“I have an idea,” I said. “But I just need some more time to think.”
“Take all the time you need,” Dad said, unbuttoning his jacket. “I’m going to shower this cayenne off me before my skin catches fire.”
By the time Dad pulled the bathroom door closed, before he’d even turned on the water, I’d already gotten settled in my room and closed the curtain tightly shut. Now’s my chance to call Mom, a little voice inside me said, again and again. But the bathroom was right next to my space, and I knew there was a good chance Dad would hear me talking through the thin wall. Besides, the little voice inside me was near drowned out by a single, much louder word that was fast filling my whole self. Sway. The word itself had stars and paisleys bursting off of it in my brain. So many sparks and colors that I couldn’t even contain. It felt noodle-worthy. But bigger than could be noodled on some old journal page. And bigger than colored pencils. Sway felt permanent-noodle-worthy.
Assuring myself that there would be plenty of time to call Mom later when Dad was asleep, I went to work. Despite feeling certain that Dad wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of permanent marker on the RV wall, I simply had to do something with the fullness I felt inside. So, before the courage could escape me, I pulled the brand-new pack of Sharpies from my backpack, lit my cantern, and hung it from the window latch with my red string. Then, while lifting the Eiffel Tower poster with my left hand, I began to noodle with my right. First, and across the top, went the outline of the word SWAY in black, and then came all manner of colored squiggles and stars and lightnings bursting off of it. Then I filled in the S, the W, the A, and the Y with stripes and dots and jagged patterns of red, pink, yellow, turquoise, and orange.
When the Sharpie fumes started to give me a little headache, I leaned back and checked out my work, thrilled that it was a perfect mirror of the bright, wiggly way I felt inside. Sway had just become my first permanent noodle ever, and Sway was a really good perm. In fact, it was so good, I made plans for what would go underneath the word on the wall. I could almost see it there already.…A field of soap bubbles with a magnificent Castanea dentata tree in the middle. One with great reaching branches and a fat tire swing. Of course, with me dangling off it and dragging my wavy hair through the suds.
That’s as far as I’d gotten when Dad spoke up and near scared me to death.
“Hey, Cass,” he said, his voice alarmingly close to me and my secret project.
I capped up my marker and pressed the Eiffel Tower poster down over my noodling fast as I could, just in time for my shiny clean dad to pull back my curtain. I expected him to ask me what in the world put such a look of being busted across my face, but instead he reached in and handed something over that only kept the excitement flowing. It was the brown suitcase.
“I thought spending some time with the collection might help you make your decision.” He handed the case so close, the gold MBM glowed in the flicker of my can-tern. “Here. Take all the time you need,” he said. “I left the key in the lock for you.”
I couldn’t have felt more trusted than I did at that moment. It was like he’d just asked me to drive.
“For real?” I said.
“For real,” said Dad. “Just so long as you handle with care.”
I took the case from him slow and easy, to keep it from jiggling, and laid it gently on my bed.
“You can refer to the soap list in there and look up some of the names in the encyclopedias if you need to,” Dad said, pulling an armload of volumes down for me. “And just imagine all the possibilities those slivers hold for me and you.”
And that I did. In fact, the thoughts of those possibilities piled high as I unpacked the soaps from the suitcase one by one. First, I laid the little pastel ovals across my bed, from biggest to smallest. Then I arranged them by colors: greens, blues, pale yellows, goldens, swirlies, creamish-whites, and white-whites. Then alphabetically. After all, this was not a task to be taken lightly. If there was one thing that watching McClean in action had taught me about Sway, it was that it required some skill and thought to unleash. So, looking back and forth from soap to list to encyclopedia, I set my mind on finding the one most likely to get my family back together, and back together fast. Tough as the decision was, just thinking about its potential made me feel like I’d just landed on the middle of a trampoline and bounced the up-est of ups, like an up that might never be changed back into a down.
It took me two hours to find just what I needed, but once it was decided, I couldn’t wait to tell Dad. I jerked my curtain back quick, shaking a million more pieces of glitter onto the floor. Dad sat squished down into the couch, grinning at me like he’d been expecting my entrance.
“Guess what,” I said, holding my closed fist out toward him.
“You chose a sliver,” he said.
“I chose a couple.”
I sat next to him and set the two soaps side by side on the coffee table.
“I’ve made you a believer,” Dad said, looking all like his gladness might spring a leak. “So I’m dying to know. What’d you pick?”
“Well first, I’ve chosen this M T one. That stands for Mother Teresa.”
“Mother Teresa!” Dad said. “Helper of thousands of poor and sick people. What an honorable choice, Cass.
“Now, tell me about this J P one,” he said.
“That one is Juan Ponce de León.”
“Oooh, a fine Spanish explorer,” said Dad. “So which one will you use first?”
“Well, the thing is…”
My words circled around and around in my head like a dog looking for a comfy spot. And then I finally just came out with it.
“They’re not for me.”
“Really?” said Dad. “Then who are they for?”
“Well, I read that when Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize, someone asked her what people could do to make world peace, and she answered, ‘Go home and love your family.’
“So I thought we could give that one to Mom,” I said. “You know, to help her do the right thing.”
