Drowning Is Inevitable (14 page)

I really wished Steven's kitchen table had some chairs, so I could sit. Max came around the table to me, tentatively. He lowered his voice.

“I found a box a while ago. It was in my parents' bedroom.” He looked down at my hands. “After the wreck my dad started hiding his whiskey from me. He said he didn't want to leave it out and tempt me. Like I was some goddamned addict or something. I told him it wasn't necessary, that I could be around it and not drink. I found his stash in his closet.”

I wondered if it was the whiskey bottle from his truck, the one with the worn label. “Why were you looking for it if you didn't need it?”

He didn't answer.

“I kept looking around the room after I found it. I'm not sure why. That's when I found the box. It was under my parents' bed, on my mom's side. The letters were inside. The return addresses were from all over. I didn't read them, but I'm positive Beth's name is on all of them. There was a photo album, too. I looked at that first. My mom came into the room and busted me. I thought she'd be mad, but she wasn't. She just sat down, ignored the bottle, and started looking at photos with me. She got really quiet when she showed me the pictures of your mom. I could tell it made her sad to see them.”

His eyes were noticeably softer, like the memories of his mom had taken away some of his earlier fear. It was hard to believe the things he was telling me. In all the time I'd spent at Max's house, his mom had never talked about my mom. Max's mom, the woman whose belt always matched her shoes, was a woman who hid letters and pictures in a box under her bed like I did. And there were pictures of my mom I hadn't seen. What other parts of my mom were hiding in the other houses of St. Francisville?

Jamie cleared his throat. “So what's the plan? You're going to introduce yourself to Beth and say what?”

“I don't know yet,” I said. “Something along the lines of, ‘Hey, we've never met, but I'm your dead best friend's daughter, and I need money.' ”

“That should do it.” He came to the table and picked up a letter. “I'm sure she's seen the news. What if she turns us in?”

“Then it's over.”

I found the last letter and reread it, hoping for some clues as to where in New Orleans she might be. She mentioned she was going to try and get a job at this restaurant she and Lillian once visited when they were in high school, a place called The P.M. Café.

Max, who was reading the letter over my shoulder, said, “That's on Napoleon Avenue. I passed it when I was out looking for Maggie. We'll start there.”

Just like that, we had a plan and a new direction.

I had butterflies in my stomach. I wished I was going to see her without needing something from her.

Max walked out of the room and came back in with a couple of baseball caps. He handed one to Jamie. “Steven won't miss them.”

They pulled the bills down low over their foreheads. I grabbed sunglasses from my bag and put them on.

The walk to the trolley was silent. I kept my head down. As soon as we rounded the corner, I saw the trolley stop. I started walking faster, but Max reached for my hand and jerked me back to him. Jamie's eyes went round at something, and he turned and sat down on a bench, his head down. I looked up at Max and his mouth was on mine. The kiss was desperate, and it scared me. His hands were on my face. He pulled his mouth away but kept his face close.

“There's a cop over there,” he whispered.

My body immediately tensed. Max's eyes bored into mine.

“Don't move.”

I started to say something.

“Shh,” he said.

His lips touched mine again, and I closed my eyes, tears coming because this was it. Max felt them on his hands and wiped them away, trailing his fingers across my face.

“Shh. It's okay,” he lied.

One kiss, two kisses, three.

He brought his hands down and looked over my shoulder. His lips at my ear, he whispered, “He's walking around the corner. He's almost gone.”

Max straightened up and cupped my face, his thumb wiping at another tear. “He's gone. Let's go.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to the trolley stop, Jamie following. We paid with money we'd swiped from Steven's house and took seats in the back. Now I was desperate.

I caught Jamie's eyes, and they looked old, like the sight of the cop had aged them. Old eyes in a young face, like the girl from last night.

Two trolley stops later my heartbeat still hadn't slowed. Beth Hunter had to help us.

When we got off at Napoleon Avenue, I was shaking. Jamie grabbed my hand, holding it still.

“If you're going to Greece, you better start packing now,” he said.

It was a line from a seventh-grade play neither of us had been good enough to be cast in. In other words, a big thing was about to happen, and I'd better be ready. We ran the lines from time to time when the situation fit, or when something needed to be said but we didn't know what it should be.

Jamie looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to respond with my line. I knew he was trying to distract me, keeping my mind off cops and my fast-beating heart.

“There's too much I want to take,” I said. “How do you fit everything you want to bring?”

Jamie looked both ways and pulled me across the street. “You don't bring everything, only what you really need.”

