While I'm Falling (3 page)

A week after I moved back into the dorm to begin my junior year, she sold the house. The buyer, who apparently had the rare ability to look past an overgrown lawn and plastic-wrapped rooms, wanted to close in thirty days. My mother acted as if she’d won the lottery. She was
excited
about moving into a new apartment, she said. It would be
so nice
to have all the maintenance taken care of, and
so much
less space to clean.

Just a few months later, winter descending again, she started to seem askew. I came to stay with her over Thanksgiving, and most of her things were still in boxes at her new apartment—she said she didn’t have time to unpack. She kept newspapers spread out over much of the carpet in case Bowzer had an accident while she was at work. And then one night, she drove to Lawrence to take me out to dinner, and on the way back from the restaurant, we almost ran out of gas—by the time she realized it, the needle was on empty, and we’d coasted into a station on fumes. These were little things, but together, they were worrisome. They seemed part of a larger unraveling, her good judgment falling away.

Finally, against the probable advice of anyone she might have asked, she started to complain to me about my father. Almost a year had passed since the day of the Sleeping Roofer. But the divorce—or more precisely, the settlement—was far from over. She believed he was hiding money from her. Their lawyers were still battling it out.

“Elise didn’t have to work when she was in school. And she went out of state. It’s ridiculous. He could afford to help you more if he—”

She leaned against her window, her fingers pressed over her mouth. We were in her minivan, parked in the circular drive outside my dorm. The floodlights by the main entrance had just flickered on automatically, tuned in to the dusk that now settled just after six o’clock. The day had been bright and cloudless, and warm for early December. Gold leaves lay dried and broken under the windshield wipers. She had driven to Lawrence to take me out for Thai food; I had a box of leftover Chicken Satay on the floor mat between my feet.

“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “A lot of students work. Most, probably.”

She leaned forward and rested her chin on the steering wheel, gazing out through the partially fogged windshield. Her black knit hat was a little too big; the edge of it fell just above her eyes. She looked befuddled, cute, a child dressed up for a greeting card.

“Sorry,” she said finally. “I shouldn’t bring you into it. You’re right.”

A truck with a camper shell parked in front of us. A stout woman wearing a Kansas City Chiefs jacket got out of the driver’s side and walked around to the back, meeting a girl who had gotten out the other side wearing sweats and a T-shirt. The woman opened the shell and helped the girl take out a basket of folded laundry. They fussed with the basket for a moment, pulling something else out of the truck to cover the clothes. The girl gave the woman a quick kiss and carried the basket up the sidewalk to the front doors.

The truck pulled away, but my mother continued to stare straight ahead.

“Where do you do your laundry?”

I looked at her. She sounded strange, as if she were asking a question with an answer she could not bear.

“Here,” I said. “They have machines in the basement.” I watched the girl with the basket walk up the steps to the front doors. “Some people just do it at home because…I don’t know…they go home.”

“Home,” she repeated.

I rested my head against the cold glass of the passenger door and gazed almost longingly seven floors up to the dark window of my room. I did feel bad for her. I knew her sadness was real. But I was tired, tired in general, and specifically tired of hearing how much she didn’t like all the changes she had brought on herself. Her problems were not my problems. At that particular moment, my problem was this: I had an organic chemistry test in five days, and even if I spent every spare moment until then studying, I was still probably going to fail it.

“I’d better get going,” I said.

“Just stay a little longer, honey. Okay? I hardly ever get to see you.”

“I have to study.”

She patted my knee. “Just a few more minutes. To talk to your mom who just drove an hour to see you.”

“I have to be in the building by six. I’m on duty tonight.”

Her mouth tightened. “It seems like a lot,” she said. “This job seems to take up a lot of time.”

Actually, it didn’t. It should have, maybe; but I wasn’t really doing the job. At the start of the year, I had every intention of being an excellent RA. I hung a sign that said “RA” by my door, and also a message board with a dry erase marker. But now the first semester was nearly over, and I didn’t know the names of most of the girls on my floor. I was too busy. In addition to a lit class and Spanish, I was taking five credit hours of organic chemistry and five more of physiology. I woke every morning with a deep sense of impending doom, a never-ending worry that I should be studying more.

“I don’t mind it,” I said, lying. This year, especially, I hated the dorm. I felt ten years older than everyone else. “And this kind of job looks good on med school applications. Seriously. They tell you to do stuff like this.”

“I just hope you’re spending time on your schoolwork.”

I registered the words, felt my body react: my teeth clenched, my breathing quickened. “Mom. I study. You have no idea how much I study.”

“I’m sure I do have an idea, Veronica. I went to college.”

