Page 38 of Waves of Time
But Hilary shook her head. “I want to go alone, honey.”
Aria frowned and leaned against the doorway, perplexed. A part of her wanted to accuse her mother of pretending to call them, of pretending to have arranged an appointment.
“Mom. Let me be there for you,” Aria said quietly. “I want to help.”
“I know you do,” Hilary breathed, turning over so that she stared out the window and away from Aria. “But this is something I have to do on my own.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t even be driving yourself,” Aria burst.
Hilary waved her hand. “I’ll call an Uber again. Don’t worry about it.” She said it as though she were talking about something mundane, like whether or not it would rain.
Aria’s hair dripped water down her back and onto the floor. “Is it this week? Before we go to San Francisco?”
“I’m going to take care of it,” Hilary said. “I don’t want you to worry about it, okay?”
Aria realized she would not be able to penetrate her mother’s thick walls, so she turned on her heel, hurried back into her bedroom, and prepared for work, even as tears welled in her eyes and made it difficult for her to see herself do her own makeup. The eyeliner wavered, and her lip gloss fell out of line.
On Aria’s way downstairs, Hilary called from her bedroom, and Aria ran back, ready to help.
“My car is still parked on the side of the road,” Hilary said quietly. “A cop just called to ask what was going on with it. They were thinking of having it towed.”
“Oh no! I can pick it up after work,” Aria told her.
“Good,” Hilary said. “My keys are downstairs in my purse.” She paused for a long time, still not looking at Aria, then breathed, “It’s strange, but telling you about my eyes has made me feel so much worse. Because it’s real now, you know?”
Aria’s heart thudded, and she sat at the edge of her mother’s bed, trying to come up with the perfect thing to say, the essential truth that would help her mother through this terrible time. But all she could say, as she touched her mother’s foot gently, was, “It’s going to be okay,” even though, obviously, it might not be.
Aria struggled through her shift at the restaurant. Violet asked her several times if she was okay, and Aria forced herself to lie, as she knew her mother didn’t want news of her bad health getting out there. After the lunch rush cleared, Violet cornered Aria and asked if she’d talked to Thaddeus since his dramatic appearance at the restaurant Saturday night.
“He called me yesterday,” Aria said, remembering how panicked Thaddeus had sounded as he’d told her how upset Hilary had been.
“What did he say?”
Aria shrugged and sipped her Diet Coke, a cold treat after the frantic few hours of waitressing. “Well, the other night, he told me that he wasn’t involved in the drug world at all. Not anymore, at least.”
Violet set her jaw. “And you believe him?”
“I don’t know. He has no reason to lie to me anymore,” Aria said. “And I genuinely believe people deserve second chances. But I also don’t want to be naïve.”
Violet nodded and leaned against the counter, surveying the seven tables they still had to clean up after the lunch rush. “Sometimes, I think being naïve is a gift. You don’t have to see all the evils of the world. You pretend they don’t exist.”
Aria remained quiet, remembering how naïve she’d been back in high school before she’d faced tremendous loneliness at Tufts. It was there she’d understood how cruel the world could be. It was there she’d learned the depths of her own weakness.
But wasn’t everyone weak every now and again? Wasn’t that something that united all humans?
Violet sighed and interrupted her reverie as she walked toward the first table, ready to clean it. “It’s amazing how much people eat on vacation.”
Aria laughed, surprised at how easy it felt to fall into Violet’s silly joke. “Maybe we should go on vacation soon.”
“It’s funny that islanders need a vacation from the island,” Violet said, sighing. “But helping all these people have a beautiful vacation takes a lot out of me.”
“Let’s go somewhere nobody knows us,” Aria agreed.
“Where nobody eats seafood,” Violet joked. “If I see another crab, I might scream.”
Aria stacked sticky plates at the table next to Violet’s, thinking again of her mother, of her eyes, and of the supposed doctor’s appointment she’d planned for that week. Aria prayed it was real. She would pester her mother to kingdom come if she didn’t get answers soon.
“Have you ever wanted to help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves?” Aria asked Violet as they headed into the kitchen with the sticky plates.