This Place of Wonder (86)

The question slides into my mind sideways, and once it’s there I have trouble dislodging it. What twisted thing was in my mind when I came up with that? What weird curse did I bring down on my own head?

I look at her young, pretty face. Why did she get so lost? Why didn’t anyone help her? Why didn’t my father help her? The thought brings up another surge of powerful emotions, and it’s so much I just want it to stop. I want to stop feeling. Stop the pain of it.

Stinging, I put the album back in the drawer and open the other side. I halt.

All the drawer holds is a bottle of bourbon. I pull it out, planning to carry it to the kitchen and pour it down the sink, but instead, I place it on the desk and turn away, get up, leave the room.

Start my pacing once more.

I walk to the french doors. Clouds are blowing in from the west, and the wind cools things down. A buzzing restlessness burns up and down my spine, a sense of loss and longing and hope and—“Argh!” I say aloud, and walk back into the office.

The bourbon sits in the middle of the desk and I grab it, carry it to the kitchen. Open the lid. Lift it, ready to pour it down the sink, but the smell suddenly snares me. I bring it to my nose and inhale, closing my eyes as memories flood through my brain. My dad’s chest, rumbling with his laughter as I rested against him, the sharp voice of his reprimands, the way he got down on the floor to play Barbies with Rory and me. How proud I was of him when he was on television, how great he looked when he made jokes on-screen.

Without even thinking, I lift the bottle to my lips and drink. It tastes so good, and the heat slides down my throat like a magic elixir.

Tears are rolling down my face, and I don’t know if they’re for my dad or for myself, for all the time I’ve wasted, all the things I’ve lost. I stand in his kitchen, tasting the booze in my throat, and feel the relief of giving in, finally. I was never going to get sober, not really. I was just stopping for a while to get everybody off my case. I take another long swallow and let the tears come, wild and hot.

“I can’t do it!” I cry aloud. “I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to be this new person.”

And as if I conjured him, there’s my dad. Not at all ghostly, not strange, just himself. “You do know,” he says. “Pour it out.”

Instead, I lift it to my lips, drink. Close my eyes as it burns down my throat, welcoming the edge of peace that seeps in. I bang it down. “Why did you leave me? Why did you leave my mother? And Meadow? Why couldn’t you just stay? Why did you rescue all of them and not me?”

He puts his hand over mine and together we pour the bottle down the sink. I watch it go, feeling lightheaded and lost. “I did,” he says.

And I suddenly remember. Sitting on the concrete stoop of the winery, soaked with wine and shivering, I waited for Meadow.

But when a car arrived, it was my father who stepped out of it. He gathered me up and carried me back to his truck and covered me with a blanket. “I’m so sorry, Maya,” he said in the dark.

Now, in the kitchen of the home he’s left me, I watch the bourbon glug down the sink. “I miss you,” I cry. “I’m so sorry.”

And that’s all there is to say. I bend over and let myself grieve him, grieve the time I lost not speaking to him. I let go of all the things he should have been, and allow myself to love the things he was. As he loved me, as they’ve all loved me, my beautiful, beloved family, loved me when I was drunk or sober.

They still love me. And the knowledge blooms, full and whole: we are still a family.

My father couldn’t wreck what was built to last. Whatever form our family takes, it’s still a bulwark against the winds of the world. It’s still mine.

I pull my phone from my pocket and dial a number. When Rory picks up, I say, “I’ve had a little relapse, and I need to go to a meeting right now. Can you come get me?”

“Yes. Yes. I’ll be right there.”

Standing there, waiting for her, I think of my young self, waiting for someone to get me out of that apartment. Waiting to be rescued.

But what I see now is that I didn’t just wait. I tried to open a window and stood by the door and screamed whenever I heard someone in the hallway. I yelled until someone finally heard me and broke down the door and let me out. I couldn’t manage the door, but I could use my voice.

I can do this.

I press my hand over my belly. “I’m so sorry, baby. That won’t happen again, I promise.”

And I know it won’t.

I just know.





Chapter Forty


Norah


I wait for Meadow on a bench in the shade of a monster-size tree, my knee wiggling with my nervousness. I’m not exactly sure what I want to say.

When she comes out the back door, she’s wearing a plain skirt that doesn’t seem like her style and a pair of flip-flops, her hair pulled out of her face in a ponytail. She looks like she’s getting down to work and I feel bad. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything too important,” I say, standing.

She waves me back down. “Sit. I’m too tired to stand.” She flops on the bench and leans forward, her face in her hands for a long minute. “They released his body, did you hear?”

“No!” My heart squeezes, hard. “What did the autopsy say?”

“Inconclusive.” She sighs and sits up. “What can I do for you, Norah?”