Girl Out of Water(11)

I’m both disappointed and relieved there aren’t any older pictures, none of my mom, no indication she grew up in this house. I’m not too surprised, though. There are so few pictures of her to begin with. Aunt Jackie once told me that even as a kid my mom rarely sat still long enough for someone to snap her photo. It must be strange to disappear so completely from your own home. I imagine my bed with the crocheted quilt Tess made me, the living room with my old, cracked surfboard on the wall, the kitchen with the pictures of Dad and me stuck to the fridge. If I disappeared, left home and traveled far away for college, would all proof of my existence eventually disappear too?

Once upstairs, Emery leads us down the hall and opens the door to the master bedroom, which must be Aunt Jackie’s. The bed is made, the linens turned down neatly, like in a hotel room. A pair of running shoes sits by the door. My eyes focus on them. Aunt Jackie runs daily, religiously, like Dad. It’ll be months until she can lace up those shoes again.

“Mom said to put you here,” Emery tells Dad. “When she gets back home, she’ll stay in the downstairs guest room because of her…her legs.”

“Thanks, sweetie.” Dad brushes a hand against Emery’s shoulder before dropping his canvas backpack in the middle of the room.

Emery nods and then turns back down the hallway. “This way, Anise.” I follow her and end up at her room. Band posters and art—most of which looks like album covers—plaster the walls. An outdated Mac sits on a desk, which is covered with pens and markers and crumpled paper. Two twin beds press against opposite walls, one with a bare mattress and one neatly made, corners tucked in and everything. Emery flops down on the made bed and gestures to the other one. “When Mom gets home you’ll sleep here with me. I can help you set up the bed and stuff. Until then, you can have your own space in the guest room downstairs. Want me to show you?”

“I think I can find it. Thanks, Emery.”

I smile at her and she gives another small smile back, one that doesn’t really hit her eyes. Then she pulls on a pair of chunky green headphones and opens a magazine, settling more deeply into the bed.

“Aren’t you coming to the hospital with us?” I ask.

She doesn’t look up, just softly says, “No, I went yesterday.” I decide not to push it. Even though I’m sure Aunt Jackie would love to see her again, hospitals can’t be on Emery’s list of favorite places.

I leave her room and take a slow inventory of the rest of the house. The twins’ room is also upstairs, complete with bunk beds and those glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. Downstairs in a corner is the guest room. I drop off my tote bag and then head to the kitchen, an old layout with laminate countertops but, unlike ours, appliances that actually came out of this century. It’ll be nice to make toast without worrying about blowing up the house. It’s a running joke between Dad and me that he runs a construction company, yet our own home probably breaks every building code in the book.

I wonder which room my mom grew up in, and if I scavenged through it, would I be able to find anything she left behind? It’s strange to brush my hands against the same walls she did as a child. I swore off thinking about her last time she left me, but avoiding her here feels impossible. Even without her pictures and things, I can feel her presence, a living ghost haunting its old home.

I can’t believe I left a note telling her we’re here. This summer is already enough of a disaster. The last thing anyone needs is for her to show up and wield her particular brand of devastation.

I step into the living room. The twins are splayed out on the carpet, playing some video game with gunfire and green alien splatter. “Wanna play?” Nash asks, his eyes glued to the screen and fingers rapidly pressing the controller buttons.

“Yeah, wanna play?” Parker asks, glancing at me for half a second before turning back to the screen to blow off some alien’s head.

“Next time,” I say. I almost never play video games. Some of my friends like playing this old surfing game on Xbox, but I never really understood the point with an actual ocean steps away.

A sliding glass door opens the living room to the backyard. I walk outside. My skin immediately misses the cool blast of AC. There’s a pool out here, which would be great if it had any water in it. I pad across the cracked cement, my flip-flops smacking the backs of my feet. The pool probably hasn’t seen anything but rainwater for years. I guess that’s what happens when you have three kids in three years and then your husband passes away before two of them are even in kindergarten. Time and money for things like fixing pools don’t exist.

Sighing, I sit down at the lip of the bowl and dangle my feet into the empty space. I grab my phone from my pocket and play “No Night to Sleep,” my favorite Motel/Hotel song. I start to text Tess but stop. What’s there to say? Nebraska sucks. See you in two months?

I tell myself to be positive, to be happy that I can help my family, family I love.

But that positivity feels difficult to grasp when I look up and see rows of asphalt-shingled roofs instead of lines of lush saltwater waves, when my friends are almost two thousand miles away, when my family is hurting, when I’m stuck here all summer—trapped in the home of a woman who broke free.

? ? ?

I have a lot of experience with hospitals. Between dislocated shoulders, lacerations, and common yet dangerous dehydration, at least one of my friends lands in the ER every few months. It’s pretty easy to get hurt out on the water, especially during tourist season when there are crowded breaks and too many distractions. So entering through the automatic double doors into the distinct, recirculated hospital air is, in an admittedly strange way, comforting.