The One That I Want Page 16

  “Do you remember our sixth-grade soccer team?” Ashley asks, sitting up abruptly, then steadying herself when she starts to lean over, a human Tower of Pisa. “Do you remember that fight that your dad got into with the ref during the playoffs?” I prop myself up on my elbows, watching her giggle, and I realize that underneath her overdone eyeliner, she’s softly pretty, if she’d only allow herself to be.

  “What? No,” I say, looking to Darcy for confirmation, then remember that she’d have been only a toddler. “I don’t remember that at all.”

  “Oh yeah,” Ashley says, standing now to reenact the scene. “He rushed the field when the ref retracted a goal that you’d scored. ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!’” She shook her finger wildly, her neck turning pink, just as my dad’s would have. “‘You are a goddamn moron if I’ve ever seen one! And blind too! You’re a little piece of shit! A blind little piece of shit!’” She plops back down and laughs. “After all of that, we didn’t win the game, didn’t make it to the championship.”

  Darcy laughs along with her, though who knows why, whether it’s the alcohol or the irony of my father playing the classic role of papa bear.

  “How do you remember that?” I ask, trying to focus, recollect. “I seriously have no recollection. Susie, do you?”

  Susie shakes her head, then reaches for another doughnut.

  “I just do,” Ashley says simply. “Actually, I remember it because my dad talked about it the whole ride home. Thought your dad deserved a medal or something. And my mom told him he was setting a bad example for sportsmanship and to please be quiet.” Her voice stalls, almost sober now. “Then they had a huge fight about it.”

  “I know it was ages ago, but I can’t remember your parents ever fighting,” Susanna interjects. “Which, hello! Welcome to marriage!” She starts to pull herself upright but opts not to expend the effort and flops back down to the floor.

  “They did,” Ashley says, her head bobbing just slightly. “They definitely did.” She looks over at me. “And besides, just because you don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  “I forgot!” I say, jumping too quickly to my feet, the blood pushing into my head like a pinwheel. “My camera!”

  “Cute art guy’s camera,” Susie corrects, her eyes closed now.

  “Cute art guy’s camera,” I concede, pulling it from my purse. I flip off the lens cap and steady the viewfinder toward my eye.

  “Say cheese!”

  “Cheese,” they all say in unison.

  Click. Click, click, click.

  I stand beside my friends and capture this time. So that one day, I can look back on it and say, I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn’t allow myself to break.

  eighteen

  The taxi drops Darcy first at Dante’s, the wine warm in her stomach, easing her inhibitions. I haven’t inquired as to their status of late, but even in my fog of self-absorption, I’ve noticed him occasionally loitering around the house, exchanging easy banter with my dad when he’s over, toting in fried chicken for dinner while Darcy hums some new melody behind him.

  “We’re just working on some songs together,” she says. “A collection.”

  I raise an eyebrow, because Darcy has never been one for collaboration, but I don’t pry.

  The streetlight has blown out in front of our house, so as the taxi pulls into the driveway, the gravel spinning out beneath its tires, it’s almost as if the house isn’t there. Just a pocket of dead September air. I flick on the porch switch as I climb the stairs, sift for my keys, and lumber inside.

  The house is as black as the night outside, which suits me in a way it wouldn’t have before, before all of this. I’m still not used to finding it so empty. With the exception of my sophomore year, when I had a single at college, I’ve never actually lived alone. I moved into my sorority house as a junior and then, of course, bunked with Tyler upon graduation. I navigate my way through the hall, my hand sliding up the stairwell, my fingers finding the brass knob to the bedroom.

  I fall onto my bed, a belly flop, reaching in the darkness for a pillow to smush over my head and shut out even the tiny slivers of light. It’s funny how I couldn’t envision that incident on the soccer field, I think. Funny how paralyzingly clear the memory was to Ashley, but for me—nothing. I shake my head, trying to suss out the scene, but I can barely remember playing soccer, much less the playoff game in which my dad was red-carded. Hazily, in the corner of my memory, I recall a picture of the team, lined up in golden yellow jerseys, a Tony’s Pizzeria icon patched on our sleeve, our knee socks pulled high under our shin guards. Our ponytails flapped in the fall air; our smiles were ensnared in the finest metal Westlake’s orthodontists could provide.

