There’s a moment of silence. I look over at Charles just as he turns his head toward the voices.
“You’re her father?” Nancy asks.
“That’s right. Why do you look so shocked? Surely I can’t be the only father who’s shown up in full face before. Especially in a place like this. It goes with the territory, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“And your name is?”
“Arthur Turner. But my friends call me Anne T. Christ.”
“I hate to think what your enemies call you,” Nancy says. “Is Toby expecting you?”
“Yes. For the past fifteen years.”
“Well, I’ll speak to her. Please wait here. Don’t go anywhere, Mr. . . . Christ.”
I slowly twist around. My eyes hover over the edge of the sofa. Nancy walks toward my room. Arthur is still standing next to the station. I can’t believe he showed up like this. What’s his goal—to humiliate me even more? Why is he even still here, in Tilden? His head turns this way and that, like he’s taking in every last detail. I see that his nails are still blood red.
“Do you have a quarter?”
It’s Meg. I didn’t see her come up behind him. My stomach churns. Now everyone is going to know.
“What for?” he asks, one eyebrow shooting up his forehead. “Is there a pinball machine around here I don’t know about?”
“It’s for a coffee.”
“Where on earth are you buying coffee for a quarter in this day and age? It must not be very good.”
“It’s not bad,” Meg says with a shrug. “It comes from a machine.”
“You poor dear,” he says. “Nothing worth eating or drinking ever came from a machine. My God, look at those bags under your eyes. Have you ever tried cucumber slices? Or cold tea bags?”
Meg squints at him. “There’s something funny about you. Are you a man?”
“What day of the week is it?”
“Thursday.”
“Then, no. I’m only a man on Tuesdays and Sundays.”
“You a new patient?”
“No, but I’m open to auditioning.”
“Toby?”
I turn to see Nancy standing in front of me. “Do you know this person?” she whispers. “Is he really your father?”
I don’t know what to say. He’s factually my father, but emotionally, he’s nothing but a stranger. I glance back over at him, but he doesn’t seem to hear our conversation. He’s looking at Meg like she’s some kind of abstract painting.
“I don’t know who he is,” I whisper back. “I don’t want to see him.”
I start to cry. I can’t take any more of this. Why won’t he go away? Why won’t he leave me alone?
Nancy’s hand goes to my arm. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
I watch as she walks back to him. “I’m sorry, but Toby isn’t available.”
“Well, I’ll wait until she is.”
“That’s not an option. You’ll have to leave now.”
“But does she know I’m here?”
“Yes, I told her. But she doesn’t want to see you, Mr. Christ.”
He looks from Nancy to Meg and seems to deflate, like he’s a balloon with a slow leak.
“Well, then,” he says. “I hope she’s doing well. And tell her . . . Tell her I hope she gets better.”
“I’ll let her know,” Nancy says.
“I’ve been to this hospital before, many years ago,” he says. “Visiting an old friend. And I can’t say I’m glad to be back. You really do need to redecorate.”
“About that quarter . . . ,” Meg says.
“Don’t even try, Meg,” Nancy says.
“I couldn’t help you out anyway, darling,” he says. “Turns out I don’t have anything of value to anyone.”
He turns, a swish of blond hair, and walks out, the click of his heels bouncing off the walls.
“Good riddance,” I whisper.
* * *
Nancy comes to me later and sits down on my bed. I’ve been hiding out in my room since Arthur left. I keep thinking he’s going to show up again dressed like Pamela Anderson or someone even more embarrassing.
“I know you said you didn’t know that person,” she says. “But something tells me otherwise. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. “No pressure. Do you want a cookie or a juice or anything?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine. But thanks.”
She gets up to go. “Just let me know if you need anything.”
“What he said is true,” I say before I can stop the words. “He’s my father.”
Nancy slowly turns around. She tilts her head and smiles. “I thought that part might be true.”
“What gave it away? His dress or the blond wig?”
“Well, I suppose he doesn’t look like most fathers,” she says. “At least, not many of the ones you see at the grocery store or the ballpark.”
“I wish he did look like them,” I say. “At least I’d feel more normal. I wouldn’t feel like such a freak.”
Nancy sits back down on the bed. “I can understand how you might feel that way. It’s not easy when parents don’t fit neatly into their packages. You had a double serving, from what I understand. Between your mom and your dad, that is.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I say.
“I’m guessing your father and you aren’t close?”
“We aren’t anything. He showed up for the first time just a couple of days ago, drunk, expecting everything to be okay. He didn’t apologize or offer any explanation for treating me like I didn’t exist. He should’ve just stayed away.”
Nancy sighs. “My mom left my family when I was a little kid. She came back, eventually. But it took her a long time. A couple of years, at least.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t think she really loved my dad. So that was part of it. But there were three kids too. So I never understood why she left us and not just him. It felt like she didn’t care about me, that she didn’t love me. Which is a pretty heavy thing for a kid to deal with. But I’m not telling you anything new.”
I don’t say anything and only nod.
“Sometimes, parents don’t do the things they’re supposed to do,” Nancy says. “They act more like the kid than the parent. And you know what that makes the kid?”
