As I walk back to Jeremy and Liza, I can feel Priscilla’s eyes on me, curious and searching.
* * *
—
My mother is chopping scallions in the kitchen when we get home. Joey and I put our backpacks down. He heads to the refrigerator.
“I’m making dinner,” she tells him. “You can wait.”
He closes the refrigerator door with a sigh and slides onto the stool next to mine, pulling out his phone so he can check his texts. There’s a mound of paper on the island, unusual for my mom, who likes to keep things neat. A paper with letterhead that says NewDay catches my eye and I pick it up. I scan the page. An innovative, empathy-centered approach to recovery, healing, and housing.
“Mom,” I say. “What is this? I thought you said condo developers wanted the Mill? Who are these people?”
I keep reading. Recovery center and services. Assistance living. Job training. For the people Joey’s boss called deadbeats.
My mother lays her knife down. “Give that to me,” she says, lifting the paper away from my hands. “It’s nothing.”
Joey glances up. “Hoagie Hank is very interested in what you’re going to do, Mom. He can’t stop bugging me about it.”
She folds the letter up and slides it back into an envelope. “He shouldn’t be discussing that with you, Joe. In any case, I’ve had offers. It’s not in good shape and the city wants me to do something.”
“What do they want you to do?” I ask. “Hank said you should sell it to the condo developers.”
“Hank has a big mouth and big dreams,” my mother says.
She looks tired today, gray smudges underneath her eyes. Her makeup is usually perfect. “These people, NewDay, are a nonprofit. They want to buy the entire thing, even the old worker houses, and turn them into a recovery center and shelter. It’s possible the auxiliary buildings could be other things. All for a dollar. Can you imagine that? Offering me a dollar?”
“Recovery center?” Joey says.
My mother gives him a steady look. “Yes. The whole shebang. Addiction services. Meetings. Needle exchange. Living space to help people get back on their feet, job training, skill assistance. Everything in the city is strained to the gills and we’ve got space out here. The river, the woods. The Mill is on an enormous amount of land.”
I think of the outpatient center that Joey goes to, how it seems more crowded every time we go. If that’s the only place in Mill Haven for people to get help and it’s already overcrowded, I can’t imagine what it’s like in the city.
“But that sounds good,” Joey says. “That sounds like an awesome thing.”
She ponders the scallions on her cutting board. “Maybe. But maybe condos would be a good thing, too. People would move from the city, pay good rents, buy things in town, bring new businesses. And I would get a hell of a lot more money selling to developers than a lousy dollar from a nonprofit.”
“But the nonprofit,” I say tentatively. “That would help people, like even local people? The bridge people. The ghosties. People at Joey’s outpatient center. Right?”
“I wish people would stop using that word. Ghosties.” My mother sighs. She picks up her knife and starts dicing a red onion. “It’s uncouth.”
“You should sell,” Joey says. “Sell it for something good.”
“Good means different things to different people in this town, Joe, and it’s complicated for me. It’s my legacy. That’s a family building, a family history. That building is older than this house. That building is responsible for this town. Or was. It deserves respect.”
She shakes her head. “One dollar, can you imagine?”
“Mom,” Joey says. “The Mill put a lot of people to work but it also put a lot of people out of work when it closed. Wouldn’t it be better to sell it to people who need it for a good purpose, rather than just build fancy apartments for people who don’t actually need help?”
“Joseph.” My mother sounds exasperated. “Don’t talk to me like our family ruined this town. We built this town. We built the schools, the library, the hospital. We’re not responsible for what happened after the Mill closed. That’s just…history. And economics. Mills close. Jobs go overseas. Plants close. Things change.”
“We did kill the river.”
I look at Joey, surprised he said that out loud. My mother doesn’t like to talk about that, all the textile dyes and chemicals the Mill used getting dumped in the river.
“Excuse me?” she says.
I touch Joey’s elbow with my own. My mother is getting the Look. He should ease up a little. Things seemed like they were going well, for once.
“The river. Remember? It used to be called Salmon River way back when, in those good old days. Plenty of healthy salmon, flipping around, swimming upstream, living the sweet life, until they started dying and everyone figured out the Mill was dumping chemicals there. And now we call it Frost River, like the salmon were never there in the first place.”
“No one knew, Joe, that the chemicals would do that. Who could know such a thing all those years ago? My god, am I responsible for every bad thing that’s ever happened in this town? Is it all on my shoulders?”
“Maybe,” Joey says, and I can tell he immediately regrets it.
My mother slams the knife on the cutting board, sending up a spray of red onion bits. Joey and I lean back in shock.
I pick some out of my hair.
“That’s lovely, Joe. Just lovely,” Mom says bitterly.
She gathers the papers together and holds them to her chest. “I’m not quite hungry anymore, thank you. You two can make dinner. Make sure to leave some for your father.”
She walks out of the kitchen and we listen to her go up the stairs. In a few minutes, the door to her bedroom closes.
“That was kind of harsh,” I say.
“It is what it is.” He reaches out and grabs some scallions, popping them into his mouth. “But think about it, Emmy. See the bigger picture. Mom’s money paid for me to go to a fancy rehab where I dug holes for my shit. But what about our groundskeeper? Remember him? Jim Tolford? He literally busted his back making our lawn pretty, year after year, and where is he now? Living under a bridge, because those painkillers he had to take to keep his job making our lawn pretty also got him fired, because he got addicted. He had to take those pills because he literally did backbreaking work for us. Why didn’t Mom get him help? Was he not a person to her? How am I any different from him?”
He stands up.
“He taught me to ride a bike, Emmy. Not Mom, and not Dad, because they weren’t around. And you know who wraps our Christmas presents in all that lovely paper? Goldie, the woman who washes our dirty underwear. Mom pays her extra for Christmas chores. If she suddenly passes out in the laundry room, is she gone, too? Just like that? Like she never mattered? She’s worked in this house for fifteen years. That matters.”
He rubs his face.
“I’m sorry. I’m tired. I’m really tired. I’m busting my ass, too, to do all the things she requires, and if I fail, I’m out. That’s what Mom does. If you fail her, you disappear.”