A Girl Called Sidney

by Courtney Yasmineh

  I turned and headed toward the cabin. I heard them following me through the fallen leaves.

  “No one’s even bothered to pick up a rake. And these boxes, how am I supposed to move them now, look at this, these waterlogged books? I can’t believe this.”

  My mind was racing ahead, my eyes darting, trying to guess what else would be wrong. I couldn’t guess. I felt bad about Brandy, but honestly, he didn’t look different to me and I just fed him normal dog food. My mom always made rice and ground beef for him from scratch but we hadn’t been doing that ever since she left the first time. Who was going to make that? There was no way. Brandy didn’t seem to care.

  I walked inside the cabin and my heart sank. I couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong but I knew it didn’t look like it did when my mother was in charge. She came in and took off her coat and just started changing everything. I was glad. I was relieved. Mr. Hoffman said he’d go back outside and see about moving the boxes.

  I couldn’t deal with any of it. They had some bags of groceries and they came back in with those. My mom got mad about the old milk in the refrigerator. I said I had to go to work.

  She said, “I suppose you’re just going to hop in that truck and drive off. Boy have you been spoiled. That’s my truck and it’s my only means of transportation up here. You better get an attitude adjustment little missy and stop thinking you own this place. I can see I didn’t come back a moment too soon.”

  I drove to the resort in the truck. I went into the warm kitchen. Margaret was there. I went over and stood by the stove. My eyes were filling with tears. Margaret was watching me.

  “You okay, Sidney?”

  “My mom came back.”

  “And I take it that’s not a good thing necessarily.”

  “Well, I thought it would be.”

  “Do you want to take the night off? You’ve been a real hard worker all summer. There won’t be many diners tonight. You could go home.”

  “Please don’t make me go home.”

  I lifted my eyes that felt swollen with tears. I looked straight into Margaret’s stern honest face. She straightened her shoulders and wiped her hands on her apron. “No. Okay. That’s fine. You stay and work. Let’s see. I know what. Maybe tonight’s a good night to get some extra cleaning done in the back room. I’ve been meaning to get you on that job. What do you say? It’ll take quite a while and once we start we can’t quit ’til it’s all put back in order. How does that sound?”

  I smiled. I loved her right then. I was fighting to keep the tears from coming to my eyes as I answered, “Okay, yeah, great.”

  My heart was filled with gratitude as we headed back to the big walk-in pantry and switched on the light.

  That night I got home very late. The cabin porch light was on as was the one in Preston’s room. It felt good to know someone else was there besides just me. Brandy met me at the door. I gave him a hug and he headed through the living room toward the master bedroom. I was afraid that Mr. Hoffman was sleeping with my mom and I was horrified to see his shoes as I got inside the kitchen door. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed his car. I went back outside to check. He had driven his car down into the grass and parked it by the woodpile where you couldn’t see it from the road. They didn’t want people to know he was there. No. Neither did I. It’s not like a lot of people were driving by our cabin now at the end of the summer, but if someone wanted to drive out to see what was going on with my family, a strange car would be of interest for sure. I got ready for bed and went to sleep in my little room with the door closed. I dreaded the morning.

  The next day, Mr. Hoffman was already awake and dressed when I got up. “Hello, Sidney. What do you have planned today?”

  I liked the way he asked me.

  “I have to work but not until about four.”

  “Your mother tells me you’ve enrolled in the school here.”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “I have a couple of ideas to help you get this place ready for the winter. Your mother and I are going to town to buy a wood stove today. They fit right into the fireplace. I’ll have to fit some kind of seal around the opening once we get the stove in place. It’ll make all the difference in the world once the cold sets in.”

  “Okay, cool.”

  “Yes, well, warm I’d say.” He gave a friendly chuckle. “We’re going for heat, right? While we’re in town, we’re going to order an extra supply of wood, already split, really great burning stuff, it’ll get delivered and stacked and we’ll get a tarp for it. It’s going to take a lot of wood to keep this place going all winter, but it isn’t impossible.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  I was not used to anyone talking to me about what was happening. And he wasn’t mad at me and he didn’t look at me funny, like he was judging me. I was starting to like him in spite of myself.

