May We Be Forgiven

shrug.
    “Scared?”
    She says nothing.
    “Ash, if it’s okay, I’m just going to talk for a couple of minutes, but I want you to feel free to interrupt at any point. Okay?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Okay. So the woman who runs your school called me. I know what happened. And the first thing I want you to know is, it’s okay. I want you to know that you’re not in trouble. And that I understand and don’t think it’s weird or anything. I also want you to know that you can talk to me, tell me whatever you want or not tell me, I just want you to be okay. The thing that I care most about is your well-being.”
    “Can I ask a question?”
    “Of course.”
    “Do I have to move back into my old house?”
    “Your old house?”
    “It’s officially called Rose Hill, but everyone calls it Patchouli.”
    “Is there a reason you shouldn’t live in your old house?”
    “Well, where I am now there’s a TV, and I really like watching TV. It helps me calm down. Like at night, if I can’t sleep, I just put it on and Miss Renee doesn’t mind.”
    “Miss Renee? The head of the lower school?”
    “Yeah, and then, like, if I’m really stressed, sometimes I come back in the middle of the day and watch, like, All My Children, General Hospital, One Life to Live, and then all is good again—it’s like they really help me understand the world and get some perspective. Also, my life is more like the people on the soaps than most of the people around here.”
    “Interesting,” I say. “I need to think about that.”
    “I really can’t go back to the old house,” she says. “I’m not okay with that.”
    “I hear you.”
    She starts to cry. “I want to come home.”
    “We can do that,” I say.
    She sniffles. “I have a project due. …”
    “How about you come home for the weekend?”
    “Okay,” she says, sniffling.
    “Can you manage until then? We don’t have to decide about the house issue right now. I think Mrs. Singer said you could stay with her —I bet she has a television.”
    “Not as many channels,” Ashley says, still sniffling.
    I pick her up on Friday afternoon. The entire way up to the school, I marvel at the scenery; the trees have sprung into bloom.
    Ashley babbles the whole way home—going on and on about soap operas. I can’t tell if it’s an anxiety response, an odd verbal downloading of daytime drama, or some kind of hypomanic state—I simply let her roll.
    “ All My Children is set in Pine Valley, it has the Tylers, the Kanes, and the Martins; it’s been on for, like, forty years, that’s more than ten thousand episodes. …” She details a bit about Erica and the Cortlandts.
    “And then, this week …” She lays out the story lines—the past history, who was married to who, who fathered what child, what secrets have not yet been revealed.
    “Ash, how long have you been watching these shows?”
    “A long time,” she says. “I started when I was, like, seven and was home with mono for a month and Mom let me watch them with her.”
    “Your mom watched them?”
    “She loved them. She’d been watching the exact same shows since she was in junior high and stuck at home with a broken leg. And once, at an airport, she actually saw Mrs. Tyler, Mrs. Phoebe Tyler! Mom saw her at the airport and ran over and helped her with her bag. Her ‘real’ name was Ruth Warrick. She died a few years ago. Mom said something about having seen it in the newspaper.”
    “You really miss your mom,” I say.
    “I have no one,” she says.
    “Well, I’m very glad to see you, and Tessie and Romeo will be happy to see you—you’re gonna love Romeo.”
    “Could we go to the cemetery?” she asks. “Would that be weird?”
    “We can go—I’m not sure how it would be.”
    “What’s it like there?”
    “We were there for the funeral; do you remember?”
    “Not really.”
    “It’s like a big park and there are some trees and the graves are flat.”
    “Why?”
    “Because that’s the Jewish tradition, to have flat graves, and a year after the funeral there’s what’s called an unveiling, and the plaque with your mom’s name will be there. And whenever you visit you leave a small stone on the marker, which indicates that you were there and the person is not forgotten.”
    “Why does it take a year?”
    “That’s the tradition. We could go visit your grandmother—would that be fun?”
    “Can we take her out?”
    “Like where?”
    “I don’t know. Just out—it’s like