Stay (39 page)

“I don’t want to see her.” I looked out the window, searching for signs of her.

“Do you want me to go in first?”

“No! If you go in alone, you’re leaving me out here, and if I’m out here alone, she could come out here and you won’t- ”

“This is silly,” Janie said. “She’s not the boogeyman.” But she wasn’t in any hurry to get out of the truck either. She stayed in her seat, staring out the front window until I got out of the truck.

The snow on the stairs wasn’t shoveled, and there were footprints going up the stairs. Triangles with tiny circles following behind, punctuating each step. A set of triangles pointed up and a set pointed back down. Diane was probably gone. But she could have been in the carriage house when it snowed, left, and come back.

I got my key out and ready to go. I could picture her having the locks changed, so I’d have to go pound on the door to the main house; but thankfully, when I slid my key into the lock and turned it, it clicked open.

I pushed the door open. The air felt thick, like the weight of Diane’s stale cigarette smoke could push us back out the door. Janie made a face.

The bathroom door was closed, and there was a sliver of light leaking out the bottom of the door. The shower was running.

“She’s here,” I said.

“Mom?” Janie said.

“Shhh!”

“Van, it’s not like we can get all this furniture out of here before she gets out of the shower. And she knows we’re coming anyway.”

“Why is she showering here?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Janie said.

“She’s your mother.”

“That doesn’t mean I understand even the slightest bit of anything she does.” Janie ran her hand along the back of the couch. “Your mom is the only one who ever did.”

There were half-drunk glasses of bourbon doing service as ashtrays, and empty Camel boxes and magazines everywhere.

I walked into my mom’s room. The bed was slept in. There was another bourbon-glass ashtray on the nightstand. I ran my hand over the indent in the bed and smoothed out the sheets. The pillowcase was spotted with mascara stains like a watercolor. Wads of tissues nested next to the pillow.

“Oh my God!” Janie yelled from the kitchen. “Look what’s on the fridge.”

I ran into the kitchen. Janie was holding up the fluorescent pink sombrero magnet. “I wondered where that ended up,” she said.

We heard the water shut off. Janie stiffened.

“It’ll be a while,” I said. “She’s got to know we’re here. And she’s not coming out until she’s done her hair.” Still, I was nervous. I mean, she was going to come out eventually. And what then? Would we fight? Would we cry? Would we have it all out? Would she tell me I couldn’t take my mom’s stuff after all? Would she ask for her money back?

We heard the loud whir of my mother’s old hair dryer. We stood in the kitchen and watched the bathroom door, like we were waiting for a bear to come out of a cave. Janie got herself a glass of water and sipped it slowly. “It’s silly that we’re so nervous,” she said. “What’s she going to do, anyway? We’re adults. We can handle this.” She wasn’t very convincing.

Janie opened the junk drawer and we sorted through all the twist ties, expired coupons, plastic army men, and cereal box prizes that had been thrown in there over the years.

We were laughing over a coupon for Smurf-Berry Crunch that expired in 1985 when Diane came out of the bathroom wearing a beige silk robe. Every hair on her head was in its proper place and she had a full face of makeup on.

“Get me a drink, Van, will you?” she said, like nothing had ever happened.

I looked at Janie. Her eyes were wide. She raised her eyebrows at me. I shook my head and went to pour Diane a bourbon.

Diane sat down on the couch and pulled a cigarette and lighter from her stash under the coffee table.

“Could you at least open a window or something?” Janie said.

“It’s winter,” Diane said, lighting up.

“Secondhand smoke kills, Mom.”

“So does old age,” Diane said, flatly, “but people don’t quit having birthdays.”

Janie rolled her eyes and opened the window.

“There’s a pizza in the fridge,” Diane said. “And I’ve got a stack of movies. John Cusack this time.”

She pointed to a stack of DVDs by the television.
Better Off Dead
,
Say Anything . . . , The Journey of Natty Gann
,
True Colors
, and
Grosse Pointe Blank
.

