At the first commercial, he turned to me. “You look tired, sis.”
“I am.”
“You need to sleep,” he said.
“I will. I’m trying to get caught up on paper grading.”
“Work, work, work,” he said, smiling a little. It was good to see that. “Is Paul coming back?” he asked.
“I think he went home for the night,” I said. “He was here while the doctor was with you.”
“I know. I saw him.”
“Did you like talking to the doctor today?” I asked. “Dr. Heil?”
“He was nice.”
“What did you two talk about?” I asked.
Ronnie shrugged. The news came back on, a story about wildlife in Africa. Ronnie’s eyes were glued to the screen.
“What did he ask you about?”
“A bunch of questions.”
“Were they about Mom?”
Ronnie didn’t answer. He watched the TV. I thought about reaching for the remote and turning it off. If we were teenagers, I would have done that very thing. But I didn’t want to get him angry or upset. He’d had a hellish day as well. But still, I wanted to know what they’d talked about. I felt I had a right. And I remembered what Dr. Heil had said to me just a little bit earlier. It could be a bumpy ride ahead.
Did Ronnie know that?
“And that’s it?” I asked. “Nothing else?”
Agitation crept into his voice. “He was nice, sis. I liked him. It’s fine.”
He turned his attention back to the TV and drank his milk.
I wished I could believe him.
Chapter Twenty-two
I thought of calling Paul as I left Dover Community. It felt too much like those last six weeks with Mom—something unresolved hanging between us. But I was still angry. Just thinking about it—thinking about him—stirred the anger almost to a boil. I trusted him, and so did Mom. Would he really just hand Ronnie over to an institution or a home? Is that why he had been so cavalier about sending Ronnie to the hospital? And when I’d suggested we get a lawyer, that we work to get Ronnie out, Paul was dismissive of the idea.
The sun was setting as I drove to my apartment. The clouds from earlier in the day had parted. A band of orange marked the horizon, and flocks of birds, black specks against the darkening sky, swept past in the distance. Halfway home, I almost picked up the phone and called Dan. I told myself I didn’t need him. I just wanted him—or someone—to be there with me when I went to the apartment. I tried to convince myself I would have settled for Jeff, the astronomy nerd downstairs. But I knew the truth. I really did want Dan to be there. After the whole long day and the fight with Paul, I wanted Dan to be around.
But I didn’t call him. I put the phone down.
I needed to go in alone.
I hurried to make it home before darkness fully fell. I parked the car, but before climbing out I looked all around me. Two runners jogged by. The night looked normal, and when I stepped out, it felt normal. Cool and crisp, but normal. I hustled up the stairs. I felt some comfort when I passed Jeff’s apartment; a light glowed in the window. I wasn’t completely alone. There were other people in the world, people sharing the spaces I inhabited. I just needed to notice them.
The key the landlord gave me worked like a charm. I slipped inside as quickly as I could, locking the dead bolt behind me before I even hit the light. When I turned it on, I saw the mess. I hadn’t been home since the night before. I’d forgotten about the condition of the place, the things strewn around, the upended drawers.
I dropped my bag to the floor, overwhelmed by it all.
I’d proved my point to myself. I’d made it home. I felt tears coming again. I didn’t want to give in to them.
But I also needed help. I found the phone and called Dan.
True to form, Dan arrived about thirty minutes after I called. And he didn’t arrive unarmed. When I undid my new dead bolt lock and opened the door for him, he stood there on my stoop carrying a bag of food from our favorite Thai restaurant. Why did I think I didn’t have room in my life for this man? Why did I think I couldn’t balance a career and a love life?
He stepped inside and assessed the damage. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said.
“Nothing is as bad as this looks.”
First, we ate. He knew what to get me—shrimp fried rice, spring rolls—and I loved every bite. I went to the kitchen and opened beers for us. It was easy to find the opener with the contents of the drawers scattered across the linoleum.
For a few minutes, the food and the drink and the company helped me forget the crappy twenty-four hours I had been through. Dan gave me my space. He didn’t ask me a lot of questions, and he avoided the subject of my family and all of their drama. He avoided it so much and so skillfully that I found myself wanting him to ask. As I finished my last bite of food, I tried to send telepathic messages to his brain encouraging him to ask me about my day. About Ronnie. About Paul.
But he didn’t know those people. Dan was right. I’d kept the two halves of my life—school and family—separated as if they were warring factions. Yet they weren’t—they couldn’t be, because they didn’t know each other. And if they had met, it would have been fine. My family—especially my mother—would have been thrilled if I’d brought a nice, normal-looking guy home to meet her. She would have been glad there was a chance I might not spend my life alone. Mom was a little old-fashioned and worried about those things. But it didn’t matter to me. I tried to keep things simple and easy. For me, if not for anyone else. Now Mom would never meet that man, whoever he turned out to be. I tried not to think of that either.
When we were finished eating, Dan, ever the chipper taskmaster, stood up. “Want to get started on this mess?” he asked.
He didn’t wait for a response. I suspected he was trying to keep the evening’s momentum moving forward. He probably feared a pause, a moment in which I could turn to him and announce that it was time for him to go. He didn’t know how happy I was to see him there.
And he had been right about the mess. It wasn’t as bad as it looked. It was a mess, but it was a simple mess. Hardly anything was broken. Things just needed to be put back in their places, which we managed to do, working together. We still didn’t say much, except when Dan asked me questions about where to put things. It took about an hour. A lamp I had purchased from Goodwill had its bulb broken. An old calculator I used to figure grades was smashed. And near the end, right when everything was pretty much put back in order, Dan handed me a framed photo. It showed Mom, Paul, Ronnie, and me. The glass was shattered. It looked as if someone had dropped a brick on it. I shook the shards of glass loose. We all looked happy for some reason. I remembered the photo being taken about three years earlier, not long after I had graduated from college and a couple of years after Dad had died.
“Be careful,” Dan said.
I stared at the photo a long time, felt the tears starting to come, and fought them off. But I couldn’t hide it from Dan.
“It doesn’t look like the photo’s damaged,” he said. “And we can buy a new frame for it.”
We, he said. Always willing to share the load.
“It’s not this,” I said.
“What isn’t?” he asked.
“Everything.” I put the photo down. “Remember that talk we had on the night of the funeral? The one about how cut off I was from my family?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I’m not getting any better,” I said. “I’m getting worse.”
“In two days? You can’t expect—”
I cut him off. I didn’t want to be encouraged or placated. I took him by the hand, and we went over to the couch. After we sat down and got settled, I told him about Paul encouraging my mom to have Ronnie put somewhere and how that led to the argument I had with Paul at the hospital. Dan listened patiently, nodding as I went through blow by blow. When I was finished, he didn’t say anything. He sipped from his beer.