Before, After, and Somebody In Between

by Jeannine Garsee

  The idea of tramping around in the snow in search of the perfect tree doesn’t exactly thrill me, but I go, because it gives me a chance to be alone with Mr. Brinkman. After picking out a huge, fragrant green pine tree—nothing at all like the metal pole with the tin foil branches Momma hauls out every year—we stop for lunch, and that’s when I ask him flat out how long he’s gonna let me hang around.

  “I don’t know, Gina. Your mom needs to go back to rehab, and that’ll take a few weeks, so you’re certainly welcome to stay here until other arrangements can be made. Of course,” he adds, half to himself, “there’s the matter of your social worker. And we’ll have to get you registered for school.”

  Other arrangements? “Well, I was kinda hoping I could move in with Shavonne.”

  “That’s not very likely. They have enough going on right now.”

  I chew hard on my straw. This is so not what I wanted to hear.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you.” Mr. Brinkman digs into a coat pocket, and drops Shavonne’s mood ring into my hand. “Must have fallen off in my car.”

  “Wow, thanks.”

  “I haven’t seen one of those in years,” Mr. Brinkman says, watching me stuff the ring into the pocket of my jeans.

  “It doesn’t work,” I confess. “It stays black all the time.” I take a deep gulp of my Coke, wondering how to bring it up, and then finally ask point-blank, “So, does Nikki know about me?”

  “She knows you need a place to stay because your mother is ill. I didn’t tell her about the trouble at school if that’s what you mean.”

  “I mean, does she know who I am?”

  “What? Oh, because you were in the car that night? I don’t think so. Why?”

  “So she doesn’t know where I live, or about my dad, or—” Or the fact that I just got sprung from jail and I’m on probation for a year.

  “Gina, I promise you, I haven’t said a word. I haven’t told anyone except my wife.”

  “But what if people start asking?” I hear sheer desperation creep into my voice.

  “What would you like me to tell them?”

  I already have this part figured out. “Can’t you say I’m a friend of the family? Like somebody from out of town?” Like from Tahiti, or Hong Kong? Just not from the ghetto.

  Mr. Brinkman shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Well, one of my associates moved to Columbus recently. How would you like to belong to him?”

  “Yes! And I can say that my mom’s sick. That wouldn’t be a lie.” Boy, I’m really getting into this. “And that my dad’s really busy, and that’s why they sent me up here.” This sounds perfect until I remember Shavonne’s mom and how the Brinkmans happen to know her in the first place.

  Glumly, I add, “Never mind. It won’t work. Mrs. Addams knows who I am.” What am I supposed to do, hide in a closet when she shows up to clean?

  “I don’t think you have to worry about Mrs. Addams right now. She’s been out sick for quite a while. My wife already hired another housekeeper.” He doesn’t mention the HIV, and I wonder if he knows. “When you talk to Shavonne,” he adds, “please let her know we’re all thinking about her.”

  That’s when it hits me: Shavonne has no idea I’m staying with these people. How can I be Gina, this mystery girl from out of town, and still be friends with the daughter of the Brinkmans’ housekeeper?

  “Um, I don’t think I’ll be talking to her. Maybe I better not tell her where I am. If this is gonna work, I mean.”

  “And what about your mom? Do you want to go visit?”

  I fidget. “Not really.” What if she’s zipped into a straitjacket and doesn’t even know me? Drugged, diapered, drool dripping from her chin. No, no, no! I can’t even think about Momma, or the fact that she just tried to freaking die on me. I want to be happy for a change. Is that such a crime?

  …

  Later on, I’m in trouble. I hang out with Nikki as she gets ready for a double date with Justin and Danny and Danny’s girlfriend, Caitlin. Without warning, she asks, “Is your mom gonna get better? I heard Daddy say she has some kind of mental disorder.” She jabbers on before I can invent an answer. “It’s not schizophrenia, is it? That’s incurable, you know.”

  “No! That’s not what she has.”

  “Schizophrenia’s hereditary. I did a report on it once. Sometimes it’s passed on from generation to generation. You could have it yourself and not even know it.”