“Cass—”
I didn’t even give him the chance to argue. “And then that leaves the Juan Ponce de León one for you,” I said super quick.
“And why is that?” Dad asked.
“Because he discovered Florida.”
After that, there was a silence dead as beef jerky in The Roast. Dad grabbed a Popular Mechanics from the top of the magazine stack and flipped through it so fast, he would have to be the speed-reading champion of the world to even catch a word.
I felt a little burgle in my belly. “I was just thinking that maybe we could use the power of Sway to fix us,” I said.
I pulled hard at both my eyebrows while Dad just flipped and flipped and flipped more pages. Despite the fanned air coming off that magazine, my ears got so hot and itchy I could hardly stand it. How in the world could he be willing to share Sway with a bunch of strangers, but not with his own wife?
“Why can’t we talk to her?” I said, glaring holes through him. “I mean really why.”
“Plain and simple.” Dad rolled his magazine tighter and tighter. “Even if we did, she wouldn’t listen.”
“But I think you’re wrong,” I said. “I think she would listen because we’ve got good stuff to say. I think she would think Sway is the neatest thing ever.”
“If only that were so, Cass.”
“Why can’t it be so? Maybe she’d even be so excited about it she’d come right on home just to be a part of this summer. A part of us, together. Just like you wanted…or at least like you said you wanted.”
Dad looked at me like I’d spit on him.
“Cass, your mom is going to have to decide to come back on her own, okay?” he said. “End of discussion.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then let’s just call her and give her a reason to. Let’s tell her all this. Let’s tell her about Sway.”
I thought of admitting we had refill minutes just waiting to be freed from the beauty b
ox, but he instantly made me glad I didn’t.
“There are things you don’t understand,” Dad said. “Things that have nothing to do with me and you.”
“Things you don’t even want to fix,” I said bitterly.
Dad slowly shook his head. “Cass, some words have been said and some things have been done that make it very hard for me to want to share this summer with your mom. And besides, didn’t I say end of discussion?”
Even more burgle inside.
“I heard all that,” I said. “But I guess I thought that maybe, just maybe, your M. B. could stand for Mercy Bo-koops.”
Dad stopped mid-sigh.
“You know,” I said. “As in lots of forgiveness.”
“Okay, enough.” He dug a packet of headache powder from his duffel. “I’ll think about it.”
My burgle calmed a bit. At least thinking about it was a start. “Good,” I said. “Then tomorrow we can—”
“Cass, please. Enough, okay?”
Suddenly, it felt like there was this imaginary long, stretchy accordion part of The Roast, fast pulling Dad and me apart. Then he flopped down on the couch and rolled over to face the back of it, leaving me just standing there like a doofus, like I’d been hung up on, but in a worse way—in an in-person way. Banishing me and my disappointment to hang out together on our end of the RV.
“Fine,” I said to the back of his head. “I’m going to bed.”
I’d had just about enough of his stubbornness, and besides, I had a certain refill card and phone to introduce to each other. If Dad wasn’t going to tell Mom about Sway right away, then I would definitely have to take matters into my own hands.
End of discussion.
I thought it would be half past never when Dad quit tossing and turning on the couch that night, so I sat on my bed, super still and quiet, in order to avoid hindering his sleep. It was ridiculously late, an hour of the night I’d hardly ever seen, but I was too stirred up to be tired. I peeked from behind the left side of my curtain to make sure Dad was asleep, and saw him sprawled across the sofa bed with his mouth hanging open, the Popular Mechanics covering his eyes, and one leg thrown over the back of the couch. The empty headache powder packet lay on the pillow next to him.
From the pink beauty box, I got both the cell phone and the refill card and held the card up to the light of the cantern to read the instructions on the back. They were easy enough to follow, and before I knew it, I was ready to press the MOM button. And when I did, it felt as promising and exciting as flipping the switch to launch a spaceship.
For the longest time there was no sound at all, and then a muffled ringing. And another ring. And then a man’s voice.
“Hello?”
My spirits sank even as my heart raced. Could this be Ken? The connection had a crackle to it, like I was talking to someone on the spaceship I’d just launched.
“May I please speak to Toodi?” I said.
The man didn’t say a word. I didn’t know much about Ken or what Ken sounded like, but being rude sure did seem like a Ken thing to do.
“Toodi Bleu Nordenhauer,” I said a little louder, stirring Dad a bit in his sleep. My heart beat even faster.
“She’s not available,” the man said. “Can I take a message?”
“Um, yeah, please tell her Cass called, and I have something really huge to tell her about.”
“Sure thing, Cass,” he said. His voice sounded almost smug, like he knew good and well what he’d stolen from me, and had no intention of giving it back.
“Something really magic,” I said. I sure wasn’t going to share anything more about this magic with Ken.
“Okay,” he said, like it didn’t even occur to him to ask about it.
“And that I’m going to mail her a present.”
“Huge and magic and present,” he said. “Will do.”
Then he hung up. And it was a good thing for him. He probably sensed that the next words out of my mouth would be I know exactly who you are and what you’ve done, and you better give back my mom soon.
