How to Save a Life (23 page)

Now I know what people mean when they say they have a lump in their throat.

“I should probably lie down now. Robin wants me to be sure to get all the rest I need.”

He gets up. “Okay. Thanks for the toast.”

“Don’t forget your history book.”

“Right,” he says, picking it up. He puts on his coat, and I walk him to the door. He pulls a green ski cap on and looks at me, and there’s a feeling between us. Not like the kind of feeling I had with Christopher. Not romantic. Not sparks. It’s more like the kind of feeling I have with Robin.

He holds his arms open. “Hug?”

I stare. What if Jill walked in right now? Or Robin? Would I get kicked out? He doesn’t wait for me to say yes. He leans in and puts his arms around me. It’s not long and, because of my stomach, it’s not that close. When he’s done, I want to say something, but I’m not sure what.

“She gave up a lot” is what comes out. “My mother.”

“Still,” he says, with a shake of his head. “I mean, she
got
a lot, too.”

I can’t think what my mother got that would make what she gave up worth it. When I look at him, wondering, I realize he means me.

Jill

Tenderness. When Dad and I used to tell each other to try a little tenderness, we meant calm down, be soft, stop having to be right, give a person the benefit of the doubt for a change. We never talked about what it’s like to be on the receiving end of it. How it leaves you the other kind of tender—raw, bruised. In certain cases it might leave you bewildered and stumbling, a person who’s been crouched in the dark, afraid someone will turn on the lights and find you, and then it happens and in some ways it’s not so scary after all and in others, well, holy shit.

Last night, after seeing Ravi, I got through my shift by shutting down, because I couldn’t keep feeling what I was feeling and also do my job. Thank God that Mandy and my mom were in their rooms when I got home. I slugged some NyQuil and slept in my clothes. It’s hard to get up and go to school and be me, be Jill MacSweeney, in the same way I was yesterday. I feel exposed, like Ravi has found some unlocked door inside me and now anything can get in.

So I compensate. And maybe I go overboard. In need of extra armor, I do the major smoky eye. The black jeans, the black boots, the black hoodie—hood up. Leather cuff. All my rings. Hair ironed and waxed to a perfect edge. When Dylan comes by to pick me up, I get in his car and hold my backpack on my lap.

“Wow,” he says. “That look is rock.”

Indestructible.

“Yep.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yep.”

“You sure about that?”

I check myself in the side mirror. Sunglasses: on. “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

On the way he tells me some story about Mandy and her terrible mother and toast. I know I should be paying attention. Only my brain is occupied getting everything that Ravi loosed back on lockdown.

“… and what’s she going to do after the baby is born?” Dylan is asking as we turn into the school lot.

Oh, that. Mandy. Whatever, who cares. “I don’t know.”

“Isn’t the point of an open adoption that she’ll have contact with the kid and stuff?”

“I guess.”

He pulls into his spot. “So you’ve lost interest.”

“No,” I say, impatient.

“Two days ago you were planning to call a PI on her ass, Jill.” He turns off the ignition; we get out. “Don’t tell me you actually listened to me and talked to your mom about it.”

“Ha.” I tighten the strings around my hood, adjust my sunglasses, and survey the parking lot. I feel like I could get in a fight right now. I feel like I could slash a tire. “I’m tired of thinking about it is all.”

Dylan doesn’t notice that I’m bent on destruction and in no way interested in Mandy at the moment. “After talking to her yesterday… man. I feel sorry for her,” he says. “Seriously. She may be giving up the baby so it has a mother, but she kind of needs one herself.”

I kick a chunk of ice off the wheel well of Dylan’s car with my boot, and then kick it again so it skids across the lot and breaks up. “One what?”

“A mother. She’s the one who needs a mother.”

I call in sick to work, from school. I never do that unless I’m actually sick, which is rare. Annalee asks me if I want tomorrow night off, also, because Polly is looking for more hours this week to pay for a car repair. Fine. When Dylan drops me off at home, I lie to him, too, and tell him I’m sick and getting straight into bed and he should leave and not kiss me good-bye or anything because he might catch it. It, my phantom illness.

Mom has left me a note on the kitchen counter—she and Mandy are at the doctor’s.

Dad’s CD collection is organized strictly by the first name of the artist. Nothing fancy. It’s easy to find Otis, right between Neil Young and Paul McCartney. I haven’t fired up the components since way before Dad died. He refused to get on board with music downloads and digital storage; rebuilding his collection from vinyl to CD was as far as he was willing to go. He’d never rip anything to his computer or listen on an MP3 player—albums were meant to be heard whole, he said, not chopped up and portioned out like hors d’oeuvres. Albums are meals. For him it was all about the component system and the giant speakers on either side of the fireplace. Between which I now lay, on the floor, the remote in my hand.

