Meet Me at the River (17 page)

I understand, believe me, all the ways I need to atone. But in the meantime I am grateful for the one thing that persists, my last acceptable solace—which is Luke and me, together again. I will take that in any shape I can, however limited or brief or fleeting. Please believe me when I say that I regret everything. And still I would do whatever I needed, anything in the world: to bring him back to me.

Luke stays away. He stays away well into early December, while my mother grows so large that she has to walk with her legs waddled wide apart, as if she’s balancing a bowling ball between her thighs. I’m in a fog the last weeks of winter term. At night I lean out my window and trace messages in the snow. Sometimes I write,
I love you.
Sometimes I write,
Come back.
Sometimes I write,
Goddamn it, Luke
, or
Where the hell are you?
The snow sifts inside, piling up beneath the window. My mother wonders why the floorboards have started to buckle.

*   *   *

School lets out. The snow falls and falls, and still Luke doesn’t come. I send in the last of my new college applications to Stanford and Colorado College. I use the same essay I wrote last year, about my years of wandering
and how they affected my character and what I learned about the world and myself. Blah, blah, blah. I do not consider for the barest second writing a new one about everything that’s happened since last May.

My grandfather brings us a Christmas tree cut from his Western hill. He will not look at Paul when he delivers it. He barely even looks at my mother. He offers me ukulele lessons again, and I hate saying “No, thank you,” because he looks so disappointed. My sisters—our sisters—come home mid-December and plan to stay a full three weeks because the baby is due. My mother goes into labor a few days after they arrive. Paul and she go to the hospital together while Jill, Katie, and I wait at home by the phone. We get a call around midnight.

I have dozed off on the couch. Katie crosses the living room and picks up the phone in the kitchen. I hear her voice, matter-of-fact and not particularly celebratory. Jill listens along with me, a few feet away in the red velvet armchair. The twins both have blond hair, like our mother, and her same pale blue eyes. Jill is built on a thicker scale than Mom, more like our grandmother, with broad shoulders and strong legs; Katie was like this originally, but since moving to LA she has lost the twenty pounds her agent demanded and looks unnaturally thin. They both wear their hair long, but contrary to what you might expect, Jill’s always looks perfect—combed and loose and glossy—whereas Katie usually pulls hers back in a ponytail or messy bun. Katie would never admit
that the desire to be a movie actor is a piece of wildness inherited from Mom. I wonder what she looks like in the horror movies she won’t let us watch. I’ve never seen her with the barest stitch of makeup.

Jill and I listen to Katie’s low voice until she replaces the phone onto the receiver with a gentle click. She comes back into the room. She wears checked flannel pajamas and looks much younger than twenty-four.

“Hannah is fine,” Katie says. Neither of the twins ever call her Mom. “Everything’s fine. They ended up doing a C-section, but that was pretty much expected because of her age. It went well. The baby is fine.”

“What is it?” Jill asks.

“A boy,” Katie says. “A healthy baby boy. Seven pounds.” I nod, surprised by the relief I feel. It hadn’t hit me, not consciously, the worry that something would go wrong, until I hear that everything has gone right.

“Why do they always tell you the weight?” Jill says.

“Because,” Katie says, “if the kid only weighed two pounds, that would be bad news. But seven pounds, that means he’s okay.”

“What did they name him?” I ask.

Katie crosses the room and sits down on the couch with me. “His name is Matthew,” she says.

Jill stands up and walks over to the window. She peers into the darkness and taps on a pane. For a strange moment I think maybe she sees Luke and is trying to
get his attention. But then she says, in a flat voice, “Dad loves those apostles.”

Katie and I look at each other. She puts a hand on my knee. “Well,” she says. “We have a brother again. I guess we can all go to bed now.”

Climbing the stairs behind my sisters, I concentrate on how happy my mother must be. Finally, a boy. I wonder if Paul feels scared, or grateful, or both—at everything he has to do over again, and hopefully get right this time.

*   *   *

In my room something about the air has changed—it feels like a barrier has constructed itself around the walls, the window. This new being in the world, this new sort-of brother. I sit on my bed and remind myself that this baby was planned—conceived even, implanted—before Luke’s death. He was never meant to replace him. Now I can only hope he won’t prevent Luke from coming back.

