Great Big Beautiful Life(118)

I want to tell him to stay. To beg him to.

But I already know it won’t work. That he won’t be able to let this go. That even if he could, for a night or two, this secret would eat away at this thing between us. Margaret will go back into hiding, and then, someday, she’ll be gone, and if I did finally tell him myself then, how could he forgive me for lying to him for so long?

“Please go,” I whisper.

He stares at me for a long beat, his dark eyes glazing with tears. “Goodbye, Alice,” he finally chokes out, then turns and walks back down the path, away from me, while I try not to break.

Try not to call after him.

Try not to tell him now, in the worst possible moment, when all I can do is wound, that I love him like I’ve never loved anyone.

When he’s gone, I shut the door and slump onto the floor, letting a fresh torrent of tears overtake me. I’m not sure how long it goes on—minutes or hours—but when I catch my breath and my hiccups settle, I pull my phone out and text my mom.


Would it be okay if I came home for a while? I’m not doing well right now.



The dots appear to indicate she’s typing back. She says what she always says.


Sure.





* * *



? ? ?

Under the hideous neon-green quilt in my childhood bedroom, I half-heartedly search for other jobs. Aging celebrities who might want to tell their stories, dating trends that could become articles for The Scratch, and restaurants back in Los Angeles that might need servers. Because if I’m being honest, right now the last thing I want to do is my current job.

I told my friends the bare-bones details—that I’m not moving forward with Margaret, that I’m spending a few days with my mom—but since then, I’ve been more or less ignoring their texts.

I think about calling Hayden, but what else can I say? I could assure him that I want to be with him, beg him to let this one secret sit, but if he ever found out, could he forgive me for knowing something this huge and keeping it from him?

Could he even take being in a relationship with someone he knows, in essence, is lying to him, every single day, the same way that Margaret was?

I play mental games with myself: If he calls me right now, I’ll tell him everything.

I debate whether Margaret would ever forgive me, like it’s a game of he loves me, he loves me not, and if I just happen to pluck a flower petal at the right moment, all my problems could go away.

After three days of moping, Mom walks into my room, flips on the lights, and grunts, “If you’re going to be here, you might as well work.”

I don’t have a good argument for that.

I get dressed and meet her in the garden. I kneel beside her in the dirt, and without looking at me, she takes Dad’s hat off her head and holds it out to me, one hand still digging with a spade.

My heart pings at the gesture, at the familiarity of it, the quiet care. I put it on and get to work.

For the next two days, we plant.

Irish potatoes and squash, more cucumbers, and snap beans. We prepare the soil for the upcoming cool season planting, clearing out the empty beds, turning the dirt with fertilizer. We take the broccoli seeds she started inside last month and plant them, along with collards and onions.

I feed the chickens, and I collect their eggs. I pick the ripe fruit from the stand of trees, and I manage the compost toilet.

I take short, scalding hot showers, and I help cook every meal.

My limbs ache, but my mind, finally, goes quiet.

On my fifth night there, we sit down to eat in near silence, the same way we’ve eaten every meal since I got here.

Across from me, at the far end of the old wooden table, Mom picks up her fork, then sets it down again. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, kid?”

“Do you want me to?” I ask, surprised.

She sits back in her chair, mismatched from mine, all of them found in trash heaps on curbs or at thrift stores and lovingly restored by her and Dad. “What the hell kind of a question is that?” she demands.

“Sorry,” I say quickly, searching for a way to backtrack.

“Dear god, Alice,” she says. “I know I’m not winning Mother of the Year anytime soon, but do you really think I’m that awful? That I’d see my kid in pain and not care?”

“That’s not it at all,” I say.

“If something happened,” she replies, “you can tell me. If you lost your job, just say it.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I murmur, looking down at my full plate. “But no, I didn’t lose my job.”

“Sorry to disappoint me?” she says, aghast. “You think I want you to get fired?”

This just keeps getting worse and worse. I want to rush to smack a Band-Aid on it, to take back or explain away that little comment.

But the truth is, now that my mind is clear enough to think, the memory of what Margaret said keeps surfacing: What good does it do anyone? He doesn’t like me…I can’t change who I am, and I’m not going to change him either.

I push back from my plate and, with a shuddering breath, force the words past the thickness in my throat. “You’ve never respected my job. You don’t respect me for doing it. You think it’s stupid and shallow and a waste of time, and I’m sorry—I’m sorry I’m not like Audrey. I’m sorry I’m not saving the world, and I’m not living a perfectly carbon-neutral life, and I spend money on—on unnecessary things like manicures and candles and romance novels. But this is who I am, and even if you don’t understand it, couldn’t you just pretend for a few days a year that you respect me? That you like me? Because I can’t figure out how to be anyone else, and it’s lonely, it’s so fucking lonely being the person who doesn’t belong in this family.”