spent my whole damn childhood trying to be seen. Did you know I tracked down my mother?” The cough again. “No, you don’t. I never told you. That’s how I got to Rockport at seventeen: I tracked down my mother in Portland—my father was already dead—and I got her to sign the paper I needed to be emancipated. Even at family court, she wasn’t looking at me. Could be she was so strung out she couldn’t focus on anything.”
Mom still held on to the console, not looking at Murphy. “I rode out with an old foster sister to Astoria. That’s where we were headed, and we got car trouble in Rockport, and … God, I fell in love with the place. It was June, and it was the coast, and the weather was perfect, and I could picture myself living there forever, and that was the first time I was okay with being unseen. You know? I finally wanted to be unnoticed and live out the rest of my days in Rockport. No stand-in parents or social worker to perform for. And then I met your dad, and we both got seen. I got what I’d wanted when I was a kid, and it turned out to be hell.”
Murphy’s heart was unsteady, beating too soft one second, too hard the next. She hadn’t ever pictured her mom as a teenager, because Mom didn’t talk about that time, and there were no photos, and why would Murphy ask about it? That was the past. Only, it turned out the past was here, in the Subaru. Mom had been Murphy’s age once, and scared and unseen too. And that teenager was part of Mom, still present, like the freckles on her hands.
Mom hadn’t been seen either. That is, until she’d been seen in the worst possible way. Maybe it sucked a little to be Murphy Sullivan. But maybe it had sucked a lot more to be Leslie Clark.
“This isn’t easy for me.” Mom’s voice bent on the words. “Maybe I’m sharing too much, or I told you girls too little. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, or if this is right. I just figured it out in Florida. I’ve been doing it wrong, you know?”
Murphy didn’t know, exactly. Mom may have once been like Murphy, but Murphy had no idea what it was to be Mom: to get married, lose a husband, raise three children on your own. The endless work, the bills, the insurance calls …
Murphy saw that it wasn’t that Mom cared too little.
It was that the world was too much.
It’s not about me, she thought, looking into her mother’s eyes. It’s about the Enrights and Rockport and a hundred things that happened before I was born. Behind the scenes. Out of sight. This show started a long time ago. I’m showing up after intermission.
Murphy’s lungs felt elastic, swelling out and taking in truckloads of air. She was thinking about Siegfried, and about how easy it was to get distracted with the too muchness of life.
Mom reached across the console, and Murphy took her hand.
“What I can promise you,” said Mom, “is that I’ll try to do better, okay?”
“Yeah,” said Murphy, letting out the air in her stretchy lungs. “We’ll all be better.”
* * *
That night Murphy woke to a knock on her door and a flashlight beam in her eyes.
“Sup, Murph. Get your ass out of bed.”
“Leenie, seriously,” whispered another voice.
Then Claire was at Murphy’s bedside, poking gently at her shoulder. “Sorry to wake you up, but we weren’t going to leave you behind this time.”
“W-where are you going?” Murphy’s words slurred from sleepiness as she propped herself up in bed.
“Straight to hell,” said Eileen, matter-of-factly.
Claire rolled her eyes. “It’s a surprise, okay? Put on your coat, and we’ll go.”
Murphy did as Claire asked, though with confusion. She followed her sisters into the kitchen and out the carport door.
“Does Mom know about this?” she whispered after she’d climbed into the Caravan.
“Don’t worry,” said Claire, at a normal volume now they were safely outside the house. “It’ll be a short trip. She won’t even know we’re gone.”
“Where have I heard that before,” Murphy groused, while her insides danced a tango. Her sisters were going someplace secretly, in the middle of the night. And this time, they’d invited her—no stowing away required.
Eileen placed the key in the van’s ignition and turned. The Caravan started up, and Claire looked back from the passenger seat to say, “Seat belt.”