Page 41 of The Quiet Tenant

She put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. “I’m not scared,” she said. She was looking up at the ceiling, like she was afraid to meet my gaze. “Well, sometimes I am, but not for you. I know I’m leaving you with the best man.” She swallowed hard. “I’m so grateful for the time we’ve had together. All three of us.”

This was a goodbye, and I didn’t want a goodbye. What I wanted was for my mom to come home. I knew that wasn’t possible, but that didn’t stop me from wanting it.

The truth was, I didn’t want to be a cancer daughter. I didn’t want to wake up every day and remember she was gone. This girl at school, Cathy, had a brother who died of leukemia a year ago. She missed a few weeks of classes, and when she came back, everyone treated her like this fragile little thing.

I don’t want to be a fragile little thing.

But ready or not, my mom was saying goodbye to me. She hugged me a little tighter and carried on. “At some point it’s going to be justthe two of you. That’s okay. All right? I want you to know that’s okay with me. He’s going to take such great care of you. And you’re going to take such great care of him. We’re so lucky to have him.”

She rubbed her eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding me. I felt like I should have been crying, too, but a lot of sad stuff had happened in a pretty short time, and when a lot of sad stuff happens in a pretty short time, you reach a point where you can’t cry anymore.

My mom was still looking at the ceiling. “You two are going to have to stick up for each other. I told him that, too. Okay?” I nodded. “Grandma and Grandpa will be there, too,” she said. “I know Dad doesn’t always get along with them, but you can count on them. I hope you’ll remember that.” She stared at me until I nodded again. “But you and Dad, you’ll be a team. And you’ll always have each other.”

I don’t know about always. But my mom was right about the other part. Three weeks later, she died, and it was just me and my dad.

Things at home didn’t change all that much. I hope that doesn’t sound mean. It’s just that even when my mom was healthy, he did most of the chores. Cooking, cleaning. Always making us food, taking us places.

So he kept cooking. I helped with the cleaning. He went back to work, and I went back to school. It’s early in the year, he said. Getting into a routine might help.

I know he was trying to make things easy for me, but I hated that he held up so well. The house was never messy. After the funeral, people brought casseroles we didn’t need. My dad preserved my life as best as he could. It was like he had read a self-help book, something likeDealing with the Grieving Teenager,and memorized every chapter.

I wanted him to stop. To let things get messy, to let us be a wreck. It seemed disrespectful to just keep going, like we were coping too well with her absence. I wanted the house to reflect how I felt inside. I wanted chaos.

And then, about a month after she died, he picked me up from school—I tell him all the time that I can take the bus or get a ride, but he never listens—and announced we had to move. My mom’s parents were kicking us out. He didn’t say it like that, but that was the idea.

I don’t get the hype around grandparents. My dad’s parents diedbefore I was born, and he’s never had anything great to say about them. My mom’s parents like me well enough, but they aren’t fans of my dad. I’m not sure why. My mom used to joke that they were just mad he took their precious girl away. Sometimes my dad would say it was the money, because my mom had some and he had none. My mom always told him to stop. She’d swat him on the arm and say things likeCome on, they like you just fine, they don’t know how to show it—that’s all.

Before my mom died but after she got sick again, I overheard her talking to my dad. I was supposed to be asleep but I went to get a glass of water. Their voices were coming from the kitchen. “I’m not saying we should do it,” my mom was saying. “I just wanted you to know they offered. That if you ever feel like you can’t…on your own…they can take her.”

My dad got so mad. “I can’t fucking believe it,” he said. I heard him slam the dining table. The next day, there was a big mark on the wood, next to his spot. “She’s my daughter. They visit what, once, twice a year? And they think they can swoop in and take her from us? From me?” He was pacing. I took a couple of steps back to make sure he wouldn’t see me. “I know they think I’m some jerk who can’t do anything right, but she’s my kid. I raised her.”

A chair scraped against the kitchen floor. I figured my mom was getting up, putting a hand on his arm, trying to calm him down. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know. It’s fine. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

I don’t know what happened after that. The last time I saw my grandparents was at the funeral. They came up to us after the service. My dad was polite, his back straight, his shoulders so stiff I thought they’d never move again. No one said too much, just the things people are expected to say in those circumstances,How are you holding upandShe was such a beautiful personandI hope she’s at peace now.We had all lost someone we loved very much, but that didn’t mean we suddenly liked one another.

So my grandparents made us leave. Maybe they realized in the weeks after the funeral that we would never bond as much as they’d hoped, and it was time to call it quits. Maybe my dad told them to butt out, and to them that meant taking the house back. Not thatthey wanted to live in it. They have another house far from us, way up north. They just wanted to sell this one. The result was the same. We had to leave the house where I had lived my entire life. The house that held all my memories of my mom.

There, I could still see her. Sitting next to me on the couch when I was a little kid, watching Saturday-morning cartoons. Teaching me how to put my hair in a ponytail in front of the bathroom mirror. Reading the first threeHarry Potterbooks to me, and later on, lying down next to me while I read the next four by myself. Singing theHamiltonsoundtrack in the kitchen, holding a wooden spoon or a spatula as a mic, and seeing which one of us could make it all the way through “My Shot” and “Non-Stop” without messing up the lyrics.

In the new house, my mom is gone. She’s not here. She was never here.

Now it’s just me and my dad again.

Well, me and my dad, and Rachel, and whoever else might be added to the list next, since my dad is apparently taking applications.

Here’s what I think.

I think my dad is a complicated person. He hasn’t had an easy life. He never talks about his childhood, and I have to assume that’s because it was pretty terrible. He wanted to become a doctor but he became a marine, because he felt a duty to his country but also because…I don’t know…becoming a doctor is hard and the people who manage it tend to have money and good families, and my dad had neither?

Despite all that, he built a nice life for himself. And with my mom, he built a nice life for me, too. Whenever we argued, he and I, and my mom had to bring back the peace, she would tell me, “Your father, he loves being a dad.” And he does. I know that. He loves beingmydad. He drives me around. He buys me clothes. He cooks for me. He cares about what’s in my head. He teaches me things. He wants me to know what he knows.

I just feel like I’m not enough, somehow. Like it was supposed to be the two of us, but I failed (at what? I’m not sure), and now he has to recruit all these companions to fill the void.

Maybe that’s a fucked-up thing to think. Sorry.

I know he lost her, too.

And so it’s me and my dad and his women, and the more people hover around us, the lonelier I feel.

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