“Shh!” Patty took me by the arm, moved me closer to her. “Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t go there. Will you be okay?”
“I won’t fall apart, if that’s what you mean.”
She squeezed my arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And you are an okay person. Please remember that.”
“Tomorrow,” I said, and I walked toward the truck.
Pepper called out my name and gave me a big, big smile.
“Hey, Leo,” I said.
“Hey, Sarabeth. Ready?” He leaned past Pepper to look at me, and I met his eyes, the way I hadn’t met hers. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. “Because it’s okay with me if you change your mind.”
“Leo, I’m not changing my mind.”
I scrambled into the passenger seat next to Pepper. She was wearing some kind of spicy perfume that knifed straight into my temples.
“Just give me a little push if you need more room,” she said as Leo pulled out into traffic. “So you phoned the people who live there now, Sarabeth, and they know you’re coming?”
I hadn’t thought for a moment about phoning. I’d just imagined myself being there, where Mom and I had lived. Dumb.
“Sarabeth, Pepper and I were talking about this,” Leo said, glancing over at me. “Talking about what you’re doing by going over there, and Pepper was saying that this is really something you have to do.” He sat on the horn for a moment as a black car cut him off at the corner.
“A necessary part of the grief process,” Pepper said.
“Pepper says if you want to do this, you need to do it.”
I sat still, fingering my fish scarf. I couldn’t remember Leo’s ever quoting Mom like that, as if she had the wisdom of the ages.
“Pepper says when you leave a place where you lived all your life—”
“I didn’t live there all my life, Leo.”
“Hey, you did. What’re you talking about?”
“We lived in Two for two years. Before, we lived over in Sixteen. You know that!”
Leo stopped at the red light under the bridge, just before the turn for the highway. “What I meant was that Roadview was where you lived all your life. Pepper got it right on that, didn’t she? She said—”
“Leo, stop with the ‘Pepper says’ stuff,” Pepper interrupted. “I’m starting to feel like a parrot! I can talk for myself?”
“Yeah, Leo,” I said.
“Jeeze, oh man, you two, don’t go ganging up on me.”
“We will if we want to,” Pepper sang out. She put up her hand to me for a confirming slap, and then, as if I didn’t know what that upstretched palm meant, she said, “Gimme five!”
I resisted the urge to tell her she was way out-of-date. Way uncool. I held up my palm, and she slapped it, smiling as if this proved we were friends.
“Tell Sarabeth what you said about her saying good-bye to the place, Pep,” Leo said.
Pep. What a dumb nickname. I inched closer to the window.
“The way I see it, Sarabeth,” Pepper said, breathing in my ear, “you left your home too fast. No warning. No chance to say good-bye. One day you’re there and, then, sad to say, the next day you’re not. And besides everything else you went through, that alone is just so disorienting, so traumatizing.”
I focused on her backpack. Leather, like her jacket. Not very practical. Leather was heavy and expensive. She could afford it, though; she taught at community college, probably made oodles of money.
“Everyone needs to say good-bye to the things they love and have to leave,” she was saying. “We invest emotionally in our things, as well as in people. A lot of folks don’t like to admit that; maybe they’re a little ashamed of it. Too materialistic.”
“Mmm … mmmm,” I said, and thought how funny it was—or not so funny—that Leo had gone from Mom, who cleaned houses and never had a spare dime, to Pepper, who was a professor and bought herself silver bracelets and leather jackets.
“People make the mistake of thinking that they don’t need to say good-bye to the chairs they sat in and the beds they slept in and the house that held those things. Now, you, Sarabeth, you’re not making that mistake. This is wise of you, really! What you’re doing today, very good. I applaud you.”
“Smart cookie, this Pepper,” Leo said. “Right, Sarabeth?”
I didn’t answer, just stared ahead. Let Leo say what he wanted to about Pepper; I didn’t have to agree.
