“When I was fourteen,” I tell my mother, “you told me that there is no such thing as unconditional love.”
My mother is in the kitchen, but she is not cooking. She is sitting at the table, her favorite crystal tumbler in front of her, and she has her rings lined up in front of her glass—the plain gold wedding band, the solitaire engagement ring, the eternity band, a thin sparkling circle of kissing diamonds.
She looks up. “What?”
“When I was fourteen,” I say again, “you told me that there is no such thing as unconditional love.”
She looks at me, tilts her head to the side and looks right at me, right into my eyes. She’s going to say something. I can feel it in my bones. She’s going to tell me that she was wrong, or that she is sorry. She’s going to apologize, and we will cry together, and I will forgive her. She’ll say she loves me forever and always, no matter what happens, no matter what I do.
She pushes back from the table, scooping up her tumbler as she stands. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “I would never say something like that.”
And then she leaves the room, her steps just barely off. She takes her drink, but she leaves her rings on the table.
???
Bekah’s apartment is on the edge of the arts district in Santa Ana. Maybe the arts district will grow and swallow her apartment complex into it, or maybe it will shrink and leave her place stranded. There’s no way to predict these things. My mother taught me that, about real estate—people make educated guesses about what will happen, which way the market will go, but really, ultimately, they are just guesses.
The doors to the apartments all face into a center courtyard. It’s Spanish-style architecture, and in the middle of the courtyard is a fountain. It’s dry, though; in the trough of the fountain are dregs of last week’s rain, some leaves, an empty soda cup.
No one is in the courtyard. I hear the sounds of television from inside one of the apartments, and some dishes clattering somewhere else.
Bekah’s apartment is upstairs. The door is dark green; the knob is brass colored but not made of real brass. In spots, the veneer has worn away, showing plain stainless silver underneath.
She answers the door almost as soon as I’ve knocked. “Nina,” she says. “Hey.” And then she opens the door wider to let me in.
Her apartment is just one room, a warm little nest. There’s a little kitchenette with a tiny two-burner stove, a half-sized refrigerator, and a table with two chairs in one corner, a low bed in the other, just a futon mattress on pallets but neatly made, a gray flannel blanket neatly spread across it, the ends tucked under. There’s a door in between the kitchen area and the sleeping area that must lead to the bathroom. On either side of the bed are low shelves made from cinderblocks and two-by-fours. Folded T-shirts and jeans, a few books, a closed laptop.
“I like your place.”
“Yeah, well, there’s not much to like.”
“That’s what I like about it.”
“Do you want something to drink?” Bekah opens her fridge. I’m surprised to see that it is actually pretty well stocked—lots of produce, a glass jar of soup that looks homemade, a pitcher that she pulls out from the bottom shelf.
“Sure.”
She’s already pouring two glasses of iced tea.
We sit in the two chairs with our two glasses of tea, and the room is just the right size.
“So how are you feeling?”
The tea isn’t sweet, but it isn’t bitter, either.
“Fine,” I say. “I mean, I stopped bleeding. And look at this.” I shrug out of my jacket and push up my sleeve to show Bekah the thin raised thread under the skin of my inner arm.
“What’s that?”
“It’s an implant. For birth control. I can’t get pregnant again until I’m twenty-two.”
Bekah reaches over and runs her finger down the lump. “Huh,” she says.
“Not that it matters,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like I’m having sex or anything.”
“Maybe I should get one of those.”
In a flash, I picture the pierced flesh I’d spied on Bekah’s phone and imagine how that would feel, to have sex like that. I want to ask her what that feels like, but that’s not something you ask someone, so instead I ask, “How’s Jayson?”
“Oh, you know,” she says, sipping her tea, “gone.”
“Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”
She shrugs. We drink tea. Her window is open, her one window, even though it’s cold outside. The sky is gray and heavy with rain. I hear a bird, but I can’t see it. At last I say, “You know, I did something really terrible once.”
“What did you do?
“It was stupid, but it was really mean. There was this girl. She was new last year. Her name’s Apollonia. And I hated her. Like, really, really hated her. I don’t know why.”
“Is she pretty?”
“Beautiful,” I say.
“Sometimes that’s reason enough.”
I nod. “But I hate that, you know? I hate that about myself.”
“So what did you do?”
I hesitate. But the things I do and the things I have done are parts of me—the things I’m ashamed of just as much as the things I’m proud of, the stories I’ve written, my time at the shelter, and the way I helped the broken dog to die. “She was new to school, and she was in the bathroom and I was, too. She was in a stall, and when she came out, she didn’t flush. I don’t know, probably her old school had automatic flushers or something, but whatever, she didn’t flush. And then she washed her hands and she smiled at me and she left, and then when she was gone I went into the stall where she was.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. And there in the toilet was like this log of shit, and the water was kind of bloody, too, like she was having her period, and there was toilet paper wadded up in there, too. And I took a picture. And then I sent it to my friend Louise, with you know a text that said, ‘Apollonia doesn’t know how to flush,’ and I guess she showed someone and that someone showed someone else, and by the end of the day Apollonia had ditched last period because she was so embarrassed, and I ended up having to do community service.”
“That’s how you ended up working at the shelter.”
“Yeah. I mean, that’s how I got started. I keep going now, even though I don’t have to anymore.”
We’re quiet for a while. At last Bekah says, “That’s pretty fucked up.”
I don’t answer. She’s right. It is fucked up. I say, “After a few days her boyfriend broke up with her, which honestly is what I wanted to happen all along.”
“Is he the guy?” she asks, and she doesn’t have to say, the guy who got you pregnant.
“Yeah,” I say. “But now they’re back together. I mean, they’re a couple again.”
“That’s a crazy story,” Bekah says. She rattles the ice cubes in her glass, tips one into her mouth, bites down on it. I can hear it crunch between her teeth.
Ice is magic if you don’t know what it is.
“Bekah?” I ask. “Do you believe in unconditional love?”