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“None of us are.” He lets that sentence hang between us for a second, a secret, a sadness gone as fast as it descended. “So, Billi,” his gaze slides to me again. “What do you do for fun around here?”
I open my mouth to give him a piece of my mind when he laughs.
“For the record, I’m not hitting on you. But Iama fan ofBuffy the Vampire Slayerand planned to watch the season premiere in my room. But if you have enough popcorn, and if you’re having a party out here in the lobby anyway…”
It’s my turn to laugh. “Me and Mr. Bailey hardly make for a great party, but yes, I have popcorn. You’re welcome to join us.”
“You don’t need to consult your magic ball before giving me an answer?” He may as well have put ‘Magic Ball’ in air quotes. I mentally erase that point from the positives column and mark it in the negatives before erasing it again and leaving the whole thing blank. Let’s not be hasty here.
“I only consult it for important questions.”
“Perfect. I’ll be back in time for the show, and I’ll bring candy if I can find a vending machine somewhere. And Billi,” he says with a smile and lift of his chin, “nice hair.”
My hand instinctively goes to my neck as I watch him leave, to the shaved strip that runs on my ear’s left side and over to the long blonde slash that drapes across my forehead. I’m unsure if he was kidding or serious, but I still yell, “End of the hall on the second floor!” as the door shuts behind him. I stand here wondering what in the world just happened. He complimented me. Or maybe he didn’t? Either way, Billi Ellis has plans on a Monday night withtwomen, and sure, one of them is old enough to be my great grandfather, but the other is decidedly not. No one in high school would believe it, least of all me. I can barely believe it now.
I stare after him for a long moment and tell myself to get a grip. I might be a lot of things, but Girl Who Falls for Handsome Stranger isn’t one of them. You can only travel that road a handful of times before it leads you straight down a dangerous mountainside, and in my experience…
Luck works best when it isn’t pressed more than once.
4
Finn
I toss the key to my “upgraded” room on the bed and look around, wondering what the room I dodged must have looked like. This one is musty and dank, a dark and gray dungeon on its best day. The only upside is that it looks marginally clean and comes with a picture window, bent and mangled mini blinds notwithstanding. I think of our summer trips to Martha’s Vineyard and wonder what my parents would think of this place, then remember they both grew up in this town and probably stayed here a time or two themselves. Maybe prom night or an eighteenth birthday, or that time my grandparents’ house flooded, and they took up residence in a nearby motel while repairmen went to work. I heard the story a few dozen times in my life, mostly as part of aYou Need to Be Gratefullecture during my teenage years.
When it comes to this town, it’s easy to forget that everything new to me would have been old and worn out to them. The pang of loss has hit harder than usual since Bing assigned me to the job yesterday. I wish my parents were here now, showing me the landmarks and sights of their shared childhood, the ones we never stopped to see the one and only time we came back when I was a kid.
I drop my suitcase on the bed and unzip it, hanging up pants and shirts on the wire hangers provided in the small closet. I hate to iron; I burn myself every time. Maybe by tomorrow, the wrinkles will straighten out.
Reaching into the suitcase one last time, my hand brushes my mother’s memory box, and I lift it out. A few papers and photos spill from the top and flutter to the floor. I scoop them up and return the items to the box, then sit on the bed and slide the box closer to me. A photo I’ve never seen of my mother catches my eye, and I pick it up. She’s smiling. “That smile is the first thing I fell in love with.”My father’s often spoken words come back to me. My mother was an anxious woman, sad and often depressed, pacing the floor at night and speaking of things I didn’t understand.“What if people find out? What if we made a mistake? Playing God is surely a sin.”My father worked tirelessly to console her.“Calm down, Laura. It’s better this way. No one played God, not me and not you.”When I asked questions, it was explained that her words were nothing but the ramblings of paranoia—something my mother had long struggled with. It wasn’t until I was older that I knew what my father meant. Paranoia: a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution. I never understood how that applied to my mother, but my dad was right about her smile.
Looking at her younger self, I can see why my father spoke of it so fondly. You tend to miss the things that easily slip through your fingers, and my mother’s smile was as close to a trickle of water that a human feature can get. It appeared so infrequently, most often when she listened to music. Occasionally when she looked at me.
