Twenty-Nine
She wakes up to the faint beep of a heart rate monitor and Suraya’s frowning face.
“Good,” she says. “You’re awake.”
Helen looks around and sees she’s in a clean, if very pink, hospital room, and the dull ache in almost every bone in her body reminds her why. She’s wearing a yellow patient gown, the air smells like lemon cleaning products, and she feels strangely color-coordinated to the room’s pastels, as if she belongs here.
A doctor—a very pretty one, and Helen wonders vaguely if she’s ever considered acting—comes in before she can muster a proper response to Suraya. The doctor briskly recites a catalogue of the ways Helen Zhang has been broken—broken arm, broken clavicle, and a fractured rib that narrowly missed becoming something more serious and potentially fatal.
“And whiplash,” she adds. “That’s pretty common. We put you on a lot of pain medication and sedation so you could sleep. Your parents are outside, asking to see you.”
“No,” Helen says, and realizes it’s the first time she’s spoken out loud in—however long she’s been out. Her voice is croaky from lack of use. “Not—not yet.”
The thought of her mother’s white-lipped concern is more than she can bear right now and she doesn’t feel even a little bad about preserving her peace a bit longer.
“Suit yourself,” the doctor says, and leaves to see to some other injured, pastel patient in need of care.
Leaving her alone with Suraya.
“I’m sorry,” Helen says automatically.
Suraya waves a hand. “What do you have to be sorry for? It’s not your fault that truck blew a red light out of nowhere.”
Helen suddenly wants to cry and she’s not sure why. She smiles apologetically at Suraya instead. It hurts unexpectedly and she realizes there are bandaged cuts on her face. “You shouldn’t have to be here right now. I know how busy you are.”
“Well, the fact is I’m here now. Meetings get pushed all the time for less,” she says. “But why am I your emergency contact?”
“Oh.” Helen flushes with hot embarrassment.
Of course. Suraya didn’t come just out of friendly concern; she came because someone looked up Helen’s records and called her. The sting of humiliation at this hurts more than the rib fracture.
“I didn’t really know anyone in LA, when I was filling out all those forms,” she says. “I should have asked. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Suraya says, with a glint of humor. “A little weird—I wouldn’t recommend doing it on your next job—but then, I think you have more friends in this city now. Nicole and Saskia are out there. Saskia’s been crying her eyes out, the poor girl.”
“Oh,” Helen says, and some warm feeling takes her by surprise. She has friends waiting for her.
“Grant’s here too, obviously,” Suraya says, and Helen tries to unpack every word of that brief sentence.
“Right,” she says blankly.
Suraya gives her a half-hearted smile. “I like you, Helen, and you seem strong enough to take this, so if I could give you a little unsolicited advice?”
Helen nods.
“There’s two things someone told me at the start of my career. One—get your house in order.” Suraya tilts her head. “You can’t really prioritize the things you need to if you’re wasting precious energy on your tortured personal life, as romantic as it may feel in the moment.”
Helen coughs and feels another hot flash of embarrassment. Is that how you see me?
“The second thing, talk to a shrink about your mommy or daddy issues. Because the most important thing to remember about anyone you’re working for is—I’m not your mommy and I’m not your daddy. I’m not still going to love you at the end of the day if you make that day miserable, because I already have my own kids for that.”
Suraya’s eyes flit to her phone and she adds, as an afterthought, “Not that my kids make me miserable. It’s just . . . you’re never really able to stop thinking and worrying about them, once you have them. All those awful clichés about your heart living outside your chest.”
“Okay,” Helen says softly. “I’ll talk to my therapist about my mommy issues.”
Suraya smiles. “I always thought mommy issues were more powerful than daddy issues,” she says thoughtfully. “Certainly more motivating. But we can save that for a season two discussion. Who do you want me to send in first?”
Helen thinks, and chooses cowardice. “Nicole and Saskia, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll let them know.” Suraya nods. “I’m heading to set. I think they’re just getting the first scene off now. You can watch the production feed on your iPad if you want. Your mom brought it for you from home.”