  I don’t mean to shout, but it happens anyway. “I don’t have schizophrenia! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Nikki practically keels over. “God, Gina. I didn’t mean you’re schizophrenic. I only meant that people can have it and not even know till they have like some kind of breakdown.”

  “Well, I don’t have it, okay? And neither does my mom.”

  “Okay, okay.” But clearly I haven’t convinced her, because she kind of slithers away. Then, “Sorry. I’m not trying to be nosy. Let’s just, you know—be friends. Okay?”

  Trying not to flinch, I meet her eyes. She’s so beautiful with all that long, blond hair, those cover-girl cheekbones. Even the way she carries herself, like absolute royalty. Friends? How? We have nothing in common. It’s a holy miracle we’re even breathing the same air.

  But I nod anyway, and she leaves for her date, and then it’s up to me to help her parents decorate the new tree. When the Carpenters start singing “Merry Christmas, Darling” on the radio, I remember how this is Momma’s favorite Christmas song and think: I shouldn’t be here. I should be home with Momma, listening to the Carpenters, trimming our own mangy metal tree, and…and what? Watch her get drunk and start blubbering, and call up her old boyfriends and beg them to come over, and then get mad at me because nobody’ll give her the time of day, and because the tree looks like shit, and she’s low on booze and none of the liquor stores are open, and then we can start screaming at each other, and …

  No. This is much, much better. And now that Nikki’s gone, that crazy feeling is back, that sense of belonging to a place where I’ve never belonged. I think I know these people, but I’m not exactly sure how. Like when Dorothy wakes up, thinking she left her best friends back in Oz, but—surprise!—there they are, hanging around her window, happy to see her.

  Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, I sip hot apple cider and watch Mr. Brinkman adjust a string of lights while he sings along with the music … Mrs. Brinkman, too, joking with him, picking stray bits of tinsel out of his hair. I feel the heat from their bodies. I hear how they breathe. Every movement, every glance, every word they say makes me ache inside with a weird, familiar longing… like maybe, fourteen years ago, God majorly screwed up.

  He passed up the Brinkmans, and dumped me on Momma instead.

  29

  Mrs. Brinkman informs me, delicately, that I could use a new wardrobe. Wisely, I don’t respond with “Gee, ya think?” She drives me to Beachwood Place, the ritziest mall I’ve ever been in—Shavonne would go insane!—and sweeps me through store after store, whipping out her charge card again and again.

  “Nikki and I used to come here all the time,” she says with a small sigh. “Now she acts like she doesn’t want to be seen in public with me.”

  Speechless, I follow this crazed fairy godmother as she snatches up shirts and pants, skirts and sweaters, and points me to the dressing rooms. Then shoes, then purses, a couple of very dressy dresses, and enough new underwear to last me forever.

  By the time we get to the coat department at Saks, I’m numb with exhaustion. “Let me know if anything catches your eye,” Mrs. Brinkman commands, holding my coat from the clown house far away from her body. Well, the first thing I notice is the same black coat I saw in the window at Tower City that day with Shavonne. “Do you want to try it on?”

  I gawk. Okay, it’s marked down—but I bet you can get cars cheaper than this.

  “Good grief, Gina. Stop memorizing the price tags.” She paws through the rack to find my size. “H
ere. Oh, this is beautiful.”

  It is! Long and heavy with a satiny lining, it’s simple and elegant and positively perfect. The clerk snips off the tags so I can wear it out of the store along with my warm, shaggy new boots with the wrap-around laces. Leaving the clown coat behind, I practically skip out to the car.

  …

  That evening, Nikki’s uncle Ted and aunt Elise stop by, along with Nikki’s cousins, Danny and Natalie. Natalie’s fifteen, arrogant, and undoubtedly a puker. She barely grunts “hi” with a faint anorexic smile, and Nikki flashes me a thumbs-up before the two of them vanish upstairs.

  This leaves me with Danny. Was this Nikki’s plan?

  “You want to go down and listen to some music?” he asks.

  “Down” means to the family room in the basement with its big-screen TV, leather furniture, pool table, and bar. Danny pours himself a 7Up and adds a hefty splash of whisky. “Do you want anything, Gina?”

