But then my heart sinks.
The first CD is Oops! … I Did It Again. By Britney Spears. It is a crime, and I want to weep for my mother’s musical taste, but I try not to get too judgy. Britney can be fun. She can drop a beat, I guess. Now I’m nervous, though, flicking through the rest of the stack. Sinéad O’Connor, Prince, Faith Hill, Ace of Base, Matchbox Twenty. These are the CDs my grandparents chose to box up from her collection? I lay them out like flashcards on my white shag carpet, trying to digest the harsh realization: My mother was mainstream.
I take a deep breath. I can work with this. Prince, I mean. An obvious genius. Ace of Base are … I have no idea. But I’m going to find out.
I leave everything on the floor to grab Grandpa’s old CD player from the laundry room, plugging it in by my desk. I reach for Sinéad O’Connor first. Her name is familiar, but I can’t remember why, and the thought of rocking out to Ace of Base sounds too woohoo for the cinderblock feeling inside me.
And then, yeah. As soon as the first few notes waft through my tinny speakers, I recognize it. A breakup song; this oddly specific amount of time she’s been missing someone.
I put the song on repeat because I know it’s going to be one of those nights and then sink back onto the floor, unearthing my mother’s jewelry box, running my fingers over rows of cheap drugstore jewelry and legit antiques, all nestled between cushions of red velvet. Grandpa made the box for her. I know, because it’s almost identical to the one he made me on my sixteenth birthday. Small and rectangular, made with love and solid wood and a glossy finish. Smooth and delicate. Did it break his heart, duplicating it? Did he resent me as he sanded the wood and tightened hinges, knowing that I took her away from him?
It only makes me want to cry more when I find my baby album nestled among her things. Pink cloth cover with painted-on hearts; the musty smell of history. There’s a baby blanket beside it, and I pull both into my lap, flipping open the first page.
All About Johanna Katherine Carlson
Each page holds a memory I can’t place. Me, making faces, crying, dressed as a strawberry or a bumble bee, smiling for a family selfie with my parents on either side. Almost always, I’m holding this yellow polka-dot blanket. My very own lovey, completely foreign to me now.
In the margins, Mom has jotted down occasional notes. Nothing super interesting. Baby stuff like, First tooth—five months or Joey tried sweet potatoes today! The best part is seeing her handwriting. Clear, bubbly print like mine. My fingers trace every word.
The last entry feels like a particular papercut to the heart. It isn’t supposed to be the last one, you can tell. There are still a dozen blank pages. I haven’t had my first haircut or learned to use the potty. Haven’t turned three. The last photograph is blurry. Me, running straight toward the camera with laughter on my face, and the caption: Joey won’t stay still for pictures anymore!
And then … nothing.
Blank.
Only me and Sinéad in my bedroom, wondering how we went wrong.
The best songs are the ones that read your mind, speak to your soul, and I imagine her doing exactly this—wallowing and curled up, blasting “Nothing Compares 2 U” at the end of a shitty day. I wonder what her problems were before I stole them from her.
Tears burn behind my eyes. Maybe there’s panic hiding back there too, but I distract myself, walking over to my bookshelf, pulling out my old photo albums. The ones with pictures from my first day of kindergarten; Christmas Eve on Canyon Road in a sea of farolitos. That time Leah, Gabby, and I dressed as tacos for Halloween.
I flick through and find my best memories—the ones I would have wanted to share with her—and slide them into the blank pages of my baby book.
40
I wait till Leah’s driven all the way into the student parking lot on Tuesday before handing my friends each a little white box wrapped in leftover Christmas ribbon. Gabby rattles hers. Leah actually sniffs it. Hopefully it doesn’t seem forced, or like a bribe or whatever. After I pored through Mom’s jewelry box, there was too much good shit to keep all of it to myself. Sharing it with them feels like something Mandy would have wanted.
“What is it?” Leah asks.
“Think of it as a pre-spring-break token of my esteem.”
Gabby raises an eyebrow.
