Chapter Twelve Barb
Chapter Twelve
Barb
I stare up at Regina’s building, grimy and salt stained.
The fire escape that snakes up the side of the three-story building appears so rusted, I doubt the ladder could be lowered in an emergency.
As I scan the four windows on each floor, wondering which belonged to my daughter, I can’t fight the disappointment that this isn’t somewhere I would have wanted her to live.
She never brought me here when I visited.
It wasn’t somewhere Regina wanted to show me either.
In the front alcove, there are six buzzers. I run my hand over the names, stopping at Geller, and press the buzzer. It rings and rings. I don’t want it to end, but it has to, and when eventually it does, this feels like another small death. How many more times can I lose her?
I press the button for Rosenthal, chuckling to myself.
I’d wanted Regina to go to temple to meet a nice Jewish boy.
Instead, she went to Venice Beach and found herself a nice Jewish girl.
At least, I hope she’s nice. I hope she was good to my daughter.
It rings twice, then she buzzes me in without inquiry.
Maisy’s apartment is 3B, so I mount the stairs, sending piercing stabs through my right knee.
Though I’m in good shape, I’ve been walking too much.
On the second floor, the police have blocked a door with crime scene tape.
A few pairs of sandals are lined against the wall beside a mat with a typewriter on it.
I check under Regina’s mat. There’s no key.
I take my shoes off and slip my feet into her plastic sandals.
Grains of sand itch my toes through my nylon socks.
A woman’s voice echoes from above. “It’s the third floor.”
I climb up, wondering who Maisy thinks she’s buzzed in. There’s no world in which she knows she’s about to talk to Regina’s mother.
An Asian woman materializes at the top of the steps in a ribbed tank top and shorts so short they may as well be underwear. Her straight hair is ear length and greasy. She has a ring in her nose and lilies grafted onto her arms. Thick liner engulfs her dark eyes.
“You have my food?”
“You’re Maisy Rosenthal?” I ask uncertainly.
“My dad’s Jewish,” she says, unfazed, though it’s the kind of moment that would show up in the sensitivity training videos I had commissioned for my company. “My food?”
Her impatience quickly shifts to discomfort as she realizes I’m not the delivery person.
“I’m Barb Geller.” For years after Isaac and I divorced, I debated returning to my maiden name, to sever the most symbolic way I had belonged to my ex-husband, ultimately deciding against it because I wouldn’t have had the same surname as my daughter.
When I say Geller now, it isn’t Isaac’s last name. It’s Regina’s. “I’m—”
Maisy thunders down the stairs and thrusts her arms around me so tight, I can feel her rib cage contracting and expanding as she starts to cry. She smells ripe, sweaty. I let her embrace me. It’s the closest I’ll get to holding Regina ever again.
“Sorry.” Maisy pulls away from me. “I don’t know what came over me.”
She wipes black tears off her cheeks. They leave streaks, little dark lines like wrinkles. I squeeze her arm, trying not to cry myself.
“I’m sorry too. I know you were close with her.” It’s odd, consoling this woman I don’t know over my daughter’s death. I can tell by her blotchy face, her bloody nail beds, her stench, that she needs someone to comfort her. I can be this person. I tell myself it’s what Regina would have wanted.
“Do you want to—” Maisy motions up to her apartment. “I should warn you, I’m not neat like your daughter.”
Regina, neat? In high school, no square of Regina’s carpet was spared from dirty clothes, no inch of her desk free from water glasses or empty plates.
When she stayed at her father’s, I would clean her room.
She’d return, say nothing about the now-orderly space.
We never fought about it. Instead, she’d proceed to create as much chaos as she could until she left for Isaac’s and the cycle began again.
Maisy isn’t exaggerating. Her apartment is as bad as Regina’s room ever was as a teenager.
Clothes bury the furniture. Record jackets are opened and tossed across the living room floor.
Puddles of burnt candles are scattered about.
This mess has a bohemian vibe to it, one that almost seems intentional.
Maisy clears enough space for me to sit on the couch. I flop onto it, not expecting the cushions to be quite so soft. I’m already dreading having to stand back up.
Her intercom buzzes, and she presses the button to let the delivery person in.
“Can I make you some tea?” Maisy scampers into the cluttered kitchen, tossing a pot into the already crowded sink to make room for the kettle on the stove.
