The Good Goodbye (3 page)

The bell rings and lockers start slamming. Arden reaches in for her binder and hands me back my copy of
Jude the Obscure.
She hooks her purse over her shoulder and looks at me again. Then she reaches out to give me a quick hug. “You totally deserve it, you know.”

She turns and pushes through the chattering girls, in a rush to get to class before the teacher does. I don’t know why she even cares. We’re seniors, coasting on our last few weeks. I watch her make her way down the hall until she turns the corner and I can’t see her anymore.

—

My parents are waiting when I get home that night. A bunch of us had gone to Georgetown to celebrate, taking up three long tables in Mitchell’s, my dad’s biggest competitor, talking and laughing our heads off. When I’d ordered a bottle of Cristal, Mitchell raised his eyebrows. I remember when Aunt Nat was his sous chef.
Come on,
I begged,
we’re celebrating!
I gave him a special smile and Mitchell caved, like I knew he would. Before I left, I slid the empty champagne glass into my bag. A memento.

I’m still kind of buzzing when I pull my car into the driveway and see Dad’s SUV in the garage beside my mom’s. Usually he doesn’t get home until after midnight, but my mom probably nagged him into coming home early. Then again, maybe not. He’d been pretty quiet on the phone when I called the restaurant to tell him the good news. He’d gone into his office and closed the door so he could hear me.

I’m expecting crème brûlée set out on the dining room table, or a plate of basil and lavender macarons beside that gorgeously wrapped gold bracelet I know my mom got to surprise me, just in case. I expect my parents’ faces to be proud and glowy, and prepare myself for all the hugging I’m going to have to endure. But when I step through the front door, they’re in the living room, my mom on the couch with her hands knitted together and my dad standing by the fireplace and not looking at her at all. Something’s happened. I calm myself. I tell myself: only four more months and I’ll be out of here.

“What?” I say.

“You tell her.” My mom’s twisting her wedding rings around and around her finger. “It’s your fault. You tell her.”

They’re getting a divorce. “Tell me what?” Am I upset? Relieved?

“Stop it, Gabrielle.” My dad’s still in his chef’s jacket and he hasn’t even taken off his clogs and lined them up in the garage by the back door, the way my mom likes us to do. She always makes him shower, too, no matter how late it is. She hates the smell of the restaurant clinging to his clothes, his hair. “That’s not helping.”

“It’s too late to help, isn’t it?” my mother snaps.

“Will you guys cut it out and tell me?”

My father’s face is settled in heavy lines. “Are you sick?” I whisper. I look to my mom, her hair pulled back tightly, making her cheekbones look sharp. “Are you?”

She presses her lips together.

“We’re fine,” my dad says. “Here’s the thing, honey. I made a bad investment.” He says this fast, his face flushed. He and Mom have been going at it for a while, I can tell.

“So?” I say. Dad’s always making bad investments and good ones. There’s champagne and flowers and little gifts when he makes a killing, or silence when he doesn’t. He stays up late, checking his computer; he has an app on his phone that’s constantly chirping. Sometimes I think he loves the stock market more than he loves Double.

“Don’t make it sound like it was just one of those things, Vincent.” My mother stalks over to the dry sink and bends to unlatch the wooden door. I hold my breath. Will she notice the vodka bottle? She pulls out the big green bottle of gin and the glass with the grapes etched on the side. Okay, so she hasn’t noticed.

“But it was. I pored over their financials. I talked to the right people.” My dad rubs his face with the flats of his hands. “Everything was coming together. We all thought the patent would go through.”

“But a million dollars?”

“It was the only way we could buy in.”

“Don’t make me part of this. This is all on you, Vincent.”

I’m beginning to panic. “What million dollars?” I’m always sneaking looks at my parents’ bank account statements. I’ve never seen numbers that large on anything.

“That’s how much your father owes the brokerage company,” my mother tells me. “He borrowed a million dollars to buy this sure-thing tech stock, and this morning it’s worth nothing. Nothing!” She puts down her glass without taking a sip. “They don’t care. They still want their money.”

“Why can’t we just declare bankruptcy?” Other kids’ families do it all the time. It’s like a joke at Bishop.

“We can’t,” my father says tersely.