I hear footsteps on the stairs, one of the twins. Before the knock I already know it’s Jill, who moves much more assertively than Katie. She doesn’t wait for me to answer her knock before she cracks the door and pokes in her head.

“Tressa?” she says. “Are you all right?”

I grab a pillow and hug it to my chest, realizing as I speak that the gesture may seem to contradict my words. “Fine,” I say. “I’m happy for Mom.”

Jill crosses the room and sits at the foot of my bed. She says, “I’m happy for her too. I want to be, anyway. The whole thing still feels so surreal.” She scratches her nose with the back of her hand, three or four brisk rubs. Then she flattens her hand on my quilt, Francine’s old quilt. I wonder if Jill recognizes it.

“I guess I keep waiting for it not to be hard,” Jill says. “Hard to think of having a little brother that’s not Luke. Hard to believe she’ll take care of a kid this time. Which of course I want her to do, but then I think, if she does, then why couldn’t she do that for Katie and me? And for you.”

This last is just a polite attempt to include me. But I say, “I know what you mean. It’s a little weird. The milk-and-cookies mom.”

“Or even a mom at all.” Jill has every right to feel the way she does. But I don’t want to betray Mom—who is
Mom
to me—by agreeing with her.

“Anyway,” she goes on. “It’s very weird. The whole thing. On so many levels. I keep wondering what Luke would say.” She raises her chin and stares at me with clear, faintly challenging eyes, then moves her gaze back to the quilt, picking at a loose thread. “You know,” she says. “I know Katie and I weren’t here for you and Luke. I feel bad that I never said anything to Dad, to try to help you two out more.”

“Oh,” I say. I recognize this as a chance to grant what I want most—forgiveness—and jump at the chance.
“Don’t worry about that. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway.”

“Maybe not. Who knows? I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s very hard coming home and having him not here. When I’m in town, I can’t stop expecting to see him when I turn corners.” She picks harder at the quilt. “I wake up in the morning and I think I should go over to Francine’s and see him, and then I remember. I feel sad all the time about him being gone, and at the same time I keep forgetting he’s gone. You know?”

I lean forward and put my hand over hers. She looks down at our two hands and says, “I have to admit something to you, Tressa.” I hold my breath, slightly scared of whatever she’ll say. “It wasn’t just laziness or distance that kept me from helping you two. The truth is, I never wanted you together, partly because it was weird—my sister and my brother. But the other part . . . it wasn’t that I agreed with them, that Luke would corrupt you. Honestly I didn’t even care if he did, because what would it amount to? A couple of beers? Lost virginity? Big whoop, right? But still I just thought it would be for the best if you weren’t together, because I felt sure you would break his heart.”

This idea is so bizarre, so apart from anything that ever could have happened, that all I can do is point to my chest. “Me?” I say, as if she could mean anyone else. “Break Luke’s heart?”

Jill nods. “I guess, in my own weird way, even though it wasn’t your fault, I always thought of you as running away. I saw myself in Luke. That’s what I realize now. I saw myself in Luke, and Hannah in you, and I thought you’d do to him what she always did to me.”

“Jill,” I say, my voice a little twisted, a little hoarse. “That never would have happened. Not in a million years.”

She smiles sadly. “But we’ll never know,” she says. Tears have started streaming down her face.

“
I
know,” I whisper. “I would never have left him. I promise you, Jill. I would never, ever have run away. Not from Luke. Not ever.”

Jill wipes the flat of her palm over each eye. I try to imagine my sister’s daily life. She lives in Denver and works taking care of plants in large office buildings. Such a loving job, tending and nurturing, but also solitary. It probably gives her way too much time to think about these past months and what they’ve done to our weird and fractured family.

She flops down on her side, lying across the foot of my bed. I pull my feet away and cross my legs. Jill lies there for a long time, the two of us looking at each other, until her eyelids start to droop, and her breathing slows. I watch her sleep, light freckles dusting the bridge of her nose, fairy-princess hair spread out across the bed. Asleep, she looks more adult than she did awake—less restful than worried, drained. Another wounded one of us.

