How to Save a Life (17 page)

Dylan nudges my foot with his under the table.

“Can I get a refill first? Please? The waitress is totally ignoring me on purpose.” I lift my cup again, to no avail. I set it down and put my hands around it, concentrating on a slice of mushroom on the edge of Dylan’s plate. “All right. Mandy isn’t a relative. Mandy is an eighteen-year-old stranger who is large with child and occupying our guest room.”

“Aaaand…” Dylan prompts me.

“
And
my mom is adopting her baby.”

Cinders blinks. “That’s… unexpected.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“She’s not really a stranger,” Dylan says. “I mean, she’s been there two weeks. You’re getting to know her.”

“And what a treat that has been.”

“What’s wrong with her?” Laurel asks.

Before I can list the Things That Are Wrong with Mandy, Dylan jumps in. “Nothing is wrong with her. She’s just different from us.”

Cinders says, “Isn’t your mom a little old to be taking on a baby?”

“Yes!” Hey, maybe this telling thing isn’t so bad; finally I’m getting some sympathy. It all spills out. “I think it’s a huge mistake. And my mom didn’t even get a lawyer…. There’s no contract, no nothing. Just a flimsy e-mail agreement! My dad wouldn’t—” I stop myself. Dylan glances at me.

Cinders is gratifyingly appalled by the whole thing, and for the rest of lunch she and Laurel ask questions and express disbelief, like, on top of dealing with my dad’s death, now
this
. It’s great, really, and energizing, except when Dylan keeps defending Mandy and my mom. But it’s three against one and eventually he stops and by the time we get back to school I’m high on righteous indignation and the feeling that, once again, I’m a part of something, and I’m right.

I carry that energy through my shift at Margins, where there is lots of excitement because, while I was at school, Ravi got his man.

Ron fills me in. “Harmless middle-aged man on crutches comes into store. He talks me into letting him keep his backpack, right, because how else is he going to get his purchases up to the register? I’m an idiot.”

So Ravi was on the money with his theory about sneaky people acting disabled. I guess the rest: “He loads up his backpack with art books and other expensive crap? If anyone stops him, he can say, ‘I was going to pay. I am but a helpless man on crutches.’ ”

“Right. And it’s not the first time. Oh no. Ravi’s been trailing him from store to store. The guy’s been hitting every Margins in our region since before Christmas, but no one could ever quite catch him in the act. The guy’s a one-man cottage industry of stolen merch.” The cops came, he tells me; it was this whole scene.

“Where’s Annalee?” I ask.

“She took Ravi out to celebrate. She’ll be back soon.” He looks at his watch. “Actually I thought she’d be back by now. They left nearly two hours ago.” Ron smiles. “Think something’s going on between those two?”

“What? No.” I say it as if the very idea is nonsense, but for the next hour I find myself obsessed with wondering what Ravi and Annalee could possibly be up to all this time, and the comments she made when she first met him. I try to add up in my head the number of times he’s been in the store since that night. Five? Six? Dude works fast. Anyway,
we’re
the ones who had a bonding experience first. Okay, so that experience involved injury to Ravi’s face, and me apparently ignoring him for an entire year of Ms. Schiff’s computer science class, but the point is we have history.

When Annalee finally shows up, Ravi is right behind her, and they are happy, happy, happy. I’m trapped in the customer service booth in the middle of the store, watching them be happy from a distance. Annalee has that look on her face, that energy you get when you have a new crush. Or when you get good news, or there’s a fun trip coming up or even just the weekend. Like despite all the b.s. that goes on day after day, life has some zip to it after all.

I don’t know when I felt that last. I highly doubt I look the way Annalee looks now when I’m with Dylan. Definitely not lately; we’ve been off and on for so long. Did I feel that way for at least a few hours when we got back together? I can’t remember if I
ever
felt that way. I must have, before.

I don’t know.

Annalee comes over to the customer service booth. “Hey, Jill.” She toys with the store keys she wears on a black leather cord around her neck. “I’m going to buy a frap for Ravi. I’ll be on in about fifteen, and then you can take your break, okay?”

Fifteen? I know our barista isn’t the fastest in the West, but how long does it take to make a frap?

“Sure.”

And off they go to the café area, laughing it up.

“Nice takedown,” I say. Way too loud. Even Ron, clear across at the register, looks up.

Ravi turns around and says, “Thanks, Jill,” and Annalee walks with a noticeable bounce in her step.

Do you remember if I ever looked like that?
I want to call after him.
Like I had something to look forward to?

I’m still hanging on to the remnants of Laurel and Cinders’s reaction to the Mandy situation when I get home and find Mom in her office, working and listening to Neil Young, a cup of tea beside her keyboard. The desk lamp casts a halo of light around her. It’s a lonely scene. I shouldn’t go in and do what I’m about to do. The timing is wrong. There’s probably not a right time, though, which in the moment seems like reason enough to proceed.

I come in close, lean on the back of her chair. “What is that? Same thing you’ve been working on all month?”

She takes the glasses from the end of her nose and puts them on top of her head. “Yes. The feasibility study for RTD. They want to extend the light rail, and I’m trying to help them figure out how to do that without upsetting residents along the corridor here.” She hovers her fingers over a map on one of the two monitors she has set up.

