She was still watching me, as if I couldn’t be trusted. Then she shrugged, letting it go, and said, “I want to talk to you about earlier.”
“What about it?”
“Haven,” she said in that voice that meant she was feeling much, much older than me, “I know it’s been hard for you with the wedding and all, but I’m concerned about how you treated Mom. It’s hard enough for her right now without you freaking out and turning on her.”
“I’m not freaking out,” I said curtly, moving back towards the door.
“Hey, I’m not through talking to you,” she said, walking quickly to block my path. I looked down at her, realizing how short she really was. She was in shorts and a red T-shirt, with a gold chain and matching earrings. “See, that’s just what I’m talking about. It’s like all of a sudden you just don’t care about anyone but yourself. You snap at Mom, and now this attitude with me....”
“Ashley, please,” I said in a tired voice, and noticed how much I sounded like my mother.
“I’m just asking you to keep whatever is bothering you to yourself, at least until after tomorrow.” She had her hand on her hip now, classic Ashley stance. “It’s very selfish, you know, to pick these few days for whatever adolescent breakdown you’re choosing to have. Very selfish.”
“I’m selfish?” I said, and found myself actually throwing my head back to laugh, Ha! “God, Ashley, give me a break. As if everything in the last six months hasn’t revolved around you and this stupid wedding. As if my whole life,” I added, the light, airy feeling bubbling back up inside me, “hasn’t revolved around you and your stupid life.” It didn’t even sound like me, the voice so casual and cutting. Like someone else. Someone bold.
She just looked at me, the gold engagement ring glinting on the hand she was shaking at me. “I’m not going to let you do this. I’m not going to let you get me started on this day, because I have too much to deal with and I’m not in the mood to fight with you. But I will say this. You better grow up and get your shit together in the next five minutes or you will regret it, Haven. I have planned this day and done too much for too long for you to decide to ruin it purely out of spite.” Her hand went back to her hip, her lip jutting out.
“Oh, shut up,” I said in my bold voice, stepping around her and out the bedroom door, then going down the stairs before she even had a chance to react. I was floating, the air whooshing through my ears all the way to the kitchen, where I found my mother and Lydia drinking coffee. They both looked up at me as I came drifting in, with the same expression Ashley had when she’d first called me into the room: as if suddenly I was no longer recognizable.
“Haven?” my mother said, turning in her chair as I reached for the Pop-Tarts and broke open a pack. “Is everything okay?”
“Just fine,” I said cheerfully, lining up my tarts on the rack of the toaster oven. Upstairs Ashley was banging around, boxes crashing to the floor.
My mother and Lydia exchanged looks over their coffee, then went back to watching me. I concentrated on the toaster oven. After a minute or so Lydia asked, “Why don’t you sit down and eat with us?”
“Okay.” I took my tarts out and then sat down across from them and started eating, aware that they were still staring at me. After a few seconds of self-conscious nibbling I said, “What? What is it?”
“Nothing,” Lydia said quickly, shrinking back in her chair. I thought about my dream where she’d been tiny tiny tiny.
“You just seem upset,” my mother said gently, scooting her chair a little closer to me to suggest allegiance. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” I said in the same gentle voice. “I don’t.” And I went back to my Pop-Tart, envisioning that tether stretched to the limit, fraying from the strain, and then suddenly snapping into pieces, no longer able to hold against the force of my pulling away from it. I looked at my mother, with the same hair and same outfit and same expression as Lydia Catrell’s, and thought, You go to Europe. You sell this house. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t care.
“Haven,” my mother said in a pleading voice, placing her hand over mine. “It might make you feel better.”
I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care, I was thinking, stuffing pieces of Pop-Tart into my mouth one by one by one. Her hand was hot and snug over mine as I pulled it away and pushed my chair out from the table. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped as Lydia Catrell pulled further back in her chair. “I don’t care, okay? I just don’t care.”
“Honey,” my mother said, and I could tell by the strain in her voice she was really worried now.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her, unable to meet her eyes. I ran to the back door and out into the garden, slipping across the pathway past the blazing colors and smells, the tendrils reaching out to touch my skin, the mix of everything so sweet and humid, thick and stifling. I hit the edge and kept going, down the street past the Melvins’ and out of our neighborhood altogether, past the Lakeview Mall with all the cars lined up in its parking lot in nice, even rows. I was someone else, someone bold, my feet finding the ground beneath me as I thought only of putting distance between me and what I’d left behind.
I didn’t know where to go, or what to do. I had no job and only three dollars in my pocket, so I spent an hour walking around downtown. I bought an orangeade and spent a half hour on a bench sipping it, wondering if there was ever going to be any way for me to go home. I imagined the house itself in pieces, brought to the ground by my bad attitude. I imagined a crisis meeting convening as I sat there in the park, with Ashley and Lewis and my mother and Lydia and my ex-boss Burt Isker and my father and Lorna, all of them debating the question What on Earth Has Happened to Haven? Only Sumner would be on my side. Over the space of just one summer he’d managed to breathe life into me again, just as he had all those years ago. And now I was playing hooky from my life there on that bench, on the day before the biggest day of my sister’s life, and I didn’t even care. I imagined their faces as they sat around that table, voices clucking with concern. I was causing a Crisis.