by Maddy Wells
If I could, I’d fly away,
There’s nothing here to make me stay.
Sometimes I think I’d like to die
‘cause then I’d fly up
through that big hole,
that big hole in the sky.”
Chapter 29
We practiced until ten o’clock. If we went a minute past ten, Jane said Mrs. Tudesco would call the cops on us for disturbing the peace, which she actually did once despite the fact that her little yapping dogs had fits in the middle of the night and woke up the whole neighborhood. Anyway, I didn’t want to bring any more attention to our house with policemen etcetera.
Tim and Captain Kirby left, promising to meet me in the morning to form a body guard for me in school, and I closed up the Trap and tiptoed up the stairs to the house. Granny O’Reilly was at the kitchen table, smoking, doing a crossword puzzle.
I coughed, hoping she would get the telepathic message. “Where’s my mom?”
“Out.”
“You know we’re not actually allowed to smoke in here. In the house,” I said.
She squinted at me through the smoke. “Your dinner is by the microwave. You can heat it up.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Of course not. Children are never hungry and you’re the most unoriginal child I’ve ever met.”
Even someone as unoriginal as Granny O’Reilly was on me for being unoriginal. There must be something to it. I sat down across from her and started fraying a paper napkin.
“Stop that.”
I kept fraying.
“Nervous mannerisms are very unattractive. In women, particularly.”
I threw the pieces on the table. “I thought Mom wasn’t supposed to go anywhere.”
“She can do what she wants until the sentencing. Except see that wretched boy.” She peered at me. “Do you know him?”
“Rob?”
“Is that his name?”
“He was here to see The Griffin. That’s the first time I met him. Well, I didn’t actually meet him or talk to him or anything. There were lots of kids here.”
“She shouldn’t have allowed it. What was she thinking? I wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Well, The Griffin is my father and I never get to see him,” I said. “I think Jane…I mean, Mom…just lets him come here so he can see me. He’s on the road all the time and when would he get to see me? Only on the band bus when he’s going from here to there. It makes perfect sense.”
“He isn’t on the road half as much as you think he is,” Granny O’Reilly said.
“Of course he is,” I said, but even as I said it, I saw his house in Texas on Google Earth. I saw the names “Marjewel and Isak” listed as people he might know on People Search. Of course that’s where he was. He couldn’t be driving around forever.
“What’s he like?” she asked. “Rob.”
Prom night seemed so long ago. “I don’t know. Captain Kirby didn’t like him.”
“That girl? Your friend?”
“My colleague,” I said.
“She has what we call ‘street smarts’,” Granny O’Reilly said. “You could do worse than her for a friend.”
“Hmmm.” My street smart friend had stolen a bike that was worth five thousand dollars and had already sold it. I don’t know, could they arrest you when your friend does something bad and you know about it but don’t say anything? And what if she needed the money for groceries for her mother or something? Could they arrest anyone for that? “Well, she didn’t like him, that’s all I know.”
The front door opened and Jane came bursting through. She seemed in high spirits. “Well, that’s taken care of,” she said, taking off her trench coat and flinging it on a chair.
“What?” I asked.
“I asked Rob if he lied to me about his age and he said ‘yes.’ See? I told you.”
I moaned.
“You saw … Rob?” Granny O’Reilly asked.
“Of course I did. How else was I supposed to ask him? I knew he wouldn’t lie to me again.” She looked really pleased with herself.
“Mom,” I said, slowly, “That was the one thing you weren’t allowed to do: make contact with Rob.”
“Well, I don’t see how else I could have cleared my name. I don’t know why the DA isn’t taking that into account. But it’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? He lied to me about his age and the only reason I’m being charged is because he wasn’t eighteen. So. I think this should be the end of it.”
She lit up a cigarette.
“Where did you run into him?” I asked. “Doesn’t he live in Nazareth?”
“Well, exactly,” Jane said. “I waited for him at his school. Then I gave him a ride home. He was really sweet about the whole thing. He admitted he lied to me about how old he was and how he was still in school and everything. You know, Mom, I know you think that I’m flakey, but you have to admit I’m a very good judge of character. I think this whole thing will just blow over once he tells the judge that he lied.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Granny O’Reilly said, “You not only talked to him, but you invited him into your car?”
