I clear my throat, sitting up a little straighter. And then I remember what Janet suggested, and realize this is the perfect opportunity to tell Aja about Dinesh and the time he almost burned a fraternity house down in college with his infamous flaming lips shot.
“You know, guys do a lot of stupid things,” I begin, smiling a little at the memory. “And your dad actually had his own little obsession with fire.” At the word “dad,” Aja’s eyes pop open even wider, almost in a panic. As I open my mouth to continue the story, Aja claps his hands over his ears and starts shaking his head, a moan emitting from his lips: “Nooooooooooooo-noooooooooooo.”
“Aja,” I say, standing up. I stare at him, unsure how to respond. “It’s OK! Calm down. It’s OK, bud.”
But he won’t stop. The moans get louder and he squeezes his eyes shut as if the offending sound is coming from someone else and he wants to block it out. I’m standing there, useless, wondering what Janet would advise I do next, when Aja takes a hand off his ear and points at the door. “Get oooooouuuuuuut!” he screams. And so I do.
I leave the room and shut the door behind me, my heart pounding in my eardrums, trying, but unable to erase the sound of Aja’s tortured moans from my memory. Maybe that’s why I haven’t shared any stories about his parents, I think, wanting to direct all my anger at Janet and her awful advice.
But I know the truth is far harder to swallow.
JUBILEE STANDS UP when she sees me walk into the den. I start, having almost forgotten she was here. She’s taken off her coat but left her gloves on, like she’s about to handle rare jewels or something.
“Is he . . . OK?” she asks, drawing my eyes to her face. The wailing has subsided, but it’s still ringing in my ears.
“Yeah,” I say, but I know it’s as unconvincing as it sounds. “Listen, let’s . . . uh . . . is it OK if we give him a minute and then I’ll drive you home?”
“How about I call a cab?” she says, and relief tinged with guilt floods me. I feel bad that I got her mixed up in my problems.
“Yeah. That’s probably the best option.”
After I call the taxi, we both sit on the couch, an entire length of cushion between us. The silence seems to stretch past us, from one side of the room to the other, until Jubilee breaks it.
“What’s the dog’s name?” she asks.
I chuckle. “We don’t really have one for him. We’ve just been calling him The Dog.”
“The Dog,” she repeats.
“Yep.”
“That’s a terrible name.”
I widen my eyes at her candor. “No more terrible than Rufus or Petey.”
“No, actually it is,” she says. “Come here, Rufus. That sounds right. Come here, The Dog. That doesn’t even make grammatical sense.”
I laugh, and the release feels good. “I guess you’re right. Would you be OK with just Dog?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I kind of like Rufus now.”
“I’ll have to run that by Aja,” I say.
She nods, content, and we sit in the silence for a few more minutes.
And then: “What are you going to do?”
I rub my hand over my face. “About Rufus?” I ask, even though I know that’s not what she’s talking about. It’s just that I have no answer. What am I going to do about Aja, his grief, about Ellie, about my seeming inability to parent with any kind of real know-how or acumen?
She smiles. “No, about Aja. Um . . . his babysitter?”
Oh. Right. Mrs. Holgerson. “I don’t know.” And as I say the words, panic begins to take hold. What am I going to do? I suddenly regret shooing her out, even though it felt good at the time. I can’t take off work tomorrow, not with this huge acquisition going on. Or any other day this week. As much as I hate it, I kind of need her. “I might have to call and beg her to come back, at least until I can find someone else.”
“Uh . . . I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“Why not?”
“When she left? She muttered something in Swedish: Fan ta dig, din j?vel.”
I look at her, not understanding.
“The first part basically means ‘May the devil take you’—or, as we would say: ‘Go to hell.’?”
“And the second?”
She pauses, and then says quietly: “?‘You fucker.’?”
My jaw drops at the idea of those words coming from that little old lady, and then I start laughing. Jubilee joins in, and the release feels good.
“Wait,” I say when we calm down. “You know Swedish?”
“No.” She shrugs. “Just the curse words.”
I smile, reveling in this unexpected detail.
She looks down and then raises her head again. “He could come to the library.”
I focus my eyes on her. “What do you mean?”
“Like, after school. If you need a place for him to go.”
I narrow my eyes at her and then give my head a shake. “No. No, I couldn’t do that. You don’t need . . . you’ve got plenty going on.” Although I don’t really know if that’s true. What do librarians do all day?
She shrugs. “I just thought . . . I mean, you’re picking me up this week anyway.” She looks down at her feet. “If, um . . . if you still were planning to, I mean.”
“Of course. Yes,” I say.
“So it just kind of makes sense. At least for a few days, and then you can figure out what to do.”
I stare at her. This woman. This confounding, beautiful woman who apparently wears gloves twenty-four hours a day (does she sleep in them?) and can translate Swedish curse words. And I know she’s right. It does make sense. I sit back, pushing my shoulder blades into the cushion behind me, and delight in the rare feeling of something just falling into place. Instead of just falling.
And then it occurs to me quite suddenly—that out of the two of us, maybe she’s not the one who needs help.
When the cab honks its horn from the parking lot, we stand up and walk to the door. From behind me, she says: “What happened to your coffee table?”
We both look back at it. I haven’t gotten around to replacing the glass top, so if you put a drink or your feet on it they would drop right through to the ground, meaning it’s not so much a coffee table at this point as just a metal frame.
I wipe my hand over my face again and sigh. “Long story.”
She follows me down the stairs and I get her bike out of the trunk, despite her now-expected protestations that she can get it herself.
As she’s climbing in the back of the cab, she stops and turns to me. “See you tomorrow?”
I nod. “Tomorrow,” I say, and I’m not sure if I imagine it or if her lips turn up in a grin. And then she ducks in the car and is gone, leaving me on the cold sidewalk, staring at the crimson taillights of the cab, and then nothing at all.
sixteen
JUBILEE
WHEN I GET in Madison’s car Tuesday morning, she’s holding her hands out toward me, palms up. In one, she’s got a doughnut. In the other, a blue pill.
“What is this, The Matrix?”
“Huh?”
I nod at the tablet.
“Oh! No. That’s funny.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Wait—how do you know about The Matrix?”
“I was in my house for nine years, not underground. I do have TV.”
“Huh,” she says, and then she lifts up her right hand an inch. “Anyway, this is Xanax.”
“For me?” I tilt my head at her. “Isn’t that a prescription?”
“Yeeeees, and lucky for you, I’m sharing.”