“You know. Like, a thank you thing.” I pause to close the heat vent pointed at me. “In the past few months, I’ve put you guys through so much more than best friends should ever have to go through. I’m constantly freaking out. I don’t know how to act. I bite your heads off when all you’re trying to do is help. I—I’m a mess. So, yeah. This is me saying sorry. You didn’t sign up for this, and I love you for sticking it out. I don’t deserve you guys.”
“Sweetie.” Leah’s eyes glisten. She leans across the gearshift while Gabby reaches forward from the back seat, the two of them ambushing me with hugs. “Teddy Bear Club forever, right?”
“Por vida.”
“And don’t feel too lucky,” Gabby adds. “It’s not like we’ve been perfect best friends either. Me, anyway.”
I shake my head. “No, I should have listened to you better.”
“It’s okay.”
She frowns supportively, and my skin crawls—not because of her, but thinking about how wrong I was about Robert. How badly I want to stop aching. That’s not what this moment is about, though, and I force my brain to switch gears.
“Open your presents already! We’re going to be late for school.”
Gabby tears the lid off her box, pulling out two dangly, tornado-looking gold spirals. “Holy shit, Jo.”
“Gran bought those earrings for Mom on her eighteenth birthday.”
“You can’t give these away.”
“Oh, please. You borrow my shit constantly.” I snicker. “But this is different. Literally, my mom had so much jewelry. I’m keeping most of it, but I want you guys to have something of hers. Leah, that moonstone ring? I know it’s your birthstone, but it was my mom’s too. June twenty-sixth.”
Leah slides the cloudy oval stone over her ring finger. The sun catches it, glinting this fantastic cerulean blue. “It’s beautiful, Jo. I’m honored.”
“But, seriously.” Gabby raises an eyebrow. “Backsies are totally permitted with this stuff. Okay?”
I laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
Seeing them both looking all bedazzled like this, though, it turns my smile lopsided. Because my heart, it still hurts.
“Are you okay?” Leah asks.
“Yeah,” I say, faltering. “I don’t know. I keep thinking I should be. Like—the mural was supposed to make me feel better. Asking Robert to leave was supposed to give me closure. The box of my mother’s things was supposed to bring me closer to her. Nothing’s working.”
Leah squeezes my hand.
Gabby rests her chin on my shoulder.
“Sorry, you guys. I’m being stupid.”
“You’re not,” Leah says.
And Gabby adds, “Maybe there’s not going to be any one thing to make it better.”
I nod. Not wanting to admit out loud that I will live with this grief forever. That it is going to become a part of me—is a part of me already.
We sit in the car a while longer, still and uncertain.
All day at school, we look shiny and dazzling in Mom’s jewelry. Me in a heart-shaped locket with the letter A engraved on the front. I mean, I’m so not a heart-shaped-locket person, but I love it. One side already had a baby picture of me, and beside it, I’ve inserted a baby picture that Gran had of Mom—blond and goofy and inquisitive.
Side by side like that, you can’t even tell us apart.
41
Overnight, it rains. Just enough to make the world look a little greener. A new beginning. After school, I drive to Dr. Cornelia Ireland’s office on the west side of town. Which isn’t really an office, actually. More like a casita attached to a larger adobe house where, presumably, Jenny Ireland is sitting inside doing homewo
rk. I park on the sidewalk and a giant Portuguese water dog comes bounding up to meet me, attacking me with slobber as soon as I open the driver’s side door.
“Sammy, stop!” a voice shrieks. The dog backs off, whimpering uncontrollably. A tall, heavyset woman with long, curly, blond hair rushes out of the casita, smiling brightly at me. “Sorry about that. He’s a lovebug, really. You must be Johanna.”
“Yeah. Hi, Mrs. Ireland. Or, I mean Dr.—sorry, what am I supposed to call you?”
“Connie is fine.”
“Okay. Connie.”
We shake hands, and I let myself get judgy of this boisterous, tunic-wearing hippie. She’s a bit weathered-looking; older than I expected. Are old people capable of handling normal teenage problems? Not that my problems are teenage. Or normal. Okay, fine, she’s probably a genius.
