Girlhearts

by Norma Fox Mazer

“As soon as I know anything. And you call me if she comes in.”

  I went into Mom’s room and lay down on her bed. Tobias padded in after me. “Right here,” I said, patting my belly. He leaped up and settled himself, turning a few times.

  “Mom has not had a car accident,” I said to him. I stroked his ears. “No way. It is just not a possibility.”

  I was two and a half when my father was killed in a freak accident. Mom always said she was sure that one car accident per family was all God allowed. And if it wasn’t God’s law, she’d add, then it was the law of Chance. Maybe Chance was also a kind of god. Semigod. Semigod Chance, who was probably even stricter than the real God about things like multiple car accidents in one family.

  “Okay, Mom, no car accident. So where are you?” I picked up Tobias and held him close to my face. He was always so warm. I listened for sounds from outside, our car pulling up, the car door slamming, and then Mom’s footsteps.…

  Maybe she had met someone in the market who just had to have her house cleaned today. Maybe this woman was throwing a big party and her regular cleaner was sick. Mom was the kind of person who would go along, even with a stranger, to help her out, and not just for the money, though she’d be glad about that.

  I went into the kitchen and filled the kettle again. Whatever had happened to delay Mom, when she came in, she’d want a cup of hot tea with a good squeeze of lemon. I set a cup and saucer at her place and sliced a lemon. Then I replaced the plain white cup I’d put out with a green one that had WORLD’S BEST MOM written on it. It was chipped now, but Mom liked it because I had given it to her for Mother’s Day when I was eight years old.

  My mind veered back to the ugly, scary car-accident idea. No, no. The World’s Best Mom would not have a car accident. The World’s Best Mom would not allow that to happen. The Worlds Best Mom would not be careless. Except that other things besides carelessness caused accidents, things like karma and fate.

  No way had carelessness killed my father. A wheel had done that. Two wheels from a truck hauling paving stones had popped off, and one had sped across the highway, as if it was aimed, and crushed the roof of my fathers pickup truck. There was nothing he could have done to stop it. Nothing he could have done to change the outcome, to make what happened turn out any differently. The moment that wheel popped, my father was a dead man, my mother was a widow, and I was a daughter who had lost the chance to ever really know him.

  I rearranged the lemon slices so they made a little star and moved the sugar bowl. There, now everything was ready for Mom. No, I’d forgotten a napkin. I folded one of the cloth napkins, the ones we hardly ever used, next to the cup and saucer.

  I went to the door and looked out again, wondering if Cynthia could still be talking to the police. “Anyway,” I said, as if I were arguing with someone, “Mom is not a good driver; she’s an excellent driver. She has a clean record, not even a parking ticket.”

  Leo had once said Mom was the best driver he knew. Then he’d added, in his Leoish way, “After me, of course.”

  Leo! I should have thought of him right away. I punched in his number, but my fingers slipped and I had to start over. “Leo,” I said the instant the phone was picked up. “Is Mom there? Let me speak to her.”

  “Who is this, please?” a woman asked, her voice twanging with a slightly southern accent. “Who do you want? This is Pepper.”

  I was momentarily speechless. I had forgotten about her. “This is Sarabeth,” I said finally. “Sarabeth Silver. I need to speak to Leo.”

  “Oh, Sarabeth! Hi, sweetie,” she said, as if we’d known each other forever, instead of having met only once. “Hold on; I’ll get him.”

  In a moment, Leo’s booming voice filled my ear. “Hey, Sarabee. What’s up?”

  “Is Mom over there?”

  “I haven’t seen Jane for weeks, honey.”

  “Oh.” I looked down at my legs. Even in my jeans, they looked too skinny. “Well, the thing is, she didn’t come home tonight.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just what I said, Leo. I came home at five, and she wasn’t here, and she hasn’t called. I thought she might be over at your place.”

  “That’s strange; that’s not like her.”

  “I know, Leo.”

  “Don’t worry, Sarabeth, Jane’s got her head screwed on right. She’s not going to do anything dumb.”

