The Love That Split the World (23 page)

“My mom’s not going to go for it,” I tell Megan when she calls the next afternoon. I’ve just woken up after another long night at the studio and a break during which I drove Jack over to the football field in my pajamas before coming home and dropping back into bed. I’m in desperate need of a shower and sheet-washing, but I can find the energy for neither. “She’s not going to let me miss this trip. She
lives
for this trip. In her mind it’s a sacred family pilgrimage. The rest of the year is just filler.”

“Well, she’s got to come to terms with you doing your own thing eventually,” she says. “The Cleary family cannot always be one big, happy, five-limbed starfish that goes everywhere and does everything together. Case in point: College. Marriage. Jobs.”

“College, marriage, and jobs will come and go—in the end, only this trip will remain.”

“Trust me, your mom will drown in happy tears when she finds out you willingly went to see a counselor,” Megan insists.
“Plus I’m coming home for a weekend before school starts, so if you stay, we’ll get to hang out. Please do it. When your mom gets home tonight, just
ask
. If for no other reason than we’ll have another weekend together. And you might save someone’s life. And Beau Wilkes.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“I’m trying to think of something better, but that’s all I’ve got. Hey, by the way, have you heard anything new about Matt?”

“No,” I say, stomach tightening. “Joyce told me she’d call when the doctors decide when to wake him up, and every time I ask how he’s doing she replies with an idiom not even Google has heard of. Like,
when the clouds part, the patient cow yields the best milk, keep praying
.” We’re both silent then, and I busy myself with the familiar stray threads on my quilt. “Is Alice right? Have I been hiding instead of living?”

Megan sighs softly. “I don’t know, Nat. But if you were, who could blame you?”

My throat tightens, and I nod as if she can see me.

“Let’s talk about something happy. Tell me about Beau or something. How are you feeling about him?”

“I’m bad at talking about my feelings. Clearly. I just got thrown out of a therapist’s office.”

“I’m not asking as your counselor,” she says. “I’m asking as your best friend. That’s basically like talking to yourself. If I were there, I’d know from looking at you, because I
do
see your soul. But we’re apart, and now I’m reduced to the communication methods of the rest of the world, so you have to tell me.
Feelings
, et cetera. Short response. Go.”

“Um, warm?”

She laughs. “I’m sorry. That’s a good answer.”

“And nothing is funnier than a good answer about your feelings!”

“No, it’s really good. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just—of course you’d go straight for temperature.”

“Ugh, this is hard.” I know what I feel, but saying it aloud feels risky, as if I’m daring the world to come at me. Like talking about a nightmare or wearing all white to a barbecue. Once you say something, it’s just out there, where the Universe can use it against you. “God, I
am
a slow train wreck of inaction, or whatever she said. Alice is right.”

“You’re going to counseling, aren’t you?” Megan says. “You’re getting hypnotized and you’re staying up all night dancing and you’re fielding text messages from Matt’s parents and you’re trying to be there for Jack and I wouldn’t put it past you to send a decoy on vacation so your mom can have her perfect trip while you stay home and kill yourself trying to save someone’s life. Sure you’re scared and you have trouble opening up, but you’re not a slug, Natalie. And you’re putting yourself out there with Beau. That has to count for something.”

“Beau and I literally come from different worlds,” I say, frustrated. “So why am I putting myself through this? I mean, on the one hand I can’t even tell my best friend how I feel about him, and on the other, I can’t make myself stop
going
there with him.”

“Nat,” Megan says, the pounding of her feet against the treadmill slowing. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“He does make me feel warm,” I say. “And safe. He’s . . . even. I doubt I could ever shock him. And he knows about Grandmother and the two worlds, and that makes me feel
understood. Like, less alone than I’ve ever been. Like we’re somehow two parts of the same thing.” That’s what I’ve been scared to say. That’s why I’m afraid to want him, and also why I can’t make myself stop. “I don’t know. He’s
gentle
. He’s so gentle that I feel like crying when I think about it, and I don’t really understand that but it’s the truth and I don’t want to lose him but I’m going to, and somehow, even with the guilt about Matt, it’s
still
worth it to me to spend every minute I can with him.”

Megan’s silent for a long moment before she murmurs, “I changed my mind.”

“About what?”

“Denial,” she says, “I don’t want to live there after all. I want to feel everything so much it hurts.”

I take a deep breath and fumble over my words. “Did you ever think you and Matt might . . .
you
know.”

“Might what?”

“Date.”

She snorts. “You mean throughout the years of him staring at you like a desperate-to-please Labrador puppy? Yes, naturally. The biggest turn-on in the world is someone who’s obsessed with your best friend.”

“I’m serious, Meg. You’ve really never thought you guys might work?”

“In a group project or flag-football scenario, yes. But in a romantic relationship, only if you died shortly after having Matt’s baby and, in my resulting psychotic break, I began to wear your old clothes and only eat your favorite foods and continue your life
à la
Stevie Nicks’s marriage to Kim Anderson, and even in that situation I don’t think I’d make it as long as
Stevie before returning to writing songs for mothers and wives rather than being a mother and wife. Hey, speaking of psychotic breaks, any reason why you’re trying to set me up with your ex-boyfriend who’s in a coma?”

Despite the way the word
coma
slices through me, I laugh in relief. “Sorry. I don’t want to live in Denial either. I want to live in a world where you get everything you’ve ever wanted. And cheese fries. I want cheese fries.”

“Always.”

Thursday’s hypnotherapy is a bust, and Alice won’t speak to me when it’s over. “I’m going to ask my parents tonight,” I tell her as I’m leaving. “About missing the family trip.”

“We’ll see,” she says sharply.

“I just need a little more time. It’s more complicated than it seems, but I’m going to ask.”

