My heart races. Cassie is me, and I am my mother. I feel light-headed. I understand her need to throw the punches. How could I have done this?
“Why wasn’t I good enough?” she says, and I hear my own childhood voice in her words.
My heart breaks.
“Of course you’re good enough,” I say. “People don’t want more children because the ones they have aren’t good enough.”
“I mean now,” she says, determined to get an answer. “When you lost the baby and couldn’t get pregnant again. Why weren’t Dad and I good enough for you? Why were you still sad?”
“Oh, honey,” I say, unable to explain any of it.
She stands there with the brokenhearted face of the child she still is, expectant and waiting for me to explain the world and all the pieces of it, and I can’t. I can’t even explain it to myself.
“I’m your kid too,” she says. “I can’t help what happened. It wasn’t my fault.”
I move toward her, but she steps back from me. “Cassie,” I say. “Please stay.”
She looks at the open suitcase, and I think for one crazy moment that she will stay with me, but she closes the top and zips it up. She stalks past me out the bedroom door and through the living room.
“I’m going to wait for Dad in the lobby,” she says.
“I love you,” I say. I know I’m begging.
She looks away from me and walks out. Monster Mom is long gone and all that’s left are a pair of ripped-up pants and a torn shirt. I sit down on the couch and cry.
14
Saturday comes and Cassie is still with Jack. Since I’m “free,” I help Ray move into the stalker building. I know he watches Nicole and Michael at the park still. I can’t blame him. He wants the little arms and legs and the tiny laugh, the hair puffing up on the wind, the small hand inside his big one.
I wanted it again too. The want of it can drive you crazy. The absence of it feels so much like a weight missing from your body that you look down at yourself to see what’s gone. You have arms, legs; your torso is intact. Were you carrying something that you’ve put down and lost? Were you wearing a coat that you’ve left at coat check? Did you lose your purse?
I felt like that for a long time after losing the baby. It was such an unidentifiable loss for most people. I wasn’t even showing very much at the time. But I had felt the baby move—that small quickening—those first flutters when you know you’ve got a life inside of you.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I ask, holding out my arms for a box.
It’s an easy move from Mom’s basement to here. Ray doesn’t have much. The back of his car is loaded with things that may have been in there for months, maybe years, as he traveled around post-prison from no place to nowhere.
“No, but it’s the only idea I have,” Ray says and hands me a box marked “stuff from the bathroom.”
“Who knows, maybe you’ll like your cellmate better this time,” I say as I walk up the three flights of stairs to his new place.
“That’s very optimistic,” Ray says sarcastically from behind me.
“Did you really come to me for optimism?” I note the peeling paint on the steel stairwell.
“Of course not.” Ray follows me into his new apartment. “I know better than that.”
“Sorry,” I say and set the box down amid the few other things we’ve taken up the stairs already. “This is a big step for you, and I’m not helping at all.”
“Of course you are,” he says and punches my arm. “You’re keeping me from having to make double the trips up and down the stairs.”
“Ray,” I say, suddenly fearful for him. “Do you really think things are going to work out?”
“I never expect things to work out,” he says, defeated already. “That way I’m a lot less disappointed. I just thought I’d try, for once, to do the right thing. Thanks for the support.” He puts down a box labeled “crap from the closet.”
“I’m sorry.”
Ray comes closer and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Sis,” he says and sighs. “I know I’m being crazy, and I know you’re trying to be helpful, although you’re not very good at it. I appreciate the honesty.”
He goes back down the stairs before I have a chance to say anything else.
I walk around his place, getting a feel for Ray’s new landscape. The furnished apartment is suitable—one bedroom and a fold-out couch, a kitchen designed for takeout, a small living area, the usual necessities. At the window overlooking the street, I see the world that Ray is sneaking through the back door of. I watch people pass on the streets below and feel the helpless desire that draws Ray here. This is Nicole’s neighborhood. It’s where she walks to the park and where she and Michael go out for ice cream. I imagine Ray standing here at the window for long hours, in wait, in hope, in need of just a glimpse of what he fears might never be.
I get a text from Lola telling me to tell Ray she’s glad he found a place and she will see it soon. I had told her about move-in day, but she hadn’t responded until now. I hear Ray’s feet clanging on the steps. He shoulders open the door and drops a box on the floor.
“I hope that wasn’t important,” I say.
“None of it is, really.” He looks at my phone where my fingers linger over the screen. “Was that Lola?” He runs his hands through his hair. “Is she coming?”
I shake my head at him. “What’s up with you two?” I ask,
