While I'm Falling Part 18

She moved her hand across her face. It came back wet. She was crying. She hadn't even known.

He shook his head, resolute. "I don't want to get a divorce."

"Why not?"

He laughed-just briefly-a short, hard exhale through a smile of disbelief. It was as if she had asked the stupidest question in the world. When her face didn't move, when she didn't even blink, he realized he had to say something. And that's when she understood. Because he hesitated, and because he seemed so certain, and because she understood him well, she knew, she knew, knew, that he was thinking about money. that he was thinking about money.

"What about the girls?" He tried to take her hand again. "You want to do that to them?"

She jerked her hand away. He'd gone right for her weakness. Of course he had. He knew what he was doing. But after Veronica left for school, it would be just the two of them in the house. And what did it matter to him if they were more or less roommates? He had his work. He'd always had his work. She'd had the girls. Next year, he would still have his work, and she would have nothing.

"They'll come home for holidays," he said. "What? You want them to have to go to different houses? Thanksgiving with me? Christmas with you? You want that for them?"

She shook her head, looking away. She knew she was crying now.

"I am dedicated to the marriage," he said, and the way he said it surprised her so much that she turned back to look at him. He was sitting up straight, his face solemn. "I have never been unfaithful. I will never be unfaithful." He sounded very tired, as if recalling years of great sacrifice. "And I love our family. I love the girls. We have a comfortable home. If we just stay steady now," he made his hands into blades and pointed them down the length of the table, "we can get through this bad time and still have a decent retirement."

It took her a moment to understand that when he said "this bad time," he meant the way they were stretched financially from Elise's wedding and tuitions and the nursing homes and the falling stocks, and not "this bad time" in their marriage, which apparently, for him, didn't seem all that bad.

And then, a moment later, she did a curious thing-she pretended, even to herself, that she had not understood this at all. She pretended that she had heard a promise of improvement, of a future full of conversations in which he actually looked at her when she was talking and seemed interested in what she had to say. She pretended all of this because then it did not seem so strange for them both to get up and put the rest of the groceries away, and for him to go to work on his laptop, and for her to take Bowzer for a walk. Because really, what else was she going to do?

She had to be pragmatic.

The next time she went to the grocery store, she found herself gazing at the tabloids in the checkout line; she felt superior only for a moment. Celebrities got divorced and remarried all the time, she realized, not necessarily because they were shallow, or fickle, or quick to throw in the towel.

They got divorced because they could afford it.

Who knows how long she might have gone on like that if it hadn't been for Greg Liddiard? An entire year pa.s.sed between the morning of that grim conversation with Dan and the day work commenced on the roof. And for a week after that, Greg Liddiard and another man had sawed and hammered and thrown down shingles without much attention from her. It was summer, so she wasn't subbing, and she hadn't gotten many hours at DeBeck's. So she was mostly at the house, paying bills, working in the garden. She went through the girls' old clothes to see what she could donate. She played a Neil Young CD one afternoon, and later, when she was going out to check the mail, the older, shorter of the two roofers, the one who would turn out to be Greg Liddiard, called down to thank her for the music, saying he could hear it up on the roof and that he liked her taste; but she'd only nodded and smiled. She wasn't looking for trouble.

The next day, both men said they needed to come in to check the b.u.t.tresses in the attic, and to get there, they'd had to walk by the bookcase at the end of the hall. The other man walked right past it to the narrow stairs Natalie had just pulled down, but Greg Liddiard stopped to ask her about the books. He'd been a lit major in college, he said. He had a master's even. He'd done a thesis on Nabokov. Did she like Nabokov? She was wearing one of her tank tops from Strength Camp, and as she looked at him while he was looking at her, she was suddenly aware of her bare arms. He had a friendly face. And he listened when she talked.

Really, this was all it took. Greg Liddiard could have said anything about poetry. He could have been an idiot, though he was not. She was that starved for interaction, for real eye contact, even. She was standing by the window at the end of the hall, the afternoon sun shining so hard that her skin felt hot and she had to move away from it. Later, after he moved past her, when she turned and looked up at the sky, she saw that it was a cloudy day.