“The parent?”
“Bingo. It’s not fair, but you can’t stop people from doing, or not doing, what they’re supposed to do. You can only figure out how to move around them. It’s like the more you learn to twist and bend, the less chance you have of breaking. I’m not sure if that makes sense.”
“It does,” I say.
“Good,” Nancy says, getting up off the bed. “At least I’ve accomplished one thing today.”
“Two things,” I say. “You also asked if it was okay for him to see me. I bet most nurses would’ve just sent him to my room. I appreciate that.”
“Oh, you don’t need to thank me,” Nancy says with a smile. “That was just common sense. Anyone in heels that high can only mean trouble.”
Chapter 33
I never told anyone I was the one who found my mom. People knew, though. When Grandma Kay came running through the apartment door and saw me sitting on the living room couch, she knew. The paramedics who came with their stretcher, they knew too. But no one ever talked about it. No one ever talked about my mom’s death or that she killed herself. Whenever Grandma Kay spoke about it, she called it a “terrible accident,” like the pills fell into my mom’s mouth. But that’s not the way it happened. Pills don’t fall into someone’s mouth. You need to put them there. You need to be deliberate. So my mom’s death was no accident. She made sure of that.
She meant to take every last pill.
When you don’t talk about something, it means it’s a secret. Or it’s something that no one wants to talk about. So while I would’ve talked about finding my mom
, and a lot of times, I wanted to talk about it—her fuzzy pink slippers, the colour of her blue lips, her stone face—it was clear no one else wanted to talk about it. This made me feel like I was alone in an arena, surrounded by people I was supposed to know, but everyone was a stranger.
What bothers me most is that my mom knew I would find her. She knew I’d be coming home from school that day. She knew I’d open her bedroom door and find her there.
Why would you do something like that to someone you love?
Unless.
Unless.
Unless you don’t care.
Unless you don’t love the person.
Or unless love isn’t enough to keep you alive.
* * *
I’m going home tomorrow. I don’t know how I feel about it. In some ways, I’ll be grateful to get back to my own room, my own bed. In other ways, I feel safe here. Like I’m in a hammock above a raging sea. And, so long as I’m here, I know the hammock will keep me dry and safe and will never tip over.
Dr. Singh has prescribed some medication for me to take. I don’t know if this is to stop me from trying something again or not. I don’t like the idea of taking the pills, but I’ve promised I will.
“You’re not alone, Toby,” she told me the other day. “You are surrounded by people who care for you and want the best for you. You need to remember that.”
I said, “I will,” but her words felt like nothing to me. They were dandelion fluff in the breeze. I watched them sail past.
What I wanted to say to Dr. Singh is that nothing has changed. I took the sleeping pills, I was rescued, I’ve been in this hospital for five days, but nothing has changed. My mom still killed herself. My father is still a jerk. My grandparents still don’t know who I am. I’m still a loser freak. But I didn’t say that because I remembered what Meg told me, about playing the game. And I’ve decided that being home is the better place to be. For now. At least there aren’t doctors and nurses. At least there are no Megs, walking around at all times of the day.
“How are you feeling, Toby?” Dr. Singh asked me.
Her eyes were like glue on me.
“I feel good,” I said, making sure I held her stare. “I don’t know why I did what I did before. But I know I won’t do it again.”
“I’m glad,” she said, sitting back in her chair and writing something down in her notebook. I stared above her head at a tiny nail hole in the wall, imagining that it was getting bigger and bigger until it was big enough that I could crawl through it and the hole would close back up and I’d be there forever, inside the wall, safe and alone.
* * *
“Do you have coffee on the farm?”
Meg looks at me with the saddest eyes, even sadder than the cows’ eyes.
“Yes, we have coffee,” I say. “Grandma Kay makes a pot every morning and one at lunch for the hired hands.”
Even saying “hired hands” makes me feel sick inside. Going home means seeing Mike. I feel awful for what I did to him. I can’t imagine how angry he’ll be at me. Not only that, he was the one who found me, and there’s a part of me that’s curious about that. I found my mom. He found me. It’s a weird connection that we have.
“Two pots of coffee a day,” Meg says, closing her eyes. “Sounds like heaven.”
“Listen, Meg,” I say, leaning over and placing my hand over hers. “You need to get some sleep. I know you think you’re sleeping, but you’re not. You roam around these halls twenty-four hours a day.”
“What are you talking about?” She looks so genuinely confused, my heart breaks. How can someone be so blind to their actions? To the person that they are?
“Just promise me you’ll try to sleep,” I say. “Even if you think you’ve just woken up.”
“Even if I’ve just woken up?” Meg repeats. Her voice is soft and uncertain, a little kid learning words for the first time.
“That’s right,” I say. “Just try to sleep and tell yourself that when you wake up, you can have the biggest, hottest cup of coffee you can imagine as a reward.”
“I’ll miss you, Tracy,” she says.
“I’ll miss you too,” I say.
* * *
Nancy comes by my room after breakfast has been cleared.
“All set?” she asks.
“I guess so,” I say.
“You’re going to be fine, Toby. I hope you know that.”
