The Words Between Us, page 15
20
Then
Do you think your dad saw the note yet?”
Peter gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. “Probably.”
We had entered the stream of traffic on I-75 as the sun was breaking over the eastern horizon and hit the Ohio border before I normally got out of bed on a weekend.
“Are you going to get in trouble for this?”
“Probably.”
“Sorry.”
“Forget about it. He’s never happy anyway.”
“I thought when you had offered to take me that it was something you’d checked out with him.”
“Not exactly.”
We drove on in silence for a while until finally he exclaimed, “Gah, I hate Ohio!”
“Why?”
He glanced at me. “You’re really not from Michigan, are you?”
“Duh.”
“Well, what do people in Massachusetts hate?”
I thought about that a moment. “Mediocrity.”
Peter rolled his eyes. “I’m talking sports teams.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t do sports. I guess New York.”
“Okay, Ohio State is Michigan’s Yankees, then. And their speed limits are too slow. And the toll roads. And honestly, we’ve already been driving here for a year!”
It did feel like it took forever to get out of Peter’s least favorite state, but when we stopped for lunch and gas in Pennsylvania, I was surprised to see that it was only 1:30. The next hundred and fifty miles were some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. Greening hills sprinkled with trees and adorned with the big red barns of bucolic farms.
“Man, what I wouldn’t give to drive all day every day,” Peter said.
“As long as it wasn’t through Ohio.”
“Right.”
“Maybe you should be a long-haul trucker.”
“Yeah, Dad would love that. ‘This is Alex, the NFL sensation, and this is his brother Peter, the trucker.’ Anyway, all they see is the highway and the backs of warehouses. I’d want to stop and walk around the woods and hike in the mountains. There’s nothing like this back home. Everything’s so flat in mid-Michigan, nothing but farms.”
“There are farms out here.”
“Yeah, and they’re not growing corn as far as the eye can see. There are sheep out here and horses and weird people in hats.”
“They’re called Amish.”
“Whatever they are. It’s beautiful.”
I did agree. Why did my grandmother have to live in boring old Sussex? Why couldn’t I have been sent to live in Montana or Colorado or even here?
“So you basically want to be a park ranger,” I said.
Peter stuck out his bottom lip and nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. What about you?”
“I don’t know. All I want to do is read.”
“I don’t think people pay you to read.”
“Maybe a writer?”
He nodded. “I can see that.”
“Or maybe I could teach English.”
“If you were a writer you could live anywhere, travel.”
A part of me liked that idea—picking up, leaving everything behind, driving off to discover the world beyond the horizon. But then where was home? I’d already been uprooted and it had hurt. Months later I was finally feeling like the place I lived was home. Could I really stand that kind of dislocation again? Without its root, a plant dies.
“Oh my gosh.”
“What?” Peter said.
“Yesterday was my birthday.”
“What?”
My birthday. I had missed it. Because my parents had missed it. They were the ones who bought cakes and presents, who sent invitations and threw parties. Birthdays were their job. They hadn’t even managed to send a card. They’d forgotten me.
“I’m fifteen.” I barely got the words out.
“Yesterday was your birthday? Aw, man, that sucks! That’s it. We’re going out tonight. We’ll find a decent restaurant and get you cake for dessert.”
He put a hand on my knee and drove with the other down the curving highway. We came down out of the mountains, whooshed through rich valleys, and crossed the Susquehanna River. The highway turned north, then south, then east into New York. Not long after we crossed the Hudson, we entered Connecticut. Our destination was north of Danbury. One hundred miles or so from there was my old house in Amherst.
It was seven o’clock by the time we walked into the reception area at the Federal Corrections Institute. At my paralyzed stare, Peter took the lead. “Linda Windsor’s daughter Robin is here to see her.”
The woman behind the desk gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, but visiting hours end at three o’clock on Sundays. You can come back tomorrow after 8:30 a.m.”
The breath left my body, and relief over this temporary reprieve replaced it. Despite having months to think about it, I still had no idea what to say to my mother.
“Thank you.” I turned around and we made our way outside. In the parking lot I looked at Peter. “I believe you owe me a birthday dinner.”
In town we found a little out-of-the-way restaurant that didn’t look too fancy. Peter used the pay phone in the entryway to let his dad know we weren’t dead on the side of the road. When he came back he was a little pale.
“Everything okay?”
“Not really. But it can’t be helped now.”
I ordered clam chowder, something I’d missed since moving to the Midwest. Peter ordered fish and chips. I was three bites in before I thought to ask, “So where are we going to sleep tonight?”
“I asked the hostess about motels when you were in the bathroom. She gave me kind of a dirty look, but she gave me directions to a couple. I think you’ll have to stay in the car while I get a room.”
“Why?”
“Do you really have to ask that?”
“Oh . . . Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
“Not if we’re careful.”