Now he was driving with his left hand, and his right arm had snaked across the back of the seat, his hand moving for my head. I leaned away, toward the window, remembering something that happened in our kitchen a year ago, or maybe it was two years ago. Mom and I and Leo had been sitting around, talking or eating. I didn’t remember that part, just how, suddenly, I’d gone for Leo’s head and messed up his hair good. No reason. I’d just felt like doing it, to be funny or cute, or maybe, really, because I loved him. I had loved him a lot back then, but not now. No more.
Now he was talking about his work, how this was the busy season, how people all of a sudden remembered they should have had their chimneys cleaned months ago, before the cold weather set in, and how his phone never stopped ringing off the hook.
I had heard it all before. Every year, Leo went through the same routine. I even knew what he’d say next, and he said it.
“Everyone wants their chimneys done PDQ. You should see the messages on the machine.”
“What’s PDQ?” Pepper asked, sitting up very straight, like the smartest girl in the classroom, or the teacher’s pet.
“Professor Pepper,” Leo said. “You amaze me. Everyone knows PDQ.”
“Well, I don’t,” Pepper said.
“Oh, I can’t believe this. Sarabeth knows. Sarabeth, tell Pepper pretty damn quick, before she has a fit, pretty damn quick, what PDQ means. Wink wink.”
“Oh, duuuh. I should have guessed,” Pepper said.
Leo turned up the hill that led to Roadview. The wet road squeaked under the tires. He pulled up in front of our house and cut the engine. It looked the same, except that a yellow bike with a blue stripe down the fender lay in the yard.
“Well … here we are,” Leo said. “Sarabeth … are you sure now that you want to do this?”
I slid out of the truck and walked toward the kitchen door. There was a light on in the kitchen, another in the living room. I knocked and, after a moment, the door opened with the same creaky noise it had always made. A woman, wearing slacks and a white shirt, looked out at me. “If you’re selling magazines, sorry, but forget it.”
“I’m not selling anything,” I said. “I used to live here. I was wondering, could I come in and just look around?”
“You were the people before us? What’s your name?”
“Silver. Sarabeth Silver.”
She stared past me to Leo’s truck. “Who’s that, your parents? What kind of truck is that?”
“They’re my friends. Leo’s a chimney sweep. That’s a picture of a sweep on the side, with the top hat and—”
“Your mother know you’re here with him?”
“Yes.”
She twisted her mouth to one side and waited, as if she hoped I would go away. Then she shrugged and opened the door wide enough for me to follow her inside. Right away, I saw that the kitchen floor had been recovered, our old wheezy fridge replaced, and the walls repainted. “It looks nice,” I said.
“We fixed it up,” she said. “Went through the place with a fine-tooth comb.”
My ears flamed. A fine-tooth comb was what you used to get rid of cootie eggs. I followed her into the living room. Couch, rug, lamps, everything new-looking, clean, perfect. Stuffed animals crowded the windowsill. “My hobby,” she said, straightening a tiger’s ear. “Mama’s toys. You want to see the bedrooms now?”
From the doorway of what had been my room, I saw a double-decker bed, hockey posters, matching curtains and bedspreads, hockey sticks leaning against the wall. In a daze, I went to Mom’s room. Another bl
ur of furniture and curtains. I looked and stepped back. At night, when I hadn’t been able to sleep, I would think of these rooms, walk through them, look at our familiar things, touch them, smell them: our clothes in the closets, the flowered plates in the cupboard, every one different, and the Princess Di photo that Mom had framed and hung on her bedroom wall. In my mind, I would curl up on the velvet couch or lie on my bed or pull a chair up to the kitchen table to look again at the scratches and burns I knew by heart.
But now I was here, and nothing was the way I remembered it. Not one thing in these rooms, not a scrap, showed that our life together, the history of us, had even existed.
Had there even been an us? How could I be sure that we had lived here? Where was the proof? How did I know that what I remembered was true?
TWENTY-THREE
“She’s upset,” Leo said, watching me as I climbed back into the truck. “She doesn’t have to say a word—I can see it.… Sarabeth, I’m taking you for an ice cream before we do anything else.”
“Good idea,” Pepper said.
“I don’t want ice cream,” I said.
