Sing You Home: A Novel Read online

  I was quite sure she was dead.

  I took a step forward. Lila was incredibly still, and faintly blue in the eerie light. I thought of my father, and how he collapsed on the lawn. I was gathering the loose threads of a scream in my throat, when suddenly Lila rolled over in one languid move, scaring the hell out of me. “Get lost, you little shit,” she said, her words as round and thin as bubbles, popping as soon as they hit the air.

  I do not remember the rest of that night. Except that I ran home, even though it was three in the morning.

  And that, after what happened, Ellie and I were never really friends anymore.

  When I was in high school, my mother used to make up alternate names for the kids I invited over to our house. Robin became Bonnie, Alice became Elise, Suzy became Julie. No matter how many times I corrected her, she preferred to call these girls by names that felt comfortable to her, instead of what was accurate. After a while, my friends even started answering to whatever she called them.

  Which is why it’s so extraordinary to me that my mother has never—not once—messed up Vanessa’s name. The two of them hit it off the moment they first met. There is no end to the things they have in common; and they seem to think it’s funny that it drives me crazy.

  It’s been two months since Vanessa and I bumped into each other at the Y, and she has slipped seamlessly into the role of my closest friend at a time when I desperately needed it—since my former closest friend happened to have recently divorced me. So much of a friendship is like a love affair—the novelty and sparkle wearing down at the edges to become something comfortable and predictable, like the cardigan you take out of your drawer on a rainy Sunday because you need to surround yourself with something cozy and familiar. Vanessa is the one I call when I am procrastinating on organizing my taxes; when I am channel surfing and find Dirty Dancing on TNT and cannot stop watching; when the homeless guy in front of Dunkin’ Donuts looks at the five-dollar bill I’ve given him and asks if he can have it in ones. She’s the one I call when I’m bored in traffic on I-95, and when I’m crying because a two-year-old patient with burns over eighty percent of his body dies in the middle of the night. I’ve programmed her cell number into my phone, on the speed-dial key that used to belong to Max.

  It is easy, with twenty-twenty hindsight, to see how I got to a point where I didn’t really have any friends. There’s that necessary shift that comes with marriage, when your best confidant is now the one you’re sleeping with at night. But then the other women I knew all started having babies, and I distanced myself from them out of self-preservation and jealousy. Max was the only one who understood what I so badly wanted and needed. Or so I’d told myself.

  Here’s what girlfriends do for you: they provide the reality check. They are the ones who tell you when you have spinach between your teeth or when your ass looks fat in a pair of jeans or when you’re being a bitch. They tell you, and there’s no drama or agenda, like there would be if the message had come from your husband. They tell you the truth because you need to hear it, but it doesn’t alter the bond between you. I don’t think I realized how much I missed that, until now.

  Right now, Vanessa and I are about to be late to a movie because my mother is talking about a breakthrough with one of her clients. “So, I bought two dozen bricks and loaded them in the back of my car,” my mother is saying. “And then, when we got to the cliff, I had Deanna write on each of the bricks with a Sharpie marker—keywords, you know, that signified her emotional baggage.”

  “Brilliant,” Vanessa says.

  “You think? So she writes My Ex on one. And Never made peace with my sister on another. And Didn’t lose last 20 pounds after having kids, and so on. I’m telling you, Vanessa, she went through three markers alone. And then I got her on the edge of the cliff and had her hurl the bricks, one at a time. I told her that the minute they hit the water, that weight was going to be off her shoulders for good.”

  “Sure hope there wasn’t a humpback migration going on below the cliff,” I murmur, tapping my foot impatiently. “Look, I hate to break up the professional development session, but we’re about to miss the early showing—”

  Vanessa stands up. “I think it’s a terrific idea, Dara,” she says. “You ought to write it up and submit it to a professional journal.”

  My mother’s cheeks pinken. “Honestly?”

  I grab my purse and my jacket. “Are you going to let yourself out?” I ask my mother.

  “No, no,” she says, getting to her feet. “I’ll just go home.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come along?” Vanessa asks.

  “I’m sure my mother’s got better things to do,” I say quickly, and give her a quick hug. “I’ll call you in the morning,” I say, and I drag Vanessa out of the apartment.

  Halfway to the car, Vanessa turns around. “I forgot something,” she says, tossing me the keys. “I’ll be right back.” So I let myself into the convertible and turn the ignition. I am surfing the channels of her radio when she slips into the driver’s seat. “Okay,” Vanessa says, backing out of the driveway. “Who spit in your Cheerios?”

  “Well, what were you thinking, inviting my mom to come with us?”

  “That she’s all alone on a Saturday night?”

  “I’m forty, Vanessa—I don’t want to hang out with my mother!”

  “You would if you couldn’t,” Vanessa says.

  I look at her. In the dark, the reflection from the rearview mirror casts a yellow mask around her eyes. “If you miss your mother so much, you can have mine,” I say.

  “I’m just saying you don’t have to be so mean.”

  “Well, you don’t have to enable her, either. Did you seriously think her brick exercise was a good one?”

  “Sure. I’d use it myself, except the kids would probably write the names of their teachers on the bricks they’re tossing, and that wouldn’t be very constructive.” She pulls up to a stop sign and turns to me. “You know, Zoe, my mother used to tell me the same story five times. Without fail. I was constantly saying, Ma, yes, I know, and rolling my eyes. And now—I can’t even really remember her voice. I think sometimes I’ve got it, in my head, but then it fades before I can ever really hear it. Sometimes, I put on old videotapes just so I don’t completely forget how she sounds, and I listen to her telling me to get a serving spoon for the potatoes, or singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ Right now, I’d kill to have her tell me a story five times. I’d settle for even once.”

  I know, halfway through her story, that I am going to cave in. “Is this what you do with the kids in school?” I sigh. “Make them see themselves for the petty, nasty people they really are?”

  “If I think it’s going to work,” she says, smiling.

  I turn on my cell phone. “I’ll tell my mother to meet us at the theater.”

  “She’s already coming. That’s why I ran back into the house—to invite her.”

  “Were you really so sure I’d change my mind?”

  “Give me a break.” Vanessa laughs. “I even know what you’re going to order at the concession counter.”

  She probably does. Vanessa is like that—if you say or do something once, it sticks in her memory so that she will be able to reference it the next time it’s necessary. Like how I once mentioned I don’t like olives, and then, a month later at a restaurant when we were given a basket of olive bread, she asked for crackers instead before I could even make a comment.

  “Just for the record,” I say, “there’s still a lot about me you don’t know.”

  “Popcorn, no butter,” Vanessa says. “Sprite.” She purses her lips. “And Goobers, because this is a romantic comedy and those are never quite as good without chocolate.”

  She’s right. Down to the candy.

  I think, not for the first time, that if Max had been even half as observant and attentive as Vanessa, I’d probably still be married.

  When we pull up to the theater, I’m amazed to find a crowd. The movie