Fifteen
FIFTEEN
She lay in her underwear in her single bed, trying to count the things she remembered and loved about the life she was six thousand miles away from.
She loved her block, solid four-story buildings, the elementary school, the bodega, the two vintage clothing stores, and, at the very end, her own sunny redbrick low-rise.
She loved Roxy and she loved the cats.
She loved the painting on the wall in the living room, the one she found in a general store in Hudson, New York, by the painter who had done a whole series while he was in prison (the painting was of dogs and cats).
She loved the old cast-iron pans that hung from the hooks in her kitchen. She loved making soup for dinner and eating it by herself in front of the old thirteen-inch TV they’d kept in the kitchen for way too long.
She loved sticking her feet into a hot tub of water at the end of shift, back when she used to have shifts.
She loved taking new students through tiny backstreets of Chinatown or Little India to the hidden little places, introducing them to hand-pulled noodles or cardamom pods or fava beans still in the shell.
She loved watching them taste the not-too-sweet sweetness of a mooncake with its red beans buried inside.
She loved surprising them with their own city.
She loved writing her small articles about what she knew.
And she loved the people she loved.
She loved Ferry, which was something she didn’t even need to say, and she loved Judd.
Of course she loved Judd. The way he kissed her forehead, casually.
The way he laughed with his whole body. The way he remembered everyone and everything about who she was.
Even if he didn’t always act like he remembered, he did.
He brought home pints of Ben if there were still sirens on Rustaveli, Amy was too far up in the hills to hear them.
This house, this small bedroom, felt like a cabin in a ship, floating through time and space, rocking back and forth between one destination and another.
The dogs beneath her in the engine room.
The grandmothers somewhere below deck. Irine, alone, in the heart of the ship, trying to steer it.
And Amy upstairs, looking out at the inky water.
The night in Tbilisi was black, Amy thought, like inky water, glittering from above with stars.
It was still so hard to sleep here.
In Tbilisi, two a.m. In Ithaca, six in the afternoon.
“Isn’t it late there?” Ferry asked. He’d picked up the phone after just one ring. “Why are you awake?”
“I’ve never exactly adjusted to the time zones,” Amy said. “I just wanted to hear your voice.”
She imagined Ferry in his dorm room, window overlooking the golf course. He’d lucked out with a single this year, small but entirely his, and down the hall in every room seemed to be some buddy or another. The cafeteria on the ground floor almost never closed.
“Here’s my voice,” Ferry said. “Does it sound the same?”
“It does,” Amy said. “Maybe a little older.”
Ferry cleared his throat. “How about now?”
“Now you sound like you.” Although he still sounded older.
During their last visit to Ithaca, Judd had taken them to a half dozen small wineries in the region, set against beautiful lakes; they tried the Riesling, less sweet than many others she’d had, and some gentle reds.
They’d been dropping Ferry off for his sophomore year, late summer, and the roadways were clogged with farmer’s markets, farm-to-table restaurants, tourists gawking at the sunsets and the bounty and then crowding into the charming lakeside restaurants to eat lake trout and corn from a field up the road.
And then, after they’d eaten, Ferry took them to the Cornell creamery where they’d all had gigantic cones (the milk from Cornell’s own cows!), two desserts a person every night.
Judd wondering how neither Amy nor Ferry ever seemed to put on a pound.
That was only eight months ago, a marriage and a family that had seemed hard-won and assured.
“I heard about Uno,” Amy said.
“Yeah, well,” Ferry said. Then, matter-of-fact: “I guess it had to catch up with her eventually.”
“Are you okay?”
“More or less,” he said. Then: “Not really.”
What were Amy’s reasons, again, for not calling sooner? Only a feeling that he was twenty now, that she didn’t have to try to soften every blow for him anymore, or that she couldn’t. Or that everything seemed so far away from her, even him.
“It’s kind of annoying, to tell you the truth.”
“What is?”
