What You Left Behind (7 page)

In the morning, I'm actually feeling all right—which is crazy, considering how dead tired I am.

I spent a long time last night searching for a journal with a
Ryden
in the back. It was a fail, obviously. If Meg had left another journal here, I would have noticed it before now. Then I left Alan a voice mail asking if he's found any journals at his place and fell asleep reading more of Meg's red journal, the
Mabel
one, looking for a clue.

I was woken up by Hope an hour or two later. Same old story. But then something sort of miraculous happened. She was crying and crying, her sore little gums bared, two small white teeth only just starting to fight their way to the surface, her hands pulled into fists, making way more noise than a thing the size of a shoe box should be able to, and somehow I knew it was hunger crying, not teething crying, even though she had eaten right before I put her down. I
knew
it. So I made her some formula, pulled her into my lap, and she latched onto the bottle right away, her sobs subsiding almost instantaneously. It was like when my mom feeds her. Easy. Peaceful. Kind of awesome.

She went right back to sleep when her bottle was finished. It was the first time I've ever gotten her to do that on my own.

Since I was all amped up after that, I used the time to continue the Michael search.

Michael
Taylor
Boston
1998 Ryden Brooks
: 160,000 results and clear from the first page that they were all scraps of completely unrelated nothingness. Sometimes the Internet can be ostentatiously useless.

So I switched missions and Googled
UCLA
day
care
. Way more productive. Turns out they have a campus day care that gives highly discounted rates to children of UCLA students if they meet the financial aid requirements. And hello, I'm poor as fuck.

It's all going to work out. Today is the day that my life finally starts to get back on track.

I meet Mom in the kitchen. She looks up from her coffee and her book in surprise. (Mom reads a
lot
of paranormal trilogies. You'd think she was one of the girls at my school or something.) Then she takes in my practice gear and Hope all ready to go in her car seat, and her eyes narrow. “What are you doing?”

“Going to soccer practice.”

She blinks a few times, slowly, and then says, “You're bringing the baby?”

“No. Alan's gonna watch her.”

“You paying him?”

“No.”

“Ryden.”

“Mom.”

She sighs and puts down her coffee. “We need to talk, bud.” She pulls out the chair next to her.

I glance at the clock. “I can't right now. I have to be at practice in an hour, and I still have to show Alan how to heat up bottles and shit.”

“I really don't care. Sit down.”

I don't have time for this. But I sit, because I know that tone of voice, and I know she's not going to let me go until I listen to what she has to say. “Fine. Let's get this over with.”

“Enough with the attitude, okay?” she says. “I'm on your side.”

“I know,” I mumble.

“Good. Now, explain this whole soccer thing to me. How on earth is that going to work?”

“The same way it always does.”

Mom gives me a look. “What did I say about the attitude?”

“I'm not trying to give you an attitude. I'm serious—soccer works the way it always does. I go to practice; I go to games; I come home. What's to understand?”

“What's to
understand
is that you have a daughter now, and a job. And school. We talked about this. You have obligations, Ryden. Important ones. Soccer's going to have to go.”

I shake my head. “Soccer's important. I can't play in college if I don't play this season.”

Mom stares at me, her eyes bugging out of her head, as if I told her I've decided to become a woman or something.

“What?” I ask.

“Buddy,” she says softer, putting her hand on mine, “you can't go to UCLA. I thought you understood that.”

I yank my hand back. “The hell I can't. That's been the plan for almost two years! The coach wants me. When he called a couple of weeks ago, he said that they just need to see me play live, and then they're going to make their official offer.”

“Things are different now.”

I push my chair back and get to my feet. “Do you honestly think I don't know that?”

“I don't know what you think, Ryden! You don't talk to me like you used to. And you
clearly
haven't been working to figure out the day care situation—”

“Not true! I told you, Alan is going to watch her.”

“Yeah, during
soccer
practice
. I'm not talking about soccer practice. I'm talking about when you go back to school. Unless Alan graduated early, he'll be going back to school in two weeks too. Which puts us no closer to a solution. This isn't going to magically work itself out. This is real life, Ryden. You need to start acting like it.”

Now it's my turn to stare at her. “I can't
believe
you just said that. I've done
everything
I'm supposed to do. I'm trying everything I can think of to do right by Hope. I got a job. I haven't seen any of my friends all summer, and when I have, it's like they're freaked out they'll catch the fucked-up-life disease from me. Meg is
gone
. She's gone, Mom, and she's never coming back, and it's all my fault.”

With no warning, all the bullshit inside me forces its way out in violent, hyperventilating gasps, and I'm suddenly reaching for my mom as she gets up from her chair, rubbing my back like she did when I was a little kid.

Goddammit
. Today was supposed to be a good day.

“It's okay, buddy,” Mom whispers. “Let it out.”

I don't know how long we stand there like that, but eventually the shaking subsides and my lungs start working again. I pull away, slowly.

