The door is partly open, so I peek inside.
The bed isn’t made, but it’s only messy on one side. There’s a silver picture frame on the nightstand. In it is Tobin’s mom in a beautiful, flowing wedding dress holding a bouquet of flowers. Next to her is the same man with reddish-brown curls who was in the picture I found in Tobin’s leather case. Except this time, the man isn’t leaned up against a car; he’s in a suit, and his curls are parted down the middle and slicked down with a bunch of goop.
I push the door open a little bit farther and slip inside.
“Hey,” Tobin protests. “What are you doing?”
“Who’s this?” I ask him, picking up the frame from the nightstand.
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“My dad,” he finally says. “Now put it back.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? Did he leave?”
“For Vietnam,” Tobin says.
“He’s a soldier?”
“Yeah, he was drafted for the war five years ago and just never came home.” Tobin takes the frame from my hand and places it carefully back on the nightstand.
“Did he die?”
“We don’t know.” He stares at the picture.
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“He left the summer before I started kindergarten. I only remember some things about him, like when he used to push me on the swings at the park sometimes. And the time we had an Easter egg hunt and we collected all the eggs together. Mom hid them in the yard and around the house. There was even one in the dryer. Dad found that one. And before he left, he gave me a silver dollar.”
“Did you love him?”
“What kind of question is that?” Tobin demands.
“I don’t know, I—”
“Of course I love him. Do you love your mom?”
Even though they sound like words, they feel more like little stab wounds in my gut.
“Sorry,” he says. “I…um, I didn’t mean to…”
I guess Tobin has his own volcano.
“I know it,” I say.
“How did she die?” he asks me then. “I mean, I know she had cancer and all, but…”
“In the hospital,” I say. “They couldn’t treat it anymore and she got real skinny and real sick and lost all her hair. It was a Monday when she stopped getting out of bed and her best friend, Catt, who came over to help make meals for us, said she needed to go back in. Her real name is Catherine, but no one ever calls her that.”
“Did you see her? I mean after…”
I nod and then feel that lump coming up in my throat. That same one that always does.
“Is your room the next door?” I ask him.
“Sorry,” he says. “I mean, I don’t know—”
“It’s all right,” I say, brushing past him.
He doesn’t say anything, he just follows.
I push open the third door. It’s perfect. Everything in its place. Not that I would expect anything different.
His bed is made tight. So tight you could probably use it as a trampoline. It has a gray bedspread, and there are matching curtains hanging at the window. On his dresser, green army men are lined up in a perfect row ready for their call to action. There’s a poster on the wall of Apollo 11 blasting into space in 1969 on its first trip to the moon, and a mini red rocket night-light next to the bed. There are dark wooden cube letters over the bed that spell out T-O-B-I-N.
“You like space stuff?”
“Yeah,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed.
There’s a stack of books on the nightstand. Surprisingly enough, books about something other than Bigfoot. I go down the list of titles.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn…Sing Down the Moon…and something about electromagnetic fields.
I pull open the closet door, and it creaks in protest. Inside are red T-shirts as far as the eye can see, all lined up perfectly on hangers.
On Tobin’s nightstand is a picture of him and his dad holding a basket filled with colorful eggs. I pick up the picture.
The man is smiling with lots of teeth showing and he’s holding Tobin’s hand. “He looks nice,” I say.
“He is. At least what I can remember.”
“What’s his name?”
“Scotty,” he says. “Scotty Tobin Sky.”
Scotty Tobin Sky.
I look up at Tobin and he looks back at me. “It sounds like an important name,” I tell him.
He nods.
“Wish I could’ve met him.”
“You will,” he says. “When he gets back.”
I stare at him.
“What do you mean? You think he’s still coming home?”
“Yeah.” He pushes up his glasses.
“You really think he might?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. Every day I wonder if this is the day he’ll walk through the front door.”
That night I can’t sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Tobin and his dad.
Scotty Tobin Sky.
Part of me feels jealous that he gets to hope that his dad is still alive and will still come home. The other part of me feels sorry for him that he doesn’t know for sure.
I wish I didn’t know for sure.
I wish I knew Mama might come back to me.
I wish…I wish…more than anything, I wish she would.
A low roll of thunder answers me.
“Mama?” I whisper. “If God really knew how much I miss you, he would send you back to me. I still need you, Mama.”
Elizabeth Lilly Witt.
There’s a windy rain that clicks against the window, and every three seconds there’s a flash and then another roll of thunder. The storm is getting closer. I lie on my side under the fluffy rainbow comforter, staring at the redheaded girl in the frame on the new night table next to my bed.
Charlie never asked me about the empty space on the wall where I swiped the picture.
Another low grumble.
“Mama?”
Click. Click. Click.
The rain answers me, spitting against the window.
I sit up and turn the knob on the lamp next to the bed. A small light glows in the darkness. If I had my glow-in-the-dark stars, I’d have no problem falling asleep. Maybe Charlie would order those from the Sears catalog too.
