Finding Someplace

by Denise Lewis Patrick

  “Reesie! Teresa!” Instead of going inside, Reesie stalked off. Halfway down the block, fresh snowflakes blew against her face, and she stopped. Slowly, she turned back.

  Should she pretend to be her old self, a “good girl,” just to get through the holidays? Daddy was coming, and Junior and … Orlando.

  She watched the snow, backlit by a streetlight, tumble to Earth with amazing perfection. Nobody had ever told her how blindingly bright the new clean snow could be, even at night. She had to admit that it made everything look beautiful. It was like a scene from a movie. Orlando would get a kick out of falling snow.

  Reesie shook her head and sighed, trudging back up the driveway. It was time for a serious conversation with her mother.

  “Mom? We need to talk.” Reesie’s voice sounded formal and stiff, even to her own ears, when she entered the kitchen. Somehow in the last few weeks she had stopped calling her mother Mama, the New Orleans way. Now she said Mom.

  “Jeannie, let me handle the stove,” Aunt Tish said, looking at Reesie curiously.

  “Don’t let it burn!” Reesie’s mother said, handing her sister the spoon. Aunt Tish bowed dramatically and made a face, but Reesie didn’t smile the way she usually would. She stepped into the dining room, where her mother was standing, her arms folded.

  “Mom, I’m sorry.”

  “For the detention, or for being rude in the car?” Mom raised her eyebrows.

  “Both, I guess.” Reesie took a deep breath. “When you said I should move on … I—I can’t!”

  “Reesie—” Mom’s face softened, and she dropped her arms. Reesie took a step back in case her mother was about to hug her. She couldn’t take that, not yet.

  “I can’t move on, ’cause I feel like I’m waiting on something! I don’t know how to explain it. All this time, since Katrina, I’ve been waiting. Waiting to sketch and sew again. Waiting to see if this thing with Orlando is anything.…”

  “Orlando?” Mom pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Reesie shook her head. It wasn’t Orlando that she wanted to talk about right now.

  “Waiting for you and Daddy to be in one house again!”

  “Well, Reesie that’s—that’s complicated,” Mom said quietly.

  “No, I know it’s my fault!” Reesie blurted out. Her voice shook. “I heard you and Daddy arguing. He could have stopped working, but because of me, he stayed! And—and now you’re going to break up, and—”

  “Reesie! That wasn’t really about you, and that is not your fault. We’re not—”

  “It is! And it’s my fault that everything is screwed up with fixing our house, because I had all the insurance papers and stuff in my backpack, and I let that man take it! And—” Reesie was crying, her mother was crying.

  “Stop.” Mom came closer. “Stop, now. I wish you’d told me this before, honey. None of this, none of it, is on you.”

  “I just want to go back to New Orleans, to my real life again!” Reesie mumbled into her mother’s shoulder. “Is that so wrong?”

  “No, baby. It’s not wrong.” Mom rubbed Reesie’s back the way she used to when Reesie had a stomachache or a falling out with Ayanna. Reesie was surprised that it still made her feel calmer.

  “Why don’t we both try really hard to make this a right Christmas, not just a white one, huh?”

  “Okay.” Reesie sniffed and wiped her wet face. The dining room’s swinging door creaked, and Reesie managed to giggle through her tears. Aunt Tish had been listening in on everything.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DECEMBER 23, 2005

  Reesie was actually tingling all over, and it wasn’t from the fitted wool turtleneck she wore layered under a denim jumper and her brother’s old hoodie. Finally the last day of classes before the holidays had come. Aunt Tish had picked her up from school. Now they were zooming on the Garden State Parkway toward Newark, toward the train station. In just about forty-five minutes, she would see Daddy.

  “So, are you going to just burst?” Aunt Tish glanced over at her as she turned down the radio Christmas carols.

  Reesie laughed a little, because she could barely sit still.

  “Maybe.” She stared through the windshield of the BMW, unable to tell her aunt how anxious she was about her father’s visit. She blinked at the blur of cars and green parkway signs as they sped along, and her mind raced with them.

