But I don’t find it funny. When I start crying, Angela hugs me. “Is it all going to be like this?” I ask.
“Worse,” she promises. “But imagine the stories you’ll have to tell your baby one day.”
She waits until I’ve pulled myself together, and then tells me to be at court tomorrow to fight the motion. As I’m getting into my car again, my cell phone rings.
“Why aren’t you home yet?” Vanessa says.
I should tell her about Angela’s visit; I should tell her about Wade Preston. But when you love someone, you protect her. I may stand to lose my credibility, my reputation, my career, but then again, it’s my battle. This ismyex-husband,myformer marriage’s embryos. The only reason Vanessa is even involved is because she had the misfortune of falling for me.
“I got tied up,” I say. “Tell me about the beehive lady.”
But Vanessa is having none of it. “What’s the matter? You sound like you’re crying.”
I close my eyes. “I’m getting a cold.”
It is the first time, I realize, I’ve ever lied to her.
It takes my mother and me two hours to swap all the furniture in my old bedroom and hers. She’s decided that she needs a new perspective, and what better way to start each day than to see something different when she opens her eyes?
“Plus,” she says, “your window opens to the west. I’m tired of waking up with the sun in my eyes.”
I glance around at the same bedding, the same bedroom set. “So basically you’re your own life coach?”
“How can I expect my clients to follow my advice if I don’t follow it myself?”
“And you really believe that relocating ten feet down the hall is going to revolutionize your life?”
“Beliefs are the roads we take to reach our dreams. Believe you can do something—or believe you can’t—and you’ll be right every time.”
I roll my eyes at her. I am pretty sure there was a self-help movement not too long ago that followed that mantra. I remember seeing a high school student on a newsmagazine who subscribed to the philosophy and then didn’t study for her SATs because, after all, she could visualize that perfect 2400. Needless to say, she wound up going to a community college and complaining on television about how it was really all a load of BS.
I look around the room at my mother’s same old bedding, same furniture. “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of starting over when you’re doing it with stuff you’ve had forever?”
“Honestly, Zoe, you are such a downer sometimes.” My mother sighs. “I’m more than happy to give you a little life coaching, free of charge.”
“I’ll take a rain check, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” She slides down, her back pressed to the wall, while I collapse across the mattress. When I look up, I see a freckling of glow-in-the-dark stars affixed to the ceiling.
“I’d forgotten about those,” I say.
After my father died, I became obsessed with ghosts. I desperately wanted my father to be one, in the hope that I might find him sitting on the edge of my bed when I woke up in the middle of the night, or feel him whisper a shiver across the nape of my neck. To this end, I borrowed books from the library on paranormal activity; I tried to conduct séances in my bedroom; I sneaked downstairs late at night and watched horror movies when I should have been sleeping. My teacher noticed, and told my mother I might need help. The psychiatrist I’d been seeing sporadically after my father’s death agreed it could be an issue to address.
My mother didn’t. She figured if I wanted my father to be a spirit, I must have had a valid reason.
One night at dinner she said, “I don’t think he’s a ghost. I think he’s a star, looking down on us.”
“That’s dumb. A star’s just a ball of gas,” I scoffed.
“And a ghost is . . . ?” my mother pointed out. “Ask any scientist—they’ll tell you that new stars are born every minute.”
“People who die don’t become stars.”
“Some Native Americans would disagree with you, there.”
I considered this. “Where do stars go during the day?”
“That’s the thing,” my mother said, “they’re still there. They’re watching us, even when we’re too busy to be watching them.”
