How to Save a Life (35 page)

If I stay, it means I’m willing to abandon my daughter. If I leave, I think maybe I’m abandoning myself. And that’s one thing that, through all of this, I’ve never done.

When I come out of the bathroom, I go to the ticket window and talk to a woman there. The train going east is delayed.

“By how long?”

In a friendly voice she explains that the passenger train shares the track with freight trains, and if freight trains have troubles, everything else gets off schedule.

“I didn’t ask why. I asked how long.”

She frowns. “It’s about an hour out right now. But all I can do is guess. Sometimes they make up time.”

“What about the train to California?”

“Westbound is on schedule as of now. But after eastbound makes it out of here, we close the station until morning. You’ll have to go home and then come back. A coach fare…”

I walk away while she’s still talking. “It’s a little behind schedule,” I tell Dylan so that he’ll keep believing that where I’m going is east, to look for the father.

“You want me to wait with you?”

“No, thank you.” I’ll have to think of somewhere to spend the night.

He puts his hands in his pockets. I sit on the wooden bench. I already feel like I have to pee again, but I just want Dylan to leave before anything happens to me. Emotionally, I mean.

“Good luck with everything,” he says. “You have my number?”

I nod.

“Mandy…”

“What?”

“Sorry about how I didn’t come through exactly.”

“It’s okay.”

He sits on the bench next to me. His arm touches mine. “You’re gonna come back, right?”

I look at him.

“I mean, once you talk to the father and all, you’ll come back and have the baby like you planned.”

And give her to Robin, he means. The answer is that I don’t know.

“Yes,” I tell him.

He exhales and gives me a sitting hug. “Okay. Call me if you need anything, any more money or anything.”

I nod against his shoulder. He’s a friend, even if he partly failed at his promise tonight. He’s the only friend I have after right now, I think. I squeeze him tighter, as tight as I can with my belly between us, so that he knows I’m not really mad about him being scared of the pawnshops. Not everyone can be brave.

Jill

Mom is beside herself, a babbling wreck. She keeps asking me to explain how this happened, as if there could be an explanation, as if I personally have control over the actions of everyone in the world.

“How could you lose track of Mandy?” She’s frozen to the couch, exactly where she first sat when she came home from her meeting and I told her Mandy and Dylan were sort of missing. She’s still got her laptop bag half over her shoulder.

“I didn’t lose her. She left.” I’m not doing so great myself—furious with Dylan and at myself because what if it was the stupid baby stuff we bought her that put her over the edge? What was I thinking? And at Mandy. I thought we had a deal; I thought we were a team, and she lied to me after all. Maybe I was right about her in the first place. The only thing I feel calm about is Ravi. Well, relatively calm.

“Why won’t Dylan answer his phone?” Mom asks.

“I don’t know, Mom. I’m not Dylan.”

We’ve tried calling his house, against my advice. I told her it was too soon, that we should wait a little longer, that maybe Mandy didn’t feel well and they stopped at a drugstore for Pepto or something to keep the enchiladas down.

I didn’t really think that; they wouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.

“He would have called, or answered,” Mom said, and she was right. Now we’ve got his parents all upset, on top of everything else.

Mom wants us to go out looking. I tell her to remember what Dad always said: In case of an emergency, stay right where people would expect you to be.
Dad, Dad. Be here now.
I’ve never seen Mom like this. Eleven months ago this scene was reversed: It was the day of the accident, me a statue on the couch, her taking care of things and making calls and telling me it would be okay, it would be okay, and now I remember she brought me a glass of bourbon from Dad’s stash. So now I get her some wine and make her watch the public television station instead of the news, just in case there are any horrifying car crashes around town or anything. Public TV is showing a special on the history of domestic cats. In between texting and calling Dylan, I refill her wine, make her talk about the cats. I take off her shoes and slip her bag off her shoulder and tuck a blanket around her.

“How could Mandy do this?” she asks me, forlorn.

“We don’t know if she’s done anything. As long as she’s with Dylan, I think she’s okay.”

“Then why won’t Dylan answer?”

It’s a circular conversation that keeps winding up back here. I suggest that his phone could be dead or lost; it happens. Then she repeats, “How could Mandy do this?”

Finally, frustrated with not having an answer, I say, “She doesn’t belong to us.”

“She does, though.” Mom runs her hand up and down the blanket. “Don’t you think she does? That we all belong together?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were right. I should have gotten a lawyer.”

Yes, I was right. But in this moment I don’t want to be right. “Signing something wouldn’t necessarily guarantee anything,” I say. “People are free. Things happen, and you can’t stop them, remember? And Mandy is…” Mandy is what? Crazy? Stupid? Those are words I would have used to describe her a month ago. But what would I do, in her shoes? How would it feel to carry a baby for this long only to give it away? “You know what Dylan said about her once?”

“What?”

“That she’s the one who needs a mother.” As I say that, an idea, a memory, shimmers for a fraction of a moment in the back of my mind, but it’s gone before I can figure out what it is.

“That was astute of Dylan.” Mom has a little trouble getting the word “astute” out, and I know the wine is working. “Even though she’s eighteen… nineteen now… she’s such a child. I’m scared for her to be out in the world on her own.”

