Maybe in Another Life (14 page)

Then she’s gone. And it’s just my parents and me.

It’s never just my parents and me.

And right this second, looking at them as they look back at me, I realize I have nothing to say to them. I have nothing to talk about, nothing I want to do, nothing I need from them, nothing to give them.

I love my parents. I really, really do. But I love them the way you love the grandmother you aren’t as close to, the way you love your uncle who lives across the country.

They are not my support system.

And they need to go.

“You guys should feel free to go home, too,” I say, as kindly as my voice will allow.

“Nonsense,” my mother says, sitting down. “We’re here for you. We’re going to be with you every step of the way.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But I don’t need you to be.” As much as I try to make it sound casual, it comes out raw and heavy.

The two of them look at me, unsure how to respond, and then my mom starts crying.

“Mom, please don’t cry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”

“No,” she says. “It’s fine.” She wipes her tears. “Would you excuse me for a moment? I just . . . need to get some water.”

And then she’s gone. Out into the hallway.

I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have just pretended for a little while longer.

“I’m sorry,” I say to my dad. He’s not looking at me. He’s looking down at the floor. “I really am. I’m sorry I said that.”

He shakes his head, still not looking at me. “No, don’t be.”

He looks up and meets my eye. “We know you don’t need us. We know you have a whole life you’ve managed to create for yourself without us.”

Some life.

“I—”

“You don’t have to say anything. Your mom has a harder time facing all of this than I do, but I’m glad you said something, honestly. We should talk about it freely, be honest with each other more.” He comes closer to me and grabs my hand.

“We screwed up, your mother and I. We screwed up.” My dad has strikingly gorgeous green eyes. He’s my dad, so I don’t often notice, but when he looks at you with the intensity he’s looking at me with now, it’s hard to ignore. They are green the way blades of grass are green, the way dark emeralds are green. “When we got to London and moved in, both
your mother and I realized we had made a huge mistake not bringing you with us. We never should have let you stay in Los Angeles. Never should have left you.”

I look away. His green eyes are now starting to glass over. His voice is starting to quiver. I can’t handle it. I look at my hands.

“Every time we called you,” he continues, “the two of us would get off the phone and cry. But you always seemed fine. So we kept thinking that you were fine. I think that was our biggest mistake. Taking you at your word and not wanting to
tell you what to do. I mean, you seemed happy with the Hudsons. Your grades were good. You got into a good school.”

“Right,” I say.

“But looking back on it now, I can see that doesn’t mean you were fine.”

I wait, trying to see if he will elaborate.

“It’s a hard thing,” he says. “To admit you have failed your child. You know, so many of my friends nowadays are empty-nesters, and they say that the day you realize your kids don’t need you anymore is like a punch to the gut. And I never say it, but I always think to myself that knowing your kid doesn’t need you may hurt, but knowing your kid did, and you weren’t there . . . it’s absolutely unbearable.”

“It was only a couple of years,” I say. “I would have gone to college anyway and left home then.”

“And it would have been on your own terms, your own choice. And you would have known that no matter what happened, you could come home. I don’t think we ever made that clear to you. That we were your home.”

I can’t help but cry. I want to hold the tears in. I’m trying so hard to keep them to myself, not to let them bubble over. I do OK for a moment. But, as with a well-matched arm wrestle, one of us eventually goes down. And it’s me. The tears win.

I grab my father’s hand and squeeze it. It is, I think, the first time in a long time that I don’t feel self-conscious around him. I feel like myself.

He pats my hand and looks up at me. He wipes a tear from my eye and smiles. “There’s something that your mother and I have been discussing, and we were going to broach it with you when you were feeling better,” he says. “But I want to talk to you about it now.”

“OK . . .”

“We think you should move to London.”

“Me?”

He nods. “I have no doubt that almost losing your life in a car accident makes you assess your life, and let me tell you, almost losing your daughter in a car accident puts things in perspective real quick. We should be a proper family again. I’m lucky to be your father, lucky to have you in my life. I want
more
of you in my life. Your mother thinks the same. We should have asked you years ago, and we just assumed you knew we’d want you there. But I’m no longer assuming anything. I’m asking you to come. Please. We’re asking you to move to London.”

