How to Save a Life (20 page)

“A friend’s.” He slides the card closer to him; I look away.

Annalee walks up from the back of the store. Ravi, hearing the unmistakable sound of her long skirt swishing, turns. They smile at each other. “Ready?” Annalee asks.

“Yep!”

To me, Annalee says, “I’m taking my dinner break early. We’ll just be down at McGrath’s. Ron is here, and Polly’s running the café.” She comes around behind the counter to get her coat. “Call if anything comes up.”

“Maybe
you
should call
me
if anything ‘comes up,’ ” I mutter.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Ravi slips the card into its envelope and writes
Annalee
with a flourish. When he puts the pen back in the cup, our eyes meet. They’re going on a date. A birthday date. I try to raise one brow at him exactly like he did at me. I have no idea if it works, but he looks away first. “There’s a policy,” I say.

Annalee hears me, nudging past to get her purse from under the register. “But you won’t tell. Want us to bring you back anything?”

“I’m good,” I say, as cheerily as possible. “Happy birthday.”

I’ll admit it: As I watch them leave, I feel a little jealous.

I’m
the one who popped Ravi in the jaw.
I’m
the one who needs his help with Mandy.
I’m
the one whose yearbook he signed, the smart and funny one he wished he’d had a chance to get to know. It’s hard not to think of him as mine. At least, more mine than Annalee’s.

During closing, while Annalee counts out the drop safes, I make a call on my cell from the kids’ section. Ravi’s business card is in my apron pocket, where it’s been since the night he came to apologize. I’ve kept reaching in and running my finger along the edge, working out what to say. Since it’s late, I expect to get his voice mail, but he picks up on the second ring.

“Ravi Desai.”

“I thought you weren’t on the clock. And what happened to R.J.?”

“Jill?”

He says it fast. He recognized my voice.

“Yeah. Um, sorry to bother you so late. I… It’s not exactly work-related.” I bend sideways so I can see down the aisle and to the front of the store. Annalee is printing out a register report, and the printer noise is loud. “Can we meet up sometime this week?”

We talk over each other.

Me: “I need your expertise….”

Him: “If this is about…”

About what?

“What?”

“I can’t really talk right now,” I say. “Do you think you could meet me at four tomorrow? At Dazbog? The one in Congress Park?”

“Sure.” He doesn’t even hesitate.

“See you then,” I say, and click off my phone before he can say anything else and before I realize that I should have said “thank you.”

I pick up a copy of
Pat the Bunny
from the floor and rub the front before placing it back on a shelf. I spin the rack of Little Golden Books. I wipe what I hope is a smear of chocolate off the Frog and Toad mural. I finish my work and drive home, singing along to the radio.

Even though what I want to see him about is serious, even though he just went on a date with Annalee, even though I’m with Dylan, even though I’m apparently a coward who’s scared of everything and most of all change, meeting Ravi for coffee feels like the first thing in eons that I’ve had to look forward to. It’s almost like I have a date with my old self.

Mandy

Jill and Robin get in a fight because of me.

Robin met me at the north corner of the mall, inside, like she said she would. I saw her before she saw me, and I tried to look at her as if she were a stranger. Would I think she was a wife, or a mother? All I could see was Robin, who could be anything she wanted, being completely who she is.

She saw me and came over, smiling and unbuttoning her blazer. “It’s warming up. Didn’t you get yourself anything?” she asked. “Where are your bags?”

“I only got this.” I pulled a small bag out of my purse and showed her the pale turquoise scarf I’d bought, with silver threads running through it. “It was twelve dollars.”

Robin held it to my face. “That really is your color. So gorgeous against your skin.”

“It is? My mother always said I shouldn’t wear too much light blue.” I curled my lower lip into my mouth and bit it. Normally I don’t talk about my mother in front of Robin and Jill. It’s better not to mention my family at all. There were questions Robin asked me back in January, when we were e-mailing our plans. I answered them all, but there’s no reason to bring it up anymore.

Robin was surprised, too. I could tell from how she drew the scarf through her hands a few times, watching me, until she said, “I think it matches your eyes perfectly,” as if my mother’s opinion didn’t exist. “Is that all you bought?”

“You said not to go crazy.”

“And you didn’t.” She put one arm around me and led me back toward the center of the mall and more stores. “Now I’m saying we could go a little crazy. Mildly insane. I remember being that pregnant with Jill and feeling like a hippo, and so uncomfortable. There’s a maternity store here somewhere….”

“It’s okay. I have what I need.”

“I know. Sometimes you should have something you don’t need but that you want. It’ll be fun. Jill never lets me shop with her anymore.”

I didn’t really want new clothes any more than I needed them. I’d rather keep wearing dresses until I go back to my old size. I’ll need clothes for my new life, and I thought maybe if I didn’t spend too much of her money now, she’d help me then. I don’t want to waste any of the watch money on clothes. But I wanted to make her happy. So we shopped and went out to a late lunch and came back to the house and took naps. After, Robin made me put on all the clothes again and walk around the house in different outfits.

I admit: It was fun for me, too.

