Page 44 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

I t was so early that it was still dark out.

No light, either from the moon or the sun, came through the window, the one that still wouldn’t open—but something had awoken me and had startled Coral, too.

She was crouched on the edge of my bed and seemed to be listening, so I lay still and tried to hear.

Then I caught it: low murmurs of a voice and some soft thumps coming from the apartment across the hall.

Levi was trying to be quiet but the walls in our building had the sound-muffling properties of aluminum foil.

I heard him every weekday and on Saturdays when he got up to go to row, but today was Sunday, and anyway?

It was so early, much before he ever had to be at the dock.

All those thoughts floated through my head but I was sleepy and hungover, too, from the excursion that Ava and I had made the day before to the Crookstown bar in Detroit.

That meant that my mind wasn’t totally connecting with my body and sparking it into action.

Specifically, I should have done a Hernán and run to throw open my door to ask what was happening, but I didn’t realize that until I heard Levi’s car start in the street and pull away.

Then I hurried to the window but it was too late to see anything except his taillights.

It made me worried. He usually told me what was happening in his life, like when he’d mentioned that practice was cancelled on the prior Wednesday so I shouldn’t think that he’d slept through his alarm and was missing it.

Last night, when he’d come to pick up me and Ava at the bar, he’d said, “I’ll be around tomorrow if you need anything, like aspirin or coffee.

Damn, Aves, when was the last time you had so much to drink? ”

It had been a while for her but at least, as she had noted, we weren’t wearing black tie and terrible shoes like at their cousin’s wedding, so it was easier to walk. “Holy shit, I forgot to tell you!” she’d continued. “Britainy and her husband separated last week.”

“Looks like I chose right when I took the under,” her brother had said with satisfaction.

Ava had looked at me and I was aware that she was thinking of the end of my relationship with Grant, which she believed had happened earlier that afternoon.

But I hadn’t said anything about it to Levi, not at that moment, because I’d decided to wait until I wasn’t under the influence of Boilermakers.

I had planned to talk to him today except now he’d gotten up ridiculously early and left.

No matter; I could track him, like I did for Hernán and they both did for me.

I looked at my phone and watched Levi’s car moving south on Woodward Avenue toward Detroit, then hooking a right on Eight Mile Road.

It appeared that he was going to the house that his friend August owned, the place where we’d found him after we’d run around and searched the different properties in his real estate portfolio.

I watched as the dot that represented Levi stopped in front of the house that August had bought for his mom.

I worked determinedly on my furniture project, and I finally succeeded in forcing it to (mostly) resemble the finished picture on the directions, although there was way too much hardware left over and that made me nervous.

The dot didn’t move. As soon as it got light enough, Coral and I went for a very early walk, with her on the leash and compliant (mostly).

But the dot stayed at that house. I took a shower and got our breakfasts, and the dot held its position.

Then I stood at my window and wondered what he and August were doing. My eyes drifted to the front steps and I recalled talking to Grant there. “I miss you, Emerson,” he’d told me. “Can I come in now? We can hang out like we used to.”

“No.”

He’d blinked in surprise, but didn’t let my rejection stop him. “We were together for so long, baby,” he’d next cajoled. “Our history ties us and I love that tie.” It was a glimpse of the charm that hadn’t been used on me since the beginning of our long relationship.

“No,” I’d repeated. “I don’t want to see you anymore, not now or in the future. You just admitted that you never really loved me and that you cheated on me. And if I’m interpreting this correctly, now you’re suggesting that you would cheat on Vivienne, too.”

“She’d go back to Lance if he snapped his fingers,” Grant had announced and it was just awful, all of it.

“Leave. Now,” I had said next. “I think you’re terrible, and I tried but there’s nothing that anyone could do to redeem you. I’m certainly not going to make another attempt and I don’t want to associate with you at all. I have standards.”

“What?” he’d asked. “Is this supposed to be a joke? You never did have a sense of humor.”