It was just one indiscretion, and never even fully realized. But as Dan liked to say, she had made her bed, and she could lie in it. Or sit in a booth at a diner, with all her worldly possessions packed in her minivan.

She supposed she should regret that first moment in the hallway with Greg, that first time she let herself look back at him, right into his pale, attentive eyes. But really, even now, she didn't. He was in Alaska now, married, a new father, and not the great love of her life. But if he hadn't come along, she might have still been living with Dan, going to sleep with her eyes and ears covered so she wouldn't hear the television after he finally came to bed. It was a more comfortable life than the one she had now, but she wouldn't pretend it was preferable.

This is what she would tell her daughters, both of them, if they would let her. But Elise got angry when she talked about Greg. Veronica clapped her hands over her ears. She understood-they thought she meant to talk about s.e.x; and yes, of course, that was private, and nothing they wanted to a.s.sociate with their mother. But so much that was private could be helpful, instructional, and what she wished she could tell them was that what happened with Greg had little to do with s.e.x and more to do with bravery. Even before she met him, she had grown tired of living cautiously. She wished she could tell them that as scared as she was now, she didn't regret what she'd done. Pa.s.sion wasn't always rewarded. And yet that wasn't the point.

Of course, neither of her daughters-the lawyer or the future doctor-was asking for any advice or wisdom from her at the moment. Just the night before, when she had come to Veronica's door, when she'd had to tell her daughter she had nowhere else to go, Veronica had looked at her with a mix of sympathy and horror, and it had made Natalie want to run back out into the night, into the cold, to the van. She wanted her daughter to feel sorry for Marley; that was fine. She didn't want her to feel sorry for her. She wanted to be someone her children could admire.

She thought she still could be. She felt sure of it for a while that morning, after she helped Veronica, after they'd gotten Jimmy out of the van; and she wanted to hang onto that idea that she could give each of her daughters something now, even after she had failed, even while she was falling. She did have something to give them. Because she knew she could get back up.

It was almost midnight when she closed the newspaper and stood to put on her coat. She'd only circled two ads, but she'd read the rest of the paper, cover to cover, except for Sports. She took just the Cla.s.sified section and left the waitress five dollars. On her way out, the waitress waved and thanked her. Natalie, lifting her head, thanked her back.

14.

I KNEW, EVEN AS KNEW, EVEN AS I I TOOK TOOK the test, that I was failing it. the test, that I was failing it. List below the hydroxybutanol structures that have R configurations. List below the hydroxybutanol structures that have R configurations. I'm not sure why I made myself stay the entire hour and a half. I'm not sure why I made myself stay the entire hour and a half. What spinning pattern in the H-nmr spectrum would you expect for H atoms colored green in the structures below? What spinning pattern in the H-nmr spectrum would you expect for H atoms colored green in the structures below? I probably could have walked out in the first fifteen minutes and gotten the same grade. I probably could have walked out in the first fifteen minutes and gotten the same grade.

But I worked as well as I could through each question, calm and unhurried. Deep down, I had already accepted what was true. Two out of three wouldn't make it to medical school, and I would be one of the two. But for that last hour and a half, I did my best, right up until the TA cleared her throat. Apparently, even though I wanted things to change, I still needed to be pushed from the ledge. I wasn't ready to jump.

But the results would be the same. I put on my coat, handed in the test, and walked out into the cold morning. The sky was a bright, cloudless blue and the bells of the campanile were chiming. Across the street, two men on ladders used ropes to lift a giant Christmas wreath over the front doors of Strong Hall. The men did not speak to each other, but their movements seemed coordinated; the wreath slowly rose, perfectly centered. I found a bench and sat down to watch. I could do things like this now. It was over. There was nothing to cram for, no deadline looming over me. I didn't have anywhere I needed to be.

