When We Were Friends (10 page)

“You’re saying I’m old and a nobody.”

“You know what I mean. You’re meant to be more than this, we both know that. I did a chart on you when you were born, and it said you’d live the most extraordinary kind of life, learn things about yourself and the world that most people never learn.”

I smiled wryly. “And things would happen to me that seemed like luck or coincidence, right? But really they’re destiny. So what’s my destiny, Ma? Because I have to say, I’m not trusting the universe at the moment.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, you break the law, kidnap a baby and even if you run they’ll most likely catch you. And as your mother I want to say this is crazy, that’s what I want to say. But one of the things I’ve learned …” She picked up the water glass on her nightstand, looked into it and then set it back down, squaring her shoulders. “You don’t grab at destiny, it’ll follow you around like a shark. It’ll bite you where it hurts over and over, until you let it drag you where it wants. What’s happening to you now, maybe this is your shark. And maybe it’s mine too.”

I studied her face, shocked by the determination in her voice. But that was the thing about Star. She’d hole up inside her home rather than fight her sickness, not just because she was afraid but because she thought it was pointless. She believed reading cards could tell you what was coming, help you prepare, but it rarely told you how to make things better. Because the world was always watching, judging, like some divine Mafia. And if it decided it wanted you arrested, dead, well it had too many connections. There was no way and nowhere you could hide.

“You’ve been shackled to this house for how many years?” she said. “But being away from me, from here, it’ll help you find out who you are and what you want, so when you come back you can figure out how to go about getting it. How could I possibly live with myself if I was the one who kept you from being who you’re supposed to be?”

“And what about you? How could I live with myself if something happened to you while I was away?” That implied
something
of course referencing her suicide, which we’d never talked about, even though the pointed shard of it was embedded in everything: the evenings she didn’t call out to me when I returned home, whenever I found her with her eyes closed at odd times of the day. Nana Sterling’s death had prompted the first attempt; what if my leaving prompted another?

“I go away,” I said, “and something happens to freak you out, and something
will
happen, I guarantee it, then who’s going to be here to talk you down from it?”

“I know you forget sometimes, but I’m a grown woman, Lainey. I can take care of myself if you’re not around.”

“Dammit, Ma!” I ran a hand through my hair, my eyes stinging. “Where would I take her, hunh? What would I do with myself, hang out in motels with Molly, watching the news and waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

In Star’s lap Molly waved her arms at me, and Star enveloped her fist in one hand. “Ahh,” she said softly, “so this isn’t just about me, is it?”

“Stop patronizing me!” I tried to think of something better to add, more piercing and less whiny, but came up blank. I glared at her and spun away, out of the room.

I paced to my bedroom, wishing I had gravel in my shoes, some kind of pain to distract me from imploding. Why was this making me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my own skin? And why was I so pissed off at Star? Look how strong she was being! Or not
being
but acting; I knew that strength must be mostly a façade. But she was trying to free me, even if it meant being alone in this house which, for her, had no doors.

The cards hadn’t told her I should leave, I was pretty sure of that. They never gave direct commands, only pointed out implications. I didn’t doubt she had read danger into the cards; in this situation she would’ve read danger into a burnt slice of toast. But leaving had been
all her idea. She’d told me the universe wanted me to leave because she herself thought that I needed to.

And she was right. I knew why I felt like this. She was making me look at myself, at my own fear so similar to hers. I’d left home at twenty and it had been a huge adventure, a chance to create a new me. I’d made friends, fallen in love, waitressed during the day and painted at night, fudged the more embarrassing parts of my life and even started to believe the fudges. But I was too old now for a new me. Pathetic as it was, I didn’t know how to live outside this house, this town, away from my mother.

I sank onto my bed, looking around the only room that had really felt like mine, the walls crowded with paintings from high school and young adulthood. Fixing on a painting of my knees holding a sketch pad that held a painting of my knees, which perfectly represented the complete introversion of my life.

I might dream of more but it’d always felt like pure fantasy, the handsome, doting husband, the towheaded, bedimpled, bizarrely easy babies, the house on the coast complete with kitchen island and golden retriever. These were all just hypnotic images on which to train my mind so I could drift off to sleep. I’d understood my life would probably never be more than it was, and I’d pretty much made peace with that. But deep down I’d always felt that without Star, at least a watered-down version of this other, better life could have been possible.

What if a different life was still possible? If Star was okay after I left, wouldn’t it prove I could someday leave for good?

I went again to the window, pleading silently for Sydney’s car. Listening to the sounds from the other side of my wall, Star blowing raspberries against Molly’s skin, Molly’s shrieks of laughter.

I imagined myself driving somewhere exotic, Mexico, or even Costa Rica or Peru. Working with artisans to weave tapestries or paint talavera. Maybe meeting someone dark and handsome who’d speak Spanish to me in low, adoring tones. Yeah, I was good at fantasizing; maybe it was a skill that went hand in hand with being an
artist, designing richly textured fantasies that could then be brought to life on a wall. Not the same as bringing them to life in an actual
life
but still, while I was imagining them, they felt real.

So I let my mind create a new life in Europe—Venice maybe—where I could set up canvases by the canals and old churches, tourists furtively admiring my work and filling my basket with euros. And then I imagined me with Molly in the barrens of northern Canada where we might go for days without seeing another soul, the snow falling thick as white noise, muffling and muting so it would feel almost like the world outside my window had disappeared.

And as I sat there conjuring these permutations of potential futures, each so enchanting that the enchantment almost subsumed the panic, I realized that in the past half hour, I had already made up my mind.

