Chapter 15
Memories
Cecily
“Why, Cecily,” my mother says, opening the door in a dark-blue robe cinched tightly over her pajamas, “you’re here late.”
“I’m sorry. I can come back tomorrow.”
“Nonsense. Come in. I was watching the Netflix.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Oh, this and that. I’m not sure it’s working properly. It keeps asking me if I’m still watching. Do you think it’s judging me?”
I take my coat off, hanging it on the hook that’s always waiting for me here. We go into the living room, where the television screen is frozen on an episode of season four of Orange Is the New Black. The room is actually overwhelmed by orange—my mother’s Halloween decoration box is open, much of its contents organized into piles on the thick beige carpet.
“What’s all this?”
“I’m trying to cull.” She looks down at the stuff on the floor. She’s taller than me, five ten when she was at her tallest. It felt like I was looking up to her my whole life. “With the kids getting older, seems like I could get rid of some of this.”
“You’ll still give out candy, though?”
I feel uncharacteristically sad. My father always took Halloween so seriously, keeping statistics of how many kids came to the door each year and how much candy had been given out. Since he died, my mother’s kept dutifully on, her messier handwriting following his in the log. The thought of no one writing in that book seems like the end of something I’m not ready to accept.
“Yes, dear, don’t worry. Harry would never forgive me if I didn’t give out the candy.”
She looks up at the ceiling, as if that’s where my dad’s been hiding all this time. We named Henry after him but kept the more formal version of his name.
“Henry, either, I don’t think.”
“Probably not. It’s a real pain in the ass, though.”
My mother never said one bad word in my presence the entire time my father was alive. He wasn’t in the ground twelve hours before I heard her use the word “asshole.” That was because of the broken garbage disposal. Now that term often refers to anything she doesn’t like, like a child who doesn’t know how the word works or what it’s meant for.
“We could take over,” I say.
“It’s all right. But you could take some of this off my hands.”
I sit down on the floor. The gas fireplace is on, throwing off a nice flickering light and a good blast of heat. I pick up a paper skeleton, one that used to glow in the dark.
“Tom never liked decorating the house.”
“I didn’t know that.”
My mother sits in a lotus position near another pile of Halloween debris. She’s seventy-five but does yoga every day and has better knees than I do. She’ll probably be the one who helps me up when we’re done.
“So, what brings you by?”
“I went on a date tonight.”
Her face lights up. She let her hair go its natural gray five years ago, and it suits her. “Oh, that’s good! Do I know him?”
I untangle the skeleton’s strings. One of its feet is missing. “Nope.”
“Mmm. That means I do, and you don’t want to tell me who it is.”
“I don’t want to tell anyone, Mom.”
“And yet you’re here at bedtime.”
She looks at me, squinting. She always could see through me, even without her glasses.
“You’re right. I guess I did want a buffer.”
“From what?”
“From him to home.”
My mother pops the lid on another plastic container. “Damn, Christmas ornaments.”
“You know, I have no idea where Tom put ours. I had to buy new ones last year.”
“Are you missing him?”
“Would it be pathetic if I was?”
“It would be normal, I think.”
“It’s been a year.”
“And there were more than twenty behind that.”
“Nineteen.”
She frowns at my literalness.
“Nineteen years without another woman in the picture,” I amend.
“Asshole,” my mother says, and for once she’s got the word right.
When I arrive home an hour later with two plastic containers full of Halloween decorations, Cassie’s made sure Henry went to bed and is reading in her room.
I check the book she’s holding. She’s rereading one of the Hunger Games books for the umpteenth time. I read them along with her the first time, four years ago. I thought they were wonderful then, particularly the first book. But now that we live in our own dystopian future, I have trouble seeing their continued appeal.
“How’s Katniss?”
Cassie doesn’t lower her book. She’s wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt we bought for her when she was ten. It was too big for her at that age. Now it’s tight on her arms and doesn’t quite cover her stomach.
“Henry’s asleep.”
“I saw that. Good job.”
“Where were you?”
A lump forms in my throat. “I was out to dinner with a friend. Teo, actually.”
The book slips from her fingers. “Teo?”
“We went to The Angry Crab. It was fun. We should go back there soon; it’s been a while.”
She picks up the end of one of her braids and flicks it into her mouth. “I don’t know if I could.”
“Because of Dad?”
She nods.
“Are you upset I went there?”
“No.”
“Are you upset I went there with Teo?”
She starts to shake her head, then stops. I sit on the edge of her bed and remove the braid from her mouth. Her eyes are welling up.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“I don’t want to forget.”
“Forget what?”
“Daddy. I don’t want us to forget.”
“Of course you’ll never forget him, honey.”
“I don’t want you to, either.”
