Letty and I got in the backseat and Cora drove. It was full dark now, and Letty leaned against me and fell asleep with me stroking her hair. The drive home seemed shorter and was a lot less emotional than the drive up, and I walked Letty right into the house and steered her toward the bathroom.
“Shower up and get into bed,” I said. “I’ll be in to check on you in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice cracking slightly as I turned away. “Mom?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, nearly a whimper.
“Okay, don’t get all upset again. I’m just glad you’re home, I’m glad you’re okay, and I want you to get cleaned up and in bed.”
If it was a relief to me to go into autopilot mom-mode, then it was also clearly a relief for her. For the first time in a long time, something I’d not noticed until now, Letty seemed happy to simply be the child in the relationship, amenable to being told what to do.
But I felt no sense of triumph at the realization, only a deepening fear that I had lost some knowledge of who my daughter was without even noticing. With Letty in the bathroom I looked for Cora, finding her dropping Letty’s things in the guest room.
“Thanks, Cora,” I said.
“No problem,” she said. “How’s she doing?”
“Weird,” I answered with a laugh. “I don’t know, like she’s ten and happy to be ten.”
“She’s happy to be with her mother,” she said. “She feels safe with you.”
“She feels safe with you, too. You’re the one she called.”
“Only because I can’t ground her for the rest of her life.”
“Maybe. But, there’s no question that the two of you have become closer on this trip.”
Cora sank down onto the edge of the bed and closed her eyes for a moment.
“Are you okay?” I immediately asked, dropping to my knees in front of her. “Are you in pain?”
She laughed. “Oh, well, I have no idea how to answer that right now. No, no, I’m not in pain. I’m all right. Tired. I’m just constantly tired.”
“You too, into bed. You have a big day tomorrow. I’ll be taking you, no arguments.”
“I’m not Letty. You don’t need to mother me, Ali.”
“Someone has to,” I said.
She didn’t argue either. With Letty in the shower and Cora washing up in her bathroom, I took a moment to sit on the sofa and collect my thoughts, but it was no use. I heard the far-off sound of Letty’s cell phone, the phone she’d taken out of our closet.
I rushed to the guest room and grabbed it from her purse, flipping it open before the call was lost.
“Hello?”
“Letty?”
“This is Letty’s mother. Is this Seth?” I could hear my voice shaking a little and was surprised and infuriated with myself that I was afraid of talking to a teenage boy.
There was a long moment of silence.
“Uh, yeah. Is—Where’s Letty?”
“Letty is home, with me. Where are you, Seth? What happened today?”
“She’s okay?”
“She’s upset, but she’s here. Now I want to know about you. What exactly did you think you were doing taking my daughter to Venice? You do know that she’s fifteen? That her father is a police officer?”
“I—I know, yeah, I do know.”
“So what did you do to my daughter that had her calling in a panic for me to come get her?”
“I didn’t do anything, I swear, I didn’t. I got—I screwed up.”
I didn’t know this kid, but there was real fear in his voice. “What do you mean, you screwed up? What’s going on?”
“I can’t—” He broke off into a frustrated groan. “I’m—they’re holding me. I was just trying to get hold of Letty so I could tell her I was okay. I knew she had to be worried.”
“What do you mean? Who’s holding you?”
“Well, you know, I mean, the cops, you know?”
“Great, that’s great. What happened? Why are they holding you? Have they charged you with anything? Where are your parents?”
He blew out his breath hard enough into the phone that I pulled Letty’s cell away from my ear. “Seth?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you called your parents? I’m sure they’re worried about you.”
“Oh man. No, no my parents aren’t worried about me. But hey—hey, uh, Mrs. Gutierrez?”
I had always told Letty’s friends to call me
Ali
. But I wasn’t willing to do that this time, not like this.
Mrs. Gutierrez
was fine.
“Could you just tell Letty, just tell her that I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave her alone there, and I thought I’d be back quick, and—”
“Seth. Seth, listen to me: Do your parents know you’re in jail?”
