While I'm Falling Part 21

"I don't want him to be in pain." Her eyes were still focused on Bowzer. "The vet said he'd be open the day after Christmas. I'll take him in then."

"I'll go with you," I said. "If you want me to. When you take him in, I mean." I waved my hand. "Whenever."

She drove me back to my father's before it got dark. She was a little distracted, steering the van slowly through the ice-speckled streets. She asked me if I'd gotten my grades yet. No, I said. She asked when I would be taking the MCAT.

"Never," I said.

She thought I was joking at first. When she realized that I wasn't, and that I really had failed organic chemistry, and that I had decided to change my major to English lit, she was quiet. She kept her gaze on the road. Her lips were rolled into her mouth, invisible. We merged onto the interstate, snow falling from the roof and rolling down the windshield as we picked up speed.

"You don't have anything to say?"

She almost laughed, though she looked unhappy. "I don't want to say the wrong thing." She glanced at me. "Have you thought about nursing? Pamela-Haylie's mom-you know, she's going back to get a degree in nursing. She doesn't have to take the MCAT. And she'll make good money. She said there are lots of jobs."

"I don't want to do medicine," I said. "I don't love it. I want to do something I love."

She looked both sad and faintly amused. She looked like she wanted to say something. We turned a sharp corner, and she held out one arm across my shoulders, as if preparing to stop me from flying forward, though I was wearing my seat belt, and we weren't about to crash.

"Sorry," she said, both hands back on the wheel. "Oh honey, you're certain about this?"

I nodded, though I wasn't certain of anything. I wanted her to rea.s.sure me, to tell me that I was doing the right thing, and that all that mattered was that I would be happy. But she didn't say any of these things. She looked down at the control panel. The check engine light had come on.

"What does that mean?"

She sighed, turning a corner. "Guess I'll find out when I take it in." After that, she was quiet again.

She pulled carefully into my father's driveway. If she wondered if he was home, she didn't ask. She told me she would pick me up at half past ten the next morning. Elise's flight got in at eleven. She knew an Indian place that stayed open on Christmas Eve. She would take us both out to lunch.

"I don't like Indian food," I said. A lie. I didn't want her to spend the money taking us out to a restaurant. She might have felt like she had to. "Why don't I make something?" I asked. "Lasagna? I'll borrow Dad's car and go to the store tonight." I said this as if it were a given that he would let me borrow his car. "I'll make something good. We can just eat it at your place, like a picnic."

She shook her head. "Other places are open," she said. "We don't have to have Indian."

I feigned hurt. "Are you saying I'm a bad cook? Are you saying you don't think I can do it?"

A car pulled into the adjacent driveway, a man and a woman in a sleek little car. They rolled into their garage without looking at us. The garage door closed, swallowing them whole.

My mother gave me a look. "Veronica. This is not about your lasagna. Let's just say that Elise and I are in very different places right now." She frowned. "Surely you understand."

I shook my head. It was the "right now" that confused me. Elise and my mother had never really been in the same place, even when they lived in the same house.

My mother sighed. "Your sister doesn't need to see the apartment. I'm not going to live there long." She smiled and unlocked the van's doors. "We'll have fun tomorrow. We'll go out."

Before she picked me up in the morning, she cleaned the van. She didn't just get all the boxes and blankets and small appliances out of the back. She took it to a car wash and dropped in quarters to use a vacuum. I imagine she was the only person there, snow flying in on the upholstery, all the doors opened to the cold. But the van looked good. There was no more dried kibble rolling around on the floor mats. The plastic straw wrappers, dog hair, and used hand wipes had been sucked away from every crevice and nook. A circle-shaped deodorizer that smelled like lilacs dangled from the rearview mirror.

She did not bring Bowzer. She'd thought about it, she said, but decided not to. We couldn't bring him into the restaurant, and the van would get cold. He was better off at home. He hadn't even noticed when she left.

Just before we got to the airport, she took the deodorizer down and put it under her seat. She caught me looking at her.

"It looked a little trashy," she said.

Elise got off the plane wearing jeans, a billowy shirt, and flip-flops. Her light brown hair was streaked with gold and pulled back in a ponytail. She carried no bag, just several folders full of paper. She started to yawn, but as soon as she saw us, she smiled. My mother and I got to her at the same time. When I went to hug her, she tucked the folders under her arm and tickled my ribs. She kept doing it until I laughed and screamed.

