Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

“Melissa, I’ll pass you.”

“I didn’t come here to get passed,” she said, quietly. “I came here to change minds. To change your mind. And you’re telling me your mind will never be changed, so I don’t see what the point is of me turning in this paper.”

“Please,” he said, “let me read it.”

“I’d rather not,” she said. She took the binder, stuck it back into her backpack. “I’ll see Professor Schoenmeyer about withdrawing.”

“That’s not necessary.”

She pressed her lips together. “I’m also going to have to tell her about the inappropriate relationship we had. I don’t think it would be responsible of me to just let that go.”

“I understand.”

“You do?” she said. “You understand?”

“Yes.” She was always going to be his out from this life, just not in the way she imagined.

Melissa looked like she wanted to say something, then shook her head, shaking it off. “Tell your girls I said hi,” she said. Then she stood, humped her backpack onto her back, and galumphed toward the door. She was hunching again. He wondered if he would miss her, or if the girls would expect to see her again. He imagined they wouldn’t. People drifted in and out of their lives all too easily.

He looked around the office, expecting to see Lou smirk at him. How he’d screwed it up this time without her. Hurt this girl, hurt someone who mattered to him. Probably lost his job too. “Lou, what you got for me?” But she wasn’t in the office. Outside, the seagulls were circling, narrowing in on an errant package of French fries someone had left on the ground.

He wondered what Melissa would say in her letter to Linda; he wondered if he could rebut it. Or if he’d want to. Well, of course he’d want to. Suddenly a cold spring of panic in his chest. No job—no job! What would he do without his job? How would he take care of his girls? But at the same time he couldn’t figure out if that feeling in his chest came from the fear that he might lose his job or the fear he might have to keep it.

The fields behind the school were boggy and muddy; too much rain over the winter had left them full of mosquitoes, but both his girls’ coaches were relentless, and they played into the evening on adjacent fields under April’s draining sun. Andy marched back and forth between third-base lines, his shoes sucked in by the mud. The soccer moms were now softball moms, and a few dads were there too, shouting encouragement to their players, swing-batta-batta-swing. Kids in their Phillies jerseys, dads in their Phillies caps and cargo shorts.

Both girls crapped out after softball practice; here, Belle was the stronger player, but Rachel kept at it doggedly, even though she’d been marooned in right field as punishment for her terrible batting average. She swung like she was trying to strike an enemy.

“You have to be more patient,” said Belle, who had only recently graduated from an automatic pitch machine and was feeling sage. “You’re swinging too early every time.”

Rachel grunted. “Is it okay if we just get pizza or something? I don’t really feel like cooking.”

“Do I ask you to cook too much?’

“Ugh, don’t go feeling all guilty, Dad, I just don’t feel like doing it tonight.” She sprawled out on the couch, and Belle collapsed on the love seat beside her; they were like two pooped golden retrievers, blondish and winded. They left nowhere for Andy to sit. He opted to go cross-legged on the floor, called Joe’s, ordered a half-mushroom, half-plain. For a treat, a few cannolis.

When someone knocked twenty minutes later he thought it was the guy from Joe’s and found a twenty before he opened the door.

Jeremy Humphreys. Such a slight kid. Eyes wide, mouth halfway open but unable to speak.

“Jeremy?”

Looking scared.

“Jeremy, what’s wrong?”

“My mom’s really sick,” he said, in a rush. “I’m sorry to bother you but I don’t know what to do.”

Andy called out to the girls, hurried out of the house in his socks. “Sick how?”

“Throwing up, not making a lot of sense,” Jeremy said. He was a step ahead of Andy as they ran down Stanwick Street. The kid was pale and skinny, with Sheila’s warm eyes and a smattering of freckles on his nose. Dirt on his clothes—he’d been at softball practice too, but Andy hadn’t even noticed him.

“Should we call an ambulance?”

“She said not to, but I—I didn’t know what to do. So I came to you.”

“That’s good, Jeremy. That’s the right thing. She’s conscious?”

“I think so. But she’s really out of it.”

“Okay, it’ll be okay,” Andy said, wondering where Jeremy’s father was, how he could get in touch with the man if she had to go to the hospital. Also, he had never left his girls alone before, at least not while they were awake. But he remembered that only in passing, then put it out of his mind.

Inside the big old house, Jeremy grew tentative. “She’s upstairs, in her bathroom, but she’s not wearing any clothes. Or she wasn’t. So I don’t know—”

“Why don’t you go up first, put a towel on her,” Andy said, and followed Jeremy’s narrow shoulders up the wide stairs and into Sheila’s bedroom, where he had never been before. The room was darkened, the shades were drawn, but Andy saw an empty bottle of Citra, the extra-large bottle of white, in the wastepaper basket. And he could see the figure of Sheila’s body on the floor of her bathroom, which was attached to her bedroom, and also darkened. “Jeremy, oh God, Jeremy, you didn’t,” she said. Her voice was clear, but there was a smell of vomit coming from the bathroom. “Jeremy.”

The boy was crying.

“Oh, Jeremy, it’s okay, honey. Oh, honey—” He could see the soles of Sheila’s feet splayed out, and that she had pulled her son to her, and was holding him to her. Andy could hear him crying softly, the hacked-off cries of an embarrassed kid. He thought to himself that he should leave, but also he had promised Jeremy that he would make sure his mother was okay, so maybe he should do that. It was probably time for him to start doing that. He thought about that night two weeks ago, how she had mumbled in her sleep in her car. How he’d imagined, for the smallest moment, she’d been cursing him.

“Andy? Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“Thanks for coming,” Sheila said. “I—give me a minute.”

Jeremy emerged from the bathroom, looking tousled. He gave Andy an embarrassed shrug. “I don’t think she wanted you to come.”

“Well, I’ll just talk to her for a minute, make sure she’s fine,” Andy said. “And then I’ll be on my way.”

Jeremy smiled, shrugged again, and sat down on the bed. He kept his eyes on Andy. “How was practice?” Andy asked.

Jeremy looked at him like that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “It was fine.” In the bathroom, running water, a toilet flushing, the spray of some kind of room freshener. The water running again, this time for a while. Should he leave?

“Just one more second, Andy.”

When she came out, she was wearing a bathrobe and her brown hair was loose, unclipped. Her face was scrubbed pink. Her smile was weary, but it was there; she was smiling.

“Mom?”

“Why don’t you go downstairs, honey.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. She kissed him on the head. “I just want to talk to Andy for a minute.”

“You’re going to be okay?”

“Honey, I promise,” she said. “Do you want me to call Grandma to come over?”

“Can I play PlayStation?”

“Or there’s pizza at my house, if you want,” Andy said.

“No,” Jeremy said. “No thanks.” He walked out of the room; a few moments later they heard the reassuring bleep-bleep-crash of the PlayStation. First-person shooter. Jeremy, victorious.