Torn Away

by Jennifer Brown

  I didn’t want her to be a beacon of safety for me. I didn’t want to feel like I was running home while running to her. But my heart leapt around in my chest when I saw her.

  “Jersey! There you are,” she said, and I could barely hear her over the siren. “I was worried.”

  The rain began to splatter around me as I cut through the front yard, my legs feeling exhausted and jelly-like as I pounded one foot in front of the other. For a terrifying, almost dizzying moment I was afraid I’d be unable to make it those last few steps. I was sure my legs would give out and crumple beneath me, that I would sprawl facedown in the grass, my grandmother unable to pull me up. I imagined the sky splitting open and an angry tornado reaching down to scoop me up and toss me into its eye with flying debris and swirling dead people; people like my mom and sister.

  But somehow I made it, and even though my grandmother was reaching out to me, I lunged right past her and into the house. I raced through the hall and down the basement steps without even pausing to search for the light switch, my brain briefly flashing back to the day Meg and Lexi had shut off the basement light and I’d gotten so spooked. The memory only served to agitate me further, and I could feel fury rushing through me.

  Down in the basement, it was quieter. The sirens were muted and the wind was no longer beating in my ears and the rain sounded far away up on the roof. Still, I was buzzing. My head was making a siren noise of its own. My ears were ringing and my breath panted out of me as I paced, moaning and crying and growling. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d never felt or acted this way in a storm before. But I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop the fiery, tossed feeling in my chest, and I couldn’t stop my body from acting on it.

  “Jersey?” my grandmother called, and seconds later the basement was bathed in light. I saw her feet pad down the carpeted stairs. “Jersey? Can you hear me?”

  And maybe it was the way she kept saying my name—always, constantly, saying my name—or maybe it was the fear or the siren, which had gotten into my head. Or maybe it was those words—“Can you hear me?” Those words that I had said to my mother a few weeks before. Those words, which had gone unanswered.

  Maybe it was all of the above, but I panicked. My chest squeezed tight and I dropped to my knees on the floor, surprised by the sensation. My hands, which were shaking, clutched at my chest and I gasped and gasped. I could feel my eyes bugging out, but I couldn’t see my grandmother or the carpeted basement steps anymore.

  All I could see was the bottom of Ronnie’s pool table, the papers as they blew around me, a rolling ashtray. All I could hear was the collapse of my kitchen down into the basement, the roar of a wind mightier than anyone had seen in forty years, death and destruction balled up inside its nasty, painful grip. I could hear the sound of glass breaking, of bricks thudding to concrete, the squeak of wood splintering. Myself screaming.

  Screaming and screaming and screaming, my eyes squeezed shut so tightly I was no longer sure where I was. Only that I felt paralyzed by fear—the fear that began on the day my mom took Marin to dance and never came home again. The fear I’d been holding at bay, had been pushing down inside myself, all through the days after the tornado, through the time at the motel with Ronnie, through those frightening nights of wondering what Lexi and Meg would do to me. The fear washed over me, held me down, made me feel like I was going to die—just lie down and join my mother and sister.

  I don’t know how long I remained that way. But eventually, as if coming up from the deep end of a pool and taking my first breath, I began to sense things. My grandmother’s voice, saying my name over and over again, her hands gripping my shoulders, and a movement that sharpened into shaking.

  “Jersey!” she was barking. “Jersey, dammit! Stop screaming. It’s going to be okay. Jersey!”

  She shook harder and harder and I felt my head moving back and forth on my shoulders, and finally the shrieking just… died out. I blinked through the tears and the swollen eyelids and saw my grandmother kneeling before me, looking stern.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Stop screaming. They’ve turned off the sirens.”

  My mouth clopped shut, my lips slippery with snot, and I tried to catch my breath.

  “It’s all clear,” she said, her voice still barking, but softer now. She’d given me a soft shake on the words “all” and “clear” but then must have seen some recognition that I was back to reality, because she nodded curtly and let go, then stood up. My grandmother crossed her arms and gazed down at me unyieldingly.

