Welcome Back, Stacey

by Ann M. Martin

“Hi, Stace,” she said. “I’m really sorry you’re having some problems.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, “but it’s my parents, not me.”

  “When they make you feel bad, it’s your problem, too. Believe me, I know. So what’s going on?”

  “What isn’t?” I answered bitterly. I wanted to tell Dawn everything, but suddenly I just couldn’t. That mental picture of an impatient Kristy kept creeping into my mind. Plus, I felt funny telling Dawn my parents’ business. In fact, I felt pretty funny knowing that the entire club already knew my business. I wanted their comfort and support — but I didn’t necessarily want to turn myself inside out for it. Maybe calling during a meeting hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

  I cleared my throat. “Well, Mom and Dad are just fighting all the time,” I told Dawn. “Over everything.”

  “Money and stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Their relationship?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, that’s a bad sign.”

  Okay, enough of this. I changed the subject immediately. “So how’s Jeff?”

  “Jeff? My brother?”

  “Who else?”

  We giggled. Maybe the conversation had been getting too heavy for both of us.

  “He’s fine,” said Dawn. “Mom and Dad let us call each other whenever we want, but it’s hard because of the time difference. I can’t call too early in the morning because then it’s really early in California, and Jeff can’t call after eight at night because it’s after eleven here. Still, he’s back in California with Dad, which is great for him…. What?” (Another conversation with someone at the meeting.) Then, “Stace? Mary Anne wants to say hello, okay?”

  “Sure.” I turned to Laine while I waited for Mary Anne, and said, “I’ll pay you back every penny of this call. I promise.”

  Laine smiled. “No problem,” she said.

  “Stacey?” I heard an excited voice in my ear. It was Mary Anne’s, and it occurred to me that the last time I’d spoken to any of my Stoneybrook friends, except for Claudia, had been on the day of Mimi’s funeral. I wished we could talk or get together under ordinary circumstances.

  “Hi, Mary Anne!” I tried to liven up a bit.

  “You want to talk?” she asked gently.

  “Yes,” I replied, “but not about Mom and Dad anymore.”

  “Okay.” (This is one thing I love about Mary Anne. She doesn’t press issues, and she respects people’s wishes.)

  “So how’s Logan?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s fine. Or, as Logan would say, he’s ‘fan.’” We laughed. Logan is from Louisville, Kentucky, and has this neat southern accent.

  “And Tigger?”

  “He’s fine, too. He caught a mouse yesterday.”

  “In your house?” I asked, aghast. Sometimes roaches get into our apartment, but I’ve never seen anything with a tail.

  “No! Outdoors. The mouse was outdoors. Although Tigger brought it inside and dropped it in his food dish.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope. It was so disgusting. Oh, wait. Kristy wants to say hello.”

  I looked at my watch. It was six o’clock. I’d wasted the rest of their meeting. Oh, well. Kristy couldn’t be too mad if she still wanted to say hi to me.

  “Stace?” said Kristy’s voice.

  “Hi. Sorry about tying up the club phone.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. How are you doing?”

  “Okay, I guess. How are the Krushers?” Kristy coaches a softball team for little kids in Stoneybrook. The team is called Kristy’s Krushers.

  “Not bad, considering. We get closer and closer to beating Bart’s Bashers.”

  “How’s our walking disaster?”

  “Jackie Rodowsky? Just the same. I baby-sat for him last week and he rode his bike right into the garage wall, skinned his knees, broke a flowerpot, and later dropped a pizza on the floor. At least he didn’t drop it on a rug.”

  “Poor kid,” I said, but I couldn’t help laughing a little.

  “I know,” answered Kristy. “Listen, Jessi and Mal both want to say hi and then we’ll have to go. Well, except for Claudia. It’s after six.”

  “Okay,” I replied. So I talked to Jessi and asked about her dancing, and about Becca and Squirt. “Hey, how’s Charlotte?” I wanted to know. Charlotte Johanssen is Becca Ramsey’s best friend, and my favorite Stoneybrook kid to sit for. She’s eight years old, and she’s shy and creative, just like Grace and Henry. Sometimes I really miss her.

