weeks later because Doug whistled at me, I didn’t even have time to grab my stuff. She was crazy, waving a kitchen knife around in the air and threatening to kill me. I kept thinking I’d come back for you . . . that I’d bring you to Dad’s with me. I even went to the house one day to grab you. But you were with McKenzie, and you seemed so . . . normal. I knew I was leaving for college in a few months, so I . . .” She drops her face into her hands. “I just left you there.”
“If you’d taken me, I’d just have ended up in the system sooner, Mallory. There’s nothing you could have done to change that. I couldn’t have gone to Florida with you.”
She lifts her head and looks at me. “Don’t go back there.”
What do I say? “I don’t think . . .” I breathe deeply and lift my eyes to hers. “I don’t think you should leave it like this, Mallory. I think you need to . . . I don’t know . . . maybe if you saw her, if you talked about it—”
“No!” She springs from her chair. “I’m not going to talk to her! I’m never going to forgive her. I’m happy she’s dying, Hilary. I want her to!”
“Mommy?” We both spin on Henri’s voice. He’s standing just inside the kitchen with the empty apple plate. Max is behind him in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”
She wipes her eyes and drags a forearm under her nose, sniffling as she moves quickly toward him. “Nothing, baby. Everything is good.” She smiles and takes the plate from his hand. “You want more apples?”
“Yes, please,” he says.
He comes to me, where I haven’t moved from the table. “Will you build Legos with me, Auntie?”
I stand and ruffle his hair, then pull him into a hug. “Sure, buddy.”
When I glance up at Mallory, she’s pushing an apple slicer down a Granny Smith like nothing ever happened, and I know as far as she’s concerned, the discussion is over. But I’m not going to let it drop. I can’t.
Chapter Sixteen
WHEN I GET to the audition a few minutes early, there’s already one girl in the small break room that I’m lead to. She’s taller than me, and brunette, with a long, thin neck and pretty face. She looks like a dancer, which makes me a little nervous. But I’m not sure she has the body to pull off the partial nude. She’s a little scrawny, to be honest.
“I’m Hailey,” the petite woman who greeted me says. “If you’d like coffee or tea, help yourself.” She waves an arm at the counter where there are pots of both coffee and hot water and a tray of muffins and croissants.
“Thanks,” I say as she turns to leave.
I grab a teabag from the basket, but as I’m pouring hot water over it into the styrofoam cup, I hear someone else come in.
“Help yourself to coffee or tea,” Hailey says again, and when I turn to size up the competition, I almost choke on my own spit.