The Family Afloat
by Andrew Cothren
“Where the Hallway Ends” by Sarah Estime
As soon as your phone rings and Beth is on the other end, voice shaking, asking if you can meet her, you know what's about to happen. You've known for some time, in fact. You hang up and put on your jacket and walk through the rain to that coffee shop near the subway and she tells you, point blank, that she wants to end things, and your expression doesn't change much because you've been preparing yourself for this all along.
"I'm leaving town," she says. She's shifting in her seat, holding a steaming coffee mug in both hands. Rainwater drips from the matted ends of her hair to the tabletop.
"Leaving town," you say.
"Moving. New job. Promotion, rather."
"And this just happened. Just today, no warning."
She nods. "It's all happening quickly. You know how my company is, everything has to happen, like, five minutes ago." She manages a quick, strained laugh so loud the people at a nearby table turn with annoyed looks on their faces.
"My family," you say.
"What?"
"It's my family, isn't it? Jesus, this always happens. You just met them and now here we are."
It's been a pattern. Relationships end out of the blue, usually after the woman you've fallen for has met your family. In high school, you and Lauren had made plans to stay together after leaving for different colleges despite not being together that long, but she dumped you after your graduation ceremony and when she embraced you for the last time you could feel her shaking underneath her gown. Then there was Jaimie, in college, and your sudden breakup over the phone after she'd visited during winter break. Jenny waited until a few days after attending your family's reunion weekend in Cape Cod. Kate dumped you a week after meeting your mother.
And now here's Beth, who you brought home to Bridgeport for the first time just last month, ending things abruptly.
"Every time," you say. "I know they're a fucking handful, but you'll get to know them better. Or is it me? Is it what I said about going on vacation together?"
Beth looks at you with offended shock. "It's not your family. They're great, they were really nice when we visited. Your sister wrote me an email about how nice it was to meet me. And it's not you. Or the apartment. Not really. I mean, there are a lot of things."
"My mom can be a little crazy," you say. "But she's just had a tough time in the last few years—"
"Look," Beth interrupts. "There are reasons that I can't say." She finally looks at you, moves her hand until its almost touching yours, then quickly pulls away, thinking better of it. "I wish I could tell you everything. But I can't." Her voice is cracking and she seems nervous. Her eyes dart to the window with each passing commuter.
"What's going on?" you ask.
"I'm sorry. I just— Here." She puts a few dollars down on the table for her coffee and starts fishing a cigarette from her purse with two shaking fingers, beginning to cry.
"I thought you quit smoking."
"I need to go. I shouldn't be here. Take care of yourself. Please don't call me."
She sprints from the cafe and across the street against the light, nearly getting hit by a taxi. She disappears into a crowd of rush hour commuters and dripping umbrellas.
*
Right away, things seem different with Regina. One of your coworkers sets the two of you up on a date, after months of you insisting that you aren't interested in seeing anybody. You meet her at that new Italian place down the avenue from your apartment and end up staying there, talking over cocktails, until the chairs are up on the tables and one of the dishwashers mops the tile floors.
She fits in immediately with all your friends, makes you laugh, and joins your bar trivia team. One day when you're both doing laundry, she juggles three balled-up socks for a pair of children in the laundromat and you can feel your heart thrumming in your earlobes. Things are so good that you think about buying a guitar, or writing a novel. You start eating vegetables and actually using your bicycle. You've fallen in love very quickly, and can tell she feels the same way. One night you tell her so, and she says it back, and you have the best sex of your life, collapsing afterward into a heavy-breathing heap.
But there, in the back of your head, is that voice telling you it won't last. You try to ignore it, to ignore the dread, but it's always there, your stomach sinking. You can't sleep, stop eating, begin to drink too much. Every time she mentions meeting your family, you make an excuse, find some other event or activity that you tell her you just can't, in good conscience, miss. "But soon. Next time," you tell her.
Eventually you run out of reasons, and, despite your protests, she invites herself to Thanksgiving dinner with your family. As you take the train up the Connecticut coastline you stare out the window at the the passing harbor towns. The train is crowded, and you and Regina stand in a crowd of pastel-shirted bankers near the rear door of the train car.
"So Maggie is your cousin, the Yale one, and Frank is at Brown, right?" she asks, adjusting the shoulder strap of her backpack. "And your uncle Jeff is the one to not mention Democrats to."
"Hmm?" you say, finally turning around.
"Sorry to interrupt the sightseeing," she says, feigning offense. "What's gotten into you lately? You've been a space cadet for like two fucking weeks now."
"You're alright with coming, right? My family's a pain in the ass. My sister just went through a bad breakup and my mom's, well, you'll see. If you've got any problems with any of them, please, just promise to tell me."
