Knox
Miranda takes a breath like she’s going to launch into more but our waitress comes with our food.
Everything looks absolutely delicious . .
. and small. My bowl of red beans and rice is slightly bigger than teacup-size, with a green spray of cut cilantro topping it.
I’m starving, but Miranda has just led a giant elephant into the room.
“I don’t think Sylvie is out trying to find love again,” I say, around a bite of my food. It is delicious, and lord knows I’ve had enough hot-plate red beans and rice to compare.
“Well,” Miranda says. The look on her face tells me she preferred me in “ma’am this and ma’am that” mode.
“And I’m definitely not trying to replace Cal or anybody.”
“I’m not saying you are—everyone is different, every journey is different. Everyone has different lessons to teach us.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I’m not here to teach Sylvie any lessons.
We met, we’ve gotten to be friends in a few days, she’s taking me to my grandma’s, and then—” I guess the answer is maybe we go our separate ways and never see each other again.
I don’t want it to be, but lots of stuff happens in this world that I don’t want.
“But that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned any lessons on the road,” Sylvie says.
“You feel like sharing?” Miranda says.
“Well, it’s funny that you used the word ‘share,’ because that’s one of the lessons I’ve learned. That people feel entitled to help themselves to you, whether it be some campground murder hippy stealing my card or some orthodontists on Harleys filming me without my consent.”
“Surely it hasn’t been all bad.”
“No, Mom, and I know how much you need me to tell you that you were right—I should have gone on this road trip alone, it was all I needed to heal. But the fact is that it’s been really hard and lonely and frightening and basically every good thing that’s happened has been an outgrowth from the one really good thing that happened and that was meeting Knox. ”
Miranda looks pleased, as though she didn’t hear what I heard Sylvie telling her. “There you go then.” She takes a triumphant bite of salad and chases it with a pair of fries. She maybe should have just ordered a french fry salad and done away with all pretense.
“No,” Sylvie says, tucking a fallen spear of pickled carrot back into her banh mi.
“There I don’t go. You don’t get to plant your flag and claim ownership of the silver lining that happened by accident.
If the universe was intervening on my behalf, it was to put a little horseradish sauce on this dogcrapwich I’m eating.
” She pauses and turns to me. “I really like horseradish sauce.”
“Thanks,” I murmur, grateful, I guess, to be the most delicious part of a dogcrapwich.
“Syl,” Miranda says, fork suspended in the air. “I’m going to stop you there. I need to establish a boundary for myself.”
“Are you about to tell me that your boundary is not hearing anything you don’t want to hear?”
“No. My boundary is that I can’t allow you to say hurtful things to me when I’m doing the best job I know how to be your mother and help you heal.”
“How is that not exactly what I just said?”
“Think about it for a while and the answer will come to you.”
Sylvie, about to take a bite of her (non-dogcrap) sandwich, sets it down.
She raises both hands in the air as though in surrender.
“I can’t. I’m sorry. I knew this would be a mistake.
” She stands. “Knox, you can finish. I’ll be in the van.
” She bends down, detaches Winslow’s leash from the table leg, and walks away.
“Syl?” Miranda calls. Receiving no response, she gives me an ah-well-what-can-you-do shrug and spears a leaf of kale.
I stand. “I’m gonna—”
“Tell me the truth: Was Sylvie going to call me if she hadn’t run into Helena?”
I tell her the truth: “I don’t know.”
I make for the van. But then an old instinct kicks in. I ask a waiter for a waxed-cardboard to-go box, return to the table where Miranda is absorbed in a call with someone, and scrape the few remaining bites into the box for later.
Miranda smiles blandly at me, phone to her ear, already having moved on.