“Goodbye.” I had closed the front door behind me and lowered the plastic shade that covered this window as I’d heard the engine of the Porsche start up. It made a grinding noise and then Grant had sped away.

I thought about that for a while, and also about my past and my future.

Then I got one of the tools I’d used for my furniture project.

“You’re going to open,” I told the window, and I jammed the metal end of the implement inside the frame.

Hernán, Levi, and I had tried before with no results, but maybe all our previous work had loosened it.

Maybe I’d just picked the right tool, because suddenly, the sash shot up and Coral yowled when the window crashed open.

A cool breeze and several birdsongs flowed into my apartment.

“I did it,” I said, and smiled at the fresh air outside. I had to have a functional window if I wanted to invite someone else in here permanently, and I had to make more room, too. So next I sent a text and received an almost immediate response. Ok, now I was going to have to follow through.

“I’m going out,” I told Coral. “I have something to do but I’ll be home well before your dinner, so don’t worry.

” She looked at me and meowed, and then she deliberately walked back and forth and rubbed against my leg.

“Are you going to miss me?” I asked and laughed, because it seemed like she might.

I ordered up a car and got what I needed from my bedroom, and then I was on my way.

This time, I wasn’t the person waiting at the coffee shop. When I walked in, I saw that Pandora, the PhD candidate, already had a table. She waved when she saw me.

“Hi,” she said. She watched as I placed the cardboard moving box on the floor between us. “What is that? Should I feel hopeful?”

“I’m not sure,” I answered. “You could end up very disappointed but yes, I am giving you my mother’s papers.”

She turned bright red and then very pale. “Are you serious?”

“I don’t know what I have,” I cautioned further.

“I didn’t look at the stuff on the old discs or the flash drives and I barely went through the papers.

It’s completely disorganized, because she didn’t have any systems for keeping things straight.

She saved everything, too, so half of this may be documentation of her battle with a guy who lived down the road.

” They fought from the moment she’d moved into our house, even though there were miles of distance to separate them.

“She wrote about him in her article ‘Despise Your Neighbor,’” Pandora said excitedly, and I remembered proofreading it and telling my mother that she might get sued for libel, because half of her complaints against him were lies and the rest had been exaggerated.

She looked at the box reverently. “I can’t believe this!

When I got your text, I thought you were going to tell me off again because…

uh, about that...” Now she stared at her paper cup and picked at the lid.

“I’m pretty single-minded when it comes to my research and sometimes that, uh, takes over. You know, being single-minded.”

I waited.

“I talked to my mom about our meeting, and she said that I handled it badly.”

“Is she the housewife who never did fuck-all?” I asked, and Pandora turned the same brick red as before.

“She’s not that bad. I tend to think in tropes,” she explained. “You know, like ‘the useless housewife,’ ‘the troubled intellectual.’”

Another classic was ‘the self-important PhD student,’ but I didn’t mention that.

“My mother wasn’t a trope any more than yours is.

She was a real person and she wasn’t a villain or a hero, either.

She had lots of flaws, and the biggest was her dishonesty.

I think you’ll be able to see that more when you look at this stuff.

” I nudged the box with my foot. “Or maybe not. Maybe she only saved what made her look good.” I didn’t think so, though, because she hadn’t bothered to delete the “See You in Hell” email folder.

“I think she would be glad that someone is interested in her, even the bad parts.”

“Do you want me to send you my dissertation when it’s done, so you can read it?” she asked me, but I shook my head.

“No, thanks.” I didn’t need to see anyone else’s interpretation. I already knew the truth about my mother, or as close as I could get to it.

“Can I buy you a coffee at least? I feel like I owe you something.”

“You don’t,” I answered. “I wasn’t doing anything with her papers.” Except, sometimes, I had looked at the box and felt sad about it. I checked my phone and saw that Levi’s dot had moved. “But if you don’t mind, I could use a ride.”

“Absolutely!” Pandora answered, and it was a good thing that I went with her to her car because the box was pretty heavy and she had trouble with it—but I could deal with my mother’s stuff. I had gotten a lot stronger.