It’s another thing, like crepes and reading on Saturdays, that’s so different from how things were. Robin never says anything like she hopes I appreciate everything she’s doing for me and I could show a little gratitude by doing something for her once in a while, in exchange. Kent would say that. Kent did say that, the two or three times he bought me clothes. When he made me walk around the house in outfits he bought, it wasn’t because he was happy to see me happy.

Robin made popcorn for a late dinner, and we watched TV, and during one commercial I looked at her and smiled. I was about to say “thank you, thank you,” and I wanted to let her know how it feels to be in her house, and if I thought I could make this kind of life for my baby, I would keep it. But I didn’t want her to take it wrong, and I was trying to think of another way to say what I meant when Jill came home from work.

She had to scoot Robin’s purse out of her way with her foot to get past the entryway. “What happened in here?” There were bags and tissue paper everywhere, and stray popcorn kernels.

“Mandy got a makeover.” Robin turned down the TV. “Show Jill your new look, Mandy.”

I hauled myself into a standing position to show her: the navy blue long cardigan that Robin picked out, with rows of purple buttons down the front. It cost more than I’ve ever spent in one trip, let alone on one piece of clothing. Underneath you wear black leggings with a special supportive waistband for the baby. The whole outfit is warm and soft; the material doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever had on. Robin says that’s because it’s natural fibers. My mother always said wash-and-wear materials were best. “If I wanted to spend half my life waiting for my clothes to air dry, I would have stayed on the farm.” But I think this is better.

“Did you use my flat iron?” Jill asked.

My hand went to my hair. I’d forgotten we did that. When I saw myself in the mirror with my hair like this, I could barely recognize who I was. My face wasn’t so swallowed up.

“We borrowed it, yes,” Robin said. “It was my idea.”

Jill tripped on another bag, catching herself before she fell, but not before she swore. “Mom? Can I talk to you upstairs for a minute?”

That’s when I knew I was in trouble.

Robin set the popcorn bowl down on the floor and stood. My mother would never do that. She’d say, “Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of Kent.” Or, “I don’t feel like getting up, Mandy. I’m tired, and I don’t take orders from my daughter.” But Robin, she saw the look on Jill’s face and heard the tone of her voice and followed her right up the stairs, handing me the remote on the way. “Be right back, honey. You can change the channel.”

I didn’t. I left the volume down, too.

And now I’m down here, listening, while I start putting some of my new things back into bags. This is the kind of thing I expect to happen whenever it seems like things might turn out all right: Someone will get mad; someone will get mad at
me
. You never get anything good without paying for it. I walk quietly in my socks to the bottom of the stairs. I hear voices but not what they’re saying. Mostly I hear Jill because she’s the loudest, but muffled. Pretty soon a door slams, and I waddle back to the living room, back to the couch.

I hear Robin’s footsteps on the stairs; then she’s in the room with me and has that look a person gets when they’ve been fighting with somebody. Tired, disappointed.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have bought me all this stuff. It cost a lot.” I pick up a gray shirt Robin called a charcoal tunic from the cushion next to me and fold it into a perfect square. There are tears pushing up, even though I know not to cry in front of people. It was a good day. Nearly perfect. Now I’m paying for it.

Robin comes closer and runs her hand over my smooth hair before sitting next to me. “I don’t want you to worry about that. We have plenty of money.” She takes the folded tunic and places it on top of the stack I’ve been making.

I wish Christopher could see me right this second. The way Robin touched my hair. The way I belong. I take a mental picture and send it to him in my head. A moment in time when I feel loved, to go with the other moment I felt it, the one that he gave me.

“What is it, then?” I ask. “Why is Jill so mad?”

“Oh. Jill isn’t mad. Well, she is. Or she thinks she is.” Robin looks at the club chair, Mac’s, the one they never sit in, then at me, and her eyes are full of tears, and she doesn’t even try to make them stop. “Mostly, she isn’t mad. She’s sad.”

Dear Alex,

I think by now you must be back home and have gotten my letters. This time I’m enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope. I know sometimes you have the idea to write to someone or call them, but it’s too much trouble to look up an address and a phone number, especially these days when we do everything on the computer. I do have an e-mail address that I don’t use very much. Someone I used to know, his name was Kent, was on the computer all the time, practically addicted to it. I don’t want to miss out on important things because of needing to check something on the computer all the time. Also, I think handwritten letters are more personal. My hand is on this pen writing on this paper, and when you get this paper, you’ll know I touched it, and you’ll touch it, and it’s a connection.

Well, not to sound so serious. It sure is different being here from living my old life back in Omaha! Did I tell you that I used to be an administrative assistant? It was only about twelve hours a week, for my mother’s boyfriend’s construction company. A little bit of filing and answering the phone and things. When I leave here, I might look for that kind of a job again.

In my last letter I know I said that my future is a blank. I didn’t want you to think I’m dumb, that I haven’t thought about it at all. I have some money. Or I will have. I would never have left Omaha without a plan, including a plan for if I decide giving up my baby is the wrong thing. Not that I would, but you always need a plan. One of my mother’s boyfriends, not the one with the construction company, liked to say motivational quotes. “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” And things like that.

So you can use the envelope in here to write to me. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen or pencil. I bet you have that around somewhere.