Chapter 20
VI
I find Mara in the old food court.
She’s in the main seating area that nobody uses but which she claimed this morning. I find her sitting cross-legged on an old chipped plastic table with coffee and a book, and she looks up when I walk in, like she was expecting me.
"There you are," she says.
"Here I am."
I climb up onto the table beside her and the table creaks under our weight. I steal a sip of her coffee and she lets me, because that’s how we are together.
"How’re you doing?" she asks. “Haven’t seen a lot of you lately.”
I think for a moment. "I'm okay. I think. There's a lot swirling."
"The dad thing."
"The dad thing," I confirm. "And Fischer and his spy, and everything we found yesterday. And—" I stop. "It’s a lot."
She nods. She doesn't try to fix anything or talk me out of my angst, which is one of the things I love most about her. She knows when to just listen.
We sit in the food court for a while. It's a strange space these days, the ghost of a place we hung out in when we were tweens, ogling cute boys and scraping up enough money for a smoothie that we’d split between us.
These days, the food vendors’ menu boards have half their letters missing, and the soda fountain machines have been raided for parts.
On the other hand, the branded tiles on the floor are intact, although faded, and a napkin dispenser on one of the tables somehow still has napkins in it that say Rothwell Galleria.
It’s crazy, the stuff that manages to hang on despite everything going on around it.
"Tell me about Kade," I say.
Mara's eyebrows rise. "What about him?"
"Mara."
"He's just, he's very competent," she says with a hint of a blush.
My ass. We’re not talking about competence here.
I try not to laugh. "Uh-huh. Competence. What every girl wants. Soooo sexy."
She rolls her eyes. "Okay, fine. Here’s his bio, if that’s what you want. He grew up near here. He watched this place close. He said it was the first time he understood that things could just die. That something that seemed permanent could disappear."
"That's a lot to share with someone you just met."
"Well." Mara looks at her coffee. "I didn’t just meet him. We've talked a few times."
"A few times."
"Several times."
"Mara."
"Don't make it a thing, Vi, it's not a thing."
It absolutely is a thing. But I tuck it away with the satisfaction that Mara’s got a dude, and I move on because I am a good friend. She can be coy all she wants, but I’ll eventually get the whole story out of her.
"Hey, what’s up with your mom?" I ask. "Have you heard from her?"
She purses her lips and shakes her head. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up.
"No. Don't expect to."
I look off into the distance, remembering the falafel vendor that used to be in the far corner. "That’s too bad—"
“Hey, she made her choice," Mara says in her most practical tone. "Vi, when your father was accused and everyone started pulling away, she told me to do the same. That we couldn’t be associated with the ‘likes of your family’ as she put it. So I did. At first. And then I was like fuck this. I made my own decision and came looking for you.” She shrugs.
I don't say I'm sorry because Mara hates that and besides, I’m glad she came looking for me. Sure, I have the guys here in the Rot, but life is so much better with my bestie. Even if she has a new guy she’s being all tight-lipped about.
So I put a hand over hers and she grasps mine back.
"Your mom believed them," I say finally. "About my father."
"Most people did. It was easier," she says, squeezing my hand.
"You believed it too."
"Well, at first, I guess because everyone else did. But then, when I finally started to think for my own damn self, I realized I needed more information. I could say you showed me the light,” she adds with a weak, self-conscious laugh.
“It’s all good, Mar.” She needs to know she’s been forgiven.
We hear footsteps before we see him. Armen comes around the corner of the old burger place, pauses when he sees us, and for a moment, I think he's going to reverse course.
"Join us," Mara calls. "We don’t have cooties."
He half smiles, and my heart leaps. “Well, Mara, that’s not what they told me in sixth grade, you know.” He jumps up to sit next to me on the table and it creaks even more.
"Fancy, huh?” I say.
“Only the best for us Rotters.” He sits with his forearms on his knees and looks at the food court the same way I was looking at it earlier, as one of the ghosts of our pasts.
"You grew up in Rothwell, right?” Mara says to him.
"Yeah. East side."
"What was it like?"
Armen is quiet for a moment. "Dense," he says finally. "Old buildings, close together, everyone knowing everyone. The kind of neighborhood that had been there forever, and would be there forever. At least it seemed that way.”
"What happened to it?"
I glance at Mara. She's just asking, genuinely curious, the way she asks people about themselves. Only she doesn't know she's just opened a big, dark door.
Armen looks at the faded tiles on the floor. "You know Caldwell Street?" he says.
"Vaguely."
"The whole block, east side of Caldwell between the rail yard and the park.
There were eight apartment buildings housing maybe four hundred people all together.
" He pauses. "A development company acquired the block. Residents got two weeks’ notice.
Two fucking weeks. Demo equipment arrived on a Tuesday and by Friday, it was rubble. "
The food court is dead quiet.
"My God,” Mara says.
"Yeah. My family was in the same building for thirty years.
Third floor. Woman on the second floor grew tomatoes on the fire escape every summer.
Man downstairs played chess on the front steps every Sunday morning without fail.
" He stops. "After the demo, nobody ever built anything.
They just cleared it and left the empty lot. "
"Did anyone fight it?" Mara asks.
Armen looks at her. "No. Nobody had anything left to fight with."
I watch Mara absorb that, and the way she connects to other peoples’ stories. Her mother telling her to pull away from me. Everyone choosing the easier path.
“That's why you built this place," she says.
Armen looks around the food court, or rather, what’s left of it.
“Nowhere else to go," he says.
We sit on the plastic table, the three of us, in a place that used to feed people, in a building that used to be something else, in a city that's still trying to figure out what it is now.