The Night Before(41)

I push him away and sit up. I try to straighten my hair, but my fingers get caught in a tangled mess.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“I shouldn’t have come here.”

Now he is sitting beside me. He thinks he understands what’s happening as he reaches for the glasses on the floor.

“Okay,” he says. “Here…” He hands me a drink. I take a sip.

“I shouldn’t have posted those things about myself.”

“What things?” Now he gets nervous.

“Just … everything. And the pictures and tonight. I shouldn’t have worn this dress and these shoes. I never wear red lipstick.”

“But you look nice. I’m not sure what you’re saying. I get that you don’t always look like this. Made-up, dressed up. I was married for six years,” he says.

This makes me look at him.

“And what about you? What are you hiding?” I ask.

He shrugs and smiles that smile that caught my eye. “There’s really not much I can do. I shaved. Put on a nice shirt.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Then he gets up, walks to the kitchen. He grabs his keys from the counter.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll walk you to your car. I don’t want you to be here if you don’t feel comfortable.”

I don’t move. Not one single muscle. I don’t want to leave.

Rosie never understood. I can hear the same conversation looping over and over. It’s the one where she tells me it’s not that complicated. You go on a date. You talk about superficial things. You meet again. You talk some more. Reveal some more. Little by little, you ease into the water, making sure it’s not too hot or too cold or too deep or too muddy.

There’s nothing that time won’t reveal, she said.

But she is wrong about that.

The day Dick left us, he came to our rooms to say good-bye. He came to me first. He stood at the doorway while I sat on my bed.

Has your mother told you that I’m moving out?

I nodded. Our mother told us through tears. Through desperate words and despair that our hugs could not calm. Four arms wrapped around her as she stood in the hallway, suitcases piled beside her.

I’ll see you on the weekends.

I nodded again. I knew it was a lie. He couldn’t leave my room fast enough.

He went next to Rosie. I heard him knock on her door. I heard it open and then close and when it did, I ran from my room and pressed my ear against the hollow wood. Rosie was crying and he was comforting her, making those sounds people make to babies. Shhh. He told her about the weekends and how everything was for the best.

Rosie yelled at him then. I couldn’t believe it. Sweet, obedient, Rosie—yelling at Dick.

Why do you have to live with that woman?

Dick opened his stupid mouth and said his stupid words.

Because I love her. Someday you’ll love someone and you’ll understand.

Stupid, selfish Dick. Rosie cried again. Dick said shhh again. But then he said something else, something unexpected.

Your mother is no saint.

Rosie stopped crying and I heard footsteps. I ran back to my room and closed the door. Dick left Rosie on her bed with her red eyes and wet face. He walked down the hallway and down the stairs. We both came out of our rooms, Rosie and I. We stood together in that hallway listening to the last sounds our father would ever make in our house. And to the final pleas of our mother.

Don’t go.… Don’t leave us!

I know Rosie felt it then the same way I did when we heard our mother. Nails on a chalkboard.

I never asked Rosie what Dick meant about our mother not being a saint, and she never asked me. Now we are adults. We’ve known our mother all our lives. What good has time done to reveal the truth? About our father? About our mother?

About any of us?

Nothing, that’s what.



* * *



“I don’t want to leave,” I say.

He’s frustrated with me. I can see how he’s tensed up and I want to change it. I want to make it stop.

It begins with recognition.

But I don’t care why I feel this way, how broken I am. How wrong I am. I can’t go back to Rosie’s attic and wait for a call from this man who’s standing in front of me right here and right now.

I think about the last time I saw Kevin. I feel the words I love you sink into my bones, transforming me cell by cell. Hands releasing fists. Peace visible on the horizon of what has been a restless life. I went home that night and conned myself into believing it was here to stay.

And then it was all torn out of me.

I can’t go home and wait for it to come again. Not again.

So I give him what he wants. Or maybe the runner-up. I give him my darkest secret.

“That night that you read about—the night that boy was killed. It was my fault.”

Frustration: gone.

“Okay,” he says. He sets down his keys and grabs the bottle of scotch. Then he returns to the empty living room and sits beside me.

“I’d been dating him, Mitch Adler. He wasn’t a good guy, but that made me fight even harder,” I begin. My hands are shaking. He steadies them as he refills my glass.

“One of the wolves?” he asks, smiling because he remembers my story about Catholic school. I’d forgotten telling him. I’ve told him so many things. Three hours is a long time to talk to a stranger.