I sit up in bed and sigh.
The latest book Charlie bought me is on top of the old, rickety trunk at the end of the bed. Ellen Tebbits, by Beverly Cleary.
I slip out of bed. The bare-naked floor creaks and groans underneath my toes. I grab the book off the trunk and stare at the worn wood and rusted metal, wondering what might be inside it. Maybe it’s something really important and interesting. Or maybe just some more boring, colorless grown-up books. I decide to find out.
On my knees, I wrap my hands around the edge of the trunk and pull, but it doesn’t want to budge. Like it’s hiding something very important, and it’s been hiding it for a very long time, and it isn’t ready to share it quite yet.
I push and tug at it until it finally lets go just a little. Then I wiggle and yank until the top pulls up away from the trunk. It creaks and groans, telling me to leave it be. But I keep on wiggling until it makes it all the way up.
The air inside it escapes into the room, an old, musty smell mixed with cedar. When the light reaches the inside of the trunk, my breath sucks in so fast it almost chokes me.
“Oh,” I whisper.
I stare at the inside of the trunk, unable to move.
The rain clicks against the window. And a flash lights the room.
When the thunder follows with a loud craaack, I jump and slam the lid of the trunk down hard. I scramble back under the covers and pull them tight over my head.
In the hall, I hear heavy footsteps creaking over the floorboards. The doorknob slowly turns.
I know it’s him.
�
��Lem?” Charlie whispers.
I hold my breath and pretend I’m sleeping.
“Lem?” he calls.
I don’t move.
There are three major things that Charlie hasn’t figured out about me yet:
1. I hate tomatoes on the egg salad sandwiches that he orders from Diesel’s Deli. I always have to pick them off with my fingers.
2. Mama promised me a kitten for my eleventh birthday. I was going to name her Happy.
3. And this one’s embarrassing….I never learned to ride a bike.
Number three is the exact reason why I’m hoofing it to Mrs. Dickerson’s house. The same day that Debbie took off from the hospital to drive her and Tobin to the nursing home where Tobin’s grandma lives down in Redding.
It’s hot today after the rain, and humid, too, which makes my curls even frizzier than normal. Just as I’m wishing I had braided my hair in one long braid with the orange and green yarn ribbon, I hear someone calling out behind me.
“Hey, San Fran!”
I turn to see Buzz Cut on a blue bike, pedaling up behind me. I hold my chin high and just keep on walking like I couldn’t care less.
“Hey! San Fran!” he calls again, pulling in front of me and whipping his bike in a circle. This wouldn’t be a big deal on any other day. Like on a day it didn’t pour rain the night before.
But it did, so it is.
And in a matter of a millisecond, I am covered in a fine mist of mud sprayed up from his back tire.
“Are you stupid or something?” I shout at him. “Look what you did!”
“Where you going?”
I put my hands on my hips. “Didn’t you even hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard you. Where you going?” he asks again, riding slow circles around me as I walk.
“If it was any of your business, maybe I’d tell you, but it’s not, so I won’t,” I say, trying to brush off the mud, which only makes it smear.
“I forgot your name,” he says.
“Good,” I say, walking past him. “Keep it that way.”
He pulls up next to me again, pedaling slow to keep pace with my steps.
“Fruit Punch?”
I ignore him.
“Soda Pop?”
I ignore that one too.
“Strawberry Quik?”
“I can tell by the stupid smile on your face that you think you’re funny, but you’re wrong about that, too,” I inform him.
“Lemonade!” he calls out then. “Right? I’m right, right?”
“Congratulations.”
“I think I would have gone with Strawberry Quik. You know, ’cause of the hair and everything.”
I glare at him, and he laughs.
“So, where are you going, and why don’t you ride your bike?”
“Like I said before. It’s none of your business.”
“Why are you hanging out with Tobin Sky?”
I don’t say one word.
“There’s something wrong with that kid, you know. I mean really, what’s with that hat, anyway? The kid never takes it off.”
“Well, we think there’s something wrong with you.” I stop and put my hands on my hips. “It’s you, right? With the phone calls?”
He laughs again.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
“Keeps us busy in the summer.”
“Try rug hooking,” I say.
He laughs harder.
“We’re playing Kick the Can at Nick French’s after lunch,” he says, pedaling circles around me again.
“So?”
“So, you can come if you want to.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“You’re going to be in Mrs. Santamaria’s class, right? Fifth grade? That’s J-Man’s mom. You’ll meet him if you come today. She makes cupcakes for the class when it’s your birthday and gives the least amount of homework.”
I shrug.
“Well, you can meet some people before school starts. If you want. There’s going to be a bunch of us playing.”
I think about it.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“French lives in the blue house, third one down from the library in town. Eighteen oh eight. About one o’clock. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
I don’t say anything as I watch him pedal off, spraying mud like a sprinkler with his back wheel.
At Mrs. Dickerson’s, we eat tiny egg salad sandwiches that she calls finger sandwiches, even though they don’t look anything like fingers, and we sip chamomile tea with honey from china cups on her front porch.