“What do I really need?”

I was feeling better, less desperate.

He looked me in the eyes. “Me.”

“Will I love it?”

“You will,” he said. “The water is a blue you've never seen in real life.”

Max walked quietly behind us, watching the play.

The café was easy to spot. My mom had a matchbook from this place in her shoebox. I was surprised it was still here after all this time. We stood across the street from it. It had outdoor seating, but all the seats were empty.

“I see people inside,” Max said.

We crossed the street as the front door opened. A couple of men came out, and one held the door open for us. The place was empty, and the bartender looked at us expectantly.

“We just closed the lunch shift. We won't open back up until five o'clock,” he said.

“That's alright,” Max said. “We're actually not here to eat. We're looking for someone.”

I removed my sunglasses, and we walked up to the bar.

“Oh yeah?” the bartender asked.

“I'm looking for my mom's friend,” I said. “She just moved to New Orleans. She mentioned she was going to try and get a job here.”

“Who's your mom's friend?” he asked.

“Beth Hunter.”

“Yeah, Beth started here a few days ago. She's not working tonight, though.”

“Do you know where she lives?” I asked. “We're only in town for the day, and I was really hoping to see her.”

He looked suspicious of us and leaned across the bar, coming closer to me. “Why don't you know where she lives?”

“She never told my mom where she was staying. I just thought since we were here … but it's no big deal. Sorry to bother you.”

We turned from the bar.

“Wait,” the bartender said. He looked conflicted, like he was trying to decide whether we were dangerous. That was the million-dollar question.

“She's subletting an apartment. It's about five blocks down on the left. It's an old walk-up with a wrought-iron gate. I don't know the apartment number.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Someone was coming out of the apartment building just as we walked up, and they held the door for us to walk through. I found her name on a mailbox by the door. Her apartment was 3C. Max took off in the direction of the stairs, but I stopped him.

“Wait,” I said. “I need to do this alone.”

His brow furrowed.

“I need to be alone the first time I meet her.”

I couldn't explain it, and they didn't make me try.

“Okay. We'll wait here.”

Jamie said, “Look at you, going to meet Beth Hunter.” He grinned, proud of me.

Beth was the biggest clue to who my mom was. She'd never fit inside my box. The excitement was back, like my mom might be just around the corner. If only I walked fast enough, I'd catch her.

As I stood outside Beth's door, the million reasons not to knock ran on a loop in my head. She might not understand. She might not be home. She might call the cops. But the door opened, and just like that the girl from my mom's walls was suddenly standing in front of me.

There was no breathing, only stares. I could tell she recognized me. I was sure
Lillian
would be the first name she said. But instead she said, “Olivia.”

“Olivia?” she repeated.

I nodded. Yes, I was Olivia.

S
itting on her couch, Beth Hunter and I stared at each other. Whenever she moved or shifted in her seat, it was alarming at first, because all my life she'd been sitting still in photos. It seemed like any minute now, my mom might walk out of the kitchen and sit down to join us.

I decided Beth hadn't changed all that much since the pictures in my mom's bedroom were taken. Her hair was shorter and not as shiny but still blond. Her face basically the same only slightly more lined.

“Would you like something to drink? I have iced tea,” she said.

“No, thank you,” I said. I wondered if I sounded like Lillian to her, too.

“What brings you here?” she asked. She looked nervous.

I wanted to say, “Dead moms, dead dads, and old letters,” but instead said, “I'm in trouble.” I hadn't planned on blurting it out like that, but there it was.

“I know,” she said. “You're all over the news. The police know you're in New Orleans. They found your friend's truck.”

“Jamie—” I stopped myself, terrified to spill my secrets to someone I might not be able to trust. “He's my best friend,” I continued. “He didn't … he's not …” I exhaled loudly. “He's good. It's not murder. Not really. There are things no one knows.”

Beth put her hands on mine. “I know Tom Benton. Well, I knew him.” She didn't say anything else, but her look said she knew exactly what kind of man he'd become. “But Olivia, you're an accessory after the fact. Do you realize how much trouble you're in?”

“That's why we've got to get away. Jamie can't go back home, ever, and I can't leave him. I won't. We need help. I'm sorry to just show up here, but we don't have a lot of options. You and my mom were friends, best friends, so I thought maybe you'd help me. It's not safe where we're staying. We're not safe.”

Beth stood and went to her window. Looking out of it, she said, “How can I help you? What do you need?”

