When We Were Friends (48 page)

The world would always be a dangerous place for us. At some point in the next year or two, before I registered Molly for school, I’d need to find a way to get her a fake birth certificate and social security number. (And how did one do that? Ask at street corners in big cities? Look for hooded men selling stolen electronics from car trunks? I was so not cut out for delinquency.) If it was ever discovered, she’d be taken from us. And this is why I was putting off these
next steps. I needed to figure out how to do this right, and I was trying to avoid thinking about consequences until I absolutely had to.

If we were caught, what would our sentence be? A year in jail? Two? More? If worst came to worst, would it be better for Molly to live in foster care at the age of four than at three? Impossible questions. And so, for now, I didn’t let myself ask them.

Especially since nowadays, it wasn’t only Molly who’d be in danger.

I heard the sound of tires on the road and looked up, stretching my back, hoping it was Alex home with the groceries. Pregnancy was making me alternately ravenous, nauseated, or nauseatingly ravenous.
Taco
, Alex called him, because it sounded slightly less ridiculous than
Dorito
or
Heinz Kosher Dill Pickle
.

But it wasn’t Alex’s car. It was a lime green Dodge, the type of car prevalent in rental lots, and it paused by the driveway and then continued down the street. Two minutes later it was back and it stopped in front of the house, sun reflecting off its windows. For a minute the engine idled and then it cut out. I slowed Molly’s swing, ignoring her protests, and lifted her to the ground. “I’ll put you back on in a minute,” I said, eyeing the car warily. “Let’s see if they need help.”

And then, the door opened.

The woman’s hair was cut in a chin-length bob. She was model-thin, wearing skinny jeans and a red pashmina draped about her shoulders. Her nose was still crooked. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

I felt suddenly numb, like my entire body had been swathed in cotton batting. I reached for Molly’s hand and gripped it tight, the move instinctual. My brain hadn’t yet kicked into gear.

She started tentatively across the lawn, stopped several feet away, then wiped at her eyes quickly and continued until she reached us. “You’re so big,” she whispered, then shook her head. “And so beautiful; you turned out so beautiful.” She fingered one of Molly’s pigtails, then looked up at me, her face pink, cheeks glassy with tears. “She looks like me, don’t you think? Her eyes, her coloring. Oh Jacqueline …”

I was shaking, my mind so full it felt empty, like all the conflicting
thoughts were crammed so tight they had no room to move. “Molly,” I said. “Her name’s Molly.” My voice was not my voice. It was coming from somewhere far above my cotton-swathed self, sounding muted like my ears were clogged with water.

I watched Sydney kneel to set both hands on Molly’s waist, and the alarm on Molly’s face. “Mommy?” she said and Sydney gasped, then pulled Molly tight against her.

And it was this gasp of joy that clunked me back into my body, Sydney’s ludicrous assumption that Molly would remember. “I know, baby,” she said, “I know what you must be thinking, and you have to understand I didn’t want to leave you. I thought about you every minute, every second of every minute …”

“You’re scaring her,” I said curtly as Molly wriggled free, raising her arms to me. “Mommy!” she said and I lifted her, watching Sydney’s face slowly lose its color. She stepped away and brought a trembling hand to her lips.

Of course Sydney was alive, of course. They’d searched the ocean but they never found a body. Suicide by drowning had struck me as completely unlike Sydney, who’d told me once that she intended to be cremated so that her body would never reach a state of decay. And I’d thought several times of how strange it was that she’d chosen that way to go. Maybe part of me had always known. Suicide wasn’t Sydney’s style.

“How’d you know we were here?” I said.

“I’ve looked you up, your website, actually ordered one of your paintings for my bedroom. The site says you’re married and you live in Mendham, so I figured you were still in the same house.” She hugged her arms around her waist, her gaze dropping to my belly. “Is it—”

“Alex’s? Yes.”

She pressed her lips between her teeth, nodded quickly, paused and then nodded again.

