The Noah Confessions (16 page)

• 3 •

My mother looked exactly the way I remembered her. But she was clearer to me and I saw some things I had forgotten. That mole on her right temple, for example, and the way her forehead wrinkled when she raised her eyebrows at me. Her eyes were greener than anything I could think of. I would say greener than the ocean, but the ocean isn't really green except in poems. They were like rare gems, her eyes, the kind you see in jewelry stores under the case where it's too expensive to even ask. I couldn't stop staring into them.

She was sitting on the beach the way she used to do when she took me to watch the surfers. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and she was hugging her knees into her chest. Her hair was perfectly still and I remember thinking, there's always a breeze at the ocean, shouldn't her hair be blowing?

And if her hair isn't blowing, does that mean I'm dead?

And if I'm seeing her, that should certainly mean I'm dead.

But I wasn't afraid of being dead. I was just so happy to see her.

Then I saw myself. I was sitting next to her and I was wearing my wet suit and I wasn't the least bit wet. My hair was dry and it wasn't blowing either.

Then I was in my body, sitting next to her, but somehow still watching it from above. I was in both places at once.

She watched me for a moment.

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said. “Look around.”

I looked around. The beach was empty except for us. There was no Mick and there were no surfers in the water or strollers on the sand. No birds, even. But there were waves. They were falling softly on the shore, making very little noise, and I felt free and devoid of pain. I felt calm, too, like the whole big ordeal of being me was over.

And yet I was me. I was more me than I had ever been.

She said, “What was that about, Lynnie?”

“What do you mean?”

She gestured to the ocean.

“I wanted to surf. I wanted to show Mick.” She waited for more and I tucked my head and said, “I wanted to be brave.”

“Being brave isn't about being willing to die.”

“I wasn't willing to die.” I put my hands to my face and I could feel my skin but it felt different. “Am I dead?”

“Well, actually, there's no such thing. But that's not what we want to spend our time talking about, is it?”

I shook my head.

“I think you have a few questions for me,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Go ahead.”

I wanted to go ahead but I didn't know how.

She said, “Why don't I start?”

I nodded.

“You want to know how I hid my secret from you all that time. You want to know why. And you want to know how I ended up so content in my life after everything I had been through.”

“Yes.”

She laughed in that special way that she had. Her laugh sounded like music.

“Well, I could tell you but it wouldn't mean much. That is, I'm not the person to tell you.”

“Who is?”

“I think you know.”

“Daddy?”

“You have to let him in, Lynnie. You have to let him finish the job. Don't shut him out.”

“But he's so hard to talk to.”

“You make it hard.”

“I do? How?”

“By hanging on to me. By making me the perfect one. I wasn't perfect.”

“You seemed perfect.”

“That's your memory. You've forgotten about all the times I sent you to your room for a time-out. Or about how I forgot to pick you up from school that day? You had to wait an hour in the principal's office and you didn't speak to me for a week. Then there was the time I forced you to eat your peas. And the countless times I yelled at you for making a mess. Your father defended you back then, don't you remember? She's just a kid, Cat, he said. Kids make a mess.”

I tried hard to remember but I couldn't.

“I made you brush your hair when you didn't want to and I put dresses on you for fancy events and I once let you sleep in your bed after you had wet it just because I was too tired to deal with it.”

I sucked in a breath. “You didn't do that.”

She laughed. “No, I didn't. But I wanted to. I did a lot of things because I felt obligated and there were nights and weekends when I resented you because I wanted to go out somewhere and dance until the sun came up. The point is, I was human. And you've stopped letting me be that.”

I opened my mouth to argue but nothing came out.

She said, “Meanwhile, your father has committed the sin of staying alive. Which means that he's continued to be human. And you can't forgive him for that. You can't even forgive yourself for the same thing.”

“Yeah, well, I know I'm not perfect. I know I'm not even good.”

She waved a dismissive hand at me. “Don't let that become your calling card. ‘Not as good as my mother.' That's your whole thing now. It's boring.”

