Chương 10
It was the first time Nathan could remember hearing his mother surrender control without disguising it as strategy.
That afternoon, Lauren called him.
“I need you to come.”
Nathan stood so fast his chair hit the wall.
“What happened?”
“Mia wants to ask you something.”
That was not what he had expected.
“Where?”
Lauren gave him the address of a small apartment building in Queens.
Nathan arrived alone.
He wore jeans and a gray sweater because his suit suddenly felt like a costume.
Lauren opened the door.
Her apartment was clean, warm, and smaller than Nathan’s bedroom.
A drying rack stood near the radiator.
Shoes were lined against one wall.
The kitchen table had math worksheets, a mug filled with pencils, and an unopened electric bill.
Nathan noticed all of it and hated himself for noticing it as evidence of anything.
This was simply where they lived.
Mia sat at the table.
She had changed into pink pajama pants and an oversized school sweatshirt.
Her hair was down.
She looked younger.
Nathan stayed near the door.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Lauren pointed to a chair.
“You can sit.”
He did.
Mia had Daniel’s letters spread on the table.
Four of them.
Nathan felt his chest tighten.
“I want to know if he was bad,” Mia said.
Lauren closed her eyes.
“Mia.”
“What?”
“We talked about this.”
“I know.”
Nathan looked at Lauren.
She leaned against the counter.
“I told her Daniel had problems.”
Mia frowned.
“She said drugs.”
Nathan nodded.
“He did.”
“Did he steal?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did he hurt people?”
Nathan thought carefully.
“Yes.”
Mia looked down.
Not the answer she wanted.
Lauren watched him.
Nathan continued.
“He also tried to get better. A lot.”
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Did he get better?”
“Not enough.”
The girl folded one corner of a letter.
Lauren reached over and flattened it.
“Don’t.”
“Sorry.”
Nathan waited.
Mia asked, “Would he have liked me?”
There were answers adults gave children because children needed them.
Nathan could have said yes.
Daniel would have loved you.
He could have said it beautifully.
He did not know if it was true.
Daniel had loved many people and still failed them.
Nathan leaned forward.
“I think he would have wanted to.”
Mia looked confused.
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
Lauren stared at him.
Nathan kept going.
“My brother could love people very much and still make things hard for them. He could be funny. He could be selfish. Sometimes in the same five minutes.”
Mia’s mouth twitched.
“He wrote that Mom snored.”
Lauren straightened.
“I do not.”
Mia handed Nathan a letter.
There it was.
Lauren snores like an outboard motor.
Nathan laughed.
Lauren grabbed for the page.
“Mia.”
Mia pulled it away.
For a few seconds, all three of them were laughing.
It felt wrong.
Then it felt worse to think it should be wrong.
Nathan looked around the tiny kitchen and suddenly remembered Daniel at nineteen, leaning over the sink at their parents’ house and eating cereal directly from the mixing bowl because all the normal bowls were in the dishwasher.
The memory arrived without warning.
It did not hurt as much as Nathan expected.
Mia pushed another letter toward him.
“This one says your name.”
Nathan read it.
Nate is going to hate this because he hates everything that makes life messy. He’s twenty-one going on fifty. But he’s decent. Don’t tell him I said that or he’ll become unbearable.
Nathan put the paper down.
Lauren was watching him.
“He knew you,” she said.
Nathan looked at the handwriting.
“Sometimes.”
There were tears in his eyes.
He hated that.
Not because crying embarrassed him.
Because he had spent eight years thinking grief was finished merely because it no longer interrupted meetings.
Mia noticed.
She did not say anything.
Instead she got up, opened the refrigerator, and took out a bottle of orange juice.
“Do you want some?”
Nathan cleared his throat.
“Sure.”
She poured too much into a glass.
It sloshed over the edge.
Lauren handed her a towel.
Nobody turned the spill into meaning.
They drank orange juice.
Later Lauren showed Nathan the last letter.
Daniel had written it five days before he died.
He said he had checked himself into a treatment program in Connecticut.
He said Eleanor believed Lauren should stop seeing him until he had been stable for six months.
He said Eleanor was probably right and that he hated her for being right.
Then:
I want the baby to know I tried before she ever has to know how badly I failed.
Nathan read that sentence three times.
“She?” he asked.
Lauren nodded.
“We knew.”
“He knew Mia was a girl?”
“Yes.”
Nathan sat back.
His mother had known too.
That night he went to Eleanor’s apartment.
She opened the door herself.
She wore reading glasses and a navy robe.
For a second Nathan saw not the woman who could silence a ballroom, but his mother interrupted before bed.
“Come in.”
He did.
The apartment had not changed since his father died.
Same art.
Same chairs nobody seemed to sit in.
Same silver bowl near the entrance where Eleanor placed her keys.
Nathan used to steal peppermints from it as a child.
There were no peppermints now.
He followed her into the kitchen.
“Tea?”
“No.”
“I’m having some.”
“Fine.”
She filled the kettle.
Nathan watched.
“You knew she was a girl.”
Eleanor’s hand stopped.
Then continued.
“Yes.”
“Daniel told you.”
“Yes.”
“Five days before he died, he wrote Lauren from treatment.”
His mother set the kettle down.
“He left treatment the next day.”
Nathan stared at her.
“What?”
“He stayed three nights.”
Lauren had not known that.
“Why?”
“He called me.”
Nathan’s stomach tightened.
Eleanor sat at the kitchen table.
For once, she did not make him ask twice.
“He wanted me to drive him to Lauren’s apartment.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he was high.”
Nathan stood still.
“He told me he was sober.”
“He lied.”
“Were you sure?”
“Yes.”
May you like
“How?”
“I had spent eleven years learning.”