“How about a soda?” Leo turned the key in the ignition. “You need a little sugar rush. I bet your adrenaline is down to zip. Does a soda sound good? Ice cream soda, or regular soda?”
“Neither, Leo.”
All through the years when Leo was Mom’s friend, he would come over on the weekends with a bag of groceries and make a meal for us. Half the stuff he brought had names that we’d never even heard: hummus, babaganoush, gomasao. He loved food, loved to buy it, loved to cook it. Mom said that Leo thought food was at least half the solution to every problem.
“Come on, Sarabeth, let me get you something,” he coaxed. “You want a sandwich? We can tool right over to Basario’s and—”
“Leo, I said no. Be quiet about food!”
“You know what, Sarabeth?” He turned off the key with a sharp click. “You’re just like your mom sometimes, hard-headed and stubborn as hell.”
“Good! Thank you!” I reached for my backpack and held it against my stomach, held it there, solid, the books pressing into me through my jacket.
Into the silence that fell then, Pepper said in a conciliatory tone, “Look at the sky, you two. Look what’s happening to the weather.”
The wisps of clouds had knitted together and become a gray quilt completely covering the blue.
“So, we had our bit of warm weather,” Leo said finally. “Now it’s going to snow to remind us it’s still winter.”
“Leo, do you remember us living there?” I pointed to our trailer.
“You and Jane?” He started the motor again. “Jeeze, oh man, what kind of question is that?”
“A question, Leo, just a question!” I wanted to hear him say, Yes, I remember you and Jane living there. Yes, your life together was real.
The truck eased forward. “Funny question, Sarabeth.”
I sat on the edge of the seat, wondering how I could ever have liked this truck with its ashy smell and cold fake leather seats. “Leo, do you remember us or not?”
“You’re in such a weird mood today, Sarabeth. Isn’t the answer pretty obvious?”
“Say it, Leo! Yes or no?”
“Yes! Of course. What do you think?” Leaning on the steering wheel, Leo rolled the truck slowly through the trailer park. “I’m never going to forget Jane.”
“Maybe you did already,” I said. “If you’d married Mom, instead of dumping her, maybe everything would be different right now.”
“What?” His hand hit the horn and flew off. “I guess you forgot, Sarabeth. Your mother was the one who kept pushing me off; she was the one who broke us up, saying I was too young, or whatever dumb reasons she had.”
“Don’t you call her dumb,” I shouted. We were rolling down the hill now, the same hill Mom and I had run down, hand in hand. “Don’t dare talk about Mom like that, and here’s something else. Don’t ever talk to me again, Leo, not ever again!”
“You’re out of your mind, Sarabeth,” he shouted back.
“Stop,” Pepper said, turning from one of us to the other. “Stop that, you two.”
“You know what, Sarabeth,” Leo said, looking at me, letting the truck drive itself, “you’ve been weird ever since your mother died; even Cynthia says so. She says you’re just not the same person.”
The truck sped forward. The highway was in front of us, like the cross on a T.
“Leo, watch it!” Pepper cried.
He jerked the wheel to the right, and the truck turned with a screech and a hard, jouncing jolt. Then we were off the road, tipped nose-first into the ditch. A car passed, then another. A horn tooted. “Oh my God,” Pepper breathed.
I straightened up, uncrinking my neck. It was my fault Leo had gone off the road. I’d said something, I couldn’t remember what, but something to unnerve him. I wiped my sweaty hands on the fish scarf. Never upset the driver. Was that another one of Mom’s “Rules for Life”? If it wasn’t, it should have been.
Now we should all get out and push the truck out of the ditch. I’d pushed with Mom plenty of times when our battery died, or we ran out of gas or had some other minor catastrophe.
Mom would put the car in neutral, and then we’d both get out, Mom on the driver’s side, with her hand through the window to steer, me on the passenger side. “Heave ho!” Mom would say, and, then, one, two, three, we’d push and get the car moving again. That’s what we had to do now. Heave ho. One, two, three, and we’d have the truck out of the ditch and onto the road.
All this went through my mind in a split second.