  Well! Mr. Brinkman already told me the bar down here is strictly off-limits. At the time I tried to look highly insulted, even though I’m the one who got drunk and fell out of his car last Halloween. So maybe that rule only applies to me.

  “I’ll take a 7Up. Plain,” I add.

  He is such a babe! Shockingly white smile, tousled boy-band hair, the same frosty blue eyes as the rest of the Brinkmans. We sit on opposite ends of the couch after he hands me my drink, and at first he comes off a bigger geek than Jerome. President of his senior class at Gilmour Academy, chess club, debate club, and editor of the school paper. But he also plays racquetball and belongs to a ski club, and his biceps, I notice, are about as big as my thighs. So much for geekdom.

  “What kind of music do you like?” he asks, flipping through a rack of CDs. “Who do you listen to the most?”

  “Beethoven,” I say automatically.

  He glances over with a funny look, and I wonder, Was that the right answer? Wrong answer? But no, he looks pleased. “Wow, you like classical music?”

  “I love it,” I say, relieved.

  “I play the piano, and I do some of my own composing. Actually, I’ve been working on something for weeks. You want to hear it?”

  “Sure.”

  We grab our drinks and head upstairs to the music room. It’s not as cozy as the family room, but infinitely classier with its wall of French doors, and the big Persian rug covered with red and gold designs. Checking the tone of the grand piano with expert fingers, Danny says over his shoulder, “So now you know all about me. What about you?”

  I chomp hard on a piece of ice, and nearly knock out a filling. “Not much to tell.”

  “Ah, a woman of mystery.” Why does that smile of his do such weird things to my stomach? “How long are you staying with my uncle?”

  “Um, I’m not sure.”

  “You miss your folks?”

  I cross my fingers. “Yeah, I do. My mom’s kind of sick, though. She’ll be in the hospital for a while, so that’s why I’m staying here.”

  “Bummer. Nothing serious, I hope.”

  I think fast. “No, it’s just this…I don’t know, this nerve disease thingy.”

  “Wow, sorry. So, what about your dad?”

  I do one of those blasé Nikki head-tosses, which probably makes me look like I have a nerve thingy of my own. “I don’t see him all that much anyway.” At least that’s not a lie.

  “That’s tough.” Danny waits a beat, and I pray he doesn’t ask me anything about Columbus, Ohio. Instead, he takes my wrist and pulls me down so we’re shoulder-to-shoulder on the narrow padded bench. “It’s not finished yet, but—well, I think you’ll like it.”

  I do. It’s jazzy and soft, and very beautiful. Yet all I can think about is how his arm is touching mine, how I can smell his shampoo and the fabric softener on his shirt. I watch his fingers as he skims the keys, and imagine those same fingers touching me…

  “Do you play?” Danny asks, jerking me out of my fantasy. “Piano? Anything?”

  The words fall out before I get a chance to stuff them back. “I played the cello for a while.”

  “Cool! Did Uncle Dick show you his?” And he jumps off the bench, ducks into a closet, and with his back still to me, says, “It’s over a hundred years old. It belonged to my great-great-grandmother.”

  As I stare hard at the cello case he’s just pulled out of the closet, trying to exhale around the spongy wad in my throat, Danny’s dad hollers up that it’s time to go. Fighting the magnetic pull of the ancient instrument, I pick up my dreary feet and follow Danny downstairs.

  “Well… see ya,” we say at kind of the same time.

  He leaves with his family, and I watch the red taillights disappear down the street. Boy, if mental illness is hereditary, then I must have it for sure. This guy is wa-ay out of my league, plus he already has a steady girlfriend …although, come to think of it, he never did bring up her name.

  I wander back up to the music room, still smelling his scent, still feeling his shoulder—and trying like crazy to pretend I don’t care that he didn’t kiss me. I clumsily pick out the first bar to “Love Me Tender,” and then catch the spark of the cello out of the corner of my eye.

  The whole time my feet are moving, the whole time I’m unlatching the case, I’m telling myself I do not want to play it. Then that wonderful smell surrounds me again: old varnished wood and rosin, oil, and metal. The smell of the hands of all the people who played it in the past.

