The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go Read online

  “Like melted cheese and butter?”

  “Like leather and motor oil.” She held the smudged T-shirt to her nose one more time before tucking it back into the plastic bag and into her purse.

  “Should I come up?” She couldn’t miss her sister’s resigned tone—clear that she hoped Gina would turn her down, not really wanting to talk her through another panic attack, especially with the two-hour drive north from Illinois it would take to get there and the scrambling to find someone to watch her children. Stepping out, Gina gave the truck a little pat and slid the door closed behind her. She didn’t want to burden her sister anymore. Vicky had enough to deal with, raising her four littles while her husband worked insane hours in downtown Chicago. She had no time for a sister who should be moving on.

  Focus on what’s next. Just on what’s next.

  1. Put the T-shirt back in the closet.

  2. Talk to May.

  3. Call Mom.

  “Of course not. I was just pulling up, I’m going inside now.”

  The icy wind cut through her thin fleece. Up and down her street, neighbors walked dogs on the salt-speckled sidewalks. Snow-covered yards hosted deflated Santas and reindeer and one plastic nativity scene that had been used for so many years all the figures were faded to a sad, smudged beige. Her own house looked no different than it had two years ago, or how it would look in another month. For the past two Christmases, she hadn’t had the energy to decorate—save for one wreath she would hang on the door. It was simply too much effort and pain to decorate, when it only reminded her of the good years she and Drew had together. Now she and May went to Illinois to spend the holiday at her sister’s with their mom. They’d drive down early in the morning and leave after Christmas dinner, dropping her mom off at her apartment. It was a long fourteen-hour day, but then it was over and they could spend the rest of the holiday season without having to put on a brave face.

  Patty, the new mom from across the street, power-walked past with her baby bundled into a jogging stroller. She waved and paused, as if to chat with Gina. Gina pointed at the earbuds in her ears and waved at her. Patty nodded and moved along. Gina closed her eyes, relieved to have delayed Patty’s blow-by-blow recap of her first Christmas with a baby.

  “If you’re sure. I could be there in two hours. The kids would love to see May again.” Vicky clearly felt comfortable offering the second time, now that she knew Gina wouldn’t take her up on it.

  “No. And I’ll check in on Mom, too. If she doesn’t answer her phone, I’ll stop by before dinner. She won’t hold back on how much she hated my present. It’ll make her feel better to get it off her chest, and then you don’t have to hear it, too.”

  “You don’t need to be her whipping post, Gina.”

  “It makes her feel better. I don’t mind. I know she doesn’t really mean it.”

  “Do you? What has Mother ever done to make you believe that?”

  Gina shrugged, watching Patty disappear around the corner.

  “I gotta go. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  She hung up and stared at her house. May would still be in her room, listening to music or watching videos on YouTube. She inhaled, steeling herself for today’s battle, and climbed the porch steps to open the old wooden door with a creak. She scowled at the hinges—she’d known the coconut oil her mom had put on them wouldn’t work. There should be some WD-40 in the garage that would do the trick. WD-40, another domain that used to be Drew’s, but now was added to Gina’s list.

  She wiped her feet on the thick blue rug protecting the battered wood floors inside the front door. Dust dulled the surfaces, but Gina couldn’t be bothered to remedy the problem. They never used the family room anymore, so why clean it? Straight through the hallway in front of her was the kitchen—small and functional, with a table where she and May ate their meals, usually at different times to keep the peace.

  She wanted to go about her day, but that’s not what a good mother would do, and she wanted more than anything to be a good mother. She wanted to be a mommy, or a ma, or a mama. Not the cold “Regina” May had taken to using the last year . . . when she deigned to address her at all.

  After a quick trip upstairs to her room to change clothes and return Drew’s shirt to its hiding spot, Gina backtracked to May’s door. The door was dark, six-paneled oak, only two inches thick, yet it seemed like an impenetrable wall. Friends had warned her about the teen years since the day May had been born. “Just wait until the teens, it’s like a monster takes over your perfect child for seven years, then miraculously gives her back when she turns twenty.” If Drew were here, he could talk to May, make her see the logical side. Without him around every day, Gina was on her own.