“Come inside,” I said. “You can carry her if she’ll let you, maybe hold her in your lap.” Setting the boundaries, implying that I had the right to allow this and that Molly had the right to refuse.

But Sydney took another step back, despair in her eyes. “I’m not staying. I thought I’d be able to but I … can’t.”

Molly turned to look at Sydney, shyly, her face half-hidden by my sweater. I rubbed at her back, trying to steady my heart.

“Every month I was away I was becoming a little more whole, and I thought seeing her …” Her shoulders stiffened. “But it’s not helping. I needed to see her, but now I’m breaking again.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. “I just want to give you this. In case she ever needs to know.”

I hesitated, then took the paper from her. A phone number and the name Cécile Godenot, with an address in Nice, France. “You?” I said.

“My father, all I knew about him was his name, Philippe. He lived somewhere in the U.S. and he was probably French-Canadian, but I wanted to try and reclaim his heritage, and I thought living in Nice would help me find something. But all it showed me is I won’t ever feel like I belong anywhere.”

I knew which painting she’d bought, had thought it incredible that someone would be willing to pay an extra hundred dollars for me to ship it overseas. Had felt giddy that my work would be hanging in a home halfway across the world. The painting was of Molly from two years ago, her arms reaching forward in both celebration and plea, asking to be held.
Returning Home
, I’d called it.

I folded the page one-handed and slipped it into my pocket, then said, “I can send you pictures, let you know how she’s doing.”

“No. No, please don’t; I want to imagine her like this. Or actually I want to imagine her as a baby, not a girl, never a teenager, never an adult who doesn’t know me or who just knows the types of things you’ll say about who I was.”

“I won’t tell her anything you wouldn’t want her to know,” I said. “Why would I? What would be the point?”

“Because there’s nothing much nice to say, is there? And she should hate me, I deserve it.”

“But Molly doesn’t deserve it. Don’t you remember what it was
like to hate your mother?” I hesitated, then said, “Hold on a minute, okay? Stay here, I want to show you something.”

I whispered in Molly’s ear, then set her down and started toward the house. At the doorway I turned to watch Molly take Sydney’s hand, and lead her to the swing. Stood there, frozen, watching Sydney lift Molly onto the seat and tentatively kiss the top of her head before she started to push. And the sway of Molly’s tiny body, away and back and away and away and away.

Inside, Star was on the phone. It was one of her latest obsessions, talking daily to everyone she knew in town, as well as her old friends from Virginia. Rather, I thought, like Alex’s childhood habit of praying for everyone around him, his fear of missing someone on the day they’d need a hand from God. But this was a healthy obsession. I sometimes stood just out of sight listening to her laughter and chatter about her granddaughter and the grandson on his way, thinking what it meant to have a full life. It meant a life defined not by what we lacked, but by what we’d managed to build despite it all. Star would never remarry, might never again venture outside this half acre, and still spent an inordinate amount of time on readings and worries. But if I asked her now, she probably would say her life was full.

I walked upstairs, into Molly’s bedroom, and pulled a painting off the wall. Brought it downstairs and outside, where Sydney was now sitting by Molly in the grass, listening to her tell a rather mangled version of Chicken Licken and the falling sky. “And then Goosey Loosey!” she said.

This close, their likeness was unmistakable. The same wide blue eyes, the same squarish chin, and I’d slowly dyed both our hair back to its natural shade, transitioning Molly’s through increasingly lighter reddish browns over the months so that it now almost matched Sydney’s strawberry blonde. Now I wished I’d continued to lighten her hair until it matched my own color. Kept her fully mine.

Sydney turned as I approached and I knelt beside them and handed her the picture. “This is what I’ll show Molly when she asks about you,” I said.

Sydney touched the redheaded girl in the bed, the silhouetted figure kneeling over her. “It’s me and Molly?”