My mom used to order the pizza and pick the movies. We hadn’t had a movie night since my mom went to the hospital for the last time. We’d all crowded around my mom’s hospital bed in those sticky pink vinyl chairs and watched a John Hughes marathon on TBS. She couldn’t eat solid foods anymore, but she had Janie go down to the hospital cafeteria to get pizza for the rest of us. “So it’s more authentic,” she said. There was nothing authentic about our last movie night. She had tubes going in and out of her from every angle. Her breathing sounded like Darth Vader’s.

I wondered if Diane’s insistence on us having a movie night again was her way of trying to erase the last one. I thought maybe I needed to do that too. So we sat down and had a movie night like everything was fine. Janie seemed to be resigned to going along with it too.

We made it through the early Cusacks, but Janie fell asleep on the couch right in the middle of
True Colors
, sometime around when John Cusack chokes James Spader. I went into my old bedroom and got my comforter for her. She didn’t even move when I draped it over her, like always. Janie was always the first one to fall asleep when she and Diane came over to watch movies.

“You’ve always been good at looking out for her,” Diane said, patting the seat next to her.

I sat down. She lit a cigarette for me.

“I only ever smoke with you,” I said, taking it from her. I leaned back on the couch and put my feet on the coffee table.

“As much as Nat was a good influence on Janie, I was an awful influence on you, huh?” she said, laughing.

“No, not at all,” I said, sarcastically, shaking my head. I smiled at her.

We sat there, our heads resting on the back of the couch, trying to blow smoke rings. Diane could make perfect
O
s, but I never could. We didn’t talk for a long time, and we didn’t look at each other. It was like we were testing the waters, figuring out if it could be okay to be together in the same space again.

“I miss her so much,” Diane said, finally. “I didn’t even know you could miss a person this much.”

“I know,” I said. My tears welled up fast and dripped from the corners of my eyes into my hair.

Diane sniffed. “Right here,” she said, “with you and Nat and Janie, this was my world.” She flicked her cigarette into a watery bourbon glass on the coffee table and picked up her current drink. “I never fit in Charles’s world the right way. Those women at the club, judging, picking apart every little thing. I didn’t fit there. I still don’t. With Nat, I fit.”

I remembered Diane, lying on my mom’s hospital bed, my mom cradled in her arms. My mom was so small. She was just bones and skin as fragile as wet tissue paper, but she looked so peaceful.

I’d just left the room for a minute. After days of sitting with my mom, holding her hand, letting Diane and Janie bring me food, taking sponge baths in the sink in the hospital room, I’d gone for a walk with Janie. I needed some air. And when we came back, my mom was gone. I hated Diane so much for that. For being the one who held her. For being the one who spent those last moments with her. But maybe my mom was waiting for me to leave. Maybe she didn’t want to do that to me, to die on my watch. Maybe she was protecting me. Maybe Diane was too.

I looked over at Diane. She looked harder than she used to. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes were sad. I wondered if she’d laughed, really laughed, since my mother died.

The two of them used to get going and they’d be red-faced, tears streaming down their faces. You couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but you got the feeling they could still understand each other. It was one of my favorite sounds. I loved lying in bed, listening to them out in the living room, laughing.

“Nat was so strong, leaving your father, going out on her own,” Diane said, taking a sip of her drink. “I married Charles because I thought I had to. My parents couldn’t afford for me to finish college. I wasn’t going to get to go back, and I didn’t feel like there was anything out there for me. Charles showed up at the club and he was older and ready to get married. His parents hated me, but once I got pregnant, it was all said and done and they just had to get over it.” She swirled her glass around in her hand, watching the bourbon make a whirlpool.

“You’re strong,” I said. “My mom always said you were a force to be reckoned with.” I felt like we were talking like two adults, like it was the first time we ever had.

“I made the best of what I had to work with, maybe,” Diane said. “But I always wondered who I could have been if I’d had the courage to do it on my own like Nat. She was a far better person than I could ever be.”

She used the sleeve of her robe to wipe her eyes. I hadn’t realized she’d been crying.

“That’s why I saved that money for you,” she said. “A few stocks, some savings bonds. A little here, and a little there, so Charles wouldn’t notice.”

