Olivia hit the button to stop the treadmill, slowing down to a walk. “Okay,” she said, “but I just—”
“Can you not be such a know-it-all, possibly?” I asked, whirling to face her, and of course that was the moment I dropped one of the fucking free weights onto the industrial carpet and almost took my whole foot off. “Shit!” I said, dropping the other one and jumping backward, my whole face getting tight and swollen-feeling. I knew if I breathed I would cry. You should have just stayed in Jessell, I remembered her saying. Why are you even here?
For a second, neither one of us said anything; the only sounds were the whoosh of the air conditioner and the news on the TV mounted in one corner of the gym, a CNN anchor yammering obliviously away.
Olivia broke first. “Dana—” she started, but I cut her off.
“Enough,” I said, bending down and picking the weights up, returning them to the rack with a clank. “Just go, okay, Olivia? Just leave me alone.”
Olivia looked at me for a long minute, and I thought I probably imagined that she looked like she was about to cry, too. “Yeah,” she said quietly, and slipped out the door without another word.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I think Guy could sense that things were getting close to boiling over, because he sent both of us home the following weekend to see our families and regroup. Olivia didn’t say a word to me the entire five-hour ride, listening to tape after tape on her headphones in the back of the shiny black car Guy had arranged. I thought of the trip down here in Olivia’s Toyota, how excited both of us had been, and stared out the window at the highway rushing by.
“See you Sunday,” Olivia said when we got to my house—pulling her headphones off for a moment, not quite meeting my eyes.
I nodded. “See you Sunday.”
Jessell in August was a different kind of hot than Orlando: browner and drier, less unrelentingly swampy. I was half expecting my mom’s house to look smaller, but it was the same as it had always been: chain-link fence and aluminum screen door, stringy weeds growing up between the cracks in our front steps. I bent down and yanked a couple of them out by the roots, then dug my keys out from the very bottom of my bag and let myself inside.
The house was dark and stuffy, a still, stale smell like nobody had opened the windows since I’d left for Orlando seven weeks ago. Elvis met me in the hall. “Mom?” I called, reaching down and scratching him behind his matted ears. His fur felt sticky, like he’d been rolling around in maple syrup. “Mom! I’m home.”
No answer. In the kitchen, dishes were stacked up in the sink and on the drainboard, garbage piled high in the bin; a basket full of dirty laundry sat overflowing in the middle of the hall. I frowned. Our house was never going to win any decorating awards, but it had always been pretty tidy. It occurred to me all of a sudden that maybe that was because I’d been here to clean it up.
My mom’s bedroom door was cracked open; I knocked twice, loudly, then eased it open. She was lying facedown on the mattress, the sheets twisted around her legs. For one insane, terrifying, heart-stopping second, I thought it was possible she was dead. “Mom,” I said, reaching out and laying a hand on her shoulder. “Mama, hey. It’s me.”
My mom stirred slowly at first, then woke up all at once, gasping, suddenly alert. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, eyes wide.
“I told you I was coming, remember?” I asked, taking a step backward, catching sight of myself in a baby picture on the bureau. “I’ve got the weekend off.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking, rubbing her face for a moment. Her eyes were the same blue as mine. “Yeah, of course. Hi, baby.”
I smiled, heart slowing down to normal again. “How you doing, huh?”
“Fine,” she said. “I thought you were coming on Friday.”
“It is Friday,” I said.
My mom looked irritated at that. “I don’t have anything to feed you,” she said, getting up and heading out of the bedroom.
“That’s okay,” I said as the bathroom door shut. “We can go out to lunch or something.”
My mom made noises of assent, but when she got out of the bathroom she said she didn’t feel well and it was too hot out, so instead we sat on the couch drinking Diet Coke and watching People’s Court, Elvis snoring loudly between us. It felt like a different universe entirely from Orlando. I couldn’t help but wonder what Alex would think if he saw this place—Elvis’s kibble scattered across the linoleum in the kitchen, the pair of empty vodka bottles standing at attention on the counter next to the fridge. There were a pair of men’s socks balled up on the armchair across the room, gray and dingy; I wanted to ask my mom who they belonged to, but I didn’t know what to say.
In fact, I wasn’t sure how to talk to her about much of anything, all of a sudden: we sat mostly in silence, commercials flickering by. I’d thought she’d be excited to hear about the routines I was working on—she’d always loved anything resembling celebrity gossip, and she’d done pageants when she was a kid—but she didn’t sound particularly interested in my stories about Charla and Lucas. In fact, she sounded almost annoyed. “Is he Jewish?” she interrupted, halfway through my description of Guy’s pool party, the big house and the hissing bidet.
I felt my eyebrows knit. “I don’t know,” I said. “What does that have to do with anything?”
My mom shrugged. “He hasn’t tried anything funny with you, has he?” she asked, crossing her arms. “You’re not taking off your clothes or anything like that?”
“Mom!” I said. “God! No, nothing like that. Besides, I’m with Olivia all the time.”
My mom scowled. “Well, Olivia,” she said, like that was all the explanation necessary. I didn’t say anything in reply.
She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said she had nothing to feed me; when I looked, the fridge was empty except for a thing of yellow mustard and the half-drunk two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. What had she been eating?
“Mom,” I called. “I’m going to run out to the store for a second, okay?”