  Frantically, I flip on the bedside light and am on my knees, plowing through my bottom dresser drawer in search of confirmation of what Ashley recollects so easily. I surf past my wedding photos, those reminders of when life promised to be perfect, and press on. Tyler is suddenly so distant, so unimportant, because what matters, what I need to see this very second, is that moment in time before we were all broken. When I had a dad who hadn’t started drinking and instead stood in the bleachers and catcalled the other team. When my mom was still flourishing, alive, robust. When Darcy was round and innocent and gazed saucer-eyed at the world, ready for all that it could offer.

  But there is nothing here. All of these photos were taken after the years that my friendship with Ashley splintered apart. I lean against the bureau, the spot between my shoulder blades pressed into the circular wooden handle, and I implore myself to remember. Remember, God damn it!

  The doorbell suddenly echoes in the downstairs foyer and my veins seize. It is well past 10:30, and news at night is never good news. Still ensconced in the blackness, I shuffle down the steps and steel myself for something else unimaginable: what, really, could it be? My father is drinking again? My husband is leaving me?

  The hallway tiles are cold, even through my socks, and I pull my sweatshirt tighter over me. I exhale and prepare myself, then fling the door open wide, waiting for the flood, the plague, the grim reaper.

  But there, hovering on the porch, is only Ashley. The overhead bulb behind her turns her ethereal, almost angelic, and her weary face draws a kind smile when she sees me.

  “Here,” she says, thrusting forth her hand. She still reeks of alcohol. I suppose that I do too. “I thought you could use this.”

  “What’s this?” I ask, relieved, surprised, confused. I draw the Polaroid closer to me, angling it toward the light.

  “It’s from back then,” she says simply. “I thought it might be important.” She pauses, her voice quieter. “It seemed like you needed it.”

  The evening air is quiet around us, the scent of burning leaves, of damp mulch blowing through. I stare at the shot and try to remember, and slowly, I do. It is a shiny, buoyant picture of Ashley, in her sunshine-colored jersey with the number 12 hanging off of her still girlish body. She is cross-legged on the grass, beaming up at me, holding her index finger aloft, curled at the tip. A bystander might think she is anointing our team number one, but no, I can remember clearly now, she instead meant that we were sizzling. We would lick the tips of our fingers, touch each others’ waists, and pretend that we were frying like bacon, cooked eggs on a sidewalk.

  “That was the day your dad went ape-shit,” Ashley says. “That’s probably why I kept it.”

  “I took this, didn’t I?” I peel my eyes away and look toward hers.

  She nods.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t remember this. I can’t believe you kept it.” We’re both suddenly sober, the veil of wine no match for our emotion.

  “It meant something at the time.” She looks toward the porch planks.

  I want to ask her to elaborate, but then I see something else in her, something that tells me this is more than just a courtesy call.

  “You want me to do it, don’t you?”
I ask.

  She shrugs, her eyes round with damp emotion.

  I shake my head, thrusting the picture back toward her. “I don’t do it anymore. I don’t want to see anything else. I told you, I stopped.”

  “Please,” she says, her voice nothing more than a whisper. “Please, my mom is dying, and I need to know that I’ll be okay, that I’ll make it through this.”

  “I can’t even tell you that! I have no idea what I’ll see … I just see!”

  “I don’t even care,” she says now, crying for real, and because Ashley Simmons has never, ever cried in front of me, not even when she broke her arm in third grade when she fell from the monkey bars, a sliver of sympathy opens inside of me.

  “Oh, Jesus, fine,” I say, grabbing her elbow, pulling her inside.

  We sit, the two of us, at the kitchen table, and I stare, and I stare, and then, there it is. My brain loses control of my muscles, the pain, the cramping winding through. Ashley clutches my hand as the spark soars through my blood, through my veins, through my very soul. I squeeze her fingers because I know that she’ll stay beside me until the blackness lifts its cloak, until I find a way to swim back up.