In the next moment, I seemed to be outside the truck and looking in. Observing the people there. Observing Sarabeth, long-haired girl tipped forward, spine like a lightning rod. And Leo, swiveled toward her, big head emerging from his jacket like a startled turtle. Sitting between them, pulling at her fingers, Pepper.
“Sarabeth,” Leo said. “Are you okay? Sarabeth? Hey! Give me an answer.” He reached across Pepper and slapped my face.
Then I was back inside the truck, the seat cold under me, my cheek stinging. Leo had slapped me! I wrenched open the door and fell out of the truck. I scrambled to my feet, climbed out of the ditch, and walked away, down the road.
Behind me, Leo tapped the horn and yelled out the window. “Sarabeth, come back here. Come back here!”
“Go to hell, Leo,” I said. Why did he slap me? What right did he have? Then Pepper was behind me, calling for me to wait for her. I kept walking.
“Sarabeth.” She caught up to me. “Leo’s crying,” she said, trying to take my arm. “He thinks he hurt you. First, the truck in the ditch and then—”
I walked faster.
“He didn’t mean it like a real slap,” she said, hurrying to keep up with me. “He was sort of overcome, and he got scared. You looked so spacey. I was scared, too! Sarabeth, you know Leo—he’s got the heart of a girl; he would never deliberately hurt you.”
“Stop talking to me about Leo,” I said.
“No, I won’t! You have to listen to me.” She grabbed my arm and held it, slowing me down. “He loves you; you know he does. Look at him, Sarabeth. He’s crying!”
She swiveled me around to face the truck. I pushed her off, but she grabbed me again, surprising me with her strength. She must lift weights, I thought.
“Look!” she said. Her narrow, pointed face was drawn up into a fierce, doglike scowl. “Look at him, Sarabeth!”
But all I could see was the truck in the ditch and the top of Leo’s head bent over the steering wheel. Was he crying? Maybe. “Tell him I’m okay,” I said.
“No, you tell him. Go back and tell him. He feels awful; you can’t leave him like that. My God! Have a heart!”
I walked slowly back to the truck and stood by the window. Leo lifted his head, and I wanted to slap his face, slap away that sad look. Pepper was walking back toward us. I imagined her seeing me slap Leo. Why didn’t I do it, instead of ju
st thinking about it? Why did I always think about things, never do them?
“You don’t really believe I forgot Jane, do you?” Leo said. He looked at me with red, wet eyes.
Patty was right. He was good. I was the one who was messed up. I stood there, thinking this, and then I reached through the window and touched his hand. “I know you didn’t forget Mom, Leo,” I said. “I know that.”
TWENTY-FOUR
February was usually the worst month of the winter, but we were halfway through it, and the temperature had been staying up in the twenties. That made it easier to put in my time on the bleachers before the bell rang. A lot more comfortable to talk to James, too. Wednesday morning, we walked around the track, in step, so concentrated on our conversation that we almost missed hearing the bell.
“I have no experience of death,” James said. “All my grandparents are still living, and my cousins, the whole family. I guess I’m just lucky.” He held my arm for a moment. “Is it okay with you that I said that?”
I nodded.
“My father wants me to go to Harvard when I graduate,” James said. “He wants me to do what he didn’t do. I know that Harvard could be great, but I’m thinking I should go to a historically black college, one of those schools that have been around doing their job for us when we couldn’t get into Harvard or Brown, or anywhere else. I’m thinking, I should support them; it’s the right thing to do.”
“I admire people with principles,” I said.
“How about you? Where are you thinking of going?”
“I don’t know. It’s a money thing; plus, I don’t know where I could get in. My grades …”
I’d been near the top of my class when Mom was around to goad me, and I used to like school, but I’d lost interest. I didn’t keep up with my work. I had let things slide.
“What about community college?” James said. “No, forget I said that. You can aim higher. What do you want to do?”
I started to say that I didn’t have a clue, but this was James. I didn’t want him thinking I was a dope. So, as if it was a real thought, I said, “Premed.”
“Excellent. Same here. I’ll be a physician, though I might change my mind and go for physics. Maybe I’ll do double degrees. They can work together.”
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