June 2019
In the cab, on the way to the Ann Arbor Hotel, where she had booked a room to keep Ella from feeling crowded, Helen was giddy. It wasn’t just being able to see her daughter that made her so happy, it was being invited, being wanted. Ella had actually asked her to come! Helen had called the shop to get time off, saying it was a family emergency, letting them know she might need more than a few days.
While she was packing in Williamsburg, the downstairs buzzer had rung. She opened the window to look outside. There, on the sidewalk, stood Mouse, holding a huge package and looking up at her.
She hadn’t seen him since February. Radio silence. She thought for a moment, then buzzed him in. When she opened the door, he looked so dear and familiar that for a moment, before she felt unsure, she wanted to hurl herself into his arms. Instead, she held back, but she invited him in. He handed her the wrapped package.
“This,” he said, “is for you. And yes, it is a peace offering.”
“For all these months of silence?”
“I’m a slow learner sometimes,” he said, smiling. “I tried to, but I couldn’t forget you. And I’m sorry.”
“You’re apologizing to me, but maybe I should be the one to apologize.”
“Open it,” he said.
She carefully opened the wrapping and a pour of deep blue plush fell out. She looked at him, astonished.
“I know how you love fabric. I know you love blue,” he said. “It’s a throw, something warm enough for you to curl up with.”
She couldn’t stop touching its lovely texture, pressing it against her cheek.
“I’d rather curl up with you,” she said, and she saw his face relax. His eyes moved to her suitcase and his brow furrowed again.
“You’re going somewhere?”
“There are things I need to—to tell you,” she said, stammering. She felt her heart clamp shut.
“I’m visiting my daughter,” she said finally.
“Can I come with you?”
“Next time,” she said. “She’s going through something, and I need to be there for her.” She hadn’t wanted to tell him that her daughter had been upset, that maybe she was in trouble again.
Mouse reached up and kissed her hand.
“Come back and tell me everything,” he said, and Helen hoped that she could.
SHE HAD THROWN the rest of her things in the suitcase and gotten on a plane, feeling elated. Only once the plane had left the tarmac did she dare to imagine what it might mean, Ella asking her for help. Now, in the taxi, her anxiety returned.
“Music okay?” the cab driver asked. Distracted, Helen said yes, of course, of course, and kept worrying while the driver bopped one hand against the wheel and sang along with Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry.”
Sometimes she worried that she had paid so much attention to Jude, to her make-believe family with her make-believe son, that she hadn’t realized the depth of what was going on with her daughter, of what terrible things Ella had been capable of doing. How funny, that you could love someone so much, even after they had done something so wrong.
Look at everything she hadn’t known. She’d had to find out from the newspapers that Ella said that Jude’s father beat him. The state claimed that Ella had lied. Both Jude and his father denied there had been any physical abuse. But had Ella lied? And if she had, why?
Helen blamed herself. She should have ignored Ella when her daughter told her to mind her own business—after all, they were still children. If she had known, she could have marched over to Andrew Stein’s house and confronted him, threatened to call the cops and social services. What if Jude’s father had gotten help, had stopped beating his son? Then no one would have needed to even think about getting rid of him.
Helen swallowed hard. All those years after the sentencing, she had driven the two long hours to the prison every weekend to see her daughter, bringing her food and books and whatever else she could, just another sad face among the defeated visitors. Jude and his father had simply vanished.
She had tried to protect Ella. Immediately after Clark told her the charges against Ella, Helen made herself go into the garden with a garbage bag, before anyone else could. Foxglove. It was all anyone was talking about. This garden had been everything to Jude, and by association, everything to Ella and Helen. They had all loved it.
Hands shaking, she had crouched down and had ripped out every plant and flower, all the roots and bulbs, stuffing them all into the garbage bag. The garden transformed into a messy plot of nothing. And when the detectives came by shortly after, two women with hard faces like lions, Helen pretended that there had never been any garden at all.
One of the detectives had put a hand on Helen’s arm. “I have a daughter, too,” she said meaningfully. Then you know you’d do anything to protect her, Helen thought.
In the taxi, Helen sighed heavily. She had made so many, many mistakes. But she drew herself up, letting the excitement grab her again. She was seeing her girl! Her Ella!
The music shut off and the driver pulled over. “There’s the university,” he said, pointing ahead of them, then pointing left, “and there’s your hotel.”
Helen had never been to Ann Arbor, though after Ella had left, she had spent hours watching YouTube videos of the place, trying to get a sense of where her daughter was living. She hadn’t expected it to look so vivid, the way the city suddenly seemed to explode with people. She had thought it would be soothing, bucolic—because after all, it was the Midwest. But there was a pulse of energy.