I felt bad, but I blurted it out. “Money. My friend Maggie thinks her mom might know someone who can get us new passports, but we'll have to pay him. I don't even know how much he'll charge, but we don't have anything. And if we can just spend a night or two here, just enough time to make a plan.”

Silenced followed, and I shifted in my seat.

“Wait here,” she said.

She disappeared down the hall. I worried she was calling the police. There was a calendar pinned to the wall next to her desk. We'd been gone three days. It had taken three days for life to flop on its head and become unrecognizable. Time continued to move forward in its day-to-day way, one day closer to whatever was next for Jamie and me—one day closer to my eighteenth birthday, I realized.

Beth returned to the living room, her arms full of a huge photo album. She sat next to me and opened the album to a picture in the middle. She pointed to it and said, “This was the last time I saw you.”

It was a photo of my mom sitting up in a hospital bed. In her arms was a baby wrapped in a pale pink blanket. My mom wasn't looking into the camera but into the baby's face, and she was smiling. Beth showed me the picture with no hesitation and no warning, like I was used to seeing such things. She seemed unaware that she had just shown me the only proof I had ever had that my mom once looked at me.

I didn't move or breathe, only stared at the picture of the two of us. My mom's face was pale and tired, but happy, too. My fingers went to it, to the smile on her face.

“You've never seen this picture before? I know your dad has a copy, or at least he did,” she whispered.

I shook my head; I couldn't take my eyes off it. I only shared three days with my mom. The time we spent together, the space we shared, my crib in the corner right next to her bed. What if it was the sound of me breathing that sent her into the water?

“She wouldn't let anyone else hold you that first day. She just stared at you and kept saying how perfect you were. She told me that she'd been staring at your face for so long that she could see it even when she closed her eyes.” She smiled a sad smile at me.

“If she thought I was so perfect, then why did she leave me?” My voice was a small squeak, and I hated it.

“I don't know. If she loved me like I loved her, then why did she leave
me
? Why did she leave your dad or Ms. Josephine? Some things we're not supposed to understand.”

She touched the photo again.

“This was also the last time I saw her. Last times are funny things, because you rarely know it's a last time until it's too late. I was going to come see both of you again once you were released from the hospital, but your first day home I was scrambling around trying to get packed. I was leaving for college the next week. I called and asked to speak to your mom, but Ms. Josephine said she was sleeping, so I told her to tell Lillian I'd come by the next day.” She went quiet, because we both knew there was no next day for my mom.

She flipped the pages in the photo album. It was full of the two of them and St. Francisville. Most of them were the same ones my mom had on her bedroom walls. She reached out to touch some of them.

“Everyone who knew your mom fell in love with her. That was her true gift. If you spent even a little time with her, you loved her and wanted good things for her. When she died, the whole town was devastated. Everyone came to her funeral.”

She looked from the pictures to me. “It's strange, the things you remember. From the funeral, I remember how quiet everyone was. With that many people there, you'd think there'd be noise, but there was no noise, only the sound of the preacher talking.”

Since she'd said the last time she saw me was at the hospital, I asked, “Wasn't I at the funeral?”

“Ms. Josephine didn't think it was any place for a newborn. Her friend Mrs. Cavalier kept you at her house.”

I looked back at the photos and turned to the last page in the album. In the center of the page was a picture of Lillian as a little girl. She was sitting on a stone bench with a woman who, on closer inspection, I recognized as my grandmother. They were in my grandmother's backyard, back when it wasn't sad.

“This is my favorite picture of her,” she said. “Ms. Josephine gave me a copy. Lillian was seven.”

In the photo my grandmother's hair was down, something I'd never seen in real life. The wind must have been blowing, because their hair had wrapped and laced together. My grandmother was looking into my mom's face and smiling the smile mothers reserved for their daughters.

“This is my favorite picture, too,” I said.

Beth pulled it out of its sleeve, then turned to the photo of me and my mom in the hospital and did the same. She handed them to me. “You should have these.”

I was too desperate for them to disagree with her.

I held them gingerly. “Were you surprised she did it?” I asked.

“I was devastated, but I wasn't surprised.”

“Why weren't you surprised?” I tried to rein myself in.

“No one who really knew Lillian was surprised.”

She looked down at her lap, and then back up at me, like she wasn't going to offer anything more.

“I've never known anyone, before or since, who felt things the way your mom did. She absorbed too much, you know?”

I had no idea.

“She couldn't shake things off. Your grandmother monitored how much news she'd let Lillian watch, because a sad story might keep her in bed for two days. I once opened the newspaper at your grandmother's house and sections of it had been cut out, the parts Ms. Josephine was scared to let your mom read.