  “Charlotte just got over tonsillitis, but —”

  “Tonsillitis! Is she going to have her tonsils out?”

  “Nope. Not yet anyway. Don’t worry. She’s fine now. She and Becca dressed up like grown-ups yesterday and spent the afternoon playing office. It looked horribly boring, but they kept it up for hours…. Oh, here’s Mal. ’Bye, Stacey.”

  “ ’Bye, Jessi…. Hi, Mal.”

  “Hi, Stacey. Guess what. Claire was asking about you the other day.”

  “Claire was?” (Claire is the youngest kid in Mal’s family. I got to know all the Pikes pretty well when I went on two vacations with them as a mother’s helper.) “What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘I miss Stacey-silly-billy-goo-goo.’”

  Mal and I both laughed. And at that moment, I missed Claire and my Stoneybrook friends a lot. But I knew it was time to get off the phone. The BSC meeting was over, and if I didn’t get home by six-thirty my parents would probably call the police.

  I had to hang up the phone. I couldn’t put it off any longer. The only good thing about leaving Laine’s apartment was that no one yelled, “Have fun and be careful!” as I walked out the door, which is what my mother used to do every single time she let me out of her sight in New York.

  There was just Laine saying, “I know things will be okay.”

  And on the way home I managed to convince myself that Laine was right and that I was being melodramatic.

  As right as I hoped Laine was, I still approached my apartment apprehensively. At least I managed to be civil to James and the guys at the desk.

  “Hi, James,” I said. “Hi, Isaac. Hi, Lloyd.”

  The three of them looked relieved to find me acting normal again.

  I rang for the elevator. It crashed to the ground floor, the doors jarred themselves open, I pressed the button for the 12th floor, the doors closed with a bang, and up I flew. When I was little, I used to jump around on the elevator while it was moving, which made my body feel heavier or lighter (depending on whether I was going up or down). Then Laine told me that jumping could make the cable break and the elevator crash, so I stopped, even though I think she made that up.

  The doors opened on my floor. I stepped into the hallway and paused, listening. The only sound was the TV blaring in 12C.

  I walked to my apartment on tiptoe, stopping every few feet.

  Still I heard nothing but the sounds of I Love Lucy.

  At 12E I listened especially carefully. Nothing.

  I found my key, slipped it in the lock, and let myself inside. A tiny part of me was afraid that something had happened, that Mom or Dad had stormed off. But, no. They were sitting in the living room. They didn’t look like they were doing much of anything, so they must have been talking.

  Whew. If they were talking, that meant they weren’t fighting.

  “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” I said casually, as if I’d just left the Walkers’ apartment, hadn’t heard the fight, and hadn’t been to Laine’s.

  “Hi, honey,” they replied at the same time.

  Another good sign. Speaking in unison.

  But then Mom said, “Stacey, we need to talk to you.”

  Whoa, bad sign.

  “You do?” I desperately hoped that they were going to accuse me of not sticking to my diet. I even hoped that my English teacher had called up personally to tell my parents about the D I’d gotten on a quiz.
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br />   No such luck. I sat down on the edge of a couch and looked at Mom and Dad, who were glancing at each other as if to say, “You go first.” “No, you go first.”

  Finally, Mom went first. “I guess it’s no secret,” she said, “that your dad and I have been having some problems.”

  No secret? The whole building probably knew.

  “Well, I have heard you, um, arguing a lot lately,” I admitted.

  Mom nodded. “And we’ve decided to do something about it. Stacey, your father and I are getting a divorce.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “We’re getting a divorce,” Dad spoke up.

  I felt as if someone had slapped me across the face. I actually put my hand up to my cheek. Mom must have thought I was going to cry, because she rushed to my side and started to put her arms around me. I pushed her away, though. I was angry, not upset.