“Sit,” Mom says.

I do.

“Talk to me,” she says. “
Please
.”

And I do.

It's not like any of it is really news to her—she obviously knows all the major plot points of the story. But I've never told her the little things about Meg, the things I loved most about her, like how she used to concentrate really hard on what the teacher was saying in class, as if she was eager to soak up as much knowledge as she possibly could. Or how she used to talk me into letting her braid my hair when we were alone and how she used to laugh at how ridiculous I looked when she was done. Or how she was the only person I'd ever seen eat ice cream (okay, sugar-free, organic frozen yogurt—Meg wouldn't have eaten real ice cream) out of an ice-cream cone with a spoon.

I've never told her how Meg was always pushing me to track down Michael, how she thought there was some big question mark in my head where my dad's face should be.

I've never told her that sometimes when I look at Hope's face, really look at her, I feel sick to my stomach because she looks so much like Meg that it's like being haunted by a ghost.

I've never told my mom how much I hate myself for how everything turned out, how much I regret having sex with Meg without a condom, knowing she had cancer and that things would be bad if she got pregnant, and how I should have pushed harder for her to have an abortion. Even if it meant Meg hated me forever, I should have done whatever it took to make her think of
herself
for once, to stop her from sacrificing herself like this.

But I tell her now.

“It wasn't supposed to happen this way, Mom. Everything was supposed to be fine. Meg promised me! She was so
sure
she was going to make it.”

Before she got pregnant and after, during chemo and post-chemo, right up until the end, Meg never once believed she was going to die. And if I'm being honest, despite all our fighting about her decision to stop her treatment, deep down she had me convinced of it too. I really did believe she would make it through…right up until that horrible day late in the sixth month of her pregnancy when I looked at her face and realized pieces of her were already gone.

All Mom says is, “It's okay, Ryden. It's all going to be okay.” Even though I know she's wrong—it won't all be okay—it's the best thing she can say to me. Because she's not trying to contradict me or tell me it isn't my fault or any of that crap. She's letting my feelings stay my feelings. And I love her for it.

Mom deserves to know I'm not completely in denial and that I actually do think about our situation. “I called Grandma and Grandpa.”

She nods. “They told me.”

“They said they would send a hundred dollars.”

“That's nice.”

There are a few moments of quiet. Oh, fuck it. Might as well tell her everything.

“And I went to Meg's house to ask her parents to help pay for day care,” I say in a rush.

Mom's eyebrows shoot up. “You did? When?”

“Yesterday.”

She stares at me, clearly waiting for me to elaborate.

“They didn't come to the door. They were home though. They saw me. I know that for sure.”

Mom lets out her breath all at once. “I'm sorry.”

“I don't understand it. I know they hate me and blame me and all that, and I know they probably blame Hope too, and that's why they're acting like this, but those people have more money than God. Why wouldn't they throw us a few grand to make sure their own flesh and blood is being properly cared for?”

“They're complicated people, Ryden,” Mom says.

“Yeah. No joke.”

Complicated, yes. Crazy, yes. But if they truly loved Meg—and I believe they did; they were always doing whatever they could to help her get better—why wouldn't they want to see Hope? I don't care if she reminds them so much of her that it hurts. I don't care that it's easier not to deal with any of it.

I could have put Hope up for adoption and moved the fuck on. But I didn't. I couldn't just erase Hope and Meg from my life. I made the hard choice, because it was the right one. They should have to too. Isn't that what parents are
supposed
to do?

Or is that just another thing I'm wrong about?

Mom walks over to the sink and rinses out her coffee cup. I glance at the clock. It's already nine. Practice is starting. I have to be there.

But Mom's not ready to let me go yet.

“Ryden?” she says.

“Yeah?”

“What changed?”

Could
you
be
a
little
more
vague, Mom?
“What do you mean?”

“You said Meg wanted you to try to find Michael, right? We both know you would have done anything for that girl. But you didn't ask me about him then, not even when Meg asked you to. So why now? What's changed?”

I really don't want to talk about this. Plus, I don't know how to explain it. “I don't know.” I pick up Hope's car seat. “I'm sorry. I have to go.”

“Please, Ry. I want to know.” Her eyes are almost begging.
Fuck
.

I put the car seat back down and pull the rubber band out of my hair and redo my ponytail just to have something to do with my hands. “Honestly, Mom, I'm totally sucking at this whole parenthood thing. I have no clue what I'm doing. Hope even seems to know that. So I thought…maybe…if I met my own father, things would start to click into place. Like, I don't know, on some basic level. What fathers act like when they're in the same room as someone they gave their DNA to. Or what it feels like to look at your father's face. Stuff like that. I thought if I had those experiences, things might start to make more sense for me and Hope.”

Mom stares at me as if I'm speaking Korean. Finally she unclamps her jaw. “First of all, you're not sucking at
all
. You're doing amazingly well, actually.”