by C. C. Payne
“What happened then?”
Mrs. Sloan smiled. “We missed each other. I think we were both surprised by this. I know I was surprised. And then I realized that at some point, when I was no longer expecting it or hoping for it, my stepmother and I had become family.”
“That’s never going to happen with my stepfather and me.”
“Maybe not. But just because you feel that way doesn’t mean it won’t happen—I never thought it would happen either.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “He doesn’t want me.”
“Do you want him?”
I lowered my eyes. “No, ma’am.”
Mrs. Sloan was quiet for such a long time that I had to look up at her to make sure she was still awake.
She was. “I like your necklace,” she said.
I touched the tiny cross in the hollow of my neck. “Thank you.”
Mrs. Sloan leaned over the table like she was about to tell me a secret. “My stepmother and I didn’t want each other either. But, thankfully, sometimes God blesses us with people we never asked for or wanted—because He knows we need them, even if we don’t.”
“I don’t need my stepfather,” I insisted.
“I didn’t think I needed my stepmother either, but I did, Fizzy. In so many ways. And even if you really don’t need your stepfather now, that doesn’t mean you won’t need him later.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I really won’t.”
“What if your children need him? Fizzy, my stepmother was the only grandmother my children ever had. They adored her. And she adored them because they were the only grandchildren she ever had.”
“But he took my shoes!” was all I could think to say.
Chapter 33
The first thing I saw when I walked in the door at Dad’s was a huge portrait of the four of us hanging above the fireplace. It wasn’t a great picture of me, but I loved it anyway. I loved it because the four of us, in that picture, in that moment looked . . . like a family.
“Like it?” Dad asked.
“I love it,” I said.
“I love it, too,” Suzanne said, coming up behind us with Baby Robert in her arms.
We all stood looking at the portrait and I noticed we felt like family. I felt like family, standing there with them. I remembered what Mrs. Sloan had said then and thought maybe she was right. Maybe it was happening. Maybe we were becoming a family!
I was happy for the rest of the night. Happy even though meat loaf showed up on the dinner table, happy even though I came in dead last at a game of Scrabble—I was distracted by Baby Robert’s cuteness. Just happy.
It didn’t even bother me when Suzanne brought the pictures of me alone to my room to show me. They were good pictures—except for all the freckles—and I knew Mom would love them.
• • •
I was in bed watching my little TV when Baby Robert started crying. I turned the volume up and watched two more shows. That’s how I knew that Baby Robert had been screaming for more than an hour, and that’s when I started to think maybe I could help—I could try singing Miyoko’s lullaby, “Nenneko yo.”
I got out of bed and followed the dreadful sound down the hallway to Dad and Suzanne’s bedroom. The door was closed, so I knocked and waited. Nothing. I thought maybe they couldn’t hear me over all the wailing, so I knocked again, louder.
The bedroom door flew open and Suzanne stood before me with Baby Robert in her arms. She didn’t exactly look happy to see me.
“What?” Suzanne barked over Baby Robert’s yowling.
“I heard the baby . . . ,” I said, looking past her, hoping Dad was in there and that he’d come to my rescue. But I didn’t see him. What I did see was another picture, a little smaller than the one over the fireplace, only this one had just the three of them in it. The homesickness spread through my belly like an egg that had been cracked open.
“What?” Suzanne repeated.
I swallowed. “Nothing.”
As I started to turn away, the door practically closed in my face.
• • •
I found Dad downstairs in the kitchen, warming up a baby bottle.
“I’m calling Mom,” I announced. “I want to go home. I’m going home.”
I think Dad would’ve looked exactly the same if I’d hauled off and kicked him in the shin—surprised, confused, and very unhappy.
I picked up the phone.
“Wait,” Dad said. “What happ—”
“Robert!” Suzanne yelled from upstairs.
“Coming!” Dad answered, testing the bottle on his wrist. “Wait,” he said to me on his way out of the kitchen. “Just wait.”
Mom didn’t answer the phone at home, so I called her cell.
• • •
By the time Dad came back downstairs looking for me, I was dressed, packed, and watching out the front window for Mom’s car. A flash of lightning lit up the night sky.
“Fizzy,” Dad started just as Keene’s car pulled to the curb. Why did that car always make me feel so disappointed—and nervous?
Thunder rumbled in the distance. “Mom’s here,” I said, avoiding Dad’s eyes. “I’ve got to go.”
Before Dad could say anything more, I was out the door and running as fast as my legs—and suitcase—would go. Wind rustled through the trees as the storm approached.
Keene sat in the driver’s seat. Mom was beside him. They were both dressed up, like maybe they’d been somewhere fancy when I called. Before I even got in the car, I could tell that Keene was mad.
He didn’t want to come and get me, I realized. For a second, I thought about going back inside Dad’s house, but then I knew Dad and Suzanne didn’t want me either.
I wondered, What does it say about you when even your own family doesn’t want you anymore? I felt sure it indicated that there’s something seriously, severely wrong with you. With me.
