Jubilee! Of course I remember you. Can you be here Tuesday at 10 am?
I pad to the kitchen, my heart beating excessively for the minimal effort, and dial Madison. She doesn’t answer, so I leave a message. Then, though it’s not even eight o’clock, I go upstairs and get in bed.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
I open my eyes and scan the room, blinking. My pillow is damp where I’ve apparently been drooling in my sleep. I wipe my chin with the back of my hand. The light filtering in through the windows informs me it’s morning, but I have no idea what time it is. Or if that rapping noise was real or just part of some dream.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Well, that answers one question. I sit up and wonder who it could be. Probably a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness—I’ve had a few of each knock on the door the past nine years. I’d always wait silently in the kitchen for them to move on.
Now curiosity propels me out of bed and I creep to the window and carefully move the blue curtain panel so I can peer out. I can’t see the porch from this angle, but I can see—
Eric’s car. In my driveway. I quickly back away from the window, my heart knocking against my chest. I completely forgot he said he was going to come today—but more important, why on earth did I agree to it? I don’t even care if the Pontiac runs—it’s not like I’d drive it, anyway. My bike gets me to and from the library just fine. I was just caught off guard, I think. He was being so . . . so un-Eric. More than just routinely polite, he was being kind and warm and even a little bit funny. But now, in the stark light of day, I feel like some pathetic charity case whom he feels some obligation to because I saved his son, and I wish I had just said no.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I stand stock-still, hoping maybe he’ll just leave if I wait long enough.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I count slowly and right when I reach one hundred and think he might be giving up—
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Guess not. I pull on a pair of worn leggings that I left on my chair. I head downstairs and open the door just as he’s raising his fist to knock again. A blast of cold air hits me in the face.
“Sorry, I . . . uh . . . just woke up,” I say, looking from Eric to Aja and then back again. Eric’s hand is frozen in midair and I wonder why he’s not moving. I know my hair is a tangled disaster, but I don’t think I look too crazy. At least not crazy enough for the wide-eyed stare on Eric’s face.
He clears his throat and—finally—slowly lowers his fist. “Good morning, Jubilee.” At my name, Aja’s eyes pop open, as round as quarters, grabbing my attention. Then I look back at Eric, but he’s not looking at me. Not in my eyes anyway. He’s looking, I think, directly at my chest. Not much to look at, I hear my mom’s voice saying in my ear, followed by her smoker’s cackle. It was something she said to me often. Mean, yes, but true—I didn’t inherit my mom’s particular assets—and I can’t imagine what’s drawn his attention.
Wondering if I’m in some bizarre dream and I’m just going to find myself topless and vulnerable and desperate to wake up, I glance down. What I see is worse. I fight off the wild urge to slam the door shut in his and Aja’s faces run back upstairs, and crawl into the bed, never to get out of it again.
I’m wearing his sweatshirt. The Wharton one. The one I’ve been sleeping in every single night since he brought me home from the hospital. Not because it’s his, of course, it’s just . . . comfortable. And smells good. But all he sees is that I’m wearing it and all I want to do is die a little bit.
Heat creeps up my face, until it is positively on fire. “Well, thank you for coming,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and composed. “The car is . . . well, you know where the car is. Let me know if you need anything.”
I go to close the door, but Eric reaches his hand out, stopping it. “Wait.” I stare at his fingers splayed against the grain of the wood. I remember the dream, his fingers touching mine, and my breath comes quicker. One of my online Harvard classes was an art intro: How to Draw the Human Form. The professor said hands were the hardest part of the body to draw, not only because of the complexity of their joints and lines and getting the proportions correct, but because hands are equally as expressive as the face in gesture and emotion. I thought that was stupid. Until now. I swallow with difficulty.
“I’m actually waiting for my sister, Connie. She said she’d help with the car. Do you mind if we come in for a minute?”
I take a step back, trying to put distance between myself and Eric’s hands, but he takes it as an invitation. Left with no choice, I step back farther. “Sure,” I say. “Um . . . come in.”
I close the door behind them and then we’re standing there, at the base of the stairs, in an awkward silence. I know I should say something, tell them to make themselves at home, or some other genial expression, but I can’t stop thinking about the basic fact that there are two additional people standing inside my house. Guests. That I didn’t really invite in, but here they are. The sound of Eric’s hands rubbing together in an attempt to warm them up brings me back to the moment. I open my mouth to say something—anything to break the silence—but then his hands catch my attention again, this time because I’m wondering why he doesn’t have gloves on in this weather—and that’s when it hits me. I forgot to put on my gloves. I clasp my hands behind me. “Um . . . I’ll be right back,” I say, finding the bottom stair with my foot. “You can sit down.” I nod toward the living room. “I mean, if you want to.”
Upstairs, I strip off Eric’s sweatshirt and toss it in the laundry bin, the humiliation of being caught in it inflaming my cheeks once more. The air at once feels cool on my bare skin but also causes a prickly sensation that intensifies the itching. I know scratching will cause more pain than relief, so I resist the urge, quickly apply some more useless cream to my bumpy skin, and then pull a clean T-shirt and cable-knit sweater over my head. I hope the cowl neck will cover the tail end of the rash that’s threatening to creep up my collarbone.
I stick my hands in my gloves, take a deep breath, and walk back downstairs.
When I get to the bottom step, I stop. Aja is engrossed in an iPad and sitting in the velvet-covered easy chair. My chair. Eric is sitting on the couch, on the far left cushion. My mother’s seat.
I didn’t know it was my mother’s seat—or more accurately, that I still think of it as my mother’s seat—until I see him sitting there, and a kind of uncomfortable awareness washes over me.
And then I start to notice other things:
The way that the cushion of the velvet chair sags down, offering no support to Aja’s tiny frame and giving him the appearance of a limp marionette, draped in the seat.