  The hospital smells like sanitation, that distinct blend of fruity cleaner and embalming fluid that every medical facility has. The halogen lights glare overhead, illuminating the dark circles and the wrinkles that have seeped into the various faces littering the halls. Wrinkles that come with the gravity of life-and-death circumstances. Nurses in pink scrubs push past one another, friendly enough but not really all that friendly, each of them scurrying about, all carrying clipboards holding life-altering information.

  I am standing just to the right of the vending machines toward the end of the hall and facing two adjacent patient rooms. Their glass windows offer little privacy, though a cheap fabric shade is pulled over the one to my left. A frazzled-looking doctor wanders past me, really brushes right up against me, and drops three quarters into one of the machines, which spits out a Twix. He uncrinkles the wrapper and leans against the wall, his sigh a sputter of exhaustion.

  I eye him, wondering if he is the reason that I’m here, but he just chews on his Twix, savoring the quiet moment of his break time, until I notice Ashley emerge from the room with the open shade. How I didn’t see her before, I’m not sure, because now, as I look through the glass, I realize that the patient inside is her mother. She’s got tubes in every possible orifice, a heart monitor beeping a steady beep, an IV drip cutting into the crook of her flaccid, aged arm. A fraction of the woman she once was.

  The doctor finishes his Twix, crumples the wrapper and tosses it into the garbage can, gives Ashley a quick nod, and bolts off, reminding me of a startled rabbit. Ashley tugs a wrinkled dollar bill from her pocket and shoves it into the dollar slot of one of the machines, which refuses to accept it. She tries again, and then again, and then one more time, but each time—whhhirrrrrr—the machine spits it back.

  “God damn it, I want a fucking Snickers!” she screams, her fists now balls, pounding on the glass. “Is that too much to ask? A goddamn Snickers?”

  Her tears come like a flood, a broken dam, covering her face in an instant, and she leans against the machine, as if a flimsy vending machine in a so-so hospital in our small town can actually prop her up, be her salvation. Her body shakes, and her moans are guttural, and more than anything, I want to fix her, because this is what I do. Or what I did, at least for most of my life. But I know that I can’t, that my legs won’t move and my voice won’t resonate, so all I can do is whisper, over and over again, “It’s gonna be alright, Ashley. It’s gonna be alright.” Because, though her pain feels unbearable, I know that eventually, it will be alright. After all, I lived it too.

  Steps approach to my left, and I swivel around to see my father. My father! My father? He doesn’t take notice of Ashley, a mound on the floor, and instead stops just outside her mother’s room. His shoulders sag. I can see this from behind him, his body growing smaller. His head drops to his chest, and his back rises in a giant inhale.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Ashley’s eyes are still closed, her question directed at my dad, as if she was expecting him, as if she knew he’d be there.

  He turns to face her, his features aged a decade since I’ve seen him last, since he moved back into his house and assured me he’d wrestled the beast of his insobriety. His skin is ragged, the pouches beneath his eyes sallow and bleak.

  “They don’t know everything yet,” he replies, his voice breaking.

  Ashley’s head plunges down, an anchor, when suddenly a high-pitched siren—an alarm—sounds from her mother’s room. She bounds to her feet and throws herself inside, and three pink-clad nurses, now stripped of their clipboards, rush past my father to her mother’s bedside.

  My dad slaps his hands against the glass, a silent wail, and just before I am gone, left with more questions than I came with, he slides his fingers down the window, and the last thing I see, the last thing I will remember, is the steam, the heat left from the imprints of his palms, at first clear, concise, and then evaporated, gone, just like me.

  My spit tastes like sour grapefruit, and my jaw throbs like it’s been sucker-punched, like I’ve been grinding my teeth over and back on themselves. My eyes twirl into focus, and Ashley’s pensive face hovers above me.

  “How long was I out?” I ask, pressing myself up on the couch, my palms behind me, my elbows bending like protractors.