And so the ache in my chest returned. During the exam, and only during the exam, I had been free of the heavy sadness that I'd gone to bed with the night before. Now, again, I had nothing to distract me. The bench was concrete, and the longer I sat there, the colder I felt. But I didn't get up. The wreath turned blurry in my eyes, and I pulled my hat down low on my head.

"So how'd it go?"

I looked up. Tim stood in front of me, no coat, just the same sweater he'd been wearing the night before, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. I started to smile, but the expression on his face stopped me. His dark hair was combed, his chin cleanly shaved, but I could tell, just looking at his eyes, that he hadn't slept.

"I was at the library." He nodded behind him. "I saw you over here. I just thought I'd come over and see how it went. The test, I mean."

I shook my head. I hated that I was the reason he looked so tired and sad. If I reached out, or even tried to go near him, he would stop me-I could tell. But he kept looking at me, waiting. He really did want to know about the test.

"I failed it," I said.

He shook his head. "I'm sure it wasn't as-"

"No. I did. I really did. But I'm fine with it. I don't care." I looked at the sidewalk by his feet and focused on not crying. If I did, he would feel sorry for me, and that wasn't right. I tried to pretend I was yawning.

He shifted his weight and crossed his arms. He gestured for me to scoot over. He sat on the bench, as far away from me as possible, and started rooting around in his book bag. He took out a calculator, another calculator, a book t.i.tled Thermofluid Systems, Thermofluid Systems, a can of c.o.ke, the Sports section from some newspaper, and an orange. "I thought I might have some Kleenex," he said. "I had that cold a couple of weeks ago." a can of c.o.ke, the Sports section from some newspaper, and an orange. "I thought I might have some Kleenex," he said. "I had that cold a couple of weeks ago."

I smiled, wiping my cheeks with the back of my mitten. "Thanks for checking," I said. I looked away from him, out across the street. The wreath was up above the doors now. The workmen stood below, looking up, one of them pointing at the red bow.

"If you didn't want to move in with me, you could have said so." Tim looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "If that really was the problem."

I nodded, still looking at the wreath. This time last year, my parents were married. I was getting ready to go home for Winter Break. The Roofer was maybe already on the scene, but I didn't know it yet. On Christmas Day, my family opened presents in the morning, and we ate turkey at the dining room table, and then we walked to Mr. Wansing's for the neighborhood pie party, just like we did every year. When we were little, it was the Wansings, the husband and the wife. Mrs. Wansing died when I was in third grade, but I have a clear memory of her carefully getting down on her knees to look me in the eye and ask, very seriously, if I wanted pumpkin or pecan. After she died, my mother hadn't thought that Mr. Wansing would keep inviting everyone over. He did, though. He bought pies at the store, and they weren't as good as the ones that she had baked, but everything else was the same. He set out polished silverware and whipped toppings the exact way that she had done. He also put a framed picture of her on the big table where all the pies were, so it seemed like she was gazing out over them, smiling at their familiar guests.

And just last year, we had all gone: my mother and my father, Elise and Charlie, and me. I hadn't thought much about it. I hadn't known it would be the last year, how much everything was about to change.

Tim rested his elbows on his knees. Even with his knees bent, his long legs stuck out far from the bench. A man walked by, and he pulled them in. "I was just asking," he said. "I wanted to help you. You hate your job, right? I was trying to help."

"I know," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "Okay. That's not completely true. I wanted you to move in. For me."

"But you wanted to help me, too. I know you did."

He gave me a long, appraising look. His gaze moved from one of my eyes to the other, and his mouth did something close to a smile. "I forget you're younger." He looked unhappy again. "It makes a difference, I guess."

I nodded. Despite popular belief, it wasn't always so great to be both young and in love. And yet, even at that moment, I had to sit on my hands to keep them from going to him. It felt like a physical pull.

We sat on the bench for a while, not speaking. Someone walked up and gave each of us a flyer for a garage sale.

He rubbed his eyes and looked up at me. "So what do you want, Veronica? You want to date around? You want to see other guys and then get back together? I'm not going to do that. I can tell you that right now."