Regina laughs. "If I didn't want to come I wouldn't be here. Plus, you're worried about your family making me nervous? My uncles got in a fistfight in the backyard last Christmas. Over something that had happened in high school. The neighbors called the cops. So nothing your family does can scare me off."
She runs her fingers through your hair, then kisses your ear. "You need a haircut, sir," she says, and in that moment you love her so much it hurts.
Your family greets Regina warmly, offering snacks and wine refills and your baby pictures. She makes a few jokes, once even getting your sister to smile, which is no small feat. Your family seems to like her, and she is invited to your upcoming Christmas festivities several times. Throughout the evening, you sit in the old recliner that used to be your father's, drinking whiskey and watching your family carefully. You note every motion and tic, track every brief debate over politics or health care or the triangle offense. The house seems a bit messier than it was when you were a kid, but nothing else seems out of the ordinary. After dinner and a late-night board game, you and Regina retire to your old room and try to get comfortable on the rickety twin bed. Neither of you gets much sleep.
"I don't know if I've heard you string five words together this whole time," your mother says as she drops the two of you off at the train station the next morning. "It's a good thing you had this one with you to entertain us." She rubs Regina's arm in a way that you wish you could find reassuring.
Your mother waves from the parking lot as the train pulls away. Regina is already falling asleep on your shoulder, and you aren't far behind. "I had a great time," she says sleepily.
"Me too," you lie.
*
That Sunday, you walk to her apartment in the cold afternoon, hands pressed deep into your coat pockets, the first snowflakes of a small flurry beginning to stick to the sidewalk. Pedestrians exit the subway station with overstuffed bags of gifts weighing down their arms. One of the discount stores displays cheap singing Christmas lights that whine high-pitched carols. You pay no attention to any of this, however. You can only think of Regina and what awaits you when you see her. At this point, you're not sure how you can still walk; your head is spinning and your knees wobble as you press her apartment's buzzer.
"Hey!" She yells, leaning out her living room window three floors up. "Buzzer's not working. Let yourself in, and if you could grab my mail for me? It's the small key with the masking tape on it."
She wraps her keys in an old scarf and drops them down to you. With a shaking hand, you open the door to the building and quickly grab the mail. You're not sure if your legs will be able to make it all the way up the staircase, but they do, and Regina opens the door to let you in.
"Hey you," she says. "Delivery cool? I've been craving Chinese all day, but I'm flexible. As you know." She winks.
She wraps her arms around your neck and looks up at you with that look that just kills you, slays you dead, every time. You kiss her, head swimming.
"I was right, by the way," she says as you follow her into the kitchen. "That song that guy was singing? In the subway? Totally by Dylan. Looked it up. Dinner's on you."
Something in the pile of mail in your hand catches your eye. "What's this?" you ask, pulling a strange envelope from the middle of the stack. There's no return address, and the envelope seems older than normal, the address written in the blocky font of an old typewriter.
"No idea," she says, looking at you with a puzzled twist to her face. "Open it."
Inside is a piece of paper covered in cut-out letters from newspapers and magazines, in a variety of sizes and fonts, like a Hollywood ransom note. It reads: REGINA: LEAVE HIM ALONE AND YOU WON'T GET HURT. END THINGS TODAY OR THERE WILL BE DIRE CONSEQUENCES. BREAK THINGS OFF AND BURN THIS LETTER. MENTION ANY OF THIS TO HIM OR TO THE POLICE AND I WILL FIND YOU WHEREVER YOU ARE. I WILL CRAWL IN THROUGH YOUR WINDOW AND HOLD YOUR HEAD UNDERWATER. Also in the envelope are two photographs: one of Regina's front door, the paint color and apartment number unmistakable; the other of Regina, wrapped in a towel, blow drying her hair through her bedroom window.
Regina looks at you, terrified, backing away. "What is this? Is this some sort of joke?"
"No, no, of course not," you say. "I have no idea—I would never do anything like this."
"Because this is completely fucked. Completely fucking crazy."
Your head is swimming. You stumble past Regina to her couch and drop into it, the letter still in your hand. Neither of you says anything for a while. You read through the letter several times, look at the pictures in stunned disbelief.
"There's no way," you say. "Just no way."
"No way what," she says, keeping her distance on the far side of the room.
You tell her about all your previous lost relationships, how they all ended abruptly, all without any real warning. "Maybe this is why," you say. "Maybe somebody's been doing this all along. We have to find out."
Regina nods. For the next hour, you make phone calls to all your exes. Some of the numbers you have are out of date and go nowhere. A few answer, and after some prying admit that they, too, got strange letters in the mail, but no one can remember any of them in detail, or are still too afraid to disclose anything.
"Any luck?" she asks after you finish talking to Beth.