  “You can’t go disappearing like that,” she said, and I wondered if this sharp-featured woman was the Patty my mom had hated so much. “We were worried sick with the storm coming in. You could have been anywhere. Grandpa Barry is out there right now, driving around looking for you.”

  “I didn’t tell him to come find me,” I said, my numb lips barely opening to let the words out.

  “You could have gotten hurt. Or worse.”

  “Worse,” I repeated, then coughed a dull, mirthless laugh. I felt like I was dying. Or maybe like I would never finish dying. Like I would be stuck in this pain forever. I turned my eyes up to look at her, furious and scared and swinging wildly with my words. “You mean I could have lost everything I ever cared about? Bad news, that’s already happened. Or do you mean worse like I could have died? Because that would actually have been better. I should have died with them. I wish I had died with them.” Somehow, despite my fatigue, I managed to pull myself to standing. “Death would be a blessing,” I said, though I knew I didn’t mean it, and I knew that the words hurt her and scared her. I didn’t care. I was beyond caring. I was so confused and so overwrought and so tired of all of this. What did it matter if someone else got hurt? She could join us—the walking-wounded club.

  She softened, tried to reach out to me, but I shrugged away. “Oh, Jersey, you don’t mean that. I know you were close to your mom, but—”

  “Don’t talk about my mom,” I snarled, my voice ratcheting up again. “She hated you. She ran away from you before I was born, and she never wanted anything to do with you again. It’s actually a good thing she’s dead, because she would rather die than see me be raised by you.”

  My grandmother stiffened, and I was almost certain I saw her eyes go soft and watery, but she kept herself together. “Unfortunately, we’re your only choice,” she said.

  “You can’t call it a choice when there’s only one option,” I said. “I didn’t choose. I don’t know anything about you. Because my mom didn’t tell us anything. Marin lived and died with no grandparents, don’t you understand that? Marin never even asked about you, because you didn’t exist to her. So thanks for the ‘choice,’ but no, thanks.”

  This time I did see a tear roll down my grandmother’s softly wrinkled cheek, and I was sick enough to feel satisfaction. I even smiled, though inside I knew it was wrong to hurt another person this way. I wasn’t the only one hurting, and my pain wasn’t her fault, wasn’t anyone’s fault. She was just the one getting the blame.

  “Jersey, we want to help you,” she said softly. She reached toward me again, and this time I skirted her and headed for the stairs. “We can get you some grief counseling,” she called to my back. “We can get you whatever you need. We love you.”

  I stomped up the stairs. Grief counseling. Like that was going to work. Like some New Age bullshit-spouting therapist with “coping techniques” was going to bring my mom and sister back.

  “Well, I don’t love you,” I said coldly over my shoulder, not bothering to break my stride. “None of us ever did.”

  I slapped the light switch as I reached the top of the stairs, leaving my grandmother in darkness, the same way Meg and Lexi had left me.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It rained off and on for the rest of the day and into the evening. I could hear my grandparents puttering around the house, doors opening and shutting softly, words spoken too low to make out.

  I
curled up in my blankets and stared through the window at the gray sky, the raindrops on the glass making funny shadows on my comforter.

  I felt awful. I couldn’t help myself. Now that I’d dumped everything on my grandmother, I was consumed with guilt. Partly for hurting her, but also partly because I’d begun to doubt my mother. What if my grandparents weren’t the only ones to blame? What if she’d been hardheaded and hard-hearted, too? I knew it was possible, because I’d barely recognized myself down in that basement.

  And what did it matter, anyway? Mom’s fight with them was most definitely over now. Had it been worth it to her? Did she know her parents had come to her funeral? Did she know I was with them now? Did she approve?

  I wished so badly I could talk to her, that I could ask her these things.