“Thanks,” Helen says.
“Get better,” Suraya orders with reassuring briskness, and leaves.
Grant watches Nicole and Saskia head down the hallway and Suraya gives him a brief nod before she walks over to him.
“You’re taking today off, then,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Yeah,” he says, and his voice comes out in a low rumble that sounds foreign to his own ears. “I, um—I sent in the revisions last night, and if you send me the studio notes after the table read, I can—”
“Grant,” Suraya says, and tilts her head. She looks at him in a slightly pitying way that makes the lump in his throat hurt. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it.”
“Thanks,” he says. “Let me know if . . . if you need anything.”
“I will,” Suraya says, and reaches out to touch his arm in a way he assumes is meant to be comforting.
“How’s she doing?” he asks, and realizes his mouth feels dry.
“She’s awake,” Suraya says. “Injured, and on a shitload of pain meds, but . . . it sounds like she’ll be fine.”
“Good,” he says croakily. “That’s good.”
“It is,” Suraya says. “How are you doing?”
Grant laughs but it comes out in a short, humorless gust of air.
“I’m fine,” he says. “I didn’t get hit by a truck last night.”
Suraya’s gaze sweeps over him.
“Maybe not, but you look fucking terrible,” she says finally. “Take care of yourself. I need you whole tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” Grant says. “I’ll try.”
She nods, glances at Helen’s parents (in the far corner of the room that Grant doesn’t look at, because he isn’t sure he can handle this being the second time they’ve ever met), then heads down the lobby for the elevator.
Nicole and Saskia come bounding into the room with flowers (Saskia), dirty magazines (Nicole), and tears (Saskia again).
“Oh my god, you’re such a drama queen,” Nicole says, slinging an arm around the crying girl. “She’s fine, look, she’s fine.”
Helen smiles and waves, then grimaces because that fucking hurts.
“I just thought, what if you died, and I never got to tell you I’m sorry for being such a bitch to you that last day in the writers room,” Saskia wails.
Helen looks to Nicole in confusion. Nicole mouths “no idea” and rolls her eyes.
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Helen says. “I . . . I haven’t thought about it since. Honestly.”
“You’re so nice,” Saskia says, and Helen would laugh if she couldn’t feel the fracture in her ribs every time she tried.
“So Grant looks like shit,” Nicole says, smoothly changing the topic. “In case you were wondering.”
It’s amazing how her stupid dumb heart still trills at the sound of his name. Like she’s in high school, with a crush. The fact that everyone else can hear it too through the beeping heart rate monitor feels cruel and unusual. Nicole glances at the monitor, but wisely says nothing.
“I’m surprised he’s still here,” Helen mutters to her hands.
“Are we really?” Nicole makes a skeptical sound. “I told you he was in love with you.”
Saskia giggles nervously. “He did seem very . . . distraught,” she says. “When he called us.”
“He called you?” Helen raises a brow.
“Yeah, he thought you might not want to see him,” Nicole says. “Crazy, right?”
“Ha,” Helen says weakly. A thought occurs to her then. “Has he been out there with my parents, this whole time?”
Nicole nods. “They aren’t talking or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s definitely a Sharks and Jets thing going on out there in the waiting room—no one’s crossing to each other’s sides.”
“Oh.” Helen nods. “That’s good, probably.”
“Though who knows what’s happening now that we’re not out there as buffers,” Nicole says thoughtfully. She laughs at Helen’s expression. “Don’t worry! I’m pretty sure everyone’s mostly worried about you.”
“Right,” Helen says weakly. “Me.”
Grant frowns at the ground in front of him, willing it to stop swimming.
A cup appears instead and he looks up to see the older man he knows is Helen’s father holding out a takeaway cup of tea.
“You should drink something,” he says.
