The next morning the boys are eating breakfast in the kitchen and I’m packing their backpacks for day camp when the doorbell rings. I feel that same blip of dread I always do at the sound of the bell. I open the door slowly. Ezra. Also known as Harper’s boyfriend. I assume someday he’ll go on to become someone else’s boyfriend. But to me, he’ll always be Harper’s. I want to tell him to go, and I want to pull him into the house and beg him to never leave.
“I got a call,” he says. He holds his phone up like he needs a prop. He’s beautiful, Ezra is. I wouldn’t tell him that, but Harper has. And Harper reported that he’d laughed at that and said someone once told him he had the kind of face a sketch artist would draw if the witness was unsure whether the dude was white or black. Harper told me she loved his face of contradictions: sleepy lids hooding bright, watchful eyes; sharp cheekbones and full, rounded lips; a smile that’s tentative when it starts but certain when it stays.
Race comes barreling out of the kitchen and hurls himself at Ezra. “You’re here!” Ezra torpedo-catches Race and flings him over his shoulder like he’s a bag of rice. Ezra’s over six feet tall, so that’s an impressive height for a five-year-old. Ezra flings Race upside down and gets a squeal out of my brother.
“Maybe keep him upright so that he won’t give back his French toast sticks?” I say.
“Ooh, my favorite,” Ezra says, setting Race on his feet and tickling his ribs.
“You can have the rest of mine,” Race says, tugging at Ezra’s loose braided hemp bracelet.
“Race,” I say, hating the edge in my voice but too exhausted to file it down, “you need to finish your breakfast.”
Ezra squeezes Race’s upper arm and scowls. “That feels like a one-French-toast-stick muscle. You can do better than that.”
Race strongman poses, maple-syrup-dotted shirt and all, and runs back toward the kitchen, the swinging door swallowing him up.
“Hey,” I say, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I told the boys to quit calling you.”
Ezra winces softly. “They didn’t.”
“Oh. Shit.” Then it was Mom. Calling from Harper’s cell. Imagine seeing your dead girlfriend’s number and forgetting reality for a fraction of a second. I tried to cancel Harper’s line, but my mother forbade me. I worried she’d slide even farther into the crazy pit if I did it anyway.
“Sorry,” I say. A small word that can’t possibly capture everything it needs to.
He reaches for my hand and threads his long slim fingers through mine. We’re entwined for a moment—a beautiful, horrible moment—before I yank my hand back.
“Max, we should talk.”
“Agreed. I need to tell you about an e-mail I got,” I say. He looks disappointed.
“About Harper.”
His face opens expectantly. “A lead?” he says, his voice taut.
“Kind of the opposite. But maybe it’s okay.”
There’s a crash from the kitchen. Followed by a yelp. I practically trip over myself to get there, visualizing one of the boys burned or choking. But I’m only greeted with a mess. The foil-lined cookie sheet with the French toast sticks on it has been upended, the food scattered on the floor. Shelby is squatting over it, scooping up the battered chunks.
“Okay, what happened?” I ask all three of them, over Will’s and Race’s insistence that they didn’t do it.
“Sorry … hip-checked it. Accidentally.” She pats her hip. “These things get me in enough trouble, but maybe someday they’ll make childbirth a snap. Hey, Ezra.”
He says hi and moves to the table to sit between the boys. Will reads Ezra’s T-shirt aloud: “If you can read this, you’re too close.” Clearly Will doesn’t get it, but he laughs anyway.
“When’d you get here?” I whisper to Shelby.
“Two minutes ago.” She glances behind me toward Ezra. “I peeked in the living room, but it looked like you guys were having a discussion.”
I help Shelby clean up while Ezra tries to convince the boys to appreciate their apple slices.
Shelby whispers, “What happened out there?” but I shake my head. I’m not talking about Ezra in front of him. Besides, there’s nothing to talk about. He was Harper’s. He is Harper’s. And she didn’t give him up willingly. Even if she had grown sort of bored.
Meal over, Shelby offers to take the boys to camp. Once they leave, Ezra goes up to check on Mom. I follow.
He knocks. “Mrs. T.? It’s Ezra.”
I lean against the wall, prepared to wait. But the door opens immediately.
Her eyes are glazed, fevered. Her hair hangs in lanky, greasy strands. Her robe is ratty and stained. I fight back a wave of embarrassment. I don’t want Ezra to see her like that.
“How you doing?” he says. Like talking to her is the easiest thing in the world. Not an ounce of judgment. Not an ounce of shame. Not even an ounce of pity.
“Oh, Ezra,” she says, her voice raspy from underuse. She sags onto the bed. “Ezra. You’re here now.”
I follow him into the room even though she doesn’t seem to notice me. My phone buzzes from inside my pocket. I ignore it.
