The Someday Suitcase

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Magic doesn’t have to be a big deal,” Rachel says at last. “Sometimes it’s very, very small. Sometimes it comes and goes. Magic’s not like the fairy tales. It’s a moment in time. Or a bond between two people. Or a wish that grows into existence. Sometimes it’s a thing that’s necessary and accessible. Like how we only use a small part of our brains. We don’t always access our magic.”

  “How do you know if something’s magic?” I hold my breath, waiting for the answer.

  “Magic is love with a twist,” Rachel says, seeing my worried face. I hang on to the words and don’t let go.

  No one says anything for a minute, and I’m worried I ruined the fun of the day with all my questions. But Elsa is always there to fix things.

  “That cloud reminds me of you, Clover,” she says, pointing at the prettiest cloud. It looks soft enough to sleep on and the sun is shining through it, making it glow all gold and pink and fairylike.

  It’s the best compliment I’ve ever gotten.

  I think if anyone has magic, it must be Elsa.

  And maybe, maybe me.

  19

  Dad is back from his latest trip for a few days, so on Saturday we have our annual sundae-making competition with Danny’s family. Helen was so eager she called every single day this week to confirm, even the days Danny was sickest, which were all the days I didn’t have time to visit him.

  “Thanks for waiting for me to do the competition,” Dad says when we get to their house, loaded down with ice cream flavors and a few of our favorite traditional toppings.

  “It’s a family thing,” I say. “It has to be the whole family.” I let Dad hold my hand, even though I usually think it’s babyish. Today it’s nice.

  “Dad is only our family sometimes,” Jake says. It’s going to be one of those days with Jake. The ones where he says whatever pops into his head, even if it’s a little mean or awkward or downright wrong. These aren’t the worst days with Jake, but they’re hard. He’ll comment on the way a stranger looks or tell Mom’s friends something rude she said about them behind closed doors.

  Dad looks sad at this comment, even though he knows how Jake is.

  “That’s not how family works!” I say. “Dad’s in our family when he’s at home and when he’s on the road.”

  “I would never want to be a truck driver,” Jake says.

  “You don’t have to be one,” I say. I squeeze Dad’s hand.

  “Well, we’re just so pleased you could all make it,” Helen says. She looks a little weepy and a little nervous. This is how she looks all the time now.

  Danny promised he wouldn’t tell anyone about our new hypothesis, but I’m suspicious he let something slip to his mother. She’s looking at me in a brand-new way, and it’s making me itchy. She hugs me three times in three minutes, and that is too many hugs.

  The second we’re inside, she starts snapping pictures of me and Danny, and no matter how many times he tells her to stop, she won’t.

  “You can see me anytime,” he says with his arms crossed over his chest. “You don’t need a million photos of me.” I wonder what Ms. Fitch would say about the photos. I think Helen is taking pictures of the way she wants things to be, more than the way they are. Ms. Fitch would approve, I think. “Art isn’t a research paper,” she said last week. “There’s no right or wrong. It’s about the things you want and miss and love and wish you knew.”

  I hope Helen’s photos show her what she wants to see.

  Last night Danny called me, but I could barely hear him. His voice was hoarse and small. He didn’t sound anything like regular Danny. He said something was wrong with his throat and that he had a brand-new infection in his ears.

  He begged me to come over. I did. He felt better after about half an hour.

  “See, you’re fixing me,” he said, but I disagreed.

  “I’m like cold medicine,” I said, pulling out my notebook to show him the patterns. “You feel better for a little, but then you feel worse. I don’t make you not sick, I just fix your symptoms.”

  But Danny didn’t want to hear it. “We don’t know how it works,” he said. “That’s why we have to go to Vermont. To find out.”

  He’s right. We don’t know if I’m like cold medicine or if I have to be within five feet of him for the rest of our lives to keep him well.

  We need more answers. And we aren’t getting them from any of the doctors on Danny’s “team.”

  “I want to remember every wonderful day,” Helen says, snapping another photo and saying the word wonderful like it’s a dessert she’s licking up. “Stand closer to Danny, Clover.”