"Girls," my mother said. "Girls!" But she was laughing a little, too. She stopped when she looked at Elise's bare toes.

"Honey," she said. "It's snowing!"

"Don't worry. I brought boots." Even in flip-flops, Elise was taller than both of us. "And a coat. Do you remember my luggage? It's silver? Can you watch the carousel for it? I have to pee. I'm dying." She handed me the folders full of legal-sized paper. "Here," she said. "Hold these."

My mother and I watched her walk away, flip-flops slapping on the floor.

"She looks good," my mother said quietly. I knew what she meant. Elise was naturally tall and thin, but when she was under stress, she could lose so much weight that her head looked too big for her body, her face gaunt, all the color gone. These bouts never lasted long, but my mother had worried about them for fifteen years. Given the way my sister had described her life in California, I think both my mother and I had expected her to be too thin. But she looked fine. She looked healthy, even curvy, her backside swinging as she disappeared into the restroom.

"What'd you get her?"

"For Christmas?" I turned around on my tiptoes, searching for the bag carousel. "A candle holder." That was another lie. I had already gift wrapped my "Math Is Hard" Barbie for Elise. When I'd told her about it a year ago, she wanted one for herself, but she couldn't find another on eBay. I didn't want to talk about it with my mother, to have to a.n.a.lyze the doll again; why Elise might want it, why I no longer did. It just seemed like the perfect gift, not least of all because it was free and I didn't have any money.

"What did you get her?" I asked.

"Earrings." She frowned. "I don't know if they're right. I never know what she'll like."

By the time we left the airport, Elise was wearing a gray wool coat over a turtleneck and black pants that were somehow not wrinkled. She opened the side door of the van to put her bags in. "Why does it smell like bad perfume in here?" She waved a gloved hand in front of her face. "Oh my G.o.d. Lilacs? More like chemicals. Yuck!"

We rode with the windows down, snow coming in, Elise in the pa.s.senger seat. She told us about her irritating seatmate on the plane, a man who had not brought anything to occupy him during the flight. Apparently, he a.s.sumed it was Elise's responsibility to converse with him, and he kept attempting to talk to her about the pitfalls of his job as an auto-parts salesman, even though it was clear she was trying to read.

"He wasn't hitting on me," Elise said. "He mentioned his wife twice. He just seemed to think I should be there for him. I should have brought crayons for him, I guess, or maybe stickers. After a while, I handed him the in-flight magazine. I thought that was pretty pointed, but he just kept gabbing, asking questions. I said, 'Sorry I can't talk. I've got to have these briefs read by Tuesday.' So then he starts to ask me for legal advice! Some kind of property dispute with his cousin. He starts telling me about it. I'm serious. The whole time, I've got my gla.s.ses on, my head down. I'm clearly trying to read." She smacked both hands against her forehead, just the way our father would have done it. "Finally, I go, 'Excuse me, sir. I have work to do. I'm sorry you're bored. But it's not my problem. Don't talk to me anymore.' I hurt his feelings, I think. He sulked for the rest of the flight."

In the backseat, I listened and wondered what I would have done if I had been on the airplane, held captive by the chatty man. I would have been annoyed, but I might have felt sorry for him. So I would have talked to him, and gotten even more annoyed, mostly with myself. There was much to admire in Elise: her straightforwardness, her courage. I'd been admiring her for these traits and more my whole life. It was comforting to think that she would have been a bad RA, to think that she would have lost her temper with Marley long before I did. But I wasn't sure that was true. It had not been Elise's job to entertain the man on the plane. That was the point she had made. If it had been her job, she would have excelled at it. She would have done it better than anyone else ever could.

"That always happens to me," my mother said. "In waiting rooms, especially, I get next to a talker when I want to read a book. I'm never brave enough to be so firm."

She pulled into the parking lot of a pizza parlor, explaining that not much was open on Christmas Eve and that I had said no to Indian. When we got out of the van, she exited on one side; Elise and I got out on the other. In those few seconds of separation, Elise hooked her arm in mine and lowered her mouth to my ear.

"How has she been?"

We were walking. I could see our mother's head through the windows on the other side of the van. She cleared the corner, heading toward us around the back. In just a few steps, we would meet up.