“It’s almost a year,” Mom says. “Tomorrow.”
“I know.” Ezra sits on the bed beside Mom. I’m about to tell him to get up, but wonder of wonders, instead of flipping out like she did yesterday, she just leans over and plucks a puff of lint off the knee of his jeans.
“I shouldn’t bother you,” she says. “I should let you get on with your life.”
“It’s never a bother,” Ezra says. “Honest.”
His eyes cut to mine. I don’t know what to do with his gaze, so I drop it. My phone starts up again. I slide it out of my pocket just enough to read the screen. Four texts from Chris. I slide it back in.
“Maxine is doing the best she can,” Mom says. “But I didn’t know if you were okay. I had to be sure.”
“I’m okay.” He reaches over and grabs Mom’s hand.
She squeezes his fingers. “And I’m trying.”
It’s the most direct, honest, noncrazy thing she’s said in weeks. And it’s fitting that Ezra is the conduit for it.
“We know,” he says softly. “And all you can do is try.”
My damn phone again. Ezra releases me with a gesture toward the door. Mom must be especially lucid, since even she picks up on it.
“You can go, honey,” she says to me. “I’m sure you have plenty to do.”
“I should do the breakfast dishes.” I don’t add that if I want any chance of getting my diploma, I have a shitload of homework (makeup and otherwise). So long honor roll, hello academic probation. Most seniors are in the coasting stage. Not me. And I don’t have college plans either. Shelby is going off to Seattle for school, a fact that makes my stomach turn over.
I slip out and sit in the hallway cubby where the desktop computer lives.
Hey, Chris texted fourteen minutes ago, let me know you’re OK pls?
The sunlight struggling through the small window down the hall doesn’t reach me here. My phone’s screen is the only source of light as I hunch on the spindly wooden chair.
If you can get a sitter, Chris wrote eleven minutes ago, lets go out tonite.
And six minutes ago: Or if you wanna stay in, thats fine too.
Four minutes ago: I know its a tough time for you.
Three: Hope I’m not saying the wrong thing.
Two: I want to help u get thru these next few days.
He remembers. Even though I haven’t talked about Harper a whole lot with him. Not because I can’t talk about her, but because I don’t have to. He understands, and that understanding makes words unnecessary. His brother Henry died four years ago. Technically Henry was Chris’s cousin, but they were raised together most of their life because Henry’s parents died in a crash when he was young.
Maybe because I know he gets how this feels, I’m grateful enough to leave it in the background and fill up the foreground with things like breakfast tacos and Esther’s Follies and how easily we can embarrass the Walgreens cashier by buying condoms and KitKats.
He’s my first serious boyfriend, but he’s two years older than me, so I know he’s had serious girlfriends, though I don’t need to complicate what’s uncomplicated between us. Which is why I reassured him that I didn’t need any details.
I’m here, I write. I’m OK. Sorry so quiet, stuff with Mom.
My finger hovers over the send arrow as I try to remember why I didn’t respond to his texts last night. I hear Mom’s voice over Ezra’s, hear my sister’s name said aloud. I need uncomplicated. I need Chris. I send it.
And then another: I want to see you tonight.
Cool. Gotta get back to work. Be strong.
I smile at the phone. As if he can see me.
I’m downstairs washing the dishes, stacking them in the broken dishwasher to dry, when a shriek sounds from upstairs. Mom. A soapy mug slips out of my hands. It falls into the sink and cracks neatly in two. There’s another yell, this time a more sustained keening wail. And then a loud thud.
I’m taking the stairs two at a time, blotting my wet hands on my shirt. Ezra’s coming out of Harper’s room when I get there, closing the door softly.
“I think she will be. She just … uh … well …” His forehead, usually smooth and serene, is creased.
“What was that noise?”
“She knocked over the piano.”
“Jesus!”
“She didn’t get hurt though,” he says. He holds several books of matches.
“Where’re those from?”
“Apparently she’s been collecting these. She flipped out when I found them.”
“What was she—” I cut myself off. I can’t go there. I can’t.
As Ezra stuffs the matches in his pockets his angle shifts and I see something I’d missed.
“Oh my God,” I say. There’s redness on his cheekbone near his eye. I lift a hand to touch his face, but his hand finds mine. He grips it, then lets it go. “Did she hit you?”
He shrugs. “She didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, Ezra.” I want to cry.
My phone is heavy in my pocket. I know I have to call her doctor. Adults can only be institutionalized against their will if they are a demonstrable danger to themselves or others. Check and check.
If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be on a first-name basis with my mom’s psychiatrist I would’ve told you you’re the crazy one. She didn’t even have a psychiatrist back then. The Tretheways are sane.
Yeah, well, a year’s a long time for a heart to break.