I felt tears welling up and I suspected I wasn't dead, because surely there weren't tears after death. There weren't these feelings of sadness and regret in…I don't know, heaven, or wherever it is that you go. In this case, the beach in Santa Monica with nobody on it but us.

The tears came and then I was hyperventilating the way a three-year-old does and my words came out in choked sobs.

“Why did I have to find out about all that stuff? And why can't I let you be the way I remember?”

She said, “Because it's not the truth, Lynnie. And the truth is everything.”

“Who were you?” I asked, overcoming my sobs. “You had this whole secret life.”

“Not a secret life. A private life. Do you know the difference?”

I shook my head.

“Do you want to know?”

“I think so.”

She looked at the ground and then at the sky as if she were waiting for guidance. I had a terrible feeling that she was going to disappear.

She said, “A secret life is what my father had. He couldn't exist in the world as he was. So he had to create something that no one knew about. It was a failure of nerve and a failure of confidence. It wasn't about private thoughts that he kept to himself. He started out with those but they became so powerful to him, he couldn't resist. He had to live in that power because his reality was so lacking. He couldn't speak his truth. He lived for the externals. He lived for his image. He only wanted to create an acceptable presence so he could go on indulging in his dark secrets. That's not the solution. Whatever is darkest in you needs to be dragged out into the light. Not ignored or denied. Acknowledged and announced. Then you can stop suffering. You weren't born to suffer.”

“What was I born to do?”

She smiled. “Be yourself.”

“I don't know how to do that.”

“You started doing it when you met Mick and later when you heard the rest of my story. Your instinct toward honesty and courage was correct. But you got carried away. You wanted to be something you weren't. You wanted to know something before you had learned it. That's not the way.”

“You saw Mick?” I asked.

“I see everything.”

“Do you like him?”

She reached out for my hand and I could feel her skin, cool and smooth.

“I like him very much. I like the way he looks at you. He sees you. The real you.”

“How can he see the real me when I don't?”

She laughed again. “Sometimes, most times, it takes someone outside of yourself to help you see who you are. They reflect it back to you. A good friend is like a mirror. They show you yourself. And you do the same for them.”

“But who do you see?”

“I see my little girl. Bright and funny and furious and determined. But there are other things in you that I can't see.

“Because they are private.”

She said, “Privacy is the world of things you know about yourself and don't need to share. It's your relationship with yourself. The way you cry at sad movies and sing in front of the mirror. The way you believe you'll be a movie star or win a Nobel Prize. Whatever it is. Those dreams you're entitled to. The difference is that you're not ashamed. Your private thoughts empower you. Secrets are something else. It's the part of yourself that you disown. Even to yourself. Then a strange kind of chemistry occurs and you start to love the secret and you think the secret is keeping you alive. I hope you'll never do that. I hope you'll want to take yourself and your private dreams and choose to be part of the dance.”

I thought about that and I looked around the empty beach and I looked down at my wet suit, which was not wet or even sandy, and I was sure that I was dead.

“I don't think I'm going to get the chance to do anything again.”

“Oh, yes, you will. If you want to.”

“So death is a choice?” I asked, feeling angry out of nowhere.

“No, I didn't choose it. Not in a way you can understand. I had an appointment to keep. I was shown a scenario. A few scenarios. The ones where I stayed alive weren't as good as the one where I left.”

“You're really going to have to explain that.”

“I can't, Lynnie. One day you'll understand, but not soon.”

She was still holding my hand and I could feel her skin and I had no idea where I was or what was going to happen next.

“I don't know what to do,” I said.

“You'll know when it's time to know.”

I suddenly felt restless and jittery. All of my senses came back to me, and the sand was scratchy. The wind was whipping up and my hair was blowing around even though my mother's stayed perfectly still.

“I don't feel so good,” I said.

My mother nodded. “I know.”

“Everything hurts.”

“It hurts because you feel it. Because you're alive. Make the most of it.”

“Wait, don't leave.”

I could feel my body and it felt heavy. Everything was cold. I had a headache. Something itched and there were sounds I couldn't identify springing up around me.

