Hope and Other Luxuries (40 page)

My heart melted completely. How adorable was
that
!

Valerie asked Elena to be her maid of honor, which was lovely in light of their old feud. But it also brought tension to the surface.

“You need to talk to Valerie!” Elena told me on the phone a couple of weeks later. “Aside from wanting to be barefoot at the beach, she hasn't made any decisions at all about this wedding. She's got to pin down a date. Maybe she can take off anytime she wants from her department store job, but I have to plan ahead. I've got two jobs to work and a full semester coming up.”

More than the words, I picked up on the ragged edge in Elena's voice. That brought out the worrier in me again.

“Oh! Two jobs?” I said. “I thought you were quitting your mall job to do the RA thing.”

“There's no need,” Elena said. “I can make more money this way. You want me to be independent, don't you?”

“Well, you know I want you to get a little rest this summer. You keep getting sick!”

And I couldn't keep the flutter of anxiety and reproach out of my voice, even though I knew she hated it.

“Chill
out
, Mom! I can handle it!”

Sure enough, she had heard that flutter.

Why couldn't I leave my daughter alone and quit badgering her about her choices? Was I really one of those dreaded helicopter parents?

By the end of June, Elena was busy enough that we rarely got to see her anymore, so Joe and I met her for lunch one day at a restaurant near her dorm. As I hugged her hello, panic shivered through me. I could feel ribs. I could feel spine. And Elena was pale again—sickly pale. She had a washed-out, anemic look.

The place was busy. Old-time advertising signs on the walls and waitresses in baseball caps—it was supposed to look homey. Actually, it was a massive chain, and the dining room held a couple of hundred people. That saddened me. I missed the little European restaurants, the ones with about ten tables. They actually
were
homey.

While we waited on long wooden benches for our name to be called, Elena dazzled us with stories of RA work. She enjoyed it, and she was good at it. She was pretty sure she was becoming a favorite of the RA managers, too—a set of young people who each controlled several of the dorms.

“We got a complaint about this one room,” Elena said. “The roommates said it smelled so bad they couldn't stand to live there. It wasn't my floor, but the RA in charge of it doesn't like confrontation, so she talked me into going in with her. We were walking down the hall, and you could smell it already. Something strange—like garbage, but worse.

“‘What
is
that?' my friend asks.

“Then the guy opens the door, and this
wall
of stink hits us. It was so bad, it was like the air looked dirty. It felt as if we were looking through a haze, but it was probably just our eyeballs saying,
No, please! Don't open me in here! It's not safe!

“This guy had a hot plate set up in the kitchenette, and he had these jars everywhere—
everywhere
! Jars of fish oil, jars of sauces, sitting out, sitting right in sunlight, oily brown, with these weird blobs floating in them—it straight up
stank
in the whole place like rotting fish. The other RA couldn't stand it! She had to run out. I thought she was going to throw up in the hall.”

My imagination pulled up the whole scene for me: beige dorm walls coated with that dirty, oily stink, the jars, the blobs, the light green face of the RA as she ran from the room . . .

I loved that! I loved Elena's stories.

But once we got to our table, Elena switched to an activity I found more worrisome these days: sketching out plans for her nursing school future. Planning was good, but Elena, like her father, tended to be a bit of a pessimist. She saw the future through gloom-colored glasses. It wasn't
open doors and opportunities; to her, it was an obstacle course. And nursing school was an obstacle course with forty-foot-high walls.

The waitress took our drink orders and brought us a hunk of bread on a cutting board. Elena pushed it aside.

“Here's my grades so far in the prenursing classes,” she said, writing out numbers on her paper napkin. “Composition, Intro to Psych, Developmental Psych, Nutrition, Anatomy. I haven't taken Physiology yet; that's a blank.” She drew a line and wrote
Physiology
. “Now, the nursing school liaison says that five years ago, these grades would have been good enough to get me in. But not now. They're getting more applicants than they used to.”

“They're all As and Bs,” I pointed out.

“They should have been all As!”

Joe and I were hearing more and more about this lately. Elena had begun fretting constantly about whether or not she would get into nursing school. In her mind, she was already grappling with that letter of rejection. Sometimes, it seemed as if she were already living through the shame and disgrace of it.

“I'm sure you'll be fine,” I said as I sawed off slices of bread. This didn't seem like a good topic for us to be talking about right before a meal, and I could see already that Elena was struggling to eat again. I handed her a piece of bread, and she dropped it on her plate as if it had burned her. “So, what else is going on?” I asked.

“I got a new job,” Elena said proudly.

“Congratulations!” was Joe's response.

“Oh!
Another
job?” was mine.

I could hear the flutter of worry in my voice again, and I tried to steady and brighten it. But Elena was working two jobs already!

“It's just that—when do you have time for more work?”

“It's no trouble,” Elena said. “It fits in the schedule because it's at night.” And she named a posh gym across town. “It's not hard,” she said. “It's a lot easier working there at night than during the day. Not very many people come in after one in the morning.”

Joe looked interested. “That place is supposed to be beautiful,” he said.

“Tell me about it! We have five pools. It looks nicer than a bank!”

The waiter brought our entrées. Chicken-fried steak for Joe, chicken with mixed vegetables for me, and spaghetti for Elena. No matter where we went, she ordered spaghetti. She'd done that since she was a little girl.

I used the interruption to try to figure out how to react.
You're supposed to be recharging!
is what I wanted to say, but I knew what would happen if I said it.

“The thing is . . . ,” I began.

“Oh, here it comes,” Elena commented to her father. “I knew Mom would find something to gripe about.”

My heart sank. I was back to being the evil witch again. Why? I didn't want to be! But I held on to my poker face and didn't show my hurt. I tried to put together a persuasive argument—not that I had
ever
managed to persuade Elena to do anything.

