Hold Still (23 page)

Jeffrey grabs a piece of bread and smiles at her. “She was very old?”

“Not really,” Ellie says. “But her skin was wrinkled.” She smiles at the floor, thinking of her mom scolding her when she caught her smoking in the park. “The cigarettes. I mean, I guess I got it right, you know; it was her. But I hadn't realized till I saw her that way. It felt like my fault.”

Jeffrey takes a large gulp from his wine glass and nods toward Ellie; his chin and mouth are steady, firm.

“Anyway,” says Ellie. She holds tight to Jack.

“Anyway,” Jeffrey says.

“I never went back after that,” she says.

She looks around the restaurant, which has emptied since they started talking. There are two waitresses leaning on the bar. Jeffrey, Jack, and Ellie are the only table left.

Ellie nods toward them. “I think they're waiting for us.”

Jeffrey turns toward the girls and waves with two fingers. The girl who has waited on them—young, tall, with slick brown skin—walks over to them.

“I'm sorry, sweetie,” says Jeffrey. He reaches up and holds her forearm. His other hand holds back his hair. “We're almost done. I promise.” He shows almost his whole front row of teeth.

The waitress waves her hand at them, Jeffrey's hand still on her other arm. “Don't worry,” she says. “Take your time.”

She starts to walk away, then turns back toward them. She touches Jeffrey's shoulder and stands very close. “Your family's gorgeous,” she says.

Ellie feels a thrumming in her stomach. Jeffrey smiles. The girl brings her hand back to her side.

Winter 2013

T
hey're inside a club Maya hadn't known existed. It's the sort of place she's never been, or meant to go: dark lights, loud music, young, lush people. They walked past the line straight through the door. Laura nodded at the doorman. “I sleep with him sometimes,” she muttered. And then here they were.

Maya's hips move as they wait at the bar and order drinks from the hardly more than adolescent bartender. She's tattooed all down both arms and her belly is bare before them, flat and firm and covered in some liquid that makes it catch the light.

Laura gets them martinis. Maya's feet wobble underneath her—there have been two bottles of wine in addition to the one they had before leaving her house. Her knees buckle beneath the weight of all she's drunk.

She can't remember ever being out this late.

Laura leads Maya to the dance floor. Booths line the edges of the club where people sit and drink. A few of them are hidden by curtains. A cage hangs in the center over the crowd, suspended in
the air by hidden lines. Inside the cage, a girl dances. Maya wants to get her out and take her home with her. She's writhing, a small roll of fat on her belly curves and twists as she throws her arms back, lowering herself deftly to the cage's floor. She wears only a sparkling red bikini. The top is oddly old-fashioned, a sweetheart cut, thinks Maya, though she can't think how she knows this term.

Laura puts her hands lightly on Maya's hips from behind her. She turns Maya toward her and Maya gives the dancing girl one final look. And then Maya and Laura are dancing together. They're dancing in a spirited imitation of the caged girl. Laura's grip gets firm on either side of Maya, and Maya lets herself dip into her friend. Her hair's out of its clip and down her back now, and strands of it catch in her mouth as she smiles at her friend. She tastes smoke and her shampoo, and she's enjoying not having hold of anything. It feels as if she's finally been let loose.

The music gets louder, faster. She likes the feel of Laura's hands on her. She wants to fall into her and let her hold her as she moves.

Slowly, though, Maya feels herself begin to slip. She's either too drunk or becoming not quite drunk enough. The result is nausea, nausea and wanting to get out. She puts her hands on top of Laura's shoulders, which are slick with sweat right through her shirt.

“Bathroom,” she says and then screams it twice more before Laura nods that she's heard. They walk determinedly toward a bright red
EXIT
sign. The bathroom's nearly empty. A girl, so young Maya thinks a moment she should scold her, is leaning close to the mirror, lining her eyes in black as a girl in the one occupied stall yells to her about “that fucking assface Ross.”

Maya avoids the mirror. She closes herself quickly into an empty stall. She puts down the lid of the toilet and sits, slipping
her feet out of her shoes. She stares at her long, unpolished toenails, the little hairs on each toe. Black lines are smudged around her feet from the boots' leather and her sweat.

She breathes slowly, sits back against the tank. The porcelain clunks once against the wall and Maya keeps her eyes fixed downward. She listens to the girls. They're talking about someone else now, another girl whom they seem to hate.

“Her dress, though.”

“I know.”

“Like it's the fucking prom.”

They're both laughing. One high and sharp. One hoarse.

“She's really skinny, though. I could never wear a dress that tight.”

“Coke.” Maya hears the toilet flush beside her.

“Really?” The door of the stall opens with a creak.

“I know.” She imagines that they're looking at one another in the mirror.

“Well, I guess it works.”

Heels clank against the concrete of the floor. Water runs.

“I love that lipstick.” Maya thinks of Ellie's thick broad lips.

“Here.”

“Thanks.”

Maya looks at the freckles on her knees. She can still make out the lines of her quadriceps from all the mornings up over the bridge. She still has the knot of something certain pulsing thick and tight between her shoulder blades. She's no longer drunk, but does not feel sober. Her mind pounds hard and crooked from the music and the alcohol. She thinks, briefly, of texting Stephen. But she can't think what she would say. She thinks maybe instead she will just never leave this bathroom. She will stay here, eavesdropping on young girls, pretending that they're hers.

“You okay, Ma?”

Her eyes are blurry and she can hardly make out the shape of him. He's in boxers still and an old tournament T-shirt. Maya sits up and runs her fingers down under her eyes. “Fine,” she says.