“We’ll lose everything that has your father’s name on it. The restaurant, our house, my business. We’ll have nothing left.”

“We’re going to have to liquidate what we can,” my dad says. “We’ll persuade the brokerage firm to let us keep the restaurant so we can make payments. And I’m sorry, Rory.” He sucks in a breath, releases it. “But this means using your college fund.”

I stare at him. He won’t look at me. “Seriously?” I say, and hear my voice quiver.

“I’ve called Harvard,” my mother says. “They’ve agreed to keep a place open for you for next year.”

Next
year
? “But I’m not the one who owes a million dollars!”

“Je sais, ma cherie,”
my mother says, and I know this is real. My eyes burn and my palms are sweating.

“Call them again,” I insist.

My mother’s pacing, her heels clicking sharply against the wood. “It’s no use. The scholarship money has been disbursed.”

“Are you kidding me?”
Years.
I’ve spent
years,
my whole fucking life, trying to get into Harvard. Maybe my grades weren’t perfect, but I had rocked the personal interview; I had scored the best teacher recommendations. All those AP classes, that horrible volunteer job at the nursing center, the lame cupcake business I started just because it would look good on my résumé,
everything.

“It’s just temporary,” my dad says. “It’s just one year. We’ll set up a payment schedule; we’ll get on our feet—”

“So that’s it?” I refuse to cry. “I’m not going to Harvard?”

The look on my dad’s face tells me it’s true. I can’t stand it. All my friends will leap ahead of me. I can see them pulling away. I’ll never, ever catch up. What will I do for a whole year? My cell phone buzzes, a text coming in, and something occurs to me. “Wait. What about Arden?” Her mom and my dad co-own the restaurant.

“Yes, what about her?” my mother spits, which tells me Arden isn’t going to art school in California, either. She stops pacing and spins to face my father. “How can you live with yourself?”

“You’re happy enough when I make money, Gabrielle! I don’t hear any complaints then. You think I planned this? You think I wasn’t careful? I was careful. This is just one of those things. One of those goddamn things!”

I back out of the room and they don’t even notice me go. Upstairs, I close my bedroom door and their voices grow dull. I sit in the window seat, my knees drawn to my chest. On the other side of the Potomac, Arden’s probably crying in her room. She’s been texting, but I can’t answer. My cell thrums in my pocket, another incoming text. Or maybe somebody’s Facebook update:
MIT or Stanford?

I hug my knees tight, so hard I can’t breathe. A door slams below me, Mom retreating or Dad going out. On the other side of the window the garden is dark and ghostly, filled with grass and trees and bushes, the flowers my mother plants every spring. I feel it starting to sink in. A million dollars. I’m not going to Harvard. I hold my breath until specks dance before my eyes. I picture my dad’s face, narrow with anger, shame, too. My breath explodes out of me.

I’m not going to Harvard.

A single feeling detaches itself from all the others churning inside me. It starts to grow, clear and sharp and strange.

Joy.

Natalie

WE HAVE TO
get to the hospital. We have to get to Arden, but I can’t move. People push past on the sidewalk. Rain taps my head and shoulders.
Keys. Where are my keys?
I fumble in my bag, clutch at the metal ring. Theo’s talking, asking questions. His face is lit by orange neon. I watch his mouth move and try to answer. My words come out jumbled. I hear a loud whooshing, realize it’s my blood pounding in my ears.

Theo grabs my arm. “I’ll drive.”

We inch through traffic lights. I press my foot against the floorboard as though I can force Theo’s foot to punch the pedal harder. I’m trapped in this car and it’s not going fast enough. “Take 295.”

“New York’s quicker.”

“Not this time of night.”

Rain smears the windshield. The dark road leaps from side to side. Oncoming headlights, the sailing blare of a car horn.

Theo glances over. “Your seat belt.”

I fumble for it. He leans across and drags the belt over my lap. “Call your mom.”

Yes, my mom. The boys.
I pull my phone from my bag and stare at the display. I have to think before I press my own home number. “Mom?”

“Mm?”

I’ve woken her. “Arden’s been in an accident. We’re on our way to the hospital.” Each word nails this down.

“What?” Now she’s alert.

“She was in a fire. She jumped out her dorm window to escape it.”

