“Common sense!” Meredith said, slamming her fork to the table. “Like the common sense you used on Halloween when you drove drunk to pick me up?”
Claire could tell she’d been saving this up, this hoarded trump card, now so triumphantly revealed for all to see.
Meredith turned to Mark. “Did you know that, Dad? Did you know she drove drunk?”
“Your mother was not drunk,” Mark said, shaking his head. “I saw her before she left. She was absolutely not drunk.”
“Really? Then why was she hitting on a high school guy at the party?”
Evan laughed a bark of a laugh, so absurd was the accusation.
“For god’s sake, Meredith,” Claire said. “I dropped my phone. He found my battery in the dark yard.”
“Well, I’ve never heard it called that before,” Evan said.
Meredith turned to Evan. “It’s true,” she said bitterly. “It was that Logan guy. From your class. He said he knew you.”
“Logan Boone?” Evan asked. “Ha! Mom, remember that guy? He was such a dick in grade school. Then finally somebody knocked some sense into him.”
“I knocked some sense into him,” Claire said. “I knocked some sense into him.” She laughed out loud in her dining room. God, she hated the dining room. Once they had laid wooden train track across this table, and then they had sorted baseball cards, and then later it had been a bead-making factory, but after that . . . what? What was there to spread out, after the days of train tracks and baseball cards and plastic beads? Tax forms. Suspect books. Living wills.
“You want to go shopping?” she said to Meredith. “Go shopping. I wasn’t even going to say no. That’s what’s so funny. Everyone always thinks I’m going to say no. Sometimes I just want to ask questions before I say yes. That’s all.”
“But then all the answers to your questions are no,” Evan said. “So it’s kind of hard to tell what you’re after.”
“What I’m after?” This was infuriating, coming from Evan of all people. “I’m not after anything. I have no agenda. I have no plan.” She turned to Mark. “I have no goal of the day.”
Which was absolutely true, and now the full weight of it struck her. Was there something horribly wrong with her? Was it possible that, as it seemed in this moment, she had never actually made a decision to do anything in her life? Here, in the dining room, her daughter with the accusatory fork, her son and husband witnesses for the prosecution. The charge, simply this: she had always always always let everything be decided for her. Her only decisions, her only moments of taking charge, were spontaneous and terrible. Starting up with that man when her mother was sick. Hurting a young boy, a future finder of phones. Driving to pick up Meredith at the party when she was still drunk.
“What do you want from me?” she asked Evan. “What do you expect me to—”
“I think you’re doing fine,” Mark said, touching her elbow.
“Shut up,” she said, yanking her arm away. “This isn’t about you.”
“Don’t talk to him that way,” Meredith said. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“What have I done wrong?” she asked her daughter. “You tell me. You tell me what I’ve done wrong. You tell me what I’m supposed to do. You tell me how I’m supposed to make this better. Any of this. You tell me and I’ll do it.”
Meredith stared at her from across the table. Determination. Detachment. Silence. Claire stared back. Their game faces were set. Maybe, Claire thought, they were set for good.
?
“I’m sorry,” Mark said to her later, in bed. “I know you’re getting the brunt of this. I know she’s taking it out on you.”
“I can’t stand to get up tomorrow and drive my father to the airport,” she said. “That’ll be the last straw. I just can’t stand it. I’m going to tell them I’m sick and they have to take a cab.”
“That’s pretty harsh,” he said. “They’re only here for thirty-six hours.”
“That’s their doing,” she said. “Not mine.”
“I think they wanted to see Mer in the morning. You know. Breakfast or something before the plane.”
“I can’t stand it,” she said. “I can’t stand to look at their—”
“I’d do it,” he said. “I’d take them. But I have Hillsboro tomorrow.”
Hillsboro. Their geriatric dentistry. Last Friday of the month. It was his turn.
“I’ll trade you,” she said impulsively.
“That bad, huh?”
“Honestly, I swear to god, I just can’t sit through that drive with the three of them. I can’t do it. I’ll go to Hillsboro. I don’t mind. It’s fine.”
“Okay,” he said. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “Tell them we got our signals crossed. Make it sound like you—”
“Give me a break, kid,” he said, turning off the light. “I know how to lie to your father.”
17
Meredith awoke to her father gently poking her shoulder.
“Come to the airport with me?” he said. “I have to take your grandparents.”
“Can I sleep? I never get to sleep in on Fridays.”
“There’s breakfast in it for you,” he said. “Pancakes. Keep me company?”
It was not company he wanted, she knew. Her mother was already at work and Evan was probably already somewhere not catching baseballs, maybe dropped from a cliff or a helicopter or something. Her father did not want to leave her alone.
“I’ll be fine here,” she said. “Please.”
“It would mean a lot to them,” he said. “I know they’d like to spend a little more time with you.”
“Then why aren’t they staying for longer?”
He sat down on the edge of her bed. “They don’t want to intrude,” he said, drawing out the ooooo to absurd lengths.
Well, that she could appreciate. All hail to Grandma and Grandpa, who seemed to understand that all they had to do to outstay their welcome was to arrive.
Ashamed by the thought, she rolled over so she was facing away from her father. What was wrong with her? She imagined Lisa slashing another green BITCH tally up on the shower wall. But the fact was that she didn’t particularly want her grandparents around. It was nothing personal. What did she want? To be left alone. To be left in her bed. To be left in her head. She might have stayed there all weekend except that, if she tried, surely everyone would decide there was really something wrong with her. So she would get up. She would eat pancakes with her grandparents and drop them off at the airport and then drive home with her father. At least there was this: after the scene last night, at least she wouldn’t have to drive with her mother. She probably wouldn’t even have to see her, at least until the evening. That was one thing to be thankful for on the day after Thanksgiving.
“And another,” Lisa said, marking the wall. Blood had been trickling from her nose for hours, days . . . or could it even be weeks now? The rim of the bathtub was lined with wads of soggy, pink toilet paper, the small bathroom wastebasket long overflowed, its contents spilled onto the floor. Why wasn’t anyone emptying the trash? Where was the man? How long had it been since they’d seen him? How long since Lisa had eaten? Or peed? Or slept?
“Can you be ready in ten minutes?” her father asked.
“Sure,” she said.