Chapter 33
Noah
Students will be able to endure.
The next week was a tiring one.
Gennie and I spent afternoons at her therapist’s office working through the events of the weekend and preparing to visit Eva. There were a lot of tears and they weren’t all from Gennie. This shit was hard and there was no getting around it.
It was also a quiet week. Shay stayed late at school to organize materials for a new unit she had coming up, and though I knew that was true, I also knew she was giving us a wide berth.
I knew she believed it was for the best, especially for Gennie, but I missed her.
I wanted to climb into Shay’s bed and bury my face in the crook of her shoulder and forget all about the weight of raising a child who’d been through too much in her handful of years on this planet.
Instead, I tossed and turned all night. I couldn’t close my eyes without being haunted by the visions of Shay. When she returned to Friendship and when she told me about her dream of turning Twin Tulip into a wedding venue. The day I married her and the night she kissed me and meant it.
I didn’t fantasize about the girl I’d loved in high school anymore or the person I’d resented for never looking back after she left.
Everything I’d felt for her then was real but it was different now—complicated and layered and sophisticated in ways I never would’ve understood until it thrummed in my veins.
I loved her and I hoped it would be enough this time.
* * *
“Go on,” I said to Gennie. “I’ll be right here the entire time.”
Gennie sawed her teeth over her lower lip and kept her gaze on the linoleum floor. “Maybe she changed her mind and doesn’t want to see me.”
“I know she wants to see you more than anything in the world.”
She nodded once. “Dr. Brianna said I’m allowed to feel lots of things at once and that’s called being overwhelmed.” She twisted her fingers in her black-and-white striped skirt. “Do you think my mom feels overwhelmed?”
“I’m sure she does.”
She was quiet for a moment. “Are you going to come with me?”
“I am but I’m going to let you have some time alone with your mom first, like we talked about with Dr. Brianna. Is that okay? Or should we make a new plan?”
She shook her head. “That’s okay.” She glanced across the room to where my sister stood beside a round table, her fingers twisted together and her body shifting like she was ready to spring up from the bench. “Stay right here,” she said, a hand on my shoulder, “where I can see you.”
Gennie walked toward Eva, her hair in the best braids I could manage.
When she was a few paces from the table, she paused.
I pushed to my feet, my heart in my throat, thinking she needed me to do this with her, but then she sprinted toward her mother.
She flew into Eva’s arms, knocking her back a step.
Minutes went by as I stood there, watching them cling to each other, their shoulders heaving as they sobbed. Eventually, they pulled apart enough for Eva to swipe her thumbs over Gennie’s wet cheeks and they smiled at each other. I sat down. My heart remained lodged in my throat.
They talked for nearly ninety minutes, most of that time consumed by words pouring out of Gennie. She didn’t stop moving once, always wiggling or hopping up to dance or act out the story she was telling. Eva barely blinked, too busy absorbing every last ounce of her daughter.
When Gennie ran over to fetch me, she said, “I feel overwhelmed but it’s not the bad kind of overwhelmed anymore.”
“That’s good. And wasn’t I right? Your mom didn’t change her mind about wanting to see you.”
She aimed a sour scowl in my direction, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe I’d repeated her own words back to her.
Gennie led me to the table and motioned for me to sit across from Eva.
My sister looked like she’d lived many years in the past one.
She’d always taken after our mother, with a tall, slim build and dark hair though their similarities ended at appearances.
Where my mother was a peacemaker by trade, Eva was a rebel to the core.
She had the word anarchy tattooed down the length of her spine.
My mother saw no reason to travel or go away on vacations; Eva couldn’t survive without new adventures.
Mom preferred constancy; Eva craved the unknown.
It was those fundamental differences—and the intolerance of them—that dug a mile-wide channel between them over the years.
By the time Eva graduated, they barely spoke.
Those last few years, when I was starting high school and Dad kept buying farmland he couldn’t afford from our neighbors, brought out the worst in them. It was the worst for all of us.
It was no surprise Eva left home one day without saying goodbye. She texted me often but she only called the house every few months. It stood to reason that things would’ve been better without Mom and Eva walking around in hostile, seething storm clouds but it wasn’t. It wasn’t better.
I didn’t know whether Eva found what she wanted beyond the pastoral borders of Friendship, Rhode Island.
I had to believe that she had found some of it.
I had to believe that. I couldn’t watch while she gazed at her daughter with awe and unmasked grief if I didn’t believe she’d lived wild and free in the time between leaving home and a life sentence.
And I couldn’t tell her how very much she looked like our mother.
“I have people working on the appeal,” I said to my sister.
She lifted her shoulders. “I know. And I know it will take time.”
“They’re still working on getting you moved to Connecticut too.”
Gennie crawled into Eva’s lap and turned her attention to the coloring book pages and worn-down crayons on the table. “I know you’re doing everything you can.”
“And I’m—”
“Tell me about the girl you married,” Eva interrupted. “Why am I not surprised it’s Shay What’s-Her-Name from high school?”
“It’s not—it isn’t—I mean, we aren’t actually—well. Yeah. Shay Zucconi.” I folded my arms on the table and leaned closer. I had no idea what I was trying to say. Where to begin? “Gennie likes her.”
“I know,” Eva said, laughing. “I heard all about Shay.”
“It’s not—she isn’t—” This time, I knew what I was saying but I couldn’t gather the right words to say it. “She’s not trying to replace you.”