Mom’s eyelids droop. “If I didn’t think it would be too confusing for the baby, and for Mandy, I’d have let her stay with us. She has no idea the lengths I would go to for her. If she did, she wouldn’t run away. I should have done a better job of this. I should have gotten a lawyer. You were right.”

She goes on like that, repeating herself, repeating me. I top off her wine and put a pillow behind her head as she lies back. “I bet when you wake up, she’ll be right there in her room, like always.”

“Mmm.”

Soon she’s out.

Up in Mandy’s room I check one more time for any clues as to what might be going on. The Bible is gone. Her new clothes are gone, her bag. My straightening iron. I dig through her trash and find an envelope addressed to her and get all excited, thinking there will be answers. But the single sheet of paper inside simply says:

Please stop writing to me.

—Alex from the train

I go back down and sit in Dad’s chair, watching Mom, watching the door. My phone, which I’ve got on vibrate, buzzes with a text and I scramble for it. It’s Ravi.

Ravi. When we were leaving Casa Bonita, he asked if I wanted him to stay with me, if there was anything he could do, but I sent him home so I could focus on this situation. Now he wants to know if there’s any new information.
No
, I text back.
Thx for checking.

I go over and over the whole night in my head. Dylan and Mandy being so late, acting so strange. Could something be going on between them? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Mandy is nuts and pregnant, and one thing I’ve never doubted is Dylan’s faithfulness to me, even when I’ve been less than faithful to him.

My phone buzzes again. This time it’s Dylan.

He’s outside my house in his car, and can I come out? I bolt for the door, grabbing my keys and my coat. It’s freezing outside; I run out to his idling car and jump into the passenger seat. “Where is she?”

Dylan looks terrified. “I took her to the train station.”

I don’t even blink before saying, “Take me. Right now.”

“Jill… you don’t get it. Imagine if—”

I hold up my hand, concentrating on containing my fury. There isn’t time to say everything I want to say. “I trusted you. I told my mom if Mandy was with you, we had nothing to worry about.”

“Imagine you were a guy who got a girl pregnant. Wouldn’t you have the right to know?” He’s impassioned. “Wouldn’t you want to have some
say
in what happened to your baby?”

I open the car door. I’m not here to debate parental rights. I just have to get Mandy back so that my mom isn’t shattered all over again. “If you won’t take me, I’ll go myself.”

“She’s coming back,” he says with less confidence. “She said she would. She—”

The rest of his words are muffled and then lost as I slam the door and walk to my own car to start scraping ice off the windshield. I hear him get out and follow. “Are you listening to me? No, of course not, because you never listen to anyone.”

“Why would I listen to bullshit, Dylan?” My fingers sting with the cold.

“Not everything is bullshit!” He’s loud enough now that if my mom weren’t stone-cold out, I’d worry he’d wake her. I move to the rear windshield, Dylan staying close. In an only slightly quieter voice, he says, “Ever since your dad died, you—”

“Don’t, Dylan. Don’t ‘ever since your dad died’ me.” The ice scraper falls from my numb hands. I pick it up. “I haven’t changed. I’ve always been this way.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Okay, well, I don’t remember that Jill.” I hold my hands to my face to warm them up, to press back tears. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry. And I can’t
be
her now, and I’m never going to be her again,” I say, my voice rising. I realize it, finally. This elusive old Jill I’ve been chasing isn’t someone who can be found. Short of my father coming back from the dead, it’s not happening. Which doesn’t mean I can’t change, just that I can’t change
back
.

I recognize hysteria coming when I see it; I can’t afford it right now. My hands drop, and I take deep breaths of the lung-burning air. “If I could, I would… and I wish… I’m sorry.”

Dylan is miserable, staring at the ground. “This sucks.”

I open the driver’s-side door, throw the scraper into the car. “Was she trying to sell a watch?” I ask.

He pulls his head back, a little surprised. “Yeah.”

“Did she?”

“No. I… I chickened out. I thought we were going to get stabbed outside a pawnshop or something. I gave her some of my own money instead.”

At least there’s that. “Go home,” I say. “Your parents are having a shit fit.”

Mandy’s sitting on one of the high-backed wooden benches, looking ten times as lost and helpless as she did the day she got here, even though her clothes are better now, and at least this time she’s got on a decently warm coat. At the sight of her, tears spring to my eyes. Tears of relief, I guess. Such incredible relief. Also, I feel something for her. Something like pity but more like affection, more like compassion. Because imagine. Having a mother like that, being pregnant, having the balls to leave home and go through with it all. And I wonder where she’s planning to go now, trying for another fresh start. As mad as I am at how close she’s come to getting away, there’s something admirable about how she can take care of herself, be this strong.

I sort of want to let her go. I still think my mom is bonkers for wanting to take on a baby at this point in life. And if the baby has half Mandy’s kooky genes, it’s going to be interesting. I also know my mom would give that baby a great life and love her even when she’s an ungrateful, bitchy teenager like me, love her more than she deserves. Not that Mandy couldn’t love her, too, and I’m not saying money necessarily makes a life better, but they had a deal. Does it matter that it might not hold up in a court of law?

“Mandy,” I call, breathless, from where I am, maybe ten feet away.

She turns her head and stands up. “Hi, Jill.” And she waves, as if we’re just running into each other at school or something. I’ll never get this girl.