The next week she writes a list of all the terrible things she’s done in her life. She wants him to know he’s not the only one with regrets. Drugs. Horrible, hurtful sex that she now realizes she thought was punishment for all she’d done wrong. She thought that was what she deserved. Betraying Ben Mink. Never letting him know that she loved him. Adultery with Harper when his wife was pregnant and nicer than he was. Stealing two dogs and one cat. Robbery at the junkyard in Queens. Being a bad daughter. Being a bad person. Stealing Helene’s life.
A few weeks later Shelby receives a postcard in the mail. It’s stuck into the metal mailbox in the building’s cluttered lobby, where people leave umbrellas and newspapers. There are circulars for food delivery and for a tattoo parlor on Broadway. At first she assumes the postcard is from her anonymous correspondent, then she remembers he doesn’t know where she lives and can only leave cards at her mom’s address. This postcard turns out to be from Teddy. She knows that’s a good sign. An SOS from somewhere near Albany. She stands in the hallway because she can’t wait to get upstairs to read it. There’s a photograph of the school on the front of the postcard, with a bright blue sky and green lawn enhanced by computer magic. On the back he’s scrawled: I still don’t believe you were that bad. Thanks for writing. He’s tagged on a smiley face after his signature, as if he were still the little boy Shelby used to babysit for, the one who never gave her any trouble and walked to school without complaint, who worried for his brother, who saw monsters on the corner while he raced by without a second look.
CHAPTER
10
Shelby knows a bad sign when she sees one. Blood in the egg drop soup she had delivered from the Hunan Kitchen. Nothing good could ever come of that. There are two fortune cookies in the bottom of the bag. Shelby throws them into her container of cookies. She has the feeling they would portend doom.
“That is not blood,” the owner, Shin Mae, insists when Shelby calls the restaurant to complain. “It’s soy sauce.”
But the day after the egg drop soup, she gets a call from her father. Her dad rarely uses the telephone and he rarely calls Shelby. His conversational skills are nonexistent. Shelby has a shivery feeling. For some time she has wondered if her mom has been avoiding her. Whenever Shelby wants to visit, Sue is busy, and their plans are always disrupted. I’ll see you soon, her mother always says, and then she cancels again. It’s been going on for nearly two months.
“You’d better come home,” Shelby’s father tells her. When Shelby asks why, her father’s response is cagey. “Your mom needs you” is all he’ll say.
“Is it an emergency?” Shelby has been waiting for tragedy to strike. She’s been a bit too happy lately. Something’s got to slam her.
“I would say so,” her father says.
That’s how Shelby knows it hadn’t been soy sauce in the soup. It was blood and bad luck. She’s glad she dumped the soup down the sink. Her mother hasn’t wanted to see her because something has gone terribly wrong. Shelby wishes she could call Ben to discuss her fears, but she knows it’s over for good. She knew the minute he walked into the restaurant and looked at her with true panic.
She quickly folds some clothes into a backpack and carries the two small dogs in a tote bag. She slips on sunglasses and grabs the cane she’d bought at the Chelsea flea market so she can say Pablo is a service dog if anyone gives her a hard time on the train. Luckily, the conductor doesn’t even look at her when he punches her ticket. She takes a cab from the station to her parents’ house. Her father is waiting for her on the porch. They don’t have much to do with one another, and he never waits for her like this, so she realizes the situation is even worse than she’d imagined. Her father doesn’t even complain about the dogs. Maybe he’s not loyal, but this is his wife and it’s hard for him to get the words out, and then finally he does. Shelby’s mother has stage four lung cancer. Her parents decided to keep the news from Shelby to protect her, even though she’s a grown woman and a college graduate. They did so because they thought she was “delicate,” meaning her nervous breakdown back in the dark ages. Shelby sits down on the stoop and cries, her hands over her eyes. Her father lights a cigarette even though he quit five years ago.
“That will give you cancer,” Shelby says. They both laugh, and then Shelby starts crying again.
“Come on. Snap out of it,” Dan Richmond says. “She’s right in the bedroom. You don’t want her to hear you crying.”
Shelby blows her nose on her sleeve.
“Geez,” her father says. “Have you heard of tissues?”
“Does she know?” Shelby asks as they go inside.
“Doesn’t she always know everything?” Shelby’s father has suddenly noticed Pablo’s presence. “I thought you had two dogs.” He seems nervous about Pablo. In the past, Shelby left the big dog with her neighbor when she came out to Long Island. Her dad has never been a dog person. “What the hell is this thing? A Saint Bernard?”
“A Great Pyrenees,” Shelby says. She has begun to think of a plan of action. “I can quit my job and stay while she has chemo.”
“She’s already had it. They started, but they had to stop. It didn’t work. It just made her sicker.”
“Is that why she’s been avoiding me?”
“She didn’t want you to worry. Just so you’re not shocked, Shelby—she’s bald.”
“That’s a bad joke.” When Shelby came back from the psych ward and shaved her head, her mother had wept. How could you do this to yourself? she’d cried.
“No joke. She won’t leave the house. That’s one of the reasons I decided to tell you. I want you to take her to get a wig.”
