Come In and Cover Me (23 page)

Normally mothers would stay in the kitchen, getting cake ready, stacking up presents, staying out of the way. Ren could not tell her mother that it was embarrassing to have her there, standing with all the girls, asking them where they got their earrings and if they watched
Miami Vice
, which she knew Ren loved. It did not reflect well on Ren that her mother did not know how parties worked. But it seemed to be okay. She apologized to Allison Shum and Betsy Sapp for her mother, and they both shrugged. “Don't worry about it,” Allison said, whispering. “It's been a really tough time for her. We totally understand.”

The girls were extremely nice to her mother and extremely nice to Ren. It was the first time she realized that Scott's death had made her somehow glamorous. There was some part of these girls that envied her.

At one moment during the party, her mother stood against the wall. She was not talking to anyone. Ren looked up and saw her standing there while the disco ball's lights hit her full in the face, her eyes disappearing behind spinning white squares. The light blinded her again and again. She smiled so brightly.

It all began to change.

Once Ren was trying to hang a calendar in her room, and she smashed her thumb with the hammer. The nail turned black with a pretty swath of blue. A few days later, after the novelty of the wound had worn off, she painted her nails with dark red polish. It took only a little time before the damage showed through again—the nail would not hold paint anymore. So the red flaked off, one chip at a time, until the bruise was obvious.

The same thing happened to her parents.

First her father put the coffeepot in the freezer. Ren was alone in the kitchen, staring at the toaster and waiting for the toast to eject. This was January. Her father walked through the kitchen door, straight to the coffeepot, and poured a cup of coffee in his beige mug. He left the coffee cup on the counter, carried the coffeepot to the freezer, put it on the top shelf, and closed the door.

Ren laughed; then her father turned around. His eyes were open but blank.

“Dad?” she asked.

Harold left the room, and she heard him walk up the stairs. He did not come back, did not stick his head around the corner, grinning, did not laugh from the hallway and tell her it was all a joke. She waited for a long time, hoping. Then she opened the freezer and found the pot precariously balanced on a bag of Tater Tots. (Scott had loved Tater Tots, and no one could stand to eat them anymore.) She returned the coffeepot to its burner.

That was the first time she saw her father walk in his sleep. Her mother started locking their bedroom door after Ren found him in the front yard one night. He also started sleeping at odd hours, and sometimes when she got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, she would hear a noise and find him wide awake, eating a sandwich or putting a golf ball on the den floor.

Her mother stopped appearing at supper. Anna would prepare a meal at some point during the day, leave it in the refrigerator or the oven, and put a note on the counter with instructions. Either Ren or her father would get hungry at some point and heat the dinner. They stopped sitting together at the table. Ren would eat in her room or at the kitchen counter, and her father would eat in the green recliner. Both Anna and Harold seemed to be working more and were rarely home before dark.

Later, months and years later, Ren would think that she should have asked questions in those early stages. Just once she should have asked what was happening. But she didn't. Parts of the day kept being chipped away—no more meals together, no more mother picking her up from school, no more riding in the back of her father's truck (which was clearly unsafe and he wondered why he had ever allowed it), no more laughter from the kitchen that pulled her downstairs, no more music playing too loud (she had to use headphones because they could not stand music coming from upstairs), no more wrestling. That was the most obvious thing—routines and habits were being taken away. But also parts of her mother were disappearing: the touch of her mother's hand against Ren's face in the morning, the way her mother had of biting her lip just before she laughed, the sound of her mother calling her name through the halls of the house, her mother's excitement over parties. While her father was sleeping, her mother was fading away.

What Ren felt at first was relief. That was why she did not ask questions. She had not liked her parents' constant attention after the accident. She had felt as if her face might crack and split open while they watched her and something winged might spring from her skull. She felt there was something inside of her, struggling, and her parents were watching for signs of it. And when they sat on the edge of her bed, listening, she felt the something pushing harder at her skin.

But the struggling winged thing did not occupy her thoughts very often. The truth of her life at thirteen was an obvious one. She did not want to spend time with her parents: No one she knew wanted to spend time with their parents. All those girls at her birthday party had wanted to be more grown-up, more independent, and Ren was the most independent thirteen-year-old she knew. There had been those months—during her parents' constant-attention phase—when she wasn't allowed to go anywhere or do anything. They wouldn't let her ride in a car with anyone but them. But then, one by one, the restrictions lifted entirely, without a word being said. She could stay up as late as she liked, and they did not ask if she had finished her homework. They no longer asked how her day went as soon as she walked through the door. She could go to the mall or to a sleepover any night she liked. Her parents always gave permission. Some days she would walk in from school and not see either of them until the next morning. Harold and Anna drifted through the house, insubstantial, as if they could walk through walls.

The old routine shifted into a new one day by day. She never had an awareness that fundamental changes were happening—only, looking back, that they had happened. By the time she understood the depth of the loss, it was too late. She had not seen the whole of the thing, only bits and pieces, and she had been trying so hard not to see anything at all.

She did eventually want the things she had been relieved to see slip away. But they seemed impossible to retrieve. As a small child, she had loved beach trips, which required enough planning and time that they did not happen often. She would lie awake in her bed after one of those trips, missing the sand and the salt and the lovely monstrous sound of the waves. But the memories were removed by more than time and distance: They were removed by complete foreignness. The strange perfection of the beach could not be anchored to her normal life by a single detail—even the color of the sky was different—so the beach floated away from her. After a day or two, it was hard to imagine it had been real, that water thick with salt could swell against you and send you flying—the sounds, the textures, the colors were so disconnected from Ren's bedroom that it seemed impossible the two experiences could exist in the same world, much less the same life.

