After the End(74)

I fix the carpet. Then I tighten the loose handrail, and replace a slipped tile on the porch roof. I move an old dresser to the basement, and fill Mom’s trunk with clothes she wants to take to Goodwill. I’m clearing the yard when I hear voices.

“He’s out back.”

I wipe my hands on my sweatpants. Mom appears on the back steps, with a woman I’ve never seen before. She’s about my age, with a mass of dark corkscrew curls that bob about her shoulders when she moves her head.

“Hey.”

“You remember Blair, right?”

“I—” I look blankly at the pair of them. I’ve been awake and upright for longer than any single period since I arrived in Chicago, I’m aching for my bed, and I have no idea who this woman is.

Blair laughs. “It was a long time ago. To be honest, I don’t think I’d recognize you, if I passed you in the street. Last time I saw you, you were probably on your BMX and wearing an Incredible Hulk T-shirt, or holding your breath at the Y.”

It’s one of those crazy Novembers where the temperature’s falling but the sun won’t quite give up, and I squint up at her. Who is this woman, who can take me back to 1986 in a single sentence? The corkscrew curls tug at my memory, but the recent weeks have dulled my brain and filled it with cotton.

“Blair is Bob and Linda’s daughter, honey. From next door?”

And in a rush, it comes back. Ten-year-old Blair Arnold, with her boy’s shorts and scraped knees, forever wanting to play with Danny and me. Tugging off her swim cap at the end of a session, releasing a mass of dark curls. I stand up. “You moved away.”

“Pop got a job in Pittsburgh. It didn’t work out, but when we came back they bought a place in Lincoln Park, so I stayed over that side of town.”

“I’ll make coffee, shall I?” Mom says. “You’ll stay for some coffee, will you, Blair? So lovely of you to drop in.”

There’s a flicker of surprise on Blair’s face, then it’s gone, and she smiles broadly at me. “Must be—what?—thirty years?”

I shrug. “An easy thirty.”

Mom puts a hand on my shoulder. “Honey, Blair had a—”

“Shall I make the coffee? Do you want me to make the coffee? Or I can give you a hand here, if you like, Max?” After so much time alone in my room, Blair’s sudden prattle is overwhelming. I take a step away, and she stops and gives Mom a look.

“What?” I snap. There’s an awkward silence, and Mom retreats to the kitchen.

“I’ll fix the coffee,” Mom says. “You two stay and chat.”

Chat. I have lost the ability to make small talk. No—I have lost the desire to make small talk. Life is bigger than that.

“Heather got you earning your keep, then?” Blair says after a while, nodding to the pile of garden waste at my feet. “I moved in with my folks for a while after my divorce and they did the same. I found my own place pretty quick.” She grins. “I guess that was the idea.”

The emphasis on “my” divorce tells me she already knows why I’m here. I wonder how much Mom’s told her. Just about Pip, or about Dylan, too? Did she tell Blair I was a mess? A failure? I look at this woman, with her shiny hair and straight white teeth; her wide smile and clean, pressed clothes. I see her walking around Disney World with two perfect kids; perfect grades, perfect manners, perfect health . . .

“You got kids?”

If she finds me abrupt, it doesn’t faze her. “Two. One of each.”

Of course. So predictable. So perfect.

“My mom asked you to come, didn’t she?”

She has the good grace to blush. “I bumped into her at a fund-raiser at Happy Village—I’ve still got friends in the neighborhood—and she mentioned you were back. Said you’d had a tough time.” She tips her head to the side, her lips in a downturn of sympathy, and I know this is a part she’s played before. Blair Arnold bakes for friends when they have babies, leaves pies on the porches of grieving neighbors. She sympathizes, empathizes, tips her head and gives that sad smile, then goes back home to her perfect kids to enjoy the warm glow of the professional do-gooder.

“Excuse me.” I walk past her. “I should go earn my keep.” In the kitchen, Mom’s fixed a tray of coffee, six cookies arranged neatly on a plate. “I’m going to bed.”

“Max!”

“It’s OK.” I hear Blair come into the kitchen just as I leave it. “Let him go.”

From my bedroom their voices drift from downstairs, punctuated by the chink of crockery.

“She just walked out on him, after everything they’ve been through.”

“I guess she’s hurting, too.”

“So she, of all people, should understand!”

“That doesn’t mean she can help.”

I sit on the bed, wanting to bury myself beneath the comforter, but needing to hear what they’re saying about me. About Pip.

“It’s like when two people have the flu,” Blair says. “They know how the other feels, but they’re too sick to nurse each other. They both need to get better first.”

I lie down on top of the comforter and close my eyes. There is no getting better. This is it—this is how I am now, how I’ll always be. And for the first time ever, I understand why people decide life isn’t worth living. Sometimes it isn’t.