“No! No, man, shit. Look, I mean, I’m sorry I cussed, okay? No, they won’t be able to find my parents. It’s just not—it’s not gonna happen, okay?”
His voice had climbed high, betraying his fear, and I couldn’t help myself.
“What can I do to help you, Seth? Why can’t they contact your parents?”
“My mom hasn’t been around for, what? Fifteen years? And my dad—my dad wanted me gone anyway, okay? He’s sure as hell not going to answer the phone or do anything to get me out. So, look, I’m really sorry about everything. Please tell Letty that I love her—”
We were both shocked into silence at that.
“Okay, so, sorry,” he said.
“Tell me where you’re at, Seth,” I said, but he had already hung up.
“Mom?”
I closed Letty’s phone and turned to her. I didn’t know how long she had been there. She was in her ancient Hello Kitty pajamas. When we picked her up from the party and she’d changed into them at home, I had been shocked at how obscene she had suddenly looked in them. They were too small, years too small, and had been washed so many times the fabric had thinned to something between lace and fog.
Everything about her that night had been tawdry: her hair dry and slept on, her expression rebellious and pouting, her posture loose-limbed, her arms and legs too long and splayed in the pseudosexual manner of fourteen-year-old models.
Tonight, the pajamas were the same, but everything else was different. Her hair was still damp, combed tightly back into a low ponytail in a sprung scrunchy; her face was scrubbed clean of make-up, her eyes were wide and scared, and she held herself closely together, as if prepared for cold.
My little girl broke my heart, but I made a mental note to discard the Hello Kitty pajamas once she had changed out of them.
“Yeah, honey?”
“Was that . . . ?”
“Come on in and sit down. It’s time for you to tell me what’s been going on.”
I kicked my shoes off and scooted up on the bed, against the headboard, and patted the bed next to me. She came hesitantly, but at last she came and she talked, settling against me and telling me about how much she felt she’d changed in comparison to the kids she went to middle school with, how she met Seth in the courtyard at lunch, how they’d fallen in love, and then, God help me, that they had slept together the night of the party.
“And . . .” I couldn’t frame what I wanted to ask her properly. “Are you okay? Was it . . . painful? Were you scared?”
“You’re not mad?”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’d say that,” I said. “I am. I think you’re much too young—”
“How old were you?”
“That’s not the point.”
She pulled away so she could look me in the eye. “Why not?”
“Because it was a different time, a long time ago, and because I know a lot more now than I did then. I was too young, too, and I was pressured into it. I was afraid, of a lot of things, making him mad for one. And I thought I was older than I really was.”
“Mom.”
I sighed. “I was fifteen, Letty, but older than you. You were technically still fourteen.”
“Was it Dad?”
“This conversation isn’t about me, Letty. It’s about you. We’ll talk more about me one day, but not tonight. Now, were you pressured?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I didn’t really want it to happen there, like that, but I did want to do it—sorry. I did want to, with him, and I told him I did.”
What was I supposed to do? It was already over, there was no going back. I wanted, more than anything, to wail and protest that she was too young enough times that it would somehow make a difference in the universe and I could turn the clock back. But at no time during my life had that ever worked, and I’d tried it plenty. So I took a deep breath and continued to ask the questions that the situation called for.
“And did you use protection?”
“Mom,” she said, a thin hint of a whine creeping back into her voice.
“Did you?”
“We used a condom, okay?”
“And was that the only time?”
“Well, yeah, remember? You grounded me.”
“You skipped school today. You might have skipped every day for the past few weeks for all I know.”
“But I didn’t.”
“Okay.”
“Was that him on the phone?”
“It was, and I’ll let you know what he said, but I want to hear the rest. Why did you run away, and what happened in Venice?”
Letty looked away from me, her face turning crimson.
“Letty. It’s time to be honest with me.”
“You’re going to be mad.”
“I’m already mad. But you’re home, you’re okay, and we’re going to work this out.”
