‘Your father says tomorrow’s the big day.’
‘Yup.’
‘Honey-bell,’ she repeated. ‘Your father’s set the whole thing up with Mr Winslow, and I don’t need to remind you that they’re being very generous.’
‘Yup,’ I replied, feeling myself bristle. Who knew what Birch had finally said to get my reluctant, sullen father to agree to let me miss three months of punishing labor, but whatever it was, it had worked, and thank god for it. Still, I found it borderline insulting to suggest my father had had anything to do with ‘setting the whole thing up’ when he’d barely tolerated it, and was reminded of how my mother always sided with him, even when (especially when) her face held the pink imprint of his hand. My eyes scanned the intricate pattern of Ev’s rug.
‘Do you have a hostess gift? Candles maybe? Soap?’
‘Mom.’
Ev glanced up at the sharpness in my voice. She smiled and shook her head before drifting back into the magazine.
‘Mr Winslow told your father they don’t have service up there.’
‘Service?’
‘You know, cell phone, Internet.’ My mother sounded flustered. ‘It’s one of the family rules.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Look, I’ve got to—’
‘So we’ll write then.’
‘Great. Bye, Mom.’
‘Wait.’ Her voice became bold. ‘There’s something else I have to tell you.’
I absentmindedly eyed a long, thick bolt on the inside of Ev’s bedroom door. In the two weeks I’d slept in that room, I’d never given it much thought, but now, examining how sturdy it looked, I was struck with wondering: why on earth would a girl like Ev want to lock out any part of her perfect life? ‘Yes?’
‘It’s not too late.’
‘For what?’
‘To change your mind. We’d love to have you home. You know that, don’t you?’
I almost burst out laughing. But then I thought of her burned meat loaf, sitting, lonely, in the middle of the table, with just my father to share it. Microwaved green beans, limp, in their brown juices. Rum and Cokes. No point in rubbing my freedom in. ‘I need to go.’
‘Just one more thing.’
It was all I could do not to slam the receiver down. I’d been perfectly warm, hadn’t I? And listened plenty? How could I ever make her understand that this very conversation with her, laden with everything I was trying to escape, made Winloch, with no cell phones or Internet, sound like heaven?
I could feel her trying to figure out how to put it, her exhalations flushing into the receiver as she formulated the words. ‘Be sweet,’ she said finally.
‘Sweet?’ I felt a lump rise in my throat. I turned from Ev.
‘Be yourself, I mean. You’re so sweet, Honey-bell. That’s what Mr Winslow told your dad. You’re a “gem,” he said. And, well’ – she paused, and, despite myself, I hung on her words – ‘I just want you to know I think so too.’
How could she still make me hate myself so readily? Remind me that I could never undo what I had done? The lump in my throat threatened to well into something more. ‘I’ve got to go.’ I hung up before she had the chance to protest.
But I hadn’t caught my tears in time. They flowed, hot and angry, down my cheeks against my will.
‘Mothers are such lunatic bitches,’ Ev quipped after a moment.
I kept my back to her and tried to gather my strength.
‘Are you crying?’ She sounded shocked.
I shook my head, but she could see that was exactly what I was doing.
‘You poor kitten,’ she soothed, her voice turning velvety, and, before I knew it, she was wrapping me in a tight embrace. ‘It’ll be all right. Whatever she said – it doesn’t matter.’
I had never let Ev see me walloped, had felt sure that, if she did, she would be fruitless in her comforting. But she held me firmly and uttered calm and soothing words until my tears weren’t so urgent.
‘She’s just – she’s not – she’s everything I’m afraid of becoming,’ I said finally, trying to explain something I’d never said out loud.
‘And that may be the only way that your mother and my mother are exactly the same.’ Ev laughed, offering me a tissue, and then a sweater from a bag on the floor, azure and soft, adding, ‘Put it on, you pretty thing. Cashmere makes everything better.’
Now, I looked across the Plattsburgh train depot and swelled with indulgent love at Ev’s grumpy scowl.
‘Be sweet,’ my mother had said.
A command.
A warning.
A promise.
I was good at being sweet. I’d spent years cloaked in gentleness, in wide-eyed innocence, and, to tell the truth, it was often less exhausting than the alternative. I could even see now, looking back on how Ev and I had gained our friendship, that sweetness had been the seed of it – if I wasn’t good, why on earth would I have dared to touch Ev’s sobbing self?
There was no sign of anyone coming to meet us. Ev’s mood had settled into inertia. It would be dark soon. So I headed south along the tracks, in the direction of a periodic clanging I’d heard for the past half hour.
‘Where are you going?’ Ev called after me.
I returned with a greasy trainman, toothless and gruff. He let us into the stationmaster’s office before trudging away.
‘There’s a phone in here,’ I offered.
‘The Dining Hall is the only place at Winloch there’s a phone, and no one will be there at this hour,’ she snarled, but she dialed the number anyway. It rang and rang, and, just as even I was beginning to lose hope, I spotted, through the dusty, cobwebbed window, a red Ford pickup rolling up, complete with waggling yellow Lab in the truck bed.
‘Evie!’ I heard the man’s voice before I saw him. It was young, enthusiastic. As we stepped from the office – ‘Evie!’ – he rounded the corner, opening his tanned arms wide. ‘I’m glad you made it!’
‘I’m glad you made it,’ she huffed, brushing past him. He was tall and dark, his coloring Ev’s opposite, and he looked to be only a few years older. Still, there was something manly about him, as though he’d lived more years than both of us combined.
‘You her friend?’ he asked, fiddling with his cap, grinning after her as she wrestled her suitcase in the direction of the parking lot.
I shoved Paradise Lost into my weatherworn canvas bag. ‘Mabel.’
He extended his rough, warm hand. ‘John.’ I assumed he was her brother.
JOHN’S FOUR-DOOR PICKUP WAS old, but it was clear he took great pride in it, second only to his yellow Lab, who barked triumphantly from the flatbed at the sight of us. Ev struggled to toss in her suitcase until John lifted it in one hand – mine was in his other. He placed them down beside the giddy canine, who was, by then, doing her best to lick Ev’s ear.