She stood up, turned, and started walking down the beach. I tried to stand up but I couldn't. My limbs felt as if they were filled with wet sand and all my nerve endings were exposed. The pain was rushing in like the white water, coming toward me at eye level, and there was no escape. I tried to say something. My voice crackled and popped like a voice on the end of a cell phone that was losing its connection. The sky suddenly got very low and the sun was hot and everything ached.

“She's waking up,” I heard someone say. “We've got her back.”

I opened my eyes and I wasn't on the beach at all. I was in some kind of room with machinery all around me. People were dressed in green and someone was holding a mask over my face and I wanted to stand up and scream. But everything hurt and the light from somewhere stung my eyes.

I saw my father bending over me. He was wearing a shirt and tie but the shirt was soaked with sweat and his face was all wrenched with worry and there were tears.

He leaned over me and grabbed my hand.

I felt it.

It was sweaty and warm, not like my mother's hand at all.

“Lynnie,” he said. “Lynnie, come back.”

I'm back, I heard myself saying. But I wasn't talking because the mask was over my mouth.

I stared into his eyes until I really saw him. He was my father. I looked like him. I had always looked like him. And I wanted to get to know him.

I squeezed his hand and he smiled and laid his head against my chest.

I closed my eyes and trusted I would know what to say when the time came.

And I knew the time was coming so I slept.

SIXTEEN
and I've Stopped Counting

• 1 •

So much for that nice moment.

When I woke up in the hospital my father was angry.

He started yelling around the time I noticed that I was hooked up to machines and there was a bag dripping some kind of disgusting gunk into my arm.

“What's this?” I asked.

“What's what?” he responded, jerking awake in his chair. He had been dozing off, his head rolling to the side.

“This thing in my arm?”

“It's an IV. It's been keeping you alive. Something you seemed to have lost interest in yourself.”

“Okay, wow. Happy to see you, too.”

“Did you really think I wasn't going to have something to say about this?”

“I thought you might wait until I was out of the hospital gown.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you might not make it out of the hospital gown.”

A nurse came in just as our voices were rising.

“Oh, good,” she said with fake cheerfulness. “Miss Lynne is finally making sense.”

“When wasn't I making sense?”

“For the last two days,” my father informed me.

“I've been here two days?”

“Two and a half,” the nurse said gleefully. “Now, let's look at those stats.”

She took my blood pressure and stuck a thermometer in my ear and said everything was fine.

“This might be your first day of solid food,” she said, as if I were about to get a glimpse of my first porn video. She winked at me and went out.

“What wasn't I making sense about?” I asked my father, who was standing now, breathing hard through his nose and looking at me the way he did when I hid a grade from him or lied about something.

“You were babbling, Lynne. You had a head injury. You weren't making sense and, frankly, nobody was sure if you ever would.”

I took a breath and looked at my lap, at the oatmeal-colored blanket with fur balls on it. I wondered about all the other sick people who'd gotten covered up by it and it grossed me out. The whole hospital thing was grossing me out, and it wasn't helping that my dad was yelling and glaring.

“Was I talking about Mom?” I asked.

He raised his chin. “As a matter of fact you were.”

I didn't feel it was the time to say, That's because I saw her. So I just kept quiet.

I remembered it, though. All of it. And that was why the hospital room wasn't scaring me so much. I knew I wasn't going to die. It surprised me that my father ever thought I was going to. I tried to see it from his point of view but, as usual, failed.

I looked at my nightstand and saw some balloons from Zoe and Talia. There was a card with a wave on it. I opened it and it said, “Lizard, the big swell, by yourself? You're an ass. Get well. Jen.”

I had a sudden recollection and looked around the room.

“Where's Mick?”

My father moved toward the bed, his hands on his hips.

“Who?”

“Mick. The guy I was with.”

He shook his head and for the first time I was a little scared. Had I imagined Mick, too? Or had he died trying to save me? Or had he just deserted me on the beach and left me to my demise?

So much for my first date.

“Mick,” my father repeated. “He introduced himself as Michael.”