Even though I was trying my hardest to be perfect.
But since they’d stopped what they were doing and come all this way, and since big raindrops were starting to splatter down on me, I went ahead and got in the car with Keene and Mom.
Mom turned around in her seat and said softly, “Fizzy, honey,” and that was all it took.
I burst into tears. I don’t know why Mom has this effect on me, but she does. Once, when I was eight, I wrecked my bike near Olivia’s house, skinning my thigh. But I didn’t cry. Instead, I hopped right up and told everyone I was fine. When Olivia’s mom said that my leg was in bad shape and she needed to call my parents, I was a little scared, but still, I didn’t cry. When Dad showed up to get me, I didn’t cry then either. But as soon as I walked through the back door and saw my mom, I fell to pieces. “She was fine a minute ago,” Dad kept saying, like I was faking or something. I barely had any skin left on my thigh; I wasn’t faking.
Anyway, once I started crying, I couldn’t stop. I cried so hard and loud that eventually Mom stopped trying to talk to me, and instead just reached into the backseat and put her hand on my knee. Rain began pounding the windshield. I did that kind of crying where you make weird sounds that you never make otherwise and you can barely breathe.
By the time we got home, I could tell the anger had sort of melted off Keene. Now he just looked . . . uncomfortable.
It didn’t make any difference to me. I kept right on blubbering as Mom hurried me into the house. My teeth chattered violently. I felt cold and wet right down to my bones. My body felt heavy, my head pounded, and my stomach sloshed around like an out-of-control Tilt-A-Whirl. I felt more homesick—for a place, a time, a family that didn’t exist anymore—than I ever had in my life.
Mom took me upstairs, helped me out of my rain-soaked clothes and into my pajamas, tucked me into bed, and sat down beside me. Then she brushed my hair with her fingertips and said over and over, “It’s
going to be all right,” until I started to calm down.
But even after I stopped crying, I couldn’t get hold of myself. My breathing was still funny—like hiccups or something, only not hiccups—and I kept shuddering.
“You’re awfully warm,” Mom said then. “Do you feel all right?”
I opened my mouth—to say that I was fine—and promptly vomited all over my bed.
“Keene!” Mom shouted. “Keene!”
I blindly reached out, caught Mom’s arm, and squeezed as I continued retching. I wanted to say, No, don’t let him see me like this! Only I couldn’t say anything at the moment.
Mom must’ve misunderstood the arm squeeze, because she responded by pulling my hair back and holding it.
I saw Keene’s polished, black-tassel loafers step into my room. But as soon as he’d had a few seconds to take in the scene, his shoes turned and carried him away—quick. I didn’t blame them—or him.
“Keene!” Mom called sharply.
Keene’s shoes reappeared in the doorway.
I raised up and wiped my mouth on my hand.
Mom let go of my hair and placed a strong arm around me. Then she said to Keene, “I need you to strip this bed while I get her into the shower.”
Keene didn’t look like he wanted to, but he didn’t argue.
Mom was sitting on the toilet lid in the bathroom, waiting for me, when I stepped out of the shower. She handed me a towel and said, “I’ve put fresh sheets and another blanket on your bed.”
“Thank you. I . . . I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s all right,” Mom assured me.
When I was back in bed, she said, “Now then. We’ll talk in the morning—it’ll all look better in the morning, you’ll see.”
I nodded obediently. I knew Mom was wrong, but she was trying so hard.
“Sleep now,” Mom said. “Just sleep.”
I was listening to the rain, about to drift off to sleep, when I heard the phone ring. Somehow, I knew it was Dad calling. I felt like I should get up and tell him how sorry I was—for everything—but I was too tired to move. Mom’s words echoed in my throbby head: Sleep now. Just sleep.
Chapter 34
I felt so far from perfect and so ashamed the next morning that I didn’t want to get out of bed. And I definitely didn’t want to come out of my room. I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to come out and face anyone again.
But I didn’t have a choice, because eventually Mom came in, bringing a tray of food with her. I sat up and Mom placed the tray on my lap: green tea, beef broth, toast, orange Jell-O, a napkin, and two spoons—because I don’t like my silverware to be cross-contaminated with food other than the one I’m using it to eat.
“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it, because even though I wasn’t hungry, somehow that tray made me feel like I was better than leftovers, like I mattered, like someone cared how I felt—even about silverware.
“You’re welcome,” Mom said, pulling the chair from my desk over to sit down beside me. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better,” I said.
“So . . . ,” Mom said, and I knew she was waiting for me to explain last night.
“I was sick,” I said, hoping this would be enough.
Mom waited for me to say more.
“With sickness,” I added. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” Mom said easily. “Everybody wants to go home to their mom when they aren’t well. But, Fizzy, are you sure that’s all it was? There’s nothing else bothering you?”