“Everything on this entire planet is complicated,” Alice says coolly, and with that, I nod and leave.

I hate to prove her right, but when dinner comes and we’re all peacefully sitting around the table, I start to feel like there are hands grasped around my trachea. It doesn’t help when the trip comes up in conversation naturally, and Mom starts giddily describing all the pre-trip research she’s done. I promised myself I was going to ask to stay home, right after dinner, but now the thought of actually doing it makes me visibly shake.

Then, halfway through the meal, Coco sets down her fork and clears her throat, immediately summoning all of our attention.

“I don’t want to transfer,” she announces. “I want to stay at Ryle.”

Mom sets her own fork down and stares at her, mouth agape, but Dad just half shrugs and keeps eating. “If that’s what you want, baby,” he says. It’s what he’s always called Coco, but now it elicits an eye roll. Mom shoots him a
We have to talk about this before we say such things!
look, and he clears his throat exactly like Coco just did. “Any particular reason?”

She shrugs and toys with her hair. It’s like watching a
Twilight Zone
version of tennis in which hereditary mannerisms are being volleyed back and forth. “I just don’t.”

“Coco, you’ve worked so hard for this,” Mom says. “A performing arts school—”

“You let Natalie quit dance,” Coco says, and now even Dad looks up.

“You want to quit altogether?” he says.

“No . . . I just don’t want it to be my whole life, is all.”

Jack officially checks out of the conversation when he starts dropping linguine noodles under the table for Gus, who’s always on top of our feet while we eat. Mom sighs and runs her hands through her hair before addressing Coco again. “Well, your father and I will have to talk.”

Per usual, Mom’s fighting for a serene expression, though it’s obvious that internally she’s sobbing and wondering what anti-dance god has cursed her family.

At the end of dinner, Jack ambles off to play video games, and Coco goes to pack for a sleepover at Abby’s, leaving me to help Mom and Dad carry the dishes into the kitchen. When the dishwasher’s loaded, I lean against the island, send a prayer
to Grandmother, and force out the words “Can I talk to you guys for a second?”

“Sure, honey,” Mom says. They must think it’s bad because Mom leads the way to their bedroom. The rest of the house is clean and quaint, carefully designed to look homey without being cluttered, warm without being stifling, and country without being hick, but Mom and Dad never bothered giving their own room the same attention. It’s clean but not neat, the dresser covered in mail and the plaid chairs beyond the bed loaded with clean laundry. The walls are the same eggshell color they were when Mom and Dad bought the house, and the bedding, curtains, side tables, and lamps are so unintentionally mismatched that the aesthetic can’t even be called “eclectic
.
” When Mom picks up new pieces from estate sales and antique stores, the furniture being replaced typically comes up here to die. If Pier 1 Imports sponsored a production of
The Lion King
, this is where the hyenas would live.

As I follow Mom and Dad around the bed, I think about Beau’s credenza, the singular bright spot in a room I
know
I’d find depressing if not for the person who lives in it. Unlike Mom, I’ve never happy-cried over pretty furniture, but seeing something Beau made with his hands—that wouldn’t exist without him—turned me into goop. I think right then he could’ve told me he was the one who spread out the stars and I would have been neither surprised nor any more impressed than I already was. Thinking about that night makes my insides feel warm and mushy and a little achy all over again. It’s not
why
this conversation’s so important, but it is helping me go through with it. I want those three extra weeks. I want them so badly.

Mom perches on the edge of the bed and pats the blankets beside her. I sit down, and Dad eases into one of the chairs across from me.

“I’ve been seeing a counselor,” I say.

“You have?” Mom says. “Dr. Langdon?”

“No, not Dr. Langdon. She works at NKU. I found her online, and she specializes in . . . my issues, I guess.”

“How are you paying for it?” Dad says.

“It’s free. I mean, it’s helping Al—Dr. Chan with her research, so it’s sort of a trade.”

“Oh.” Mom nods encouragingly. “That’s great, honey. Isn’t that great, Patrick?”

“It’s great,” Dad confirms, but his eyes are discerning, and I know he senses there’s more to it than what I’ve said.

“We’ve been making real progress,” I go on, “but we’re not finished, and . . .” I gather my courage and push forward. “And I want to keep seeing her for as long as I can.”

“Would she be open to that?” Mom says. “Long-distance sessions? Maybe video chat or something?”

“No,” I say.

“Maybe she could recommend someone near Providence then.”

I sigh and crack my knuckles. “Actually, I had another idea.”

When I’ve spit it all out, at least the parts that leave out eerie warnings and alternate realities, Mom and Dad just stare blankly at me. To my surprise, Dad speaks first. “Well, sugar, sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”

Mom looks up at him, her face frozen in something that resembles terror. She swallows audibly and tries to compose
herself. “Honey, I thought you loved this trip.”

“I do,” I hurry to say before Mom’s spirit can wilt. “And I’ll be really, really sad to miss it. But this is really, really important to me. If I’m going to go to Brown, I feel like I need it.”

“If?” Mom’s voice cracks. “What do you mean,
if
 ?”

Dad clears his throat again. “You’re going to Brown, Natalie. It’s settled. We didn’t take out a small fortune of loans for nothing.”

“That’s not what I meant. I just . . . There are things I need to resolve before I go. Please just trust me.”

“Honey, we
do
trust you,” Mom says, running her fingers frantically through her hair. “We let you go to parties, you don’t have a curfew, we do our best not to pry even though it kills us not knowing where you are every second of the day because we know you’re a good kid and you’re smart and if you make mistakes, you’ll come to us. This isn’t about trusting you. It’s about our family, and this trip’s important to us.”

“I know,” I say. “It’s important for me too, and I hope I’ll never have to miss another one. But I’m going through some things right now—”

“You can talk to us,” Mom says, shaking her head.