After an epic shopping trip, thanks to Dad’s credit card, and best friend time, thanks to Tatum, I somehow felt both better and worse. Better because I was equipped for my trek into the wilderness, in regard to gear anyway, and worse, because our limited time together reminded me how I was going to be far from home and far from Tatum all summer.
When I’d put away my stack of shorts, T-shirts, new backpack, reusable water bottle, and hiking boots, I came downstairs to find both of my parents seated at the kitchen table. My father had a glass of red wine in his hand; my mother sipped on club soda with lime. Family dinners generally only happened on holidays around here, so naturally I was a little confused.
“Sit down, Ashlyn,” my dad said, gesturing to an empty chair.
I sat.
“Your mother and I just want to make sure you understand how this summer will go. Everything is under control. We don’t want you to feel like you’re unsupported.”
I almost laughed out loud. Too late for that, Dad. “Okay,” I said, quietly, instead.
Dad sipped his wine. “We’ll all be leaving tomorrow morning.” Tomorrow? I’d been home for less than forty-eight hours. I thought I’d at least be here a week. I shifted my gaze to my mother, who was staring at the lime floating in her drink, and then back to my dad, who was eerily calm for someone about to have a massive lifestyle change. “You need to have everything packed tonight. There will be a car coming for each of us and then we will go our separate ways.”
It sounded like he was breaking up with me and Mom. My stomach churned and bile rose in my throat. I swallowed hard. “Who leaves first?”
“Me,” my mom whispered.
Dad set his glass down on the table with a thunk. “We will all be fine,” he said, sensing the panic rising around us, as if he could just make it all disappear with a word. “We’ll do what we need to do and then everything will go back to status quo.”
A flicker of hope lit in my heart. Was this the right moment to ask if I could come home at the end of the summer? Surely Mom would be better by then. I ran through my mental list of things I wanted to remind them of from the last year at Blue Valley Academy. My grades were perfect. I was captain of the Quiz Bowl team, which was unprecedented for a new student. I got a gold medal on the national French exam. I wanted to add that I hadn’t dated anyone or gotten one single demerit the entire year but decided that might work against me. I looked from my dad to my mom and back again. It was time. I inhaled and opened my mouth to speak, but my dad was quicker.
“And, I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that senior year at Blue Valley is all arranged and paid for. Since I’ll be gone and your mother’s treatment is still up in the air, we can all be assured that you’re well taken care of and that your future is secured. I think all three of us can feel relieved knowing things are managed, don’t you agree?” He smiled at me, like a cat with canary feathers sticking out of its mouth. Smug, even. Did he know what I was going to ask? Sometimes I wondered if my father could read my mind and spent time thinking of ways to divert my plans. Like it was a game, ruining my life.
Rage bubbled up inside me like the carbonation floating to the top of my mother’s glass of club soda. I wanted to scream so many things at him. I didn’t need to be managed. Mom just needed some help, and she wouldn’t be locked away forever. If anyone needed to be watched or supervised, it was him. I deserved better than being sent away for his mistake. But of course, I said nothing and popped the rage bubbles, leaving me feeling warm, tender, and raw.
I looked at my mother. Had she heard the screaming inside my head? Her eyes, huge and blue like mine, bore into me, full of what looked like panic. I wordlessly pleaded with her, my face begging her to ask me the question I desperately wanted to answer. She shook her head—at me? At my coming home? Did she not want me here? Mom’s voice was void of all emotion. “This is for the best. Your father will be gone, and I just can’t think past today right now, sweetheart. Okay?”
The lines on my mother’s face were deeper than I’d ever seen them. Tears appeared in the corners of her eyes. I couldn’t stand to see her hurting. I swallowed the rotten lemon taste of my anger for her sake. “Okay.”
We ate a dinner I didn’t even taste while my dad answered no less than five phone calls from various lawyers and advisors. I guess he had time for that since he wasn’t packing anything. He disappeared into his office, his plate only a quarter eaten, while Mom and I just looked at each other again. Her shoulders sagged as she exhaled, her wispy bangs lifting slightly.