  “An hour or so,” she says, helping to steer me upward. “I dragged you over here when your head knocked down against the table.”

  “I’m not doing this again, you know. I’m retired after this. It’s too much, too hard.” She nods, understanding and anxious all at once. “But I did it because I get it,” I say. Our eyes meet now, both too sad for two people so young. “I mean, I guess I always wondered what could have been different if I’d known what would happen in the future. How many times did I wish for that after my mother was sick and then died?”

  “I know,” Ashley says. “I sensed that in the tent that day.”

  “So you also know that I can’t change anything anyway. That I can only see what happens, that what happens is going to happen regardless.”

  She nods.

  “I saw your mother.” I sigh. “She is very ill.”

  “I already know that,” Ashley says quietly.

  “But my dad was there too. What was my dad doing there too?”

  nineteen

  A week coasts forward, and summer has flitted out as quickly as it came in. Already, the fall winds are nipping all around us; there will be no extended summer this year, no last gasp of lingering days by the lake, late-evening barbecues during those final minutes of sunset.

  In years past, I have loved fall, much like I have loved the first few days of the school year, but now, the season only reminds me of how change rushes in too fast—one day you’re weeding in your garden in a tank top, the next, you’re hauling through your closet in search of an extra sweater. But, because I am trying, at the very least, to distract myself now, and, at the very best, to pull myself out of the muck, I set out to complete Eli’s assignment, to document the ins and outs of Westlake High from the view of his Nikon.

  “You’re totally trying to please him,” Susanna said yesterday during our first dress rehearsal when she noticed the lens dangling from my neck.

  “Oh, give me a break,” I said, then shouted to Wally to ease up on the jazz hands already!

  “Wally, dude, this is the fifties, and you’re the resident stud,” Darcy said from the piano bench. “We’re not doing A Chorus Line here.” The kids in the ensemble laughed, and Darcy sat up a little straighter. Darcy had recently told Midge Miller that she would take over full-time, and Midge just cracked her knobby arthritic fingers, shrugged, and shuffled out of the auditorium.

  “Anyway, I’m not doing this to impress him,” I said, turning back to Susanna. “I enjoy this; you know I do.”

  �
�Who says it can’t be both?” she answered, keeping time with her foot. “And hey, I’m not criticizing. You were always good with what other people asked of you.”

  True, I thought, watching the teenagers attempt to master the hand jive sequence, which for most of them seemed about as natural as speaking Cantonese. Elbows were askew, knees were out of sync, a mishmash of misinterpreted rhythms and too-complicated choreography.

  But yes, I have milled through the halls for the past five days, popping into classrooms, loitering in the gym, stealing candid frames of my students’ lives. The prom committee convened in my office on Wednesday, and rather than dictate the remainder of the to-dos—the invitations needed to be printed, the chaperones needed to be confirmed, the éclairs, which they had all readily agreed on, ordered in bulk from the bakery in Tarryville—I simply handed the list to CJ and clicked, clicked, clicked while they hashed over the details themselves. It was almost exquisite, I thought after they headed out of my office, their faces flushed, their words running over each other—berets, canapés!—that when I stepped aside, took my hands off the wheel, they somehow managed to steer it just fine without me.

  Oddly enough, the same can also be said of my father and Darcy. It’s not that Darcy has totally absolved him, but just that there’s less rancor when she speaks of him, less rage when she speaks to him, which they’ve been doing regularly now, mostly about me and my mental health. I hear them sometimes, whispering when they think I’ve fallen asleep or zoned out in front of the TV.

  “I don’t know what to do with her,” my dad said the other night when he thought I was out of earshot. “I can’t stand to see her like this! I’m going to kill that kid.”

  “Let her be,” Darcy replied, as she always does. “She’ll pull through. She’s more capable than you realize.”

  I listen to them go back and forth, too exhausted to go out there and say, “Hello! I can hear you!” but it hasn’t escaped me, how much credit Darcy’s been giving me, how much faith she’s placing in me, when maybe I’ve never done the same for her. When, frankly, it’s been hard enough to imagine doing the same for myself.