  I give Danny a look. “Did you tell her?” I whisper.

  Danny shrugs.

  “You promised!”

  “I didn’t tell her, but she kind of guessed on her own. You’re not the only scientist. Mom knows stuff too.”

  “Did you ask her about Vermont again?” I ask. “Vermont is more important than me anyway.”

  “You know she won’t let me travel. She says I’ll get even more infections if I’m in new environments.”

  We should be whispering more quietly, but everyone’s talking over everyone else, so we’re pretty sure no one’s listening to us. Jake is being very loud; he’s a great distraction sometimes.

  “We have to get there on our own,” Danny says.

  I’d do absolutely anything to find out what’s wrong, and I’m pretty sure the clinic is the only hope we have. We will figure out a way.

  “You two stop whispering and come get your ice cream!” Helen says. She’s stopped taking pictures for long enough to fill everyone’s bowls with three scoops each of different flavors.

  We’ve been having a sundae-making competition every year for my whole life. It started when Mom was pregnant with me and Helen was pregnant with Danny and they both were craving ice cream, but wildly different kinds. Mom wanted mint chocolate chip with pretzels and whipped cream on top. Helen wanted vanilla and every kind of sauce—chocolate, caramel, strawberry. She wanted nuts and cherries and a banana underneath it all, like a boat carrying a very sweet load of cargo.

  The sundae-making competition is the best day of the year.

  But this year Jake is on his rampage and Helen has nervous bird-energy and Danny’s illness is so large it feels tight in the kitchen.

  Every year Helen gives everyone three scoops and we have full use of the kitchen to put any topping we want onto the sundae. I won last year with a peanut-butter-and-every-kind-of-jelly-ever concoction. Mom won the year before with bacon bits and maple syrup.

  We grab our bowls and Helen wipes her brow like she’s all worn out from the effort of scooping. For a moment, the day feels very nearly good and normal.

  Danny leans against the fridge, surveying the toppings on the counter.

  “If you need to lie down—” Helen whispers into Danny’s ear. We all hear her, and Danny waves her off. His eyes are bright and he doesn’t look tired at all. He barely looks sick except for how skinny he is. “Was this too much for you after your hard night last night?” Danny wants to be mad, I think, but he stays cheery.

  “Don’t try to trick me into forfeiting!” he says, and Helen laughs and takes a picture of Danny and me feeding each other a scoop of pre-sundae-ed ice cream.

  Mom looks through their refrigerator and pulls out fruits and vegetables, and I decide to make my sundae a soup, so I start mashing up the ice cream.

  “How is ice cream when it’s microwaved?” I ask. “Like, warm ice cream? Could that be good?”

  “No assists!” Ross says. He’s always in charge of the rules. The room’s full of people but also full of warmth. There’s the sun, of course. There’s always the sun. But there’s also the way we all know each other and the smell of hot fudge on the stove and the oldies station that Helen’s singing along to and Danny buzzing around without even a sniffle or a limp.

  There’s enough good stuff in the room that I feel like I can relax for a minute. It’s
almost like last year, which was perfect.

  “Danny, if you die by next year, can I make your sundae, too?” Jake says. “If you die, can I make two sundaes?” His hands are covered in ice cream and sprinkles and a sheen of butter. There are sprinkles in his hair. He’s a Jake-sundae, and it was so cute a minute ago but now it’s all wrong.

  The day turns so fast I lose my breath.

  Helen drops her bowl of ice cream.

  Mom rushes to Jake’s side like she might be able to shove the words back in his mouth.

  I look at the floor and wish myself into the moment before.

  Danny sputters a laugh, but it’s the ugly kind. A cackle, really. Ross shushes him and I know the competition is pretty much over before it began.

  No one’s said anything about Danny dying.

  “Jake, that’s rude,” I say, but my mind is rushing with a thousand other scary thoughts.

  Usually when Jake says something, it’s because he’s overheard someone else saying something and he’s repeating it.

  I wonder if Jake heard Mom or Dad say something about Danny and . . . dying.