I look at the picture of the four of us she has on her night table. The last official studio portrait we did in coordinated outfits. Coordinated outfits! My old life was a fantasy. Anyway, we’re all laughing because Henry had belched loudly and the photographer looked horrified.
“How could I ever forget him?”
“You could. You could get married again or whatever. Or maybe have another baby, and then . . .”
She bursts into tears. I lie down next to her and hold her close. She’s starting to smell different from how she used to—more like a grown-up than my little girl.
“Sweetie, what’s going on? Where is this coming from?”
“That’s what Kevin was saying at dinner.”
“Who’s Kevin?”
“He’s . . .”
I hold her away from me. Her lip’s trembling.
“Is Kevin your boyfriend?”
She shakes her head. When did my daughter become so tongue-tied?
“A friend?”
“Yes.”
“Were you out with him tonight?”
“Yes.”
I feel queasy. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. “So you weren’t at Stacey’s?”
“Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad. I want to know what’s going on.”
She pulls away and wipes at her nose. I have a mother’s instinct to grab a Kleenex off her nightstand, hold it to her nose, and tell her to “blow.”
“I wanted to go to this movie with Kevin. He asked me, and I’m not sure I like him, and I didn’t want it to be a big deal.”
“I wouldn’t have made it a big deal.”
“Mom. Come on.”
“Okay, so I would’ve made a big deal about my daughter’s first date. Sue me. It is your first date, right? I didn’t miss that?”
“It’s the first.”
“Phew. Your first date! Wow.”
“I knew it.”
“It’s not like I would’ve insisted on pictures or anything. Well, maybe only a couple.”
She starts to cry again.
“Oh, honey, I was kidding.”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . . I miss Dad.”
I hug her to me again, the queasiness having turned to sorrow. I thought I was done crying over Tom, but there are still so many firsts he’s going to miss.
“He always said he couldn’t wait to beat up my first boyfriend.”
“He did say that.”
“And now he can’t.”
“It’s true. It’s not fair. He should be here to beat up that Kevin guy. I can do it if you want.”
She tilts her chin. “You’re joking again, right?”
“Of course I am. Or not. Your choice.”
I stroke the top of her head while she rests against me. Her room is in a transition phase, like her. Posters we put up years ago are half papered over with photos she’s printed up on our color printer of her friends. Thick books with black covers are perched on top of a confetti of others about magic and twins in high school. It’s like an archeological dig of her childhood.
“So, I get the hiding where you were going from me—not that it’s okay—”
“I won’t do it again.”
“You probably will. I’m not saying it’s allowed. I’m just being practical.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
“Good. But what about that led you to think I’d be marrying someone else and—God forbid—having more children?”
“You don’t want to have more kids?”
“Sweetheart, you know I love you and your brother to death, but no. I’m forty-three. I’m too old for that.”
“Janet Jackson had a baby at fifty.”
“Good for her! Come on, where’s this coming from?”
Cassie squirms, then settles. “We were just talking . . . I don’t know, about stupid stuff. How his brother was still obsessed with Pokémon and stuff like that. Anyway, then he kind of asked me about the memorial, and it felt good to talk about it because none of the kids at school ever ask me anything about Dad, like it’s contagious or something and their dad will die if they mention it. So I talked about Dad for a bit and how it’s been, and then he told me how he’d read this thing, or heard his dad talking about it, I guess, about how all these babies are being born now, like how there was this baby boom or whatever starting nine months after Triple Ten, and it’s still going on, and even some of the survivors’ families have new babies and . . .”
She pauses for breath.
“And then what?”
“And then he asked me if you had started dating ‘yet.’ And I just lost it, Mom. I ran out of the restaurant and all the way home. And now he’s never going to talk to me again.”
I can feel Cassie’s heart thrumming against her ribs. I know that feeling all too well. “I’m sure he will. And if he doesn’t, then he wasn’t worth it.”
“If you say so.”
“Trust me.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and then, “Is that what you were on tonight with Teo? A date?”
“I’m not sure.”
She pulls away.
“I know it might be upsetting to you and Henry to see me with another man, but that’s not what’s happening. Maybe it will someday and maybe it won’t, but it was just dinner.”
“But he likes you. I can tell.”
“And I like him, too. We all do. But I don’t know if I’m ready for that again or, even if I was, whether he’s the right person. This is complicated. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah,” she says, but she’s not looking me in the eye.
I turn her head gently to me with my fingertips. “How about this? Why don’t we agree that we’ll both keep each other up to date on our, for lack of a better word, love lives?”
She wipes her nose again. “Like, in detail?”
“Um . . . no, I don’t think that’s a good idea. But if I go on a date with him or you with Kevin, we’ll tell each other about it. Sound good?”
I smile bravely, because it doesn’t sound good to me, and I can’t imagine it sounds good to her, either.
None of this is how it should be, but it’s all that we’ve got.