  “Why?” I demanded. “You don’t need a divorce.” But I think I knew that they did. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have shouted, “Can’t you work things out like two adults? That’s what you always say to me when I’m having a fight with a friend.” I was protesting too much. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

  “Honey, we are working things out,” Mom told me. “The divorce is our solution.”

  “We’ve been having trouble for a long time now,” Dad added. “Ever since I got the news that I was being transferred to Stoneybrook.”

  For that long? Why hadn’t I noticed earlier? Because I’d been too busy baby-sitting and making friends and taking vacations and going to camp and shopping and doing homework, I guessed.

  “My job has been on shaky territory since the first transfer,” said Dad.

  That much I knew.

  “I guess the shakiness spread to our marriage,” he went on. “I feel as if I’ve got to work harder than ever just to keep from being fired. Your mother thinks I should look for a new job.”

  I thought she thought Dad was a workaholic.

  “There are other problems,” added Mom. “Money, that sort of thing.”

  They were being vague to protect me, I decided. If only they knew what I already knew, but this wasn’t the time to admit I’d been eavesdropping.

  “Those problems sound big, but not — not unworkable,” I said hopefully. “Can’t you reach some compromises? I know! You could see a marriage counselor!”

  “We have seen one,” said Mom.

  “And?”

  “And she was very helpful. We’ve been seeing her for three months. She was the one who suggested we get the divorce.”

  “Oh. So you saw a divorce counselor,” I snapped.

  “Stacey, don’t be difficult,” said Dad. “This doctor is well respected and we liked her very much.”

  “I haven’t even met her and already I hate her,” I told my father.

  He ignored my comment. “She knows about our problems, our lives, you, even our finances. After she suggested that a divorce was probably the best solution to our problems, she helped us arrange as amicable a divorce as possible.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “It means splitting up with as little trouble as we can, and making things as easy on you as we can.”

  “Could we please backtrack for a second?” I said.

  But Mom changed the subject. “Stacey, have you given yourself your insulin today?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Just checking.” Mom looked at her watch. “It’s dinnertime,” she added.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “You have to eat anyway.” Mom was losing her patience.

  She was right, though. I did have to eat. With my kind of diabetes, I can’t skip meals. I have to eat regularly, eat what the doctor says, and take in a certain number of calories every day. It’s such a drag. If I don’t do those things, my blood sugar gets out of whack and I’m in trouble.

  “Come on,” said Mom. “We can continue this discussion over dinner. I ordered in from the deli.”

  “Unnecessary expense,” muttered Dad, but neither Mom nor I said anything.

  Mom had ordered several different kinds of salad and some plain sandwiches — lean meats on whole wheat bread. Healthy stuff that I could eat. She’d set a bowl of fruit out, too, and I knew I was supposed to eat an apple or a banana with dinner. So I filled up my plate, even though I had no appetite at all.

  The three of us sat around the kitchen table with the remains of the deli food in a jumble on a nearby counter. Actually, I don’t think any of us was hungry, but we all began to eat.

  “Now, what was it you wanted to ask?” said Mom.

  “I wanted to know more about your problems,” I replied. “I mean, if you can tell me. I want to know just what it is that’s so big you can’t work it out.”

  “Stacey, it’s a lot of things,” said my father.

  “And,” added Mom, “some of them you probably wouldn’t —”

  “Wouldn’t understand?” I interrupted. “Listen, I’m not a baby anymore. I’m thirteen years old.”

  “It’s not that,” said my mother. “I don’t think anyone except your father and I could understand some of these things. They’re personal. They have to do with our feelings toward each other. And those feelings have changed.”

  “Are you in love anymore?” I asked suddenly. “Are you?”

  Mom and Dad glanced at each other.

  There was a pause.

  At last Dad said, “Your mother and I will always care about each other. We’ll always love each other — and we’ll love you, of course. But no, we’re not in love anymore.”

  I felt stung. I looked down at my plate. It was mostly full, so I began shoveling in the food. The faster I ate, the faster I could leave the table. While I was eating (and listening to myself chew, since no one was talking), I realized that my parents hadn’t really answered my original question.