She nodded slowly and pressed her lips together.
Then, “I know that too. I’m happy there’s someone in Gennie’s life who can tie fancy braids and help her read about pirates and explorers.
” She glanced at the coloring page. “I’m really happy there’s someone in your life who can do special things for you too.
With everything that you do for all of us, you deserve it most of all. ”
I nodded. I needed that validation more than I could ever put into words. “You’d like her. She has pink hair and wears avocado earrings.”
“Like, actual avocados? Or things made to look like avocados?”
I waved a finger toward my ear as if she didn’t know where earrings went and said, “Beaded things that look like avocados. Beads, sequins. Embroidery, maybe? But not actual avocados, no.”
“Actual avocados would be pretty badass,” Eva mused. “I bet there’s some kind of ancient Mesoamerican custom of wearing avocado earrings as a way of knowing the exact moment they’re ripe.”
In a different time, Eva would’ve followed that thought to the Yucatan and spent two months asking the locals about old avocado lore.
Then the wind would’ve turned her attention in a new direction and she’d set off to hitchhike up and down Pacific Coast Highway or learn how to drive a pontoon boat down south.
“Are you doing all right?” I asked her.
With the curiosity of ancient avocados wiped from her face, Eva nodded slowly.
“As good as anyone else in this place,” she said.
“But it hasn’t been too bad. Thank you for the care packages and for keeping money on my card.
That’s helped.” She heaved out a sigh. “There are books here. Not the best of selections and some really outdated shit but I’ll take what I can get.
” Her eyes widened, her brows crinkled. She paused and I prepared for the worst. “I’ve been talking to a counselor.
She suggested I think about writing to Mom. ”
I leaned closer, my chest nearly level with the table. “Say that again?”
She laughed though the sound was sad. Aching.
“I know, right? The counselor says it might help me resolve some stuff if I reach out. If I just say hi and that I miss her and I hope she’s okay.
That’s all.” As she spoke, her eyes filled with tears and her words broke.
“Even if she never responds, I’ll know I tried. ”
“I think that’s a good idea. I know it’s hard for her to write. She has a tough time holding a pen or typing but there’s probably someone at the facility who can help.”
“I might do that,” she said. “But I won’t hold my breath for a response. Because she has a hard time writing.”
We were silent for several minutes while Gennie colored.
She told a story about pirates and submarines and how mermaids would always side with pirates.
When the visiting hours ended, Gennie and Eva shared another long, tearful embrace.
I gave my sister a squeeze and reminded her to let me know if there was anything she needed.
I carried Gennie out of the facility, her head heavy on my shoulder and her silent tears soaking my shirt.
She didn’t say much on the drive back to the hotel other than to say she wanted to visit the indoor pool again and then eat chicken fingers for dinner.
All things considered, this visit was a remarkable improvement over previous attempts.
And yet it was still grueling. It was still more than I ever wanted Gennie to endure.
She splashed in the pool for three straight hours and, upon judging her five thousandth handstand of the evening, I realized she was burning off emotional energy.
She needed to tell pirate and mermaid stories and race from one end of the pool to the other and handstand her ass off because it was how she worked out the stress.
It was the same reason she ran off the bus every afternoon and bombed down the hill to play with the dogs.
She wasn’t just a hellraiser of a child.
It wasn’t an attack on my orderly way of life.
She simply needed to do something with everything she’d experienced that day.
Gennie swam up to the edge of the pool. “Noah, am I allowed to send Momma stuff in the mail?”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I don’t know. Maybe some of my good schoolwork or a letter if Shay would help me write it.”
“Yeah, you can send her those things,” I said. “I’m sure Shay would help you but I can help too.”
“Shay’s better at that stuff.” She dunked under the surface and then came back up. “I was a little girl when Momma went away and I didn’t really understand it,” she said sagely. “Now that I’m a big girl, I know Momma still loves me and she didn’t go away because she didn’t like being my momma.”
“You’re—you’re a big girl now,” I repeated.
“Yeah,” she replied, as if it was obvious. “And I think you need to be really nice to Shay.”
I leaned forward on the lounge chair. What did this kid know that I didn’t? And where was she getting her information? “I…thought I was nice to Shay.”
“Nicer,” Gennie said. “Like you love her.”
I coughed to cover up a bitter laugh. Shay and I had exchanged a few texts this week, only the most basic check-ins from our travels and confirmation that she was well, and it was driving me fucking crazy.
I couldn’t wait to get home. I wanted to make things right with us and I didn’t care what that cost me.
I’d rip up this fake marriage and start over if that helped.
I’d hire another therapist so the three of us could figure out how to do this right.
Anything she wanted, I’d give her. Anything. “How do you suggest I do that?”
“You should do nice things, like take her on romantic dates,” Gennie replied. “I promise I won’t run away when Mrs. Castro comes to babysit this time.”
Mrs. Castro was a little too busy unpacking the horror of her last babysitting gig to consider future opportunities with this flight risk. “Dates, okay. What else?”
“She liked it a lot when we had a birthday party. Maybe we should do that again.”
“Another birthday?”
“I dunno. Maybe a party with cake. And presents! You should give her presents.”
“Right. Okay. Anything else?”
Gennie floated on her back, her arms swishing at her sides. “You should tell her you love her. Tell her a lot . I think that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
She flipped around and returned to her handstand practice.
Maybe she was right. Maybe that was exactly what I needed to do.