Pretend She's Here(24)

But this wasn’t about other people. It wasn’t even all about me. Marcela was talking about my whole family.

“Breaking news in the Emily Lonergan case. After twenty-two days of silence, Emily made contact. Her email hasn’t yet been released, but a source close to the family says that Emily ran away once before and that, according to the email, she is safe and will return home when she is ready. A spokesman for the Black Hall Police Department confirms that Emily was once a runaway. More as this story develops.”

Mrs. Porter switched to a different news channel. I glanced at her. I wondered if she was the source close to the family. In this news clip, she was standing right on our front porch, hugging Patrick, an expression of concern on her face. She glanced at the camera, as if surprised to see it there.

“Two families, united by loss,” this other reporter—a TV-perfect-looking man I didn’t recognize—said in a fake TV-modulated voice. “Virginia Porter, mother of Emily’s best friend Elizabeth—a tragic victim of childhood cancer—is here in idyllic coastal Black Hall to comfort another family in distress. Emily Lonergan, missing for three weeks, sent this email to her family.”

The network showed a screenshot of what I had written. I wanted to die. Everyone in the world could read it: my mother drinking again, me not feeling like part of my family. I twisted my head away, but then I had to look back at the screen.

There was Patrick. I always teased him and said, You’re the best brother in the world except for my other brothers. Patrick had the classic Lonergan black Irish coloring I’d always wanted—for real, not fake and dyed like the way I was now. His blue eyes blazed. His mouth was set in a hard line. Was he mad, sad, confused? I tried to read his face. Then he bowed his head, and I saw his shoulders shaking. He was crying—my big brother. On TV. Mrs. Porter embraced him.

The reporter continued, speaking in a grave voice. “Alcoholism is a tragic illness that all too often plagues not only the drinker but entire families. Tune in at eleven for our special report. ‘Problem Drinking: Destroyer of Families.’”

“He likes the word ‘tragic,’” Mrs. Porter said, sitting beside me. “He said it twice.”

“It is tragic for my family,” I said. “Because of what you made me do.”

“Well, the death of a daughter is a true tragedy. Your parents have the hope that their child will return. Even though you won’t, because you’re ours now.” She put her arm around me, just as she had around Patrick, and the physical sensation made me want to throw up. “Lizzie, you’ve come home.”

She muted the sound and handed me the remote. I clicked around, searching for more views of everyone I loved. There was Anne at Trinity College, bundled up in the red wool cape she’d sewn herself. Even though the black satin lining didn’t show on TV, I knew it was there because I had helped her pin the pattern to the fabric, kneeling on the floor of our living room.

The next channel showed Tommy, Mick, and Iggy. It must have been an older clip, before my email, because they were shoulder-to-shoulder, taller than anyone else, searching the marsh where my mother and Mrs. Porter had been walking. There were other people, too, in horizontal lines like you see on newscasts where there is a missing person, when neighbors join the police to scour in fields and stretches of water for the dead body. My brothers had returned home from their faraway colleges to look for my corpse.

The shot that hurt most was one of Bea. She stood alone on the front steps of our church, staring into the distance. She looked desolate—in the close-up I could see circles under her eyes, her skin so pale you couldn’t even see her freckles. I remembered when once she’d told me about her boyfriend, James, how they had figured out how to get into the church steeple, how they went up there to look all the way down the Connecticut River and across Long Island Sound to Orient Point, and to kiss.

But I could tell she wasn’t at church for the view or to meet James. Standing right there, oblivious to the camera, her lips were moving. Was she talking to me, the way I talked to Lizzie, or was she praying? Was she angry at me for leaving? All three. I was sure of it.

“My three colleens,” my father would say about Anne, Bea, and me. In Ireland, colleen was another word for “girl.” I looked at Bea, my colleen, at her bright azure eyes and long, straight brown hair, at the thick Aran Isles sweater I realized—with a tiny, surprising burst of outrage—she had taken from my closet. We were always borrowing each other’s things, getting mad at each other for stealing clothes, especially sweaters. This one had been knit for me by Anne. She’d given it to me for my last birthday.

“Brat,” I would have said to Bea, if I were there.

The last clip showed my parents walking on the beach. My dad’s hands were jammed into his pockets. My mother’s arms were tight across her chest, as if holding herself together. The screen caption said, A family torn apart by alcohol.

They weren’t speaking. They were fighting. They usually walked the beach holding hands, but now there was ten feet of space between them. I was sure my father felt betrayed because he believed what I had written: that Mom had relapsed and was drinking again.

“You’re a drunk!” he had shouted at her once, the worst thing I’d ever heard. My gentle father, my always-loving mother. But she’d missed seeing the dress rehearsal of my play that afternoon. It was called Ghost Girl, and not only had I written it, I had played Ada, the spirit girl. I had felt so nervous and thrilled about kissing Dan—well, his character, Timothy—that I didn’t even notice my mother wasn’t in the audience.