While I'm Falling (27 page)

M
Y MOTHER SAID THAT
Pamela O’Toole, formerly Pamela Butterfield, was a kind hostess, especially considering how busy she was, and how small her apartment was, and the fact that she didn’t really like dogs. My mother tried to be a considerate guest. She cooked. She tidied up. She kept her things in neat stacks behind the couch where she slept. She only used the shower when Pamela was at nursing school, and she took her sheets off the couch every morning. When Pamela came home, ready to study at the kitchen table, my mother took their dirty clothes to the Laundromat, or she went with Bowzer for long walks, or she just drove him around in the van. So it wasn’t exactly
Kate & Allie.
The apartment was too small for both of them. But they had some good conversations: they talked of ex-husbands and daughters and former neighbors; they compared their descents and sometimes laughed. For the most part, however, my mother felt cramped and awkward and irrationally annoyed for having to work so hard not to be a burden, and she was always terrified the dog would pee, or worse, on the floor. During the week she stayed with Pamela, she said the three words she said more than any others were “thank you” and “sorry.”

There was more gratitude to come. The paycheck my mother had been waiting for was not enough to cover both a security deposit and the first month’s rent, and so she went to one of her friends at the mall, Maxine, for help. Maxine told her she was being ridiculous about the dog. She told my mother she was not thinking reasonably or making the best use of her resources. But she also gave my mother a loan. My mother said “thank you,” ignored the advice, cashed the paycheck, and moved into an apartment with Bowzer.

She called me from her new phone, excited, but she did not invite me to spend winter break with her. I hoped this was because she wanted her own space for a while. I worried that she couldn’t afford the groceries.

“You’ll be more comfortable at your father’s,” she said. “You know you will. For one, I’m sure he has furniture.”

It was true. My father’s rented condo had come furnished, complete with paintings on the walls in neutral colors that matched the carpet and the curtains and the throw pillows on the leather couch. Because he spent so little time at home, everything was clean and new-looking. The glass table in the dining room was smudge-free. He’d lived there for almost a year, and he’d used the oven exactly twice. The guest room had its own television and a double bed, which I would be sharing with Elise when she arrived on Christmas Eve.

Elise had already called to break the news that she could only stay for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Work was insane, she said. Charlie, who did tax law for an even bigger firm, couldn’t take any time off at all. My mother wondered about her new son-in-law spending the holidays by himself.

“He’ll be fine,” Elise told my mother and, later, me. When she called me, she was on a headset, buying groceries at midnight, Pacific time. “You all don’t understand the kind of time we put in. You can’t imagine it. The work just doesn’t stop.”

By “you all,” she of course meant my mother and me. My father needed no instruction on the kind of hours a law firm might require of a new associate. He was still working all the time himself. The whole week before Christmas, he left for his office before I woke up, and he usually got home after I ate dinner. But he seemed happy that I was there. Every night, he stayed up late, long after he was yawning and blinking, to tell me stories about his day—a judge falling asleep, a juror surreptitiously picking his nose.

“You’re not laughing,” he said.

I tried to laugh.

He looked at me over his bifocals. “You okay? You seem kind of down.”

I shrugged. If I only told him that Tim had broken up with me, he would automatically take my side and call Tim names. On the other hand, if I gave him the particulars—namely, that it was all my fault—he might ask me, just what had I expected, acting like that? He would have to take Tim’s side, given the parallels between Third Floor Clyde and the Roofer. I didn’t see them as parallels, but he might see them that way.

“You’re bored, right?” He put a frozen burrito in the microwave, setting the timer and turning it on without taking his eyes off me. “I mean not right now, while I’m here. I mean during the day. I feel bad, you’re here by yourself.”

I shrugged again. It was true that my options were limited. My father’s car was with him all day, and it was too cold to walk anywhere. But I’d actually gotten used to my holiday schedule, which involved reading the last four hundred pages of
Middlemarch
and regularly looking up and out the window to watch rain or snow fall into the tiny, man-made lake for which my father’s entire neighborhood was named. I made myself grilled cheese sandwiches. I watched the news and infomercials. Even with all this, I had several hours a day to spend on my default activity—lying on the guest room floor and feeling bad about Tim.

