Dad talked to Mom before me—the first time they’d talked in months, I was pretty sure. Mostly, they used me as a middleman to relay only the most necessary information—reminders of property tax payments, my dental checkups—and left it up to me to decide what else was important. Mostly, I didn’t find it necessary to tell either of them anything; they were adults, I figured, and they could start acting like it at any time.
Dad opened the door to his office, where he’d been talking in a low voice, and passed me the phone. “Your mom,” he said.
I took the phone into the kitchen, where I’d been trying to figure out what food might spoil before we got back. Mom was more puzzled than enthusiastic. I didn’t know what to say, especially with Dad pretending not to eavesdrop from the next room. How could I give her the news about Dad and the incident on the roof over the phone? She would freak out—summon a small army of Sacramento connections to pop in on us, maybe, or start driving from Omaha now and meet us somewhere in the middle.
It was easier to pretend to be hurt than to tell her the truth. “You don’t want to see me?”
“No, of course I want to see you. Haven’t I been begging you to fly out here for the summer? I just don’t think that now, while you’re still in school...” She didn’t mention Dad, who would obviously be arriving on her doorstep, too. Not once, in all her pestering about how much I would love Omaha had she suggested, Why don’t you and Dad just hop in the car and drive out here? His name hadn’t come up in connection with the idea, period.
“Mom, come on. You know I can’t get on a plane, right?”
“Liv, of course you can.” Mom sighed, but let it go. “Look, you understand. I’m just worried. I mean, what about school? It’s your junior year. Don’t you have a million projects and things to finish?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. We’re basically done, and I can finish the rest on independent study.”
“Please, Liv,” Mom said, her voice low. She probably didn’t want any of her colleagues to overhear. “Tell me what’s really going on.”
But I didn’t have a name for what was going on. I was worried in general, but until Kara had found me in the girls’ bathroom, and until I’d seen Dad on the roof, looking vacant and dazed, I hadn’t focused my worries on anything specific. My fears had been as random as nuclear attacks one minute and power tools the next, things I’d dutifully listed in my Fear Journal.
Mom wasn’t stupid—even from a thousand miles away, she could probably sense the tightening in my throat, the strange breathing sounds that signaled I was about to start bawling uncontrollably. “Liv,” she pleaded.
I snorted back my tears and forced myself to sound normal. “We’ll be there soon, and then I’ll tell you everything.”
Now she was crying, or close to it. “I’m going to worry about you every second until you’re here.”
I was grateful for the chance to make her laugh, even if it didn’t do much to cheer me up. “You leave the worrying to me, Mom. That’s my job.”
Dad raised an eyebrow curiously when I returned his phone, but didn’t ask any questions. I stood in the doorway of his office and wondered if I had made a big mistake, or if the big mistake was still to come. He’d been organizing his desk, and his trash can was overflowing with papers. I looked closer and saw lesson plans, handouts and student tests, as if he’d just swept the whole mess into the can.
“You owe me,” I said.
“I know,” he replied, not meeting my eyes.
In a few days the remaining Kaufmans were going to be together again, but I couldn’t sort out exactly how I felt about that. When Mom visited every summer, it had been beyond strange to have her ring our doorbell and wait politely to be let in, like a guest, like a person who’d never lived in our house at all. Before she arrived, Dad and I spent some serious time cleaning. Without discussing it, we made sure to rearrange anything we’d moved while she was gone, so that it looked like the exact same house she’d left, the same stacks of magazines we didn’t read on the coffee table, the uncomfortable throw pillows back on the couch. It was as if we’d been preserving the house in her honor, just like we’d done with Daniel’s room, still intact behind his closed door. During her visit, Mom tiptoed around our lives, barely leaving a trace of her existence—no smear of toothpaste in the bathroom sink, no plate with crumbs on the kitchen counter. She and Dad had been polite with each other, like houseguests at a B and B. Dad slept on the couch while she was there, waking with strange fabric impressions on his skin and a sore back, but he cleared out during the day, always with an excuse that felt contrived, like he just had to go look for a new set of solar lights at that exact moment. After she left, no matter how good it had felt to just be with her, the whole house let out a sigh of relief. The couch inched its way closer to the TV, the mail stacked up and a pile of laundry grew in the middle of the upstairs hallway.
In Omaha, Dad and I would be the guests. It would be our turn to tiptoe around Mom’s life, around her creations, her wood shavings and cans of paint and varnish. She was living in the house she’d grown up in, renovating it room by room in whatever spare time she had when she wasn’t at the store. In Omaha, she would have the advantage; we would be the ones afraid to leave a mess lying around.
Or maybe it would be different. Maybe I could open up to her the way I hadn’t done on her visits or in our dozens of phone conversations. I’d have to tell her what happened with Dad, but there were secrets of my own I’d been keeping, too.
The few people at school who knew about my mom leaving couldn’t understand how I didn’t absolutely hate her. You mean you still talk to her? Even after she walked out of your life? That’s messed up!
No, I didn’t hate her—but at the same time, I did. I’d never really been able to sort out my feelings for Mom. I’d been shocked when she actually left, and felt guilty as hell that I hadn’t left with her. I really, honestly hoped she was happier where she was, but I was afraid of that, too—it proved that she didn’t need Dad or me.
That whole weekend—one of the longest weekends of my life, it seemed—I packed and unpacked and repacked and watched Dad do the same. I scribbled frantically in my journal. I watched Dad as if he were a two-year-old playing with matches. When he ran out to pick up dinner, I sorted through the papers on his desk, not sure what I was looking for.
And I realized I couldn’t wait for us all to be together—good, bad or ugly.
Four more days.