Twenty-seven

The party didn’t break up until midnight, when Toni went out with her friends. Avoiding me, as if she were two years old again, hiding behind the corner of the couch to poop, leaving me to clean up her crap.

“Go to bed. You must be exhausted,” I said to Reeti as I bagged the trash.

“At least let me put the food away.”

“You busted your ass cooking. It’s not fair to stick you with the dishes, too.”

“I can’t leave you alone in the kitchen like Cinderella.”

I smiled wryly. “I feel more like the evil stepsister.”

Reeti sniffed and dumped the few skewers of leftover tikka. “You shouldn’t worry about Toni.”

“I can’t help it.”

“You cannot save her from all her poor choices,” Reeti said as she scraped the veggie tray into Tupperware. “How will she learn, if not from her own mistakes?”

She sounded uncomfortably like Tim. I ducked my head defensively. “This isn’t like letting her go to school without a coat. Or fail a quiz because she didn’t study. This is her life.”

Reeti’s eyes met mine. “Exactly. Her life, didi. Her dream.”

My throat constricted. I couldn’t argue with Reeti about my sister’s choices. Not with all the pressure Reeti felt to conform to her parents’ expectations. Not after the fight she’d had with Vir.

But this was different, I told myself. Toni was only eighteen.

The dishwasher was loaded, the counters wiped down. There was nothing to do but go to bed.

I lay staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about Tim sleeping in his king-sized bed one floor down. Or not sleeping. Waiting or not waiting? This was the first night we’d spent apart. It felt awkward. Wrong. Especially after he’d seen me kissing another man.

The memory rushed back—the shock of Sam’s hard, lean, angled body, the bitter sweetness of the beer he’d been drinking.

I flopped back against my pillow in a welter of guilt and confusion. Fretting over Tim or Sam or Tim-and-Sam didn’t help anything. I had to think about Toni.

“The more you focus on her needs the less you have to think about yourself,” Tim said in my head.

Eventually, I fell into a restless doze, the messy tide of emotion dragging me into a churn of dreams.

I was awakened by a crack of light from the open door.

Toni shuffled forward, bumping into the dresser. Her jewelry tree rattled and fell. Earrings tinkled and spilled to the floor.

I rolled over, groping for my phone. “It’s three in the morning.”

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Toni whispered.

“Not really.” I struggled to sit up. “I was worried about you.”

“I’m fine.” A giggle. “Fee called me a cab.”

I turned on the bedside lamp. “Did you have a nice time?”

Toni blinked in the sudden light. Her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks flushed. I didn’t have to sniff her breath to know she’d been drinking. Appletinis. The smell of gin and Jolly Ranchers wafted across the room.

“Are you going to yell at me?” she asked.

I suppressed a sigh. “It’s your last night out with your friends. I’m not actually trying to ruin all your fun.” Whether she believed me or not. Whatever Tim and Reeti said.

“Good.” She pulled her top over her head, exposing the delicate bumps of her spine and the new tattoo on her shoulder blade—three spirals radiating from a center point. A triskelion, she’d informed me a week ago, displaying the fresh ink proudly. A sign of the triple goddess. A souvenir of Ireland.

I felt a surge of protective tenderness. “You don’t know what it was like,” I said. “Before we moved to Kansas.”

“That’s the point.” She peeled her jeans down her thighs, stumbling into the bed. “You know. You remember. But we never talk about it.”

“We’re talking now.”

“It’s not enough. You tell me stuff. But I don’t remember. Even Mom. I look at pictures, but I can’t remember her voice or her laugh or even if she hugged us.”

“She did. She loved us, Toni. She loved you.” The words tumbled out. “She used to dance with you in the living room to Jackson Browne.” I could see them, our mother with her wild hair and flowing clothes, bouncing my baby sister in her arms while I hopped and twirled beside them. I hummed a few bars of “Somebody’s Baby.”

“Don’t sing.”

I was stung. “Sorry.”

“I don’t even know what are real memories and what you’ve made up. Or what I made up from listening to your stories.” Toni’s eyes glistened with tears and rebellion. “That’s why I want to go to New York. All my life, I’ve missed somebody I never knew. This is my chance to know her.”

I was shaken to the core. I wanted to hug her and never let go. “All I’m asking is for you to take some time to think about it. I’ll be home in the fall. Six months,” I begged. “We can talk about it then.”

Toni tossed her head. “So you can wear me down?”

Yes. No. “I just want you to consider your options.”

“No, you want me to consider your options.”

“Toni . . .”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” she flung at me. “You’re not my mother.”

Her words struck like stones. I reeled from the impact.

Her face slackened suddenly. “I’m going to puke.”

I leaped from bed, galvanized into action. “Bathroom,” I said. “Now.”

We made it. Barely. I held her hair as she heaved and shuddered over the toilet, purging her body of gin, of too much food and emotion.