My father offered to pick up a study guide for the MCAT. “You’ve got all this downtime,” he said. “You might as well put it to use.”

I told him I needed a break from studying. I left it at that. I didn’t want to talk to him about my chemistry grade, either, though report cards would be mailed out in less than a week.

But I liked the idea of a distraction, of somehow putting my time to good use. I’d told my mother that if she wanted to come pick me up, we could go to a movie, or I could help her get set up in her apartment. But she was back to work at the mall, going in for long shifts to make up for the time she’d lost. And anyway, she said, she didn’t want me to see the apartment just yet. She wanted to clean it up a little first.

On my third night in the condo, my father brought home an ice cream maker. We assembled it and read the directions, and went to the grocery store to get ingredients. We spent the rest of the evening making a runny, vanilla-flavored dessert that we slurped like soup while watching
Law & Order
.

I nodded, looking at the television, a commercial for an asthma drug. The actor playing the doctor looked like Tim. Every day, I thought of things I wanted to tell him; but I couldn’t, because he didn’t call. I looked down at my bowl of ice cream. I’d only finished half, but I put it on the floor.

My father leaned forward, stretching his arms. “I’ll hit the tread-mill, the elliptical. And the weights, too. I’ll just stop in on my way home from work. I’ll shower there. So I might be home really late tomorrow.”

I nodded again. My father had just recently joined a gym; he said he usually got himself there three or four times a week. He’d already lost much of his belly. He looked good in general. He seemed to be making more of an effort with his clothes, even when he wasn’t at work. For as long as I could remember, he’d spent his evenings in an old white T-shirt and a pair of blue sweatpants that my mother hated. Now he padded around his condo in new T-shirts and khaki shorts that looked like something Tim would wear. He had nice, striped pajamas, and a sleek robe for after he got out of the shower.

“You sure you don’t mind?” He bent over to pick up his dessert bowl and mine. “I don’t want to slack off too much over the holidays. But you might even be asleep by the time I get back.”

“I don’t mind.” I kept looking at the television. The asthma commercial had thrown me into a downward spiral. Tim would get a new girlfriend. I would see them together on campus.

“Honey?” My father stood up, holding the dessert bowls.

“Dad. Go to the gym tomorrow.” I forced myself to smile. “Don’t feel bad. I think it’s great that you’re taking care of yourself.”

He looked away. He looked back at me, biting his lip.

“I’m so nervous,” he said. “I hate this.”

I looked up at him. He picked up the remote and turned off the television.

“I’m seeing someone.” He set the dessert bowls on the glass table a little too hard. One of them tipped over, spilling vanilla. He cursed under his breath. “Okay? There it is. I’m seeing someone. I’m sure that’s strange for you. Believe me, Veronica. It’s strange for me to look at your sweet face and tell you his, but I have a woman friend. She is a part of my life. I’ve moved on. That’s who I want to see tomorrow night.”

I did not move. I did not react. I did not want to know any more, but if he kept talking, I would have to listen. I could not keep clapping my hands over my ears like a child. My father looked down at me over the tops of his bifocals, watching my eyes. I didn’t think I had ever seen him look so unsure of himself.

“She’s a very nice woman,” he said. “Susan O’Dell? You met her years ago, at my firm’s Labor Day party? She brought that huge watermelon? She could barely carry it, remember? Auburn hair? Slim? She came to Elise’s wedding.” He held up his hands. “Nothing was going on. She was just a business associate, a friend. But we’ve started spending time together…”

I tried to remember his firm’s Labor Day party, or even just a flash of any woman carrying a watermelon. I came up with nothing. I focused on staying calm, and on not letting my lip curl even a little.

“You’ll like her a lot. She’s really smart. Great lawyer. She’s not looking for a free ride, you know? She’s worked hard her whole life.”

My gaze hardened. I didn’t know if he was making a comparison to my mother or not.

He took a step back. He smoothed his hair with his hand. “I want you to meet her,” he said. “I want her to come over for dinner when Elise gets here. She can meet you both. Boom boom. It’s done.”