Part of me feels disappointed that she’s fallen asleep there, knowing that her presence will keep Luke away for yet another night. Another part of me hopes even more strongly—if it’s possible—that Luke
will
come. I imagine myself waking Jill.
Look who’s here
, I would say. And then I could sit back, giving them room, watching the joyful reunion.

*   *   *

The next day, when my sisters and I walk into Mom’s hospital room, she’s sitting up in bed, alone, her head turned and gazing out the window. Paul’s not here, and neither is the baby. I can hear squalling from the nursery, and from adjacent rooms, but in here feels like a little bubble of quiet.

“Hannah,” Jill says when Mom doesn’t turn to look at us.

She snaps her head in our direction, as if we’ve startled or woken her. Her hair is pulled back, and even though she looks tired, the harsh lights don’t seem to be doing much damage. Instead of a hospital gown she wears a lavender nightgown that I’ve never seen before, with a high, ruffled collar. She looks pretty. I walk over and give her a hug, then climb onto the bed next to her. “Hi, girls,” she says to the twins, once I’ve settled in.

“Where’s Matthew?” Katie says. The two of them still stand just past the threshold of the room.

“He’s in the nursery,” Mom says. “I wanted to rest. Your father went down to get the paper and some coffee.”

“We’re going to go see the baby,” Jill says. She grabs hold of Katie’s elbow, pulling her toward the door.

“Sure,” Mom says. “You can bring him back here, if you want.”

“I doubt they just hand babies to anyone who asks,” Jill says.

“Oh, right. Well, tell the nurse she can bring him here, if she has time.”

When they’ve left the room, Mom puts her arm around my shoulders. “I’m glad to see you,” she says. “I was worried about you.”

“Worried about me,” I say. “Can you please be the one who gets worried about? Just this once? With the whole baby-operation thing?”

She smiles and leans her head back on the pillow. “What’s he like?” I ask.

“He’s very small,” she says, and sighs a little. Then, by way of apology, “I’m really tired, Tressa. And taking painkillers. I’m not myself.”

“You’re fine, Mom. Don’t worry.”

A nurse who looks exactly like Meryl Streep comes into the room, carrying a squirming bundle. Jill and Katie trail in behind her, followed by Paul. The nurse leans over the bed, about to land the baby in Mom’s arms. “Give him to Tressa,” my mother says.

The nurse halts in midair. “He’ll want to eat,” she says, slightly scolding.

“In a minute,” Mom promises. “Let his sister hold him.”

I glance apologetically at Katie and Jill as the nurse matches the numbers on the baby’s bracelet to one that Mom’s wearing. Then she lowers the baby into my arms. She’s so used to doing this for novices that she doesn’t need to give me instructions, just mimics how I should cradle him—his head supported by the crook of my elbow—as she lowers him down.

And suddenly I’m holding this squirming being. He wears a little blue skullcap, and his eyes are a murky gray color. As his mouth opens and closes, he makes weird bird noises—a cross between gulping and chirping. He looks red and scrunched and tiny and strangely perfect. I reach down to touch his tiny hand—fingernails!—and he closes his fist around my finger.

“Wow,” I say. “Look at you.”

Paul settles into a chair next to the bed, a paper coffee cup in one hand and the newspaper across his lap. The baby opens his mouth and starts wailing, the most insistent sound I have ever heard. Mom reaches for him, and for a moment I resist her taking him from me. Then I hand him over. I guess there must be some kind of flap in her nightgown, because in a second she’s nursing the baby without unbuttoning it. Somewhere in the process his cap has fallen off, and I reach across Mom’s body to touch the top of his head. It feels unbelievably tender, downy.

“Now, Tressa,” Jill says with a laugh, from where she and Katie still stand, in the doorway. “You have to promise not to date this one.”

I can hear an intake of sharp breath from both Mom and Paul, but I take it as I know Jill meant it, as a joke, and I laugh too. So does Katie.

How weird, and surprising—new life. I’m glad I got onto the bed with Mom, because I hadn’t been at all prepared. For this feeling flooding me, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

“I promise,” I say, letting my hand rest on the baby’s stomach. It covers his whole tiny self. “But I do love you,” I tell my new brother. “I really do.”