She coughed, wiping her mouth on her arm, her wet, raccoon eyes streaked with tears and mascara. “Sorry.”

Love clogged my throat.

“It’s okay, baby.” I wrung out a warm washcloth for her face and a cool one for the back of her neck, the way Aunt Em used to do for us when we had a tummy bug. “Better?”

Her head wobbled. Yes.

“Let’s brush your teeth, okay?”

I helped her into a clean T-shirt, tucking her into bed as if she were five again.

She sighed once and snuggled into her pillow. “Love you.”

I stroked her choppy hair, my chest heavy. “Love you, too.”

I sat there on the side of her bed a long, long time, until her soft snores almost drowned out the bruising memory of her words. “You’re not my mother.”

My breath hitched. Because they were true. Our mother was dead. Nothing I said or did could ever make up for that one, deep, terrible loss.

“I can’t remember her voice.” I tried to recall things Mom used to say, little phrases or advice. What were the stories passed from my mother to me? The lessons written in my heart, the things that made me her daughter? I was not like her. Was I?

Was Toni?

“I want to be an artist.”

I’d been proud that our mother wasn’t like the ordinary mothers I saw, withering away on the Kansas prairie or stuck in some suburban rut. Our mother was always on the move, making larger-than-life installations in far-flung exotic locations. The celebrated Judy Gale: ambitious, brilliant, dedicated. Irresponsible. The word snuck in and stuck.

She loved us. She did. But never enough to stay.

“All my life, I’ve missed somebody I never knew. This is my chance to know her.” I swallowed hard. What would it be like, to follow in Mom’s footsteps? To see her from the perspective of her friends and peers? To be seen as Judy Gale’s daughter. A talent, a genius, an artist like our mother.

Maybe, I reflected, it was better not to know. But I understood Toni’s choices better now.

I smoothed the covers over Toni and crept out of our shared room. I felt itchy and empty and wired with a weird energy, unable to keep from moving, as if there were someplace I needed to be. I thought again of Tim, alone in his big bed downstairs. I missed his solid strength, his reassuring warmth. I reached for my phone and then pleated my fingers together to stop from texting. This hollow space inside me . . . Even Tim couldn’t fill that.

Besides, it was really late. What would I say? Am I bothering you? like Gray? Or whatever it was Charles messaged at three thirty in the morning. Help me. Save me.

I winced. I didn’t want Tim to feel I was using him, for sex or anything else.

It was only nine thirty in Kansas. Late for farmers, but maybe not too late to call.

Em answered on the third ring. “Dorothy.”

“Hi, Aunt Em. Were you in bed?”

“Your uncle’s sleeping. What’s the matter?”

“Does something have to be wrong for me to call?”

“Usually. How’s Toni?”

I cleared my throat. “Fine.”

“She’s not sick? They haven’t canceled her flight?”

“No.” I waited for her to ask about me.

“Right, then,” Em said. “Tell her I’ll be at baggage claim.”

“Aunt Em . . . She’s talking about going to New York. To stay with Mom’s friends.”

“Better than going off on her own. Leslie’s not a bad sort.”

I gripped the phone tighter. “You knew?”

“Toni asked me for her number.”

I ignored for the moment the realization that Em had kept contact with our mother’s life and friends in New York. “Aren’t you worried?”

“Of course I’m worried, Dorothy. But I learned my lesson with you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was scared to death when you were that age. All those colleges, sending you things. What if something went wrong? You’d be halfway across the country, all on your own. Naturally I was afraid. But I made you afraid, and I’m sorry for that. I never meant to hold you back.”

“I thought you wanted me to go to Kansas because it was cheaper.”

“No point in throwing money away, trust fund or no trust fund. But mostly I figured you’d be better off close to home. You didn’t have a lot of confidence in those days.”

As if I had a lot of confidence now. “Toni isn’t afraid. Of anything. She’s more like Mom.”

Em made a noncommittal sound. “Toni’s her own person. Same as you.”

“But braver.”

Another of those noises. Not agreement, not complete disagreement. “Because of you. Toni’s always known she had you in her corner.”

I thought it was a compliment. A nice one. But it left me even more confused. “So you’re just going to let her go to New York?”

“Don’t see how I can stop her. Girl’s not stupid. She knows where she comes from. She knows who to come to if she needs help. She’ll be all right.”

Of all the women in my life, I had known Em the longest. I trusted her the most. Em—no-nonsense, undemonstrative, unsentimental—wouldn’t tell you something simply because it was what you wanted to hear.

She was, I realized, the person I went to when things fell apart. When my mother died. When the pandemic struck. When Gray broke my heart and ruined my reputation and derailed my academic career, Em had given me refuge. And then pushed me off the couch and into the world again.

“Thanks, Aunt Em.”

“It’s late,” she said. “You should be sleeping.” Which might be as close to I love you as she could get.

I’d take it. “I love you, too,” I said.