"She's fine," I said. "She's okay."

Ordering pizza with Elise always required negotiation. The rules went back almost twenty years. We could get pepperoni if I was willing to give up green peppers. She would forgo olives if my mother allowed pineapple. She only wanted breadsticks if we could get them with cheese. When we reached an agreement, she made the final order, stacking all of our menus and handing them to the waitress. My mother looked at the edge of the table, smiling with just half of her mouth.

I looked at Elise. "You didn't get a soda."

She shook her head and took a sip of water.

"You usually order right away. You're a caffeine freak."

"I'm turning over a new leaf." She poked my knee under the table. "So how's school? Are they letting you cut up dead bodies yet?"

My mother frowned. "Elise. We're about to eat."

I gave my mother an appreciative glance. She wasn't at all squeamish. She'd just given me an out.

Elise clicked her tongue. "If she wants to be a doctor, it shouldn't bother her." But now she was looking at my mother. "Your hair is different."

My mother touched the side of her head. "I've let it go. I know."

It was true. I hadn't noticed before, but now, even in the low light of the pizza parlor, I could see a definite horizontal line in her hair, almost at the level of her ears. Below the line, her hair was all dark, the same color as mine. Above the line, there were several curling strands of gray.

Elise nodded, with no further comment. "So how's the mall? Do you like it? Is it fun?"

My mother nodded. She took a sip of water as she smiled. "It's fine," she said. In the center of the table was a flickering candle in a small red holder and a list of weekly specials encased in plastic. The list was green on one side, red on the other, and a little uneven in the frame. My mother picked it up and fixed it.

"How's your new apartment? Where is it?"

My mother waved her hand as if clearing smoke. "It's an apartment. Not much to say. I want to hear how you're doing, honey." She reached over to pat Elise's hand. The diamond on Elise's ring glinted brightly in the low light of the candle.

At the table next to ours, a man and woman sang "Happy Birthday" to a little girl. We all looked over and smiled.

Elise leaned forward, elbows on the table. "You really want to know how I'm doing?"

I sat back, ready to listen. For almost a year now, Elise had been telling us how busy she was, too busy to come home for a visit, too busy to even stay on the phone. But now, finally, here she was in the flesh, and though she often reminded my mother and me that we couldn't possibly understand how much work she did, that really, we had no idea, I expected her to tell us all about it now. There would be funny impersonations of a demanding boss, maybe, or a needy client. She had my father's small, blue eyes, and they were glimmering the way his did when he prepared to command our attention.

"Hmm. How am I doing?" She stretched back, her pale arms raised, her gaze moving over our heads. "Pretty good, I guess." She smiled at me, and then at my mother. "I'm pregnant."

My mother knocked over her water gla.s.s. "Oh!" she said, jumping a little. "Oh! I didn't expect that at all!" She stood up to hug Elise, and her wrapped silverware fell to the floor.

Elise mouthed Help me! Help me! over my mother's shoulder, though she was clearly enjoying the excitement. over my mother's shoulder, though she was clearly enjoying the excitement.

"Hug you?" I asked, standing up. "You said you want me to hug you?"

When the waitress arrived with the pizza, Elise waved us both away.

"Okay, you two. Down. Sorry, yes, it's wonderful, la la la, okay. I want to eat." She thanked the waitress and reached between us to take a slice. "Whatever's in there, boy or girl, it's always hungry."

I tried to stop staring. Her belly, if she had one yet, was hidden by the table. A boy or a girl. A niece or a nephew. Aunt Veronica, I would be. I used my napkin to sop up the spilled water. "Are you going to find out?"

She held up a finger, chewing. She covered her mouth with her hand. "Soon. In a month. I'm due in June."

"It's good you're hungry," my mother said, with something like doubt in her voice. Her face was still flush, excited. "With both of you girls, I was nauseous the whole time. Even in the second trimester." She looked down at the pizza and wrinkled her nose. "Just the smell of this would have sent me over the edge."

"That's how I was just until a month ago." Elise leaned back and rested her hand on her belly, and as soon as she did this, she looked pregnant. I couldn't see any b.u.mp or swelling, but it just looked like something a pregnant woman did. "I felt like I was on a boat for two months," she said. "Bobbing. Bobbing." She crossed her eyes. "Even in my sleep, I was bobbing. I had to keep bags in my car. More in my desk. One in my briefcase."

