He was very quiet for a moment. “Where are you?”
I started crying again, my voice ragged. He told me to calm down. He told me it was going to be all right. And then, he told me he’d be there soon.
After we hung up, I went into the bathroom and washed my face, then used a nubby hand towel to dry off. I was so tired, and yet I knew I needed to stay awake, so I could be ready to explain when he showed up, whenever that might be. I sat down on the bed, kicking off my shoes, and reached for the remote. But then I looked at my boxes instead, and left it where it was.
I dragged the heavy box over, taking off the lid, and started stacking things around me on the bed. The books, the photos both framed and in albums, the yearbooks, all my notebooks and old journals, all in a circle, like numbers on a clock, with me in the middle.
I picked up a loose picture of me and my mom when I was in grade school, posing at a holiday parade. Beside it was a framed one from her and Peter’s wedding, she in white and him in a dark tux, me standing in front of them, the maid of honor. A third: the twins as infants, sleeping through a professional photo shoot, their tiny fingers entwined. Pictures in brass frames and wooden ones, frames backed with magnets and decorated with seashells. I’d had no idea how many I’d once had until now, and as I laid them out on my bed, beside the quilt, I searched for my own face in each one, recognizing my different incarnations.
At the parade, it was me when things were okay: parents still together, life intact. At the wedding, I was sleepwalking, with a fake smile and tired eyes. In the early ones with the twins, taken on holidays after the move, it was hair color and makeup, the clothes I was wearing that let me know who I was as the shutter clicked. I recognized Eliza’s ponytail and T-shirt with the school mascot, Lizbet’s thick dark eyeliner and black turtleneck, Beth’s crisp button-down shirt and plaid skirt. I looked at myself in the mirror across the room, all those things surrounding me. My hair was longer than it had been in a while, falling over my shoulders, and I had on jeans and a white T-shirt, a black sweater pulled over it. Tiny gold hoops in my ears, that single Gert on my wrist. No makeup, no persona, no costume. Just me, at least for now.
I looked over at the stack of notebooks, their covers decorated with my loopy handwriting, silly signatures, pictures I’d scribbled during boring classes. I took one out, opening it to a fresh page, taking in again the circle of pictures and history around me. Then I reached over to the bedside table, picking up the complimentary hotel pen, and started to write.
In Montford Falls, the first place I moved when I left, I called myself Eliza. The neighborhood we lived in was all these happy families, like something from an old TV show.
I stopped, read back over what I’d written, then looked outside. A single car passed by slowly, its lights brightening the empty street ahead. I turned another page.
In the next place, Petree, everyone was rich. I was Lizbet, and we lived in this high-rise apartment complex, all dark wood and metal appliances. It was like something out of a magazine: even the elevator was silent.
I yawned, then stretched my fingers. It was now 1:30.
When we moved to Westcott, we had a house right on the beach, so sunny and warm, and I could wear flip-flops all year-round. The first day, I introduced myself as Beth.
I could feel the tiredness, the heaviness of this long, long day bearing down on me. Stay awake, I thought. Stay here.
In Lakeview, the house had a basketball goal. I was going to be Liz Sweet.
The last time I remembered looking at the clock, it was 2:15. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, the room was barely light, and someone was knocking at my door.
I sat up, startled, and waited that moment until I remembered where I was. Then I pushed some pictures aside, sliding off the bed, and walked over to the door, pulling it open, so ready to see Dave’s face.
But it wasn’t him. It was my mom, and my dad was right beside her. They looked at me, then at the room behind me, their faces as tired as my own. “Oh, Mclean,” my mom said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Thank God. There you are.”
There you are. Like I’d been lost and now found. She opened her mouth to say something else, and my dad was suddenly talking, too, but for me it was just too much, in that moment, to even hear what came next. I just stepped forward, and then their arms were around me.
I was crying as my mom held me and my dad led us into the room and to the bed, easing the door shut behind us. My mom pushed aside those pictures, my dad the notebooks, as I lay down, curling myself into her lap and closing my eyes. I was so, so tired, and as she stroked my hair, I could hear them still talking, voices low. A moment later, there was another sound, too, distant but as recognizable as the waves outside. That of pages turning, one after another, a story finally being told.
Sixteen
“Wow,” I said. “You weren’t kidding. You didn’t need me.”