Free Wherever Nina Lies by Lynn Weingarten

“Bijou.”
    Sean is looking over my shoulder, grinning. “Bijou must have had incredible balance to keep such a big hat situated so perfectly on top of his head. Most dogs can’t do that.”
    “Yes,” I say. “Well, most real dogs can’t, but a few imaginary ones can.”
    Sean cocks his head to the side.
    “We didn’t have an actual dog,” I say. “We were never allowed to get one. But we got the very best imaginary dog ever one summer.” I pause. “Nina got him for us.”
    And Sean nods as though of course this makes perfect sense. He glances back down at the stack of papers in his hands and then before I can continue he’s shouting “Yes!” and holding out a piece of paper so I can see. “Ellie, look!”

     
    It’s a photocopy of an insurance claim form. Sean begins to read it out loud. “On October twenty-third, two thousand-four, Nina Wrigley had a regular cleaning at the dentist, a check-up, and a set of X-rays…” Sean flips the form over and points to a spot right near the top where her Social Security number is written out neatly in my mother’s serious-looking handwriting. “There it is,” he says.
    I stand up, suddenly breathless. “The computer’s downstairs.”
    A minute later Sean and I are sitting side by side on the couch in my living room, waiting for my mother’s ancient 45-pound laptop to boot up.
    “Looking at porn on this thing must be a bitch,” Sean says.
    “Hello, Ellie.”
    I turn around. My mother is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, in her bathrobe, drinking juice.
    Oh shit.
    “Mom,” I say. I can feel the blood rushing to my face.
    She rubs her eyes, half smiles at me. I can’t tell if she’s smiling because she didn’t hear Sean’s porn comment, or because she did. My mom is a mystery sometimes. “I haven’t seen you in days.” She glances at Sean and raises one eyebrow. Sometimes she’s not a mystery at all.
    “I’ve been sleeping at Amanda’s,” I say.
    “Oh,” she says. “You’re sure they don’t mind you over there all the time?”
    “They don’t.”
    “Okay.” She nods, as though we haven’t had this conversation dozens of times before.
    And then my mom just stands there, not even acknowledging the fact that there is another person beside me on the couch. She’s not being intentionally rude, she just doesn’t understand things like this sometimes. Like how people act. How people are supposed to act.
    Sean stands up finally. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Sean.” He sticks out his hand.
    My mother just stares at it. She looks him up and down. Then over to me on the couch. Then back to Sean. “Hello,” she says, awkwardly. “I’m Ellie’s mother.”
    I put my hand in my pocket and touch the drawing, but I know I can’t show it to her. I wish I could.
    “I thought you were working tonight,” I say.
    “My schedule changed. I did an overnight last night instead. Got home an hour ago.”
    “How were the babies?” I ask. I turn toward Sean. “My mom works at the neonatal ICU at the hospital.”
    “Wow,” Sean says. “That must be crazy.”
    “Preemie twins tonight,” she says. “Sixteen weeks early. They’re stable for now. But it’s hard to say what might happen later.” My mother shakes her head. There is a special kind ofexhaustion my mother always carries around. It radiates off her. When I haven’t seen her for a few days, it’s all the more obvious. Being around it, I catch it, like a flu. It makes me feel like someone is sitting on my chest. It makes me want to go outside, somewhere light and loud with lots of other people.
    “That’s awful,” I say.
    “That’s life, I guess,” my mom says. And she shrugs and lets out a sigh.
    When I was younger I would always beg her to take me to work, imagining all the cute little babies I’d get to play with, but she would never let me come with her. Once, when I was nine years old, Nina showed me a picture on the Internet of a tiny preemie,