The Last to Let Go

by Amber Smith

  Then she stands and walks into the kitchen. Ray follows behind her without so much as a glance at me. Aaron glares for a moment longer, then slides his eyes away, shaking his head. I throw my arms up and pull them tight around my stomach, clenching my teeth hard, not about to let any more words escape my mouth.

  Later that afternoon Jackie and I are sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Greenberg’s office—Callie’s weekly appointment. This is the first time I’ve ever gone with them; Jackie said it would “do me good” to get out of the house.

  She sets her magazine down and side-eyes me. If she’s waiting for me to apologize, she’s going to be waiting a long time. I’m straining to hear the words underneath the sound machine stationed on a table right outside the door. I can’t make any of them out, but I know that one of the voices belongs to Callie.

  “Is she talking?” I ask Jackie.

  She nods. “Yes. She has been.”

  “Yeah, but she’s talking a lot,” I whisper.

  “I know.”

  “Well, why doesn’t she talk to us like this?”

  She shakes her head. She doesn’t have an answer.

  I jerk myself back in my chair. I should be happy that she’s talking, I guess, but I’m starting to really resent the fact the she still hasn’t said a word to me.

  “It’s better than nothing,” Jackie points out.

  “I know,” I tell her, my voice tight and closed off.

  “I was thinking maybe you should try talking to Dr. Greenberg too, Brooke,” she says cautiously, adding in that rehearsed way of hers, “And you know, it just so happens that he has an opening after Callie, so if you wanted to meet him and—”

  “Oh, it just so happened that way, huh?” I interrupt, my tone all saccharine, so mean I can taste it on my tongue.

  Jackie scoffs, shifting in her seat.

  “Is this how it’s going to be?” My pulse is gaining speed with every word. “Every time you don’t like what I have to say, you’re going to threaten to send me to therapy like I’m crazy or something?”

  “Come on,” she says, turning her head. “No one said that. It’s sometimes helpful to talk to someone who’s objective.”

  “There’s no way some stranger”—I emphasize that word—“is going to understand anything about anything.”

  “Are you talking about me or Dr. Greenberg?” she asks, hurling some of my own attitude back at me.

  I roll my eyes and mumble, “Forget it.”

  “Brooke, I’m trying to help you, that’s all. Don’t you see that?”

  “I don’t need to see some doctor. I need to see my mom, which is what I’ve been saying for weeks now.”

  Jackie looks at me like she wants to say something else, but she doesn’t.

  “I’ll be in the car,” I finally say after a long moment of silence. I walk out of the office without another word.

  THE VISIT

  THE COUNTY JAIL IS forty minutes away. I keep looking at the clock on the dashboard in Jackie’s car, my mind performing endless calculations of how long it will take to get there, as I double-, triple-, quadruple-check the traffic report on my phone.

  Our appointment time is eleven o’clock, and we get only a half hour, so we can’t be late, because Mom can have visitors only once a week. Yet Jackie drives too slowly, first navigating out of the twists and turns of her bizarre green-grassed, hedge-lined, subdivided world, and soon enough the scenery begins to look more familiar as we cross over the bridge and back to our side of town. We stop at Jackie’s shop on the way, which isn’t far from our old apartment—I could get out of the car and walk only a few blocks and be there in seven minutes, or cut through the park and be there in five. We keep the car running so we don’t lose time. As soon as we pull up, a guy in an apron jogs out of the store, carrying a pink cardboard box to the car.

  “Thanks, Owen,” Jackie tells him as he deposits the box into Callie’s hands through the window of the passenger-side door. “So how’s everything going in there, or do I not want to know?” she asks, like we have extra minutes for small talk.

  I look up when I hear the voice that answers her. Owen Oliver. We had the same homeroom last year. He’s the superstar of the Riverside Ravens. Anytime he entered a classroom, there was always a crowd of people to yell his nickname: O. O for Owen or O for Oliver, I’m not sure. “O—O—OHHHHH,” they yelled, like they yelled on the field at the Friday-night games. I think both the guys and the girls worshipped him—when he started growing his dreads out in freshman year, so did about ten other guys on the team.

