When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books to read now .TXT) 📗

other word, eating Chinese food in the kitchen unless they’re having Sunday pasta dinner. Dark brunettes. They don’t apologize. They eat dessert. They wear high heels and real furs to drive their Escalades to the mall. Their kids wear Gucci sneakers. They pay in cash. They yell, in joy and in anger. They have meticulous eyebrows, and pride, and loyalty, and real emotions. They say “shtrong” and “shtreet.” Maybe they finished school, maybe they didn’t. But they’re not in the kinds of businesses where education matters. They hug and drink and cry and have each other’s backs. They’re not rich-lady skinny because they’re not trying to be because you can get red leather leggings in any size in Jersey and that’s what Spanx and over-the-knee boots are for. And they don’t give a fuck anyway.

Of course I never used to watch any of these shows until we moved here, until Rocky came and the world shrank to the size of the living room and everything turned the color of the London sky at 3 a.m., no matter what the time of day.

Now the ladies are discussing a rumor about another girl in the group and her husband and whether he did or did not sleep with his mother-in-law. Amber is so shocked she’s about to fall out of her chair, and Teresa reacts because she’s in front of the camera but you can tell her heart’s not in it. She’s got other things to worry about. She’s facing prison because of her husband’s financial decisions. Papers she signed because she trusted him. It’s hard enough dealing with one dick in your life without thinking about the dicks that other women are married to. Married to Dicks. That could be a reality show. Every married woman in the world could be on it.

That’s not fair. I don’t mean it, he’s not a dick. Harry is…I was going to say a good man but that’s just…that’s surface. He’s a part of my body, one of my limbs, half my brain. A vital organ I can’t live without. He would laugh if he heard me say that about the vital organ. I’m mad at him, I hate him and I love him. I have no choice, it’s involuntary, like breathing.

We don’t tell people the real story when they ask how we met. We just say we met in New York. Because how do you explain the tragedy and the loss, the years spent apart, the plans of a God who takes no notice of whether you believe in him and just puts you where you need to be.

I thought Harry would get what’s happening to me without my having to explain. We used to be like that, we used to have unspoken understanding. One night back in Brooklyn, when we’d been together only two months, Johnny woke up at 1 a.m. with a really high fever. He was shaking and sweating. He was limp in my arms. I was alone and scared to death. I called a taxi for the hospital and when I opened the door of my building to take Johnny outside Harry was standing there, out of breath, like he’d run the whole way.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“You called, or you didn’t know you called,” he said. “You must have hit my number by accident, but I heard you talking. I could hear something was wrong so I’m here. I came.” Our eyes met. He took Johnny from my aching arms and we got in the cab.

Maybe finding each other after so many years was the best part of our story. Maybe the rest doesn’t end well. Oh, look at this. Gia, about twelve, the oldest of Teresa’s four daughters, is crying in the kitchen. She’s old enough to understand something serious is happening to her parents. Teresa—in a purple velour tracksuit, her pink acrylic nails as reflective as the shiny marble countertops of her kitchen—wraps her arms around her daughter and says, “I wish I could take your pain and I have it, you know?”

I know you do, Teresa, I know. But who takes your pain for you?

Who’s going to take it for me?

Brooklyn and Manhattan, October 2012

I’m being watched. I open one eye, startled to see Johnny at the edge of my bed, his little nose two inches from mine, watching me breathe, like a very small demon in a horror movie. “Oh shhhhhhoooot, Johnny, don’t scare me like that, how long you been standing there?” I half-yell, half-whisper.

“Hi, Jeej. Did I do good sleeping?” I look at the clock. 5:42 a.m.

“It’s not the worst you’ve ever done but it’s not your best.” He climbs into bed, scoots his little backside as far into my stomach as he can, repositions my arms and installs his head under my chin. “OK, buddy, let’s try to sleep some more?” And I close my eyes. I haven’t slept past 6 a.m. since he was a baby, nearly four years. Seven days a week. Most days, it’s 5, so I guess we slept in today. I want sleep so much it feels like hunger. I say I resent these early mornings, this need of his to be on top of me. But I know that one morning, not too long from now, it’ll be the last time he does this; the last time he’s small enough to curl up beside me; the last time he’ll need to. I won’t know it at the time—that it’s the last time—but it will be. I hold him close so he can feel the rhythm of my breathing and be lulled into dreaming and…

Two seconds later: “Jeej, can we go to the playground?”

“Yes, later, go to sleep.”

“Jeej, I have pizza?”

“Yes, later, go to sleep.”

“Jeej, you are my Jeej. Are you my Jeej?”

“Yes, always. Please let Jeej sleep, OK?”

“Jeej, you need coffee?”

“Yes, always, go to sleep, Johnny.”

“I like T-rexes. Oso [he can’t say “also”] I like pteradactylyseses, and triceratopses, and oso iguanodons.”

“I know. Go