Dishes overflowed from the sink. The cupboards were mostly empty, but on a higher shelf I found a plastic bowl. I used it to catch a dribble of water, lapping it up before filling it again. With every sip, the previous day elbowed its way further into my thoughts. Marlena said I’d been drooling. Was she kidding? And what was that last bit, fluttering in the periphery of my memory like a butterfly? Had we kissed? I had to get out of there.
Grit sandpapered the linoleum, sticking to my bare feet. Where were my shoes? My shirt, my backpack? I tested the back door. It opened easily; when it did, I realized I’d half expected it to be bolted shut. Eyeing the distance between my house and hers, the packed trail in the snow that led to the stand of garbage cans our two houses shared, I decided to go for it. I glanced backward. Marlena’s dad, who must have heard me, stood in the entryway to his little room off the kitchen, staring at me without interest, his face psychotically alert.
I shot out the door, not caring that it slammed and almost certainly woke up Sal and therefore Marlena, bare feet kicking up a spray of snow, the skin on my arms, my chest, my belly, my toes so cold it burned, like I’d frozen my body into losing its mind.
I had put together by then that Marlena’s dad cooked meth, and that he did it in the railcar behind our houses, the same way that, though I could never remember her directly telling me, I knew Haesung’s dad worked in a hospital. Like everything to do with our parents, their occupations were gross and boring, and if the meth frightened me, I remember that less than I remember thinking it was lame. Still, when I saw Marlena’s dad that morning, I was reminded that he had probably done things I could not imagine.
I opened my front door, grateful that it was unlocked, my bare feet a howling red from running through the dirty snow. I went straight into the shower and stood under the running water, turning the tap until it was so hot it hurt. I didn’t leave the bathroom until Mom banged on the door, yelling at me that we had to go.
*
I crammed myself into the passenger seat of Mom’s car, a bucket full of sponges and blue cleaning spray and hairballs of steel wool at my feet. The pain in my head was both distant and increasing, as if my skull was stuffed too full of cotton, expanding.
So this was a hangover.
“The day I skipped out on Public Speaking, I did not see myself speeding toward forty without a bachelor’s degree,” said Mom. “Or cleaning houses for money, for that matter.”
“Or living in Silver Lake,” I said.
She turned on the radio. Who knew kisses were so wet? Maybe that was just Marlena. I couldn’t think about it.
“I like Silver Lake,” Mom said.
We drove along Lake Michigan, heading toward Coral Springs, a tinier, richer iteration of Kewaunee. We turned off the highway into an enclave of four-story houses that stared from the base of long driveways. The Top 40 song blaring from the car radio wrinkled, some trash Marlena would never tolerate. Baby, I’m—on my—owwwn. Mom had lasted seven months in college. I’d heard the story a million times. In high school she’d been at the top of her class, a squinty girl whose high grades and glasses must have hidden her prettiness. First-chair viola in the Michigan Youth Orchestra. She started at Michigan State as an English major. She had wanted to be a teacher. But she got itchy. After so long in school, the thought of four more years made her, as she put it, want to peel off her skin. I’d done the math—she must have been just a couple months pregnant with Jimmy when she quit. Shortly after we got settled in Silver Lake, Mom had enrolled part time at NCC, the local community college, taking on two core classes. Would she major in nursing, or would it be general studies, a nice, broad foundation for a master’s, she’d ask us over dinner. “I’m really smart, you guys,” she’d say. “I have options.” I couldn’t understand the point of all her planning. What was it all for? What did she want? She was Mom; how could she be anything else?
Though she’d stopped talking, Mom had a strained, searching look. She liked to talk about the past, especially after a glass or two of wine. Listener—child—optional. At that age, I assessed and dismissed her at every turn. It must have been awful to be around me. Later, I’d find myself returning to Silver Lake the way, when I was there, I’d returned over and over again to our old house in Pontiac, and wonder if a difficulty letting go of the past can run in families, like a problematic thyroid.
“We’re looking for 2044,” she said, leaning over the steering wheel. The pores by her nose were very big. We inched past 2038, its roof crusted with snow, one giant window suspended above the grand double doors like a snoozing eye. The radio static climaxed, then smoothed itself out. All of the houses were locked and abandoned. Like most of Michigan in the winter, the neighborhood had the atmosphere of a shipwreck—structures half sunk in snow, abandoned in the name of survival.
Impossibly, 2044, a castle, slate blue with windows everywhere, was the biggest house we’d seen so far. The driveway was so snowy the car hummed with effort as we pulled up to the garage. Mom jumped from the car with put-on energy, and slipped the key out of a pot of ivy hanging near the door. Counting the garage, the house was really two buildings—the main one and a smaller one behind it, closer to the lake, that was almost identical. The littlest was twice the size of our modular, and had a second level.
“Do we have to clean that one, too?” I asked, pointing. When I lifted my arm, my head swam, pulse trapped dizzily inside. My heartbeat had never felt so delicate before, so imprecise.
“If that’s the guest house, then yes we do,” Mom said.
We lugged the cleaning supplies inside, which was harder than it should have been because my leg twanged with every step and I had to make a special effort to hide my flinches from Mom, who would want to know what happened, and who was so good at extracting the truth that there was no doubt I’d spill the whole thing and never be let out of the house again. The front door opened into a spacious room, its entire far wall a sheet of glass that overlooked the lake. Nothing looked dirty, though the air had a shut-up smell, as if a flower somewhere inside had wilted, died in its own dirty water.
“Holy cow,” Mom said. She was Cinderella, standing on the marble floor, her blond hair tied up wispily in a bandanna, black workout leggings, a dust rag in her hand. The house was three stories tall with an atrium in the middle, like the one at the Chicago hotel I’d stayed at during a choir competition my freshman year. From any floor, you could stand on a sort of balcony and look down to the living area below. We wandered through, taking stock. “This is the big time, huh?”
“How much are you getting paid for this, again?”