The casita smells of rosemary and has this chilled-out panpipe music easing out of a corner stereo. Hieroglyphic prints and diplomas dot the walls. There’s a giant suede sofa on one side, two oversize armchairs opposite, and I must be staring at them like it’s Sophie’s Choice because Connie says, “Sit anywhere.”
“Is this one of those things where I lie down?”
She smirks. “How tired are you?”
I stare blankly back at her.
“Feel free to lie down. Sit, stand on your head. Anything, so long as you’re comfortable.” She picks up a yellow legal pad, resting it in her lap as she nestles into one of the armchairs.
I lower myself onto the sofa like I’m recovering from hip surgery.
The room goes quiet.
“So, Johanna. How are you?”
“Fine,” I say too quickly.
Because, I mean, where do I start? Therapy isn’t how we Carlsons do things. And I’m glad that I’m here—maybe even grateful—but it’s also weird and forced, and how does she expect me to just open up? Plus, there’s no way Connie could have other clients as screwed up as I am, the thought of which only makes me more tongue-tied.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
Rather than saying, There’s nothing to be sorry for, like I think she might, Connie merely smiles and lets another minute pass. “Anything in particular you want to talk about?”
“Oh. Um.” I shift on the couch, tucking my legs up under me, picturing myself blurting out that I shot my mother. But I can’t. Not yet. I pull a pillow into my lap and shrug. “I don’t know.”
She shrugs too. “That’s okay.”
A wall clock ticks in the background, and my heart pounds three times faster than the second hand. Connie looks at me, smiling, until I can’t take anymore. I clear my throat.
“What do people usually say?”
“Everyone’s different.”
I nod, bottling too much air in my chest.
“Y’know—” She puts down her pen. “I have an idea. Before we get into too much of a conversation. How are you on breathing?”
“Breathing?” I say.
“Yeah, the in-out-in stuff. I ask because you sound like a donkey in labor right now. Assuming that’s not normal for you.”
“I obviously know how to breathe.”
“Obviously,” she says. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
I shrug.
“I think breath could really help you calm down and keep the panic at bay.”
“How do you know I have panic attacks?”
“Psychic,” she says, jazz hands-ing around her graying temples. “That or your grandmother told me when she booked the appointment. Let’s try it, though, huh? If you’re like, To hell with this breathing shit, we’ll go back to awkward silence.”
My eyes bulge. Partly because she’s swearing, but also— “Gran told you about the panic attacks?”
Connie nods.
“Did she also tell you about what I did?” I ask quietly. “To my mother?”
“She told me about what you’ve been through. You make it sound as if you orchestrated something.”
Hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. I look at the ceiling to dry them.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m not trying to push. Not at our first session, anyway.”
We both get quiet for a minute. My eyes stay upward, but I can feel her looking. Drilling a hole into me. Willing me to open up, emote, share, even if she claims she’s not trying to. I move my knees around, pulling them into my chest, hugging them tight. Stay in, tears. Go away, you dicks.
In response, Connie kicks off her Birkenstocks. “As I said, you look like a girl who could do with breathing lessons. You ready to get schooled?”
I look back at her. “Schooled at breathing?”
She smiles, folding her legs into one of those yoga pretzel-looking poses. It isn’t nearly as therapy-ish as I thought it would be, but twice as new age. At least she’s not hypnotizing me or making me horseback ride my problems away (there was an article).
So, I give it to her. My breath.
I guess we’ll take it from there.
42
My first assignment or whatever from Connie is to take my grandparents to see the mural. Something about the three of us healing together. They’d heard about it, obviously. Had seen the newspaper article and been given secondhand praise from Pastor Thompson. But I’m a nervous wreck taking them right up to the thing.
“You did all this?” Grandpa marvels.