I ate and listened as they kept talking, about cravings, about fatigue. Elise had taken naps in her office, under her desk. My mother said she'd done the same when she was teaching, when her students had gone to lunch.

"Ginger helps," she said. "Not for being tired, but for the stomach. I used to suck on candied ginger, I remember."

My gaze rested on the candle in its little red holder, and their words moved over my head. This was a new situation. My mother and Elise were usually awkward together, hesitant, two strangers at a party h.e.l.l-bent on talking but without much to say to one another. Now they had this thing between them. I already detected a shift, our old triangle changing slants.

"You have a good OB?" my mother asked. "You want to get references, Elise. It's important."

"Hmm." She took a long sip of water. "Well. We thought we would wait and find an OB out here." She blinked at both of us. "Since we're moving back to KC in the spring."

Bombsh.e.l.l number two. My mother looked too happy to breathe. It was like watching a game show where the prizes just get bigger and bigger, until the winning contestant goes into convulsions. My mother had just won a grandchild and both of her daughters living close to home. I was pretty happy, too. Maybe everything wouldn't feel so over, so sad, once Elise came back.

She reached for another piece of pizza. "Charlie got a great offer, and he knew how much I wanted to come back here. They want him right away. He'll start in February." She rolled her eyes. "I'm the one who gets to stay behind and pack up all our stuff."

"Oh, honey." My mother looked a little crestfallen. "That's a lot to do when you're pregnant." She shook her head, lips pursed. "And knowing you, you'll work right up until you leave."

We were quiet for a while. The birthday people had gotten up and left, and most of the tables were empty. "Crimson and Clover" played on a neon jukebox in the corner. We chewed and swallowed, all of us still smiling, but avoiding each other's eyes. A question, I knew, hung in the air. My mother had her hand over her mouth.

"So you'll get a job here, too?" I asked. I pretended to be fascinated with a string of cheese hanging off the side of my pizza. Half of what made Elise so intimidating was the way she could focus her gaze, making any question I asked feel stupid. "After the baby, I mean?"

"Nope." She picked something off her shoulder, her nails manicured, her polish clear. "I'm just going to stay home with Junior for a while. Or Juniorette."

"How long is a while?"

Elise chuckled, as if my mother had asked her about the weather in Australia, or how many seconds were in a year. "I don't know. First grade?"

My mother put her pizza down. "Honey, you can't be serious."

Elise stopped chewing. She gave my mother the look-the long, steady gaze that said to any opponent, You are about to be devoured. You are about to be devoured.

"This is a problem for you?"

"Anyone want parmesan?" I held up the shaker. We all knew my dad's old joke: It's a free topping. Learn to like it! It's a free topping. Learn to like it!

"Elise. You love your work."

Elise raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "These days? Not so much. You know what it's like? Remember when I was little I used to love Rice Krispie treats? Remember I used to beg you to make them? And then one day Veronica was sick and you went upstairs to lie down with her, and I stayed down in the kitchen and made a huge batch of Rice Krispie goo and then ate right out of the bowl before you came back downstairs. You remember that?"

"I remember," I said, still holding the parmesan. Elise had thrown up the rest of the day, stealing my sickness thunder.

"Well it cured me. I haven't wanted a Rice Krispie treat since. It's been almost twenty years, and I can barely look at one at a bake sale. That's kind of how I feel about work right now. I've had a little too much of it lately, and to tell the truth, it'll be nice to have a little break."

"Five years isn't a little break." My mother spoke through a frozen smile. "You could go back a little sooner? Part-time?"

I chewed more slowly, the pizza heavy and dry in my mouth. I was unnerved by the way our mother's worried eyes moved back and forth between me and Elise. I didn't think it was a fair comparison. I was only changing majors. What Elise was doing was more extreme.

Elise shook her head. "You know what part-time is at a law firm, Mom? About fifty hours a week. I'd like to actually know my child. And we can afford it. The cost of living is so much lower here." She c.o.c.ked her head, her face impa.s.sive. "Is there a reason you need me to work? Is there something going on with you?"

My mother lowered her gaze. "I'm just surprised," she said.