Drowning Is Inevitable (15 page)

Unfolding the paper, she looked at me with a smirk. “Okay, so Lillian had this thing where she ranked everything. She'd leave ‘top ten' lists everywhere. And they were ridiculous: top ten reasons not to marry a farmer, top ten reasons to drink Strawberry Hill before football games, things like that.”

We laughed. She looked down at the paper, and her smile died. I read the words on top of the page, words I'd read over and over again: “Top ten reasons never to leave St. Francisville.”

I watched her face as she read it. “I guess you've read this,” she said.

I could recite it. Lillian listed all the things she loved about the town, my tree and the cemetery. Numbers two and three on her list were names, Beth Hunter and my dad. Her number one reason: “The world is too big.”

Beth folded the letter and put it back in the box. She put the lid on it and gave it back to me. There were tears in her eyes, and I felt hot.

“I want to help you,” she said, her voice thick. She wiped her eyes. “But as much as I'd like you to stay here, I don't think it's a good idea. If your dad comes to New Orleans, this'll be the first place he'll come.”

“You don't know him anymore,” I said. “He won't come to New Orleans.”

“I disagree.”

My face fell.

“But I have some money saved. You can have it.”

“I don't want to take your savings. I wish I didn't need … I wanted to come see you anyway. I've wanted to see you for a long time. It's just, me and Jamie …”

She touched my knee again. “I'm glad you came. I want to do this. Besides, you're on her list: help someone who really needs it.”

Number eighty-two
.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I have almost five thousand dollars saved.”

My eyes went round at that number.

“You'll need it,” Beth said. “Who knows how much this guy's gonna charge? And then you'll need money to get around. Can you trust this guy?”

Could we trust a friend of Vicky's? Probably not. “I don't know.”

“If you get caught …”

“I won't tell anyone you helped us.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“I can't get the money until tomorrow. The café on Napoleon, can you meet me there tomorrow afternoon, around two?”

“Yes.”

I was desperate to spend more time with Beth. I wanted to play twenty questions like I did with my dad, but I thought about Jamie and Max in the lobby of the building like sitting ducks.

Beth stood up.

I guessed it was time to go. She walked me to the front door.

“It's going be you that meets me tomorrow and not the police?” I asked.

“It'll be me.”

“Thank you for the pictures, and for everything.”

“You're welcome, Olivia.”

She looked like she wanted to hug me, but instead she reached for my hands.

“All my life I was worried it was me,” I said. “That her life was perfect until me.”

She squeezed my fingers hard, too hard.

“It wasn't you.”

My fingertips pulsed

Max and Jamie were sitting in the hall outside her door. “People were looking at us funny, just hanging out in the foyer,” Max said.

Jamie stood. “I heard you laughing. Did it go okay?”

“She's gonna help us,” I said, massaging my fingers.

“Are you okay?” Jamie asked again. “You look weird.”

I was drunk on her memories and words. “Yeah, I'm fine. She's going to give us money, a lot of money. But we can't stay the night here. They found the truck and everyone knows we're in New Orleans. She's afraid my dad might come to see her. She said to meet her at the café tomorrow at two”

“Can we trust her?” Max asked.

“We can trust her. She's doing it as a favor to my mom.”

The look on Max's face said he wasn't sure, but he said, “Good. Let's go.”

Once we were back on the street, Jamie fell in step with me.

“She's just like we imagined,” I said. “I showed her the box, and she told me some really funny stories. She gave me these.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the pictures.

Jamie took them. “Wow. Look how tiny you were. Is this your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

“She was beautiful.” He handed them back to me, then dipped his head to me and whispered, “Did you find your mom?”

“No, but I'm getting closer.”

It wasn't you.

When we got back to Steven's, Jamie took a seat on the front porch swing. I went to join him, but Max reached out, stopping me. He leaned down and his lips brushed my ear and I stayed still, listening, but he didn't say anything. His face was so close that I closed my eyes, but that didn't matter because I could still see him. Suddenly, the weight of what Max wasn't saying hit me in the chest:
Don't go with him. Stay with me.
I felt like I was losing my way to the swing, and if I didn't move now, I might never get there. I gently pulled away from Max and walked to Jamie, sitting down to take my seat next to him. I turned my hand over, palm up, and Jamie slid his hand home to me.

V
icky Harrington walked up the steps to Steven's front porch, looking at me like she knew me but couldn't quite remember how or where from. Max looked from me to Jamie, figuring out who she must be from our expressions. It had been three years since Maggie last saw her mom, but it had been much longer for me. We were all still in elementary school. Maybe that was why I had such a hard time making the person from my memories be this woman standing in front of me. She looked so much like Maggie, the same height and the same eyes, but whereas Maggie's petiteness was endearing and then easily forgotten because of her magnified personality, Vicky Harrington looked like a dying child. It seemed possible that Vicky was working harder on her drug addiction than her singing. She smiled when she finally placed me, but it was a fearful one. She moved past us to the front door.