  “Cynthia’s calling the police right now. I better hang up, Leo, in case she’s trying to get me.”

  “The police?”

  “Yeah, because … what if there was an accident?”

  “Call me back when she gets home, okay? Or the minute you hear anything. Call me even if it’s really late. And don’t worry,” he said again. “I’m positive there’s a perfectly good explanation for this.”

  I curled up on the red velvet love seat. Mom had bought it at a garage sale last spring. Tobias came padding slowly over and climbed into my lap. “Yes,” I said, stroking him, “yes, you nice old boy, you’re sick, poor guy.” And, sitting there, watching the clock, I tried to think of a perfectly good explanation for Mom’s staying out so many hours without calling me.

  FIVE

  I was sleeping on the couch, my face mashed into a pillow, when the phone ringing woke me. For a moment, I couldn’t process where I was, why my face was stuck in a cushion. I wiped my mouth and sat up, overturning Tobias, who had been sleeping on my butt.

  The phone was still ringing.

  I stumbled into the kitchen. “Hello?”

  “I have some information for you,” Cynthia said, without any preliminaries.

  “What happened? Where’s Mom?” I was fully awake now.

  “I want you to stay calm. I’m in Trowbridge Hospital. You know the one, up on Seneca Hill—”

  “Mom’s in the hospital? Then she did have an accident!”

  “Don’t get upset. I know it sounds bad, and it’s not exactly good, but we can—”

  “Where did it happen? Was it I-Eighty-one?” My throat constricted. “Did someone smash into her?” The smudgy black-and-white newspaper photo of my father’s fatal accident sprang into my mind, only now it wasn’t his pickup truck I saw crumpled under that huge wheel, but Mom’s rusting two-door Civic.

  “It wasn’t a car accident, Sarabeth.”

  “What?”

  “She had a heart attack. They found her in the park.”

  Cynthia had just said something that made no sense. Mom had had a heart attack? People don’t have heart attacks when they’re twenty-nine years old. They joke about heart attacks, but they don’t have them. Heart attacks were for old people, frail people, sick people, tense, rich, type A people. Or was it type B? Whatever, it wasn’t Mom.

  “Sarabeth, are you there?” Cynthia said.

  “Yes.…”

  “She was lying on the ground. They don’t know how long she was there in the snow. A man taking a walk found her on one of the paths in the park. You know the place, Millers Park.”

  “Millers Falls Park,” I corrected stupidly. And I remembered how uneasy I’d been all day, how disturbed, as if I knew something was terribly wrong, something I didn’t even know I knew.

  “Right. Millers Falls Park. That’s the one,” Cynthia said. “The one near the post office over on Oak Boulevard. They think she was lying there for maybe half an hour before this man found her, and then before the ambulance came, it was even more time.…” Her voice trailed away.

  “You’re in the hospital now?” I said. I kept talking, trying to push away the mental picture of Mom lying on the ground, her face crushed into the snow. I said anything that came to my mind. “Who’s staying with Darren? Is it your neighbor, whatsherface? Billy’s probably at the base, isn’t he?”

  “Right, Billy’s at the base.” Cynthia’s voice was low.

  “And you’re where?” I said again. And it was true that I couldn’t remember, although she’d told me only moments ago.

  “At Trowbr
idge Hospital. I’ve been here for, uh, two hours. It took time for the police to figure out that the woman they’d found was the same person I was asking about. She must have left the car in the parking lot at the park, which they didn’t know, of course, so they couldn’t trace her that way, and she didn’t have any ID on her—”

  “Her wallet,” I said.

  “Right, so they had no idea who this woman was.” This woman … the woman they found. Why was she talking about Mom like that?

  I held the phone close to my ear. “What are they doing to her, Cynthia?”

  “They’re taking care of her, hon. They’re giving her the best care, Sarabeth. They’ve got her in intensive care; people are on the job. It’s round-the-clock care. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “I want to see her,” I said. “Why didn’t you come and get me before you went to the hospital?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I should have, but I didn’t.” Cynthia droned on, her voice without bounce. “I just came straight here; the moment they called I got in the car and drove here, I didn’t think of anything else.”