She looked at me speculatively for a moment, gauging whether I was telling the truth, and then she took a deep breath, sighing it out before she started, resignation heavy in her voice.
“Seth wanted to go see his cousin.”
“Did you plan this?” I asked, unable to keep myself from interrupting.
“He asked me to go a couple of days ago,” she said, then fell silent, waiting for me to fire another question at her. I restrained myself, and she started again. “So we were just supposed to go up for a few hours, to the beach where they have all the shark’s teeth, you know? And then we were going to come right back. But there were a bunch of people there and everyone was drinking, and when we went back to his cousin’s place, they took off—”
“Who took off?”
“Seth and Jimmy, his cousin.”
“Were they drinking?”
“Everyone was drinking, Mom.”
“Were you?”
Letty looked away from me.
“Yes. But I only had a beer, that was all.”
“Okay, keep going.”
“So they left, and then Jimmy’s roommate was trying to get me to drink more. They were playing beer pong, and—”
“How old is Jimmy?” I asked. I wanted to find Jimmy and his roommate and wring their necks.
“I don’t know, maybe twenty?”
“And his roommate?”
“Mom,” she protested.
“All right. So he wanted you to play a drinking game?”
“Yeah, but I was getting nervous about what time it was, and Seth wasn’t back, so I went into the bedroom and tried to call him, but he didn’t answer. And then Jimmy’s roommate came in the bedroom, and . . .”
“And what, sweetie?” I asked softly, praying silently that nothing like what I was envisioning happened.
“He was trying to, you know, kiss me and everything.”
My hands curled into fists, and I breathed deeply, trying to hide my fury. Grown men feeding my daughter alcohol, coming on to her; I got a little taste of how out of control Benny felt.
Letty rushed forward. “But I got away.”
“Got away? Did you have to fight? Did he hurt you?”
“No, Mom, I just, you know, I screamed, and someone came to the door, and I got out and ran to the bathroom and locked the door.”
“Well, how far did he get?”
“He just—kissed me,” she said, in a near whisper.
“Are you sure, Letty? If anything else happened, I need to know. Everything will be okay, but I need to know.”
“No,” she said, sounding stronger. “He scared me. He held on to me, my arms, when he was trying to kiss me, but nothing else happened. It just scared me.”
I stared at her, trying to decide if she was telling me the truth. I thought she was.
“Okay,” I said. “So how did you get out?”
“I stayed in the bathroom for a while, and after I heard him go in the living room I went back to the bedroom, locked the door, and then went out the window.”
“Good girl,” I said, so relieved by her escape that I forgot to be angry with her.
“I can handle myself, you know,” she said, her voice filled with bravado.
“You should have never been in the situation to begin with,” I said. “And jumping out of a window isn’t
handling
yourself. I’m glad you did it, but knowing how to handle yourself means keeping yourself out of questionable situations to begin with. Skipping school, lying to me and your father, and leaving town with a boy we’ve never met is
not
handling yourself well. It’s immature, and . . .” I trailed off when Cora appeared in the doorway.
As I had been lecturing Letty I had forgotten about Cora, about why she was here, about the
fifty percent
. I stared at my daughter, all of my anger draining out of me as I considered how irrevocably things might change soon.
“Everything okay in here?” Cora asked.
“It’s fine,” I said quietly. “We’re fine.”
“Okay. Good night, Letty.”
“ ’ Night, Aunt Cora,” Letty said, looking from me to Cora rapidly, aware that something had changed.
I took a deep breath as Cora turned away.
“Okay, we’ll talk more about this tomorrow,” I said. “But I think I’m done for the night. And you need to get to sleep.”
I reached out and pulled her toward me, and, surprised, she let me hold her against me, breathe in the warm scent of shampoo and soap and girl. For the moment I was just happy to have her here, safe, for as long as I could keep her that way. I finally pulled away and stood, dizzy and fatigued with emotion.
“Wait, Mom,” Letty said, reaching for my hand and tugging me back. I sank down on the edge of the bed. “Are you . . . are you and Dad planning on having a baby?”