She opens a nearly empty cabinet. “Let’s see, I have—” She pulls out a box of Irish breakfast, frowning as she shakes it, then returns it empty to the cupboard before continuing the same routine with a box of chamomile and a tin of something called Sleepytime.
There’s a knock on the door, and she retrieves a bag with a receipt stapled to it.
“Is water okay?”
“Water’s fine.”
Except the Brita she removes from the fridge is empty. “How about wine?” she asks, holding up a half-full bottle of something white.
It’s barely noon, but if ever a glass of wine was in order, it’s now.
Maisy kicks the fridge shut, then fills two small water glasses with the colorless wine.
After handing one to me, she tosses a pile of clothes off the recliner beside the couch and sits down, unstaples the delivery bag.
Inside, a burrito as large as a sub is sliced diagonally in two. She holds one half toward me.
“Jackfruit carnitas?” I must cast her a funny expression because she adds, “I’m vegan.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” I tell her, realizing I’m famished. Still, I’m not about to take half this girl’s lunch.
Maisy folds one leg under her and regards her burrito like she, too, is uncertain it’s edible. Another black tear trickles down her cheek.
The wine is either corked or really terrible. Possibly both.
Maisy drops the burrito onto the coffee table. A little splatters on the smudged glass, which she doesn’t bother to wipe off. “I still can’t believe about Reggie.”
I’ve never heard anyone call Regina that before.
She leans back in her armchair, runs her hand through her short hair, and wipes the tears from her cheeks, leaving more black lines across her freckled skin.
“Sorry, I’ve been such a mess. I just keep thinking what I could have done differently.
We couldn’t have stayed together. Maybe if I hadn’t ended it, maybe she’d still be alive. ”
“It’s not your fault,” I say. Then I brave, “When did you break up?”
“Which time?” She half laughs, half cries. “Sorry, I don’t know how to do this.”
“I don’t know how to do this either.” My eyes water, and I blink, letting the tears fall. “Maybe we just talk about her?”
When Maisy doesn’t say anything, I go first.
“I saw her in March. Before that . . .” It’d been seven years. What kind of mother doesn’t see her daughter for seven years? “It was the most time we’d spent together since she was a teenager.”
Maisy grins, sniffling. “She was really excited you were visiting. It meant a lot that you were working on your relationship.”
“It meant a lot to me too. Can I ask—when was the last time you saw her?”
“I definitely passed her in the lobby last week, but we hadn’t spoken in like two.” Sadness mists her face, making her appear so young, so lost. “Things didn’t end so well the last time.”
Maisy chews her nail. She glances at her wineglass, now empty, and her burrito, untouched.
“I don’t want you to worry about my feelings. Anything you tell me is a big help. Even if it hurts,” I say. Everything hurts. The good. The bad. The sweet. The ugly. I want to know it all, even if it will break me.
“We were dating on and off for almost a year. Full-on the last six months. It was the longest either of us had been in a relationship. You know that joke: What do lesbians bring on a second date?” I’m unfamiliar with this joke, and my lack of response must convey this to Maisy, because she explains, “A U-Haul. That wasn’t Reggie.
It totally freaked her out. I mean, we both have friends who’re married with kids.
It’s different here. Everyone in Venice is young or pretends to be young.
It’s not a place to raise a family. God, not that either of us was thinking about a family.
Reggie told me on our first date she never wanted to have kids.
” Even though I knew this, Maisy’s words blast through me, a gaping hole in my midsection that stings from the ocean air. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I suppose it isn’t a secret that her father and I had an unpleasant divorce.”
“Reggie didn’t talk much about it, just that her dad cheated on you with your best friend, which is a total asshole move.
” I never said anything to Regina about Isaac’s infidelity, allowing her to believe his relationship with Anna had started after we divorced.
At some point, though, she’d realized. “If it helps, she dodged his calls way more than she did yours.”
A week ago, I would have relished this news. Now, knowing that she had fraught relationships with both of us doesn’t feel like a win.
“I told myself she was just scared of relationships because she’d never seen a good one. I knew it couldn’t last, but I was so in love with her.” Her voice cracks.
I start to push myself off the soft couch to comfort her. I can’t get up. It’s better, though. It’s not my place to console this woman whose heart my daughter broke.
“Can I ask what happened?”