Gran’s old Southern face is harder to read. Brow furrowed, but eyes bright. I want to tug on the hem of her skirt like when I was little, asking her a thousand times if she likes it. Especially the girl I painted, all curled-up and crying beside a broken heart. Or Milo’s Zia symbol with the Mexican sugar skull at its center. Do you like it, Gran? Do you, do you, do you, do you? If she tells me it’s perfect—that I’m perfect—will my heart unlock and spill open?
“A bunch of us worked on it,” I say, smiling at a few kids walking past. As of 3:30 p.m., it is finally spring break, so people are giddily streaming to their cars, ready to peace out for nine glorious days. “Our teacher supervisor was Mr. Donnelly, and he’s great. He backed me up from the beginning. The art teacher helped too. My whole art class, actually. Plus a few friends. And Milo, who I was telling you about? And there was this totally brilliant artist overseeing the whole thing. She helped us find our voices and draw initial sketches, and then taught us how to grid it all out on paper before starting on the wall itself. We tried to keep the message positive—no actual guns painted anywhere. See?”
It’s nerves that are making me talk a mile a minute, so I bite my lips together and try to let the moment happen. There really is a lot to take in. One of my favorite parts is this trickle of bullets transforming into peace signs. The whole thing is bright, brimming with hope and soft edges. I mean, not to brag, but—
“I used to be a gun owner,” Grandpa says, filling the silence.
“Wait, what?” I blink. My brain’s not there yet. “You have a gun?”
“Had,” he corrects, keeping his eyes on the mural. “For hunting.”
I wait for more, but that seems to be the whole story. Grandpa: a wellspring of information. But I’m not ready to drop it, so I turn to Gran.
“Did you know about this?”
She shoots me a quizzical smile. “Well, of course I did. Grandpa shot a lot of game back in Arkansas. Deer, mostly. And before you give me that sourpuss look, there is nothing wrong with hunting if you are trained and licensed and your guns are properly locked and stored. I was always impressed by the level of care and safety Grandpa went to.”
Grandpa coughs. “The fact is, hunting didn’t feel right anymore. After that day, that was it. We were taking you in, and we didn’t want firearms in the house. Not even locked in the shed.”
“Grandpa sold it to one of those—what do they call it?”
“A buyback program.”
She nods. “A buyback program. Where I suppose they sawed it into pieces.”
My brain is completely exploding right now.
“I’m not quite sure what
happened to Robert’s gun,” Gran muses.
“Evidence,” Grandpa says, rocking back on his heels as he nods.
“That’s right, evidence.”
Evidence. The word hovers around us, dissipating like smoke until we’re standing in silence again. My grandparents are back to serene smiles and appreciation, but my insides are screwed tight and airless. A gun. My grandfather was a hunter, and he gave up his favorite hobby. I took their daughter from them. I uprooted their lives. I changed all three of us down to the very core of our being, in a single second.
“Should we take a picture?”
I blink back to reality, swallowing a lump in my throat. Grandpa’s already dutifully unzipping his coat, reaching for the phone in his breast pocket. Gran’s lightly coaxing my dazed body toward the mural.
“Make sure you get her standing next to it.”
I tousle my hair, smiling self-consciously.
“Do you want to be in the picture, Katie?”
“No, just take the picture.”
He takes three zillion, all of them in portrait mode when clearly the mural is landscape, but whatever.
I want to freeze time—or at least the sheer pride on their faces—but Gran’s feet start to ache, and dinner isn’t going to cook itself. We head toward the parking lot, Gran fiddling with her turquoise bracelet.
“Grandpa and I wanted to talk to you about spring break,” she says, kind of weird and hesitant. “We’d like to take you to Little Rock.”
My face crinkles. “Where you guys used to live?”
“Yes,” Grandpa says. “And where your mother is buried.”
My insides freeze. “Are you serious?”
Clearly they are because they almost never joke, so why start now.
“You haven’t been to Amanda’s grave since the funeral,” Gran adds, like I don’t already know that. “We thought we were saving you the heartache. Anyway, we’d like to make it up to you. I can’t miss my fundraiser meeting, so we’ll leave on Monday.”
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