MY FATHER AND MARNIE are fighting again. It’s a stupid fight. My father has stepped out of his post-treadmill shower and there are no clean towels. This does not compute with his Sunday-morning routine.
“Just use the towel you used yesterday,” Marnie says.
“I don’t want the towel I used yesterday. I want a fresh towel.”
“Well, I don’t have one for you.”
“Why not? Is the washing machine broken?”
“No. I just haven’t kept up with the laundry.”
“Well, do you think you could do a load today? Could you squeeze that into your busy schedule?”
Marnie storms out of their bedroom. I watch her bang open the laundry hamper and start tossing dirty clothes all over the floor. “Here!” She hurls a towel at my father, who is standing at the top of the stairs in his boxer shorts, dripping wet. “Do your own laundry!”
I watch the whole thing through a crack in the guest room door.
I watch my father try to smooth things over. He is a bumbling idiot. He has no idea how to say “I’m sorry,” because he and my mother never apologized to each other. It is pitiful to behold.
“I’ll go out after breakfast and buy more towels,” he says, missing the point so completely I think he’s joking.
He is not.
Marnie can barely look at him.
Jane wakes up and starts screeching.
“Great,” Marnie says. “Now you woke the baby.”
The tension is so thick I almost wish it were a school day so I had somewhere to go.
* * *
Later, I overhear Marnie on the phone. “I used to have a life,” she says. “I used to be fun. I used to do things. Now I clean. And cook. And get spit up on. I don’t even recognize myself.”
Silence for a moment. Then, “I know, Harp.”
Harp. Harper, from the wedding. Marnie’s maid of honor. She’s about six feet tall and lives in Atlanta.
There’s another silence, a long one. I wish I could hear what Harper is saying, but that is the problem with cell phones. Eavesdropping is only 50 percent effective.
“Believe me,” Marnie says, “the thought has crossed my mind.”
What thought? I wonder. Hiring a cleaning lady? Leaving my dad?
“I miss college,” Marnie says.
* * *
My father comes home victorious. He has towels! He presents the Macy’s bag to Marnie like it’s a woolly mammoth he clubbed himself and dragged back to the cave just for her.
“Are you serious?” Marnie says, peering into the bag.
“What?”
My father looks surprised. He expected a gold star.
“Are these ROY G. BIV?” She starts pulling out towels, one after another. Lemon yellow. Kelly green. Ruby red. She turns to me. “What do you think, Anna?”
“Wow,” I say.
“It’s the Hotel Collection,” my father tells us. “Micro-cotton. I didn’t know which color to get so I got one of each.”
Orange, I think. That’s what color you get. How has he not noticed that all the towels in this house are orange?
Marnie is laughing now. Literally every hue of the rainbow is represented on the kitchen counter. My father does not find this amusing.
“I was trying to do something nice.”
“Oh, are these for me?”
“They’re for both of us.”
Marnie stops and looks at him. “David. You do realize you’re just giving me more towels to wash.”
“Why are you turning this into a laundry issue?”
“Because you made it a laundry issue. This morning. When you basically told me it’s my job to provide you with fresh towels.”
“You’re the one who stopped working,” my father practically shouts. “I didn’t force you to. You chose to. You wanted to stay home and be a mom!”
“A mom to Jane, not a mom to you.”
My father’s face is red. He is staring at Marnie like he cannot believe she just said that.
“Anna?” Marnie turns to me. “Could you please go check on Jane? I think I hear her crying.”
No, she doesn’t. She’s just trying to get me out of the kitchen. Which is fine with me.
* * *
The Fourth Annual Pharmaceutical Sales Training and Development Conference in Atlanta, Georgia: that’s where my dad met Marnie. I know because they took turns telling the story at the rehearsal dinner. She was fresh out of college, working her first job. He was a panel presenter, fifteen years in the biz. Yeah, that’s right. She was twenty-three, he was thirty-nine. Do the math.
You could call it love at first sight; they do. The way they tell it, they locked eyes in the exhibition tent and couldn’t look away. My dad walked over to Marnie’s table and took one of her free samples. They talked, they laughed, they had drinks, they fell in love in a single weekend.
I remember seeing him when he got back. I remember he took me to Denny’s, and we both ordered Bacon Slamburgers. He told me he’d met someone, and he made some joke about “chemical attraction.” He wanted me to be happy for him. But I wasn’t happy, of course I wasn’t. Even though I knew the divorce was almost final, there was a tiny part of me that was hoping my dad would change his mind and come home. And now I knew he never would. Marnie was a new beginning for him, but to me she felt like the end of everything.
I wanted to hate her. She was too pretty. She was too young. When we went out to dinner the first time, she ordered a garden salad and unsweetened iced tea. She made my father smile. Because she was so, so adorable. Marnie was the opposite of my mother in every way. And I loved my mother. And so I took it upon myself to point out, in the middle of our first dinner, that Marnie had a big, ugly blob of spinach stuck in her teeth. When she went to the bathroom to get it out, my dad shot me a look.
“Be nice,” he said.
“I am being nice,” I told him. “I was doing her a favor.”
“I know what you were doing.”
“What was I doing?”
“You were trying to embarrass her.”
“No I wasn’t.”
When Marnie came back from the bathroom, she said, “Thanks, Anna.”
I looked to see if she was being sarcastic, but she was smiling. With her spinach-free teeth. Like I actually did her a favor. Which made me want to hate her even more. Because she was so nice.
