How to Save a Life (19 page)

She flicks a packet of sweetener between her fingers. Her face is smooth and worry-free, as if she’s only making friendly conversation.

“Where are they now?” I ask.

“Hmm?”

“If you’re so attached to your children, where are they now?”

The flicking stops. Her mouth hardens. “One’s at kindergarten, and the other is with the nanny.” She rips open the packet and dumps it into her tea. “Obviously you’re missing my point.”

I stand and let my purse accidentally knock over my cup. What’s left of my hot chocolate spreads out over the small table, and she can’t stop some of it from running over the edge and onto her lap. “Shit!” she says, grabbing for napkins.

“I hope you don’t use that language in front of your children.”

Outside it’s cold but sunny. It feels good, and I walk up and down the streets of the outside part of the mall, and I wonder: If you don’t grow up to be a wife or a mother, what are you? A person alone, always wanting to be one thing or the other or both? My mother was never a wife, and that’s what she wanted more than anything. She didn’t want to be a mother, and she wasn’t one. Where does that leave her? A husband makes you a wife, and a child makes you a mother. Robin, she has everything and is everything, because she had Mac and she has Jill and also her job. What if there isn’t anyone to make you something?

A lot of times when I look at the world and everyone in it, I feel like they all know something I don’t. I’m not dumb; I can see how it works. But it’s like double Dutch jump rope. In grade school I would watch the ropes fly and see girl after girl jump in and either get it right or get tangled in the ropes and laugh. I’d stand there with my hands ready and my body going back and forth, trying to get the rhythm and the right moment, and Ms. Trimble, the PE teacher, would say, “Come on, Mandy, everyone’s waiting,” and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out how to get in.

That’s how life feels to me. Everyone is doing it; everyone knows how. To live and be who they are and find a place, find a moment. I’m still waiting.

Jill

“You need to stop obsessing about her.”

Dylan and I are back at the pho place, only two weeks since the day I hid in his car.

“Having actual concerns is not obsessing. She’s living in our house. Bearing the child my mom wants. My sister. It’s kind of a big deal.” A largish blob of rooster sauce shoots into my broth from the bottle I’ve been squeezing—too hard, apparently. My conversation with Mom last night still bothers me, so much, but I haven’t told Dylan about it. Maybe he’ll agree with her, say I’m too closed off to life, a coward. Which isn’t something I need to hear; it’s not like I know how to do anything about it.

“It’s going to be okay. Your mom is rock.”

“My mom is
not
rock, Dyl.” Fearless and indestructible aren’t the same thing. He should have seen her on the day of the anniversary. He should see the way she still looks at Dad’s chair. “There’s this guy at work—” As soon as that much comes out of my mouth, I freeze, unexpectedly shy about saying Ravi’s name.

Dylan shovels noodles into his mouth with chopsticks and widens his eyes at me, nodding, as if to say,
Go on…
.

“Just this annoying loss control guy.”

“Loss control?”

“Theft prevention. Theft by employees or customers or whatever. Can I finish?”

“Continue.”

“So, he’s this annoying guy, this loss control dude from Corporate who, for some reason, is always hanging out at our store. He completely thinks he’s a superspy. I mean, he did catch this major thief, but he takes it all so seriously.” I’m talking into my bowl of broth, pushing bean sprouts and mint leaves around, and my face feels hot. “It’s lame.”

I don’t know why I’m saying he’s annoying. Dylan’s not the jealous type, so there’s no need to make Ravi into a nonthreat by going on and on the way I am, no reason not to mention that Ravi went to our school, signed my yearbook sophomore year, and said he bet we’d meet again. It’s actually kind of a great story. Only I don’t want to tell it. It feels personal, so mine.

Dylan steals one of my beef strips. “Anyone who takes anything seriously is ‘lame,’ according to you.”

Mom’s words come back:
Cynical
. No
courage
. “He wears these stupid suits.”

“Oh no. Not
suits
.”

Dylan’s been arguing with me all day. This morning I merely suggested that he park on the other side of the school lot from where he usually does, because the sun had melted the ice over there, and he said, “No, thanks,” and parked in his favorite, icy spot. Then in English I made a point about Anne Brontë being a more interesting Brontë than Emily and why did high schoolers around the country always have to read
Jane Eyre
, anyway, when there were other Brontës? And Dylan said, in front of the class, that
Jane Eyre
is awesome and why shouldn’t everyone have to read it? As if he’s even read any Anne or Charlotte. Now he’s defending Ravi, a stranger.

“Anyway. Yes, he’s an annoying suit-wearer, but he
is
good at what he does, and I thought I could hire him. As, like, a private investigator.”

Dylan sets down his chopsticks and squints at me. “To investigate what?”

“What do you think? Mandy.”

He makes a church and steeple out of his hands and points the steeple at me. “And you hope to accomplish… what, exactly? Pissing off your mother and making Mandy feel like crap?”