While I waited for Mom to call, I found the rhubarb man postcard, tore two pieces of tape from off the lint roller, and stuck the M T sliver good and tight on there. In the small bit of space left behind, I wrote:
Dear Mom,
Dad and I both really, really miss you. Here’s a little present from our trip.
Love, Cass
I fancified the space around the soap with as much teensy noodling as would fit, making a squiggly frame all around. Then I dug the gum wrapper from the can it! box and copied Ken’s address on the card. Ambrette’s stamp was the final addition.
If I hadn’t become so exhausted from our roller coaster of a day, it might have bothered me more that Mom never did call back that night. Cell phones are like bricks with buttons, she had once told me when I asked why she didn’t call more often from rescue sites. She said they were as unreliable as the weather report.
I tucked the phone back into the beauty box for the night, my only regret being that I’d blown one of my minutes on Ken, who probably didn’t even bother to write down my message, anyway. Resolving to call again the next day, I blew out the candle in my cantern and traced my finger along the word HOPE on the side of it until I drifted off to sleep.
When morning came, most of my toes were hopelessly tangled in my afghan, which made it tough to lift my poster and see if my supremo noodling had all been a dream. But the noodling was there, better than I even remembered, and looking at that word SWAY, in all its permanent vibrance, was like my own little private sunrise.
My phone call had so distracted me the night before that I’d slept in all my clothes, so I shuffled my way straight to the passenger seat, dragging the afghan behind me. Dad was already driving, somewhat slumpy and gazing baggy-eyed at the traffic in front of us.
“The headache medicine was full of caffeine,” he said. “Kicked in at about two a.m. So I just thought I’d do some driving.”
“Driving and thinking?” I said, hoping that thought might be Sway plus Nordenhauers equals family reunion.
“Driving and thinking,” said Dad.
In a snitty tone that on any other day would have gotten me in trouble, I said, “Well then, while you drive and think, I’ll look for a shoe, okay?”
I grabbed the remains of a candy bar from the console and took a bite. Shoe-searching was a great excuse for not talking.
“All right,” Dad said, but his pinched scowl made him look all wrong.
The breaks in the highway made rhythmic da-dunks under The Roast, and Dad looked frighteningly close to falling asleep. He cranked the air conditioner so high, I had to bunch the afghan around me all the way up to my nose.
It seemed every billboard we passed was an ad for cave-exploring or discount fudge.
“Are we still in Arkansas?” I asked.
“Not anymore. We’ve crossed over into the Missouri Bootheel.”
The Roast groaned its way up a steep mountainside.
“Mom’s Missouri?” I asked.
But of course Dad didn’t answer.
I left him to his grump and got back to enjoying the sights, which included a muddy mountainside with old white appliances stuck down in it like marshmallows in hot chocolate, goats eating out of an old bathtub, and a coon dog cemetery sign that I thought said corn dog cemetery. I tried to memorize it all, wondering if Ken had left enough minutes on the phone for me to tell everything to Mom and still give her time to say how much she’d missed me.
“Just what I was hunting for,” Dad said as we passed a giant fake moose with giant fake wings on his back, on the lot of a tractor dealership.
“You were hunting for a moose with wings?” I asked.
Dad put on his blinker.
“No,” he said. “This town. I was so tired, I almost passed it right up.”
“But we didn’t find a shoe,” I reminded him. “And the Missouri Bootheel doesn’t count.”
“We’re not working he
re,” said Dad. “I just want us to drive through.”
“How come?”
“Look where we are,” said Dad, as we passed a big welcome to gwynette sign.
“Hey! Is this where Mom was?” I said. “Where they had the big flood?”
Dad didn’t seem a tenth as excited about the discovery as me. “And the soggy houses? And the boat rescues? And the steeple lady?” I added. Each and every detail I remembered made me feel tingly, like Mom was close by.
“Take a good look around,” said Dad, driving us slowly through the town square like we were a one-vehicle parade. The city looked old, but surprisingly well preserved and clean. I immediately felt connected with it, wondering if any of the people going in and out of the hardware store or the library or the grocery still remembered Toodi Bleu. Was somebody talking about her over lunch at that Main Street Café? Maybe already planning a statue in her honor?
As Dad pulled us into the parking lot of a big white church at the top of a hill, I hoped that all that thinking he’d done the night before might have kindled some Toodi-forgiveness inside him. Before he could even stop, I was unbuckling myself. He parked The Roast far from the church building, in a spot where we could see most of Gwynette laid out before us.
“So how do you feel about it?” he said.
“The town?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I feel proud,” I said. “Of Mom. It makes me want to talk to some of the people. To see if they remember her.”
“That’s the thing, Cass. I’m afraid none of these people will remember her.”
“But this is where she was, right?”
“This is where she said she was,” he said.
With that, my happy thoughts skidded to a stop. “What do you mean?”
“Cass, do you see any signs of flood damage?”
“Um, I don’t know what flood damage looks like.”
“Like water stains on buildings, muddied yards, flooded-out cars.”
I scanned and rescanned, but the wettest thing I saw was a birdbath on the lawn.
“No, not really.”
Sway Page 17