“It's just that staying up all night is hard on the body,” I said. “You have trouble sleeping already, and you just said you don't feel hungry. Well, keeping the body awake at night throws it off in all kinds of ways. It affects appetite, number of hours of sleep, everything.”

The argument certainly convinced me. It made me worry even more. I knew that others of us might listen to our bodies and make up for that lost sleep. But Elena? When it came to taking cues from her body, that girl was completely tone-deaf.

“I eat just fine,” Elena said emphatically. But she didn't look it. She was eating her spaghetti, but not the sauce. All the meat was falling off to the sides.

If I was already the evil witch, I might as well say it.

“You're doing too much, Elena. You promised when you took all those classes in the spring that you'd take a break in summer and rest up.”

“I
am
resting up,” she said. “I'm not taking summer school.”

“Three jobs isn't resting!”

I could hear it in my voice: that whiny, nagging edge. I hated to hear it, too, but I couldn't help it. She drove me to it! All the frustration I'd felt during Elena's senior year resurfaced.
Why
was she doing this to herself?
Why
was she doing this to
me
?

“You know,” Elena said, “most people would be happy if their children got a job. No matter what I do, you're never satisfied!”

The same old song
, I thought. But I kept quiet.

“It's only a summer job, Mom. It's just for a few weeks. I think I can handle staying awake nights for a few weeks!”

We finished our meals—or at least, Joe and I finished our meals. Then we hugged Elena good-bye, and she drove off in her dusty tan Elantra. I went back home to my adoring little dog and my piano and my writing. But worry—the same old worry—followed me home.

It followed me from room to room. It got between Martin and me when I tried to revise his manuscript. It floated in the air in front of the keys when I sat down to play the piano.

But I didn't do anything about it. I just kept it to myself.
I need to quit hovering
, I thought.

A couple of weeks later, Valerie called up. “Hey, I've got some news,” she said in her abrupt, practical way. “Clint and I are having a baby.”

“Oh!”

Valerie knew better than most young women what sort of reaction this comment would get. She knew she wouldn't face a lecture. She knew I would be too busy remembering a similar phone call—a call I myself had had to make.

I remembered that call. I remembered the disbelief. I remembered the disappointment. But more than anything, what I remembered was my own fierce determination. I had been scared—no, I had been more than scared, I had been petrified! But I had made a promise to this scary new ghost who had just joined me in my graduate school apartment.

You will not be the one to suffer
, I had said.
This was my mistake, not yours. No matter what we decide we need to do, you will come
first.
You will have a family, and you will have a loving home
.

That scary new nameless person haunting my life, that morning nausea and surprising result on the pregnancy test—that baby who, no matter what, was going to come
first
—

That baby had been Valerie.

“Oh!” I said, caught up in past fears and present worries. “What . . . what are you going to do?” And my mind immediately started running down the list:
High school diplomas, low-paying jobs, fleabag apartment
 . . .

I didn't have to say it. Valerie knew what I was thinking about.

“We're not worried about money,” she assured me. “Don't worry, we don't need money. Clint and I know how to get by on nothing.”

“But babies cost a lot more than nothing,” I said.
No insurance, no employee benefits
 . . .

My imagination showed me snapshots of Valerie's own tiny nursery, with its handmade mobile and big paper animals that I had found in a teacher's store somewhere. It all seemed so dingy and dreary in those memories, with only baby Valerie herself to brighten the room.

Joe and I had had so little!

And that was with two college diplomas, an engineer's salary, and health insurance!

“I know, I know, it's not the greatest time,” Valerie said. “But we're halfway there. Clint's only got three more college classes to go before the Air Force lets him in. And you know Clint. He'll get through them.”

“That's true,” I said with a feeling of relief. Clint was the sort of man who
would
get through them.

“Clint and I are used to being poor,” Valerie reminded me. “When we didn't have a car, we used to catch a ride into town and go to the dollar movies. When we didn't have two dollars, which was a lot of the time, we'd go to the bookstore and read. Compared to back then, we're rolling in it. And hey, now we don't have to plan a big wedding!”

Valerie's voice was jaunty, but I could hear the edge of strain in it.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Oh,
you
know,” she answered. “I've had better days. I'm starting to feel pretty sick. And I haven't smoked a cigarette in three hours now, so I kind of want to punch somebody in the face.”

Valerie without cigarettes was not a pretty picture. I'd seen that picture before.

“How's Clint?” I asked next.

“Clint's pretty thrilled about the baby,” Valerie said. “Which, right now, kind of makes me want to punch
him
in the face.”

“Well, I think you'll want to resist that urge,” I said. “It'll get better in a couple of days, when the withdrawal symptoms ebb.” And the two of us said good-bye.

A few minutes later, my phone rang again. This time, it was Elena.

“Did you hear about Valerie?” she demanded, and her voice was genuinely angry. “Oh my God! I can't believe it. You know Valerie's not ready to handle this.”

“It's going to be hard on them,” I agreed. “They'll need support to get through it. Fortunately, Clint's mom and stepfather are nearby. I know they'll help all they can.”

“I can't believe it!” Elena said again. “Really. I can't believe it!”

I was worried for Valerie and Clint, but Elena was sounding much more upset than I was. Her exemplary work as a resident assistant had impressed the managers, and she had earned an RA job slot in the fall. She had a tidy sum in savings from her jobs at the mall and the gym. She would have free room and board all next year. But I could hear for myself how high a price she had paid. She sounded sick, stressed, miserable, and exhausted.

The three jobs, the being awake day and night—Elena had overdone it again. This summer that was supposed to recharge her had run her completely ragged. And in another week, she would be back in the classroom, stressing over grades. She was taking another crushing course load.