69
I WANTED TO ASK HER ABOUT the boy in red swim trunks.
I wanted to tell her about the cold hand and the sandwich halves.
I wanted to explain that ever since Ava had told me (I only ever thought about Ava telling me, even though the two tellings happened within a week), my body couldn’t always summon the energy to eat or bleed. That it wanted to shrink, even though I coaxed it to grow.
I wanted to explain that if I hid things from her, it was because I couldn’t stand to see Mom hurting any more than she could stand it in me.
It was winter-mixing. Rain mixed with snow. The trees were a runny green slurry coursing past the car windows. After the initial explosion, things had calmed down, and we’d all gone out to lunch. Mom and Pauline had griped about the stupidity of teenage boys and talked about the things they’d tried to hide from their parents in high school. Afterward I took a nap, and Mom and Pauline had talked in the kitchen for another two hours. Pauline wanted us to stay over, but Mom had to work in the morning. We drove to Ava’s dorm to pick up my things, and I’d scrawled a note for Ava on the back of an envelope.
Thanks for everything. Half Moon Mountain was the best. Then we’d left.
Now Mom was being too quiet.
“Where does he live?” I said.
“Who?”
“Scott.”
Long pause. I looked down at my lap, conscious of having invoked a demon. At the sound of his name I could feel the car fill with icy air. Sorry sorry sorry, I thought, wishing I could take it back.
It was always like this, on the extremely rare occasion I tried to talk about him with Mom. Like lifting a rock to see the insects underneath, and seeing them scurry around in a panic. Feeling bad because all they wanted to do was stay safely hidden under their rock. Sometimes I felt like Mom regretted telling me. At least my questions back then were dumb and harmless, not these ambushes that made her think about a person she’d rather forget.
Sorry sorry sorry, I thought, sorry sorry sorry.
I don’t know why I thought it was a good time to try for a conversation. Maybe because things were already so raw.
Mom named a suburb of a suburb of a big city an hour and a half from our town. “Why do you want to know?” she said tightly.
“No reason,” I peeped.
I squished myself against the window and stared at the road.
70
FALLING ROCKS, SAID THE SIGNS, AND I wanted to be one, tumbling angry forever.
YOU ARE IN BEAR COUNTRY, said the signs, and I wanted to lumber down riverbeds in pajamas of meat and fur.
ICE ON ROADS, said the signs, and I wanted to be that deadly, to kill without warning, out of nowhere, invisibly.
The city said ENTER, the bridge said MAX WEIGHT 1.5 TONS, and I felt myself heavy, breaking the spans.
I flinched when we passed a sign that said the name of his town.
I could feel him in the car with us, sucking up all the air.
I wanted to push him out the door, but I didn’t know how.
71
WHEN IT GOT DARK, WE STOPPED at a diner in a town I didn’t recognize. We ordered tomato soup. Neither of us was very hungry. It came with hard white bread rolls and frozen packets of butter on a plate.
“Are you mad at me?” I said.
“I don’t know yet.”
We ate our soup in silence. The waiter came by with more coffee for Mom. I listened to it splashing into her mug. Behind us, a pair of truckers was watching a football game on TV. I thought about the regional park. It seemed like there was always a sports game going on in the background when Mom and I were having a bad time. I snuck a peek at her face. The emotions there were too complicated for me to read. Strain. Exhaustion. Exasperation. Hurt. I looked back at my soup and felt the minutes drag.
“I guess it’s my fault for embarrassing you with the condoms,” Mom blurted at last. “How were you supposed to tell me after that?”
I blushed. I couldn’t stand to see her feeling guilty for something I’d done.
“How long did you know?” said Mom.
It was a relief to be talking again. Better than that long, strained silence in which God-knows-what thoughts could be lurking. “Only since the day before I left for Maple Bay.”
Mom shook her head. “Jesus,” she said. “Well, at least you were somewhat responsible. Ava’s not the worst person you could have asked to help you. And Pauline says you didn’t even try to lie to her. I’m just sorry you didn’t feel like you could tell me.”
“I’m sorry too.”
Our eyes met over the empty soup bowls and then we both looked away, as if the pain of connection was too piercing to sustain. My mother and I loved each other with eyes averted, like birds circling a pile of grain but never coming close enough to peck. As if love was a mirage that could shimmer and vanish if you looked at it too closely, or a tree with sorrow nesting in every branch: shake it too hard and your heart would break.
We walked to the cold car and got back on the road.
It was too dark to see the trees now, and soon we were home.
72
I TOLD NOE IT WAS TOO late to come over, but she insisted.
“Mom?” I said sheepishly, hovering in her bedroom door. “Noe’s coming by for a few minutes. I think we’re going to go for a walk.”
Mom grumbled her acquiescence, and I went downstairs to wait by the window until I saw Noe appear at the end of the block. I slipped out the door and ran to meet her. Our bodies collided, and I thought of the loons who wheeled through our town on their annual migration until one year, for no reason anyone could discern, they didn’t come back.
“Bethy,” she gasped.
“Noe,” I wailed.
The street at night was empty and quiet, the moon a sliver.
I wondered what it would be like not to know her anymore.
73
THE WEEK AFTER CAMPUS VISITS, OUR school was buzzing with stories of what everyone had gotten up to. Michael Lavelle had gotten drunk with a college basketball team and woke up with a string bikini drawn over his nipples in permanent marker. Eleanor Watchless had attended a 400-level physics seminar and astounded the professor by turning in the solution to every problem she had written on the board. Mallory Davis had cheated on Tim Xiu with her campus tour guide.
Steven had taken the train south to NYU to check out their drama department. In Art, he chattered about it nonstop. “It’s like an entire school full of pee sisters,” he confessed gleefully. “Perhaps an entire city.” He’d stayed with his rich uncle in Manhattan, and the uncle had taken him to see The Lion King, Avenue Q, and a ballet called Petrushka. He brandished a pink slipper the lead dancer had signed for him after the show. After Art, we went to the bathroom together to wash the paint off our hands, an endeavor that proved to be surprisingly labor-intensive.
“What about you, Annabeth?” Steven said. “You’re being awfully quiet about Northern.”
“It was—very interesting,” I said.
“Interesting how?”
“A lot of ways. Every way.”
I pumped more soap into my hands and scrubbed at my fingernails, which were caked with tenacious blue paint. I thought we’d reverted to friendly silence, but after a moment Steven said, “Are you going to tell me about it, or is the privilege reserved for first-degree friends?”
“Steven—” I groaned.
“I’m right, aren’t I? Whatever it is, you probably told Noe the minute you saw her, but I’m just the person you kill time with in Art.”