I took care of my mother before I left, I really did. Even though it meant bringing Molly to the store, a hood covering all but her eyes and nose. A highly risky move, but I knew it was safer than leaving her at home with Star, who when I’d left had been in the process of gene genocide, an obsessive sterilization of the entire upstairs.

There were a surprising number of people in the store at that hour, night-shifters, insomniacs, an enormously pregnant woman hugging a jar of green olives. What did the sleepy checkout girl think of me, there with a baby at two
A.M
., looking overcaffeinated, pale and shaking, unloading shopping carts filled with frozen dinners and canned goods and Star’s favorite cookies? Single mother of five, she probably thought. Or bulimic.

I’d also picked up a box of hair dye, “Sunsparked Brown,” the brand that looked least likely to induce chronic conditions if used on infants. All-natural, odor-free, the model’s face bright with the obligatory
Do-I-look-awesome-or-what?
glow.

Back home I stocked the freezer and shelves, enough food for at
least a month. And when a month was over, well we’d find a way around it.

I didn’t think it through, of course. Didn’t look at the improbability of it all, how yesterday I’d been painting brown barrels on dusty plaster walls, and today I was kidnapping a baby. I didn’t think about money, or how a baby needs stability. But I did think of my mother. If things went bad I could at least tell myself that.

I did a patch test on Molly’s skin, and when her arm did not fall off I slicked the brown dye over her hair. And then I held the box against my own head.

All my life I’d been blond but without help, little-girl-golden-blond almost inevitably darkens to a mucousy beige, and I’d never cared enough about my hair to give it help. I looked in the mirror from my face to the box and back, and then while Molly crawled around the bathroom pulling down first towels and then toilet paper, I slid my hands back into the plastic gloves.

After rinsing our heads, I held Molly up so we could both look into the mirror. Molly had not enjoyed the rinsing and her face was pink, eyes rimmed with red. But with our new Color Number 75R matched hair, we looked indisputably related. I smiled at my reflection and my reflection smiled back, and we assessed each other. If I’d seen this woman in the street, I probably would have rated her a seven. And thought she was better looking than I was.

Molly was falling asleep, so I set her in her carrier and brought magazines into Star’s room. I’d bought one of each kind, including tabloids, and the latest Jennifer Weiner and Danielle Steel, and the weight of them in my arms made me feel a little better. Reading was almost like having a conversation. She couldn’t be lonely with all those voices, funny and informative and trashy and romantic, in her bedroom.

I’d thought Star might be asleep but she was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. I set the magazines on the bureau and sat on the bed beside her. She startled and then lifted a strand of my hair, studied it. “Chic,” she said softly.

I took her hand and held it to my cheek. “Do you think I’m crazy for not going to the cops?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You think I have a right to call anyone crazy?”

I swung my legs onto her lap and rested my head against her shoulder. She paused like she was debating something inside herself, then began tracing a finger in circles again and again around my knee. “You and Molly, you’re going to do great. And
I’m
going to do great. I’m kind of excited to have the house to myself. I’ll blare Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly in the middle of the night, and dance to it without having to worry about you making fun of me.”

I smiled and put my arm around her, nuzzled my face into her neck. And I stayed there with her, holding her, until she fell asleep.

I drove out to Pamela’s and parked in her driveway, looking up at the dark windows as I called her cell phone. She answered with a grunt.

“Hey,” I whispered.

Silence, then, “Who the hell is this?”

“Sorry. Sorry, it’s me.”

“Lainey? What’s wrong? What time is it?”

“I … I’m actually in your driveway. Could you come outside?”

“You’re in my driveway?”
Pause
. “Okay, okay, let me get my shoes on.”

She hung up and I hunched forward to rest my forehead on the steering wheel. A minute later, the passenger door opened and Pamela slipped inside. “Where we going?” She glanced down at her pajamas, pale blue and printed with Holstein cattle. “Should I have dressed better?”

“How long do you have to be with a man before you feel comfortable enough to wear cow pajamas?”

“Wait till you’re married and it’s too late for him to change his mind,” Pamela said, then widened her eyes. “Your hair!” She reached to smooth a lock of my hair between her thumb and forefinger. “When’d you decide to do this? You have to give me tips, because I’m starting to look like Barbara Bush. Look.” She bent her head and pointed at a streak of gray.

I waited for her to notice the other big change in my life, and when she didn’t I said, “Look in the backseat.”

She turned and stared at Molly. And then, in the voice of someone who’s caught her daughter stealing gum, she said, “Lainey? There’s a baby in your car.”

“Her mother asked me to take her.”

“Somebody gave you her daughter?”

“I’m keeping her safe,” I said, and then I told her the story, watching her face go various shades of pale until she said, “You’re going to get yourself arrested.”

“I won’t. I can’t, for the baby’s sake, so I’m leaving Virginia and I need your help.”

“You’ll get
me
arrested.”

I ignored her. “I need you to look out for my mom. Just call her every day to make sure she’s okay, see if she needs anything.” I reached into my purse and pulled out a credit card. “She might need groceries if I’m gone more than a couple weeks.”

“A couple weeks!”

“And actually, if you could use the card every few days for whatever, it might be good to leave some kind of record that I’m still in Virginia.”

Pamela leaned back in her seat to look up at the car roof. “There’s something really weird about this; I have a really bad feeling. You know she’s using you.”

“Well obviously she’s using me, but it’s not about her.” Implying of course that it was only about Molly, that I was sacrificing my life to save her.