“Thanks,” Grant answers thickly, and takes the tea. It’s lemon ginger, and warms him from the inside. He glances over to the chairs where Helen’s parents have been sitting and sees that her mother has disappeared—to the bathroom, probably.
“You’ve been here a long time,” Helen’s father says, his mouth a grim line.
“You’ve been here a long time too,” Grant says.
“We’re her parents,” her dad says simply.
“Yeah.” Grant nods, and looks back down at the floor.
There’s an unspoken question between them—We’re her parents. Who are you to her?—and Grant can’t answer it, to Helen’s father, to Helen, to himself. He doesn’t really have a right to be anyone to her, but he also doesn’t think he’d be useful to anyone else, anywhere else, right now. He wants to laugh at the way Suraya dismissed him summarily from reporting to work today and feels even more worthless.
Get it together, Shepard.
Grant tries to think of something, anything, he could say to Helen’s father that would fix everything, and realizes he doesn’t even know this man’s name. Helen really never wanted them to meet. Would it be better to respect her wishes or try something desperate?
Helen’s father casts an appraising look at Grant, sighs heavily, then returns to his chair across the room. Maybe he’s thinking the same thing—he should talk to Helen first.
Grant tries for the hundredth time this hour to think of what he’ll say to Helen when he sees her, if he sees her.
He’s never really believed in writer’s block—his dad had laughed at the idea once, saying something like, “Well, car mechanics don’t get to have mechanic’s block, do they?” And Grant had been determined to treat his job with the same unromantic steely air.
The thing is, he’s not so sure mechanics don’t feel blocked sometimes. Grant has tried and failed to repair his own car enough times to respect the amount of creative thinking that goes into finding elegant solutions in the art of car maintenance.
But words have never failed him—at least not dialogue. Prose was trickier; he couldn’t hold a thought long enough to expand it into a proper paragraph, let alone a novel. But dialogue he’s always been able to hear as if the people he’s writing are in the room with him.
He tries to imagine Helen’s voice now but his brain stubbornly continues to avoid all paths leading to hypotheticals.
Let’s not experience this more than once, his psyche seems to suggest. It’s for your own good.
Nicole and Saskia stay long enough to annoy the nurses, and then they act as if they always planned to leave after Helen’s hospital brunch of pudding and a fruit cup.
“Heal fast, babe,” Nicole says, and kisses the top of Helen’s head. “Who are we sending in next? The sad, hot man, or the sad, worried parents?”
“Your mom is really worried,” Saskia says. “I mean, it’s fine, just, you know, a lot of . . . ‘My baby, they won’t let me see her’ kind of thing.”
Helen huffs slightly. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
Nicole leans against the doorway, jacket in hand. “I vote for the broody, hot one. You’re already injured, you deserve a little fun.”
“Fun,” Helen repeats. “Right.”
Nicole shrugs her shoulders and drops her voice. “Helen. Helen, I love you. Helen, hmmm . . .” She cracks a smile. “That was my Grant impression, in case you couldn’t tell.”
Helen laughs, genuinely, and winces.
“You’ve convinced me,” she coughs, in a way that makes Nicole actually look worried for a second. “Send in the broody, hot one.”
They slip out and she has the horrifying realization that she should have asked them to borrow a mirror first. She briefly tries to adjust her hair using her distorted reflection in the chrome railings of her hospital bed, then gives up just in time to hear familiar footsteps approach.
“Well,” she breathes, and he’s here. “You look terrible. What happened to you?”
Grant laughs then (she missed that sound, when’s the last time she heard it?), leaning against the doorway. His T-shirt is a wrinkled mess and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days, and she can see the crick in his neck from the way he unfolds himself strangely to drop into the chair nearest to the door, a long ways from her bed.
“You look worse,” he says. “Like you got hit by a fucking truck.”
“Ha,” she says. “Funny.”
“Hilarious,” he agrees.
“Why did you come?” she asks.
“Isn’t that obvious?” he says, and looks at her in that way he does.