I ran my tongue along my teeth, looking away. The comparison was too ridiculous to respond to. She had majored in education.

“I just…” She turned to me and sighed. “I imagine you spend a lot of time with Tom.”

“Tim.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“For your information,” I said to her now, “I do not spend all my time with Tim. I hardly spend any time with Tim. I work and I study. All the time.”

“He’s a lot older than you, isn’t he? He’s out of school already?”

“He’s in graduate school. He’s twenty-four.”

“You’re only twenty,” she said, as if I didn’t know. “You should be focusing on yourself right now, on your schoolwork.” She looked away and clicked her tongue. “And twenty-four is significantly older.”

He’s the best part of my life,
I thought. I slid my eyes toward her. “You’re suggesting I go younger?”

She closed her eyes. She looked so unhappy that I felt bad.

“I have to tell you something.”

I looked at her.

“You seem hostile, honey. Are you angry with me?”

“No,” I said, because saying yes would take up too much time.

She straightened her shoulders. “I know this might make you uncomfortable, but it’s important for me that you understand. Whatever your father has told you, I was never…technically, unfaithful in my marriage.”

I winced. There were things I did not want to know about her, images I did not want in my head.

“Veronica. Would you look at me, please?”

I raised both eyebrows. She had spoken with all the authority she’d really had over me several years ago, as if I were fourteen again and she wanted me to unload the dishwasher.

“Please look at me, Veronica. You’re still not allowed to be rude.”

I looked at her. My mother has pretty eyes. They are large and dark, and they make her look friendly and a little concerned, even when she’s mad. I pursed my lips and waited.

“I know your father and his lawyer will make what they want of that note.” She swallowed. “But I at least want you to know that Greg and I never…made love.”

I clapped my hands over my ears.

“Fine.” She fiddled with the knob for the heater. “I just wanted you to know. It was a friendship. It might have turned…later…There were feelings there. There were for me. But we had only talked. We talked a lot. That day he fell asleep—we’d just been talking.”

“In bed?” I shook my head, annoyed with myself. I had just asked her to spare me the details.

“I was unhappy. I was unhappy with the marriage, unhappy in general. It was nice to talk with someone.”

“Then why didn’t you get a divorce then?”
Before you had a sleepover,
I meant. I didn’t need to say it. My tone was condescending, an adult speaking to a child. It felt good, gratifying, and then it didn’t.

She shook her head. That was all. Maybe she had no good answer. That was a difference between my parents. My father spelled everything out, making a clear argument for his indignation; but with my mother, I was left to guess, to piece together clues from my memories. I had had no idea she’d been unhappy. Or rather, I had not really thought of her as happy or unhappy. The last year I lived at home, my mother spent her days driving my grandmother Von Holten to doctor appointments and even to a butcher on the other side of the city that sold pickled pig’s feet, a delicacy that made my mother nauseous but brought her mother-in-law back to her happy girlhood in Queens. My mother learned to read a glucose meter. She became an expert at folding up my grandmother’s wheelchair, putting it in her trunk, getting it out again. Three times a week, they went to an indoor pool, and my mother walked with her through the water.

My father had been appreciative. I remembered him saying so, all the time. He wished he could do more himself, he said, but financially speaking, this wasn’t the year for him to take any time off. Expenses were adding up: Elise was in law school. I would go to college soon. My grandmother’s money had run out, and yet she continued to live. So every day, both my father and my mother were up early, and gone in their respective cars before I caught the bus for school; but at the end of the day, my mother seemed the more tired of the two. After dinner, she would go up to her room, saying she wanted to read; but if I walked by their room after eight, her eyes were usually closed. By the time I went to bed, my father would still be downstairs in his chair, watching the news with Bowzer’s head in his lap.

“My goodness, that’s a big building you live in.” She leaned over the steering wheel to look up at the dorm. Her voice had taken on that chirpy, resolute quality I recognized from a few months back.

“That’s too many.” She clicked her tongue. “It wouldn’t feel homey at all. You know, I don’t know why you didn’t rush, Veronica. I loved my sorority house. There were about thirty of us, living in. We were like a big family. We all took turns making dinner, setting the table. It was so much fun.”

I said nothing. It was not a surprise to hear that my mother had loved this.

She looked down at my boots. “Oh good! You’re wearing them. How are they?”

“They’re great,” I said. “Thank you.” She had given me the boots for my birthday. They were nice, stylish, maybe expensive. She got a good discount at DeBeck’s, though she only worked full-time during school vacations. When school was in session, she took substitute teaching jobs during the day, and worked at DeBeck’s on evenings and weekends.