“Just how she seems surprised by this whole thing. You can’t abuse your body like that for half your life without any consequences.” He sounded bitter; she had never heard this sound in his voice before. “Did I tell you she’s been writing me letters?”
“From the hospital?”
“Yeah, these really long letters—she wants me to know more about her life, how she ended up where she is. And she wants to give me advice. As though she’s someone I should be taking advice from.”
“Well, she still wants to look out for you—”
“Name one time in my life she has ever, ever looked out for me.”
“Ferry—”
“Name one.”
“She’s been sober now for seven years,” Amy said. “That’s a lot of work. And I honestly think you’re the only reason she’s been able—”
He cut her off with a snort. “Did you know she was actually homeless for a while? Born into a fortune and turns out homeless ?”
The way he said that. “She always had a place to sleep.”
“Mom, for two years she didn’t have an address.
Her parents kicked her out, none of her friends trusted her anymore.
If Dad hadn’t taken her in, she wouldn’t have had anywhere to go.
And he knew what would happen if he took her in!
And she’s actually telling me all this like she’s proud of it!
How he knew she would steal his shit and sell it, he made her promise not to, and then the second she arrived, she did it.
Did you know that? Stole his kitchen knives which were worth like a thousand bucks and sold them for heroin. ”
“Ferry—”
“And she’s writing this like it’s something I should know! Like this is something I’d want to know about the person who fucking gave birth to me—”
“Ferry, she just wants you to understand—”
“I do understand. She wants to absolve herself, so she’s dumping her shit on me.”
“Honey, she’s your mother.”
“Like she was ever a mother.”
“Ferry.”
“Maybe I’ve never had a mother at all.”
“Ferry!” she said. “Enough!”
But she could hear him crying softly on the other end of the phone.
“Listen, honey, don’t read the letters if you don’t want to. You don’t have to engage at all. But I think she’s just trying to explain herself, or make amends.”
“She could have done that a long time ago.”
But she had , Amy wanted to say. She had tried her best to be as good to you as she knew how to be. But she didn’t think he’d be able to hear that right now, so instead she said, “I love you so much, honey.”
“I know,” he said. Then: “I love you too.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“I think so,” he said. “It’s just—I’m so fucking pissed.”
“I know, baby,” she said. They were silent for a moment.
She wondered if he was still crying. But then he heard a voice behind him, a few voices, and he said that his friends were there to go play basketball, that’s what he wanted to go do, and she said great, and when they hung up she felt a heaviness in her gut, a sorrow.
The first time she’d met Uno: one afternoon after a brunch shift, she let herself into Judd’s apartment; they’d been dating for three months and she already had a key.
And there was Uno sitting on the couch, frail and blondish and red-eyed, either high or recently coming down from something.
She wearing a black turtleneck; it was eighty-eight degrees outside.
“So you’re the other Amy,” she’d said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Amy lied. The hand she grasped was as bony and freezing as a grandmother’s, and Amy tried not to draw back quickly. “Have you been—have you been comfortable here?”
“I’m never comfortable,” the woman said. “And when people are around me they’re not comfortable either. It’s too bad but it’s a fact.”
Amy admired the honesty.
“Do you love him?” Uno asked.
Who?
“Where is he?”
“Getting Ferry. At the babysitter’s.”
This was Ferry’s mother.
“He’s a good guy, you know. He has a good heart.”
“I know,” Amy said, nervous in this woman’s presence; she disappeared into the kitchen to spend a long time making soup.
When Judd came in almost an hour later, Ferry in his arms, they found Uno passed out on the couch, silent and unmoving as the dead.
She had just leaned back and closed her eyes and sat like that, upright, passed out, for hours.
Ferry did not acknowledge her, but instead ran straight to Amy, jumped into her waiting hug, and she took him to his room and closed the door and they played with his toy trucks for three hours straight, while his mother sat corpselike a room away.
It was all too weird, and not for the first time in this heady new relationship, Amy thought, what am I getting into?
How can I do this? And then looked at Ferry and thought, it will be worth it, it’s already worth it.