  I went out to the kitchen where my mom had the oven going and something cooking already. It was cinnamon rolls.

  “Hi Mom.”

  “Oh Sidney! I made your favorite. And there’s scrambled eggs too. And bacon. Help set the table for all of us will you please.”

  This was so weird and wrong but I really was grateful, so I went along with it.

  I ate quickly, my mother eyeing my plate to see what I’d eaten and how much of the cinnamon roll I’d eaten compared to the scrambled eggs. I hated her scrambled eggs. I loved her cinnamon rolls. I could have eaten the entire pan of eight rolls. I could have vomited from eating even a forkful of the eggs. The bacon was great. I drank some orange juice and stood up announcing that Brandy needed a good long walk.

  No one could argue with that so I hooked on his leash and took off. When Preston and I had gone through the boxes before he left, we had found the bright red down vest and light blue down coat he had promised me. I was already starting to wear the vest and I was glad I had it when Brandy and I turned up onto the road. The trees were getting just a tinge of yellow to their leaf tips. The sumac that jutted out in the midst of the undergrowth along the edge of the road was turning red. Wild grapes were dark purple, the vines turning yellow and brown and red where they had been only green a few weeks ago. Field mice, blind moles, chubby chipmunks all dashed across the road in front of us, their mouths filled with seeds, fruit, nuts to be stored for the winter. I thought of the time we arrived at the cabin in the early summer and my mother was so guilty and saddened when she showed me how the mice had carefully made neat little separate piles of grains and seeds of many varieties, including the bright blue pile of the tiny mouse poison pellets. I vowed that no mouse would be killed during this winter when I was in charge.

  That made me think about what was happening with my mother and Seymour Hoffman. Were they staying? It didn’t sound like it. Was my mother understanding that I wasn’t going back with them? I resolved to have a talk with her when I got back.

  I walked into the cabin and my mother had her makeup on and was wearing her jaunty denim trench coat, so they were heading out.

  “Mom, I don’t really get what’s going on. Are you guys staying here? Is Mr. Hoffman staying? Are you guys going back soon? I mean, I just want to know. Do you know that I signed up for school here?”

  “Oh Sidney, do we really need to get into all this right now? We’re just heading out the door to go to town. We’re going to buy one of these wonderful wood stoves. Did you see the brochure? They’re really terrific.”

  “Yeah okay. Mr. Hoffman told me.”

  “I think he wants you to call him Seymour … Seymour? Is that right?”

  I looked at him, but tried to not look into his eyes. I focused my eyes on his turtleneck sweater collar, as he answered, “Yes Sidney, I think you should call me Seymour.”

  I couldn’t stand any of this. “Okay. Seymour. Fine.”

  “Well good, so we’re going to town. Will you be here when we get back, to help?”

  “I have to leave for work at four.”

  “Oh Sidney, really, we’ve been here less than twenty-four
hours. Don’t you think you could take time off to help when your mother is here?”

  “I need the money. I mean, that’s what I’m trying to ask. Do you guys have a plan? Do I just go ahead with what I have planned at this point? I mean, does anybody know what’s going on?”

  “Sidney! I’ve been through so much. You have no idea. And don’t you talk that way to me. And Seymour has done nothing but try to help.”

  “Okay, so I’m starting school in like two days okay?”

  “I think we understand that.”

  “Okay, and how long are you guys staying? Is Seymour staying? Are you staying?”

  “I have to get back to Chicago. Your father has left us in a terrible situation and Aunt Evelyn really can’t be left alone right now either. Her health is not good at all since all of this, you know that. No. I will be here as long as possible, but I have to get back if there’s any hope of getting any resolution with all of this.”

  “Okay, just asking.”