It’s all too much. London. And my dad. And my mom crying out in the hall. And the hospital bed. And . . . everything.

I look down, away from his eyes, and I hope that when I look back up, I’ll know how to respond. I just have to look away long enough to figure out what to say.

But nothing comes to me.

So I do what I always do when I’m lost. I deflect. “I don’t know, Dad, the weather is better here.”

He laughs and smiles wide at me. “You don’t like constant clouds and rain?”

I shake my head.

“Promise me you’ll think about it?”

“I promise,” I say.

“Who knows, maybe London’s the city you were meant for all along.”

He’s joking. He has no idea the significance something like that might have for me.

And then I realize just how odd it is that I’ve never come up with that idea myself. In all of my traveling, all of my city
hopping, I never once set my sights on the city my family lived in. Does that mean it’s not the right place for me? Or is it a sign that this is exactly what I needed to finally see, that London is where I should be? I want to follow my fate, but I also sort of don’t want to go to London.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” he says. “And I need you to be completely honest with me. Don’t worry about how you’re going to make your mother and me feel. I want you to worry only about you and what you need.”

“OK,” I say.

“I’m serious, Hannah.”

“OK.”

He speaks with a gravity that takes me by surprise. “Would it be easier on you if we left?”

There it is. What I want. In my lap. But I’m not sure I’m capable of reaching out and grabbing it. I don’t know if I can bear to say it out loud, to tell my father that I need him to leave, especially after the conversation we’ve just had.

My dad interjects before I can formulate a response. “I’m not worried about my feelings or your mom’s feelings. I’m worried about you. You are my only concern. You are all I care about. And all I need from you is enough information to make the right decision for my daughter. What do you need? Do you need some peace and quiet for now?”

I look at him. I can feel my lip quiver. I can’t say it. I can’t bring myself to say it.

My dad smiles, and with that smile, I know that he’s not going to make me say it. He nods, taking my nonresponse as an answer. “So, it’s good-bye for now,” he says. “I know it doesn’t mean you don’t love us.”

“I do love you,” I say.

“And we love you.”

We’ve said it many times to each other, but this time, this particular time, I can feel it in my chest.

“All right, let me go break the news to your mother.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say, putting my hands to my face. I feel terrible.

“Don’t be. She’s tougher than she realizes sometimes. And she just wants what’s best for you.”

He slips out into the hallway. Momentarily alone, I find myself tense and tearful.

Soon the door opens, and my parents come in. My mom can’t say anything. She just looks at me and runs to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

“We’re gonna go,” she says.

“OK,” I say.

“I love you,” she says. “I love you so much. The day you were born, I cried for six hours straight, because I had never loved anyone that much in my life. And I never stopped. OK? I never stopped.”

“I know, Mom. I love you, too.”

She wipes her tears, squeezes my hand, and lets my father hug me.

“I’m proud of you,” he says. “Proud of the person you are.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

And then that’s it. They walk to the door.

My dad turns back to me. “Oh,” he says, “I almost forgot.”

He picks up a box he left on the counter when he walked in. He hands it over to me.

I open it. It’s a cinnamon roll from Primo’s. The glaze is stuck to the box, and the dough has started to unravel.

“You remembered,” I say. It’s such a thoughtful gift, such a
tender gesture, that I know I’m going to start crying again if he doesn’t leave this minute.

He winks at me. “I’d never forget a thing like that.”

And then he’s gone out the door, to join my mother and sister. They’ll take a cab to LAX and then fly across the country, over the Atlantic, and land at Heathrow.

And I’ll stay here.

And I can honestly say that until this moment, I never realized how much my parents have always, always loved me.

S
ince Ethan left for work, I’ve been sitting here with Charlemagne trying to figure out what vet to take her to and what bus route to use.