I set the photo on the bed and thumb through a few more papers toward the top of the box. Gas station receipts. Grocery coupons. Odd items for a memory box, but my mother was an odd—if also beautiful and reserved—soul. The things she considered important were often overlooked. Like an injured baby robin booted from the nest. A lone shoe discarded on the roadway. A lost penny no longer bringing luck to its owner. All these things needed her attention because all were in some way in need of rescue. The Bible says not to store up treasures on Earth, but I’m convinced the ones my mother kept close gave her a direct line to Jesus. In her own unique way, she cared about the lost and discarded in the same way He did.
Still, the gas station receipts are weird. On one, the only item is a ten-cent pack of Beech-Nut gum purchased in April of nineteen fifty-four. My mother was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a pack rat. I consider balling up the receipt and tossing it in the trash bin before deciding it must have meant something to her, so that makes it of secondary importance to me. I tuck it toward the bottom of the box when my fingers connect with something thick, like an envelope. I tug it free and flip it over in my hand. It’s fat like a wallet but larger like the passport of someone well-traveled. My pulse picks up speed from curiosity and guilt. This seems like something that could be marginally informational, but I’m certain that if my mother caught me snooping, I’d get smacked on the back of the head.
I look over my shoulder to check the time displayed on the bedside clock. TheBuffypremiere starts in eighteen minutes, leaving me enough time to glance through this paperwork and head to the lobby. Anything else I might find will have to keep until later tonight.
The envelope is stuffed full of papers and a few miscellaneous items. More receipts. A stack of folded papers that look medical in nature. They’re folded out of order, so I sift through them until I reach page one. A Silver Bell Memorial Hospital logo is printed in bold block letters across the top of the page. The hospital where I was born, the same one I’m here to cover that burned nearly thirty years ago. I glance at the signature at the bottom of the page, signed by a Dr. Sullivan. I frown. I was delivered by a Dr. Romine, a man my mother spoke fondly of on numerous occasions.“Did I ever tell you what Dr. Romine said about you as we were leaving the hospital…?”‘He was born to play football’ were his exact words, a line I heard so often I could recite them in my sleep. In what turned out to be the world’s most cringe-worthy punchline, I grew up to excel at trombone while also serving as editor-in-chief of my high school’s newspaper.
Dr. Romine might have requested a refund if he’d lived long enough to be made aware of his long dive off base.
My vision connects with the date next to the signature, and I frown. It’s wrong. Dated three years before I was born. Same hospital, same month, but different year. I flip the page over, thinking it must be a misprint, but the next page is signed and dated too with the same year. Only this page has a new annotation, one that sends a single drop of ice water sliding down my spine.
Baby Boy Hardwick. Cause of death: Edward’s Syndrome. That’s all, nothing more. Baby Boy, a generic reference one might use to avoid the subject at hand. An eyesore. A nasty cut. A used hamburger wrapper you crumple into a ball and discard in the nearest bin, wiping grease off your formerly pristine hands.
Two things I know for certain: I’m still alive, and baby boy Hardwick isn’t me.
I look up and out the darkened window to the Hardee’s parking lot across the street, the only fast-food joint I saw in this town on the drive in. I remember thinking to myself,“I guess that’s what I’m having for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”I never once thought,“Maybe my parents had a life I knew nothing about. Maybe I even had a brother.”Headlights pull into the lot, cut off, and two teenagers emerge from the car. Even from here, I can hear the laughter coming from a girl who throws her head back at a joke coming from the guy with her. They hold hands and walk across the parking lot, arms swinging in an exaggerated movement between them, carefree and easy. Just a normal Monday night in Arkansas.
Like no one handed them a bomb set to detonate their whole lives.
With shaking hands, I refold the paperwork and stuff the stack back inside the envelope. Time’s up for this.Buffystarts in five minutes, and I’m not one to turn down an invitation from a pretty girl, even if I’m no longer in the mood to socialize.
Turning the lock on the door, I shove all thoughts of the memory box out of my mind and head for the motel lobby.
As a whole,Buffy the Vampire Slayeris ridiculous camp, cheese with a side of stale crackers. No human I’ve ever met could possibly call it realistic. But Richardson started watching it late at work one night while procrastinating a deadline, and I got sucked right in like a hormonal teenage girl. I’ve resented it—and watched it—since. I’ve looked forward to this premier in ways I would never admit out loud; my VCR at home is recording this very show as we speak.
