“You didn’t give me time to rearrange my face!”
“I don’t see why you’d want to rearrange it.” He passed my phone back to me. The photo was better than I expected, even if my eyes were crinkly and my mouth was half-open. I looked happy. Real happy, not stew-smile happy.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and looked back at the dining room, where Nina and Ollie seemed to be in the middle of a heated discussion. “Did you need to escape the drama that is Nina and Ollie?”
Alex raised his eyebrows and let out a low whistle. “That is some... unresolved tension.”
“See why she hated you so much?”
“Hard to say.” Alex looked over at them. “I think hate and love look like the same thing with her.”
Was he talking about Nina and Ollie, or how Nina had felt about him that first week? Maybe he really did have a thing for her. And why wouldn’t he? She was exciting, gorgeous, creative. Maybe Nina sensed Alex’s feelings for her. Maybe that was why she’d been so persistent in pushing him at me.
When we finally dimmed the lights and started the first movie, Nina waved me over to where she sat in between Ollie and Alex on the couch. She scooted closer to Ollie, leaving just enough space for me to squeeze in between her and Alex.No, thank you.I plopped down beside Mia, who was lying on her stomach next to Kitty and Greyson, a bowl of popcorn and several cans of sprayable food between them.
I stretched my legs out in front of me. Mia scooted closer and put her head on my leg, reminding me of my eighteenth birthday, the night Samson was born. Mia, then four, had curled up beside me on the couchas we watchedTangledfor the thousandth time and waited for news of a baby brother. Beth and Mark had left for the hospital early in the day, leaving me in charge of the girls. Between contractions my sister had wheezed apologies for ruining my birthday, and I’d told her she was making my birthday even better. It was my mother who’d ruined everything, having invited herself over, much to my annoyance. I was still angry with her for how things had changed between us, and grew more upset with each glass of wine she poured herself as she complained over and over about how Dad had died on her, as if he’d done it on purpose. Mia, somehow sensing the tension, had been a quiet buffer at my side throughout the evening, and the only thing that kept me from snapping.
“Just one night,” I’d said to myself after I’d put my mother to bed in my room. “I needed her to keep it together for one night.” And Mia, thinking I’d been talking to her, patted my leg and said, “Don’t worry, Jo, there’s lots more nights.”
When my father died, my mother had come unglued like the bottom of a cheap sandal. She drank more, talked to us less. She stopped cooking dinner and started sleeping in Dad’s armchair. She was angry at him for dying. It was the only thing she could talk about. And that anger kept her from seeing what she still had: Beth, me, her grandchildren. I knew the pain of losing Dad had done this to her, but it was love too. Maybe if she hadn’t loved him so much, she would’ve come back to me.
I blinked the memory away. The girls were happy and distracted, and I needed to keep them that way. I knew they were suffering. I could read the ache of it on their faces and sensed when it washed over them out of nowhere. Once you lived through it, it was easy to recognize, but I knew the pain would dull with time, like how the ocean smooths glass with every wave. There was nothing to do but tread water until your feet touched the bottom.
As I watched the movie, I brushed my fingers through Mia’s hair like I had on the night Samson was born. It was easy to forget she was still a child. She was angry, unlike Kitty, which made it harder to know howto comfort her. But maybe in the dark with a Disney movie playing, she could be that little girl again.
“You just have a comfortable leg, okay,” Mia said, but wedged herself closer to my side, nudging my arm when I let my hand drop from her hair. How did Beth do this? How could you make sense of a person when they said the exact opposite of what they wanted? There was something about Mia I didn’t understand. Some days I’d catch her staring down at her phone, headphones shoved in her ears, a pained look on her face. Other times she’d deny herself something I knew she wanted: a second bowl of ice cream, a touristy flamingo-shaped keychain. She seemed to be punishing herself for something, but I wasn’t sure what. Survivor’s guilt, maybe? I’d need to find out if there were any grief support skills for that.