“It’ll be fine, honey. It has to be,” she said, in a moment of optimism. I wasn’t convinced she believed it, but I imagined she’d seen and heard enough in the last year to want to believe it. And then, perhaps to convince herself further, “You’re a good girl, Ashlyn. It’ll be okay.”
I got up from the table, shoved my plate in the sink with a clatter, and ran up the stairs as fast as I could so she wouldn’t see the tears that had begun to spill, hot and stinging, down my cheeks. I shut the door, locked it, and crawled into bed.
Are you there? I texted Tatum.
She responded immediately. What’s up?
I need you.
Tatum arrived in ten minutes flat, a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream and two spoons in her hand. “Reinforcements have arrived.”
I relayed the whole terrible conversation, with my head resting on Tatum’s shoulder, as she cupped the container between her hands, softening the ice cream.
She sighed when I finished, pried the lid off, and handed me the pint with a spoon stuck in. “It’s not forever. None of it.”
“In my head, I know that. But it feels like everything’s changed, and none of it for the better. We’re broken. All of us.” The words brought fresh tears.
“You’re not broken, Ash. And your family isn’t broken. Maybe in need of a little duct tape,” she said with a low chuckle, poking me in the ribs, “but not broken.”
“I’m going to be the worst retreat center employee, you know. I’ve never had a job. I don’t really know how to do anything.”
Tatum shrugged, and my head bobbed with her shoulder. “You’ll learn. You’re smart.”
“Book smart, maybe. I don’t think all the random quotes and trivia I know are going to help me.”
“What’s the worst that can happen? You’ll commune with nature, get a tan, and hang with your cousin. No big deal.”
I lifted my head. “The cousin who is essentially a stranger?”
She waved my protest away with a flick of her hand, like it was no big deal that Hannah and I probably couldn’t pick one another out of a line up. “Blood is thicker than water, or so they say. Hey, she’s done this retreat center thing before, right? You can just ask her everything. It’ll be a bonding experience.” Tatum quirked an eyebrow up. “Do you know what your assignment is yet?”
“I have no idea.” I hoped no one was expecting me to hook middle-aged business women and men onto the ziplines or guide them through trust falls.
“Well, I’m sure, whatever happens, it’ll be fine. You’re stronger than you think, you know. You got through this last year at a new school all on your own.”
“True.” While I hadn’t made any life-long besties at Blue Valley, I hadn’t made any enemies either. If I had to go back, it was a small comfort to know that Cassie Pringle and the girls on my hall would be there too. “I just wish I was going to be back here. At school. With you.”
“Me too, Ash.”
One of the first quotes I’d ever recorded in my notebook was from T.S. Eliot: “Home is where one starts from.” It made home seem like a source of pride. And I was proud of where I’d come from. Despite the recent wealth, my parents hadn’t had so much when I was born. There was a photo album collecting dust somewhere with pictures of tiny me in secondhand toddler clothes, joyfully running through the exhibits at the free Smithsonian museums. My parents held me tight under the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin, love written on their faces.
The photographs that were framed, cased in silver and glass, hanging in the formal living room, were the ones where I was posed, wearing an outfit specially bought for the occasion, my smile never reaching my eyes. They had taught me appearing perfect, doll-like, was the real source of pride. According to my dad, anyway.
Last year, during our poetry unit, we’d studied Warsan Shire, who speculated that home was somewhere we haven’t experienced yet—a place to discover. The idea of something better waiting for me in my future resonated like the clang of cymbals. When I thought about Shire’s and Eliot’s words together, though, I wondered if the place I was running to was the place I’d already been.
It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine. My parents belonged to me and I belonged to them. I wanted what was mine to be the best, even if I didn’t know how or when we would get there. And even in a twisted way, there was comfort in knowing that my dad was going to scrutinize my every move, and my mom was going to look the other way and try to make us both forget through retail therapy and spa days. It was our normal.