  She knocked on the door, waited five seconds for a response she wouldn’t get, and then opened it. It took her eyes a few seconds to find May among the scattered clothes—including the clean clothes she’d set outside the door that morning—schoolwork, and books, like a Where’s Waldo? puzzle of her sulky child. May lay on her bed, blue headphones covering her ears with her iPad propped on her bent legs. She didn’t even look up to acknowledge Gina’s arrival.

  “May, can you take off your headphones, please?”

  Gina waited ten seconds, then carefully stepped through the piles and plucked the headphones off May’s head, revealing an orangey-yellow streak in her brown hair that hadn’t been there yesterday. Should she yell at her? Compliment her? Ignore it completely?

  “Hey!” May reached for the headphones, but Gina lifted them higher. She’d go with ignoring the hair streak for now. She hated that parenting had come to a game of keep-away and constantly second-guessing herself.

  “I need to talk to you and I want to know you can hear me.” May glared as only a disgruntled teen can, so Gina took that as a sign that she could continue. “I’m heading over to Grandma’s. Did you want to join me? I’ll make your favorite bacon and cheddar grilled cheese.”

  “I don’t eat meat anymore, Regina.” She moved her eyes to look at Gina, then returned to staring at her paused YouTube channel. Ah, the dreaded “Regina.”

  “Since when do you not . . . actually, never mind. I’ll make you a bacon-free one.”

  “No.”

  “You can bring your iPad.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t like the idea of you being home all on your own for all of break. Do you want me to drop you off at one of your friends’ houses? What’s Olivia up to?”

  “No.” She held her hand out for the headphones. Knowing she had lost, Gina handed them back and leaned in to kiss May’s forehead. May blocked it with her arm as she reinstalled her Beats. Gina wanted to yank them off her ungrateful ears again—after all, Gina had purchased those headphones—but counted to ten instead.

  “Call me if you need me. I love you,” Gina said, knowing that May had not heard her. She exited the room, leaving the door open behind her. If May wanted it closed, she’d at least have to get off her bed to do it. All the parenting books Gina had read told her that May’s emotions and behaviors were normal, but she missed the little girl she laughed with, and snuggled and tickled, and made smile with her grilled cheese sandwiches.

  With another parental failure under her belt, she shut the front door behind her and started toward her golden Mini Cooper, which was barely visible in the shadow of the truck.

  “Gina! I was hoping I’d catch you on my way back.”

  Gina cringed, immediately twisting her lips into a smile and turning to face the woman attached to the cheerful voice. Patty and her husband were new to the neighborhood, new enough to not have been among the many who had dropped off casseroles and coffee cakes by the ton at Gina’s house, as though noodles and ground beef could fill up the space a husband left behind. Drew had been the rock that kept their family strong. Without him, she and May tumbled through each day, flailing in the rushing waters, occasionally bumping into each other. Alone, they didn’t pretend. But out in her driveway, she had to pre
tend to float, to swim, to glide on the pristine waters of life, when she was just barely keeping herself out of the turbulent undertow pulling at her legs.

  “Hi, Patty. Good walk?” She looked down at the baby, soundly asleep in the cozy blankets, a blue elephant hat sliding over one closed eye. Such peace and innocence. Gina missed the unconditional love of a baby. Her eyes lifted to Patty’s, whose normal smiling face was crunched into sad eyes, like she had to tell a third grade class they’d lost the school spirit competition and wouldn’t get a pizza party. What had Gina done to warrant that look? And then it hit her, even before the words were out of Patty’s mouth. She had seen that expression on the faces of everyone who’d known Drew.

  “I am so sorry. The Greebles told me at the Christmas Round Robin about your husband. I’d just assumed you were divorced. You’re too young to be a widow. I can’t imagine how hard that loss has been for you and May.”