“But when she was happy, she was electric. I'm not saying that flippantly. I felt electricity when I was near her. She could shock you with her energy. It made up for all the bad times. I'm pretty sure she was manic-depressive, but we didn't know that then. There was so much we didn't know.”

“What else didn't you know?”

“How tired she was. How much she was hurting. She tried to tell us.”

“How?”

“There were days when she wouldn't get out of bed, when she'd stop talking. For days she wouldn't talk. And during the good times, she'd be so reckless with her life. She never knew how important she was.”

“But you did,” I said. “I have your letters. The ones you left on her grave.” I pulled out the shoebox and opened it. I laid a handful of the envelopes between us.

Beth's fingers went to them, but she didn't pick one up. She stared at them for a long while and then said, “So that's where they went. I thought maybe it was your dad, or your grandmother, or the wind. I never imagined it was you.”

I wanted to tell her that neither my grandmother nor my dad ever went to the grave, but decided that might make her sad.

“I've read them.” I looked at her apologetically. “I couldn't
not
read them. They're how I found you, actually. The last letter …” My voice trailed off.

She nodded, like now she understood. “The hardest part was not being able to talk to her. So I wrote letters. It was the best I could do. We made all these plans, your mom and me. I made her write a list of all the things she wanted to do, so she could look at it when she was sad. I guess I hoped it would be an incentive for her to get better. I have my own copy.”

“I thought it was your list, too. I thought you made it together.”

“No, it was just hers. I have my own list. I've been working on both of them for a while now.”

“My mom's list is hanging on her bedroom wall.”

“It's still there?” Beth asked.

I nodded. Everything was still there.

“All the signs she gave us, and we didn't do enough. There's a price for something like that.”

I thought about the cost. My dad's happiness; my grandmother's sanity; the rest of Beth's life, which she'd given over to working through my mom's list.

“I'm sorry I didn't come see you,” Beth said. “It was painful to even go back to that town, but to walk back into Lillian's house … I couldn't do it.”

“Did you ever see my dad?” I asked.

“No. After Lillian died, something in him did, too. Looking at him was hard after that. We kept in touch, though. Somewhat. We talk sometimes. I always make sure he knows where I am.” She touched my knee. “I told myself you both were okay, that at least you had each other.”

“Not really,” I said.

She cleared her throat. She had noticed Lillian's necklace, and she went still. Then she met my eyes. “I gave that to her,” she whispered. “I got it from one of those street festivals, for her seventeenth birthday. She loved anything with her name on it. You would've thought I'd given her diamonds. She wore it every day.”

“I looked for it, after she died.” She exhaled loudly. “Ms. Josephine called me the day before the funeral. She wanted me to come over and pick out something for Lillian to wear. She said she knew Lillian wouldn't want to be buried wearing anything her mother had chosen. I thought Lillian would want to wear the necklace, but I never found it.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.
For so much—picking out your best friend's forever outfit at the top of my list.
“It was in her box.” I motioned to the shoebox in my lap. “It was under her bed. These are her mementos.”

Beth looked down at the box. “Do you mind?” she asked.

“No.” I put the box in her lap.

She fingered through the items, slowly, one by one. She picked up a movie ticket stub and grinned. “We got kicked out of the theater for smoking in the back row.”

I widened my eyes in surprise.

“We were the only ones in the theater,” she explained. “Who was it going to hurt?”

I laughed, and so did she. She put the movie stub back and picked up the ski-lift ticket, looking closely at my mom's picture. “We had no business on snow skis. We almost died that first day.” Her smile got bigger. “We dropped out of ski school after a couple of hours. That was our first mistake. Lillian was convinced that since we could water-ski, snow and a mountain wouldn't be a problem. One has very little to do with the other, by the way, but you couldn't talk her out of something once she got the idea.

“Our next mistake was deciding to forgo the bunny slopes because we wanted a real rush. We ended up walking down that mountain carrying our skis. There are pictures somewhere.”

She put down the lift ticket and perused the other items in the box. She touched everything. Picking up my dad's class ring, she said, “I remember the day he gave this to her.” Beth slid it on her finger. “She loved him so much.”

I soaked up her comments, each word a gift. I wanted her to keep picking up different things from the box and tell me something else I didn't know about my mom.

She laughed and picked up a folded piece of paper. It was folded in four and had the words “Top Ten” written on it. “I can't believe she kept one of these.”