While I'm Falling (26 page)

“You sure you don’t want to keep it?” the cashier asked. He touched the cover of the chemistry book. “You look a little sad to see it go.”

I wouldn’t have said I was sad. But I understood what I was doing. At that moment, I was no longer thinking about quitting or even deciding to quit; I was actually quitting. And it was hard to look at that brick of a book and not think of all the long days and nights I had spent with it, trying harder than I’d ever tried at anything in my life. And now all that work, all that trying and worrying, was for nothing. I had failed.

The Union was decked out for the holidays, too. There were blinking lights and large banners wishing all of us a happy Christmas, Kwanzaa, and Hanukkah. I used the change from the bookstore to buy coffee and some pistachio nuts. I found an empty armchair that faced a window big enough for me to see much of the sky, the first clouds of the probable snow hovering on the western horizon. I looked at my watch. I’d told Marley I would be gone for several hours, and I hadn’t been gone for forty-five minutes. I crossed my legs. I uncrossed them. I crossed them again. I looked out at the sky. Whenever my father had taken his rare breaks from work, for holidays and family vacations, he often moved this way, jittery and anxious, unsure what to do with himself.

But I just needed to get used to it. For the rest of the afternoon, I read.
Middlemarch
was as thick as my chemistry book, but I turned the thin pages easily. I’d watched the movie of it with my mother and Elise two summers ago, right before Elise’s wedding. We’d all been horrified when Dorothea married the old, unfeeling man, and we felt bad for her once she realized what a mistake she’d made. At the next commercial, Elise clicked her tongue. “No divorce back then. She’s screwed. This is sad.” But my mother had already read the book, and she told Elise to just wait. Sure enough, almost as soon as the movie came back on, good luck—and that’s all it was, really—the creepy old husband died.

When the credits rolled, Elise clapped. “So she gets to be happy at the end. Aww. Nice.” She clasped her hands beside her head. I was still thinking of the last line.
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.
There was more, but I’d already forgotten it.

My mother got up from the couch to stretch. “I don’t know if I’d say she’s happy.” She’d looked at the stairs, her brow furrowed. My father had already gone to bed. “You should read the book,” she said.

And so I did, for almost that entire, cold afternoon, sitting there in the Union. Even from the start, there was so much the movie had skipped over.
Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia’s mind toward her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?
I underlined sentences, dog-eared pages.
Here is a mine of truth, which, however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal.
When I looked up, the setting sun was bright in my eyes. The sky was clear, with just a few wispy clouds edged in orange and red. It hadn’t snowed yet, and maybe it wouldn’t.

But Inez was right. I could see that as soon as I turned the last corner of my walk home. Even on dead grass and soggy ground, the luminarias were beautiful, perhaps because there were so many, all of them flickering in swirling patterns and lining the sidewalks around the dorm. A few people were out walking around them, quiet; and above me, in hundreds of windows, faces pressed against dark glass, so many hands cupped around eyes, looking down.

The fire alarm went off before dawn. My mother groped her way to my bed and grabbed my arm in the darkness.

I had to repeat all this twice. The alarm was so loud that even Bowzer could hear it; he was at her feet, trembling, and he looked as if he were trying to burrow into her shins, to work a hole right through her leggings and skin.

I held him back as she pulled on her boots, and she held him as I put on mine. In less than a minute, we were ready to go, with Bowzer buttoned under my mother’s coat. Before I opened the door, she looped her arm around mine.

“I love you,” she said. She looked at the floor. She wasn’t kidding around. “I want you to know that. Okay? I think you’re pretty great.”

“Mom.” I leaned toward her. “I love you, too. But really. It’s just an alarm.”

Out in the hallway, which was not, in fact, full of smoke, my mother walked slowly, with her chin lowered to keep Bowzer’s head pushed down. All around us, doors were opening. Girls in pajamas stepped into the hallway swearing, their hands clapped over their ears.

“I need to go on ahead,” I yelled. The alarms were louder in the hallway. “You should go find Marley, and have her wait with you. She doesn’t have a car.”

