The Mothers(43)

“Do what?”

“Ask what I’m thinking. As soon as you ask, my mind just goes blank.”

“It’s not a test,” he said. “I just want to know you.”

Later in the night, she shrugged his arm off her. She felt sweaty with him hugging her all night. Sometimes she wondered if she only loved him when it was cold, in the middle of winter when everything was dead.

—

AUBREY EVANS’S entire life boiled down to the places she’d slept.

Her girlhood bed with its pink princess headboard, pullout couches in relatives’ living rooms when her father left, the backseat of her mother’s car when hospitality ran out, the trundle of Mo’s daybed when they’d moved into a new apartment, her mother’s bed because she hated to sleep alone, her own bed after her mother’s boyfriend moved in, her own bed where her mother’s boyfriend touched her, the bed in her sister’s guest room where she’d escaped, and now Luke’s bed, where they had never made love. His non-making-love bed was her favorite. The department store normalcy of his blue plaid bedspread, always a little mussed as if it’d just been sat on. There wasn’t much else in his studio apartment: a wicker basket from his mother, now filled with free weights, a crumpled pizza box jutting out of the trash can, Nikes lined up near the door, wooden cane propped against the wall. The first time she’d visited him in his apartment, she’d frozen in his doorway, unsure of what to do. They had never been this alone before—in a place that belonged to no one else, where no one else had a key and might interrupt. Luke had gestured toward his bed.

“Sorry,” he’d said. “There’s nowhere else to sit.”

So they’d sat on his bed and watched a movie. Other things they did in his bed: ate pizza on paper plates, played cards, played Madden with the injury setting turned off, watched the Super Bowl, listened to music from her tinny laptop speakers, held hands, kissed, argued, and prayed. They had slept together, as in beside each other. She’d fallen asleep on pillows smelling faintly of his cologne and he’d curled against her, kissing the back of her neck as she drifted off. But she hadn’t felt afraid. All beds told stories, and Luke’s told a different one. She pressed her ear against his pillow and heard no rage. Just the rustling of his covers as he scooted close to her and her own thudding heart.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “All that stuff about the party.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

“Tell her to stop if it’s too much. My mama’s like a runaway train once she gets going.”

“She’s just trying to help.”

“Still,” he said. “Once she gets going.”

They’d just returned from his parents’ house, where his mother had hooked an arm around Aubrey’s waist and ushered her around the backyard, explaining the layout for the bridal shower.

“Now, the waiters will be right there,” Mrs. Sheppard had said, pointing toward the center of the yard. “Not too close, though, we don’t want them hoverin’ over folks while they eat. Lou’s Catering wasn’t my first choice but you know John wanted to support Deacon Lou’s business. Of course, he had nothing to say the whole time I was planning things but he’s got all the opinions right before I book the catering. I hope Lou’s boys paid attention. I told them cranberry tablecloths but I just know they’ll bring red.”

If it was exhausting to worry about tiny details, it was even more exhausting to pretend to. Aubrey felt guilty for not caring about whether the tablecloths were cranberry or red. Mrs. Sheppard was working so hard to plan a beautiful shower for her, she should at least share in her concerns. But she had other worries. Months before her wedding, she had stopped sleeping. Like any big life change, it happened both gradually and all at once. At first, she shaved off minutes, falling asleep later, waking up before her alarm. Then an hour here and there as night fell and she lay under her covers, her laptop toasting her stomach, another episode of television reflecting off her glasses. Then big chunks of time, scoops of it, patches in the middle of the night when she woke to get water and tossed in bed and sat by the window and read her Bible until light cracked through the blinds. By April, she was only sleeping a few hours a night and those few hours made her feel more tired than if she hadn’t slept at all. She was unsleeping, and it wasn’t the wedding jitters like everyone tried to tell her. She had decided to invite her mother and she hadn’t heard back from her yet. She was both worried that she would and would not come.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Monique had said. The two of them were sitting around the kitchen table, which had been covered for the past few months in wedding books Mrs. Sheppard sent over. The war room, Kasey called it.

“Mo, relax,” Aubrey said. “She probably wouldn’t come anyway. Mrs. Sheppard said I might regret it if I don’t at least invite her—”

“So you want her to come.”

“I don’t know,” she said, although she had already imagined the reunion: her mother stepping off the train, carrying a small green suitcase, as the flaps of the past began to lift. Her hair would be shorter now, whipping around her head in curls tinted with silver. She would wear a coral cardigan buttoned all the way to her neck because the coastal breeze would chill her and she’d glance around the station, shielding her eyes from the sun, until she spotted Aubrey. Then she’d smile, and at breakfast, Aubrey would notice all the little things her mother did, the way she sliced her muffin diagonally, how she folded her arms when she was listening, the way she always chatted with the waiter when he checked on them. She would feel like a little girl again, enraptured by her mother’s face.