?
“Maybe we’ll see you at Christmas,” her grandmother said.
“If not, we’ll talk on the phone,” her grandfather said.
They stood beside the car, shivering, while her father pulled their luggage from the back of the van.
“You take care of yourself,” her grandmother said. She gathered her in for a hug and held it until Meredith felt dizzy and gently twisted free.
“See you around like a doughnut,” her grandfather said. He gave her a one-armed hug. This was his specialty, the old one-armer—she and Evan had often laughed over this—as if every person he loved was a high school chum. “Tell your mom we said good-bye.”
“I will,” she said. She wondered why her mother wasn’t here. Sometimes she felt like her mother would be happier if there were no actual people in her life, but rather just a series of tasks to complete, a checklist of root canals. This thought didn’t even make her angry; it just made her feel heavy now, the weight of its sadness draped over her like one of the x-ray blankets. Alien Examination. Evan with his giant lamp. Her father wheeling down the corridor on his stool. Her mother . . . where?
She sat silently in the car with her father. They watched her grandparents negotiate the revolving doors with their rolling bags and then they were gone.
“Are we going for Christmas?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You wanna go?”
She imagined the drive, her safe place, her middle seat, her brother with his iPhone, the box of car stuff, the sound of her parents’ voices in the front seat. She imagined them in the van in the dark, the lights splashing on the windows. It made her feel hollow inside, the thought of all that time, all those miles, with her family.
“Not really,” she said.
“I guess we’ll see,” he said. “I guess we’ll see where everybody is. I guess we can decide at the last minute if we have to.”
Her phone buzzed in her purse. A text from Becca: r u coming? were here.
She looked at the text for a moment, then out the window. She watched a plane’s steep ascent, imagined the strangers inside, gazing down on their tiny van.
Can’t come, she replied. Family thing.
K. I’ll txt later
“What’s up?” her father said. “Big plans?”
“I guess I’m just going home,” she said.
“No shopping?”
“Nah. Something came up with them. I think I’m just going to crash.”
“You need anything?”
“Not for crashing, no.”
“Then home we go.”
He turned up the radio and she knew she was safe. She trusted his silence. Unlike with her mother, there was nothing lurking under her father’s silence. Sometimes Meredith wondered why they’d ever gotten married, and sometimes she wondered why they stayed married. It was two different questions, with two different answers. Or maybe two hundred different answers. How could you share your life with someone, forever, especially someone who was so different from you? If two became one, like the cheesy songs always said, what happened to what was left over?
?
“I’m cold,” Lisa said.
The skin around her eyes was pasty, and the space between her top lip and her nose was raw from the rough toilet paper. How many rolls of toilet paper remained? At some point they would surely run through it all, and then what? Meredith stood up.
“Wait,” Lisa said, but not very convincingly. Meredith’s knees cracked as she stretched and stepped out of the tub. She swung open the door of the cabinet below the sink. It was empty but for the crumpled corpse of a daddy longlegs. She closed the cabinet and opened the medicine chest. There were a few cellophaned Pepto-Bismol tablets and a flat tube of travel-sized toothpaste.
“I’m freezing,” Lisa said.
There was a single hand towel, dingy, stained, probably once yellow. Meredith pulled it off the towel rack and draped it over Lisa’s middle. Even Lisa smiled at this.
“Thanks,” she said. “Much better.”
“Take my sweater,” Meredith said.
“It’s okay.”
“No, really.” Meredith pulled her sweater over her head and laid it across Lisa, spreading the arms carefully over Lisa’s bare shoulders. Now she stood in her bra by the tub. She had nothing else to offer and Lisa’s teeth were chattering.
“This is dumb,” Meredith said. “I’m going to go get a blanket.”
“Where?”
“Out there. On the couch.”
Lisa shook her head. “No. There’s not one there. I’m pretty sure.”
Meredith couldn’t remember. She could hardly conjure the couch in her mind. She realized that she couldn’t recall the last time either she or Lisa had left the bathroom.
“It’s okay,” Lisa said. “Really. I’ll be all right.”
Meredith bent down and put her lips on Lisa’s forehead. This was what her mother had always done to test for fever when she was younger. Her mother claimed the hand was a poor indicator, that only the lips could tell for sure. She and Evan had spent much of their childhood illnesses swatting their mother away. “Get a thermometer,” they always said. “Please. A thermometer.” And eventually she had.
“You’re burning up,” she told Lisa, standing. “Seriously. I’m going to get a blanket.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. It’ll just take a sec. I’ll be right back.”
“Meredith?”
“What?”
“Be careful.”
“He’s not even out there,” Meredith said. “When’s the last time you heard him?”
Lisa shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Me neither,” Meredith said. Still, she turned the knob quietly and eased the door open.
“Meredith?”
She turned back, exasperated. “What?”
Lisa wiped the blood from under her nose. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Meredith said. “I’ll be right back. It’s gonna be okay.”
The apartment was dark and quiet. What time was it? She couldn’t see any light behind the living room curtains, so it must have been nighttime. She didn’t think he was home, but to be safe she felt quietly around the couch in the dark, not wanting to turn on any lights. She recalled the blanket that was piled on Lisa’s lap their first morning in the apartment. Where had that blanket gone? What had that blanket even looked like?
Well, it was obvious where she could find a blanket, even if it wasn’t that one. She went back to the little hall. The bedroom door was a few inches ajar, as usual. She crept to it and pushed it open slowly. She had never been in the bedroom before, never seen more than just a slice of it.