“Christmas Eve?”

He threw up his hands. “It’s either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, honey. Elise will be gone after that.” He picked up both bowls and carried them to the counter. “I’m trying to work her into your busy schedules.”

I stayed up late that night, though I didn’t read or watch television. I sat in the dark in the living room, wrapped in a blanket because the leather couch felt cold. The central heat turned on with a hum. A poinsettia plant, a gift from my father’s secretary, sat in the middle of the glass table. My mother would be alone on Christmas Eve. Elise and I would be having dinner with our father and Susan O’Dell.

My mother might not be all that upset about the evening, even if she knew. There was a chance she would spend Christmas Eve listening to Judy Garland and sobbing into her pillow, but it was more likely that she would use the time to fix up her new apartment. Or she would read, Bowzer lying beside her. Either way, Susan O’Dell’s presence at my father’s table wouldn’t change anything about her night. They had shot off in different directions, my parents. One trajectory no longer affected the other. And I didn’t have to feel sorry for her, or angry on her behalf, because even she no longer seemed angry.

I was just about to go to bed when Tim called. He was at his parents’ house in Chicago, the only one still awake. The upstairs was full of siblings and in-laws and cousins, he said. He had two nephews in sleeping bags in his room. He was calling from a corner of the basement, between his parents’ old luggage and empty ornament boxes, because it was the only place in the house he could be alone. His voice was noncommittal, his words clipped. He said he just wanted to wish me a merry Christmas. That was all. But I sat up straight and pressed the phone aginst my ear. It wasn’t Christmas yet, and it was late at night.

“How’s your family?” I asked.

“Good. Okay. My little brother is being kind of a dick. He’s started smoking, and he acts like James Dean, out on the front porch. One of my sisters-in-law made fun of him, and he got mad, stormed out for the night. My mom cried. So there’s been drama.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. I tended to imagine Tim’s family as if they lived in a Norman Rockwell picture, only wearing expensive, tasteful clothes instead of overalls and flowered dresses. But of course real trouble would occasionally arise, with that many people in the house.

“How’s yours?” he asked.

“Okay.” The central heating had clicked off. The condo was perfectly quiet. “Just, you know, spread out.” I sighed until I laughed. There was too much to say if this was just a quick call. If he really only called to wish me a good Christmas, then anytime now, he would say he had to go.

“I miss you,” I said.

There was a long pause, both of us silent. I didn’t hang up, and neither did he.

Two days before Christmas, my mother invited me over. Her new apartment was less than a mile from her old one, a little closer to the mall. The entire complex—green with white shutters—was nestled into a slope, and my mother’s apartment, which the landlord called ground-level, could only be entered by first descending five concrete steps. You opened the door to a big, brown-carpeted room with no windows except for sliding glass doors on the opposite wall. The eyelet bedspread hung from the curtain rod. A bowl of pinecones sat on the counter. She had driven in a nail by the sliding doors—a rudimentary hook for Bowzer’s leash. “He doesn’t have to deal with stairs if we go out this way.” She gazed out the sliding glass doors to the little patch of frozen yard, and beyond that, the pines that muffled the roar of the interstate. “Really,” she said. “It’s perfect.”

I said nothing. She had allegedly spent days cleaning, fixing the place up. I hated to think what it had looked like before. Maybe the flies were pets, I thought. Maybe they weren’t dead at the time, but elderly flies the previous tenant couldn’t bear to part with. Why else would anyone live here? Bowzer was asleep on the mattress, which my mother had made up neatly, the extra material of her duvet fanned out across the carpet. I bent down and rubbed the space between his ears. His eyelids fluttered, but that was all. He hadn’t gotten up when I’d first come into the apartment.

“What do you think?” she asked.

I could tell by her voice that she wasn’t asking about the apartment. I kept one hand on his head and shrugged. She’d already come this far with him, moving into this dark, dingy place that smelled of cat pee. I didn’t know what kind of a lease she had signed, but it seemed to me that since she was already here, she might as well keep him around.