  “You should have come for me,” I said. “You should have come here first.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Come and get me now.”

  “Now? I can’t do that, Sarabeth, I’d be shuttling around all night. Besides, your mom doesn’t need company, not now, not in the middle of the night.”

  “I’m not company, Cynthia.” I wrapped the phone cord around my wrist. “I should be there. I should be with her.”

  “What for? What will you accomplish, except to wear yourself out? Anyway, you can’t be with her. They won’t let you in.” She paused. “I really need to go home now. I’ve got to get some sleep, and you should, too. Go back to sleep, and in the morning, get up and go to school. Don’t stay out of school because of this. You know how Jane is about your missing school. I’ll come by and pick you up right after, and we’ll zoom over to the hospital. By that time, she should be stabilized.”

  “I don’t want to wait for tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “I’ll call Suburban Safari. They’re on seven/twenty-four. Mom always uses them when the car breaks down.”

  Last year, when one of the radio stations ran a contest for the “baddest original song lyrics,” Mom and I had spent a weekend writing a song together about Suburban Safari. “Suburban Safari went to town, a’riding on its tires. Got three fares and dumped them down,” were our opening lines. We were hoping, wishing, even believing we’d win. The prize was twenty-five dollars, and we could have used it. But somebody else wrote worse lyrics, even though we didn’t think it was possible.

  “Sarabeth, I’m going to say it once more. Are you listening? Don’t come to the hospital now. Jane’s completely out of it. All they’d let me do was peek in at her. It would be useless for you to come here. Go back to sleep. That’s what your mom would say. You know it! In the morning, we’ll talk again. Are you going to be okay?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said.

  “Right. Okay. You know what time it is?”

  I stared at my watch. The numbers glowed up at me. Did they say quarter of one or five after nine? Better, so much better, if it were five after nine. At five after nine, Mom could still walk into the house at any moment. Could still sit down and drink a cup of hot tea with lemon and tell me about her day. At five after nine, I could still be annoyed with her, still be planning how I would remind her that she was the one who was always telling me to let her know where I was and when I’d be home.

  When I hung up, I called Trowbridge Hospital. It seemed to take forever to find an actual human who would talk to me, but finally I heard, “Intensive Care Unit. Ed Bowers speaking.”

  “I’m calling about my mother,” I said. “Jane Silver. This is her daughter. Could I speak to a nurse, please?”

  “Okay, that’s me,” Ed Bowers said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want to know how she is.”

  “She’s being watched carefully. She’s on the critical list. This is her daughter, you said?”

  “Yes. Sarabeth Silver.”

  “Your mother’s in good hands. Dr. Maguire is with her right now. Why don’t you call in the morning? I’m sure you can speak to Dr. Maguire or someone else then.”

  “Yes, I’ll do that,” I said. I put the phone on the hook and went into Mom’s room. I was going to lie down on her bed, but instead, I just stood there looking around and seeing how neat everything was and thinking that doctors had all kinds of drugs and medicine for people these days. People had heart attacks and then they recovered and came home and walked around and did everything they’d always done. They were as good as new. It was so, wasn’t it?

  I opened her drawers, one after the other, and saw how carefully she had folded everything, neat little stacks of underpants and bras, of shirts and sweaters. She hated the way I threw everything in my drawers helter-skelter; she called them rats’ nests. She was always trying to get me to be neater. I made her bed, tucked in the sheets and blankets, punched up the pillow, and pulled the spread smooth.

  In the kitchen, I filled the sink with hot water, poured in detergent, and washed the breakfast dishes. I scrubbed each one, holding it under the hot water until it shone. After I finished with the dishes, I scrubbed the sink and wiped down the counters. Then I got the mop and bucket we kept outside in back, filled the bucket with hot water and the all-purpose cleaner Mom used, and mopped the floor. When Mom came home, she’d be impressed. She’d say, “Wow, good job! Thanks!”