Helen settled into her hotel and called Ella. Too excited to sit on the bed, she paced the room instead. She wanted to see Ella’s place, but Ella said they should eat first, have a drink at this place she liked called High Dive, and she gave Helen an address that was within walking distance.
“It’s only four so it won’t be too noisy,” Ella said.
“I can’t wait to hug you,” Helen said, but Ella had already hung up.
It took her ten minutes to find Huron Avenue, where High Dive was situated between two brick facades. She turned onto the street and there, standing in front of the bar, like an apparition, was Ella. “Mom!” Ella called, and then she flew into Helen’s arms so hard and fast that Helen stumbled backward.
“There we are,” Helen said, and then Ella pulled away and led her inside.
“It’s pretty, right?” Ella said. But High Dive could have been built of diamonds and Helen wouldn’t have noticed; she couldn’t take her eyes off Ella. Her daughter’s hair was longer, shaggier, and now the same bright red it had been when she got out of prison. Helen resisted the urge to push the mane off her face to see clearly into Ella’s beautiful eyes.
The place was already crowded, but they managed to find two seats at the end of the bar, by some tables in the back. Helen was wearing a deep blue cashmere dress, but Ella was in four different shades of black. Helen kept wanting to touch her, but every time she reached over, Ella moved out from under her hand, until Helen got the message. Instead, Helen talked about the shop, about her life, and Ella was silent until Helen told her she had a boyfriend.
“Oh my God, that’s wonderful!” Ella said. “You have somebody. You really do—”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Helen said.
“You know. I know you know! You’re blushing,” Ella said, grinning. “Good for you. Tell me his name.”
“I will later. I want to hear more about you,” Helen said.
Ella waved to the bartender. “Two white wines,” she said. “To start,” she added, and Helen said nothing because maybe Ella needed a bit of wine first before she could open up.
Ella drank one glass, then ordered another, and then pointedly looked at Helen’s untouched glass.
“The wine’s not good?” Ella asked, and Helen shrugged. Ella knew she didn’t like to drink, but Ella was watching her as if she wanted Helen to, as if it mattered. So, Helen lifted her glass and sipped.
“Fabulous,” she said, and it was worth the lie to see Ella smile.
Helen kept drinking. The room grew darker as clouds moved over the Ann Arbor sky.
“Sometimes I sew messages into the hems of the clothes I make,” Helen said in a rush.
Ella smiled. “What? You do?”
Helen nodded. “Bet you didn’t know I put a message into that yellow wool dress I sent you, did you?”
“You did? I love that dress,” Ella said.
“Go and look sometime,” she said. She tried to imagine Ella’s surprise after teasing out the little strip, reading the words that said Helen loved her. Ella could tuck it back in and sew a few stitches and that message would always be with her. She imagined Ella finding the earrings and wearing them every day, so that a part of Helen would always be with her, too.
“Well, I just might,” Ella said.
A man in a fedora, carrying a stein of beer, eased down at a table near them, tipping his hat in their direction as he sat down. They both ignored him.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Helen said.
“Oh—” Ella said, as if she had forgotten that she had begged Helen to come.
“How’s work going?”
“Good. It’s really fun,” Ella said, then whispered, “Shhh. Nobody in Ann Arbor knows I’m the columnist, which makes it kind of mysterious.”
Nobody knows you’re a felon, either, Helen thought.
A plate crashed to the floor near the entrance and the swell of voices grew louder.
“No one can hear themselves think in here,” Helen fairly shouted, but Ella shook her head, putting one finger in front of her mouth.
“Baby girl,” Helen said quietly, placing a hand on her daughter’s. “Talk to me.”
And then, haltingly, her words sliding into one another from the wine, Ella told her. Everything.
The instant she heard the word daughter, Helen felt herself go cold.
“What were you thinking?” Helen said, but Ella kept on talking, about how her daughter’s name was Carla. About how she had made friends with Marianna, how they had all bonded. And about how everything was now a mess, because Mark, the father, was dead, and she knew Marianna was in Ann Arbor, but she couldn’t reach her, and she had no idea where Carla was, and she only hoped she wasn’t stuck in the system.
The whole time Ella was talking, Helen shuddered. She had thought this trip would be about her supporting Ella, getting her what she needed, sorting things out, but this—what Ella was telling her now—these were all things she thought had been buried forever. For the better.
“Oh, honey, no,” Helen said finally, and Ella stared at her.
“No, no, you don’t understand. You should see how beautiful she is!” Ella said. “How smart. She—”
“Stop,” Helen said. “Please. Please stop.”
Frowning, Ella beckoned the bartender for another drink, and as soon as it arrived, she threw half of it back, too.
