Never Have I Ever(69)

“Well, I liked it. Maybe because I don’t really remember my own mom. Or maybe because you started as my teacher. But I’m . . . I liked it, is all. When she said that.”

I took a long, shaky breath, because in that moment I could see it. A way to stay. I’d returned to Florida to make things right with Tig, and I’d been rewarded with Char’s friendship, even though I’d chickened out and only helped him secretly. What if I could help Char secretly, too? And if her brother, Paul, had troubles, she’d tell me, and I could step in. If bad times stayed away, I’d work with my lawyers to set up anonymous scholarships for any kids they had. I would care for all three of them, Tig, Char, and Paul, behind the scenes, if only I could stay.

“Me, too,” I said, and I more than meant it. “I like being your mom-friend.” I said those words like a promise, like a vow. If I took this silent path, it might lead me toward redemption. If the universe let me have Maddy and Davis, I would know that I was close enough for it to count. I’d know I had done enough right by Tig Simms to count, too.

Char made a pleased sound and lightened the conversation, complaining that Phillip had not helped her with cleanup. Getting her house back in order was taking up the morning, but she’d promised an elderly neighbor she would drive her to the doctor.

I wasn’t working until four, and I thought, Here. Here is a small, good thing that I can do, right now. For Lolly Shipley.

I had to talk her into letting me, but I won out, seeing it as a start on all the ways I could be present for her.

It wasn’t simple. At first I couldn’t look at her face without seeing Lolly. I’d come home from every outing, every visit with her, headachy and exhausted. I started misbehaving with food, not eating for ten hours, or twenty, or forty. When I finally broke, I would gorge myself, then purge.

I thought about confessing to her, but what truth could I have said? Char, when gently pressed, told me simply that her mother had been killed by a drunk driver. A teenage boy, she said. Not “a couple of teenagers” or even “a carful of teenagers.” Just a boy. Even if I said, My maiden name was Smith. I’m Amy Smith, it would mean nothing without hours of awful explanations. And to what end? Any confession would be for me, not her, to wring her out for drops of absolution.

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t look at her.

I had to separate them out, Lolly and Charlotte. For the sake of my own sanity.

I had the idea while I was diving, hovering over the deck of a wrecked schooner, playing my light over a pair of angelfish to make their sunshine-yellow sides flash. Lolly had gone into the water once, and she’d been trapped in that inhospitable blue. It had left her with a lingering terror. But I had given water back to Char, hadn’t I? Now it was a good place for her.

I thought, Maybe I can leave her there. Not Char herself, of course. Not even Lolly, but my pain-soaked memory of her, the avatar of all my guilt. I could feel her with me every minute, palpable and so, so heavy.

Down in the vast and breathing blue, she was like all my other sins. She was rendered tiny in the vastness, just like me. Under, she was small enough to carry, weighty enough to sink. All I had to do was let her go.

It was hard to open my hands, though. I imagined her little face, tilted up to mine, peaceful and unafraid. I imagined she was smiling, giving me permission. My fists unclenched, and she went down, faster than I would have thought. I came up from that dive lighter.

Lighter every time, because it became a mental exercise, a meditation. I took my heavy sorrow under with me, every dive, and I let her go into that place of otherworldly beauty, the place where I was most myself. After a few months, I didn’t even need to dive to do it. It was a movie I ran in my head every time I filled my mouth with food but couldn’t seem to swallow, every time I felt I didn’t deserve a bite of bread, or even my next breath. I folded my memories and guilt up in her baby arms and let her sink into the unending blue inside me. I learned to never, never, never go that deep.

After a while when I looked at her real face, I only saw my friend, Char Baxter. When I thought of Lolly, I only saw blue bubbles rising. Diving had taught me how to be present only in each moment. Under the waves there was never anything but breath and now. I could be present in that way with Char, too, I learned. Just breathe, and love the person she’d grown into. It felt so meant-to-be.

I kept my silent promises so faithfully that people in the neighborhood noticed. Davis, as we got serious, told me he loved my loyalty. Lisa and Sheridan called Char and me “the Sister-Wives.” Tate, less fondly, had christened me “the pit bull” after I thwarted her book-club coup. She’d meant I was Char’s pit bull, and I was. I had to be.

Now Roux had me leashed. She invited herself along on our walk, insinuating herself between us, in the extra space our strollers made. I was almost grateful. I needed her there, filling my sick silence by telling Char all about our plans to get Luca certified this weekend. On Roux’s other side, I kept a tight grip on the stroller’s bar, kept my feet moving forward. It was all I could manage. I’d been flayed open, all the buried ugly in me rising like gorge, roiling out of me in waves.

I was seeing myself as Char would see me, if she knew. My motives didn’t matter. Neither did the genuine love that had grown up in between us, because it was blanketed inside so much deceit. I had killed her mother, derailed her father, changed her childhood. Then I’d stepped in for the mother I’d killed, moving into her most sacred spaces dishonestly and with no consent. I’d made her dependent on me under cover of a thousand silent lies. She leaned on me more than her own husband. How would she feel, to know that the person she relied on most was offering feeble payback under cover of kindness and love?