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me?”
“That was her choice, not mine. You think I’m the bad guy, I know.”
“Cancer,” Shelby reminds him. “The wig.”
“There’s a place on Main Street that sells them, but she won’t go with me. I think she’d feel a whole lot better if people didn’t stare at her. She’d look like her old self.”
Blinkie and the General follow Shelby into her parents’ bedroom.
“Hey, Mom.” Shelby has decided not to cry. She’s already done that.
Her mother is in bed, under the covers. Shelby perches beside her. She tries to peek beneath the quilt.
“Don’t look at me,” Shelby’s mother says.
“Do you think I never saw a bald woman? I was a bald woman.”
Sue Richmond laughs. When she’s convinced to sit up, she leans against the quilted headboard. She’s bald and pale and her eyes are red.
“Good Lord, Mom. You look like me.”
The General leaps up, and Sue pets him. “Which one is this?”
“General Tso.”
“Is he the smart one?”
“Smarter than Ben Mink.”
Sometimes Shelby calls Ben, then hangs up when he answers. Their date was such an embarrassment, yet she still has the urge to talk to him. She had her number blocked so he wouldn’t know she was the one calling, but he knew anyway. The last time she phoned he’d said, “Shelby?” She hasn’t called since.
“I liked Ben,” Sue says.
“He was a drug dealer,” Shelby reminds her.
“Still. He was nice. And he became very responsible. I always liked him.”
“Me too,” Shelby admits.
“You didn’t act like it,” her mom says.
“If he had known me, he would have known how much I cared about him.”
“People don’t have ESP,” Sue says.
“They should,” Shelby says moodily. “Everyone should know exactly what everyone else is thinking and then people wouldn’t hurt each other so much.”
Sue takes her hand. “How did this happen to me, Shelby?”
It’s a big question. Shelby asked the very same thing of the psychiatrist who saw
her right after the accident. It was in the ER, before she stopped talking, before she realized she would never be the same. The shrink didn’t have an answer then and Shelby doesn’t have one now. Her mother didn’t even smoke. It doesn’t run in the family.
Shelby throws herself across the bed. She used to come into her parents’ room when she was a little girl and couldn’t sleep. “I must have brought you bad luck.”
“Don’t talk like that,” Sue says. “Your dad wants me to get a wig. He thinks I’m depressed, but the real reason is that it depresses him to see me this way.”
“You seem depressed. Which would be totally normal, you know.”
“I’m not depressed,” Sue says. “I’m devastated.”
They both laugh again. Hysterical laughter. The kind that hurts your stomach.
“Maybe I should get a blond wig,” Sue muses. “Maybe your dad and I will get back together if I look more attractive.”
“You are together,” Shelby says.
“I mean in love.”
Her mom looks so wistful, something twists up inside Shelby. She hates shopping, but she says, “Sure. Let’s go. We’ll leave Dad in charge of the dogs.”
Shelby sits with her dad in the kitchen drinking coffee while her mother gets ready. “Can you be nicer to her?” Shelby asks him.
“I am nice. It just changes when you’ve been together for close to thirty years.”
“Well, pretend it doesn’t,” Shelby says coldly. “Pretend you’re her knight in shining armor.”
Shelby’s mom comes out of the bedroom wearing slacks and a sweater, a scarf around her head.
“You look great,” Dan tells his wife. He glances over at Shelby for approval, and for a second she feels bad for him even if he is a creep and selfish. She grabs Blinkie and plops him on her father’s lap. “Oh, great, the blind one. Jesus, Shelby. What am I supposed to do with him?”
“Take good care of him.” She stares at her father. “Try to do something right.”
They go out to the driveway, but when Shelby starts for the passenger side of the car her mother stops her. “I can’t drive,” Sue says. “They did a surgery that affected my arm.”
“Well I can’t either.” Her mom knows she hasn’t driven since the accident.
“Damn it, Shelby! You can drive me where I want to go this one fucking time.”
Shelby is so shocked by her mother’s language she immediately gets behind the wheel. She should be able to do this. Any idiot can drive a car. She starts it up. She’s got that tremor in her hand again.
“Make a left and turn onto Sycamore,” her mother tells her. “Go to Lewiston.”
“That’s not the way to Main Street. I thought we were looking at wigs.”
“I want to go see Helene,” Sue says. “I’m not going to argue with you about it.”
At the beginning there were often hundreds of pilgrims milling around the Boyds’ house, patiently waiting their turn in the driveway, each one hoping for their own healing encounter with Helene. TV stations sent reporters when prayer vigils were held on the front lawn. But there are new miracles and new healers and people have forgotten about Helene. Eight years have passed since the accident, and nowadays only the faithful and the desperate still appear. There is one old woman who drives out from Queens every day to say prayers on the lawn, even in the depth of winter or during rainstorms. She began visiting the family the week after the accident. Now she says she is waiting for Helene to rise from her bed, to give hope to the world. This devotee of Helene’s carries all of her earthly belongings in a paper bag. The Boyds will no longer let her into the house. Sometimes this woman calls out to Helene and begs for her to rid her of her demons, and then the police are phoned and they gently escort her to the tiny apartment where she lives with her daughter, who has never been able to speak or walk.