  Their chanting always made my head throb. Even now it pounds in my ears so loud I can barely hear what they’re saying. When I look up again, he smiles at me. I quickly look back down, duck my head, try to escape any kind of recognition, focusing instead on texting Aaron:

  Running late. There in two mins. Be ready.

  My phone vibrates in my hand as the car shifts into reverse.

  Aaron: K. I’m outside already

  “One thing I learned a long time ago,” Jackie says, her tone calm and cheerful as I meet her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Good old-fashioned comfort food can make any situation feel just a little bit better.”

  I force a smile and bite back any words that might give away how irritated I am. Callie lifts the lid and chooses one of the cream-filled ones, then passes the box to me. I set it down on the middle seat and cross my arms over my growling stomach.

  Next we turn down Carmen’s street—I could make out the roof of our building if I looked over my shoulder. But I try not to do that. Instead I focus on the road ahead of us. As we pull up next to the curb, Aaron’s standing there, his hair wet, like he just got out of the shower. He slides into the backseat with me, an invisible cloud of smoke trailing in after him as he sits behind Callie.

  “Hey, good morning,” Aaron says to the car collectively. “Smells good in here. Doughnuts?” he asks, looking at the box.

  “Did smell good,” I mumble, waving at the air in front of my face. He clearly just finished smoking a cigarette, even though he supposedly quit after he moved out.

  Then he reaches forward around the front seat, placing his hand gently on Callie’s shoulder. “Cal? How you feeling?” he asks. She turns around to look back at him, and gives him a quick nod, a small smile, and touches his hand for a moment—more than I’ve gotten out of her this whole time—something real exchanged between them as their eyes meet in the side rearview mirror outside Callie’s window. Like they have some secret language, a secret club to which I’ve not been granted access.

  Somehow we make it on time. We approach a counter where a corrections officer stares us down until Jackie introduces us. Then she reads a series of numbers off a scrap of paper she’s been holding on to. The officer gathers up Aaron’s and Jackie’s driver’s licenses, then looks at me and Callie like, Well?

  “Documentation for the minors?” he asks Jackie.

  “Oh, right. Yes,” she says, sliding several sheets of paper across the counter.

  “And you’re their legal guardian?” he asks, examining the forms with suspicion.

  “Yes,” Jackie answers again, and the man nods and begins entering information from the forms into the computer.

  Aaron, Callie, and I share a look, all of us confused. “No you’re not,” I tell Jackie, using all my willpower to keep my emotions in check.

  Jackie turns to face us, taking a deep breath and exhaling. “Actually, I am. At least for now. It was your mom’s idea. It’s only a temporary guardianship,” she says quietly. “I had to get this paperwork filed before you and Callie could visit her—you can’t come here without a legal guardian.”

  “And no one was planning on telling us?” I look to Aaron for some sort of backup, of which he offers none. He stands there nodding along as if Jackie’s making sense.

  “It’s a formality, Brooke,” she says, also looking to Aaron for some kind of support.

  “Are you getting money for thi
s, or something?” I blurt out. A low blow, I know. But it’s the first thought that entered my mind.

  Jackie flinches.

  “Brooke,” Aaron says close to my ear. “Shut up.”

  The man behind the desk peers out over the rims of his glasses at me, continuing to type, though he’s not looking at the screen. “Problem?” he asks me.

  I clench my mouth shut tight, so hard my back teeth throb, and I force myself to shake my head no and go against everything I’m feeling inside.

  Reluctantly he hands Jackie her papers and the IDs. “Maximum of three people. Only one minor can visit an inmate at one time,” he begins, like he’s an actor spitting out lines he’s said a thousand times—no emotion, no feeling, no idea how it twists my insides to hear my mother called “inmate.” “Minors must be supervised at all times, so you’ll have to take turns. You’ll have thirty minutes.”