Maggie was still napping in one of the bedrooms, but no one could sleep through the happy noises that came from Steven when he saw Vicky standing in his living room. Maggie came down the hall and stopped when she saw her mom. It was easy to see from her expression that her mom didn't look like she did three years ago, and not for the first time I wondered what it was like to have a mother with a changing face.

Steven, oblivious to any tension in the room, took Maggie's hand and then grabbed Vicky's, and then he twirled them around in a Ring-Around-the-Rosy kind of way, not noticing that he was the only one smiling. After a few twirls he caught on and stopped. Vicky kept up the momentum, though, spinning around the room in slow motion, taking in all our faces. It was easy to see she was able to place everyone in the context of Maggie. She began dispensing pleasantries.

“This is a surprise.” She reached out and touched Maggie's arm. “Look at you. Wow.”

She turned to me. “You look so much like your mother. You even scared me a little bit on the porch.”

Looking at Jamie, she said, “I bet you're still as sweet as ever, and Max Barrow … You've grown up really nice. I can't believe you're all here.”

“They're here to see you, sweet Vicky,” Steven said, wrapping his arm around her and giving me a wink.

She looked around the room, and her face dropped, like she was sad there was no one else to be surprised to see. Then she perked up. “I'm singing across the street tonight. I don't really have a band at the moment, but the group that's playing lets me sing a couple of songs. Y'all should come check it out.”

We all nodded politely, and then a long stretch of silence laid itself out. Vicky looked back at Maggie and said, “Are you still singing?”

Maggie nodded.

Her mother ventured, “We could do a duet.”

The way she said it, childlike and hopeful, made my eyes tear up. Maggie nodded again, and then a silent but unanimous decision was made by all to exit to the porch, leaving Maggie alone with her mom.

I was the last one out. Reaching back to close the front door, I saw Maggie becoming a child again with Vicky standing in the room, her face losing its bravado and growing younger minute by minute. When the door clicked shut, I was envious of Maggie, because she was getting her face-to-face fix.

It felt awkward with all of us standing on the porch together, so I suggested to Jamie and Max that we take a walk. It was completely dark now, and there were only a few people on the street. We came to a section of the sidewalk where a group of homeless people was sleeping and had to go around them. I imagined the homeless people in New Orleans were very different from the ones in other cities. We were very likely stepping around poets, artists, or musicians, who had all left wherever they were from to come to this city. I liked to imagine it wasn't so they could “make it” but so they could be near each other.

We walked several blocks, looking into the store windows, no one saying anything. We stopped at an antique shop and looked at all the stuff: a mirrored table, a silver tray, a hairbrush. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought it was all taken from my grandmother's bedroom. I closed my eyes and saw her face. It wasn't the one she had when I left, but a new one, an older one. Her wrinkles were deeper, the lines sagging around her eyes, their color dulled. We had aged her even more, first Lillian and then me.

I wondered how Maggie was doing with her mom. I wondered if she'd asked her about the guy who could get us new IDs, and then I felt guilty, because they had so much other stuff to talk about. But she'd have to get around to it. We hadn't talked about what she should tell her mom we needed new identification for, and I hoped Maggie could come up with something believable.

It was probably wrong to leave all that up to Maggie, but I knew she wanted some time alone with her mom. Then the truth hit me, the way it does sometimes, and I opened my eyes to the realization that sometimes what we want is not what we need, and maybe the last thing Maggie needed was to be left alone with a mother like Vicky.

I felt like my heart had caught on fire. Without explaining, I turned away from the shop and ran back to Steven's house. Jamie and Max followed.

We found Maggie sitting on the couch alone. She was the fourteen-year-old version of herself, and she was crying. All my life, I had never seen her cry. I'd always believed having a part-time mom was better than having no mom at all, but seeing Maggie now I thought it was probably better to lose your mother all at once.

“What happened?” Jamie asked.

“Where's your mom?” I asked.

Maggie didn't say anything. I sat down next to her on the couch. Maggie fell into me, her arms around my shoulders, her face pressing into my neck, her tears falling onto me, but she made no sound. There was no wailing to make up for all the crying she had never done, only voiceless tears.

I could tell when Maggie's emotions switched, her body tensing and the heat in it rising. I could tell when she stopped being sad.

“We talked for a little while, she asked when school started. She even asked about my dad. Then this guy came in and they went to the back room. I'm pretty sure he was her dealer.” She looked down at her lap, and the heat in her body rose so high it burned my skin where we were still connected at the knees. The heat dried her tears up from the inside.

“She told me to wait right here for her, and even though I knew who he was and what she was going to do, I just sat down and said, ‘Yes ma'am.' ”

Maggie stood up now, disconnecting from my body, leaving me cold. She walked toward the back room, and we got in line behind her like dominoes. I could hear Luke playing his guitar in his room, the music seeping out from under the door, dark and sad.

Maggie went inside, and we followed. Vicky and a man were sitting at the table in the middle of the room. The man looked like what I thought a drug dealer would look like—the kind of person who always looked dirty, no matter how clean they were.