Her memories were blurry, with large chunks—like most of her fourteenth year—missing entirely. She never knew whether she remembered blurrily or she had lived that blurrily. But there were some clear images.

Her fourteenth birthday. She was not sure that her parents would remember it. In the weeks leading up to the date, they had not said a word. She considered reminding them, but she wasn't sure she wanted them to invite anyone over. There was the potential for this to be much worse than the previous year's party. For one thing, she did not know how her mother might act. Anna's eyes were always swollen and tired, and Ren had almost started to believe her when she said her allergies were giving her trouble. She was often quiet, often absent, but sometimes aggressively sad. There was a good chance her mother might actually spend an entire birthday party in her bedroom or in the kitchen, but there was also the chance that she might burst into tears or sit silently in the middle of the room without speaking to anyone.

The party idea was unappealing, whether or not her mother was there. Ren was not fond of conversation. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence—hers or someone else's—she would drift off completely. She preferred reading alone in her room, with its light green walls like a forest. She could be sucked into her books, and time would stop completely. She had bought her own tapes, including some Dylan, and she could listen to them without feeling like she had stolen something of Scott's. Sometimes she would close her eyes with the headphones over her ears, and when she opened her eyes, Scott would be sitting next to her, eyes closed, as if he were listening, too. Sometimes he would do ridiculous dances and make her laugh aloud. He was nicer to her now that he was dead.

She did not remind her parents. By the day before her birthday, she had convinced herself that she did not want them to remember. It would be much easier not to deal with a birthday.

She woke up on December 13, and when she stepped into the hall, she knew they had remembered. She could smell that they had remembered—her mother had made orange cinnamon rolls. Those orange rolls took hours to roll out and then let rise, and her mother had always teased Ren for liking them only because they forced Anna to wake up at five a.m. to make them. When Ren breathed in the sweetness from the top of the stairs, she felt so full of love for her mother that her skin felt tight, as though if someone squeezed her she would burst like fruit. She took the stairs two at a time and ran into the kitchen.

There was no one there.

She walked slowly into the pantry, anticipating a surprise. Once upon a time, her parents were fond of hiding behind corners and springing out loudly. But they were not in the pantry.

There was a note in her mother's handwriting on the stove. “Happy Birthday, Rennie—Love, Mom and Dad.”

The orange rolls were browning in the oven, a shade past perfect, so Ren took out the pan and set it on the stove. She went looking for her mother and found her on the back porch swing.

“The birthday girl,” said her mother, smiling. She held out her arms, and Ren stepped into them. Her mother's arms were loose around her shoulders.

“I hope you don't mind that we didn't do a party,” her mother said, looking out at the brown grass. “You didn't mention wanting one. We thought maybe you were at the point where it wasn't cool to have a party anymore.”

“It's fine,” Ren said.

“Your dad wants to take you out for a nice dinner.”

“Great,” said Ren. She sat next to her mother, trying not to rock the swing. “Aren't you coming?”

“We'll see,” said her mother.

“Thanks for the orange rolls.”

Her mother nodded slowly. Ren shivered, wishing for a coat. She noticed that her mother was barefoot.

“We didn't do anything for Scott's birthday,” her mother said.

Ren didn't know what to say. Her mother never said his name.

“June twentieth,” said her mother.

Ren wanted to say that she knew that, that she had known very well the day Scott's birthday came and went, but she had not said anything, because she had thought she was not supposed to say anything.

“We should have done something,” said her mother. “I wanted to bake a cake, or maybe those strawberry cupcakes he liked, but your dad thought it was a bad idea. He said it would only remind us of things. You wouldn't have minded, would you, if we had made cupcakes?”

Ren shook her head, but her mother wasn't looking.

“Or maybe blackberry pie,” said Anna. “He liked blackberry pie.”

“He liked every kind of pie,” said Ren. She wrapped her arms around herself, twisting her fingers in the sleeves of her flannel pajamas. Her ears were burning from the cold.

Anna's legs were bare, and her nightgown didn't quite cover her knees. She held herself straight. Her hands were in her lap.

“I think we should make a tradition on his birthday,” she said. “Maybe plant something. Not that he liked gardening. But maybe we could plant something anyway.”

“Maybe,” said Ren. She scooted closer to her mother, who was much warmer than the wood of the swing.

Her mother looked over briefly, patting Ren's knee with two cold fingertips.

“I didn't have to do my homework in Mrs. Allen's class,” said Ren. “You get a free homework night when it's your birthday.”

Her mother nodded thoughtfully. “I need to get batteries for the radio.”

The wind blew suddenly, and Ren closed her eyes against the cold. The swing rocked with the wind, and her mother lifted her feet off the ground.

“I took the rolls out of the oven,” said Ren. “They were going to burn.”

“Good girl,” said her mother.

Ren went back into the house. She ate an orange roll, because they were not as good once they cooled. She got ready for school and went to catch the bus, and her mother was still on the porch. She wished her mother had picked another day to say Scott's name. And she wished there had not been orange rolls. If she had walked downstairs without the smell of them, she thought it would have hurt less.

Her father was late that night, and they went to the Italian restaurant down the street for an efficient meal. Ren did not particularly like Italian. When they came back home and she went to pour herself a glass of water, she noticed the pan of rolls still sitting on the stove. The rolls were hard and cold, and only one was missing.

This was her worst memory.

They did not want her to leave for college, which surprised her, because she thought they had forgotten she lived with them. Her mother asked if she would stay in town, go to the small private college in the city.

Ren had cut her hair to chin length; she missed being able to lower it over her face as she read or studied. “I don't want to go there,” she said.

“Why?” her mother asked. She had been working in an artsy gift shop, one with handblown glass, endless wine stoppers, and purses made from bottle caps. She had a sheer scarf around her shoulders with flecks of silver.