  I went in my room and closed the door. I heard them walk off the porch and up to Seymour’s car. I heard them pull out and head down the gravel road. The day was coming, and it was coming soon, that they’d pull out and I’d be alone.

  I got home from the resort early that night and the two of them were in high spirits. The new wood stove was burning bright. Seymour showed me how to use it. He pointed out how the iron was pressed with whimsical designs; the figures dancing in relief, hand-in-hand wearing woodland garb. He pointed out the deer facing each other with matched racks of antlers, the tall pines lining the trim around the base. The stove had a glass window in the door that allowed you to watch the fire and check its progress. The rest was all black cast iron. Seymour showed me the trivets that sat on top for warming a pot or a kettle. He demonstrated how you used the wired handle to unlatch the door, hopefully without burning your hand, and how you had to carefully fit the logs in so the door would shut. The stove had its own narrow metal pipe chimney that went through a hole in the asbestos liner, which Seymour had fitted over the mouth of the stone fireplace.

  I made a joke about us all dying of lung cancer and Seymour answered, “Well, without the asbestos you’ll freeze to death long before you could ever develop the cancer, so at least this way you’ll make it through ‘til spring. You know what they say, we can make it to spring if we can just get through the mattress.”

  “Nobody says that.”

  “How do you know?”

  I was beginning to like Seymour.

  The next day Seymour and my mom had a handyman from the town come to help out. He knew how to “take up the dock” so he did that first, with Seymour’s help. I watched as they first went down to the water and hoisted all the wood pallets, which made up the decking, up onto the shore. They fastened hooks and metal cables that were in the woods on the old winch. Then they cranked the frame on its big iron hinges until the dock hung suspended over the water at a forty-five degree angle.

  I felt sad. My decision was closing in. It was only the beginning of September. Why were they doing all this so soon? I would no longer be able to bring the canoe down and get it in the water. The stone steps were inaccessible with the dock cables in the way.

  I went to my room and strummed my guitar. I thought about what kind of song I could write to express the way it was all going down. But then I heard Seymour and the handyman right up on the porch by my window so I went out to see what they were up to next.

  “What are you guys doing now?”

  “We’re putting plastic up on all the windows to keep the heat in better.”

  “Does everybody do that?”

  The handyman answered, “Yep, if you want to have any kind of comfortable feeling in this place, this has gotta be done.”

  I watched for a while as they stapled plastic sheeting that really wasn’t completely see-through, and then they tacked wood strips all around the edges to hold it in place. I went back in my room and it felt like I was in a goldfish bowl that hadn’t been cleaned in a while.

  Luckily, they decided to leave the picture window that looked out over the lake uncovered. From there you could see the big thermometer that Grandpa had used to chronicle his winter experience. He had a journal that sat by the window and wrote about any birds he saw and what the temperature was on each day. He recorded that the thermometer bottomed out a few times because it only went to forty below. Only went to forty degrees below zero. Fahrenheit. I couldn’t imagine it. I knew that people and animals lived through it every year. I knew my eighty-year-old grandfather did it for several winters in this very house. I was so excited about the little school and the new kids, and so glad I didn’t have to return to Chicago, to the scene of the crime, that I was happy to tough it out.

  I was excited. I liked bundling up. I liked ice-skating. Ice-skating. I went out on the porch, passed the two men working on the windows, walked up to look one more time through the soggy boxes in the yard. Didn’t Preston hold up an ice skate and laugh? I dug through. There. Very pretty white leather ice skates. They weren’t mine. They must have been my mother’s from a long time ago. I brought them down and closed the door to my room. The laces were white too, very new, like nobody had ever worn them before. They were hard to slide into at first but once I got them on it was like they were made for me. I stood up with them on and looked at myself in the dresser mirror. They were great. I held up each foot behind me to see them better. Cute! I wondered when the lake would freeze. I wondered if I’d be able to find a way to get down to the water easily enough to put skates on. Another thing to look forward to. I took off the skates and hung them tied together by their laces on a nail on the knotty pine wall. This was going to be so cool.