  We’d hug and kiss, and maybe I’d sit on her lap, which she kept wanting me to do and I kept not wanting to do anymore. But maybe she wouldn’t be strong enough to hold me, and I’d tell her to sit on my lap, and she’d laugh, and then she’d do it. Just plunk herself down in my lap, and I’d put my arms around her and hold her as if I was the mom now.

  I took the curtains off the window over the sink and put them to soak in the bathtub. Since I was in the bathroom, I mopped that floor, too, and, while I was at it, I cleaned the toilet. My least-favorite job. After that, I rinsed the curtains and hung them over the shower rod to dry.

  Tobias padded in, leaving paw prints on the damp floor, and curled up near the hot-water pipe. I sank down next to him, put my hand on his back, and looked into his eyes. Did cats have heart attacks? He blinked and, as his eyes closed, mine did, too. I slept like that, slumped against the wall, for an hour or so; then I woke up, stumbled into my room, and fell across the bed.

  SIX

  It was still dark when the coyotes began howling. The air was gray with sleet, and their piercing voices rose and tangled in the air. The coyotes had crossed the border from Canada down into our territory only within the last few years. Mom liked hearing their howls and the kind of scary, thrilled feeling she said it gave her, the reminder that the whole world wasn’t civilized. But every night when Tobias went out for his prowl, I worried about his being caught and eaten.

  And now the same thought came to me again, only it was of a pack of coyotes coming across Mom lying helpless in the snow.

  “No,” I said out loud. “No!” I bolted out of bed and walked through the house. That hadn’t happened. Mom wasn’t lying in the snow anymore. She was safe in the hospital. She was being taken care of.

  It was dark outside, still hours before I had to go down to the school bus stop at the foot of the hill, but I showered, washed my hair, got dressed, made my lunch, did everything as if I was getting ready to go to school. I meant to go to school, but what I actually did was call Suburban Safari and ask them to send a taxi to the house.

  “How much is it going to be?” I asked the driver, looking into the window.

  “You’re going up to Trowbridge?” He put his hands flat on the steering wheel. “Didn’t they tell you? They shoulda told you when you called.” He was an older man with a blank face, as if he had no emotions. “Fifteen,” he said.

  “Fifteen
dollars?” I repeated faintly. I knew I should have asked how much it would be when I called the service. Mom always told me, “Ask first, decide second.” I had to tip him, too, which would be another couple of dollars. What I had in my backpack was twelve dollars and fifty-three cents.

  “Can you wait a minute more, please?” I said.

  “How long you gonna be?”

  “Fast.” I ran back into the house and took Mom’s wallet from the shoulder bag. She had four singles and seventy-three cents in change. I checked her secret pocket—sometimes she’d have a ten-dollar bill in there—but it was empty. She never kept much cash on hand. She said it was worth the three dollars she paid on her basic checking account every month not to be tempted to buy stuff we didn’t really need.

  I was in the cab and on the way to the hospital before I even thought about how I was going to get back home. “Excuse me.” I tapped on the driver’s shoulder. “Do you think you could …” I hesitated, then plunged in. “Would you be able to wait and take me back home?”

  “Why not?” he said. “It’ll be the same fare.”

  “Fifteen dollars?” My heart thundered in my chest. “But I don’t have any more money.”

  “You want me to drive you someplace and you don’t have any money? You think I do this for fun?” He never lost the flat look on his face, just sounded annoyed.

  “No … I’m sorry. Okay. I’ll figure something—”

  “This is a job. Work. Four-letter word you kids today don’t know nothing about.”

  I found a bus token in the bottom of my backpack. I could probably get downtown with that, then get a transfer. I might have to walk the last few miles from the nearest town to where we lived. Or maybe I’d hitch a ride. I’d done that once, and Mom had been so mad at me, I’d promised never to do it again, but this was an emergency.

  Just as he turned up Seneca Hill, the driver looked around at me and said, “So what’s the story?”

  “I have the money for this trip,” I said quickly.

  “Hey! Did I say you didn’t? Alls I’m asking is what you’re going up to the hospital for. You know the Vets Hospital is up there, too, right back of Trowbridge?”