“No,” I said, “the little girl’s you; it’s me and you. What I’ll tell her is how things used to be, and how you were the one who really taught me how to be a mom.”

I’d painted the picture the month after I’d heard of Sydney’s death, a portrait of the little girl who, when we’d played house, had never wanted to be the mother, always the daughter.
Sing to me
, she’d say and so I’d sing about twinkling stars and sweet chariots, and she’d smile up at me with drowsy eyes.
I had a nightmare
, she’d say.
Please don’t go
.

I’d painted that girl, curled in bed with me kneeling to kiss her forehead, and I’d hung it at the foot of Molly’s bed so she’d see it first thing when she woke. I hadn’t known what I’d say if someday she asked who the girls were, whether I’d have enough distance by then to tell her the girl in bed was her mother, or if I’d just say she’d once been my best friend. But now I knew I could tell the truth, that she’d been both. I’d show her the scar on my palm and tell her about the day we’d shared blood, the pain of it and the realization that I’d been changed forever. How I’d wanted to show everyone the wound, how it was part of me now, would help define my present and my future, for better or worse, till death. It had made me stronger but also more vulnerable because that’s the way love always does. You know it might hurt but you go into it anyway, and hang on for as long as your broken skin will let you.

“It’s your bedroom,” she said slowly. “I should’ve realized. I remember it so well, you know? That lamp with the green-woven ribbons, the old headboard with the daisy-shaped pedestals; I loved that bedroom. I used to wish I could just live there and not have to go home.”

“That’s Molly’s bed now,” I said. “Remember the tic-tac-toe game we played on the back of the headboard? It’s still there.”

She looked up at me, held my eyes, and I felt something inside me loosening. Did I forgive her? No. I couldn’t forgive what she’d done to Molly, not just the act of burning her back, but the even worse pain
Molly would carry once she found out what had been done to her, pain that would never go away. I couldn’t forgive Sydney but maybe I could find a way to accept that she’d truly believed she was doing the right thing for them both. Could trust that inside she was better than the person she’d become.

We all looked up as Alex’s car pulled into the driveway. Sydney stiffened, dropped the painting, and I set a hand on her arm. “Stay for dinner,” I said. “Alex was planning to make salmon; he’s seriously the best cook.”

But, of course, she’d know that. I shrugged back my shoulders. “He’ll want to see you, and Star will too. And Molly, she’s old enough that she might remember you if you stay a little longer.”

Alex stepped from the car, squinted over at us and then his eyes widened and his jaw went slack. The color drained from Sydney’s face and she rose onto her knees, looking frantic like she was about to run until Molly grabbed for her sleeve. “And then, and then,” Molly said, “Chicken Licken, he went to Foxy Loxy and then!” She smiled up at Sydney.

“The sky fell,” Sydney said, still looking at Alex. My eyes flicked from her face to his and back, thinking how all this time I’d convinced myself that it hadn’t been real love, that she’d just loved being adored and taken care of. But watching her, I could see the pain of what she’d had and lost written all over her face.

I looked down at the painting she’d dropped in the grass, the shadow of the woman bent to comfort the child. I’d taken care of her then and I could do it again now, just for this one night. Sharing dinner with Sydney wouldn’t heal her, but it might convince her that it wouldn’t be wrong to search for healing. You have to know you deserve a rightful place in the world in order to go about finding it.

I willed Alex to come forward, to at least take Sydney’s hands and show some sign of relief that she was alive. But when he didn’t I reached for her myself, vaguely pleased that among the myriad of feelings inside me, none of them was fear. “Stay,” I said.

Random House Reader’s Circle sat down with the lovely Elizabeth Joy Arnold at a favorite café in her rural hometown of Hopewell, New Jersey
.

Random House Reader’s Circle:
Have you always been interested in writing fiction, or did that interest develop later in life? Your background is in chemistry, and you have a postgraduate degree from Princeton. What led you to that field, and what then inspired you to start writing? Are there any similarities between chemistry and creative writing?