"There was a letter, but she burned it, like it told her to. She said she had a panic attack when she read it."
"Fuck. There's gotta be something. In the letter, on the envelope, somewhere."
You look at the envelope again. It's addressed to Regina with a typewriter, the small "a" in her name and in the word "Apartment" both a little bit higher than they should be. Your father had a typewriter, one that sat dusty in the corner of his office, but he let you use it from time to time, barely any ink left on the ribbon, and the "a" did the same thing, like it was trying to escape the words it was trapped in. You think about that typewriter again, and about the common threads between all your failures, all the relationships that were cut short. When it becomes clear to you, when everything snaps into place, you stand up, clenching your jaw and turning red with anger.
"I know who did this," you say.
"What? Who is it? And why would they—"
"My mother. It has to be my mother."
You both stand silently for what feels like several minutes. Regina stares at her feet and you look towards the ceiling, letting your eyes trace one of the cracks in the plaster, hoping it will calm you down. Through the wall, you can hear the neighbors' television set.
Finally, she speaks. "So what do we do?"
"We take a train. Right now. If we hurry we can catch the express."
All the way to Bridgeport, Regina grips your arm tightly. She is visibly nervous, and keeps fidgeting the hem of her skirt with her free hand.
When you arrive at the station, you hail a black taxi that takes you to the outskirts of the city. Finally, you pull into the driveway of the house where you grew up. A light is on in the living room.
"It's going to be fine," you say. "You've met her. She's completely harmless. We have to find out why she did this."
You and Regina walk across the overgrown lawn. Your old bicycle sits rusted where you left it nearly a decade ago, leaning against the porch, freckled by some of the paint chips that have sloughed off the side of the house. The spare key is underneath the corner of the welcome mat, as it always has been. You unlock the door and step inside.
Nothing has been cleaned since Thanksgiving. The carpets need a vacuuming, the air smells of food gone bad, and the old brown afghan, crocheted by your grandmother, is crumpled in the dusty corner behind the recliner. On the wall, your mother's collection of old clocks still ticks away, all out of rhythm, the sound filling the empty den.
When you get to the dining room, your mother is sitting at the table, a small mug of steaming tea on a coaster in front of her. Magazines are stacked on the ground near her feet next to a pair of scissors and an almost-empty bottle of rubber cement. Your father's typewriter occupies the place at the table where he used to sit, out of its case and freshly polished. None of the serving plates or silverware have been washed or put away, and caked food dries on them and in the fibers of the tablecloth.
"Mom," you say quietly. She turns and looks at you, then at Regina, with a guilty look on her face.
"You can sit down if you'd like," she says.
You and Regina sit across from your mother. "It's the letter, isn't it," she says, staring down into her tea. "You weren't supposed to see it," she says.
"How long have you been doing this?" you ask.
"Since the first one."
"Every time? It was you?"
"Yes. Every time."
You pound your fist on the table, almost as a reflex. Both your mother and Regina jump. The typewriter dings. You almost start to say something, to scream at your mother and tell her all the ways she's ruined you, the years you've spent turning over questions in your head, blaming yourself, then blaming the women you've cared about. Then you look at her hand and see that it, like yours, is trembling.
You take a deep breath, exhaling slowly through your nose. "Fucking Christ."
"I just knew they've never been good enough for you, sweetheart."
"You barely ever met any of them."
"It doesn't take long to know. A mother knows. I gave them plenty of time to prove themselves, but none of them have been right. I'm sorry that you haven't been able to see that."
"That's bullshit."
"Your sister too. Nobody's been good enough for her yet either. And she sat there practically crying at the table at Thanksgiving after what's-his-name left her and I could barely contain myself. There's somebody for her, and there's somebody for you, but neither of you have met those somebodies yet. So it was up to me. It's always up to me. I'm the one who keeps the family afloat. I always know."
"You can't know. You can't possibly."
You sit there, blood warm in your ears, your mother now sobbing across the table.
"Is this about Dad or something?"
A few tears begin mazing their way through the cracks in her face. "Maybe," she says. "I don't know."
"Let's go," you say to Regina, putting your hand on her arm.
"No," she says. "No, we have to talk about this. She, Jesus. You—" Regina points a rigid finger at your mother. "You fucking psycho. I should call the cops. There's no excuse for this."
You turn towards her with a look that you hope says "Now is not the time" but she doesn't stop. She continues to shout, her face red and getting redder. Regina has always been very confrontational, taking offense at overheard statements in bars or embarrassing waiters when she finds something wrong with the food she ordered. She almost always apologizes afterward or when she looks at you and sees the mortified look on your face, but it's been a source of tension in your relationship at times, her unwillingness to let things go, her need to always be right.
It's something you've never really liked about her, now that you think about it.