“They don’t have to know. If Mandy hasn’t done anything wrong, it won’t matter.”

“But what if you
do
find something out, Jill? Something you feel like you have to tell your mom?” He waits. Patiently. Will wait forever while letting me stew in my own juices and think about the implications of my words and actions. I’d forgotten how good he is at that.

“Every single other person in the world uses a lawyer or social worker or has a contract or
something
before they go giving away their babies…. Why won’t Mandy?”

“Maybe not ‘every single other person’ does. You don’t know. All kinds of people make all kinds of decisions that aren’t by the book, and they have their reasons.”

I set my chopsticks on the edge of my bowl. One rolls off, and onto the table, and then off the table and onto the floor. The lady reading the paper at the register frowns at us.

“Your mom is smart, Jill,” Dylan continues. “Give her some credit.”

“You don’t know her like I do. She totally rushed into this. She doesn’t know enough about Mandy. She…” I press back tears with my palms, seeing spots and sunbursts. Mom’s right: I’m scared. I’m scared something will go wrong. If I keep my eye on Mandy, maybe I can prevent that. Not everything has to be left to fate. “I’m the only one left to take care of her, Dylan. Me. I keep trying to think what my dad would do but I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I feel Dylan’s fingertips on my elbow and uncover my eyes, blinking a few times.

“I think it’s gonna work out,” he says.

“You think.”

“Yeah. I have a feeling.”

“Gee, how can I argue with that? It should completely put my mind at ease.” I pull my elbows back and get out my wallet. “I owe you from last time.”

“Promise me you won’t hire this work guy, or anyone, to investigate Mandy behind your mom’s back. If you’re that worried, talk to your mom and let her decide.”

I slide the check toward me. “How much is it?”

“Jill. Say okay. Say you won’t do anything stupid.”

“Okay.” I put cash on the table. “I won’t do anything stupid.”

As if he heard all my accusations about being a relentless suit-wearer, Ravi isn’t wearing one tonight. Instead, he’s got on dark-rinse jeans and a palest yellow T-shirt with a black cardigan. The yellow sets off his dark skin, and a thought floats through my mind before I can stop it: I bet his neck smells like a cinnamon graham cracker, the kind my third-grade teacher used to pass out at recess.

It’s the strangest thing, the way my senses play strange tricks when I’m around him. I think of baked goods, I think of childhood. I feel like I’m seeing the world—or glimpses of it—through the eyes of the smiling sophomore Jill, the courageous Jill, the excited-about-life-and-possibility Jill. But because I’m not her, because I’m me and because the idea of being excited about life is, let’s face it, a little bit scary in light of what life has given me in the recent past, I greet him with “How come you’re always here?” instead of
Hi, how are you?
“There
are
five other stores in our region, you know.”

He spins a rack of greeting cards, picking out one and opening it. “Mm-hmm.”

A customer—one of our regulars, a middle-aged lady with giant glasses—comes up to the register with a paperback by this author who’s got a new book out every other month, and she’s always the first to buy a copy. If we don’t have the book out
on
the release date, she harasses us. “You know he doesn’t write these himself,” I say, scanning the book and reaching under the counter for a bag.

“What?”

I tap the author’s name on the front cover. “He doesn’t write these.”

She takes the book, turning it over. The entire back cover is a picture of the author, resting his chin on his hand and attempting to smile devilishly. “Of course he does.”

She’s in love with him. I shouldn’t shatter her this way, but I can’t help myself. “He outlines them. He has his staff fill in the details.” I’ve been dying to tell her this ever since I found out from one of the publisher’s sales reps.

She runs her credit card through the machine, her kitty-cat charm bracelet jingling against the PIN pad. “How do you know?”

Ravi is nearby, still looking at cards. “I read it in the
New York Times
.” I say. “It’s not a secret.” I’ve always wanted to say “I read it in the
New York Times
” to someone, about something. It sounds good, whether or not it’s true.

“Did you, now?” She gives my brow ring and blue-streaked hair a meaningful look.

I slip the book into the bag, throw in a bookmark, smile. “Have a nice night.”

Ravi sets a card on the counter. It’s a birthday card with a drawing of a cute goldfish swimming toward a cake. I run it through and add the employee discount code. “We’re not supposed to shop on the clock,” I remind him.

“I’m not on the clock.”

“Bag?”

“No, thanks.”

He pays, then takes a pen from my pen jar to write in the card.

“Can you move down the counter? I don’t want customers to think there’s a line.”

“The store is empty.” Ravi looks at me and raises one eyebrow. One. The other goes down. At the same time one corner of his mouth goes up. It’s perfect, the kind of thing you practice in the mirror because you’ve seen someone else do it and it’s so cool you’re dying to be able to do it yourself. I have to exert all my will to keep from smiling. Because smiling would be… bad?

“Whose birthday is it?” I try to see what he’s writing, without being too obvious about it. I can only make out the words
fun week
.