What Happens to Goodbye(26)

“It’s just a knife cut,” I said for about the tenth time. I wasn’t sure if this reassurance was for me or her. “He gets them all the time. It’s part of the job.”
“I can’t believe your dad is a chef!” she said, easing into the turn lane. “That is so exciting. I hear Luna Blu is amazing.”
“You’ve never been there?”
She shook her head. “We don’t eat out much.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Well, I’ll have to take you sometime. To thank you for the ride.”
“Really?” She seemed so surprised I had a twinge of pity, although I wasn’t sure why. “God, that would be so great. But you totally don’t have to. I’m just happy I coud help out.”
As we headed up the road to the emergency room entrance, I saw a couple of doctors pass by, both in scrubs. Off to the left, a man in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask was sitting in the sunshine. None of this helped my nervousness, so I distracted myself by saying, “Yeah, but it must get kind of old, right? Being a student ambassador, and everyone always asking for something.”
Deb leaned farther over the steering wheel, peering at the parking options. She was so precise and responsible, in her perfect green headband, her neat car with a memo pad stuck to the dash, a pen clipped to its side. She seemed older than she was, older than she should be. “Not really,” she said, turning into a nearby lot.
“No? ”
She shook her head. “You’re actually the first person who’s asked me for anything.”
“I am?” I didn’t mean to sound so surprised, and could tell immediately by her reaction—a slight flush, a nervous swallow—that it didn’t do much for her confidence. Quickly, I added, “I mean, I’m glad. Makes me memorable, I guess.”
Deb cut the engine, then turned to look at me. Her expression was clearly grateful, happy. What must it be like to be so genuine, so fragile, your entire world of thoughts so easy to read on your face? I couldn’t even imagine. “Well, that’s nice to hear! I hadn’t even thought about it that way!”
There was a sudden blast of siren from behind us, and an ambulance came racing up to the emergency room entrance. He’s fine, I told myself, but even so my heart jumped.
“Come on,” Deb said, pushing open her door and reaching into the backseat for her purse. “You’ll feel better once you see him.”
As we walked across the lot, she reached into her bag, taking out a pack of gum and offering it to me. I shook my head, and she put it back, not taking a piece herself. I wondered if she even chewed gum, or just carried it as a courtesy. I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
Earlier, when we’d stopped by my house, it was no surprise that she’d been polite and complimentary. “What a lovely place,” she said, standing in our sparsely furnished living room. “That quilt is gorgeous.”
I looked over at the sofa. Tossed over one arm was one of my mom’s quilts, made way back when she’d first taken up the hobby. The truth was, she was really good at it, and could do all kinds of intricate patterns. At our old house, we’d had tons of them, both as décor and to use when it was chilly. When we left I’d boxed most of them up with the rest of our stuff in storage, only to have my mom give me a new one as I stood in Peter’s driveway saying goodbye.
“I’ve been working on it nonstop,” she said as she pressed it into my hands. Her eyes were red: she’d been crying all morning.
I took it, looking down at the neatly stitched squares. The fabric was pink and yellow and blue and varied: denim, corduroy, cotton. “This is really nice.”
“It’s baby clothes,” she told me. “So you have something to remember me by.”
I’d taken it, and thanked her. Then I’d put it in a box in the U-Haul, where it had basically stayed until I brought some stuff back to her house during one summ ofeak and left it in my closet. I knew I should have kept it, but like so much else with my mom it just felt so loaded. Like under it, I’d suffocate.

“Thanks,” I’d said to Deb, back at the house. “We just moved in, so things are still kind of all over the place.”
“I’d love to live here,” she said. “This is such a great neighborhood.”
“Is it?” I asked, digging around in the file box for my dad’s insurance card.
“Oh, sure. It’s in the historical district.” She walked over to the doorway, examining the molding. “My mom and I looked at a house for sale on this street a couple of weeks ago.”
“Really? Are you thinking about moving?”
“Oh, no,” she said. She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “We just . . . Sometimes for fun, on the weekends, we go to open houses and pretend we’re buying. We decide where we’d put everything, and what we’d do to the yard. . . .” She trailed off, looking embarrassed. “I know it sounds silly.”
“Not really.” I found the card inside a book of stamps, and slid it into my pocket. “I do stuff like that, too, sometimes.”
“You do? Like what?”
Now I was stuck. I swallowed, then said, “You know. Like, when I start a new school I always kind of change myself a little bit. Pretend I’m someone different than I was in the last place.”
She just looked at me, and I wondered what on earth it was about her that made me be so honest. Like she was sick with truth, and really contagious. “Really,” she said finally. “I bet that’s hard, though.”