The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(81)
Dorothy turned and was on the ferry, her head reeling from the champagne and swirling about the dance floor. She stood frozen for a heartbeat, still confused, then instantly sobered as she saw Annabel on the other side of the glass doors, in the rain and howling wind, climbing up the metal railing. Passengers dropped their phones and coffees, others leapt to their feet. Dorothy shoved past them frantically, pushed through the heavy doors, felt the chill in the air as she ran, reaching Annabel just as she’d thrown a leg over the top rail. Dorothy pulled her down, wrapped her arms around her, the embrace of a terrified mother. Annabel was cold, soaking wet, confused.
“What are you doing out here, Baby-bel?” Dorothy tried to remain calm, but she was scared, shaking Annabel and shedding tears of relief. She tried not to think of her daughter plummeting into the dark, roiling waters below. Annabel didn’t know how to swim and the water was frigid, deep, the storm currents deadly.
The ship’s horn sounded, and the bow rose and fell as it eased through the waves. When the blaring faded Dorothy heard the thrum of electric vehicles on the car deck below. Other passengers queued up behind the glass doors to disembark as the ferry slowed. The downtown terminal flashed its lights in the distance. Dorothy saw the Smith Tower. Saw the lights at the top where their apartment was. She felt as though she’d been awakened from a dream and shoved face-first into a cold, cruel reality.
“I told you to stay put,” Dorothy said, rocking Annabel, squeezing her, trying not to break down sobbing. “What if something happened? What if I lost you?”
“I’m sorry.” Annabel looked crestfallen. “I saw the boy. The same one you saw. He was waiting for me to come play, but when I got out here he was gone.”
Dorothy looked around. There was no boy. Just more rain.
She picked Annabel up and walked inside as the other passengers stepped back, regarding her with a mix of shock, relief, and disdain for the type of mother who would let a five-year-old wander out there all alone in this weather. They shook their heads at Dorothy as she passed. She recognized the angry expressions, the whispering. She’d experienced the same reaction more than a decade earlier when friends, strangers, and social workers had disapproved of her own mother’s neglect and incapacitation. As an adult, it took Dorothy years to stop blaming herself for her mother’s pain, her trauma, her death. Now, as a parent, Dorothy realized that during all those years it had been the other way around, and despite her best efforts, the cycle was repeating.
* * *
When Dorothy and Annabel got home, Louis and his mother were sitting on the couch in the living room. They whispered, then stopped speaking and instead exchanged knowing looks and put on welcoming smiles. They looked like fraternal twins, one with more mileage than the other, but the same make and model.
“Um. Hello,” Dorothy said as she helped Annabel out of her boots and new raincoat. “I thought you’d gone back to Spokane already. Did they close Snoqualmie Pass again? I heard there was another mudslide warning because of all the rain.”
“You know me. I couldn’t leave without giving my sweet girl another hug,” Louise said to Annabel, arms outstretched.
The happy five-year-old walked into her grandmother’s open arms, though when the older woman squeezed, Annabel said, “You’re. Squishing. Me.”
Dorothy didn’t want to see Louise, not again, not tonight. She didn’t appreciate how the older woman could make her feel like an unwanted guest in her own home. Or worse—a servant, someone whose presence was functional, nothing more.
“What’s going on?” Dorothy asked as she removed her coat.
“Louis called me as I was leaving. He thought we should talk.” Louise spoke in a manner that reminded Dorothy of an old boss, the department head at Seattle Central Community College who had fired her for too many absences. Louis wanted to sue the school for wrongful termination, but Dorothy talked him out of it. The thought of being stuck in a windowless conference room for days, having to give a deposition to strange men who could subpoena her therapist’s notes and ask her humiliating questions, was worse than being temporarily unemployed.
Louise kissed Annabel on the cheek. “Why don’t we let this wonderful girl of ours go to her room so we can let you in on our discussion.”
“Well, that sounds ominous,” Dorothy said, envisioning Louis spinning a wheel of misfortune and watching it land on Mother Moves In or Let Me List Your Flaws, or the dreaded Spokane Getaway, where Louise would insist on taking Annabel home with her until typhoon season had passed. It wasn’t a terrible idea, on paper. It was eminently safer on the other side of the state, despite the rise of nationalist separatists the closer one got to the Rocky Mountains. Dorothy patted Annabel on the shoulder. “Baby-bel, why don’t you go work on your drawings. I’ll come read you a story later, okay?”
Annabel sighed and then trundled off to her room. “Grown-ups talk about the weirdest things.”
Dorothy sat down across from Louis and his mother.
This is my home, not hers. But her mind became a zoetrope of emotion, with flickering images, lingering memories of a boy on the bow of the ferry, sitting on the grass of some lakeside park with someone named Sam, the hauntingly familiar smile of the man who had asked her to dance. Dorothy stared across at Louis, who for once wasn’t staring at his phone. She remembered his eyes rolling back, his body going limp, him waking up on the floor confused and disoriented. Is that what this is about? she thought. Great. This is going to be like one of those Hollywood tabloid cover stories, where the girlfriend is accused of physically abusing her loudmouthed boyfriend.