Girl Overboard (42 page)
My eyes drooped.
Old neighborhoods with brownstone buildings. Brownstone buildings in Manhattan, the kind Mom had hoped we would live in…
My dream drifted to Dad’s voice: “Bits, we need to talk.”
Mom’s breath caught as worry sprouted like invasive morning glory, entwining every nerve, every terrible possibility. She asked, “What’s wrong? Is everything okay? Is it your mom? Is she okay?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Can you meet me in an hour? At the Starbucks near my office?”
“Is it your job?”
“No, we just need to talk. Can you come here?”
“Thom, I can’t drop everything while the movers are here. Reb’s sick. And I’ve got to get Reid from his friend’s. Remember, only you have a car.” There it was, her perennial accusation in full bloom. Even sick, I could hear the constant chorus of her blame.
“Take the train. It goes direct from Newport.”
“Just tell me what we need to talk about.”
I wanted to wake up now. The sense of foreboding was so overpowering, I had to claw my way out of this dream, this now. I wanted to throw off my comforter, run to Mom’s room, tear the phone from her hands.
“Bits,” Dad said as though he had practiced this a billion times, “I’ve been seeing someone.”
“Oh, Thom,” Mom whispered, cell phone clutched to her ear. “What have you done?”
“We need to talk.”
“It’s Giselle, isn’t it?”
Pause. Then Dad, surprised: “Yes.”
“How could you?” Mom asked, her voice fracturing.
Only then did I pry my eyes open. Only then did I realize this was no fever dream but a vision I had seen and heard as if I were in my mother’s skin. A vision colliding with reality. A vision unfolding into Now. Mom was racing up the stairs. Her face may have been hidden behind her hands, but nothing could stifle the raw and painful sobs that stole out of her.
“Mom…” I whispered.
Somehow I got to my feet, head whirling, the marble floor freezing my feet swaddled in thick socks. Somehow I stumbled to the stairs, unconquerable as slick, sheer rock face. There was no way I could climb to the second floor. One of the movers looked at me and said, “I think your mom needs you.”
This perfect stranger held his arms out to me and waited in silent question.
I nodded.
He swung me into his arms and carried me upstairs to the dark-stained door, heavy and closed. Inside, I could hear the animal crying of a woman in pain.
“What should we do?” the man asked as he lowered me to my feet.
“I don’t know,” I said. I may have found my voice, but finding my balance was harder. I reached for the wall as my world tilted beneath me. “Maybe you should just go?”
Then I opened the door to find my mother collapsed on the floor. Instinct carried me to her, where I sank to my knees and cradled her in my arms, both of us surrounded by a wall of boxes filled with her hopes for our new life here.
T
his is what a girl does in crisis. When her world is shattering. When she is cut off from her friends back home because she doesn’t have a landline phone or an Internet connection (her dad didn’t think to add these functions before they moved). And the thick, stone walls block cell phone reception as effectively as they do her mother’s sobs.
This is what a girl does.
She goes outside to call the Bookster moms and leaves messages with each one. And because she is afraid to leave her mother alone for too long, she texts her own friends. Then, her boyfriend.
She ignores the barricade of boxes in the living room that need to be put away.
She listens to the eerie silence after her mom stops crying. The silence is worse than the crying.
She falls apart on her own.
Half an hour later, her mom’s friends haven’t called back. Or her own.
So she calls her grandfather, the one her father has ironically called unreliable. She leaves a garbled message. The words are unclear, but the intent is not:
SOS. Your daughter needs you.
Because he does not answer, she rings her grandmother, the one she hasn’t seen in two years, maybe three. She doesn’t leave a message, because what words can bridge the gap of silence between them?
And then, because she has no one else to call, she phones a neighbor.
A neighbor her mom bribed at Starbucks to be her friend. A neighbor she’s met three times.
A neighbor whose last name she’s forgotten or perhaps has yet to learn.
The neighbor flies into her house a mere five minutes later.
The neighbor takes one look at her and says,
Lie down, honey. I’ll take care of this
.
The neighbor sprints upstairs to her mom’s bedroom. And opens the door. And says, “Oh, Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth? Since when had her mom started going by her full name?
The girl asks herself what else about her parents doesn’t she know?
But then the neighbor tells her mom that Thom is a jerk. That all men lose their brains in their forties.
The neighbor says go meet him. Figure out what’s really happening.
The neighbor picks the place to meet—a private bar in a hotel not far from here.
The neighbor says,
You won’t know anyone there.
The neighbor says,
I’ll drive you and wait in the parking lot. However long it takes.
The neighbor says,
Pull yourself together. You are strong. You must be strong for your kids.
The neighbor leads her mom downstairs and puts her cell phone in her hand. The neighbor says,
Call him.
The neighbor opens the front door.
The neighbor says,
Fight.
Nothing but the Truth (and a few white lies)
North of Beautiful
Return to Me
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Copyright
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2007 by Justina Yi-Yen Headley
Text © Justina Chen Headley
Excerpt from
Return to Me
Copyright © 2013 by Justina Yi-Yen Headley
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: January 2008
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ISBN 978-0-316-02838-7