“I don’t have the energy to play this game right now,” she says softly. “Would you come closer?”
He stands and reaches the chair closest to her in surprisingly few strides. She turns to look at him, close enough to touch now, though not quite yet touching. She reaches out lamely and he takes her left hand between both of his, then bows his head to kiss her thumb. It makes her heart ache painfully, but at least the heart rate monitor doesn’t seem to pick up on it.
He kisses her wrist, then her palm, then each finger. She smiles slightly at that.
“Are you thinking of that time on my couch, with the yearbook?” he murmurs, as he presses a lingering kiss to the tip of her left pinkie.
“No,” she says. “I was thinking I missed you.”
He huffs softly.
“You gotta stop saying things like that out loud,” he says gruffly. “It’s fucking killing me.”
She lifts her hand to press it against his scratchy cheek and he covers her hand with his own, pressing her closer.
“Grant,” she starts, and he shakes his head.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk so much, crackerjack,” he says softly. “Can I kiss you?”
She knows she shouldn’t say yes, but she’s on enough pain meds that she thinks maybe it’s not such a terrible idea after all.
“You probably owe me one anyway,” she mutters, and she can feel his laugh against her mouth. She lets out a shaky sigh as it evolves into a slow kiss—it feels like the first real breath she’s taken since their last kiss. His lips linger—warm, sweet, longing—until it’s over, and he’s back in his chair, watching her.
Some searing pain in her chest tells her this is what it would feel like to be safe, and loved, and healing under the watchful gaze of Grant Shepard.
He chuckles.
“You’re about to say something that’s going to piss me off,” he says.
He’s so annoying.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Helen starts, and Grant holds out a hand, like there it is. “Take me seriously right now.”
“As a heart attack,” he says, his voice sounding raspier than she remembers it. “A cute, pastel one.”
She ignores that.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’d be lying if I said otherwise,” she starts.
“Glad we’re on the same page,” he says coolly.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she says.
“Tell the truth?”
“Interrupt,” she says.
“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and she rolls her eyes.
“My parents are out there.”
“Yes, they are,” he says.
“My mom’s probably having a minor meltdown at the hospital staff because I haven’t let her in to see me.”
“She’s had a few,” he acknowledges. “Very tiny, perfectly reasonable meltdowns, in my opinion. You can be frustratingly . . . opaque. When you want to be.”
“Sorry,” she says irritably.
“S’okay,” he says quietly. “I’m used to it.”
“How was it out there, with them?” she asks, pushing onward past the bruising pain. “Did you guys bond over my intake forms, are you besties now, did my mom invite you to Christmas dinner?”
Grant’s jaw tenses. “No.”
“Did Mom even acknowledge you?”
Grant lets out a short exhale. “No.”
Helen sinks into her pillow sullenly. “Nothing’s changed, Grant. I got in a car accident. People get into car accidents and break bones all the time. You know that.”
“You don’t, though,” he says, his voice a dry rasp. “Do you know what it felt like, to get that call from Suraya last night? By the way, good job picking your boss as an emergency contact, that’s not pathetic at all, Helen.”
The quiet anger that’s been simmering in him since their kiss ended is nearly at the surface now, she can tell. Good. She can deal with an angry Grant better than a sweet one.
“I didn’t know anyone in LA,” she says.
“You knew me,” he hisses. “We filled that paperwork out week three, I remember, I was there. It was right before the camping trip.”
“We weren’t friends then,” she answers.
“We aren’t friends now!”
Helen exhales shortly. “You’re being unreasonable. Who gives a shit when we filled out some stupid employment forms?”
“I don’t know,” Grant says, and pushes a hand into his hair in frustration. “I can’t—I can’t think straight when I’m around you.”
“Maybe I should have put down someone else. Saskia or Nicole probably wouldn’t have called you first.”