Dinner and dessert were over too soon, and we followed the hostess’s directions to the first motel. It looked like a scene out of a movie, one designed to show you how down on their luck and desperate the characters were. Peter vetoed it on sight. The second motel was clean and well-lit—at least on the outside. I chose to see this as a good sign. Peter secured a room for one with the emergency credit card his dad had given him when he got his driver’s license. He removed our two suitcases and brought them inside, instructing me to keep my head down until he came to get me. The car got colder and colder. A full twenty minutes later he opened my door from a crouched position. We both crept to the end of the car and made a dash for it.
We sat inside with the blinds drawn and the TV on a rerun of Friends and avoided talking about the sleeping situation. I fiddled endlessly with a motel matchbook, flipping it through my fingers until the edges were soft and worn. Peter put his arm around me and I settled into the crook of his elbow, my head on his beating heart.
Eventually—miraculously—I fell asleep on top of the covers. When I woke in the early morning light I was beneath them, still fully clothed, Peter asleep beside me, his warm fingers laced in mine. Had I gripped his hand in my sleep? Or had he simply known I needed something to hold on to? I didn’t want to let go, but I had somewhere to be. I slipped from the bed and into the tiny bathroom to shower and change. By the time I came out, Peter was up and dressed.
“It’s nine o’clock. We better get going.”
I nodded, but I didn’t want to go to the prison anymore. I didn’t want to speak to my mother. I didn’t want to ask about her old doll or her old friends. I didn’t want to yell at her for failing me. All I wanted was to keep on driving. If we left now, we could be at the Atlantic in just a few hours. I could stand with my heels on the sand of Cape Cod and my toes in the ocean, as I had every summer of my life—until this last one. Maybe for that moment, as the salt wind tangled my hair, I would feel like me again. Maybe the wind would blow me out of this story and set me down inside a new one, one that didn’t include prison as a setting.
Instead I waited at the window for Peter’s all-clear signal, dashed into the car, and let him drive me to the prison that would be my mom’s home for the next twenty-some-odd years. The same woman was at the desk. I filled out a form and read the long list of rules and restrictions for visitors. I emptied my pockets into Peter’s hand—a few coins, a ChapStick, and the motel matchbook. Then I left him sitting in a plastic chair while a guard wanded me and escorted me to the visiting area.
The room was spare and unadorned. A few round tables with built-in backless seats were bolted to the floor in no particular pattern. A couple other visitors were already waiting, and more came in behind me. When everyone was seated, I heard a buzz and the clicking of a lock being released, and the prisoners were led in.
She was third in the line, and I saw her before she saw me. Her hair was a little longer, unstyled, looking far less silky than it had seven months ago. She wore no makeup, her pale lips disappearing into the surrounding skin on her flat cheeks. The dull gray of her prison jumpsuit and the harsh fluorescent lights gave her whole face an ashen cast. I could tell when she spotted me. A slight hitch in her breath, a sudden slackness to her hard jaw that morphed into a smile—that brilliant smile that transformed a room.
She sat down across the table from me, never breaking eye contact. “Robin. I can’t believe you’re here. You’re finally here.” Tears formed in her eyes. “Happy birthday, baby.”
She hadn’t forgotten.
I wanted to go to her, to hug her, to crush the distance between us in an embrace. But the rules were clear on physical contact—there would be none if I wanted to continue this conversation. And now that I saw her, I did. Desperately. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened back in Amherst or tell her what a terrible mother she’d turned out to be. I only wanted to rewind my life and have a mom again.
“I’ve missed you, sweetie,” she said.
I pulled back the tears that wanted to fall. “I’ve missed you too.”
“Is your grandmother here?”
“No.”
I wouldn’t tell her about the break-in. Not yet. There was nothing she could do, so why worry her? When I got back to Sussex and things got back to normal, I would write to her.
“Who brought you here?”
“A friend from school.”
She smiled. “You’re going to Kennedy, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
She began asking all about Sussex. How was The Professor doing? Was this restaurant still there? Had Mr. So-and-So retired from Kennedy? We talked about Emily Flynt. I told her about meeting Peter in the graveyard. For some reason, I didn’t tell her about all of the books beneath my bed. Those were just for me.
“It’s a bummer your mom had to move out of that cool old house and into some dumpy trailer,” I said.
She frowned a little and looked at her hands. The guard in the corner of the room gave a ten-minute warning.
“You know, my grandfather built that house. Every stick of it was nailed together with his own hands.”
“Why did Grandma leave everything behind?”
“What do you mean?”
“A bunch of furniture, the pictures on the wall, your doll.”
“My doll?”
While I described the dilapidated house and the doll in the window with the ever-watching eyes, my mother seemed lost in memories. It was then that I realized that her childhood was gone too. And now her adult life was as well. If my life had been disrupted by my parents’ bad choices, hers had been utterly destroyed.
“Your grandmother has a lot of bad memories of things that happened in that house,” she finally said. “I don’t blame her for wanting to start fresh.”
“Time’s up,” bellowed the guard from the corner of the room.
