room. I wonder if there’s a way to sort of…rig up a separate thermostat.”
His brain really did work like this. There had been many times when, in the middle of a conversation about, say, our relationship or my feelings, he would be suddenly distracted by some question about a building’s circuitry or heating and cooling system. It was like a tic he couldn’t help. Still, in this instance, I was pretty sure he was acting. He was changing the subject to give me some time, to remove any immediate pressure.
And then, because it seemed so simple, so logical, and, more than anything, so true, I said, “I’d like to live with you.”
My cell phone beeped on my desk. We both looked at it.
“You going to get that?”
I shook my head. “But I don’t know. Not about the phone, I mean. I mean about moving in. I need to think. I just need time to think.”
“Sure. Yeah. Of course.” He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “When do you have to reapply for this for next year?”
“January.” My cell phone had stopped beeping. Above us, the reggae song ended, then started again.
I woke in darkness, my comforter pulled over my head. I turned on the lamp beside my bed and saw it was quarter past two. I had a Post-it note stuck to my cheek.
Sleep well. Enjoy the Jacuzzi. Drive carefully. Love you.
Beside the word “you,” he’d drawn a cartoon rabbit who looked just a little bit like me, in a neurotic, stressed out kind of way. I stood up and set it carefully on my desk, propped up against my calculator so I would be able to see it. My physiology book was open to the same page I had been looking at before Tim came over, but the dog shark diagram seemed completely unfamiliar, the words swimming together before my eyes. I had to sleep. I would learn about dog sharks in the morning, either before or after the drive to the airport. There would be time. There would have to be time.
I had started back to bed when I remembered that someone had called earlier. I sat on my bed and thumbed in my security code.
“Hey, it’s your big sister. I know it’s late there. Sorry. Are you in bed?” There was a pause. “Forget it. I don’t need to know. Listen, I want to know if you’ve talked to Mom lately. I just called her, and she sounded weird. Even for her. She was talking about changing her name to Natalie Wood. Maybe she was kidding. But she didn’t sound like she was kidding. Veronica, she sounded kind of…crazy. I’m worried she’s having some kind of breakdown.”
I yawned and moved the phone to my other ear. My sister was a little behind the times. My mother had been having some kind of breakdown for the last year. It was nice that Elise had finally realized this all the way out in San Diego.
“I don’t know any of her new neighbors. So. I’m hoping you can at least call her. But I wish you could go see her. I know you don’t have a car. But…I don’t know. Something is going on, Veronica. I’ve never heard her like this. Okay. Call me. Call me back tonight. I’ll be up.”
I set my phone down and crossed the room to my bed, turning off the lamp. It was too late to call California, or too early, whatever. And I was tired. I had enough in my life to worry about without having to wake my mother up only to affirm that she was still unhappy, still full of regret, still unsure of what to do with herself. The truth was, she was all of these things because of very bad decisions she’d made. As my father said, she was lying down in the bed she’d made. And so, steeled against her and very sleepy, I lay down in my own.
4
HER DAUGHTER HAD CALLED her crazy. Or told her she was acting crazy. (I did not call you crazy, Elise-the-lawyer would say. I said you were acting crazy.) True. And, Natalie admitted, thinking back, maybe she had sounded a little unhinged just now on the phone. She had been talking to Elise about her last name, about how she was considering a change. “Just something I’ve been thinking about,” she’d said, bending down to pet the dog, trying to sound cheerful. Just before the phone rang, Natalie had actually been thinking