The horns start in, then the little strum of an electric guitar.

That’s all it takes; I’m gone. Otis and a box of tissues and me.

Weary me.

Unsurprisingly, considering I’ve got the volume as high as it will go without distorting, I don’t hear Mom and Mandy get home. They find me listening to “Try a Little Tenderness” for the twenty-first time, surrounded by wadded-up tissues, still in my sunglasses and with my hood up. I don’t love my mom seeing me like this, but it’s definitely the last thing I want to be doing in front of Mandy. I scramble up, turn off the CD player, amass my snot rags, and toss them into the fireplace.

Any normal person would look away and make up something about needing to excuse herself. Mandy, being Mandy, stands like a deer in the headlights and takes it all in as if she’s watching one of her shows.

I want to tell her go away and leave us alone. But you can’t listen to Otis for an hour straight and then yell at someone. And you definitely can’t do it when your mother is starting to cry, too, and coming at you with open arms.

Ravi calls after dinner. I’m in my room, trying my best to concentrate on homework. Though I’ve been ignoring texts from Dylan all night, I lunge for the phone when I see it’s Ravi.
Hey, hi, where are you, when can we talk again?
And it scares me, because then I think,
No. You’re going to lash out. Maybe not now, but you will, because you always do, and then he’ll hate you
.

Bravely, I answer. “This is Jill.”

“Jill. Ravi.”

We’re both doing this big act: professionals, coworkers.

“Hello.”

“How are you feeling?” And I fear he means
feelings
feeling, about which I’m far too exhausted to talk. Then he clarifies: “I was by the store a little while ago, and Annalee said you were sick.”

“Oh yeah. Not too bad. Kind of stuffed up.” From hours of weeping.

“Sounds like it. So you probably don’t want to meet up to go over some of the results of my research into your situation.” He talks as if our phones might be tapped, in his Grown-Up Ravi voice, the one that makes him sound like a distant, uninterested uncle. It’s comforting, in a way, to know that just because we had a moment yesterday doesn’t mean every conversation has to turn into an emotional root canal. Maybe I won’t ruin this after all.

“You already have results?” I ask.

“Well, nothing specific. We could talk about it right now, or if you have video chat….”

He’s pretending he only wants to go over “results” of my “situation”; I’m pretending to believe him. When what it feels like is that we want to see each other.

But I hate video chat. It’s so hard to get the laptop screen at a flattering angle, and the colors are weird; I don’t need Ravi seeing me all beige and busted.

“No, we can meet. This may shock you, but… I’m not actually sick.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t rat on me to Annalee.”

It’s awkward saying her name, and Ravi replies, “I wouldn’t,” a bit too quickly.

We make plans to meet at Dazbog, and I put myself back together so that when I go downstairs to tell Mom I’m headed out, she can see that I’m fine, absolutely fine, and no one need worry about me, despite the fact that only hours earlier I was in a sorrowful heap on the floor.

Mom is unconvinced. “Where are you going?” She and Mandy are at the kitchen table, the laptop open and a notepad nearby.

“Meeting a friend for coffee.”

“Why don’t you stay in? It’s been a long day already, and the snow is really coming down.” Understatement, re the long day. “You can help us decide which birthing class to take.”

“Fun. But no.”

“You could do the class with us,” Mandy says. She’s smiling, wearing one of her new outfits, happy as a clam. “In case something happens and Robin can’t be there.”

“I’ll
be
there,” Mom insists. “Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t be there, too, Jill.”

Even in a world in which I accept that Mandy’s baby will be in our lives forever, I cannot conjure up an image of me in a hospital room with her and my mother, shouting out breathing instructions and fetching ice chips or doing whatever else needs doing in a baby-having scenario. I try to be polite. “Thank you so much. Don’t plan on it.”

Yet I have a twinge of jealousy, seeing them there, cozy, looking at birthing websites like they’re planning a wedding or something.
It’s your choice, Jill
. As Mom said, she’s been trying to include me from the beginning, but I wouldn’t have it. Instead, I’m about to go discuss Mandy as if she’s a criminal. Except, okay, that’s not
really
why I’m going out on a cold night to see Ravi.

Mom gets up to give me a kiss. “All right. Don’t be late. One hour, then home to bed, okay? Since you’re not working, you might as well get some sleep.”