“I like your hair like that.” She lifted a long strand from my shoulder. “It’s very grown-up looking. You’re straightening it?” Her hand moved over her own curls.

I shifted in my seat. I needed to go. I wanted to go. But I could tell that there was something else she wanted to say. She looked coiled up, ready to spring, her fingers tapping the steering wheel.

She turned to me. “Christmas is coming up.”

I nodded. I wished it weren’t true, but it was.

“Elise doesn’t know if she’s coming home,” she said. “Or here, I mean. Her home is there now, I suppose.” She laughed a little, and then stopped. “Anyway, it might be just the two of us, if you come to my apartment. We could go out for dinner. Or a movie. That might be fun.” Her eyes moved over mine. “But if you already have plans…with your father, that’s fine, too. You could stay with me, but eat with him. Or you could stay with him, and eat with me. That would be fine, too.”

I looked back up at the dorm. In two weeks, it would close for winter break, and it would stay closed for a month. The year before, I’d loved going home for break. I’d gone back to the house on the cul-de-sac, and slept in my old room, my old bed. This year, no matter where I stayed, would be different. My father’s new condo had a guest room with a fold-out couch. At my mother’s little apartment, I slept in a sleeping bag.

“Can I get back to you on that?” I asked. I didn’t want to promise anything. I’d stayed with my mother for Thanksgiving, so it seemed I should stay with my father over Christmas.

I straightened up. “How’s Bowzer?” I asked. “How come you didn’t bring him?”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t like to be in the car now that it’s getting colder, I think.” She leaned forward and fiddled with the heater again. “I’ve got to get him in to the vet. He’s stiff. He sleeps all the time. And he’s so cranky.”

“He’s old.”

“No. It’s more than that. I’ve got to take him in.” She nodded as if making a decision. “But don’t worry about that.” She looked out into the night sky. “So what are you going to do tonight?”

I rolled my lips together. There was no point in talking. She did not hear me. “I’m going to study,” I said slowly. “I’m going to study like I do every night.”

“Oh. What are you going to study?”

“Chemistry. I have a test on Tuesday.”

“Honey. It’s only Wednesday.”

I looked at her.
Make up your mind,
I wanted to say.
Make up your mind about how I should be.

She patted my leg. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She held her hand up to the heating vent. “Your sister is always busy. Always worried about the next big case, the next big meeting, can’t talk on the phone, she’s got to work. But you both always do fine.” She sounded sad, her voice wrong for the words. “You both always do so well.”

“Not anymore.”

“What?” She leaned forward to look at me.

“Nothing.”

“Honey. Tell me what you just said.” She reached over and pulled her old move, tickling beneath my chin until I raised it.

I held up both hands to the dash. “I just…You don’t understand the way that it’s hard. The test.”

She leaned back. “Oh.”

We sat without talking for maybe a minute, listening to the idling engine. Three girls walked arm-in-arm across the lawn. They were coming from the direction of the dining hall, their faces bowed against the wind. I thought I recognized one of them from my floor. I couldn’t be sure.

“I’d better go in,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “On duty.”

I opened the door, but her hand fell on the sleeve of my coat. She held tight until I turned back.

“Don’t forget your leftovers.” She nodded at the paper box of Chicken Satay. “But, honey, if you don’t have a refrigerator you can put that in, you should probably just throw it away. You don’t want to mess with food poisoning.”

“Gotcha.” I stepped out of the van with the box.

She reached for my sleeve. I turned back.

“Honey.” Her face was pale in the interior light. “I just want you to know that…” She kept her hand on the sleeve, holding me there. “I know I’m a little bit…maybe kind of a mess right now. But I still love you so much. I’m still here for you.”

For just a moment, it felt like before, when she was just my mother, her gaze so focused and full of love and worry for me. But even now that she was smiling at me and saying these nice words, I could see something wasn’t right, or at least not the same. My eyes moved over her face in a slow spiral. She’d stopped getting her hair done, getting it highlighted, whatever she used to do to it. I could see strands of gray even in the semidarkness of her car. I said nothing. I didn’t want to interrupt her. I wanted to believe what she was saying was true.

“And maybe I don’t understand the way that test will be hard, but I’m still rooting for you. I want you to do great.” She squeezed my arm and smiled. “You’ve got your whole life in front of you. I just want you to make good decisions. It’s so important for you to make good decisions right now.”

I nodded, my eyes on hers. Her eyes, at least, had not changed, and so I made certain they were the last thing I noticed before I shut the door. When I got to the dorm’s front entrance, I could still hear the idling engine of her van. Whenever she dropped me off after dark, she always waited, headlights shining, until I was safely inside.