Lynn Strong - Hold Still

“Sorry,” they both murmured. She’d placed her hand on Maya’s shoulder. It was cold and Maya shuddered. She pulled it away quickly and Maya sat back down. Her mom pulled out a chair and held her hands on the edge of the table. Maya unrolled her silverware, placed her napkin on her lap, and ran her index finger down the handle of her fork.

“Maya,” her mom said again. She wore bright red lipstick. A thin line of it rose above her lip on the left side of her mouth. Maya wanted to tell her to stop saying her name — she hadn’t earned the right yet. Her mother grabbed the saltshaker. Her arms were thin, her fingers short and nubbly, and her nails cut close to the quick.

“How’s. .” she tried again. “How are you?”

Maya nodded. “Okay.”

“I thought. I guess I’d stopped expecting.”

A waiter came and took their drink order. Maya got water. Her mom ordered a white wine.

The whole thing took less than an hour. Her mom asked awkward questions Maya didn’t want to answer. Maya asked her about painting. It was what she’d done when she’d left them, what she’d said she’d left to do. She said she “cobbled,” said she didn’t paint much anymore. Maya didn’t ask her why she’d left. Once she’d seen what she was, she didn’t feel the need to ask. When the check came, her mom waited a long time without looking at it. She sipped slowly on her third glass of wine. After an infinity of time passing and neither of them speaking, Maya finally paid the bill while her mom looked past her to the restaurant kitchen. As they left, her mom had once again moved to hug her and Maya had pulled away again.

Maya tells Alana none of this. She holds her coffee near her face again and sips; it’s turned tepid since either of them spoke.

“It’s completely terrifying,” Maya says. “It’s also. .” A thousand million other things.

When she’d finally come back from her time in Florida, it had taken her weeks to get Ellie to forgive her. Ellie was sullen and quiet, spending more and more time close to Stephen or alone in her room. Maya had the summer free and worked to court her, taking her for days alone in the park and around town while Ben was with Stephen or with friends. Her daughter, like her mother, loved the subway and wandering the city. They filled whole days finding new and different ethnic restaurants, pastry shops. Maya dragged her to run her hands over the spines of books at all her favorite shops.

“When El was tiny. .” Maya says to Alana, “She was probably six or eight months old — I was hardly leaving the house still, except to go to work — a friend of mine forced me out to go with her to MoMA.” It was Laura, always Laura, reminding Maya how to live. “We drove up there with Ellie screaming in the car seat and I was already regretting trying to do normal grown-up things too soon, wondering if I ever would again. I had her in the carrier.” She laughs. “She shit all over herself within the first five minutes.” She feels Alana smile. This is right , she thinks. “She was facing out, strapped to me again, looking at the paintings. My friend. .” Laura was so young then and surprisingly comfortable with Ellie, taking her from Maya for an hour or two when Stephen traveled, for long walks, letting Ellie lie on her in Maya’s bed while Laura read. “It was Jean Dubuffet, you know?” Alana smiles. “This sort of accidental warmth and joy.” She stops, remembering the paintings, the texture of them up close, the disproportionate portraits, the burnt reds, the blacks and browns. “And El just lost it,” she says. “She started squealing.” Maya laughs, remembering, the feel and weight of Ellie wriggling, strapped to her. “People stared, thinking she was crying at first, that I was this awful person, disrupting the sanctity of these great works. But she was squealing with this incredible joy , you know? Like whatever he was doing, she understood it. I realized she could teach me. That even from the beginning, she would see the world in ways I’d never even thought to see before.”

They’re outside again. The bag has gone from Cooper’s hand to the front pocket of his pants. It forms a small, almost imperceptible bump below his waist. Ellie wants to be free from him. She wants to take the alligator and the onetwothreefourfivesix.

“Shit,” she says. She takes her phone out of her back pocket. It hasn’t rung or vibrated, but she looks down at the black face and then over at Jack.

“Annie texted.” Jack looks at her, then back toward the old woman.

Ellie says to Cooper, “We have to go.”

“Seriously?” he says.

Ellie shrugs. “Sorry.”

“Listen. .” His eyes wander to Jack, then back to Ellie.

“We really have to go,” she says.

She starts walking toward his car.

“I can pay you for some of those,” she says, nodding toward his pocket. She says it quietly, leaning toward him, hoping Jack can’t hear. He turns away from her, unlocks the door. She helps Jack up into his booster seat.

“Nor?” Jack asks.

“Jack doesn’t think you should.” His car is old and the locks don’t work. Cooper has to reach across the seat to open Ellie’s door.

“It’s fine.” She grabs Jack’s knee a minute, but he pushes her away. “Just, since you bought more than you would have.”

Cooper laughs. “I’m sure you feel bad.”

She pulls on her seat belt, stares down at the purple alligator that still sits in her hand. She reaches into the back pocket of her shorts where she has stuffed a wad of cash. She was planning. She’s been trying not to look it in the face. She puts the alligator on the dashboard, hands the money to Cooper; she rubs her other hand up and down along the side of the wet sandy canvas of the seat.

“Enjoy,” he says, handing three pills to her and pocketing the money.

She doesn’t say anything about the other three. She looks briefly in the rearview mirror, but Jack turns his face down as she looks at him. She sees his dad in the way his face has flattened out.

She thrums her thumb quick and careful on the alligator. The scales of it sting briefly each time her hand hits it.

Back at the house, the pills are in her pocket. Jack looks like he’s about to cry. Ellie leaves Jack in his room with his bugs while she slips back into her room and stuffs the pills to the bottom of her lowest drawer. She calls to Jack and for a while they sit together silently on the couch. Ellie Googles the cockroaches Annie bought him last week and starts reading different random facts out loud. Jack doesn’t mention where they’ve been, so Ellie doesn’t either. She picks the pieces of sand off Jack’s feet and drops them on the floor.

The clouds come quickly, covering the sky all at once, and the first crack of thunder comes just as she gets up to find the Nutella jar. They pass it back and forth, and Ellie swipes big mouthfuls with her index finger and licks the remnants from underneath the nubs of her fingernails. Another crack, and this time the power goes out. The house is dark and the TV switches off. The roof is tin and the rain is loud against it. Jack grabs for the Nutella jar. “Can we go outside?” he asks. Ellie can smell the rain through the screened porch. She’s kept the door to the house open and when Jeffrey’s gone they keep the air conditioner off. “Now, Jack?” she says. He loves the storms almost as much as she does. Often, they sit under the overhang that covers the front door and stick their feet out as it pours. Ellie looks at him, taking one more swipe of chocolate for herself, then licking her finger and cleaning a smudge off his chin.

“Now,” he says.

Jack leads the way to the backyard. There’s a hammock hanging between two trees and a small brick patio that holds four chairs and a table, all made of wrought iron that has just begun to rust. The rain’s coming hard now, and Ellie can barely see to the fence around the backyard. Jack holds tight to her hand and they step out underneath the downpour. She looks over at Jack, who has his head tipped back just like her, his eyes shut tight, his nose scrunched up. They walk out past the deck and lie down in the dirt that’s turning quickly to a muddy slush. The palm fronds whip back and forth, lashing loudly, Jack laughs as the mud squishes underneath them, and the thunder cracks again.