Just as we passed Marley’s door, it opened. My mother turned back to me briefly. Both of her hands were occupied, so she sent me on with a nod of her head.

So it was Marley who was with her on the way down the stairs, and it was Marley who would tell me later how Bowzer popped his head out of my mother’s coat just as they were filing out the double doors. The security monitor, Marley said, was meaner than he’d needed to be. She didn’t know his name—it was the one with the pierced nose and the pretty girlfriend. My mother seemed to know him. He tried to take the dog. She wouldn’t let him. He told her she couldn’t leave, and that she had to come with him. And he kept calling her Mom.

Gordon Goodman rubbed his eyes, one elbow propped on his desk. His white T-shirt was on backward, the tag sticking up under his chin.

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He looked back at me, annoyed. We both knew he wasn’t chastising me. He was just talking to himself, trying to sort through the problem. I’d already told him about my mother getting kicked out of her apartment, having nowhere to go.

Unfortunately, accidentally, I’d also told Jimmy Liff. He was on the other side of the interior window, pretending to fill out paperwork behind the front desk. Or maybe he really was filling out paperwork—on me and my mother. He stood just on the other side of the window, his head lowered, the top of his skullcap almost touching the glass. When I noticed him there, he looked up and smiled. I knew he’d heard every word.

Gordon tugged on his beard. “You don’t have any relatives in the area?”

I shook my head.

“Any friends? Anyone she can stay with?”

“I think she’s embarrassed. And it’s hard, because of the dog.”

On the other side of the window, Jimmy pouted. It was over the top. It was like he was making fun of himself, for just how much of a jerk he could be. Gordon saw my face change and followed my gaze. He stood, opened the door, and told Jimmy that he could finish up whatever he was working on later. His voice was stern, and that was a little vindicating, but not much. I didn’t care what Jimmy Liff thought about anything, and I doubted my mother did either. But I hated that he looked so pleased, keeping his eyes on mine as he sauntered past the window one last time.

As soon as he was gone, I started begging. I told Gordon my mother would only need to stay a few more days, and that Bowzer wasn’t bothering anyone. No one had complained. And it was my mother who had organized the luminarias. She was the one who drove everyone to the store for the bags and candles. She was doing my job better than I was.

Gordon raised his eyebrows. For a moment, I thought I had him. Of course he would relent. My mother was too nice of a person to have to sleep in a van.

But he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “She can’t stay, not with the dog.” He frowned. He felt the tag under his chin, looked down, and tucked it back in his shirt. “Does she have anywhere to go tonight?”

“I don’t know.” I stood up slowly. My own head felt heavy on my shoulders. He was looking at his bookcase, at one of his glazed bowls.

“I’d like her to come back and talk to me. You think you can get her to do that? She’s not in any trouble, okay? I just want to help.”

“I’ll ask her,” I said. He was being polite. I kept moving to the door.

“Veronica!”

I turned around. He was on his feet.

“Are you going to talk to her today? Does she have a phone? Is there some way you can reach her?”

I nodded, though the answer to the last two questions was no.

She did call later that morning, from a pay phone outside a grocery store. But she didn’t want to go talk to Gordon. No, she said, she wasn’t scared of Jimmy. She hadn’t appreciated him cornering her like that, telling her where she had to go. But she didn’t care if he was around or not. She said she just felt bad about causing so much trouble for me. She sounded tired, but not particularly upset. “I’ll come get the rest of my things later,” she said. “I’ll be fine, honey. Really. I just don’t want to bother you for a while.”

But I pleaded. I insisted. I told her it wouldn’t take long, and that I would wait with Bowzer in the van. When none of that worked, I told her the real reason I needed her to come in was that I was about to get fired for keeping a dog in my room, and that I needed her to confirm my story, so my boss might give me another chance. I made my voice sufficiently righteous and whiny. It was for her own good, I told myself. Once Gordon met my mother, he could not possibly expect her to sleep in a van. She would charm him. He would understand that she didn’t deserve any of this, even if she wouldn’t get rid of the dog. He would bend the rules, and let her stay.