  Under the covers, I shut my eyes and pressed my palms together, waiting for words, but it was like something inside me was afraid to approach my mom, even in prayer. Every time I got close to thinking a direct thought to her, my brain backed away, my heart closed down, my words failed me. Talking to her this way meant she was dead, and I couldn’t go there.

  My door opened and the light switched on, making me wince and blink. My grandfather stood in the doorway, which surprised me. Usually it was my grandmother who came to my room. He’d never once come in.

  “Grandma went to bed for the night,” he said evenly. “She was upset and had a headache. So if you want dinner, you’re gonna have to make it yourself. Unless you want peanut butter and jelly. I can make that much.”

  “No, thanks, I’m not hungry,” I told the streaks of rain on the window. But after he left, leaving the door open behind him, I found that I was actually starving.

  It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to enter the kitchen, where I knew he would be. But there was something about my grandfather that I didn’t mind so much. Maybe it was the cards, but I almost felt a sort of connection with him, even if I didn’t want to admit it. There was something about him that seemed trustworthy. It felt like it had been so long since I’d had someone to trust.

  I wasn’t surprised to see him at the kitchen table, playing solitaire. And losing, as usual.

  “Three of clubs on two up top,” I muttered as I walked by. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him pick up the card and move it, while I searched through the cabinets until I found a box of macaroni and cheese. I flipped it over to look at the directions, even though I pretty much had them memorized. It had been so long since I’d gotten to do something as mundane as make myself macaroni and cheese. It felt good, like a routine revisited. I put a pan of water on the stove and turned it on, then leaned against the kitchen counter, unsure of what else to do. “There’s a jack there,” I said.

  My grandfather stared at his cards, his hands hovering above them. I stepped forward and pointed.

  “Right there.”

  He moved the cards.

  “Why do you keep playing that game?” I asked. “You always miss the cards.”

  “Oh,” he said, pulling three cards out of the deck in his hand and flipping over the last one, “I suppose I think it’s keeping me mentally agile.” He glanced up, winked at me. “Imagine how many I’d miss if I didn’t play.”

  I couldn’t help giggling. “You’d miss none. Because you wouldn’t be playing.”

  “Huh,” he said, acting as if he were pondering. “I guess I wouldn’t, would I? Or maybe I’d miss them all. Care to join me? We can play Spit.”

  I grinned. Spit was all about speed. No one had ever beaten me at Spit. Once, I’d even made Marin cry during a game of Spit, it was such a slaughter. “Deal me in.”

  The water began to boil behind me and I poured in the pasta and gave it a quick stir, then slid into the chair across from my grandfather as he counted out twenty-six cards for each of us.

  “Quite a storm we had this afternoon, wasn’t it?” he said absently as he dealt.

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wasn’t ready yet to confess to him that I felt guilty for how I’d lost it down there. For how I’d attacked my grandmother.

  “You know, we get pretty intense storms around here all summer long. Break off our tomato plants, blow the barbecue grill to the other side of the porch. One time we had hail so big it busted out the skylights.”

  I picked up my cards. What was he getting at?

  He gathered his cards and leveled his gaze at me. He didn’t look angry, but he did look serious. “We’ve never once had a tornado here. In all my sixty-two years, not one.”

  I understood what he was getting at—that I needed to let go of my fears because the chances of ever being in another tornado were so slim. The devastation in Elizabeth was unexpected for a reason—because tornadoes as huge as ours almost never happen. It was a freak accident, losing my family. That fact didn’t make it suck any less, but the chances that it would happen again were almost zero. And I couldn’t keep living my life expecting tragedy around every corner.

  “You said you learned how to play in the service,” I said, trying to change the subject. “Were you ever in a war?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “But yes.”

  And maybe it was because playing cards relaxed me. Or maybe it was because I felt guilty for what I’d done to my grandmother. Or maybe I had finally gotten so lonely, so sick of my thoughts being my only company. I suddenly wanted to talk.

  “I’ve got time,” I said.