I wanted to go back because I was clinging to the idea that it would change one day. Every once in a while, I got a glimpse of what it could be, in the laugh lines in my mother’s face or my dad’s footfalls coming down the hallway. Who we used to be. I wanted to go back because what if one day I left for good and it all completely disappeared. That would break my heart. So, I kept clinging and hoping.
I slipped my cold hand into Tatum’s. We sat that way, in the comfortable silence that exists between best friends, until the ice cream melted, and I could breathe again.
The next morning, I kissed my mother’s cheek and told her I loved her as she slid into the car, spirited away to her treatment facility. As the car sped from the house, I imagined the conversation we might have had if she hadn’t been so “exhausted.”
“Do you have everything packed?” Though Mom would’ve already known because she would’ve slipped a note inside my bag or inside my quote journal, telling me she loved me.
“Packed and organized.”
“You’ll call me every day?” She would’ve made me promise.
And I would promise, of course, to call and to write and to not be embarrassed if she showed up at the retreat center just because she missed me.
Even though we couldn’t have that conversation now, I hoped we could have one that was just as loving and meaningful when Mom got back. I said a silent prayer to anyone who would listen: Please make her feel better . . . and quickly. I went back into the house and carried my own bags downstairs. I stood there, twisting the pearl on the chain at my neck, and waited for the next departure.
My dad and his lawyer hired a security team to ride along behind them as he surrendered himself to the prison. He thought there might be media trying to “catch a glimpse of a fallen hero.” Hypocrite is a better descriptor, but I didn’t say so out loud.
I didn’t say goodbye to him. He just squeezed my shoulders with a reminder and a promise he himself probably couldn’t keep. “Be on your best behavior. I’ll see you soon.” I didn’t know if he meant at our first visitation, or when he was released, but it didn’t matter. I just nodded. I watched from the living room as three black SUVs whisked my father away, two local news vans and their cameras looking on from across the street. I shut the curtains with a huff.
On the blank first page of the grocery list pad hanging from the refrigerator, I scribbled,
THERE WAS A CERTAIN SATISFACTION
IN BITTERNESS. I COURTED IT. IT WAS
STANDING OUTSIDE, AND I INVITED IT IN.
Nicole Krauss
But it didn’t matter. No one would see it. I ripped off the page, crumpled it, and threw it in the trash, hoping it wouldn’t spontaneously combust.
I felt like the cliché-est of clichés, but after my dad’s car had disappeared, I went straight to the bathroom and got out the scissors. Pulling up a YouTube tutorial, I started hacking away at the blonde hair that had always hung halfway down my back. In books and movies, heroines cut their hair when they need a change or they’re about to start a revolution. I wasn’t trying to change the world at the moment, maybe just my little slice of the world. If I had to go to be a niece, a cousin, and an employee, things I had absolutely no experience being, it might be easier to do it if I actually looked like someone else. I managed to cut a fairly decent straight line at my ears and did my best with the back. I faced the mirror and shrugged. It made me look younger; my already large eyes seemed even bigger. I thought I’d feel lighter, physically and emotionally, with all that weight gone, but I felt the same. Still angry. Still lost. I could see my dad’s face in my mind, brows knitted in disappointment at my impulsivity. You look ridiculous, I heard his voice say.
“Get a grip,” I said out loud, twisting my pearl necklace between my fingers. “It’s a summer job. And one more year at Blue Valley. And then you’re out of here.” I gripped the sides of the sink and leaned in, nearly nose to nose with myself in the mirror. “You can get personal loans for college, so you don’t need his money. You can go to school in California or Canada or on the moon. As long as it’s far, far away from here. Deal? Deal.”
The Ashlyn that looked back at me nodded, her newly shortened hair tickling the tops of her ears. She looked scared. A little angry, a little hurt, and more than a little scared. I swallowed. She swallowed too.
“We’re going to be fine. Just fine.”
I hated that I was using my father’s favorite phrase, but at that moment, in an empty house, alone, with an uncertain future ahead of me, that was the only thing left to say.