I wasn't exactly sure of everything I was looking at on the table, but I recognized the needle. Vicky stood up, looking shocked, and backed away from the table as if distance would convince her daughter there was no wrongdoing. Maggie looked from her mom to this man, back and forth. I expected her to beat him and scream at him, or scream at her mom—something loud. Instead, she walked to the table and sat down. She was so calm it terrified me. She put her hands on the table. She turned over her arms, laying her veins open to the man, and said, “Make me understand.”

The burning in my heart started again. All eyes fixed on the two people in the center of the room. I looked at Vicky, waiting for her motherly instincts to kick in, but she just stood there and stared, as if waiting for Maggie to cross over to her side. I looked back at the door, hoping Steven would burst in and say, “No, this one's a baby,” rescuing us all, but there were no interruptions. The man looked at Maggie and shrugged, like it didn't matter to him who sat across from him. He reached out to touch her arm, stroking it from the crook of her elbow to her wrist, up and down, over and over. The man's thumb pressed in at the crease of Maggie's elbow, and I swear I felt it. My hand went to my own arm.

Max and Jamie stood on either side of me, and even though our feet were planted side by side, Max's body leaned forward at the same time as Jamie's leaned back. Through the wall, Luke's music picked up speed, and my breath did the same. When the needle touched Maggie's skin, the fire in my chest moved upward, burning my face. I kept waiting for the heat to thaw me so I could move and do something, so I could stop Maggie from proving her point. Yet I could only watch and wonder if we'd lose her as soon as the drug entered her veins, or if the loss would be gradual.

The room came alive when Maggie grabbed the needle and threw it at her mom.

“Fuck you!” she screamed at Vicky. She jumped up from the table, knocking the chair back. “Fuck. You.”

It was a test, and her mom had failed. Vicky ran out of the room. The dealer picked up his needle and followed her. We all looked at each other, all breathing hard, like we'd just come to the end of a race.

There was so much sorrow in Maggie's eyes. They filled again, tears spilling down her cheeks. The sight of them made me feel 102 years old. I reached out to her, my hand going to her arm. I rubbed the dot of blood away from the place where the needle had pricked her.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered before going out the door.

I looked at Jamie, his eyes too big in his face. I had to get him out of this place. I had to get him somewhere where it was safer to be lost, but Maggie needed us first.

I followed her down the hall. “Where are you going?”

She turned and looked at me once she got to the front door. “I'm going to sing.”

I left Max and a too-quiet Jamie sitting on the swing on Steven's front porch and walked over to the Maple Leaf. Sneaking in the back door, I was worried I'd be recognized as one of the troublemakers from the night before, but no one seemed to notice me. As promised, Maggie was already standing in the center of the stage, forgetting about the duet and taking her mom's spot completely. Vicky sat on the same barstool that Maggie had sat on the night before and watched her daughter. I made my way over to Vicky. The band began to play, not seeming to care who was there. For just a second Maggie didn't move, only looked at her mom. Then she leaned in to the microphone and opened her voice to the crowd.

When the song was finished, there was clapping and whistling, noises that always followed Maggie's performances. I looked back at Vicky to see her staring wide-eyed at her daughter. Anybody could see the pride in her eyes. Maggie wasn't looking in her mom's direction but instead into the crowd and at the band members, who were asking her to sing one more. She complied.

Once she was finished, she hopped down off the stage and walked over to me and Vicky, leaving her new fans disappointed. Her mom looked scared, even leaning back on her stool as Maggie approached.

“You used to know a guy who could get fake IDs, right?” she said. “I need a couple.”

Vicky seemed shocked that this was what Maggie wanted to talk about. “My friend Louis, he does good ones,” she said. Her voice was small, like she was the child now.

“Can he do passports?” Maggie asked.

Vicky's eyes went round. “Yeah. They're expensive, though.”

“How much?”

“I think they run a grand apiece. Maybe more.”

Maggie looked at me, and I nodded.

“We want 'em.”

Vicky looked from Maggie to me and back again. “Who are they for? Are you in trouble?”

“That's not something you need to worry about, and let's not pretend you really care.”

Vicky was quiet for a long moment. “He'll need to meet you. He decides who he works with.”

“Can you set it up?”

“Yeah. I'll come by Steven's tomorrow evening and tell you when and where.”

“Sounds good.” Maggie grabbed my hand and pulled me off the barstool. “Let's go.”

“Wait,” Vicky said. “We could still do the duet.”

Maggie went stiff. “I don't
ever
want to sing with you.”

We left the bar, Maggie still holding my hand. Hers was shaking, and I squeezed it.

Jamie and Max were still sitting on the swing. The two boys scooted over, making room for Maggie and me. With all four of us on the swing, it was reminiscent of being crammed in Max's truck, and I wished we could go back to that small world, when I thought there was a way out for all of us.

The music from the bar carried across the street to us. The voice was haunting, and Maggie turned her head to it.

I stood and faced Max. “Dance with me,” I said.

And he did.

The wood creaked under our feet, harmonizing with our movements. Max looked into my eyes and whispered, “You're beautiful.”

I loved this boy. Seconds ticked by. I felt my heartbeat in my ears, and my lips twitched to tell him.

Instead of making declarations, I whispered back, “So are you.”