  So he proceeded to tell me about the Vietnam War, where he was a young private, barely out of high school, scared for his life. He told me how he’d felt insanely homesick and how every cross word he’d ever uttered to anyone he loved plagued him as he watched young men dying around him every day. He said he’d lie awake at night and replay all the good times and bad that he’d had with his family, hoping that if he died, they’d only remember the good. He’d never had a girlfriend before he got enlisted, and he worried that he’d die over there and never know what it was like to fall in love.

  “That was the worst,” he said. “I would rather have had someone to love and left her too soon than die never knowing love at all.” He let that sink in while we flipped cards over. “But,” he said with renewed vigor, “turned out I wasn’t supposed to find Patty before I went. I met her the day after I got home, can you believe that? The day after.”

  I rooted through my cards, then drew a nine that I needed and laid it down. “Why didn’t you talk to my mom again? I mean… after she split up with Clay.”

  My grandfather drew a card and studied it. “I wish we had” was all he said.

  There was a sizzling sound as the pot of water boiled over. I jumped up to stir it and turn the flame down, absently setting my cards on the edge of the table. They fell off with a whisper, spreading themselves across the linoleum floor. I calmed the overflowing pot, then went down to my knees to pick up the cards, which had fanned underneath a side table.

  That’s when I noticed it for the first time—a porcelain kitten tucked away on a low shelf. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands, forgetting about the cards as I stood up.

  It was a glossy orange-and-white tabby with a number three on its chest, pawing at a purple butterfly.

  I held it out to my grandfather, feeling like someone had stolen my breath. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

  He frowned at it over his glasses in the same maddeningly nonchalant way he did everything. “That? Oh, I think it belonged to Christine. Her mother bought her one for her birthday every year. Christine loved cats. She treasured that collection. She left the whole thing behind.” He took the kitten out of my hand and looked it over. “Your grandma packed them all up and put them away. All except this one. She keeps it out because it was Chrissy’s favorite.” He set the statue on the table between us. My eyes felt riveted to it as pieces of my life snapped into place. “You’d better tend to that pot,” he said. “It’s fixing to boil over again.”

  I walked over and took the pot o
ff the stove, then searched until I found a colander and drained the pasta, stirred in the cheese and butter and milk. But I did these things on autopilot. In my mind, all I could see was a padded manila envelope, one each year, sitting on our old kitchen table back in Elizabeth.

  “It’s another kitten, I’ll bet!” I could hear myself say excitedly, a birthday girl waiting for cake and presents.

  I could see the sour look on my mother’s face as she watched me tear open the envelope year after year. I’d always assumed she’d looked so sour because they had come from Clay. I’d always assumed that was why Marin never got one.

  But how could Mom tell me? How could she tell me they were from the grandparents she’d raised me to believe were so mean? How could she admit that they weren’t absent after all, but were reaching out to me in the only way they knew how?

  On second thought… how couldn’t she tell me these things? How could she be so stubborn? How could she be the cruel one?

  Because she’d never in a million years thought I’d find out, that was how. She’d never have guessed that one day I would be playing Spit with her father at the kitchen table she’d grown up eating on. Whatever grudge match had occurred between them, she’d never thought I’d learn about it.

  I took a bowl out of the cabinet and spooned in some macaroni.

  “You got any extra? I’m not really in the mood for peanut butter and jelly,” my grandfather said.

  I glanced over to find that he had picked up my spilled cards and dealt.

  “Cheater. I didn’t see you deal those,” I said, reaching up to pull down a second bowl.

  He spread his palms over his chest, making a show of innocence. “Cheater? I’m an innocent old man,” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, carrying the bowls to the table and setting one in front of him. “Redeal, old man.”

  He swept the cards together and shuffled, chuckling, as I blew into my bowl to cool it off, keeping one eye on the kitten the whole time. I’d treated these people horribly. I’d refused to speak to them, refused to be pleasant. I’d said awful things to my grandmother, and her only response had been to tell me she loved me. My grandfather had invited me to play with him. They understood, even when I was being unfair and selfish and ugly.