Sometimes I forget my mom has this whole other life, where she’s great and competent and well paid for the consulting work she does with transportation-engineering firms and the city. She’s so smart at work stuff.

Then I see, taped to the other monitor, ultrasound pictures of Mandy’s baby. There are two: One doesn’t look like much, but the other one is a close-up of her face. Her hand is up by her mouth, her puffy little eyes shut, the outline of her nose clear. “Mom…” I say, unable to take my eyes off the picture of this person, this person who’s on her way into our family.

“Yes?”

Let it go, Jill. Let. It. Go
. “Never mind.” I almost touch her shoulders, almost lean over and kiss the top of her head. What I want more than anything in this moment is to have faith, the way she does, that everything’s going to be okay.

“What, Jill?” She spins her chair around; my arms drop. She touches the mole on her jaw. “You’ve been wanting to say something all week. I can tell, and it’s made me nervous. Spill it or let me get back to work.”

I grasp my fingers together, stuck. I have to ask. “Do you have something from Mandy about the father? Like a thing where he signed over his parental rights or something?”

Instantly she’s beyond irritated. “Why are you asking me this?”

Just as instantly, I manage to find that self-righteousness that was so sharp and fresh at lunch today. “Because you’ve never said anything, and I would think it’s kind of important. God. Sorry for caring.”

Mom speaks slowly. “Jill. I have been trying to involve you in this from the beginning. You practically put your hands over your ears every time I brought it up. Now you have questions?” She turns back to her computer. “Trust I’ve got it taken care of, and by all means don’t let it bother you.”

Her back is rigid, and though she’s moving the mouse around and typing figures into her map, I don’t buy that she’s paying any attention to her work.

“Well it does bother me. It bothers me. I’m sorry for how I was before.” She spins her chair to face me again. I take a deep breath and continue. “It didn’t seem real. I didn’t believe it was going to happen. Now that Mandy’s here, I’m just saying what if in five years, after we’re all attached to this thing, some dude comes knocking on the door and is all, ‘That’s my baby, give it over.’ ”

Mom picks up her mug of tea and gazes into it. Less irritated. More contemplative. “ ‘This thing’? You say that it wasn’t real
before
, but you still don’t see the baby as a human being who’s going to be in our lives for… ever. Since you’re so concerned about ‘this thing,’ I’ll tell you. Mandy did her best to contact the father, but she couldn’t. It was difficult because she…” Mom sighs, and her voice goes from serious to sounding
what-the-hell?
-ish. “She didn’t know his last name or live in the same town. She only saw him once.”

“It was a one-night stand?”

“It was a one-night stand.”

After that bullshit Mandy was saying last week about the baby being “made from love.”
Love!

“I didn’t want you to hold it against her,” Mom says. “Or the baby. So now you know.”

Now I know.

“Here’s another shocking revelation, Mom: That doesn’t make me feel any better. Dad would have asked more questions.” I blurt it. Stupidly. Meanly.

Chair spins back. Clicking of mouse. Entering of figures—traffic counts, GPS coordinates. “Well, he’s not here now, is he?”

As if either of us needed reminding. I try to sound less accusing this time. “I’m merely saying, the guy could turn up—”

“I
know
, Jill.” She turns around again, and her face—her face so much like mine, no matter what Mandy says about us looking nothing alike—is full of outrage, yet so alive. “The father could show up, Mandy could change her mind. The baby could be born deaf or blind. I could die tomorrow. I know. I know! You think I don’t know, after the year we’ve had, that anything could happen? That no matter what precautions you take, how smart you are, how much you prepare and plan, anything could happen.”

My eyes burn. I don’t know why she had to say that she could die tomorrow. Why did she have to say that part?

I’d miss her so much. It’s a jagged thing in my throat, how much I’d miss her, how much I miss her now, how much I want us to be able to find each other now that we don’t have Dad as a bridge between us.

I want to say it.
I’d miss you
. My vocal cords are paralyzed.

“You want to shut life out, Jill, that’s your choice. Push everyone away. Refuse change.” She laughs a little and throws her hands up. “You used to not give a damn about anything, but that was because you were
brave
, not cynical. You used to have so much courage. Dad and I would lie awake at night worrying about the trouble you’d get into because of your courage.”

They did? I had courage?

Mom continues, “I don’t know how you got so scared.”

She tosses it off, unthinking. We stare at each other. How can she say that? She does know. She does! I swallow, finally finding my voice. “I don’t know how you didn’t.”

What I mean is,
Tell me how
. Tell me how to keep being the way I was. But she’s still defending herself. “I have to believe…” She jabs at her collarbone. Her voice cracks. “I have to believe something surprisingly good can still happen.”

I nod and retreat to the living room, where I sit in Dad’s club chair and put my feet up on the ottoman, trying to understand Mom the way he understood her.

“Your mom doesn’t listen to sense,” he used to say.

“Your mom does what she does, damn the torpedoes,” he used to say.

“Your mom’s a nut,” he used to say. “I’m just along for the ride.”

I mean, I get it. I sort of get it. She’s not just doing this because she wants a baby, though I think she really does. She’s doing this to say a big eff you to fate, or God, or luck, or whatever it is that took Dad away from us.
I dare you
, she’s saying.
I dare you
.

Mandy