I was wrong. Twenty minutes after my mother walked into the dorm, she came back out to the van with a handwritten list of social service agencies and homeless shelters. Bowzer strained against my arm, trembling in his excitement over her return. As soon as she closed her door, I let him go, and he lunged, falling between her lap and the steering wheel.

“I though it was pretty nice of him.” She took off her hat and put it on the dashboard. “It’s not his problem. But you wouldn’t have known that, talking to him.” She took the list back from me and studied it. She didn’t look that bad, considering she hadn’t gotten a shower that morning and she’d spent most of the day in the van. She was wearing the scarf I’d given her. In the sunlight coming through the windows, it looked itchy, made with cheap yarn. And the red was too bright for her face.

“He gave me some career advice, too.” She looked up at me, smiling.

I waited, but she waved me off.

“What? What did he say?”

“Later. Maybe.” She kept looking at the list. “None of these places take dogs.”

“Mom. That doesn’t matter. You’re not going to a shelter.”

She started to say something, but when she saw my face, she stopped smiling, and all at once, she looked as if the skin of her face had suddenly grown heavy. She put her hand over her eyes and turned away.

“Mom. Let me call Elise.”

She shook her head. She still had her hand over her eyes, her elbow resting on the steering wheel. Bowzer sighed in her lap, content.

“Then let me call Dad. I won’t even mention you. I’ll say I need the money. I’ll make something up. I’ll—”

She put her hand on my knee. “Please stop talking,” she said. “Please? I just need you to be quiet for a moment. I have a little dignity left, and I’d like to keep it. I’ll think of something else if you just give me a minute. Okay? I’ll come up with something else.”

I gave her a minute. And then two. And then five. And then ten. She didn’t speak, and neither did I. I looked out the window, up at the sky, which was soft and gray this morning, though there was still no sign of snow. Tim. I could call Tim, and ask him to take the dog. My mother could stay with me. But I couldn’t call him. Just a few days after Third Floor Clyde did not seem like the best time to ask him to take care of my mother’s slightly incontinent dog. You couldn’t push someone away and then lean on them. And although my mother was quiet, no ideas yet, I knew that if she knew everything, she wouldn’t want me to ask him.

Also, I thought that if I waited long enough, she would give in. She would let me call Elise or lie to my father. She would realize there wasn’t another option.

But she didn’t give in. I don’t know how much time passed. It got cold in the van. She sat with one hand on Bowzer’s back and the other tapping the steering wheel. Her eyes squinted across the parking lot, though there wasn’t anything to see. We might have sat there all day, the two of us. As time passed, that seemed more and more likely. I wasn’t going to leave her there in the parking lot. And yet, despite her refusal to admit it, there really was nowhere for her—for them, at least—to go.

And then, there was.

Our salvation came in the unexpected form—and the very unusual sight—of Haylie Butterfield getting off a bus on the other side of the parking lot. It took me a moment to recognize her—not because of the dark hair, which I’d gotten used to—but because for the last five months, I’d only seen her transported in Jimmy’s car—she never rode the bus. She was also wearing running shoes. She had on the shiny red coat and a long black skirt, and from the ankles up, she looked as glossy and glamorous as ever; but from the ankles down—running shoes. They were pastel blue with white stripes.

“Is that…?” My mother looked out the windshield with narrowed eyes.

I nodded, watching Haylie make her way to the front doors of the dorm. Several other people had gotten off the bus with her, but she was already ahead of all of them. She moved quickly, with confident strides. She was almost up at the front doors when suddenly, as if she could feel my mother and me looking at her, she stopped and turned around. She put the flat of her hand above her eyes. And she started walking toward us.

I shook my head. I sat up straight. “She’d better not come over here,” I said. “This better not be about the car.”

“Now, honey,” my mother said. “You don’t know what she wants.” But she pressed the button that locked all the doors.