  That’s not possible, though. My throat’s dry and my head hurts, but there’s no way anyone could think Danny’s going to die.

  Dying is something old people and bald kids in bad movies do. Dying is something in books.

  I put my hand over my heart to calm it down. No one’s dying, I tell my heart. I’m here, fixing him, I tell my heart. We’re going to get to Vermont. We’re going to find out what’s wrong. We’re going to see snow, I tell my sad, aching, beat-up heart.

  “What are you telling your children about my son?” Helen says. Mom steps back. That’s not what she was expecting. She’s ready to give Jake yet another speech on what is and is not okay to say about other people. But Helen’s not mad at Jake. She’s mad at Mom.

  “You know Jake,” Mom says. “He doesn’t think about things the same way the other kids do. He has his own ways of processing—”

  “But what are you saying that’s making him think Danny might die?” Helen says. She says the word die like she’s been practicing saying it out loud for weeks in her mirror. It’s a little too forceful.

  “Stop saying die!” I say. I’m even louder than Helen, and Danny gives me a look.

  “It’s fine, everyone,” he says. “Jake didn’t mean it.”

  “Stop talking about me,” Jake says. He doesn’t like when he hears his name being thrown around but can’t quite understand why. It happens a lot, and it always means the start of a tantrum. Now would be a terrible time for a tantrum.

  “Danny’s getting better,” Helen says. “Look at him. He looks wonderful. Like our little boy.”

  “You look really good, Danny,” Mom says.

  “Danny’s fine!” I say. “We’re figuring it out!” I stop myself before I say anything else.

  “I’m sure the doctors are figuring everything out,” Dad says in his calm voice. I’m glad he’s here; he’s good at sounding relaxed when things are stressful.

  “I feel great right now,” Danny says. “I know Jake didn’t mean it.” His voice shakes, though, and I wonder if Jake’s words scared Danny a little too.

  I take another bite of my soupy ice cream and Danny does the same. We want the day back, but I don’t think it’s coming back, so we might as well eat as much ice cream as we can.

  “Jake, you want some M&Ms?” Danny asks. “You want to try putting gum on the ice cream? I’ve always wanted to try that.”

  Jake starts to wail.

  Jake cries like a baby when he’s upset, and it brings me back to when I was four and he was brand-new and I’d be up all night listening to him screech in his crib. It was a terrible sound then and it’s terrible now, too. Danny covers his ears.

  “It’s okay, Jakey,” I say. “We’re having fun!” I do a little jig in front of him. I stick out my tongue and try to feed him ice cream from my own spoon.

  “It’s not fun! I’m not having fun!” Jake screams. His arms start helicoptering and his legs are stomping on the floor. The kitchen shakes a little, even though Jake’s tiny. He’s powerful. He’s an earthquake, destroying us all.

  Helen hides her face in her hands.

  “I think you need to go,” Ross says. He says so little most of the time that it’s extra awful when he says something pointed and painful.

  “Don’t make them leave,” Danny says. He puts a hand on the top of Jake’s head, like that might help the situation, but it only makes Jake worse. He pushes Danny. It’s not powerful or on purpose. It doesn’t do much but make Danny trip a little. But it’s enough to make Helen leave the room and enough to make Mom and Dad gather us up and pull us right out of there.

  I don’t have time to say good-bye to Danny, and I know he’s worried that he’s going to start feeling sick again the minute I’m out the door.

  It was supposed to be a wonderful day, the best kind of day, but instead it is a terrible day.

  When we get home, Mom gives Jake a Popsicle.

  “I wanted ice cream,” he says.

  “Well,” Mom says. We don’t have anything else to say.

  But I wonder about what Helen asked. I’ve never heard anyone talk about Danny and dying. Not even Danny, who will say anything about everything. Dying and Danny aren’t words that go together. Not ever. I can’t even think the two words in my brain at the same time. One comes in and I have to get it all the way out before the other word can arrive, on its own. They’re like trains, timed one after the other, minutes apart. And my brain is a crowded station.

  I ask for a Popsicle of my own, but we’re all out.

