Marley arrived at my house less than ten minutes after Dad left, her breath coming in jagged spurts that told me she’d sprinted the whole two blocks to get there. Flopping onto my bed in a huff, she looked like a starfish. It took her a minute to catch her breath, but while I waited, I crawled into my bed next to her. We looked up at my ceiling and I had a flashback to a sleepover we’d had once as kids. There had been hundreds of sleepovers, but the one that crept into my memory was one when Marley and I had made a treasure map and made Mom tack it up to the ceiling. After that, we made up stories about pirates and mermaids while we drifted off to sleep. There’d be no pirates this time, but I wished I had a map more than ever. A treasure map with a big X somewhere along an edge that would show me the shortest path to my happiness.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Marley told me as she flipped onto her side so that her knees were up against my hip. “I don’t know whether to ask about your date or your dad.”
My date or my dad. I didn’t really know which one of them to start with, either, but I felt a dense, physical relief in my stomach as I realized that both of those topics were finally on the upswing. With Lennox, I had to shut my eyes to catch my breath because the joy of our meeting was still too large to contain inside me. With my dad, things weren’t quite as good, but I’d found a way to release the past I had been gripping so tightly. With my dad, I finally felt some hope.
“Know what?” I said, curling up to face my oldest friend. “I want to hear what’s going on with you. Any news about Sean?”
Marley let out a snort of disgust. “Sean? No, no. Sean is definitely not the one. I texted him a flirty text the other day and that boy didn’t respond for almost two hours. No, I’ve got my eyes set on someone else.”
Playing coy, Marley waited almost five minutes to reveal that she had a crush on Jake. It was weird; a month ago I would’ve been upset by the risk that her crush would upset the whole balance of our friend group. I would have discouraged her from attempting a relationship with so much potential to complicate everything in all our lives. Now, though, complications just didn’t seem like such a big deal.
“You know I’m extremely pro-Jake,” I told her with an authoritative nod. “That’s a quality guy.”
She laughed and for the next half hour, we lounged in my bed planning the upcoming summer and imagining what it would be like in our new couplings. Marley was all about impromptu trips to the lake or to concerts. She was in the place I’d been when winter break had started: desperate for something new. For me, that time had changed; it wasn’t that I didn’t still want to go places and have fun, I just didn’t have the same urge to force everything. Sitting on the couch with Netflix and snacks, hanging out listening to music, just chilling sounded great to me.
When Marley went home, I sat on the edge of my bed thinking about the one thing I hadn’t managed to fix. Things with Mom were still weird and even though most of the flames of our anger had gone out, there was still a stiffness between us that there’d never been. It was my fault. It was her fault, too, but mostly mine. I was still hurt that she’d lied, but it probably wouldn’t have been a bad move to at least try to see how hard her decision had been.
I found her in the kitchen heating some water in the microwave and I giggled to myself as I remembered a recent Buzzfeed article about how scandalized Europeans were that Americans microwaved water. The comments had been wild; people thought it was intensely gross that we heated our water that way. I’d never really given it a second thought before reading that, but there was something shocking about the backlash. Was it the convenience or time saving they found so off-putting?
I broke my weird, rabbit hole of thoughts by sitting at a stool and watching mom dunk her teabag. Breaking the ice was hard. I’d let things go for too long and when she’d tried to put things behind us, I’d stopped just shy of slamming the door in her face. Every time I thought I’d settled on something to say, I’d change my mind, and after the third time I opened then shut my mouth, Mom sighed ia loud, guttural groan.
“Hannah. You look like a fish with your mouth popping open and shut like that. Is there something you’d like to say?” She blew on her tea before taking a sip, her eyes steady on mine. Her face gave away nothing, her expression totally blank. I had to hand it to her, Mom could wait it out. No silence was too awkward, no lull too uncomfortable. If I were in her position, I would already be desperate to fill in the gaps the quiet left. I think maybe that’s what finally got me talking, even though I still wasn’t sure what to say.
“Dad’s really different,” I told her. It occurred to me that maybe she wouldn’t want to hear me talk about Dad. Maybe it was too painful or just brought up memories that she’d rather forget. Instead she shocked me again.
“I know,” she said. “We talk every week. At least once.”
Every time I felt like I was starting to see the full picture, starting to finally grasp the dynamic my parents shared, everything changed on me. Here again, I’d pictured Mom as pining away for Dad, missing her best friend, and they talked every week?
“Since when?” I demanded.
Although her eyebrows rose at my tone, Mom didn’t comment on it. “Forever,” she said. “That was one of our earliest agreements and he’s always kept to it. Even if it's just for five minutes, just to check in. I mean, there have been a few times his illness made him go AWOL, but for the most part, he’s been incredibly consistent.”
My head was pounding. The vein on the side of my forehead thumped in time with my heart and I wondered if this was it: the moment my head would just explode from being fed too much information too quickly. I mean, clearly my brain should be atrophied from underuse since in all the years leading up until now, I’d been told nothing. I guess my indignation was written all over my face because Mom rolled her eyes and told me not to be melodramatic.
“Oh, sure,” I answered sarcastically. “I’ve just found out my life is basically a daytime soap opera, but why be melodramatic.”
Mom let her hair down from her ponytail and began massaging her scalp, eyes shut tightly. Lines branched away from her eyelids and it was like her face was carrying all the different secrets of our family tree. Some branches were thin and barely holding, while other lines went deeper. Mom’s deepest wrinkles were clearly the branch that had formed me and Ari.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a brat about all this,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I know it’s been hard for you.”
Opening one eye to peer out at me, Mom nodded. She sat upright suddenly and began making a second cup of tea. I assumed it was for me because she used a fresh mug to microwave the water. As she stretched onto her tiptoes to pull the cup from the cabinet, her hair cascaded down her back and I noticed the grays that were starting to really make their way through the red. While we waited for the water to boil, Mom clicked her fingernails against the counter, and I noticed that they were painted a pearly pink. It was a subtle color, but cheerful.
“Hey,” I teased, “What’s the occasion? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with nail polish.”