Jack tightened his grip on me and kissed my forehead in slow motion, exactly as you might if you loved someone but couldn’t tell them. I felt an upsurge of longing for my mother. She was home waiting for me, but I couldn’t turn to her now. I hid my face in Jack’s shoulder and he laid his head on mine, tender as could be, unaware that I was no longer with him. I was standing on a lone rock jutting out of the sea. Recklessly I had scrambled out there, wanting what everyone wants, doing what people do on sunny mornings. But now I could see the black water stretching out in front of me to the horizon, and behind me, in silence, the tide had come in and closed off the way back.

15

From the road, my house looked like a replica of itself. Not smaller, exactly. Purple paving stones curved as always up to the three porch steps. Pointy dormers, black handrail, red shutters were just the same. But still the house was different. Complete without me.

My mother was unloading the dishwasher, her back to the kitchen door, making such a racket she didn’t hear me come in. Humming, she stacked the cupboard, raked her bangs with one hand, and bent down again, her denim hips too slight and girlish to belong to anyone’s mother. Clattering plates is the loneliest sound ever.

“Mama?”

She stood and turned, eggbeater in one hand, wineglass in the other, smile at the ready. “Oh, there you are! I was starting to—” At the sound of her voice I could not control my breathing or the shape of my mouth. My mother veered toward me. “What’s wrong, Maddy? What’s happened?” Eggbeater bounced to the floor. Glass hit the counter’s edge and shattered, leaving her holding a jagged cartoonish stump.

“Did I scare you?”

“Are you okay?”

“Careful!” I said.

“Careful!” she said.

I took the remains of the glass from her, dropped it in the trash, and reached for the dustpan. My mother’s clumsiness was legendary. Tools for dealing with it were always close at hand. “Don’t move. I’ll get this.” The breakage had momentarily knocked the heartache out of me. When I stood I felt something slithering down, deep inside.

“Mom, you’re bleeding!”

“Am I? It’s nothing.” She was trying to look into my eyes.

I dabbed with a dish towel at the back of her hand. She was right, the cut was not deep. Her hand was strangely meek in mine. The bones were close to the surface and so were the veins. She let me press the towel until the blood no longer seeped back in when I took it away.

“What is it?” she asked again, drawing me near and murmuring the usual things. “You’ve been at Jack’s?”