“I do,” I say. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“When your mom came back, did she say anything to you? I mean, did she apologize for going away in the first place?”
Nancy frowns. “Hmm. I was pretty young, so I don’t remember her saying anything at the time. I think she more or less showed up one day, and the next thing I knew, she was back in the kitchen, making dinners, telling us to clean our rooms. Like the two years she was gone hadn’t happened. Sometimes, I wondered if it really had happened. That I didn’t dream it. She died a couple of years ago from cancer. I visited her in the hospital right before she passed away. She took my hand and said, ‘I’m sorry for all that.’ And I knew by the look in her eyes what she meant by ‘all that.’ Sometimes, that’s all you get. And you need to decide, is that enough? And even if it doesn’t feel like enough, it’s all you’re ever going to get. So you need to make it enough. For your own sake, not theirs. Because you’re the one that has to keep on living. Once again, I’m pretty sure I’m not making any sense.”
“You are,” I say.
But what I really want to say is, “At least you got an apology.”
* * *
I know I’ll do it again. I don’t know how I’ll do it. Or when. Not pills this time, because we all know how that went. Maybe poison, although I imagine myself rolling around on the ground in agony. Or foaming at the mouth. I wouldn’t want that. A gun would be too violent. Plus, I don’t know how to work one. Maybe slitting my wrists. I’ve heard it doesn’t hurt if you’re in a warm bath when you do it. But there’d be so much blood. I’d make a mess of the bathroom and I wouldn’t want Grandma Kay to have to clean it all up.
On the far side of the farm, trains pass by a couple of times a day. Not trains with people. Cargo trains. They’ll let out long whistles as they barrel along on the tracks. They travel so fast, there’s no way they’d be able to stop for anything in their path.
A train is on a mission. A train won’t be stopped.
Chapter 34
Things look a lot different when you’ve been away for a few days. From my view in the back seat of my grandparents’ car, I notice things I hadn’t before. The purple thistle in the fields, the dip and rise of the telephone wires as they fly past the window, the blue sky that doesn’t have a single cloud in it.
You’d think I’d see beauty in all of this. And I do see it. See it, but not feel it. And I think, in many ways, that’s the story of my life. I stopped feeling anything the day I stepped into my mom’s bedroom.
open the door
That’s why I’m always nervous opening doors. Because I’m never sure what will be on the other side. But I know that, whatever it is, it’ll be bad. Whatever is waiting for me will try to drown me. That’s why I have to take matters into my own hands.
Beat them at their game.
I wonder what Meg is doing right now, if she ever got that cup of coffee.
“I’m making a turkey,” Grandma Kay says. “With mashed potatoes and gravy. Corn too. But not the frozen kind. I know you’re like your grandpa and prefer the canned stuff. Although God knows why. Looks like old teeth to me.”
“Tastes sweeter,” Grandpa Frank says. This is the most he’s spoken since they picked me up. Grandpa Frank has never been much of a talker, but I can’t deal with his silence. Or, rather, the anger behind his silence. My stomach turns into knots just thinking about it.
“Good with me,” I say, trying to sound cheerful. I know it’s important. I’m supposed to reassure them. They have nothing to worry about. I’m on the mend.
I’ve put a Band-Aid on the hole in my heart. Everything is going to be okay.
I also know I’ll be under their watch. Grandma Kay and Grandpa Frank won’t let me out of their sight. And while a part of me is angry about this, I also know I only have myself to blame. Like everything else in my life.
“Shirley said she might come by,” Grandma Kay says. “I don’t know if she’ll be there for dinner or dessert afterwards. Of course, I don’t know if she can eat dessert on account of her diabetes. Remind me to check for sugarless Jell-O in the cupboard.”
I watch as we pass some horses in the field. I’d like to come back as a horse. Maybe a bird. Something that can run or fly away. Something that can escape.
“Do you know where he is?” I ask. “Arthur?”
I don’t want to know, but he was at the hospital just two days ago. Which means he’s likely still in Tilden. I cross my fingers before they can answer.
“Please say he’s gone,” I say inside my head. “Tell me he’s away.”
“He’s gone back, as far as I know,” Grandma Kay says. “Haven’t heard from him since they left that night. Where was he performing?” She turns to Grandpa Frank.
Grandpa Frank shrugs. “I try not to listen to much of what he says.”
They don’t know, then. That he came to see me at the hospital. I try to figure out what this means. Was his visit a secret? Does Shirley know? And where’s Bruno?
And why did my father think dressing up like a woman was appropriate? I have to smile when I remember his exchange with Meg. I can’t imagine what was running through her head. She must’ve been so confused.
I won’t say anything about his visit, then. I’m not going to open that can of worms. He knows I don’t want to see him. Nancy told him that. He got the message loud and clear. I’m rid of him. For good.
We pull into our driveway and I feel my heart jump, expecting to see Mike’s car. But it’s not there. I’m relieved and disappointed at the same time. What will I do when I see him again? What can I possibly say?
Ladybug comes wandering over to the car as soon as I get out. She’s still half-blind but she knows it’s me. I can tell by the way her tail is wagging. I kneel down to rub her head, trying not to think about fleas.
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