I smiled. “He was trying to impress you.”

“He didn't. You can imagine how he didn't.”

“What? Why are you mad at him?”

“I don't know him, Lynne. I'd never seen him before. I didn't know anything until the cops called me, and then I was standing on the beach while the paramedics were pumping water out of your lungs and there was some kid with long hair and an army jacket standing nearby, pacing and saying he knew you, and imagine how I felt. I knew less than anybody on that beach about what was going on.”

Try to picture a man who is always in control of himself, a lawyer, no less, used to making arguments in front of a bunch of strangers where somebody's life is on the line…picture that guy waving his hands around and yelling at a teenager hooked up to an IV in a hospital bed under a ratty blanket.

And then picture yourself with a terrible headache and a lingering vision of your dead mother and your five-minute boyfriend and your grandfather the murderer and you might get a mild notion of how I felt.

Try not to get yourself into this predicament.

But I was in it and I didn't know what to do. I wanted my father to calm down. I wanted to see my mother again. I wanted to tell someone who would understand. I wanted to see Mick again but now I wasn't sure I ever would.

“Were you mean to him?” I asked.

“To who?”

“Mick?”

“I wasn't mean to him. I just sent him home.”

“That was mean.”

“I don't know him, Lynnie. I don't know how you know him. I don't know what you're doing half the time. I don't know who you are anymore.”

“Isn't that why you gave me the letter? To tell me who I am?”

This stopped him cold. I knew it wasn't fair, but I was tired of him yelling.

I could see in his eyes a split second of relief that I had that kind of recall. If I could remember the letter then I wasn't so far gone.

He stared at me and for the first time I saw that his eyes were watery and I felt shocked at myself and at him.

“So you do remember,” he said.

“Yes, I remember. I'm not brain damaged.”

“Is that why you pulled this stunt? Because of the letter?”

“I don't know. I haven't had time to process it.”

“And what about the boy? How does he fit in?”

“He's nice. We had a juice date. He lives in Westwood.”

“How did you meet him?”

“In the cemetery, talking to Mom. He was drawing. He's an artist.”

“It would have been nice if you had told me.”

“It would have been nice if you were the kind of person I could tell.”

He wiped at his eyes and I felt even worse than before.

“No, I take that back,” I said.

This caught him off guard. He'd never known me to take anything back. I'd never known myself to, either.

“I didn't go down there to hurt you. I went to show off for Mick. And for myself. I wanted to be brave.”

“Brave?” he said as if the word shocked him.

“Yes, like her.”

“But you don't need to be brave, Lynnie. She was brave so you wouldn't have to be.”

“What does that mean?”

“She fought through all that so you could have a good life. So you wouldn't have to worry. This is her history, not yours.”

“How does that work? Her history stops with me?”

“Of course it doesn't. She saw her own story ending and she wanted to start another one. God, why are we even talking about this? You nearly died.”

“Because I nearly died. That's why.”

I considered, for a second, telling him about seeing Mom on the beach. But I knew it wouldn't help. I knew it was destined to be my private life. And I remembered the difference. A private life is just for you. A secret life involves others.

My father said, “People have things to overcome. People make sacrifices for each other. For the future. For the sake of their character. That's what I wanted you to get from it all. People do what's necessary.”

I couldn't listen anymore. I was laughing. Now he really was looking at me as if I had lost my grip on reality. But I wasn't the one yelling at an intensive care patient, now was I?

“What?” he demanded.

“This all started with a car. I wish I'd never mentioned it. And the funny thing is, I don't even have my license yet.”

He looked at me for a long time. “You don't?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“You have to have a car to get a license.”

“I could have taken you.”

“You didn't. Is this really the time, Dad?”

This actually made him smile. He sat down on the bed. He shook his head, smiling at nothing, and then he put his arms around me and swayed me back and forth with my IV bag swinging and the sudden motion causing a machine to start bleeping and I could feel him crying against my shoulder even though he wasn't making any noise.

I stopped myself from crying, too. Honestly, one wrecked person was enough for the moment.