* * *
In the great green room …
Jane keeps patting the book. Pat, pat, pat. Pat, pat, pat. So I read it again. I have been up here for at least twenty minutes. I don’t know if my dad and Marnie are still fighting—or “discussing,” as my father would say—but I am in no rush to find out.
Reading Goodnight Moon reminds me of this random trip my dad took me on when I was little, to some children’s museum. I can’t remember where it was, but I remember there was an exhibit made to look exactly like the room in the book. With the fireplace, and the mouse, and the two little kittens—everything. There was even a black rotary telephone, and I remember I kept trying to call my mom, but she wouldn’t answer. All I got was a recording. Some lady reading Goodnight Moon. I actually started bawling in the middle of the great green room. My dad took me out to the car and gave me a pack of Life Savers to make me feel better. Butter rum Life Savers. I ate the whole roll. Funny what you remember.
* * *
It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep. I try all the tricks: cleansing breaths, tranquil images, sheep. Nothing works.
I check my phone. Two twenty-six, which means only four more hours until I have to get up for school. Which means another day of sleepwalking ahead. Another day of freewriting. Another day of cheerleaders in the halls. I am tired just thinking about it. I should sleep.
I check my phone again. Two twenty-seven.
Crap. I will never sleep.
I get up, tiptoe down to the kitchen, flip on some lights. The house is too quiet. I fill a glass with water and stand in the middle of the cold ceramic floor, listening to nothing.
Nothing.
I wonder if this is what my mother feels, like a house in the middle of the night. Black and silent. Bottomless. I think, My mom is alone in the dark and no one can get to her. Not me. Not Regina. Not the doctors. My chest tightens at this last one. Because if the doctors can’t help her turn on the lights, who can?
I am lost in these thoughts when the glass slips out of my hand. I don’t know how it happens, but it does. It hits the floor and shatters. When I bend down to pick up the pieces, I cut my finger. It’s pretty deep, too. It stings, and my heart speeds up when I see the blood. But I don’t get a Band-Aid or anything. I just stand there, watching the blood drip onto the floor. Drip, drip, drip. Drip, drip, drip. It’s the weirdest feeling, watching the blood fall, like I’ve been carrying around something heavy for days, but now my body is getting lighter. And lighter. And lighter.
I think about bending down and picking up another piece. So I do. I hold it gently between my fingers.
“Anna?”
I jump.
“I heard something…” Marnie says, standing there in her nightgown. “Oh my God. Are you bleeding?”
“Yeah. I broke a glass. I was trying to pick it up.”
“Don’t move,” she says. “I’m going to get you some shoes.”
I hold perfectly still.
When Marnie comes back, she slides my feet into a pair of her flip-flops. She takes my arm. “Come over to the sink.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice doesn’t sound right.
“Don’t be sorry.” Marnie runs the water until it’s warm. She sticks my hand under the faucet. “I’m going to fix you up, okay?”
I nod.
Marnie pats my hand softly with a towel. She pulls a first-aid kit out of a drawer. Ointment. Bandage. Direct pressure. She’s a regular ER doc. “Come sit with me on the couch,” she says.
I look around at the floor. “But what about—?”
“We’ll clean that up later.”
Marnie turns on a light in the living room, and we sit together on the leather couch under two fleece blankets. Everything is quiet for a minute and then she turns to me. “Anna.”
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Marnie’s eyes are serious. “I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest. Can you do that?”
I nod.
“Did you cut yourself on purpose?”
I hold very still.
“Anna?”
I shake my head.
“You didn’t cut yourself on purpose?”
“No,” I say. My voice is calm, but my heart is pounding. “I didn’t. It was an accident.”
Marnie sighs. “Good.”
“What if I said yes? What would you do?”
“Then … I’d get you some help.”
“You mean—like my mom?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not her,” I say.
“I know.”
“I would never try … I would never do what she did.”
“Good.”
“I’m just really…”
“Tell me,” Marnie says.
“I don’t know.”
“Worried about her?”
“Yeah … and I can’t sleep. Like at all.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Marnie yawns. “Sleep.”
“I’m so tired.”
“You know, Anna—”
“I know, I know. Wait until I’m a mom with a newborn, and I’m getting up every two hours to nurse.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You weren’t?”
“No. I was going to say … let’s get out of here.”
I look at her.
“I’m serious. I think we need a change of scene. I know I need a change of scene. My sorority sisters are dying for me to come visit them in Atlanta, and I think we should go. Just the two of us. Girls trip.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Now?” This is something my mother would do—take off on an adventure at three a.m.
Marnie smiles. “Well, not this second, obviously. But as soon as we can get ready. We need to pack. And I need to buy tickets…”
My mother would not think about packing. She would not reserve seats.
“I need to make a list for your dad, for Jane…”
“You’re not bringing Jane?”
“Don’t you think your father can take care of her for a few days?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. He has a flexible job. He can work from home.”
“What about school?” I say.
“I’ll email your principal.”
“I don’t know. It’s just—”
“Anna, this is how spontaneity works. You have an idea and you roll with it. You work everything out as you go. That’s what makes it fun. You just … decide you’re going to do something and you do it.”
She seems so sure of herself. Confident. This is Marnie, I remind myself. This is not my mother.
“There’s only one question you need to answer right now … Do you want to go to Atlanta?”
“Yes. Yes. God! Marnie?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s okay if you change your mind … if you want to, you know, bring Jane along.”
“This is just you and me.”
“Okay.”
I pull the fleece blanket into myself. Squeeze. My heart is beating hard again, but it’s a completely new feeling.