“I thought you might help me—that you might even know someone who could help me find out where she is, how I could reach her.”
“I am helping you. By telling you the truth. She isn’t yours. Why are you torturing yourself like this?”
“You know, she’s your granddaughter. Don’t you want to at least see her?”
“No. No she isn’t. And no, I don’t. And you shouldn’t either. Why are you doing this?”
“I didn’t realize she’d be only six when I got out—”
“Only six—” Helen said.
“That’s different from twenty-five! Twenty-five is an adult! Twenty-five doesn’t want parents around! But six? Six does. Six needs them. Six needs to know, to have at least some sort of connection with her mother!”
“She has a mother. And no one is going to take a little girl, no matter what, and give her to a felon!” The word felon was ugly and heavy on her tongue.
“But what if she’s in a foster home?”
“Is she?”
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything.” Ella swallowed. “They could tell Jude!” she blurted.
“Ella, no,” Helen said. “I told you he gave up his rights. You don’t want to get mixed up in all of that again.”
Ella’s face clouded. She jerked her arm back, and the rest of her drink fell to the floor. The man in the fedora pulled his chair back and wiped at his pants.
“No problem,” he said, but he was reaching for napkins, dabbing at his leg, giving them both a wary eye.
“All this time, you never said it to me, not when I was in prison, and certainly not now, but now I know how you feel about me,” Ella said, her mouth a blunt line.
“How do I feel? You tell me.”
“You think I did it,” Ella said. “You think I’m guilty.”
Helen felt her body go numb. Ella stumbled up and then Helen got up, too, but to her surprise, she had no tolerance anymore.
“Wait,” Helen said, reaching for Ella and missing. “Wait—”
“I made a lot of mistakes,” Ella said. “Don’t you think I know that? And I paid for them. I did! But the biggest mistake was believing you still loved me. I thought maybe you could listen to me talk about my life instead of telling me how to live it.”
Ella grabbed her jacket.
“Wait!” Helen cried. “Where are you going?”
“Home. I want you to go home, too.”
She’s drunk, Helen thought. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
But then Ella was shoving her way out of the bar. Helen moved into the crowd, but she wasn’t tall enough, couldn’t see over the sea of bodies, could not even catch a glimpse of Ella’s red hair.
The floor moved beneath her. Helen knocked against a couple, ignoring their glares, and then finally got to the door and pushed it open. But she saw only the street, sparkling in the twilight, and couples holding hands, heading into the bar. “Ella!” she called, but no one answered. People pushed past her as she stared down the block.
She leaned against the wall of the building, reeling from the wine, her first glass in months. She steadied herself, still hoping Ella would come back.
Helen sighed. She was too dizzy to walk to the hotel. Plus she’d left her jacket on her seat. She’d go back inside to get it, pay the tab, and then have someone call her a cab. She’d go to her hotel and call Ella—they would smooth it all out.
Helen went back into the noise and light, finding her stool still empty, her jacket still thrown over it. Maybe Helen deserved this punishment. She thought about the stupid secret they never told you about being a parent, how from the moment your child is born, they’re moving away from you, giving you less and less of their life even as you yearn for more and more. It didn’t matter if you yourself had cut your child’s umbilical cord; it had never actually been cut. Not until your offspring severed that tie.
Helen had thought she would somehow always have an unshakable bond with Ella, and she knew now that was a lie. That it had never been true, not even when she had been carrying Ella inside her belly and Ella would kick hard against her, like she couldn’t wait to be free.
There was so much about her daughter she no longer knew. There was the surprise of seeing Ella pull out a pair of glasses to check the drinks menu: when had that happened? Who were Ella’s friends? Did she have a boyfriend? Would she stay in Ann Arbor or would she move somewhere else? How much more didn’t she know? It made Helen so sad because when Ella had been young, she had prided herself on knowing everything. You and me, she had said. And now, Helen knew that there was going to be so much more she’d never have a chance to know. Ella was like a foreign country where Helen had once been a citizen. Now she was denied entry. It was, she reflected, similar to how she had been cut out of Hasidic life. Only this exclusion hurt even more.
The bartender, a young guy with a man bun, glided by.
“Sir?” Helen said, and he stopped. “Another, please.”
Helen swirled the wine around, a tiny wave in her glass, and took a gulp—because what the hell. Here she was now, in a bar, with the noise and the thrum of music, and the heat from all the people pressed against her chest like a fist. Her daughter—her daughter!—had been here, too, until Helen ruined it. The pain was too great for her to move, to do anything. She stupidly downed one drink and then another.