  “Please tell me more about your problems,” I said firmly. I didn’t look at my parents, just at my plate, which was growing cleaner by the moment.

  I heard Dad say, “Mostly we just have differences, Stace.”

  “Irreconcilable ones,” added Mom. “We are not meant to be living together any longer.”

  That did it. I was pretty much finished with my dinner by then, so I banged my fork onto the table, stood up, threw down my napkin, and stalked away without excusing myself.

  I stalked right into my bedroom and slammed the door shut. I slammed it so hard I could feel my walls shake. The china figures on my dresser rattled.

  I locked my door.

  Then I switched on my stereo. I put my loudest tape in the tape deck, turned the volume up as high as it would go, and blasted out my eardrums for a minute or two. But I turned the volume down before any of the neighbors could complain.

  Mom and Dad knocked on my door five times that night. I wouldn’t answer them. I wouldn’t leave my room, either. At ten-thirty, I fell asleep with my clothes on. I didn’t wake up until seven o’clock the next morning.

  Thursday was the most awful morning of my life. My body felt grungy because I’d spent the night in my clothes, and my mouth felt like an old sock. It tasted the way I imagined an old sock would taste, too.

  Groggily, I rolled out of bed, tripping over my sneakers, which were lying on their sides next to the bed. I turned off the power on my stereo and looked out my window. (I hadn’t bothered to close the blinds the night before.)

  Outside I saw a chilly gray day.

  Perfect, I thought. The day fit my mood.

  I made my way to the door of my bedroom and listened for a moment. I wanted to put off running into Mom or Dad for as long as possible. I didn’t hear a sound. Had Dad already left for work? He usually left early — but not by seven o’clock.

  I dared to open my door. Then I tiptoed into the hallway and peeked into the living room.

  My father was asleep on the couch! He and Mom didn’t even share their bedroom anymore. How awful. How long
had that been going on? I wondered. And did Mom ever sleep on the couch or was it all up to Dad? I turned away, sure I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to have seen. But it couldn’t be helped. We’d all overslept a little that morning.

  I retreated to the bathroom, where I locked myself in. (I seemed to feel more secure locked into places.) I took a long, hot shower and washed my hair twice. Afterward, I brushed my teeth two or three times, trying to get rid of the old-sock taste. While I was brushing, a knock sounded at the door.

  “Morning, honey!” called Mom’s voice. “Why don’t you take it easy today? You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

  In answer, I turned the water on as hard as it would go.

  A few moments later I was locked in my room again, trying to decide what to wear. I was going to school, of course. There was no way I would stay at home with either Mom or Dad. (I was pretty sure they wouldn’t both be there.)

  Another knock.

  This time Dad’s voice called, “Hi, Stace! How do bacon and eggs sound for breakfast? I’ll cook. I’m going to the office a little later than usual this morning.”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  I had never, ever felt so angry at my parents. Not even when they had dragged me to this awful doctor who wanted to change my whole life around in order to help my diabetes.

  Dad waited for my answer. When he didn’t get one, he left. I heard his footsteps retreat into the living room on his way to the kitchen.

  I dressed. I put on one of my better outfits — short red pants with purple suspenders over a bright yellow and black sweat shirt. On my feet I put my purple push-down socks and a pair of red hightop sneakers.

  I added jewelry — a big necklace with wooden bananas and oranges strung on it, and dangly earrings shaped like sunglasses.

  I fixed my hair. I brushed it until it was full and shiny. Then I rolled up a red scarf and tied it in my hair like a headband. My outfit was pretty colorful. I think I was trying to make up for the gray day.

  After I had tied the scarf in my hair, I was ready for school. I wished I could just beam myself there like they do on Star Trek. That way, I wouldn’t have to see my parents. But obviously, I couldn’t beam myself anywhere. Even if I could have, what would have been the point? I’d have to face Mom and Dad sooner or later.