  Jackie and I go in first, while Aaron stays in the waiting area with Callie. It seems like a ridiculous rule that I can’t see my own mother by myself, but if this is the only way, I’ll take it. We’re led into a small box of a room that has concrete floors and concrete walls. Empty, bare, and gray, with an overhead vent blasting cold air on us, so that it feels like we’re in a walk-in refrigerator. There’s a table, with one chair on one side and two chairs on the other. The guard has us sit down while we wait for Mom to be brought in.

  The door opens and another guard walks alongside her, holding on to her arm. I think I stop breathing. I can barely recognize her—because her usually soft, shiny hair seems to have lost its sheen, pulled back in a ponytail, and her face is bare, without any makeup, pale, making her look sick. But as she comes closer, I start to recognize her underneath the too-big jumpsuit—I find her somewhere behind the eyes. The guard leaves after Mom sits down. She’s crying before anyone has spoken a word, and as she reaches out, the metal handcuffs clang against the tabletop. The skin on her hands looks transparent and papery, like she’s aged ten years since the last time I saw her. I reach across the table, but the guard bangs on the door and yells, “No touching, please!”

  I pull my hand back. “Mom . . . ,” I begin, but I haven’t a clue what to say next.

  “I’m sorry.” She wipes her eyes and pulls herself together. “I know I look like hell,” she says, scooping the loose strands of hair behind her ear.

  “Ally,” Jackie coos.

  Mom smiles at her and says, “I can’t thank you enough for everything you’re doing—I don’t deserve you.”

  “Stop that right now,” Jackie tells her, waving her hand through the air and shaking her head like it’s no big deal. “What are best friends for? And you don’t look like hell, by the way.”

  “Liar!” They both start laughing like we’re in some high school cafeteria.

  I make myself count to five before I begin. “Mom, it’s really good to see you.” Start slow, I tell myself. Ease into the big questions.

  “You too, honey,” she tells me. “Listen, I don’t want you to worry. Everything’s going to be okay,” she says, spitting my own words to her back at me.

  As I look at her, I see a whole other world in her eyes. She doesn’t believe things are going to be okay. Not for a second. She’s only saying that because Jackie’s here. I feel tiny pinpricks behind my eyes, tears building up. I wipe them away before they can fall, though. It’s time to get serious. “Mom, what are we going to do?” I whisper. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “Let’s not talk about that today,” she says, trying to smile, trying to act like everything’s okay, as usual—you would think if there were one time she could drop the act, it would be now.

  “But how much longer do you think—” I try again, but she interrupts me.

  “I’m not sure.”

  There’s this exchange between her and Jackie, like they’re trying to protect me from the truth, like I’m the one who needs shielding. Jackie doesn’t know my mom at all.

  “Mom, what is this guardianship thing?”

  “Brooke, please,” she says, as if I’m being inappropriate, like I don’t have a right to know what’s going on in my own life.

  “But—”

  “It’s temporary,” she interrupts, losing her patience with me. “It’s just a six-month arrangement so that I know you’re being taken care of—that’s all. Can we drop it now?”

  “Does that mean you could be here for six months?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, Brooke. Really, I’d rather not talk about this.” She widens her eyes at me, in a silent flash, then her face melts back into a soft fake smile. “Tell me about Jackie’s house. I haven’t seen it in ages.”

  “No,” I argue. “I need to know what the plan is—what’s going on? What does your lawyer say?”

  She sighs and shakes her head. Then she interlaces her fingers and I can see that her hands are trembling, that she’s bitten her usually polished nails down to the quick.

  We all sit in silence for what feels like too long.

  “Why don’t you tell your mom about your exams?” Jackie suggests, trying to diffuse the tension.

  I roll my eyes. “I got As on all of them.”

  “Very impressive,” Jackie offers.

  “Yes,” my mom agrees, trying too hard to sound enthusiastic, but she and I both know her real thoughts are a million miles away from me and my grades. “Brooke always does well,” she adds. I hate when she says stuff like that—it feels so dismissive. Like me doing well is something that happens automatically.

