It took me a second to understand what Elizabeth was saying, but when I did, I snatched the pill bottle off the table and said, “What if you came to live with me? Max can live there too. We could make a go of it. As a family.”
“What type of family would we be?”
“The best kind,” I said.
She smiled and looked at the floor. “You’re just being nice.”
“What’s wrong with that? Maybe all of this, everything that has happened—my mom killed by cancer, Max and me meeting coincidentally, all of us needing to go to Canada, my seeing you at the library, noticing that you were different, and even Father McNamee dying—maybe all of it happened because the three of us are supposed to be together.”
“You do realize how insane that sounds, right?”
“I don’t know, does it? I mostly just listed everything that happened to us—facts—and then made my best guess.”
I couldn’t believe how confident I sounded, Richard Gere. You must have really rubbed off on me.
“I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Bartholomew,” she said, swirling the olive-studded stick inside her glass. “I admire your willingness to offer kindness almost indiscriminately. But unfortunately, it takes a lot more than kindness to survive in this world.”
I understood what she meant, but I also understood that Mom’s philosophy was a powerful weapon, and I thought that maybe I could harness it here, so I said, “I’d love for you to live with me, Elizabeth. We can make it work. I choose to believe this because the alternative”—I shook her bottle of pills—“is so, so unattractive. Why not try to believe with me at this point? What do you have to lose? We can get a cat for Max! He could work at the movies, you could keep volunteering at the library, and I could . . .”
I didn’t know what I could do, and that started to make me feel anxious. All I had ever done was take care of Mom and be her son. And yet here I was promising to be so much more than what I was—pretending again.
“I’m not well,” Elizabeth said. “Neither is Max. We’re damaged goods. We’re problems—and nothing but. You do realize that by now, right? We’re not easy.”
“I’m damaged goods too! And I’m also problems! I’m a mess! It’s perfect!”
“It’s not perfect,” she said in what was very close to a yelling voice. I could tell that she had been struggling for a long time—too long—and didn’t have much left in her hope tank. “None of this is perfect! I’m not going to allow myself to hope for perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist for people like us, Bartholomew. Passable. That’s what I want. Just simply passable. If I could have a passable existence, I think I’d be very grateful.” She shook her head and stared at her lap. I saw her lips moving behind her curtain of brown hair, and I could tell she was arguing with herself again. Then suddenly she looked up and said, “I don’t think I could have ever executed my exit plan, anyway. I could never do that to Max. And now I’m putting my problems on you.”
Elizabeth shook her head, looked up at the ceiling, and then stared at her lap again.
We were silent for some time, as we sipped our martinis.
And then I had an idea that seemed sort of weird, but I went with it anyway, because I felt like the moment required me to be something more than I usually am. “Pretend I’m you,” I said to Elizabeth. “Here’s how you would answer right now if we were in a movie—in response to my offer for you and Max to live with me in Mom’s home like we were a family.” Then using a girlie falsetto, overly dramatic Vivian Ward/Julia Roberts Hollywood voice, I said, “If we do take you up on your kind offer, do you actually think we could make it work, Bartholomew? Do you really? We wouldn’t ask for much. We wouldn’t dare. But do you think that maybe we could just exist together passably, because that’s all I’d ever hope for—a passable existence.” My voice started to quaver here. I wasn’t sure why. “That’s all I’d ever dare to ask. We’re not greedy—but life, it really hasn’t been generous to Max and me. So you have to be honest with me here, Bartholomew. Do you actually believe a passable existence is possible?”
Elizabeth drained her glass.
“I wasn’t really abducted by aliens.” She moved the hair away from her face. She was trembling. “The doctors called Max in Worcester when I was recovering in the hospital, because he was listed as my next of kin in my insurance information. He took a train to Philly that night and went crazy when he saw me. Max is simpleminded, but he has a huge heart. He really does. He doesn’t understand that awful things happen every single day to people all over the world. Horrible things. Like being . . . like . . .” Elizabeth looked down at her lap, and the curtain of hair fell over her face once again. “They were drunk and subhuman and were never even brought to justice. Max’s mind couldn’t accept that, because how can you protect your sister from something so horribly random as being attacked near the Delaware River on the way home from an afterwork drink on a crisp fall Wednesday night? Attacked until your thighs are covered in blood. So Max and I made up the aliens story together in the hospital—almost like we were kids again—and I went along with it just to keep him calm. He insisted on moving in with me so that he could protect me from aliens, and it just escalated from there. But it’s really kind of a beautiful brother-sister story if you can manage to look at it the right way, and . . .”