“What’s going on, Grace?” Eva asks, interrupting my mental game. I’m amazed she’s held off plugging me with questions this long. She digs a spoon into a jar, scooping a huge glob before licking it like a lollipop. It’ll take her ten minutes to eat that one spoonful.
“I’m a mess, Eva,” I say, my eyes fixed on where I know the ocean should be. It’s just a giant swath of dark, ignited every few seconds by the lighthouse beam. “Maggie’s a mess. We’re just . . . we’re a mess.”
She reaches out and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. Her fingers tickle my cheek as they brush over the skin, and I grit my teeth to resist leaning into her touch.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
I take a breath and let it out slowly before I turn to look at her. “My mom isn’t stable. I know you think she is, that she just looks at the world differently and handles things in her way, and maybe she does, but it’s not stable. And she didn’t raise me in a stable environment. Nothing about this”—?I wave my hand around my face—?“is stable. And it’s only a matter of time before this whole thing with you and her—?whatever it is, whatever you get out of it—?blows up.”
“Why does it have to blow up?”
“Because it always does.”
She frowns, clearly confused. And she should be. I haven’t told her shit and Luca’s too loyal to me to tell her anything and Emmy clearly wants me to tell her. The worst part is that I didn’t even see it, how screwed up it is to withhold all of it from Eva, not only because I like her and want her to know me, but because she is wrapped up in Maggie. And Maggie’s a fucking hurricane.
So I tell Eva some stories. Stories of Mom’s and my itinerant life, rescues from crowds of beer-soaked men at Ruby’s, vodka at breakfast, and stolen money out of my jewelry box. I try to weave in some good stuff, too. The New York trip. How talented Mom is with jewelry design. The way she haggled that pastor down to a price we could afford for my piano because she knew I needed it. Because she believed in me. Still, the bad stuff is like flypaper. Everything else sticks to it.
Eva listens, her eyes on me and her half-licked spoon forgotten between her fingers.
“God, Grace,” she says when I take a breath.
I shake my head and look down. “It’s not that bad.”
“And Luca knows all of this?”
“He knows most of it.”
“And Emmy?”
I nod. “She and Mom don’t get along. When I was thirteen, Mom disappeared for a few days and Emmy brought me to her house. They had a huge fight when Mom finally came home. It was bad. It’s been weird between them ever since. Emmy’s offered to let me live with them more than once, and she gives me money here and there, but I can’t leave my own mother, can I? And who knows what sort of fucked-up stuff is in my head that I don’t even know is fucked up? It’s just me, the way I am.”
Jay’s words filter through the snarls in my head. You never asked. And I didn’t. Not once. I didn’t bat a single eyelash when I dumped him. Guys before him? Ones I mess around with or went on one date with before blowing them off? They meant nothing to me.
“No,” Eva says, her curls falling into her face as she shakes her head. “You’re you because of you.”
“Eva. Our life is chaos. Please, just trust me on this.”
“I’m not denying that. And it’s not like I couldn’t tell Maggie wasn’t your average mom, but . . .” She tosses her spoon into the jar and rubs her eyes with both hands. “I wish you would’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want you to see me as some screwed-up girl. I didn’t want . . . I didn’t want to admit it all. It’s hard enough letting Luca into all of this, and I just wanted to be me when I was with you. Just Grace.”
“I get that, but—?”
“And you needed it. I know I should’ve told you, but Maggie really seemed to help you. I didn’t want to take that from you.”
She doesn’t answer but takes my hand in hers, playing with my nails. I notice that hers are painted freshly purple. Maybe she did them herself, but I really doubt it. The color is Mom’s favorite—?that same sparkly aubergine from the first time I saw Maggie and Eva together at my own kitchen table.
“Do you know the story of Swan Lake?” Eva asks quietly, her eyes on the ocean.
“The ballet?”
“Yeah.”
“Only what I know from playing Tchaikovsky and watching Black Swan.”
She smiles, but it’s tight. “Well, this will seem totally normal to you, then.”
I don’t say anything, and she takes a deep breath. “We danced Swan Lake for our spring show last year. I was Odette. Pissed off all the white girls, but I danced the hell out of that role. Wanted it so bad, wished for it every night, just to prove to them all that I could do it. Mom wasn’t even in on the casting. She said it wouldn’t be fair, but the other instructors picked me anyway. In the ballet, Odette is a princess and a sorcerer curses her so that during the day, she has to fly around as a swan, and only at night can she be herself. That’s how I feel now. Like there are these two sides of me—?the normal me, the before-Mom-died me, and then this sad little cursed thing. I wanted to be Odette more than anything, and I got my wish.”
Tears form in her eyes, and they roll down her face undeterred. I sort of love this about her, how she simply lets them happen, lets the sadness have her for a few minutes. I always fight it, always feel like I’m breaking apart when the first tears bloom in my eyes.
“Eva.”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“Okay. No, I’m not, but I want you to understand what’s been going on in my head about Maggie. She’s not fine either. We’re both cursed with this . . . this death hanging over everything we do. You know sometimes I go hours without thinking about it? About my mom? Hours. It doesn’t seem like that should be allowed. And then I remember and I feel so guilty. Because when I forgot, I felt happy.”
“Your mom would want you to be happy.”
“No, I know. I just . . . it happened so fast. I woke up one morning, thinking my mom would be in the hospital for a day or two and then things would go back to normal. By that night she was in the critical care unit, machines beeping and breathing for her. I’ll never forget how they sounded. How everything smelled. And then she was gone, and suddenly I was that sad little swan. The other me? Gone, too, just like that.” She snaps her fingers once. “And it’s like, around Maggie, I can be that sad little swan, and it feels . . . almost normal.”
I inhale deeply through my nose and keep hold of her hand. Her words make sense—?at least, a sort of sense, but they also scare me. Because the way my mother has handled her grief is anything but healthy. Part of me wonders if Mom’s problems go beyond grief, beyond too much vodka and skeezy men, like Emmy said to Luca earlier. Maybe it’s some chemical thing in her brain, maybe not. I don’t know.
“I get that,” I say. “But . . . can you see why it bothered me? Why Luca’s worried? Why I’m worried?”
She nods, squeezing my hand tighter. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”