"No. That's not what I want."

"Then what? Do you know?" He pointed at himself. "Because I do." The tops of his ears were pink, maybe from the cold, maybe not. He squinted up at the sky. "Eventually...I want what my parents have. That's not a terrible thing. They're pretty happy. Okay? I know you're cynical right now. But sometimes it all works out. You would know that if you'd ever met them."

This was probably true. Two stories about Tim's parents stood out in my mind. The first was that before Tim's eldest brother was born, his mother had been in a car accident that burned her left arm and some of her neck so badly that she was in the hospital for months, and Tim's father had stayed with her every moment that he could, reading to her or just sitting there with her so she would know she wasn't alone. The second story was that just last year, the two of them had been asked to leave a movie theater because they were laughing too much at a movie that wasn't supposed to be funny.

"I wish I'd met them," I said, only because it was true. He turned and looked at me, mad.

"Why?" he asked. "What's the point? Just curiosity?"

I shook my head, as if that were a reasonable answer. He waited.

"I want..." I rubbed my eyes, trying to think. "I want to be with you, but..." But what? I didn't have the word for it. It was the feeling of being in the semi, all those exits rolling by. "It would be so easy to move in with you. It's what I want. But it might not be good for me." Even as I said this, I heard how cold the words sounded, and I hoped he would hear in my voice that I didn't mean them coldly at all. "I meant everything I said last night. It was just a dumb thing I did. I still want to be with you." I reached across the bench and tugged on the sleeve of his sweater. I let my hand rest there on his sleeve, and he didn't pull away for a while.

But eventually, he did. He was quiet as he packed his things back into his bag. When he finally started to speak, I thought I was going to get an answer one way or the other. But he only looked up at the blue sky and said that the weather was supposed to turn again and that it might snow. I closed my eyes.

"Look," he said, standing up. "I don't know what I think. I need some time."

I opened my eyes, surprised. He must have seen it, because he shook his head. "I don't know," he said firmly. "I don't know what I'm going to do yet."

I nodded somberly. I understood what he meant. But I was still hopeful. Really, the fact that he was just thinking it over was as good an a.s.surance as any. When did anyone ever really know what they were going to do? People who had been married for decades broke promises to themselves and to each other, good intentions or not. That was the way it was with love. You had to have a contingency plan, or be ready to come up with one quickly. No matter what he decided this week, he could, at any time in the future, change his mind.

When I got back to the dorm, I opened the door to my room to find my mother sitting next to Bowzer on the floor, or rather, on newspapers spread flat all over my floor, with a large bucket of sand in front of her. A dark-haired girl in a pink hoodie sat on her right. Gretchen sat on my mother's left. Three other girls who looked vaguely familiar completed the circle around the bucket. Everyone was taking turns scooping out handfuls of sand and dropping them into small paper bags.

Bowzer noticed me first. He wiggled the stump of his tail and struggled to his feet. A little pee dribbled out of him, forming a puddle on the linoleum.

My mother looked up. "Oh, hey, honey. How was the test?" She followed my eyes to Bowzer. "Whoops," she said, standing up. "I'll get that. It's just a little. I've got wipes in my purse."

"Hey, Veronica." Gretchen waved. She looked comfortable, relaxed, as if she had been sitting there for a while. She had also taken the chemistry test that morning. We had caught the same bus and walked into the exam room together. But, of course, she had finished early. "I just came down here to get you for lunch," she said, shaking out a new paper bag. "And I walked in on this good time."

I looked down at Bowzer. I looked back at my mother. She'd already dabbed up the pee with one wipe and was now using another to go over the floor.

"Oh," she said. "Don't worry about it." She tossed both wipes into the garbage and used another to go over her hands. "I explained the situation. They all like dogs. It's fine."

Everyone looked up, nodding in agreement. I took a step back, and tried to think where I should put my bag. I'd never had so many people in my room.

"We're making luminarias," my mother said. She air-dried her hands above her head. "For Christmas. Or I call them luminarias. What did you call them again, Inez?"

