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She shrugs. “Sure, whatever.”
“Thank you.”
I turn around and go back inside, put the cigarette butts in the trash, wash my hands. She touches my shoulder. “Let’s put it all behind us, Laura, high school, all of it, okay?”
“Yes, I’d like that. And also…I’m sorry about the pony.” I turn around, lean against the sink. “I really overreacted, didn’t I.”
“It was quite dramatic, yes.”
“God, I feel so bad. Poor Charlie.”
“She’ll be fine. Anyway, I should have asked you if it was okay before hiring the pony. We’re both to blame.”
I tilt my head at her. “Thanks, Bronwyn.” And at this point, I couldn’t have felt any worse.
TWENTY-FOUR
I’m cold, shaky and lightheaded when I go back upstairs. I brush my teeth, rinse the taste of tobacco out of my mouth, slip into bed next to Jack.
Who is Beth, Laura?
I curl on my side. I feel so ashamed, I bring my knees closer to my chin and wonder where I could find a hole to crawl into and die. When Bronwyn held up the notebook, I saw myself back then. I thought I was funny, when in fact I was petty and vindictive, ungrateful. Then I think about how I reacted about the pony and it’s hard not to think I’m the one shadow boxing through my life, looking for a fight where there isn’t one, misinterpreting every gesture, every kindness and I wonder what else did I get wrong?
When I was fourteen years old, I came home from school one day to find my mother had died. She had jumped early that morning off the Snohomish River Bridge, although officially, the cause of death was accidental death. She had fallen, they said. Which I knew, and my father knew, and most people knew wasn’t the case because she’d been seen climbing up the trusses alongside the east sidewalk of the bridge. She’d picked the highest spot to jump from. She didn’t want to take any chances.
After the funeral my dad asked me to pack her things so we could take them to the goodwill store. He didn’t want to see them. So I did. I went through her things, and I found most of them already gone. In the bottom of the closet, I found a suitcase I didn’t remember. It was already packed with her best clothes, a pretty nightgown I’d never seen before, the little bit of jewelry she owned. I stared at the suitcase for a long time. It whispered that she was leaving us. It gaped at me with its contents neatly and lovingly folded, like a reproach. We weren’t good enough anymore. I asked my dad later if she’d been planning a trip and he looked at me like I’d sprouted horns.
“Your mother? Going on a trip? Where the hell would she go?”
I remembered the phone ringing early that morning, I was still in bed, but I was awake, then the sound of the front door closing, the car starting. After I found the packed suitcase, I wondered if she had intended to leave with a man, if the pretty nightgown was for him. I wondered if he had called that morning to say he had changed his mind. Or maybe he had called to say he hadn’t changed his mind, but she couldn’t do it.
In the end it didn’t matter what I thought. She left us anyway.
I shoved the rest of her things in black bin liners and we drove to the goodwill store downtown with all of it, suitcases included. I made sure nothing was left behind. Nothing at all.
Everything changed after that, in all the obvious ways, but in other ways, too. My father, who had been a brute, a loud, angry man who would smash his fist through doors and bellow every time my mother expressed an opinion, retreated into a kind of catatonic silence. I’d never been allowed to go anywhere, and suddenly I had more freedom than I knew what to do with. It was as if I was suddenly living alone.
Bronwyn and I were in the same class, but we didn’t know each other very well, until I went back to school two days after the funeral. That’s what we did back then. Emotions were for sissies. Everyone already knew, obviously, because bad news travels fast. Bronwyn was the first to come and hug me, that first morning in the school yard and I cried on her shoulder. She stayed by my side all day, holding my hand, patting my hair. Later, I thought she was just enjoying the drama but at the time I was just grateful someone cared. She was lovely to me, those first few weeks. We became best friends, I got less sad, we’d go to each other’s house, sometimes she’d even lend me one of her bicycles—she had two—and we’d ride to the river and lay down on the grass and look at the sky and dream of what we’d do when we grew up, which invariably involved marriage, children, and volunteering for charities.
There was an older boy she liked, called Jimmy, who she thought could be husband material because his father worked in a bank. When Bronwyn’s parents went away for the weekend, to their house on Orcas island—which is something they used to do all the time, go away without her —Bronwyn announced she’d have a party. I asked her why she didn’t go with her parents and she just shrugged, said it was boring, she didn’t like it. I found out much later that her parents treated these weekends away asadult timeand said it was best if she didn’t come along. Which to be fair, explained a hell of a lot about her. She invited half a dozen of our classmates and asked me to deliver Jimmy’s invitation, because she didn’t want to look too eager. So I did.
Bronwyn’s house was amazing, huge, with all the latest mod-cons, and her room was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was palatial and pink and soft, with enormous egg-shaped cushions you could disappear into and a four-poster bed with pink taffeta curtains all the way around. Before the guests arrived, she and I went downstairs and mixed whatever alcohol her parents kept in their living room bar into a silver bucket and called it punch. We brought it up to her room with tumblers and cups and an ice bucket, the other kids came, including Jimmy. She served him tumblers of punch and smoked her mother’s cigarettes that she’d get him to light for her, take a puff and pass it over to him like it was a joint.
We played music, danced, Jimmy hung back on the edge of the party. I thought he was going to leave, and maybe she did too because she turned the music off, clapped her hands and declared we would play spin the bottle, but with a twist. If the bottle pointed to you, you got to say who you wanted to kiss. We sat cross-legged in a circle, and Bronwyn was the first to spin the bottle which wasn’t really a spin, more a gentle twist until it pointed directly at Jimmy.
“Oh my God!” she shrieked. “Well? Who is it going to be, Jimmy?” She smiled shyly.
I was looking at her, so I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. But suddenly Jimmy had tilted forward on his knees and was kissing me full on the mouth.
I gasped when he let go. There was a second of stunned silence, then Bronwyn burst into laughter. “Oh my God! That’s so sweet!”
“No way,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, feeling my face burn. For a moment, I thought it was a joke at my expense, but Jimmy kept looking at me and then he said, “Will you go out with me, Laura?”
“Well!” Bronwyn said, clapping once. “I think that’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard all day. Good for you, Laura.”
“No, I didn’t know…really.”
“Of course not. Jimmy, I think that’s so sweet that I got to bring the two of you love birds together. Would you like to sit on the couch with Laura?”