When Haylie was maybe twenty feet away, she veered toward the driver’s side of the van. I unlocked my door and got out. It was not my fault that my mother was having a hard time, at least not directly. But I wasn’t about to let Haylie bother her now.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She looked at me, lowered her eyes, and tried to step around me. I moved again.

“What? You want to whine to us about your car some more? It’s so sad that you have to ride the bus? Fine.” I pointed at myself. “Whine to me, Haylie. Leave her alone.”

She gave me a look as if I were the one tormenting her and not the other way around. Her nose was pink from the cold.

“I took the bus so I could come here,” she said, her gaze lowered again. “I just want to talk to her. Her, not you. Is that okay?”

I shook my head. The bus didn’t even go out to where they lived. I looked down at her tennis shoes.

“Just talk to me,” I said.

The van’s engine started up. We both turned as my mother’s window shimmied down. She rested her arm on the door, and Bowzer’s face appeared.

“What’s going on?” My mother frowned at the cold air coming into the van and rewrapped the scarf around her neck.

“I’m supposed to give you this.” Haylie reached into her pocket and pulled out an envelope. She tried to give it to my mother. When my mother didn’t take it, Haylie looked up at the sky, which was almost the exact color of her eyes. And it was hard not to look at her, even then, or maybe especially then, and not consider how unfairly beautiful she was. Haylie Butterfield would be beautiful no matter what she did to herself. Black hair. Purple hair. Too much makeup. A bolt though the nose. It wouldn’t matter. She couldn’t get away from it if she tried.

“Jimmy told me you were staying at the dorm,” she said. “What happened this morning. He told me. I called my mom, and she wants you to call her right away. She said you can stay with her. The dog, too.”

Haylie tried again to hand over the envelope, and this time, my mother took it.

“Her phone number is in there. And I wrote out directions to her place.” She pushed a dark strand of hair behind her ears. “She lives in an apartment by the Med Center. It’s really small, and there’s no yard. But she said you could stay there and bring the dog, if it’s really only for a week. She’s in nursing school right now. She’s never home. That’s why my brother’s in Oregon.”

My mother gave the envelope a worried look. She may have been thinking of Haylie’s little brother, but she may have also been realizing that even this new, best option would not be painless.
If it’s only for a week
. In any other situation, in our old life, this would have been such a hesitant invitation that my mother never would have accepted. She and Haylie’s mother had been friendly, maybe more than acquaintances. But I don’t think they were ever good friends. Now, however, my mother couldn’t worry about imposing. So if this was all that could be granted, even with conditions, fine.

“Thank you, Simone,” my mother said. She put the envelope in her lap.

Haylie looked embarassed. I couldn’t tell if it was the “thank you” or the “Simone” she didn’t want. But I understood right then that I shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d come all this way to find us. Whatever she’d tried to turn herself into over these last two years, some part of her must have remembered what it was like to have everything fall apart. Really, it would have been more surprising if she had laughed at Jimmy’s story and not worried about my mother at all.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked at me for just a moment. “I’m sorry about this morning, what he did.”

My mother nodded. “You didn’t do it, hon. You’re not him.”

It was a nice thing to say, maybe the nicest thing possible, given the circumstances. But Haylie looked newly burdened. It was as if my mother, in exchange for the gift of the envelope, had presented her with a problem. She tightened the sash of her red coat.

“I’ve got to go,” she said.

“Do you need a ride somewhere?”

She only considered it for a moment. “Not a good idea,” she said. “I’m on my way home.” She turned and started walking back to the bus stop. Halfway there, she stopped. My mother and I didn’t speak to each other; we didn’t pretend to do anything but watch. Haylie stood still for a minute, maybe two, her hands in the pockets of her coat. She walked to the front steps of the dorm.

She was still there, sitting on the top step, when I got out of the van. She stared straight ahead, her elbows on her knees, her pretty chin resting in her hands. On my way up the steps, I asked her again if she needed a ride. My mother waved from the idling van, but Haylie again shook her head.

She was fine, she said. She was thinking.