“Will you tell me more about when Mama was little?” I ask her.
“Oh, honey, I have a million stories.”
“I want to know all of them,” I tell her, sipping my tea.
“Well, let’s see. Did I tell you about the time your mom was the lead in the Easter production at school?”
“The lead in a play?” I ask. “No.”
“It was adorable. What was the play?” She rubs her temples to help her find the right memory. “Oh, I can’t recall. But it was an Easter play, and she wore a paper bonnet on her head.”
I laugh. “A paper bonnet?”
“Well, she couldn’t remember her lines halfway through, but she made up an entirely new story. All the other kids just went with it, and the whole second half was improvised. It started off as a play about an Easter bonnet and ended up being a story about saving the animals of the forest. She was always about the animals.”
“Still is,” I tell her. “You know Mama is a vet in the city?”
“Yes, honey, I do.”
“How do you know?”
“Oh, well, Charlie kept close tabs on her even after she left for good. Charlie would take trips to the city and check up on her to make sure she was okay. Then, of course, when you came along, the trips were more frequent.”
“He did that? I don’t remember ever meeting him.”
“You didn’t….” She looks off into the woods across the street. “Elizabeth just couldn’t get over the past, and he was devastated by that. He wanted so desperately to make amends.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t try hard enough.”
“Oh, he did, honey. Believe me.”
“Mama would have forgiven him if he’d tried. If he’d really tried, she would have. Mama was like that.”
“Oh, my sweet Lemonade, they were both just broken to their core…their hearts shattered in so many pieces after Rebecca died that they didn’t know how to fix it. And instead of holding on to each other through their grief with love and gratitude, their sadness came out in anger, and their anger tore them apart.”
I don’t know what to say about that, so I don’t say anything. We sit for a spell while we sip and munch on egg salad fingers.
“I know how hard it’s been for you,” Mrs. Dickerson says quietly, smiling a crooked pink-lipsticked smile at me. “Life is the definition of loss. But it makes us grow, and it makes us stronger. The most important thing to remember is to have gratitude for those we love and those who love us. Even if it’s not for the amount of time we expected or wished for. If you don’t, you can be washed away by the sadness.”
“You know what it feels like sometimes?” I ask. “Kind of like I have to carry something that’s way too heavy, and I can’t find any place to set it down. And it makes my whole body ache.”
She nods slowly with her eyes closed.
“You may never find that place to put it down, but I promise you that the load will become lighter. And one day, you may even forget it’s with you any longer, but it will be with you. Elizabeth will always be a part of you, making you stronger, braver, and more loving because of what you’ve carried. Your task now…”
She takes a long drink of her tea. “Your task is to learn to accept your new life without forgetting the gifts of your past. These are the gifts of your new life, Lemonade.” She holds out her arms. “Willow Creek…Charlie…Tobin…Trust it. Embrace it. Be
thankful for it.”
I think hard about her words.
“I am thankful for Mama,” I say. “And other things too.”
“Like what?” she asks.
“You, for one,” I say. “And your cookies, for another.”
Mrs. Dickerson laughs until she wipes at the teardrops squeezing out the edges of her eyes. Black smudges appear on the white cloth napkin in her hand.
“Oh, Lemonade, you are so much like her. Do you know that?”
I wipe my tears too.
“I used to know it,” I tell her. “But I think I might have forgotten.”
After lunch at Mrs. Dickerson’s, I head back to town. My stomach is full and my eyes are heavy after being up so late the night before. When I reach the library, I see the blue house. 1808.
Nick French’s house.
There are kids running and hiding in the bushes. Laughing. Playing. Having fun.
Like they have no worries in their life.
No lava. No quicksand. No heavy loads to carry.
I keep walking, watching out of the corner of my eye. There are two girls pointing toward me and whispering. Some boys poke elbows at each other and laugh at me.
I pick up the pace.
“Hey!” someone calls. “San Fran!”
It’s Buzz Cut.
“You playing?” he asks.
I stop in front of the driveway. Everyone is watching me now. Waiting for an answer.
I don’t give them one.
“Come on!” a cute boy calls out to me. “We don’t bite!”
Everyone laughs, and so do I.
He’s even cuter than Craig Lundgren at Sherman Elementary. He has brown eyes and a wide smile stuck smack dab in the middle of two deep dimples on each cheek.
Then they all stand there looking at me, waiting for my answer.
“That’s Jorge,” Buzz Cut tells me, pointing to the cute boy. “But we just call him J-Man. And that’s Eliza Rose and Mei Cunningham and Nick French. And you know Beau.” He points a thumb at the kid with the bangs.
I look down the street toward Charlie’s house. It would be a lot easier to hide under the rainbow comforter with my book than to stay. Or go back to manning the Bigfoot Headquarters, which is where I’m supposed to be anyhow.
I look at the girls again. They’re still whispering about me. I wonder what they’re saying.
Lemons Page 9