Already used to following orders, my mother stood up at once. But time couldn’t be up. It had barely started.
“I love you, Robin.” She leaned closer and winked a teary eye at me. “Keep your eyes open. Your grandmother’s hiding something. Something for you.”
For a moment all I could hear was the sound of slippers scuffling across linoleum. Mom was directed into a line and shuffled out a door with the other prisoners. I was directed into another line and shuffled out another door.
Back in the lobby Peter stood and frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just—let’s go.”
In the car I replayed the conversation for Peter as best I could, ending with my mother’s bizarre non sequitur about my grandmother. Had Mom somehow managed to send me a birthday gift from prison?
“Weird,” Peter said. “She said your grandma is hiding something from you?”
“No, for me.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It isn’t? I said from?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
Had I? Which was it?
21
Now
What do you mean you got a job?”
Dawt Pi furrows her brow. “You told me look for a job. So I did.”
I can’t argue with her. But now that there is some slim chance of saving Brick & Mortar Books, I can’t quite picture its future without her.
“Yes, of course, that’s great.”
“It is just on the other side of the river, at a salon.”
“But don’t you need a license to cut hair in Michigan?”
Dawt Pi rolls her eyes. “Anyone can cut hair. I cut my own hair since I was ten. I cut my sisters’ hair, my brothers’ hair, my parents’ hair, my aunts’ hair. But it does not matter for now. I will be the receptionist, and the owner says she will help me get my license.”
I try to imagine the permed old ladies of River City attempting to make appointments with someone with such a heavy accent. Will they think her name is Dorothy like the postal worker does?
“When do you start?”
“Wednesday.”
“This Wednesday? That’s only two days.”
“It’s okay, Robin. I will still come by the store. I promise. But you don’t need me. Anne’s salon is very busy. She needs me.”
“Who will I talk to?”
Dawt Pi is unable to stifle a little laugh. “The better I speak English, the less we talk.” She puts a hand on my arm. “Talk to your customers. There are more since the book drive. You talk to them, okay? Talk to Sarah. And Ryan. Ryan is nice.”
We go about the day as normal. Only it’s not normal anymore. Every action takes on new significance as I count it among the last of such things. The last time Dawt Pi will straighten that book, the last time she will sweep that corner, the last time she will get the mail. I hardly acknowledge today’s fat, padded manila envelope. It sits unopened behind the counter until closing time when Dawt Pi flips the sign and locks the door.
“Are you ever going to look at this?”
I sigh and pick it up. It feels like my heart—large and hard and heavy. I already know what it is, and I don’t even have to open it to remember the poem I wrote after reading it that fateful week when everything I was building in Sussex—everything I was building with Peter—fell apart.
I chase my death upon the waves of Fate,
Thinking it a trophy for my shelf
And, triumphing, I leap into my grave
And pull the tender dirt upon myself.
In bless’d oblivion beneath the ground
My peace with vengeful rancor I have found.
I knew, despite my hunting faithfully,
Death was always in pursuit of me.
I put the package down again and start to count down the register. “You can open it.”
“Kentucky,” she says, followed by the dry hiss of paper fibers breaking apart as she pulls the red tab. “Mobby-Deek.”
“Moby-Dick.”
I don’t need to give her a summary of the plot, because it is spelled out in oil paints on the cover. A small boat, an angry monster from the ocean depths, a crew of terrified men on the brink of drowning, and one defiant captain looking into the great eye of the creature that will destroy him.
“Looks exciting.”
“It is. But it’s a tragedy.”
“What is that?”
“A story that ends badly with no one getting what they want. Often lots of people die.”
She examines the books that have taken over the shelves behind the register. They fill every inch of space and flow like water onto the floor. A few hand-scrawled notes proclaim their unavailability for the curious customer. Dawt Pi has been on me for weeks to box them up and take them to my apartment.
“Most of these books are tragedies?” she says.
I make my own perusal. Do any of these books end happily? As I scan the spines I begin a defense a few times, only to have memory cut me short. For the most part no one gets what they seek, or if they do it’s not what they thought it would be. People die, love is lost, lovers are destroyed, lives go on empty of meaning. So much heartache and pain. So little hope. Sometimes there is justice. Sometimes not. They don’t all fit the textbook definition of a tragedy, but most come close. Then at the bottom of one stack I spy a series of spines that lift my spirits.
“Jane Austen’s books end well. Those aren’t tragedies. They’re comedies. Comedies of manners. They poke fun at the way people act—their misunderstandings and mistakes—but the hero and heroine turn out okay in the end.” My smile fades. “Maybe that’s why they’re not always taken as seriously.”
“Is tragedy better?”
“I don’t know.” I take Moby-Dick from her hands. “Maybe it’s truer.”
An hour later I find myself alone in my apartment, bathed in the glow of my laptop, staring at the novel I am attempting to rewrite. Is it a tragedy? It’s certainly not a comedy. Are those my only options for this story? Are those the only options in life?