“He’s just been lying there for the last two days.” She sighed and smoothed back her hair. She was dressed for work at the mall, wearing nice black slacks and a black sweater. Her earrings were shaped like candy canes. “I called the vet yesterday. He said I could bring him in again, and we could talk about it. Maybe different medication.” Her knees creaked as she lowered herself to the floor. “I don’t know. He still eats. But I had to carry him outside this morning. Just last week, he wasn’t this bad.”

I ran my hand down his soft back. His breathing was shallow, quick. I didn’t know what my mother would do when he died, how she would take it. She’d given up so much for him, because of some strange attachment to him or whatever he represented. And now he would leave her. It wasn’t fair. The night Tim called, we had stayed on the phone for almost an hour, talking seriously, then joking. Since then, I had carried a good feeling with me like a jewel hidden in a pocket. I still had possibility. But what did my mother have? A dying dog in a depressing apartment. I didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t want him to be in pain.” Her eyes were still focused on Bowzer. “The vet said he’d be open the day after Christmas. I’ll take him in then.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said. “If you want me to. When you take him in, I mean.” I waved my hand. “Whenever.”

She drove me back to my father’s before it got dark. She was a little distracted, steering the van slowly through the ice-speckled streets. She asked me if I’d gotten my grades yet. No, I said. She asked when I would be taking the MCAT.

“Never,” I said.

She thought I was joking at first. When she realized that I wasn’t, and that I really had failed organic chemistry, and that I had decided to change my major to English lit, she was quiet. She kept her gaze on the road. Her lips were rolled into her mouth, invisible. We merged onto the interstate, snow falling from the roof and rolling down the windshield as we picked up speed.

“You don’t have anything to say?”

She almost laughed, though she looked unhappy. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing.” She glanced at me. “Have you thought about nursing? Pamela—Haylie’s mom—you know, she’s going back to get a degree in nursing. She doesn’t have to take the MCAT. And she’ll make good money. She said there are lots of jobs.”

“I don’t want to do medicine,” I said. “I don’t love it. I want to do something I love.”

She looked both sad and faintly amused. She looked like she wanted to say something. We turned a sharp corner, and she held out one arm across my shoulders, as if preparing to stop me from flying forward, though I was wearing my seat belt, and we weren’t about to crash.

“Sorry,” she said, both hands back on the wheel. “Oh honey, you’re certain about this?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t certain of anything. I wanted her to reassure me, to tell me that I was doing the right thing, and that all that mattered was that I would be happy. But she didn’t say any of these things. She looked down at the control panel. The check engine light had come on.

“What does that mean?”

She sighed, turning a corner. “Guess I’ll find out when I take it in.” After that, she was quiet again.

She pulled carefully into my father’s driveway. If she wondered if he was home, she didn’t ask. She told me she would pick me up at half past ten the next morning. Elise’s flight got in at eleven. She knew an Indian place that stayed open on Christmas Eve. She would take us both out to lunch.

“I don’t like Indian food,” I said. A lie. I didn’t want her to spend the money taking us out to a restaurant. She might have felt like she had to. “Why don’t I make something?” I asked. “Lasagna? I’ll borrow Dad’s car and go to the store tonight.” I said this as if it were a given that he would let me borrow his car. “I’ll make something good. We can just eat it at your place, like a picnic.”

She shook her head. “Other places are open,” she said. “We don’t have to have Indian.”

I feigned hurt. “Are you saying I’m a bad cook? Are you saying you don’t think I can do it?”

A car pulled into the adjacent driveway, a man and a woman in a sleek little car. They rolled into their garage without looking at us. The garage door closed, swallowing them whole.

My mother gave me a look. “Veronica. This is not about your lasagna. Let’s just say that Elise and I are in very different places right now.” She frowned. “Surely you understand.”

I shook my head. It was the “right now” that confused me. Elise and my mother had never really been in the same place, even when they lived in the same house.

My mother sighed. “Your sister doesn’t need to see the apartment. I’m not going to live there long.” She smiled and unlocked the van’s doors. “We’ll have fun tomorrow. We’ll go out.”