Dirty Read online

  “I’m still here.”

  I had to swallow, hard, before I could force myself to speak without my voice crumbling. “I need you to go away.”

  “Oh, Elle.” He didn’t ask me why.

  I didn’t want to tell him. What could I say? That shame was easier to bear alone? That seeing his face and knowing he knew what had happened was too much, right now, with my father’s death still so raw?

  “You don’t want me to leave you.” The steadiness of his voice was a comfort that could break me, if I took it.

  “That won’t work this time. I do want you to go. I need you to go, Dan.”

  A soft shuffle on the other side of the door made me think of him, standing as I did, pressed up against the wood. He sighed so heavily I had no trouble hearing it. I heard the clink of keys.

  “I don’t want to go, Elle. Won’t you just let me in? We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to—”

  “No!” My shout echoed in the bathroom, and I winced at the way it bludgeoned my ears. “No, I mean it. I want you to go away! I have to be alone right now!”

  “You don’t have to be alone,” he said quietly.

  “But I want to be,” I told him.

  To that, he seemed to have no answer. I waited, but at last the sound of footsteps led away from the door, the jingle of keys getting fainter and at last, fading away. By the time I came out, most everyone had gone home, leaving behind them the remains of casseroles and cakes I knew I’d be expected to put in containers and freeze.

  Mrs. Cooper had stayed behind. I found her in the kitchen, putting the kettle on and tying an apron around her waist. She turned when I came in, and her smile was meant to warm me but missed a big icy section in the middle of my chest.

  “I put your mother to bed, poor dear, with one of her headache pills. She’s resting. I’ll just get these dishes started.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “Oh, but, my dear, it’s no trouble, really. What are neighbors for if not to help each other out in a time of need?” She smiled and reached for the bottle of dish soap.

  I bent to find the neat stacks of butter tubs my mother used as storage containers, but found instead a cupboard full of matching containers and lids. My muffled noise of surprise drew Mrs. Cooper’s attention.

  “Oh, God love her, your mother,” she said with a chuckle. “She had one of those parties, you know? And she went a bit hog wild, I’d say. She’ll never use more than a few of those at a time, what with it just being her now, but well, I guess they’ll come in handy, won’t they?”

  She indicated the table groaning with the offerings of potato salad and meat loaf, pierogies in butter sauce and carrot cake. “People were so generous. Look at all that food!”

  “You should take some,” I told her. “Maybe Mr. Cooper would like some.”

  “Thanks, honey.” Mrs. Cooper started scrubbing while I started packing. I smoothed a spoon over the top of a mound of tuna salad to finish filling the container.

  “Where’s your young man gone?”

  “I think he had to leave.” Dan had gone, like I’d asked him to. He gave me what I wanted, the way he always did.

  “He seemed nice.” She gave me a birdlike glance. “Your mother seemed to like him.”

  I looked up, startled. “She did?”

  “Oh, yes.” Mrs. Cooper smiled. “Your mother is so very proud of you, you’re all she ever talks about. How well you’re doing with your job, how you’re always getting promotions. How you fixed up that house of yours all on your own, without her help. Yes, she seemed quite impressed by your young man. He has a good job, she said, and is very polite.”

  That didn’t sound like my mother, but I didn’t argue with Mrs. Cooper. I kept my attention focused on filling containers with food and stacking them to be taken to the freezer in the basement.

  “It was so good to see you. It’s been so long. I’m sorry it had to be such a sad occasion. We miss you around here, Fred and I.”

  The stack in front of me doubled and tripled, and I blinked away tears. “That’s nice to hear, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “Ella,” she said gently, but I didn’t turn, “you know we were all sorry about what happened.”

  “My father dug his own grave,” I said. “Not to be rude, but you know it as well as I do.”

  “Not about your dad,” said the woman who’d given me my first copy of The Little Prince. “About Andrew.”

  Sometimes when things break, you can hold them together for a while with string or glue or tape. Sometimes, nothing will hold what’s broken, and the pieces fly all over, and though you think you might be able to find them all again, one or two will always be missing.

  I flew apart. I broke. I shattered like a crystal vase dropped on a concrete floor, and pieces of me scattered all over. Some of them I was glad to see go. Some I never wanted to see again.

  I sobbed, and Mrs. Cooper rubbed my back and let me do it.

  It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator of The Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Mrs. Cooper told me, stroking my hair the way she’d done when I was a little girl and had run into her kitchen for a cookie and tripped and scraped my knee instead. “None of it was your fault. Stop blaming yourself, honey.”

  “What good is it to stop blaming myself,” I sobbed, “when she still does?”

  And for that Mrs. Cooper had no answer.

  Dan left ten messages before I called him back. I know the number of times I lifted the phone to return his calls, but I’m too embarrassed to say it. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was fine for Mrs. Cooper to tell me not to blame myself, but I couldn’t do that any more than I could face Dan. I didn’t want him to see something different in his eyes when he looked at me.“I can’t see you anymore,” I said finally when I’d managed to finish dialing and stay on the line long enough for him to answer. “I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I can’t do this. Us. I can’t do it, Dan.”

  I heard the sound of his breathing, this time separated by a far greater distance than a wooden bathroom door.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I want you to say okay.”

  His voice hardened a bit. “I won’t say it’s okay, because it’s not. If you want to break up with me, Elle, then do it. But I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

  “I’m not asking you to make it easy for me!” I bit out the words, pacing as I talked.

  “That’s exactly what you’re doing.”

  “So then do it!” I cried.

  “No,” he said after what seemed like forever. “I can’t, Elle. I wish I could. But I can’t.”

  I sat down on the floor because the chair was too far to walk. “I’m sorry, Dan.”

  “Yeah,” he said, like he didn’t believe me. “Me, too.”

  I wanted to hang up, but couldn’t make myself do it. “Goodbye, Dan.”

  “You don’t have to be alone” was his answer. “I know you think you do, but you don’t. When you change your mind, call me.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “You want to change your mind, Elle,” Dan said.

  I couldn’t deny the truth of it, so I hung up instead. I let him go. I let him slide away. I convinced myself it was better that way…to say goodbye to something before it had a chance to start. I didn’t have time, in my grief, for more.

  The days passed, as they do. I went back to work, because I could and because it helped me not to think so much about my father, Dan, my mother, my brothers, both of them. One dead and one so far away. I still hadn’t heard from Chad, and I stopped calling.It didn’t seem as if it ought to have been a good time in my life, but the introspection and time alone, undistracted, proved to be the best thing I could have done