Grant glares at her then. “Suraya called me because she knew I’d want to know. That’s how she put it. I almost didn’t pick up, because I hadn’t slept in thirty-six fucking hours, because I kept replaying our last conversation trying to figure out if I could have said something, anything, that would have changed the outcome. Thank fuck I did pick up, Helen. Do you know what it would have done to me if you’d died and I’d been sleeping?”
Helen stares at him mutinously. “You shouldn’t drive when you haven’t slept for that long.”
“I took a fucking Uber.” He gives her a disgusted look, as if unable to bear the sight of her. “You know what I figured out on the ride over? All that talk about me being grateful in a few months, and finding someone else, and being happy and healthy, all of that—it’s bullshit.”
Her breath catches at the despairing look in his eyes. A memory suddenly comes online, of meeting eyes with him in that church at Michelle’s funeral, all those years ago. It seems to reach across time and space, reminding her who they are and why they’ve been leaving each other for so long.
“You could keep me your dirty little secret, come to me tasting like other men, I’d still take you back every fucking time,” he says, a muscle ticking violently in his jaw. “I’d rather have a fraction of you than all of someone else.”
Helen swallows. “I don’t want that for you. For either of us. It’s not—it’s not healthy.”
“I don’t want to be healthy,” Grant says, and his chest is heaving as if he’s just run a marathon. “I just want you.”
She stares at him and knows if she told him she loved him back, there would never be any hope for either of them. They’d keep coming back here, over and over, holding on to less and less of each other each time, until they had nothing left but a lifetime of regret and resentment over old heartaches and missed chances.
“I’d like you to leave now,” she says quietly.
“What’s wrong, getting too honest?” Grant murmurs softly.
“Please,” she says.
“You’re a coward, Helen.”
She’s crying now, she realizes, and he sees it too. He doesn’t move to comfort her (she hates being comforted), but he doesn’t leave either. He stares at her, and folds his arms across his chest.
“Am I dismissed?” he asks bluntly.
“Yes,” she says, and wipes her face. “You should go.”
“Yeah, I’m going,” Grant says, his voice low and dark. “Have a nice life, crackerjack.”
“Grant,” she says, and he stops in the doorway. He turns and watches her with shuttered eyes. She misses him so fucking much already. “I hope you’re wrong. I hope you’re able to . . . to get over this someday.”
He stares at her for a long beat, and it feels like he’s memorizing her.
“You can keep hoping for both of us. I won’t be,” he says grimly, finally, and leaves.
Helen asks a nurse to take her to the bathroom and uses the time to clean herself up. She wipes the tears from her face and reminds herself she can cry more later, every night for the rest of her life, if she wants. She just has to keep it together long enough for her parents to see she’s going to be okay—maybe a little scratched and banged up, but nothing time and bed rest won’t fix. She has the terrible thought just then that Mom will probably insist on staying longer, maybe even move into her condo to take care of her until she deems Helen healed enough, and Helen tries wildly to think of the best arguments to deter her. I have friends who’ll come take care of me, the building’s security keeps an eye on entries and exits and it’s only my name on the sublease, if you move in, I’ll jump out the window.
She’s only darkly amusing herself with the thought of saying that last one out loud. Maybe there are mothers out there who could hear that and laugh or at least tut dismissively and move on with the conversation. She knows her own mother would stare back at her, ashen-faced, and ask, Why would you say such a terrible thing?
Helen knows the hospital staff probably think she’s a terrible person, that she doesn’t care about her own parents, that they’re treating an awful, unfeeling robot. As she looks down at her hands, which were shaking when she came into the bathroom yet seem oddly calm now, she wonders if she is.
She used to think it was her superpower, her ability to identify her upset emotions and set them carefully aside. This anger isn’t serving us right now; put it aside and deal with the facts. This sadness isn’t helping; turn it off and look for solutions. It made her effective, productive—powerful, even.
But she’s found lately that she’s much more emotionally fragile than she used to be. All it takes is a hug while she’s trying to keep it together and the dam breaks, and the tears flow. No one’s going to hug her now, though.