"Farolitos." The dark-haired girl looked up and smiled. "They'll look really good if it snows." She shrugged. "They'll look good anyway."

Inez. Unless there were two girls named Inez on my floor, she was Inez from Albuquerque, the first person from Albuquerque my mother had ever met. She wore silver hoop earrings, large enough for the bottoms to graze her shoulders, and her hair was shiny black and very straight.

"It's just candles, bags, and sand." My mother nodded at Inez, smiled, and then looked back at me. "You missed the run to Hobby Lobby." She lowered herself to the floor again. "Have a seat, honey. You should make a couple. You just put enough sand in the bag to weight it down, then nestle a candle in. It's relaxing." She looked up again. "How was the test?"

I shook my head. My gaze moved over the pile of votive candlles in the corner.

"Where are you going to put them?" I asked. My voice, in itself, was a wet blanket. And what was I worried about? Really, we already had a dog in the room. Why not a dog and a fire?

"Outside," Inez said.

"Where outside?"

"Right outside. In front of the dorm. It'll look pretty, for once."

I caught Gretchen's eye. She looked back at me, frowning. She stopped filling her bag with sand. "s.h.i.t," she said. "You're right."

My mother picked up another handful of sand. "Right about what?"

"I don't know if they'll let us do it," I said. "Not on the property. Candles are pretty much banned."

"It's not a fire hazard," Inez said. She gave me a hard look, her chin jutting up. "That's stupid. Everyone does this back home."

I didn't know what to say. I didn't pretend to know anything about luminarias, and I'd never even been to Albuquerque. I only knew the dorm's fire code was strict. "We can try to put them outside," I said. "We could see if anyone says anything."

"Forget it." Inez leaned back on her hands and looked at a spot of newspaper on the floor. "I hate it here. It's stupid to even try." She looked up and out the window. Her brown eyes glistened, but her face was perfectly composed. "I can't wait for break. The second I finish my last final, I'm gone. I'm in my car. I'm going home."

I looked at the floor, and then back at her face. Here was someone who hated the dorm as much as I did, or more than I did. And this someone was younger than I was, and, in so many ways, farther away from home. I'd thought I had it so hard, being a little older than everyone else.

"Let's just keep making them," my mother said. Her own hands never stopped moving. "I don't know what else we can do with all this sand." She reached for another paper bag. "We'll figure out what to do with them later."

I had heard this line from her many times. Over the years, on cold afternoons and in Girl Scout meetings, whoever was under my mother's care had been encouraged to make more cookies than anyone could eat, more ornaments than anyone could hang, and more candle holders than anyone could possibly want. And if our creations burned, broke, or just looked stupid-no big deal. It was all about the making for my mother. She was never that concerned with the end result.

But Inez was listless as she dropped handfuls of sand into a bag, and the look on her face made it clear that she was only continuing to be polite to my mother. We worked without speaking. I could hear the sound of sand falling, the paper bags crinkling. Gretchen shifted and sighed.

My mother nudged me. "Do you have any holiday music?"

I looked up from my paper bag. "Do I have any holiday music?"

She nodded.

I shook my head. She seemed surprised, but no I didn't have any holiday music. I was a junior in college. I lived, essentially, in a high-ceilinged box. But she seemed disappointed, as if, after all these years, I had finally admitted that despite all her years of careful teaching, I didn't write thank-you notes, or wash my hands after using the bathroom. My mother had a lot of holiday music. Her favorites were Handel's Messiah Messiah and an alb.u.m that ended with Judy Garland's sad voice singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I'd heard all that and more played over and over every December of my childhood. Her music was maybe packed in a cardboard box now, probably out in the van. and an alb.u.m that ended with Judy Garland's sad voice singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I'd heard all that and more played over and over every December of my childhood. Her music was maybe packed in a cardboard box now, probably out in the van.

A girl across the room raised a sandy hand. "I have Jingle Cats."

We all looked at her. She was pretty, with long, curly red hair. She smiled, revealing braces.