I thought about this. What was bothering me most this morning was that, when only Mom and I lived in the town house, I’d looked back on the times when we lived at home with Dad as the good times. Now that Keene was here, I looked back on the times when it was just Mom and me in the town house as good times, too—good times I didn’t even appreciate until things were so much worse. And then I wondered if at some point I’d look back on this time and think the same thing. I figured things could only get worse, seeing as how there had to be something seriously wrong with me. But I couldn’t tell Mom any of that. My misery would take a great big old bite out of her happiness. I knew it would. I just knew.
Apparently I took too long deciding this, though, because Mom said, “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
I said what I hoped would amount to a tiny crumb instead of a whole bite: “Did you know that Keene took my shoes?”
“‘Took your shoes’?” Mom said. “What do you mean?”
“I left them in the bathroom because they were muddy and I planned to clean them after I mopped the floors, but I forgot and he took them. He said, ‘Finders keepers.’”
I could tell that Mom didn’t understand and, more important, didn’t approve. But all she said was, “I’ll get your shoes for you—and I’ll talk to him. What else is on your mind?”
I searched my mind for something else smallish and safe-ish—crumblike—and finally came up with, “I don’t like my math teacher.”
“All right,” Mom said easily. “Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t like me.”
Mom started to smile but she caught herself and said, “How do you know? Does she treat you differently than the other kids?”
“Maybe not,” I decided. “You’re probably right: She doesn’t like any of us.”
Mom did smile then. “Just remember: There’s a difference between being mean and being tough. Tough teachers are usually good teachers, but you’ll have a new one soon enough—you’re almost a seventh grader now.”
That reminded me: “Don’t you think a seventh grader ought to have her own phone?”
Mom shook her head. “Fizzy, the more you ask about the phone, the more you reveal your failure to accept that you can’t always get everything you want in life.”
That meant two things: 1) Mom didn’t want to hear another word about the phone, and 2) if I kept on bugging her, I’d never get a phone. Elle est diabolique, non? (“She is diabolical, no?”) I nodded and picked up a spoon, not because I planned to eat, but because I was finished talking.
• • •
I called Dad later that afternoon and told him I was sorry.
“What happened?” he said.
“I don’t know. I felt tired and sick and . . . I just had a little meltdown, I guess. Can you forgive me?”
“You’re forgiven, Fizzy, but next time, let’s talk things over, okay? Running away never solves anything. And we know how to take care of sick kids here, too.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Should we try it again next weekend?”
“Next weekend would be good,” I said.
Since that had gone okay, I called Aunt Liz, too.
“Hi! How are you? Oh, Fizzy, I miss you so much!” Aunt Liz gushed, not sounding inconvenienced or irritated in the least.
I exhaled—I hadn’t known I was holding my breath until then. “I’m fine, just really busy,” I said. Being perfect, I thought. “How are you?”
“Good—this morning, I made a flourless, sugarless chocolate cake that looks promising.”
“Why?” I thought out loud. “Why would you bother making a cake without the best parts?”
Aunt Liz laughed and then we spent a few more minutes talking cake.
“Speaking of cooking, have you heard from Southern Living?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I said, “but I should any day now.”
After I put the phone back, I heard Mom calling for Keene in a frustrated voice. Naturally, I went to see what that was about.
At the bottom of the stairs, I heard Mom say to Keene, “I can’t find Fizzy’s bedclothes anywhere—I need to wash them.”
Keene shook his head, like that was just about the craziest thing he’d ever heard, and said, “I threw all that stuff away.”<
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“What? Where?” Mom said.
“Outside,” Keene said, “in the Dumpster.”
“Go get it, please,” Mom said with forced patience.
Keene shook his head again. “That stuff’s nasty, Cecily—you just don’t—”
“I’ll get it,” I said, interrupting him. I mean, they were my bedclothes and it was my puke on them.
Keene turned and gave me a look that I interpreted as, Thank you.
I nodded my head once.
I was about to close the door behind me when Keene said, “Hose that stuff off outside before you bring it into the house.”
I rolled my eyes—after I shut the door.
When I returned to my room, I could hear Mom and Keene talking downstairs—through the vent:
“We all have our little pet peeves, Keene—even me,” Mom said, “but can you name one of mine?”
“No,” Keene said.
I lay down on my belly and put my ear close to the vent.
“That’s right,” Mom said, “because I think of them as petty peeves. But if you really want to know, it bothers me when you leave your briefcase, car keys, mail, and sunglasses on the dining room table.”
“That’s where I’ve always put them,” Keene said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t know.”
“Like Fizzy didn’t know your pet peeve about floors until recently. It takes time to adopt new habits. Give her time. Remind her if you have to, but please don’t take her things.”
Keene didn’t say anything.
“You know,” Mom said, “once, I thought about picking up all your stuff off the dining room table and dumping it in the passenger seat of your car—I know how particular you are about your car. But then I thought about how lucky I am to have you, and your things, here with me.”
Keene still didn’t say anything. What could he say? It’s not like he could say he was glad that me and my things were here—because he wasn’t, I knew. Mom must’ve known, too, because she didn’t say anything else either.