So she steels herself against the emotions that aren’t helpful in this moment, practices the right kind of it’s okay, it looks worse than it is, I’m fine, really smile in the mirror, and hits the bell for the nurse to help her back to her room. And finally she says, “I’m ready for my parents.”
Her father enters wearing a grim expression, her mother a drawn, glassy-eyed one. She can tell Mom’s been crying and she feels a stab of guilt. Mom holds out Helen’s iPad and a bag of chips.
“They said you might be hungry,” she says, and drops the bag on Helen’s bed.
“Thanks,” Helen says. She takes the chips but doesn’t open them. She tries out the best I’m fine smile in her repertoire. “So obviously something happened. Ha. But I’m fine now. Sorry I kept you waiting. I didn’t realize so much time had passed.”
“How are you feeling?” Mom asks, and a tiny line of worry appears between her brows.
“Good,” Helen says. “I mean, not great, but pretty good, under the circumstances.”
“The doctors said you have broken bones,” Mom says, her eyes scanning Helen’s limbs.
“Yeah, but I’ve broken bones before and gotten better. Remember that time I fell on my chin in fourth grade?”
Helen remembers it. She had been on the swings at Mom’s friend’s house and decided to try jumping off the swing like she saw the older kids doing. She’d fallen chin-first onto the ground, and she can still see the way Mom’s eyes went comically aghast at the sight of all the blood gushing down her chin. She’d driven Helen to the ER, completely silent, radiating panic from the car to the parking lot to the waiting room. Helen remembers Mom asking questions in soft, broken English to the doctor until they found a nurse who spoke Mandarin and could explain Helen just needed a finger splint and fourteen stitches on her chin.
“You were younger then,” Mom says.
“My point is, you were worried then too, and it was fine. I’m going to be fine.”
“Fine, fine, all you ever are is fine,” Mom says. “You don’t tell us anything.”
“I tell you things,” Helen says, and can’t keep a petulant tone out of her voice that makes her sound exactly seventeen years old.
“Listen to our daughter, listen to how she lies,” Mom says, turning to Dad. “So easy for her.”
“She needs to rest,” Dad says.
“She says she’s fine!” Mom snaps, then rounds on Helen. “I know what you’ve been doing with—with that boy.”
She says that boy with disgust and Helen’s brain wearily thinks, I can’t do this right now. None of her surprise or shock synapses seem to be firing—all Helen can muster is tired.
“I saw your text messages,” Mom says. “I had a lot of time to wait for you with your iPad.”
Helen blinks furiously. She mentally runs through the entirety of her texts to Grant in milliseconds and tries to remember anything incriminating. The fact that she texts him at all is incriminating. But they didn’t text that much—they spent most of their waking hours together.
“The way you talk to each other, come over, I miss you, happy birthday—”
“Oh my god, this is such an overreaction, Mom—”
“I know what he is to you!” Mom cries. “You let him in here before your own mother.”
Helen looks away then. She’d forgotten, somehow, that Mom would have seen that. The hospital’s ability to wield a magical legal boundary between her and her parents’ access to her must have driven her mad with power, or she’d never have forgotten something like that for even an instant. She remembers the last time she slipped up—in high school, when she’d come home one day in freshman year to find her diary open on the kitchen table and Mom waiting for her with an expression of betrayal. How could you write these things about your own mother?
“What would your sister say?”
Helen shakes her head silently and looks out the window.
Michelle would probably high-five her and say, I never thought you had it in you.
“You have no idea what he is to me,” Helen says finally. “Anyway, it’s over. He loved me, and it’s over, and I really don’t want to talk about it.”
She’s slightly horrified to find she’s crying again and swipes furiously at the tears that refuse to stop silently rolling down her face.
“Helen. This is a sickness.”