  There it was. Two years later, and the sting was as fresh as yesterday. Patty reached for her hand, and Gina let her grab it. The gesture wasn’t meant to bring her comfort. The hand-grab was to make Patty feel better, so she could walk away believing she’d reached out and done the neighborly thing. So she could return to her perfect baby and loving, alive husband, comforted by her own sensitivity and the belief that she would never be on the receiving end of a horribly sympathetic hand grab.

  Gina silently counted to three, then squeezed Patty’s hand back. She’d learned through way too much practice that this made the squeezer feel more comfortable, the pause let them think their gesture was successful. Gina took a step toward her car—something she’d also learned was important. Insert some distance, so they knew it was okay to leave.

  “Thank you for saying so,” Gina said, the often-used phrase coming to her lips naturally, even though she hadn’t needed to use it recently. It was rare anymore to meet someone who didn’t already know her history. All her earlier determination felt like rapidly cracking ice beneath her feet. “It’s been a little under two years.” She slid on her sunglasses to hide the welling water and grabbed the door handle to the car for support—and to hint that she really needed to get going. “And we’re all okay.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  May just wanted everything to go back to the way it was. She knew that wasn’t possible, but it didn’t make her stop wanting her dad to come back.

  The video had ended, so she could hear her mom scuffling out the front door. Why did she keep pretending like nothing had changed, like nothing was different? Everything was different. She didn’t even notice May’s hair. How could anyone miss a giant stripe of yellow? Was she really that determined to ignore her?

  She pulled off her headphones and rubbed her ears where they were sore from being crushed by the padded speakers—she really only wore them when her mom was home so she could pretend not to hear her. The car rumbled to life outside, and May waited until it faded, enjoying the solitude and knowing she’d have the entire empty house to herself for the rest of the day. She kicked some clothes out of the way to make a path from her bed to the door, keeping the clean clothes on the left and dirty on the right.

  She could have gone to Olivia’s today to get her mom out of her hair, but she didn’t want to be around anyone, not even her best friend. She rarely did. None of her friends even got why she was so angry at her mom. She didn’t really get it either, but she knew she was mad.

  Pulling out the ingredients for brownies from the cupboard and fridge, May grabbed the bacon on a whim. Mom’s face when she said she didn’t eat meat anymore was classic. Would she become a vegetarian to try and “connect” with her? Would she forget, like she forgot most things on most days? If her mom didn’t put it on one of her stupid lists, her mom didn’t remember it. Bacon, chocolate, and caramel—those were all things May liked. Maybe after she fried the bacon, she could crumble it into caramel and drizzle that on top of her favorite brownie recipe. She set to baking.

  Once the brownies were done and glazed with the bacon caramel, she cut a huge slab out of the corner and slid it onto a plate, burning herself on the gooey, piping-hot concoction. The plate in one hand, she took the stairs two at a time to her mom’s bedroom. She set the plate on the nightstand and beelined for the closet, going to the farthest corner, where her mom always hid the bag. She found the Ziploc and pulled it out, opening the sealed edge and inhaling. Inside was her dead dad’s favorite T-shirt, soft gray material smudged with motor oil stains. On the front it said BIKER DAD. LIKE A NORMAL DAD, BUT COOLER. On the back was the Harley-Davidson logo. She crawled onto the middle of her parents’ bed with the bag in hand, balancing the plate on one knee and the Ziploc on the other. She took a bite of her brownie and chewed, using her free hand to clutch the soft fabric, not removing it from the bag. The salty bacon and sweet caramel gave her gooey brownie a nice salty/sweet kick, and she wished she could bake them for her dad. He would have loved how she’d improved on her brownie recipe. When she finished the treat, she returned the plate to the nightstand next to the jar of coconut oil Grandma’d given her mom, careful to lick all the sticky sauce from her fingers.

  Pulling the comforter over her and rubbing the soft T-shirt material between her fingers, she curled into a ball and pretended her dad was just downstairs. She could only do this when her mom was gone. Regina never wanted to discuss her dad or his death. It was like May was the only one who wanted to keep him alive.