After the first film ended, Mia rejoined Greyson and Kitty in conversation. Ollie had moved to the other side of Alex to discuss the Miami restaurant scene, and so I took the seat Ollie had been in, as far away from Alex as possible. The girls sang at the tops of their lungs throughout the lastHigh School Musicalmovie, during which Nina and Ollie got into an argument and left. I was pretty sure they hadn’t gone to their respective apartments, though, seeing as Nina wasn’t responding to any of my texts. As soon as they’d left, Alex moved from the couch to the floor.See, I mentally told Nina,there’s nothing going on between me and Alex. He’s sitting as far from me as humanly possible.
“Dad,” Greyson called whenThe Greatest Showmanbegan. “Why are you still on the floor like a weirdo? There’s room on the couch.”
“You’re on the floor,” Alex said.
“But I’m not an adult.”
Alex sighed and took the empty space beside me.
Okay, so maybe he isn’t sitting as far from me as humanly possible, I thought to Nina.
“Tough crowd,” I said.
Alex rubbed his jaw. “No kidding. Everyone said it would get easieras she got older, but let me warn you, that is a lie.” His smile faltered. “Not that you want kids. Or maybe you do. Not that youshould, I mean.”
I tried not to laugh at Alex getting flustered. “I don’t, for the record. If they came out as teenagers, it would be a different story, but the baby stuff doesn’t interest me. I got my fill of that when those two were little. I’ve changed enough diapers for a lifetime.”
“You lived with your sister, right? Mia mentioned it.”
“Yeah.” I kept my gaze on the TV. Fortunately, Alex had a decent sound system, so the movie was loud enough to keep the girls from hearing us. “After my dad died, my sister got married and moved out. My mom, she...” I wasn’t sure how to explain it. Typically Ididn’texplain it. Nina was the only friend I had who knew the details, but even she didn’t know everything. Emotion needled its way out of me, the memories lining up like the crew at the end of a charter. “She was devastated, even more so after my sister left. It wasn’t so bad when she was there.”
Which wasn’t entirely true. One night I’d made the mistake of wondering aloud what the last poem Dad wrote for us had been about. All I’d wanted was to remember the things I was already forgetting. But Beth had burst into tears and disappeared to her room. Mom had scolded me brutally. How could I ask such a thing? Was I trying to torture my sister? Her? I hadn’t answered, and Mom left the room. I’d sat at the kitchen table and tried not to cry, realizing my broken pieces could hurt people. I didn’t ask about Dad anymore after that.
“She started drinking,” I continued, “and everything kind of spiraled out of control.” The images flashed through my mind. Mom passed out by the time I came home from school. Mom, looking at me as if I were the last person on earth she wanted to see. She’d never said it, but I knew she blamed me for Dad’s death because I was the only one home when it happened. I was sure Mom asked herself all the same questions I did. What had I been so preoccupied with when he died? What would’ve happened if I’d heard him fall? Could I have saved him if I’d gotten to him sooner?
“It got to the point that she couldn’t take care of me anymore,” I said. I could sense Alex watching me but didn’t look at him. I knew I’d find pity in his face. I hated pity. It was the least productive emotion in the world. “When I was sixteen, my sister realized how bad things were. I moved in with her, and things got better.”
Which was also not entirely true. I’d been a mess those first months at Beth and Mark’s. Kitty was a newborn, and Mia was three, and now my sister had a grieving teenager to deal with. We’d told Mom I was moving in to help Beth with the girls, and Mom hadn’t fought it. She’d let me go, as easy as that. Still, there were nights Beth sat up with me as I cried and begged to go back to Mom’s. Not because I wanted to, but because the guilt was eating me from the inside out. What if something happened to her and I wasn’t there? On one of those nights, Beth had grabbed my face in her hands as Kitty slept in a swing beside us. She’d forced me to look her in the eye and said,You couldn’t have known, Joey. You couldn’t have saved him, and you can’t save Mom. It’s not your fault, and Dad would tell you that himself if he could.
“It’s hard to lose a parent young,” Alex said. I prepared myself for the inevitable pitying look, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His eyes were on Greyson, who was rolling around on the floor and laughing hysterically as Kitty sprayed Cheez Whiz into her mouth. There wasn’t a trace of pity on his face, and I realized he understood.