She’s heard this one before, it’s her mom’s favorite phrase—when Helen would stay up past three a.m. reading by flashlight under the covers, when she found pages of Helen’s diaries where she’d scrawled four more years four more years four more years in cursive script until she ran out of ink, as a way to calm the pounding in her head when her parents had done some now forgotten thing that probably had her best interests in mind but had felt wildly unjust at the time. This is a sickness. Yet Mom had balked when she’d first heard that Helen had started seeing a therapist regularly in her late twenties—“Why? What’s so bad you need to see a therapist?”
Helen knows her parents have always done their best by her, that they just want an easier life for her. They aren’t that bad, she reminds herself. They let you become a writer, when everyone else’s kids became doctors and pharmacists. They’re supportive. They show up. It’s just that they don’t have context for her and it makes her feel like they’re talking in opposite directions in every conversation.
But I didn’t choose this, she thinks. You decided to move to another country and start a family. You should have known that not fully understanding your own kids would come with that territory.
She loves her parents, she does, but it’s a prickly, complicated love, and suddenly Helen is swept up in a hopeless feeling that maybe all she’s capable of is prickly, complicated loving. Maybe even with Grant Shepard permanently, safely in the rearview mirror, she’ll never be able to love simply and without disclaimers.
Helen feels a clawing sensation in her gut, a panicked kind of trapped feeling, and when she opens her mouth, the words come out in a choked gust—
“It’s suffocating, being loved by you.”
It sounds so awful and dramatic out loud, she almost can’t believe she’s said it. Helen lets out a shaky exhale. “You don’t leave me an inch of space to breathe.”
Mom stares at Helen, stunned. “I’m your mother,” she says.
“I fucking know,” Helen snaps.
She looks up, and she’s never seen Mom look at her like this—like she wants to reach out and slap her. (Dad has retreated to the chair in the corner and is studiously watching the production feed on Helen’s iPad.)
“You read my diary in high school, you read my texts now, you don’t leave me anything,” Helen says.
Mom stares back at her. “Because you give us nothing. What else am I supposed to do? How else will I know what’s going on in your life?”
This would be the part of the episode, Helen thinks idly, where mother and daughter finally have a heart-to-heart. Walls come down, they finally, truly see each other, and all is resolved at last. It’s the all-American fantasy she’s been peddled by every episode of her favorite Emmy Award–winning, syndicated television dramas featuring tough-but-loving families.
But for some reason, she and Mom always seem to miss each other.
“We should let her rest,” Dad says from the back of the room. “This conversation doesn’t have to happen here.”
Mom stares at Helen, her fingers balled in tight fists at her sides. Dad stands then, and returns Helen’s iPad to her. He nudges Mom.
“Come on,” he says.
Helen watches Mom’s throat working, her eyes glassy with fresh tears.
I don’t hate you, she wants to say. I just hate the way you love me.
But Mom wouldn’t be able to hear that. Helen watches silently as her parents move toward the exit and knows this is the end of the scene, there’s nothing else left to work out between them. There’s no point. They’re almost out the door when—
“Wait.” Helen clears her throat, desperate to tell them something. “I’m not writing YA anymore.”
Her parents stop, confused.
“What, you have a new book deal?” Dad asks.
“No,” Helen says, her heart pounding. She isn’t even sure she means any of the words she’s saying and thinks suddenly maybe this is the thrill other teens experienced when they shouted “I hate you!” and slammed the doors to their childhood bedrooms. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know I don’t wanna write about teenagers anymore.”
Mom and Dad exchange a bewildered look.
“I don’t care what you write about,” Dad says slowly. “But maybe it is not so good to jump without knowing first where you will land.”
“Michelle did,” Helen says, hurling the words like knives across the room. “Maybe it’ll work out better for me.”
Dad grips the door handle as if he’s been hit. Mom stares at her with an expression of horrified betrayal. “How could you say such a terrible thing?” she hisses.
Helen laughs and wipes at tears that are flowing inexplicably down her face.
“I don’t know, Mom, I’m probably very broken inside. I wonder why.”
Then Dad tugs at Mom’s elbow, and her parents leave.
Finally.