  She had only seen her mom cry once, at her dad’s funeral. The cemetery had been gray and dull green and flat brown. Clumps of dirty melted snow lined the curving roads. She and her mom wore black dresses under their colorful parkas— it was confusing to be somewhere so sad and wearing purple and pink. May couldn’t wait to take her jacket off. The large crowd of people still hovered around the open grave where her dad’s ashes had been lowered, all except his biker friends, the group of twenty that would cruise together before her dad stopped riding, and used to come over for cookouts. They were mounted on their bikes, lined up two by two near the crowd with a single rider at the start and a single rider at the end.

  The lead rider started his bike, revving the engine three times, then the rest of the riders joined in. The rumble of all the engines revving together shook the ground. Her mom clutched May to her side as she closed her eyes. May worried the sound would break them apart, sending their shattered pieces to join her dad. A baby across from her started to cry, but she couldn’t hear the wails. All she could hear was the bike thunder, like a special kind of deafness that only allowed engine thunder in. Would she ever hear another sound again?

  On the leader’s signal, they all stopped at once, then the last bike revved three more times. With barely a sound, especially for Harleys, the riders drove out of the cemetery. Her body still vibrated from the noise as her mom pulled her in tight, her face scrunching as she wept into May’s hair. They clung to each other in the overwhelming silence as the crowd dispersed to the church hall for a lunch of cold cuts, potato salad, and lemon bars.

  Life had returned to normal after that. Or as normal as it could, May guessed. Her mom stopped talking about Dad, and May’s friends sort of faded away. They had all listened to her as she cried, which was nice, until they stopped asking her over. They had comforted her and didn’t want to do it anymore, which was okay, except that May wasn’t done. They only wanted to talk about cute boys and which girls in their class were bitches, and which teacher was the most unfair. The only one who had wanted to talk to May about her dad was the school counselor, and who wanted to share their personal life with Mr. Matycheck? Everyone knew he put what you said in your file.

  May smelled the T-shirt one last time, detecting a lingering motor oil scent, reminding her of all the times he’d brought her to his motorcycle shop. Saturdays when she was little were always “family days,” all of them doing chores, watching a movie or playing board games, and Mom always made delicious snacks. May’s favorite part of those days, though, was when they’d pack a lunch and spe
nd the afternoon at her dad’s motorcycle shop. The first time he’d shown her how to take apart an engine, she was hooked.

  He’d spread a quilted blue blanket onto the shiny cement floor. Her mom sat in the front office entering information on the computer, leaving the two of them alone. As he took each part off the engine, he lined it up in a straight line on the blanket.

  “It’s important to keep the parts in order so you don’t lose any. It will also help you when you put it back together.” Her dad handed her a rag. “I’m going to hand each part to you, and you need to clean all the grime off. Can you do that?”

  She nodded and took the job very seriously, using her fingernails to get into the crevices, wiping until she’d gotten it as clean as possible, then moving on to the next part. They worked in silence. As she got older, he started explaining each part, showing her how to make each part like new or the tricks needed to remove stubborn parts.

  When she was ten, he had surprised her with a rusty, battered v-twin engine, hers to take apart and put back together until she could do it without any help. He said that if she was going to drive one day, she had to learn how to take an engine apart and rebuild it herself. It had taken her six months to get it apart and another year to rebuild it, only needing his help twice—and he hadn’t butted in like her mom did, he waited until she asked him to help her. Then she took it apart again and put it back together, even faster. Then he died. The engine now sat in the back of their garage collecting dead spiders and dust under a dirty bedsheet.

  Now every time she saw it, she thought of him. And cried. So she didn’t look.

  May wiped her eyes and carefully sealed the bag, extracting as much air as possible. She returned it to Regina’s hiding place in the closet, then carefully straightened out the bedding, fluffing up the material to remove her body’s imprint. She tugged at each corner, making sure the wrinkles were gone and that it looked exactly like it had when she came upstairs. She picked up the plate and gave the room one last look to make sure Regina wouldn’t know she had been there.