She felt someone’s stare, like a piece of gauze settling over her, and she realized the man in the fedora was watching her. He got up and stepped toward her. She hadn’t thought anything about him before except that his hat seemed pretentious, but still she felt drawn to him. He sat on Ella’s vacated stool and leaned his elbows on the bar. Here it was, another friendly male gaze, and she knew what that meant: danger, danger, like an alarm telling her to stop, but she moved her body closer.
“Bacardi, rocks,” the man said, motioning to the bartender. His voice drifted toward her, an invitation.
Helen took another sip of her wine.
The man beside her lifted his glass and clinked it to hers. “Cheers,” he said.
“L’chaim,” Helen said.
He nodded, and then studied her. “You look like a pop someone shook up that needs the cap taken off,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“You seem like you’re about to explode,” he said. “I’m told I’m a great listener.”
The alcohol was making her bold, and she ordered another. “Helen,” she said.
“Jack.”
She swore she saw Ella dancing in the crowd, her lovely long arms raised in greeting to a group of friends.
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Helen wasn’t sure when or why she started to talk. Just that there was so much sorrow inside her, and this man’s face seemed kinder by the second. Words poured out of her. Sip and slip, she thought fleetingly.
The more she talked about her daughter, the more she wanted to tell, and the more she told, the lighter she felt, almost as if she were watching everything play out on a movie screen and it was happening to someone else. Jack’s face softened with sympathy, and he began to look better to her, too. She noticed his eyes, the quirk in his smile.
Then Helen told him how she had raised Ella all by herself, how she had been kicked out of her insular Hasidic community, into another world that maybe she had never really understood. She certainly didn’t understand it now. She told him about Jude—how her daughter’s boyfriend had practically lived with them when Ella was a teenager.
“Her boyfriend,” Jack repeated. “Her boyfriend lived at your house? That must have been… well, different.”
“It was amazing,” Helen said. “It was a family.” And then she fluttered a hand over her face because she felt as if she were about to cry. And if she started, she’d never stop. Her stomach buckled.
“My daughter’s a felon,” she said in a rush. “She was in prison. For attempted murder.” Her hands began to shake. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Jack leaned closer and put his hands comfortingly over hers.
“Oh no,” he said. “What a shame.”
“They let her go early because they said the case was botched. Not exonerated. She’d have to go to court for that—so technically she’s still a felon. But free.” The room spun and she was sweating now, talking faster and faster, telling him everything she could remember. Ella and Jude had tried to kill his father, this prominent New York judge. Or only Ella had because Jude had gone free, and it was Ella who had been in prison.
“Oh my,” Jack said. “What do you think? Was she innocent? Was she guilty?”
She’d had too much to drink, not enough food, and now she was paying for it. “Yes. No,” she said. “Maybe. Maybe I don’t really know her anymore.”
And then the words kept flowing and she was telling him that Ella was a writer, that her name was Fitchburg and they had changed it from Levy.
“Imagine her giving advice to people in the paper,” she said. The roaring in her chest grew louder. She was so woozy with drink. She wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. She wanted to talk to Ella. She wanted to talk to Mouse most of all.
He cocked his head at her, his gentle smile faltering as he watched her face change. The burning in her stomach grew.
“I’ll be right back—” she said.
Then she was running to the small bathroom by the door, shoving it open and rushing into a stall, kneeling, vomiting into the toilet. She retched until it seemed like she was emptied out of everything. She stumbled up and went to the sink and splashed water on her face, raising her head to see her reflection in the mirror. She tried to calm her breathing, then pulled out a lipstick from her purse to give herself some color. Then she opened the bathroom door and stepped out.
Jack was gone.
She dug in her purse for her wallet, put two fifties on the counter, which she thought should cover everything and—hands against the wall for balance—made her way outside and back to her hotel.
Her head was throbbing. Her mouth was desert dry, and though she knew she shouldn’t try to talk to Ella in her condition, as soon as she got to her room, she called anyway. The call went straight to voicemail. I’m sorry, Helen tried to say, but she had no voice. She hung up and flopped onto the bed, the phone resting on her chest. She should call Mouse, she thought, but everything was closing in on her, narrowing into a cone of black.
IN THE MORNING, a headache raged. She pressed her thumbs into her temples, found her bottle of aspirin and downed two, showered, and then walked to Ella’s. She knocked but there was no answer. She texted her, and then went to have coffee by herself. She sat in the café for two hours, waiting, and when she still didn’t hear from Ella, she made a decision: she’d go home. It would be easy enough to come back.
She went back to the hotel, filled her suitcase, and called the airline about a flight back to LaGuardia. She called Ella again, but as before, it went straight to voicemail. She made one last call before takeoff, but still nothing. Ella must still be furious with her, she thought, but she could make it right. She knew she could.