Lakewood(33)

“That’s great.” When her mother was very sick, it was hard to keep her eating, keep her hydrated. She was so thin sometimes people who didn’t know her stopped and said, “I’ll pray for your health.”

“Lena, I went to a mall.” The music, the smells of perfume and fast food and cleaning products, the dry air, kids having tantrums were all proven migraine triggers. Going to a mall for her mother had once been as unlikely as her going to the moon. Her mother’s voice was light, happy. She needed her cane occasionally still but hadn’t had any days where she needed to be in her chair.

“And maybe this is heading toward bragging, but I can concentrate better now.”

There was an ugliness in Lena that made her angry when she heard this. All her life she had wanted a healthy mom, one like all her friends’. Someone who didn’t need her to take care of things or to be extra-quiet or to be comfortable making dinners, getting a job as soon as she could to help pay the bills, to clean. And now, when she no longer needed a mother, when she was no longer there to experience her, Deziree was the person she had wanted for so long. And the only way it could continue was for Lena to be hours away, to keep risking herself. She was so emotional that she pulled over into a gas station.

“Lena, I—” Her mom swallowed. “Thank you. The health insurance is.”

All the ugly feelings evaporated, replaced with embarrassment for feeling that way and a small, uncomfortable joy at being able to give her mother something she needed.

“Mom, I love you. I would do anything for you. You know that, right?”

“Get me some of that Disarono water,” a woman yelled. “My water tastes bad.”

A young man was pumping his gas with an unlit cigarette tucked between his lips. His dog was watching. Its eager expression, the way it wagged its tail, seemed as if he was encouraging the man to light it. The dog wanted to watch the gas station burn, film the carnage. Lena understood maybe she was just projecting and the dog was just being a dog.

“Mom? Are you there?”

After a few more moments of silence, Lena hung up. She leaned back in the driver’s seat, tilted her head up. The fabric on her car’s ceiling was puffy and shredded from age and humidity.

The next morning, Charlie gave Lena a ride to work. His eyes were glassy. As Lena got into the car she automatically offered to drive.

“No, I’m good,” he said.

“Where were you yesterday?” Lena asked.

He turned on the radio.

“Did you do anything cool?”

He turned the radio up a little louder. The song was a country song about dreaming each other’s dreams, holding each other’s heart, big sky, cute dogs, our little farm. She asked him one more time. He turned up the radio a notch louder. She opened her window. The day was warm and the air felt nice. If they drove around like this for another hour or two, Lena thought she could learn to like country music.

When they reached the office, Charlie got out of the car quickly and walked five paces in front of her. On the back of his arms were five bruises. Perfect circles about an inch apart.

Day 18: You find that someone has left the microwave filthy, but you don’t say anything. You leave it and eat your cold lunch. You accept some deliveries and help do inventory with Ian.

At 10, Lena sent Charlie an email that said only “I’m sorry.” She didn’t mean it and it annoyed her to give in, but she couldn’t handle the silent treatment any longer. Five minutes later, Charlie came over and offered to buy her a snack out of the vending machine.

In the hallway, he pointed to the drawing of a lamp smoking a cigarette on her cast. “Who did that? It’s weird.”

“I think it’s more weird that they gave me a cast.”

“Isn’t it weirder? Not more weird.”

If they hadn’t just made up, Lena would’ve rolled her eyes.

Charlie jingled the quarters in his palm. “I hate that lamp.”

“For your information, I plan on getting it as a tattoo. Across my entire back. Huge. Full fuckin’ color.”

“Sure.” Charlie closed his eyes, as if the overhead lights were too bright. He rubbed his forehead.

“Headache?”

“A little.”

His eyes were on her cast again. She had drawn a bunch of anthropomorphic grapes on it eating smaller, non-anthropomorphic grapes. “You have a future at The New Yorker,” Ian had said when he noticed Lena drawing it. “Just caption it something like ‘Working hard or hardly working.’” Some of her coworkers had signed it or written customary Get Well Soons. She asked a few of the observers if they wanted to sign. One laughed and said, “Oh, Lena.”

“Charlie?”

He turned to the vending machine and bought pretzels without asking Lena what she wanted.

“Is everything okay?”

Charlie handed her the pretzels. He hunched his shoulders. His eyes were bloodshot. “I was visiting my grandparents.”

“What?” Lena checked around, sure there was an observer she had missed.

“My grandparents are getting older and they missed me. You know how it is.” He leaned forward and whispered, “Stop trying to get me in trouble.”

“I’m not. I just thought.”

“Come on, Lena.”