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"So you left?"
"So I left, as fast as I could. I went straight to New York. I wanted to be a set designer, and Manhattan is the center of theater. So many colleges there offer degrees in production design.”
“That’s why you’re so good at the store window,” I say.
“You’ve seen it?”
“I have. I knew it had to be you. It just felt like you.” I don’t know how to explain it other than that I could see Paige in the story of that window when I spotted it the other day. The use of color. The subtle humor in the details. The theme of bringing something bland to life. It’s all Paige. No question.
She nods. “Yeah. The problem was that I couldn’t pull myself together enough to apply to a college. I couldn’t even get a job at any of the theaters as an usher or ticket-taker. I stayed in a hostel for a few nights, spending the days looking for theater jobs, but the giant invisible chip on my shoulder got in my way.
“Eventually, I met up with this girl who invited me to stay at her place, sort of this millennial communal loft in Brooklyn, one of the ungentrified parts, where you had to fight off the rats to claim your spot on the floor or sofa. That’s the first place that felt right to me. Or that I felt like I deserved.”
“Deserved,” I repeat. “Why deserved?”
She smiles over at me, even if it’s tight at the corners. “You’re being way nicer about this than I was when you told me your story.”
I lift and drop a shoulder. It’s true, but it also doesn’t matter to me right now.
“I don’t know if I can explain why I felt like that’s what I deserved. It was like I didn’t want to spend the insurance money on a single thing that would make me happy when I only got it because they died. It didn’t make sense.”
“I think I understand,” I say quietly.
“It was a miserable headspace,” she says. “I doubled down on it. I paid for everyone’s alcohol and pretty soon, for their drugs. It was hateful money, and it gave me vicious satisfaction to spend it that way. To waste it. To not let it make anything meaningful of their deaths, because their deaths were senseless. And as a bonus, sometimes I could get high enough not to feel miserable.”
She heaves a deep sigh and keeps her eyes trained on the Persian rug beneath the coffee table. “I don’t like remembering those times. I can’t remember a lot of it, honestly. But it went for a while, and it turns out that people are always happy to help you spend a lot of money in a hurry or do anything else you want to do to forget how bad you feel. And suddenly you’re broke, your paid friends evaporate like your empty bank account, and you’re pregnant.”
I’m so used to experiencing Paige as a jolt of energy, somewhere between a breath of fresh air and a jack-in-the-box, depending on the day. But to see her wilted, pressed down by the weight of memories, is awful. It’s like watching a bounce house deflate and fold in on itself.
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” I say. “You don’t owe me this story.”
She glances up, a glimmer of a smile playing across her mouth. “But we’re about to hit the dramatic turn. I can’t stop now.”
I don’t want to put her through one more second of this, but at the same time, I want her to know that I’m listening. I follow an impulse I don’t completely understand and go to her on the sofa, pulling her up, then slipping behind her to settle into the corner, and pulling her back down again, nestling her in the vee of my legs. She holds herself stiff for a few seconds, then slowly relaxes, leaning back against me.
“Is this all right?” I ask quietly. “I think I’m trying to quite literally show you that I have your back.”
She draws a deep breath, and I can feel her slight frame expand before she releases it. She nods. “This is good.”
She falls quiet for a while, another minute or two, and I rest my hands on her shoulders and feel the rise and fall of her breath. Finally, she takes a slightly deeper one and speaks. “I came back. To Granger. I had to panhandle for a couple of days to get the money. Those were the worst three days of my life, and I never want to be that low again. I got together enough for a bus ticket, and I came home and found Noah. He took me in.
“I hadn’t taken anything or even had a drink from the second I found out I was pregnant. He paid for rehab, which was expensive. He helped me get Medicaid so Evie could be born safely and have insurance. I got a job waiting tables, and I tried to take care of as much as I could, but I still could not have gotten through those first five years without him.”
I give her shoulders a soft squeeze. “That all sounds really hard.”
“It was,” she says simply. “In so many ways, remembering that time feels more like telling someone else’s story, like someone else lived it, because I don’t recognize myself in that lost and angry girl. Anyway, the next two years were way better. I convinced Noah that he could leave without worrying about us, largely because Bill and Lisa insisted on ‘adopting’ us.” She makes air quotes around the word.
“Why air quotes?”
“They love their daughters and want them to be happy, and if that meant taking in me and Evie so Noah felt like he could separate and be with Grace, they were willing to do that.”
That’s not how it’s read to me any time I’ve been around them, but Paige is the one who lives this, so I don’t contradict her.
She turns, slipping to her knees on the floor and settling her elbows on my knees, her chin in her hands. “I mostly feel like I’ve healed. Done the work. Turned it around. But about the time I finished my degree, this laugh thing started happening. It happens at the worst times too. I can’t stop it, and I don’t know why I do it, and I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
I have this impulse to stay utterly still so I don’t scare her into flitting away, but I have an even stronger impulse to connect with her, so I do. She’s tucked her hair behind her ears, but an escaped tendril rests against her cheek. I touch it, then curl it around my finger and slowly unwind it, letting it trail across my hand and drift back against her skin.
“You’re forgiven,” I say. “I’m sorry for being stubborn about it. And for signing that petition. I shouldn’t have done that.”
