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She nods and looks off toward the playground. She and Rae must spot each other, because she chuckles and waves, then blows a kiss, then gives a full laugh.
“You’re so good with her,” I remark.
“I try.” After she drops her hand, she sighs. “I mean, of course I love her more than anything, and getting along with her is easy because she’s so sweet and silly most of the time. The rest of it is hard, though. There’sso muchthat goes into taking care of a kid, because they don’t know how to take care of themselves.”
“Yeah, for sure.” I look out again, too, and watch Rae slowly make her way across the monkey bars. She seems to be holding on decently despite her fingers. “You really are managing to rock it, though. You were way younger and at much more of a disadvantage when you got her than Lolly and Pop were when they got me. They were settled and experienced, and you were still a teenager, really. But no one would ever guess you didn’t bring Rae into the world yourself. It’sreallyclear that you love each other and that she’s got a good life. So you’ve done great.”
She doesn’t speak right away.
When she does, her words are nearly a whisper. “Thank you.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Blows my mind that my sister cares so little about her.”
A sidelong look at Liv shows me she’s chewing on her bottom lip, a slight frown on her face.
“Same here,” I say honestly. “She’s precious.”
“I know.”
Thoughts of Liv’s own childhood come back into my mind.
Go away,I try to tell them.
They don’t. They grow bigger until they’re pieces of an ugly puzzle: a shitty mom who somehow let boyfriends get in the way of taking care of her kids, Liv getting stuck with memories she struggles to talk about, her sister growing up to be such a bad mother that her kid got taken from her. I remember Liv saying once that she knows what a person looks like when they’re pretending nothing bad has happened to them, and saying another time that no freak-out of Lolly’s could be scarier than what she and Rae have already experienced.
I can’t shut myself up about it anymore. She knows my troubles and helps me with them, and I want to be able to say the same where she’s concerned.
“Will you tell me about your mom?” I ask.
She blinks slowly—the barest show of unpleasant surprise.
Aaaand here’s the common sense, reappearing after I’ve already opened my mouth.
She breathes in deeply and exhales, “Um….”
“No, nevermind,” I amend. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me anything. Rude of me to just ask about her like that. I know she wasn’t good to you.”
Clearing her throat, she unfolds herself from how she’s been sitting. “Well, it’s not—it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you about it.” She leans against the back of the bench to mirror how I’m situated. “But I don’t know….” She shoots me a timid look. “I don’t know.”
I don’t like that look. It’s as if she’s unsure of how I’m going to feel about her keeping this to herself, like she really does think she owes me the conversation.
“Hey,” I say gently, “I mean it, forget I asked. If you want to tell me, you should tell me on your own terms, not right now just because I brought it up. I shouldn’t have done it. In fact, a minute ago, I expressly thought to myself that I shouldn’t bring it up in case you still aren’t ready to talk about it.”
Gently, too, she asks, “You were already thinking about my mom?”
“Yeah. That probably sounds weird, but….”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.Ithink aboutyoua lot.”
Even though I know she doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, it still brings back the crazy butterfly feeling she inspired in me the other day.
And even thoughsheknows she doesn’t mean her words the way they sound, her cheeks turn a bright shade of pink.
“By that,” she says slowly, “I mean I think about your life with Lolly a lot.”
I nod probably more times than I need to. “Yeah.”