I puked again this morning, shortly after he left. I was feeling sort of queasy when I woke up, and then I thought I felt better, so I opened his fridge to see if there was anything for breakfast. I picked up a package of bacon, and the smell made me sick to my stomach. I threw up and ended up feeling much better. Suddenly, I was starving, which was when I remembered the cinnamon rolls.

I grabbed one for me and one for Charlemagne, but I thought better of it. She’s a little thing, after all. So I ripped hers in half, giving one half to her on the floor and adding the other to my plate. I wolfed all of it down in three big bites. Then I ate another one.

In college, during the few times I got so drunk I puked, I always immediately felt hungry afterward. It was as if my body had gotten rid of everything bad and wanted to replace it with something delicious. I’d get up in the morning, go to Dunkin’ Donuts, and inhale a cinnamon cake doughnut, the closest thing they had to what I wanted. Some things don’t change, I guess.

Now Charlemagne and I are on the couch. She’s cuddled up in my lap as I’m leaning over her, trying to figure out if dogs are
allowed on public buses. I don’t see anything definitive on the Web site, so I close my computer and decide just to take on the day and see where it leads me. If they won’t let her on the bus, I’ll figure something out.

I lock Ethan’s apartment door and head outside. First things first. Charlemagne needs a collar and a leash if I’m going to get her across town. I walk to Target, which isn’t all that far from Ethan’s place. I have Charlemagne bundled in my arms. I expect someone to stop me here in the store, but no one even bats an eyelash. I had this whole plan to claim she was a service animal, but it isn’t necessary. I grab a collar and a leash and head to the register. The cashier looks at me sideways but doesn’t say anything. I act as if it’s perfectly normal to be holding a dog in a store. In general, I find that when you are doing something you are not supposed to be doing, the best course of action is to act as if you are absolutely supposed to be doing it.

Once I put a collar on her and attach the leash, I decide to go with the same tactic on the bus. I act confident as I wait for the bus to arrive. When it does, I get on during a rush of people, hoping this will distract the bus driver.

No such luck.

“You can’t have that dog on here,” the bus driver says.

“She’s a service dog,” I say.

“Doesn’t have a service tag,” the driver says.

I start to answer, but he cuts me off.

“Wouldn’t matter anyway. No dogs.”

“OK,” I say. I want to debate this a bit and see if I can persuade him to let us on, but my mind is blank, and I’m holding up the line. “Thanks,” I say as I get off.

I’m getting this dog to the animal hospital if it’s the last thing I do.

I walk back to Target. I go in, again with my head tall, holding Charlemagne in my arms. I head right for the school supplies and buy a backpack. I go back to the same cashier, the one I know won’t say anything, and I have her ring me up.

“You’re not supposed to have dogs in here,” she says. “That’ll be fourteen eighty-nine.”

“Thanks,” I say, pretending I didn’t hear that first part. I quickly head out, walk around the corner, and put the bag down on the sidewalk. I lift Charlemagne and put her into the bag, and then I zip it up, leaving a hole at the top for her to breathe.

I walk around to the bus station and wait for another bus. When it comes, I walk on as if I have a backpack full of books, not filled with a tiny terrier. Between my attitude and the fact that Charlemagne doesn’t bark, we’re golden. I take a seat in the far back. I gently put the bag down at my feet and unzip it a bit more. She waits quietly at the bottom of the backpack. She doesn’t make a sound.

I keep her at my feet. She sleeps for most of the ride, and when she’s not sleeping, she’s just looking up at me sweetly, with her kind face and her huge eyes. Her face is shaggier than the rest of her. She needs a bath. I’m glad she’s not begging to be let out of the backpack, glad she’s not trying to sit in my lap or play. She has the sort of face that makes you want to jump through hoops to please her, and I don’t want us to get kicked off the bus.

We pass street after street, and we’ve been on the bus for quite a while. Just when I think I’ve gotten on the wrong bus, that this all has been for nothing, I see the animal hospital up ahead.

I hit the button to request the stop, and soon the bus is
starting to pull over. I stand up, picking up the backpack gently and heading for the double doors in the back of the bus. I’m standing there, waiting for them to open, when Charlemagne starts barking.