Chapter 42

42

Cecilia’s not here.” My father’s words were meant to be stern but I heard a ripple in his voice. “I don’t know where she is.” He placed the receiver on the phone cradle with a shaking hand. I’d been watching from the hallway. He had lied to the person on the other end. My mother was home and hadn’t left her bed in a while. I didn’t know why, or why my father needed to lie to whoever kept calling for her. The one time I had reached for the phone before him, he knocked it out of my hand, as though the voice on the other end would burn my ear.

He brought her soup and water and crackers. I asked if she had the stomach flu.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

I was in the way. He passed me on the stairs, his back hunched over the tray he carefully carried to her. I hadn’t seen my mother for days, not since she’d been dressed up for one of her nights out in the city. She was going out more often by then, gone overnight, sometimes two. Her disappearing act. I listened from my room but couldn’t make out their words that night. She sounded weak and tearful and he was patient and calm. I tiptoed closer to their door.

“You need help.”

And then a crash. A dish. She had thrown the bowl of soup. I jumped out of my father’s path as he swung open the door in search of a cloth. I looked in the room and saw her in bed, upright, eyes closed. Her arms folded across her chest. I saw the same plastic bracelet I’d seen the year before on Mrs. Ellington when the baby in her stomach hadn’t made it. My mother was thin, though, her waist the size of mine at eleven years old, and there wasn’t any chance she wanted another child. I went to my room and got ready for bed, hoping to hear them continue the argument so I could piece together what was going on. I fell asleep to the sound of my mother crying.

In the morning I went to the bathroom to pee. The house was still quiet—my father hadn’t stirred from the couch yet. I opened the toilet. The bowl was filled with blood and what looked like the guts of the mice the neighbor’s cat sometimes left on our front porch. My mother’s underwear was beside the toilet. I picked them up and saw that the heavy brown stains were dried blood.

“Dad? What’s wrong with Mom?”

My father was standing over the pot of coffee, still wearing his clothes from the night before. He didn’t answer me. He fetched the paper from outside the front door and tossed it onto the table.

“Dad?”

“She had a procedure.”

I poured myself cereal and ate quietly. The phone rang as he flipped through newspaper sections, drinking his coffee. I stood to answer.

“Leave it, Blythe.”

“Seb!”

He sighed and shoved his chair back. He poured a cup of coffee for her and left the kitchen. The phone rang again and, without thinking, I answered.

“I need to talk to her.”

“Pardon?” I’d heard just fine but didn’t know what else to say.

“Sorry. Wrong number.” The man hung up. I heard my father’s footsteps come down the stairs and I quickly turned back to my cereal.

“Did you answer that?”

“No.”

He looked at me for a long time. He knew I was lying.

Before I left for school I went to my mother’s door and knocked softly. I wanted to see for myself if she looked okay.

“Come in.” She was drinking the coffee and staring out her window. “You’re going to be late for school.”

I stood in the door frame and thought of sitting beside Mrs. Ellington when she showed me her swollen stomach. My mother had the same strange smell. Two new containers of pills were on the nightstand. She looked tired and puffy. She’d taken off the hospital bracelet I’d seen the day before. The top of her hand looked badly bruised.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the window.

“Yes, Blythe.”

“There was blood in the bathroom.”

She looked surprised, like she’d forgotten that I lived in the house, too.

“Never mind that.”

“Was it from a baby?”

Her eyes lifted from the window and found a spot on the ceiling. I saw her swallow.

“Why would you say that?”

“Mrs. Ellington. She had a baby that didn’t make it.”

My mother finally looked at me. And then through me. She blew air through her teeth and looked back to her window, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I immediately regretted telling my mother about Mrs. Ellington. I wished I could shovel the words back into my mouth—I didn’t want my mother anywhere near my relationship with her. It was the only thing I had in my life that was sacred. I left the room and went to school and when I got home everything seemed to be back to normal. My mother was standing in the kitchen, burning dinner on the stove. My father was pouring a drink. The phone on the wall rang, and he picked up the receiver to hit the hook and then let it dangle. We listened to the faint dial tone while we ate.