When Shelby parks across the street from the Boyds’ house, she’s shaking from the stress of driving. She hasn’t been behind the wheel since she was seventeen. She hasn’t seen Helene since then. “I’m not going in there with you,” she tells her mother.
“I didn’t expect you to.” Sue flips down the visor and checks to see if she needs to straighten her scarf.
“She can’t really heal people, Mom. If she could wouldn’t she have healed herself?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” Sue tells Shelby. “Wait right here.”
Shelby watches her mom cross the street and go up the path. There’s a shrine on the lawn, with pamphlets that describe the miracles Helene is said to have performed. The old lady is there kneeling on the lawn. She brings a blanket with her so she won’t get grass stains on her skirt. She is here because of the stories of drug addicts who visit Helene once and never touch the stuff again, of women who can’t get pregnant who have babies nine months after a visit, of men who can’t be faithful who renew their vows, of a blind woman who could see while she was in Helene’s bedroom and described it perfectly, down to the pink bedspread, the same one she had on her bed when she was a girl.
Shelby sinks down in the driver’s seat and lights up a joint even though Sue doesn’t allow smoking in her car. Shelby inhales once or twice, then realizes her hands are shaking even worse, so she stubs it out. From what Shelby knows, there’s no cure for what her mother has.
Shelby can’t see through the windows of Helene’s room. She thinks of crouching beside the house with Ben. That was the night she realized he loved her. She could cry if she let herself. She’s ruined everything she’s ever touched. The windshield has steamed up, and after a while the whole world outside is foggy. Shelby laughs to think her mother told her not to go anywhere. Where the hell would she go? After an hour, Sue comes back out and gets into the car.
“That took a long time. What was it like?” Shelby asks.
Sue is fussing with cleaning off the foggy windshield with her scarf, so it takes a moment before Shelby realizes her mother is crying.
“I told you she couldn’t help,” Shelby says. “This kind of thing just gives people false hope. It just exploits her, Mom, don’t you see that?”
“You’re wrong. She did help me. She made me realize how lucky I’ve been.” Sue wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “I went there wanting to know what my life has been worth, and now I know, I’ve had you all this time, Shelby. I’ve realized more than ever what a precious gift that is.”
“I wish it had been me instead of Helene,” Shelby says. “I should have died.”
Sue turns and slaps her. The slap is so hard Shelby hits her head against the window. “Mom!” she says, stunned.
“Don’t you dare say that!” Sue cries. “Don’t even think it! Do you hear me? You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Shelby, don’t take that away from me. You’re my gift.”
“Okay,” Shelby says, sobered. Her mom is sobbing now. Shelby doesn’t feel stoned anymore. She’s heard that people on chemo can have their brains affected. Maybe that’s what’s happened to her mother.
“And don’t look at me like I’m crazy,” Sue tells her.
“Okay.”
“And don’t keep saying okay. It doesn’t sound like you, Shelby. Say fuck you or kiss my ass.”
“Okay, kiss my ass.” They both laugh. “So do you want to go to that wig shop?”
“Kiss my ass,” Sue says. They laugh harder. They laugh until Sue says, “Did you know your dad has a new girlfriend? This time it’s serious.”
“You’re crazy,” Shelby says. “You always think the worst. He was probably never dating that woman at Macy’s.”
“That one didn’t last long. This one is different. She’s a nurse. He told me he wanted the chance to be in love again. He has no idea that being in love is bullshit. It’s knowing someone down to their soul that matters. That’s what love is. It’s difficult and it’s real and it doesn’t change.” Sue sniffs the air. “Di
d you smoke pot in here?”
“A little,” Shelby admits.
Sue rolls down the window. “His girlfriend works at the hospital where I was being treated. We became friends. She invited us for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Fuck him,” Shelby says. “I hate him. Fuck her, too.”
Her mom takes Shelby’s hand. “Actually, I’m glad he’ll have some happiness.”
Shelby looks at her mom, eyes shining. “You can’t be this good.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Sue says. “I hate him, too.”
“How can he do this to you?” Shelby says of her father.
“I don’t care, I have you,” Sue says.
Shelby says nothing. The fact that she’s the high point of someone’s life is pathetic. She’s probably never loved her mother more than she does at this moment. Maybe she didn’t even know what love was before today. “Where should we go?” she asks.
“Take me someplace new. Someplace I’ve never been before.”
“You trust my driving?”
“At this point, does it matter?” Sue says wryly.
They drive around aimlessly for a while, up past the high school, then around by the mall. Shelby and Helene used to come here all the time. Shelby notices another branch of the pet store she managed. She heads for it.
“This is where you’re taking me?” Sue says when Shelby parks. “I’ve been to the mall, Shelby honey.”
“But have you been to the pet store?”
It’s a Saturday and the mall is crowded. As soon as they go into the pet store, however, Shelby feels at home.
“It smells like hamsters,” Shelby’s mom says. Sue has a good nose, that’s for sure. They head toward the fish department, which is less offensive.