“Why did you tell me it was life insurance money?”

“I didn’t want you to feel like you owed me anything, and I wasn’t sure you’d take it if I told you the truth,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be like me. I wanted you to finish school. I wanted you to find someone you love. I didn’t want you to feel trapped, because you grew up here, around money, and maybe you’d think it was easier to just marry someone who could take care of you.” She looked over at me. Her cheeks were wet. “I didn’t want to see that fire and independence die. That part of you is all Nat, and I’ve already lost enough of her.”

“Thank you, Diane,” I said, choking back tears. “Thank you.”

She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath. “Even though I saved that money for you for the right reasons, maybe I didn’t give it to you at the right time. I can see why you might be mad and maybe you should be.” She sniffed.

It was the closest thing to an apology I’d ever heard Diane give to anyone.

“You gave me my picture back,” I said. “I thought you were done with me.”

She looked at me, mouth open. “I found it in my purse and thought you’d get a kick out of it. It wasn’t-” She took a deep breath. “I am not now, nor will I ever be, done with you, Savannah Leone. I told Nat I’d take care of you, so you’re stuck with me, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

I smiled.

She drank the last dregs of her drink. “Go to bed,” she said, suddenly composed again. “I called movers to load up the truck for you. They’ll be here at eight.” She got up, poured herself another bourbon, walked into my mom’s room, and closed the door.

I got up and went to bed in my old bedroom for the very last time. I lay there in my old flannel sheets and wished I could hear my mom and Diane laughing in the living room.

D
iane was gone before we woke up. She’d managed to leave without waking Janie. She’d even left us a plate of bagels and a note:
Headed out for the day. Have a safe trip. D. P.S.: Thought you might need a reminder of what a real bagel tastes like.

I studied the note while Janie was in the shower. I went into my mom’s bedroom and sat on the bed, smoothing out the wrinkles in the pillowcase. For a moment I thought, I can’t take this away from her. Diane was using this place like her own secret clubhouse. Maybe she needed it.

I pulled my mom’s quilt over my lap. It was the quilt I hid under when I was scared of lightning, that helped make a fort in the living room, that my mom bought with her first month’s paycheck. I realized that I couldn’t let Diane take this from me. And I knew she didn’t want to.

I took the quilt. I left the sheets. I wadded them up and left them in the clothes hamper. I took the bed. I thought maybe I’d put it in the room with all the anchors.

I took the nightstand. In the top drawer, there was a diary, pink and shiny with a little gold lock, like a child’s. There were pill bottles and letters, a few empty paper cups, receipts, slips of paper, and a copy of
Tuesdays with Morrie
that I’m sure Diane bought for her. I shoved a throw pillow in the drawer to keep everything from moving around. I didn’t want to go through my mother’s nightstand too carefully. It didn’t seem right. Maybe someday, with a bottle of wine and some Joni Mitchell, and incense burning like it was a ritual, but I couldn’t go through it like it was just packing.

I went into the kitchen and pulled out the glasses and dishes I wanted to take, leaving them on the counter to give Janie something to do. She wrapped them in newspaper and packed them while I went through my mom’s closet. I heard something break in the kitchen while I was sorting through sweaters, but I didn’t feel like checking on what it was. None of our dishes ever matched anyway, and if it was something important, like one of the set of the Dr. Seuss juice glasses we had to eat gobs of jelly for months to collect, I didn’t want to know about it.

I took the bigger, bulkier sweaters that would fit me, and left the smaller ones that would fit Diane. I don’t know why. I couldn’t imagine leaving the house in one of my mother’s sweaters, trying to recognize her scent hiding deep in the fibers, or worse, realizing it had been washed away completely, and I couldn’t picture Diane wearing a cotton roll- neck sweater from The Gap, but I felt like I needed to divvy them up between us.

I slipped my mom’s Boston records into the bottom of the box and piled sweaters over them so Janie wouldn’t see. She and Diane always made fun of my mom and me for listening to Boston. I folded the tops of the sweater box in on itself to close it.