“Just to drive him home. I didn’t want people to see us talking.”
Granny O’Reilly put her head down on the table, then asked her, “Did you talk to your lawyer before you did this?”
“My lawyer is incompetent. She doesn’t think it’s an issue, and I keep telling her, it’s the only issue and I don’t see why no one’s bringing it up. Is there any coffee around here?”
Jane zoomed around the kitchen, picking up the covered dish by the microwave and putting it in the wave. “This looks good,” she said.
Granny O’Reilly stared at Jane, then at me, in disbelief. I was ashamed to meet her eyes. I had a box for Jane, of course. It was my biggest box because I had known Jane longer than I knew anyone else in my life, but it wasn’t big enough to hold what she’d just done.
“I don’t see why you two look so depressed,” Jane said. “The kid was underage. He lied about it. He admitted he lied. I fixed it. Business as usual.”
Which wasn’t exactly how the DA saw it. Fifteen minutes later, Jane’s lawyer called and I could hear her loud voice through the cell phone.
“But you’re not listening to me,” Jane said, over and over, then she started to cry.
After she hung up the phone, she stared at the floor.
“What’s going on, Mom,” I asked her. “What did your lawyer say?”
“Well, at least your grandmother’s here,” she said.
“I am not going to Akron. If I can’t stay here, I’m going to Houston.”
And we said stuff like that back and forth for about an hour until Granny O’Reilly finally said, “Actions have consequences, Jane. That’s the one thing you could never understand,” and went upstairs to bed before Jane could contradict her.
I don’t think that Granny O’Reilly went to sleep because I heard noises all night upstairs like she was walking around and going to the bathroom.
Jane and I didn’t go to bed either. We were like glued to the sofa in the living room. At one point, Jane said, “I tried to make everything right. You know that, don’t you, Mercedes? That’s the only reason I went to see him. Jesus, why else would I go see him? He wasn’t that wonderful, you know.”
And I nodded like I understood, but the whole thing was so overwhelming to me I just made my mind go blank so it wouldn’t explode.
It was noon when the sheriff knocked on the door with another warrant for her arrest. Granny O’Reilly came downstairs fully dressed as soon as the sheriff’s car pulled up and said, “I’ll meet you there.” When the sheriff said he would have to take Jane in himself and escorted her out, Granny O’Reilly went upstairs to get her purse and saw me staring at her. “I’m never going to be free of her, am I?” she said.
And while it sounded mean, it was exactly what I was thinking.
Chapter 30
I trie
d to pretend that everything was normal—not that my grandmother was down at the police station trying to get Jane off the hook, again—and opened my social studies book. It was my last exam and passing it was my only hope of not being a complete washout in school. It occurred to me that if I flunked, they’d make me repeat a grade and that would weaken my case for dropping out and being an “autodidact,” as I learned that word was for what I wanted to be. I couldn’t even learn when people were cramming knowledge into my head, so how could I do it on my own?
Mr. Dow had hinted broadly—okay, he wrote it on the board—the question that was our final exam: Using Your Textbook And Discussions We Have Had In Class On Child Labor And The Draft As Well As The Social Contract, Please Discuss The Pros And Cons Of Teenage Conscription Into The Military. I had copied the question into my notebook, of course, and I had a couple of ideas as soon as I wrote it down, but it made no sense to me now. I didn’t think it was even in English. I closed my eyes and was surprised by the silence in our house. I think it was the first time our house was perfectly still and without the noise of Jane hacking her head off from cigarettes, or my jacked up music in the Trap or the commotion of The Griffin’s traveling circus, or neighbors yelling at us to turn down the stereo on which we blasted The Griffin because he wasn’t here, or the Tudesco’s dogs barking their heads off, or Mr. Hennings burping and farting on his porch—which I could actually hear in my bedroom and I wondered if he was aware of that—or me and Jane arguing, or Jane and Granny O’Reilly screaming at each other. Without all that distracting noise, a picture started to come into focus, a picture of me. True, I was pretty ordinary looking which didn’t auger well for a career in music, although plain was okay for a normal life. But I didn’t want a normal life. I had a talent, I knew it, I could see it, I could feel it burning inside me, and the talent was like the little flame of a Bic lighter that wanted to keep burning till it set the world on fire, but the sound of my songs kept getting drowned out by the noises that surrounded me, that defined me, noises that would never stop as long as I stayed here.