  “Jake needed it,” Mom says. “You understand, right, Clover?”

  And I do understand, but I am missing the sweetness I was supposed to have today. I’m missing the fun and the taste of sugar and the things I thought I knew for sure.

  20

  The next morning, Mom tells me I’ve been quiet since yesterday.

  “I know,” I say. “You don’t have to tell me when I’m being quiet.”

  “Attitude, Clover,” she says, and I want to say something mean about Jake and his attitude yesterday, but I keep my mouth shut. It’s Dad’s last morning before he goes on the road again tonight, and I like those mornings to be perfect. Or close to perfect.

  My secret, secret thought is that if the mornings before Dad leaves aren’t pretty close to perfect, he might not come back.

  It’s a thought I know isn’t true, but when I’m alone at night in my bed, I think it somehow might be a little true. Sometimes something that isn’t true can feel true.

  “How long are you gone this time?” I ask Dad.

  “Short trip, only three days. Then I’ll have a big trip up north. All the way through New England. That one will be a little longer.”

  “Like, um, Vermont?” I ask. My mind is spinning. I should have thought of it before. My dad goes up north all the time. He probably passes through Vermont multiple times a year.

  “Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine,” he says. “Lots of beautiful places. I’ll pick you up a snow globe from each one, how’s that?”

  “And you’ll get me a T-shirt from each one,” Jake says. He doesn’t ever say it as a question. It’s a rule—if Dad gets me something, he has to get Jake something too.

  “Of course,” Dad says.

  I try to keep my voice from shaking. I try to keep my hands and knees from shaking too. “How big is Vermont?”

  “One of the smaller states,” Dad says.

  “When do you leave for that trip?” I’m probably asking a few too many questions, so this will be my last one. They’ll start getting suspicious otherwise.

  “Right after your birthday!” Dad says. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be here for the big day. Eleven is an important year.”

  “You said seven was an important year,” Jake says. He will always remember every single thing anyone says, so we all have to be careful to say only things w
e mean. Dad’s always forgetting that, and Jake’s always calling him out on it.

  Today it makes us all laugh. That’s how I know my family’s going to be okay. Even after a terrible day like yesterday, we still smile at each other.

  I wonder if Danny’s family is okay today, or if the upset from yesterday hung around them, haunting them.

  My question is answered in the afternoon. Danny is in his front yard. He has set up a lawn chair, and he has a big ugly sunhat on too. I know for a fact Helen has slathered him in sunblock.

  I make a note in my notebook. Temperature. Direction of the sun. Chemicals on his body. Hour of the day. Humidity percentages.

  I know we have a sturdy hypothesis, but it’s not one I like, and it’s not one that tells me what’s wrong with him, so my work isn’t done. I want to find anything else that might have to do with Danny’s illness. We have to go to Vermont so I can show them all my research and have them shake my hand and tell me I’m really quite a scientist. Those fancy doctors will see how I didn’t give up and I didn’t stop at one question and I didn’t get lazy after finding a few answers.

  And then they’ll tell me, “Clover, we’ve got this now. We can fix Danny.”

  I walk over to Danny’s lawn chair and try to startle him. It is probably a bad, dangerous thing, but I want us to be able to have fun still, in some of the ways we used to.

  “Boo!” I say, right into his ear. He jumps in his seat and smiles and there it is, there we are, Danny and Clover.

  “Practicing for Halloween tomorrow?” Danny asks. I’d forgotten about Halloween. We don’t usually go trick-or-treating—it freaks Jake out, and I like to stay home and watch scary movies with Danny. I guess we won’t be doing that tomorrow. I’ll hand out candy with Jake and that will be good, too.

  “Your parents aren’t coming outside, right?” Danny says.

  The smile is gone. There’s nervousness instead.

  “Not right now.”

  “And no Jake?” He looks around me, peering over my right hip, which is eye level with him.

  “I think he’s playing video games,” I say.

  “I’m allowed to see you,” he says. “Because they know what you do for me. How you help me. But I can’t see the rest of your family.”