  That night Seymour said goodbye after dinner and headed out to his car.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked my mom.

  “He’s found a place to stay in Virginia. He doesn’t want to upset you by staying out here. He thinks you are disapproving.”

  “Mom. You’re still married to my dad right?”

  “Well, the divorce is in process.”

  “I don’t really get why you and Dad aren’t going to try to get back together. He always said he’d love to live up here and teach law at the community college. Remember that?”

  “Sidney, what’s wrong with you? You’re the one who put me on that bus and had me shipped out of town. You’re the one who had me leave my own home. Now you’re trying to take it all back? It’s too late for second thoughts.”

  “Mom, are you kidding me? I’m seventeen. You’re like forty-five. You’re blaming all this on me?”

  “Well who was it that just had to get me on that bus, just had to push me out?”

  “Oh my God. I was trying to help you! He said he was going to kill you! I ran over to the neighbors to try to get help for you! You were crying all the time! Waking me up at night with fighting!”

  “All right that’s enough. After everything I’ve been through, how dare you? I wouldn’t have ever talked to my mother this way. My mother died when I was your age. I had no one. You have no idea what hardship is. And Seymour has come all this way to help us, to help you. And this is how you act? You’re just impossible. Everyone’s done everything they can for you.”

  I went in my room and shut the door. I got out my guitar, but I didn’t want her to hear me playing it. If she got mad enough she might try to take it away. I lay on my bed looking out the blurry darkened window at the evening sky. It was getting dark earlier each night.

  I saw the headlights of a car come creeping along toward the cabin on the road. I thought maybe Seymour had changed his mind. I thought I might even have liked that because I got along better with my mom when he was around. I felt safer with him there. I watched, expecting to see him get out. But, no. This car was long and black. Both the front doors opened. Two men stood. My heart dropped. My father.

  My father was standing in the driveway. On the driver’s side, Tommy my cousin. I watched as Tommy stretched
his arms over his head and looked around. I wanted to run away. I wanted to hide under the bed. My heart was pounding in my chest. The two men walked down the path to the kitchen door. I thought to warn my mother, but was too afraid to speak. I could see them clearly now; absurdly, improbably, dressed in tracksuits, my cousin in green, my father in black. Both had loose silky jogging pants with white stripes down the sides. Both had a zipper jacket of the same fabric with stripes down the arms. I had never seen my father dressed like that in my life.

  They banged on the door and my mother’s gasp was audible through the wall. I couldn’t let her take them on alone. I went out there, stood in the living room looking into the kitchen. Oh God, how the hatred welled in me as I laid eyes on Tommy! He looked bigger, more muscular, more suntanned, his fake hair standing on end like a cartoon version of a professional wrestler. My disgust was stronger than my fear and I could feel it rising in me. My righteousness too. I was afraid to look at my father, afraid we’d make eye contact. I saw him standing in an aggressive stance. I saw that his eyes were red, his face flushed. I saw him look at us as if he had caught us doing something wrong. What we were doing was not wrong. We were left with these circumstances by his dishonesty. His brutality. We were trying to have peace. We were trying to live without trauma and fear. I stood in my spot in the living room with my head held high.

  My mother was pleading, “Please, we just want to be left alone. Haven’t you done enough damage? Haven’t you hurt everyone enough? What do you want here? We have nothing. We don’t have anything for you. We have nothing. You always called this place ‘your dad’s shit hole of a cabin,’ well this is our home now. Please, please just leave us.”

  My dad began with, “I’ve told my daughter that I want her to come down to Florida with us and go to private school. Sidney. You know your mother’s crazy. You know she’ll abandon you up here. You can’t survive this. I know you think you’re so tough but this is insanity. Tommy and I are on our way to the relatives in Florida. Sidney can go to a good school and graduate on time. Get your things together, Sidney.”