I waited all day for Granny O’Reilly to return, thinking of the new charges that were being heaped on Jane: breaking the terms of her bail, stalking. I could imagine the drama that was being performed at the police station with Jane and Granny O’Reilly and Jane’s lawyer and Rob and Rob’s mother and Rob’s pregnant girlfriend and the judge—a real judge, not a fake television judge, who had to figure out what to do with a problem called Jane O’Reilly—all the yelling and shouting that I decided were no longer part of my personal soundtrack.
When it was ten o’clock at night, I wrote an email to Mr. Dow apologizing for not taking his final exam and disappointing him etcetera, but I said that I would make it up to him. Here’s the truth: I didn’t really care that I disappointed him anymore, although I didn’t put that in the email. There was no reason to be mean. I wrote a note to Granny O’Reilly and put it on the kitchen table under her ashtray, saying it was a real pleasure to finally meet her and I wished her lots of luck with her career, but I didn’t think Akron was where I wanted to be and that I was going to go live with my dad. As miserable as Granny O’Reilly was, I could understand why she didn’t want to stick around while Jane tried to unload her bag of woes onto her. She had enough to lug around, what with that Laura woman staring her down and being married to Ron, who I didn’t know, but if he was a politician I could certainly guess how she had to think about the consequences of every step she took.
At midnight, I got dressed and stuffed my backpack with my shampoo, toothbrush and toothpaste, my learner’s permit and my laptop and went down to the Trap. I wanted to take all my amps and speakers, but that was impossible of course. I could only carry one thing on my back besides my backpack and that was naturally the guitar The Griffin gave me. I packed the Fender in its case and strapped it on my back, took a last look at the Trap and kind of said good-bye to my life as I knew it, then got on my bicycle and rode away.
Chapter 31
The Kirby VW van was parked in the back of Kulick’s Funeral Home. I rang the bell and kept ringing it until it finally swung open and Mrs. Kirby was there saying, “Okay, okay, what’s the problem? It’s so late! Oh, it’s you, Mercy,” and she let me in. She went through the procedure of unlocking the first door and locking it behind her, then doing the same to the second set of doors, until we were in the room with a cadaver, this time an old man, with a paper blanket pulled up to his chin on the gurney.
“Where’s Captain Kirby?” I asked her.
Mrs. Kirby jerked her thumb to a door which I opened and found out was a broom closet with Captain Kirby asleep in her sleeping bag on the floor. I nudged her with my foot.
“Come on,” I said. It was odd to see Captain Kirby asleep, not on the attack. “Get up. I’m leaving.”
She frowned until she saw it was me. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m leaving. I’m going to Houston.”
“That’s not a great idea.”
“Do you have a better one?” I knew now that Captain Kirby didn’t have internet access and went to the public library to get on. She would have had no idea about the latest news on Jane. “I just have to leave.”
“What about your last week of school?” she asked. “You got to put in the time.”
“I don’t care about it. I mean, I do care, but I care about leaving more.”
“What if they make you repeat?”
“What’s the difference if I’m dropping out?”
“You’re a moron. I told you that before, if you drop out.”
I sat down next to her. “Stuff happened. I can’t tell you about it now. But I have to leave.” I told her about the notes I left for Mr. Dow and Granny O’Reilly. “I hope Granny O’Reilly doesn’t file a missing persons report.”
“If you left a note, you’re a runaway, not a missing person,” she said, finally rousing herself.
“She doesn’t want me to live with her in Akron. I heard her tell Ron that on the phone.”
“They won’t get the cops after you or anything because you left those notes, there’s no foul play. If Granny files a report, they’ll send some cops around to your house to see if you’re there. Eventually. They’re overloaded with runaway and missing person stuff.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Where can I go?”