  I don’t take it out. I don’t even pick up the bow. In fact, I’m only kneeling over it when I hear voices in the hall as Mr. and Mrs. Brinkman mosey past the door.

  “…a little rough around the edges, Richard, don’t you think? And why on earth didn’t you tell Ted the truth?”

  “Shh, I already explained. It’s not a big deal, all right?”

  Abandoning the cello, I linger by the door till they disappear, then slink after them on tiptoe. The double doors to the master bedroom stand slightly open, and, shame on me, I hear every word.

  “She doesn’t want anyone to know about her, Claudia.”

  “Who’d figure it out?”

  “Well, Nikki for one. And if I tell Ted, he’ll blab it to Elise. My God, Claudia, I wish you could’ve seen the look on that poor kid’s face. She literally begged me.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Brinkman sounds doubtful. “I don’t think Ted bought that story about some old business partner and his sick wife, and how they can’t even take care of their own child!”

  “We have to give her a chance. Don’t you think she deserves her privacy?”

  “I don’t like lying to Nikki, that’s all.”

  “No. If I can pull a few strings and get Gina into Waverly, then she’s going to need to start off with a fresh slate. You know as well as I do, Nikki’s got a big mouth.”

  Excuse me? Did he say Waverly?

  “Wouldn’t it be simpler,” Claudia asks, “to just send her to public school?”

  “She was in a public school, and you know how that turned out. She deserves better.”

  “What makes you think we can get her into Waverly?”

  “Claudia, she’s smart, she makes excellent grades, and until that one single incident, her record was nearly flawless. Besides,” Mr. Brinkman adds slyly, “the dean owes me a favor. His youngest son was charged with possession a while back. Second offense, too.”

  “And you got him off with—?”

  “Community service and rehab.”

  “Richard,” Claudia says slowly, “where are you going with this?”

  “What do you mean, where am I going?”

  “Think about it for a minute…”

  Mr. Brinkman lowers his voice, and I can’t hear his answer. Think about what? Does she not want me here or something?

  Then I hear him say, more clearly, “Well, I’m heading out for a while.”

  “So late?”

  “I won’t be long.”

  “Richard—”

  It sounds like a warning, and then
Mr. Brinkman replies in the tight, testy voice I haven’t heard since the night he drove me home from Shavonne’s. “Don’t flip out on me, Claudia. I’m not Ted, okay? I’m out of cigarettes, and I just need to get some air. I’ll be right back.”

  That’s my clue to get the hell away from their door. I dart back to the music room to put away the cello, my insides churning like a cement mixer. When Mr. Brinkman tromps in, as I figured he might, he holds up a hand at the look on my face. “Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid to touch things around here.” He nods at the cello. “I wondered when you’d find that. Incredible, isn’t it? Feel free to play it any time you want.”

  “Thanks, but—” I really don’t want to! Cheeks on fire, I murmur, “Excuse me” like the polite little girl I’d like him to think I am, and rush back to my room where I can be alone with my thoughts.

  But it’s not “my” room. It’s only the guest room, because that’s all I am—a guest in this house. Some “poor kid” according to Mr. Brinkman. Somebody “rough around the edges.” All these lies and stories and even my made-up name can’t change the fact that this is not my home.

  I’m a visitor, that’s all. A temporary intruder.

  30

  Over the next few days, I try to “memorize” the Brinkmans—how they talk, how they eat, how they answer the phone. Even the way they shake hands or get up from their chairs. I memorize everything, and make myself do it exactly the same way. No “ain’ts” or “can’t hardlys” or other hillbilly expressions. Most of all, no cuss words, not even in front of the dog.

  Nikki donated one of her notebooks so I can start a new journal, but I’m barely a page into it when the doorbell rings. Well, well, well, Ms. Zelda Broussard—the one person on earth who knows all my dirty secrets. Holding my breath, I hang over the banister and listen to her complain about how I ran away from the Merriweathers, and how she’s even more pissed off because the Brinkmans butted in. Mr. Brinkman informs her that she doesn’t have all the facts, and anyway, there’s some kind of hearing tomorrow. Smugly he adds, “Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” and whatever that means, it makes her blood boil.