She fell asleep still in her dress (Laura's) in Ellie's room, without ever checking in with Stephen, without brushing her teeth or washing her face. Now Ben has found her, under the covers with mascara smudged beneath her eyes.

“Where were you last night?”

“Laura,” she says, hoping this explains things.

“Right,” Ben says.

“What'd you do for dinner?” She should've been here cooking for him, talking to him, loving him.

“Dad made pasta,” Ben says.

“How was it?” she asks. They were supposed to make up. Stephen was supposed to tell Ben he was sorry, prepare him for Ellie.

“Fine, Mom.”

“Benny . . .”

“I know. You don't know what that means.”

“You feel better about things?”

“He's still pissed.”

She's quiet. She should have been here. She stares at her son's face and then looks down.

“I know he just wants . . . you know, he's Dad. He wants us to achieve, right? To
enact ourselves upon the world
.” Ben raises his shoulders and lowers his voice when he says the last part. Maya smiles.

“Benny . . .” She wants to say something to prove she loves him, to show him she'd still do anything on earth to keep him safe. “You want breakfast?”

“Nah,” he says. “I think I'll run.”

She doesn't want to get out of bed with Ben still watching. There's a large black
X
on her hand from the doorman at the club. There are still lines of grime along her feet.

He lingers a little longer, toeing the carpet, running his fingers through his nearly nonexistent hair. “Okay,” he says.

“Tonight, maybe?” Maya asks him. “Dinner?”

“Sure,” he says. He looks up at her. Maya holds the comforter up close to her face and breathes in the smell of cigarettes.

She needs to talk to Stephen first, to clear things up, to remind him to be careful with her children.

“Dad and I aren't coming,” Ben says.

Maya's only holding on to bits of what he's saying to her. She sees the pounding music, the caged girl.

“To Florida,” he says. “To get El.”

She will not react here in front of him. She will wait until she sees Stephen to respond properly to this. She must figure out, in the meantime, what responding properly might be.

“It's fine, Benny,” she says. “If you don't want to come, it's fine.”

“I want to,” Ben says. “But Dad . . .”

She looks out the window of Ellie's room, down into Stephen's garden. He could not ever quite make sense of who their daughter was. He understood and responded well to
goals
. He never fought with Ellie. Instead, he just slowly wandered further from her. She was, he seemed to believe, of Maya's making, and therefore Maya's task most of the time.

It was messier than this: He kept trying sometimes. He took Ellie for walks, gave her books, cooked her favorite dinners. He took care of Maya so that she could take care of their girl. He was busy trying to be the consistent, steady parent—organizing, scheduling, keeping their lives going—while Maya flailed and grasped for whatever might finally save Ellie.

“Ma?” says Ben.

“Yeah, Benny.”

“You're a mess, you know?”

She drops the comforter and smooths the front of it over her lap. “I know, Benny.” She laughs, swinging her legs out of the bed and walking toward him. “I know,” she says.

Summer 2011

I
t's Annie's one day off and Jeffrey is still down the street with clients. Ellie comes back from the beach and walks barefoot into the kitchen. Her feet are speckled with sand and her ears are still half clogged. Her head feels blurry and the skin along her cheeks smarts from the sun. She hasn't eaten since the morning. She went to swim before anyone else had risen and stayed at the beach until after five. There's no one in the kitchen and Ellie thinks the place is empty. She's wearing a T-shirt over her bathing suit, but she's left her shorts in the car. She makes a sandwich, slathering hummus on the bread and cutting big pieces of the cheddar cheese Jack likes. She's taken on many of his eating habits as her own. She's not sure how she knows to do it or what about Annie's voice signals to her that she's on the phone with Ellie's mom. She might have picked up the phone only because she hears Annie on the other end in her bedroom and her fascination with Annie has no end. Because she's not used to landlines any more. It's jarring, though, suddenly hearing her mother laughing. She's someone else when not talking to Ellie. There's none of the
worry, none of the terror muddying up her words. She seems so young and comfortable, talking to Annie about her classes. They chat a while longer. Annie complains about one of the busboys who always comes in stoned. Ellie listens to her mom get quiet. She knows now she's begun to think of her.

“How is she?” her mom asks; Annie gets quiet. Ellie wonders for the millionth time how much Annie knows.

“She's such a sweet girl, Maya. She's really good with Jack.”

Her mom's silent again and Ellie sees her sitting in her study with her feet up on the desk, holding a book in one hand, the phone held to her ear with her shoulder, rifling through the pages with her other hand as she talks. “Is she?”

“She seems good. I'm not sure what else there is to say. She doesn't say much about herself and I don't want to push.”

“Of course,” her mom says. Annie said she didn't want to tell her mom about the sailing. She didn't want Maya to worry when there was no need.

“I'd tell you, you know, if there was anything else. But she seems all right. She swims every morning. She's a sweet girl, Maya.” Ellie thinks she hears her mom set her book down.

“I don't know who she is.” This is her mom again. Ellie cups the phone more tightly. “When I think about her down there, I can't think of a person so much as a reason to be afraid.”

Annie whispers something inaudible to Jack.

“I mean, I remember her as a child. And then I remember all these years of never knowing what to expect. She was always so unpredictable. When I think of missing her, I always think of the little girl I miss. But I'm not sure who she is now. I'm not sure I'd even know what to do with her besides be afraid.”

Ellie still has hold of her sandwich. She's squeezed the hummus out of the bread and it's now smeared along her palm.

Her mom continues: “I can't say that out loud too much. I hate
how it feels, even thinking it. But I've been relieved since she went to you.”

Ellie stays very still and waits for Annie's response.