  I despise the fact that Jackie is here, because I know my mom is holding back. She doesn’t want Jackie to see her fall apart. So no one really says much else. Jackie comments on the unusually hot weather several times. And Mom says that they keep it cold in here day and night. And I sit there, stewing inside, until our fifteen minutes are up.

  Jackie stands and tells Mom, “Hang in there,” before walking over to the door.

  “I miss you,” I whisper to my mom. “And I want you to come home,” I try to tell her quietly so Jackie doesn’t hear, so that maybe she can actually answer me.

  She grabs my hands tightly, breaking the rules; she leans in and whispers, “I’m sorry,” like it’s a secret meant only for my ears.

  ILLUSIONS

  WE DROPPED AARON BACK off at Carmen’s, even though I was hoping he’d come over. So now it’s just me and Callie and Jackie, sitting in her living room once again, each of us picking at a doughnut from earlier—even me, despite my plan to boycott them.

  “Hey, Callie?” I call across the room, though she gives me no sign that she’s heard. “Callie?” I repeat, louder. She looks up. “Why don’t we go take a walk, get some fresh air?”

  She shrugs but finally gives me a small nod in response.

  Only a couple of weeks ago I would have missed a gesture that tiny, but I’ve had to train myself to pay closer attention. She stands and brings her half-eaten doughnut into the kitchen.

  Jackie mouths, “Thank you.”

  Outside, our slow footsteps flip and flop against the sidewalks that line the clean streets as they twist and curve into one another like a maze to which there seems to be no exit.

  People talk about being scared in cities, scared of crime, scared of getting lost—but here it’s like you have no choice but to get lost. Every street looks the same, like every house looks the same, like every SUV in every driveway looks the same. What’s scarier than that? I always used to harbor a silent complaint about our neighborhood. It was old and drab and shitty; I’d rather have had something new and shiny, somewhere else, somewhere quieter, with softer edges, more green and less gray. Somewhere like this, I thought. But after spending these last weeks at Jackie’s, I’m beginning to understand why my parents hated places like this. Our neighborhood really wasn’t so bad, considering the worst things that ever happened there involved us.

  We turn left or right at each corner without speaking. A middle-aged couple power walk toward us like they’re on
a mission, their movements synchronized as if they’ve been programmed that way. The man tips his head and says, “Good afternoon.” And the woman, “Beautiful day.”

  I hold my hand up in a greeting. Callie bows her head politely. They would never know that she wasn’t some ordinary twelve-year-old—they might notice that her hair looks more red than blond in the sun, or that her legs have grown so fast they suddenly seem too long for her body, and they’d attribute her awkward, shy manner and her crossed arms and her downcast eyes and her disinterested shuffle as typical of any girl her age. For some reason I want to tell them, No, this isn’t her. She’s not shy, she’s not quiet, and she doesn’t try to make herself small; she owns every space she enters, she’s full of life and is annoyingly honest and has a sharp tongue and would be ruthlessly mocking your matching hats and sunglasses and sneakers under normal circumstances.

  But they march on by, never knowing, and somehow that makes me the most sad I’ve been all summer, which is saying a lot.

  Callie looks at this group of kids across the street who appear to be her age, maybe slightly younger, playing on a perfectly manicured lawn that lies out before a gingerbread-looking house. There’s a sprinkler that streaks across the yard, ticking off aggressively, like a machine gun as it rotates, the kids screaming and cheering as they run through in their bathing suits and bare feet. A square-shaped bulldog sits on the porch, tied to a post, and though it looks like it’s melting from the heat, its folds and flaps sagging a little more than seems natural, it lets out a low, obligatory woof as we approach.

  “Haven’t we passed them, like, five times already?” I ask with a laugh, breaking the silence. I crane my neck to see Callie’s face—she tries to hide the beginning of a smile, but I can see the dimple in her cheek, tugging at the corner of her mouth. We stop for a moment on the sidewalk under the shade of a gigantic tree to catch our breath and wipe the sweat from our foreheads. “Can we sit for a sec?” I ask, though I’m already lowering myself down to the curb.