My mother gasps and I squeeze my eyes shut. Four stories high.

“Oh, my God. Is she—”

“She’s in critical condition. She’s…she’s unconscious.”
She’s suffered trauma to multiple parts of her body. We are doing everything we can to stabilize her.
I’m having trouble breathing. I press my hand to my chest.

“What happened? Is she burned?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about smoke inhalation?”

“Mom, I don’t
know
!”

Silence. “I’ll call your father.”

“Yes. Fine.” I don’t care.

A highway sign looms up out of the darkness. We’re still so far away.
Hold on, Arden. Hold on, sweetheart. I’m coming.

“What else can I do? Should I come to the hospital?”

“No. The boys.” I struggle to latch on to something solid, routine. “Soccer. They have a game tomorrow.”

“I can take them.” She sounds relieved to have a task.

I press
END
, then redial. The hospital operator answers. “How may I direct your call?”

“Someone just phoned me about my daughter. She was in a fire…”

“Hold, please.”

The rain comes harder, pounding the roof. Faraway lights blur in the wet.

“Anything?” Theo’s focused on the road, his mouth set. The needle on the odometer nudges seventy-five, eighty.

“I’m still on hold.”

“Try Rory.”

Yes.
She’ll know something. But Rory doesn’t answer. All I get is her merry voice telling me to
Go ahead and do it. You know you want to.
The beep sounds. I open my mouth to leave a message, but I’m suddenly flooded by all the things I want to say. Words clog my throat, choking. In the end, I hang up without saying any of them.

Theo puts his hand on my knee. “Hang on. We’re almost there.”

Your daughter has a tattoo?
the man had asked.

Yes.
A small green-and-purple butterfly.

In the distance, sirens shriek.

—

The emergency room’s a blaze of light. The woman at the information desk says she’ll get a doctor to talk to us; we just need to take a seat in the waiting room. Theo finds us chairs but I can’t sit. I want to run down the hall, banging on doors until one opens to reveal Arden. People in lab coats walk down the hall toward us. I look at each of them in turn, searching their eyes. Are they going to take us to our daughter? But they walk past. “What’s taking so long? Why don’t they just tell us where she is?”

“Someone will be out soon.” Theo’s face is ashen.

“She
needs
us.” The time Arden fell off her bike and split open her chin; the time she ran a fever so high she trembled, her eyes wide and fixed on mine. She must be so scared. Then I realize she’s not scared. She’s unconscious. I’m the one who’s afraid, who needs to see her face, to hold her, to cry.

“I know, Nat. They’ll tell us something soon.”

People are everywhere, sitting, leaning against walls, looking weary, looking defeated. A little girl holds her arm to her chest, her red tights ripped. College-age kids huddle in a corner, blankets draped around their shoulders. “Where’s Rory? She should be here somewhere.” Arden and Rory are inseparable. The two of them on the boat, their laughter trailing across the lake.
Wait.
“Maybe she’s with Arden?” Keeping her company until we got here.

“I bet she is. I bet that’s exactly where she is.”

Another man in a white lab coat strides past. He doesn’t look over. The TV plays silent jumpy images. Outside the window, a police cruiser flashes red and blue lights.

“Mr. Falcone? Mrs. Falcone?”

A woman in green scrubs is holding a clipboard. “Hi,” she says. “I’m Dr. Sisneros.” She’s young, plain-faced, and stocky, her brown hair scraped back from a square forehead. A green surgical mask hangs around her neck. “Let’s talk in the family lounge.”

What terrible thing does she have to tell us that she can’t say out here? But she’s already turned away, and so we follow her as she walks briskly down the hallway through a series of doors that swing open when she smacks the metal plate on the wall. The sounds from the emergency room fade and now it’s quiet. We are crossing from one world to another. At last we step into a room. It’s empty, a washed-out space.

“How’s Arden?” I ask. “Where is she?”

She looks at me with an odd expression. “Your daughter’s sustained several fractures and has second- and third-degree burns on her arms and torso. We haven’t ruled out spinal involvement yet. We’ve put a tube into her airway to help her breathe, but right now we’re mostly concerned with the swelling in her brain. We’re about to take her into surgery.”

Her spine, her brain. Arden’s rushing away from us, in bits and pieces.