“You can stay here with my mom until I’m finished my exams then you can go with me to Sunny Vale.”
“Sunny Vale?”
“My culinary camp. Remember?”
“Oh, right.”
I looked out to where Mrs. Kirby was applying lipstick to the dead old man. From the angle on the floor of the broom closet I could see into the next room where two more bodies on gurneys were waiting for Mrs. Kirby’s magic touch to bring them back to seeming life.
“Don’t you have to be in school for the rest of the week after exams so the whole year counts?”
Captain Kirby shrugged. “I’ll make it up next year.”
I was messing up Captain Kirby’s life because my own was so screwed up. “Why don’t I just go ahead now and meet you at Sunny Vale at the end of the week,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind learning how to cook.”
She considered it. “That would work. How much money do you have?”
None. Talk about poor planning. I was as dumb as Jane.
Captain Kirby reached into her sleeping bag and pulled out a nylon pouch. She opened it and eight hundred dollar bills spilled out.
“Wow! Where did you get all that money?!”
She put her finger to her lips and looked around the door to see if her mom could hear. “That bike I sold.”
“You stole that bike.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get full price for it, if it makes you feel any better. ” She gave me three of the bills. “That’ll get you there. I got give some to my mom to buy groceries and stuff when I’m not here.”
“I’ll pay it back. I swear.”
“Really.’
“Who cares?” she said.
We discussed what route I should take. We thought a bus would be too risky, they might have flyers or something for missing persons in the bus station and anyway, I’d still have to walk almost five miles from the bus stop to the farm. We decided I should ride my bike.
“But you’ll have to wait until later. If you leave now, someone will see you.”
“Won’t they see you leaving for school?”
“Yeah, but they always see me. They think I bring my mother breakfast on my way to school.”
She stuffed her money pouch into her backpack and got up to leave. She’d been sleeping in her clothes. With her shoes on, too.
“Tell Tim where I am, okay? I didn’t get a chance to talk to him.”
“My mom will let you out,” she said. “But wait until this afternoon, okay”
“Okay.”
‘You know,” Captain Kirby said, “You can’t go back. Once you step out, everything changes.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“You can know it here,” she pointed to her head, “but you don’t know it in your gut.”
“May I please deal with this tomorrow?”
“I just want you to be aware, that’s all. Sometimes I wish I had someone pointing things out to me. Keep it in mind, that’s all.”
I knew I couldn’t go back once I left, but what exactly was I supposed to go back to anyway? I felt like a baby bird who was pushed out of the nest whose mama had destroyed the nest just for emphasis.
I stood the Fender up in the corner and lay down on the sleeping bag which was still warm. “Can I borrow this?” I felt so suddenly tired and before Captain Kirby could answer me I was asleep.
Chapter 32
I dreamt I was on The Griffin’s bus, and I was like his manager or something. I don’t know what happened to his regular manager, but it was only a dream so I guess he got a better offer or something. Anyway, The Griffin was asking me, his new manager, if I thought he should ditch Aerosmith and go out on his own and I felt really proud that he was asking me for advice. “I’ve been opening for them for ten years,” he said. “I think it’s time to stretch my wings.” And he stood up and stretched his fake eagle wings and each wing was like twenty-five feet at least and they kept opening up until they lifted him into the air. “Hey, I didn’t know these things worked!” he shouted. “I thought they were just a gimmick. Hey, hey, hey!” He had gone through the sun roof in the bus—I know he wouldn’t fit, but it was only a dream—and was hovering above. His lion paws were dangling through the opening, and I grabbed at them trying to go up with him, but he flicked me off. “It’s too much weight, babe, back off,” he said, then, “Look! I’m way up here! This is so cool!” And I shouted through the sun roof in the bus, “Am I supposed to be happy for you? What about me? What about me?” And he took off into the clear blue sky saying, “You know you’re my favorite girl. You know it!” And I shouted after him, “But what does that mean? ‘I’m your favorite girl.’ What does that mean exactly if I can’t be with you?” And I felt really hot and sweaty and I was trying to get out of the bus but the door was jammed and then I woke up.