  Would Daddy be disappointed that her grades hadn’t really improved? And what would he say when he found out that her new sketchbook had just one lonely drawing in it? The design wasn’t very good, either. Reesie wondered about bigger things too. Was he coming to take them home?

  She wiggled in the warm seat.

  At least she and her mom were getting along. They understood each other better since that night in the dining room, and Reesie knew she didn’t have to pretend anymore that she wasn’t hurting and confused inside. Maybe she could learn to move on. She sighed and smiled at a Christmas tree outside a gas station decorated with hubcaps and blinking colored lights.

  “Well, I tell you…,” Aunt Tish was saying. “Your mood sure has changed since the other day. You finally sleeping all night, huh?”

  “Yes, and I had a regular dream too—not a nightmare. It was about Miss Simon’s book.” Her voice trailed off.

  “What book?”

  “Well, Miss Martine used to be this big writer. She had a book published a long, long time ago, called Woman Everlasting. I—I lost it in the flood.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know she was a writer.” Aunt Tish glanced over at her. “Was she any good?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to read it,” Reesie said.

  “That’s a shame! Maybe you can find a copy at the Strand bookstore in New York. I’ll take you over there.”

  “Great! Thanks.”

  Aunt Tish paused for a few minutes, and Reesie knew there was going to be a shift in conversation. Aunt Tish was never shy about digging into somebody’s business.

  “I’m really glad you had a heart-to-heart with your mother. She’s worried about you. This whole thing has been hard on her.”

  Reesie looked sideways at her aunt. All this time she’d been focused on what Reesie went through in New Orleans. She had never even thought about what her mother must have gone through, not knowing if her daughter and husband were even alive. It must have been terrible for her. And then there was the crazy, no-turning-back fight with Daddy, on top of losing her job and her house. She was a thousand miles away from her son, too, and Reesie’s recent attitude issues here at the Montclair middle school probably hadn’t made things any easier.

  Her mother was not only Mom; she was Jeannie Boone, a flesh-and-blood woman. Reesie had never thought about that before. Her mother was also doing her best to deal with an experience that had completely turned her life upside down. Mom deserved better, especially from her only daughter. Maybe the best present Reesie could give her mother this Christmas would be to try a little bit harder—at just about everything.

  Aunt Tish pulled the Beamer into the parking lot, and Reesie shivered as she stepped outside. They hurried across the street and into Newark’s Penn Station.

  “Oh, look!” Aunt Tish pointed up at the huge display of train arrivals, clicking and rolling up new times and tracks. There it was: CRESCENT FROM NEW ORLEANS, ARRIVING, TRACK 5.

  Reesie ran, weaving between holiday travelers loaded down with suitcases and crying babies. She flung open the glass door and bounded up the stairs, leaving Aunt Tish behind. The train threw off heat on the chilly platform and belched out steam as it glided to a complete stop.

  Reesie rocked from one foot to the other, watching nervously as the doors slid open. Grandmothers and college students streamed out. Cranky kids stumbled forth with lumpy pillows under their arms. A tiny dark-haired woman squealed and rushed to hug a soldier and his huge duffel, both in camouflage.

  “Well, Miss Reesie Bear Boone! Look at you!”

  Reesie spun toward that raspy voice. Ther
e he was!

  “Daddy!” Her father’s strong arms were around her at once, and he swung her completely up off the ground, just like he had when he’d found her at the Superdome.

  “I can’t believe it’s you, for real!” Reesie squeezed her father’s arm, breathing in his familiar musk aftershave.

  “Oh, so Dad gets all the props, and the brother who showed you how to ride a bike is just iced out?”

  Junior was loping toward them, all arms and legs like their father, with the same round walnut-brown face as their mother. He was loaded down with a computer bag, backpack, and too many shopping bags.

  “Junior! I thought you were taking the bus!” Reesie reached out, without letting her father go, to grab Junior’s collar. She couldn’t believe she was actually hugging both of them, live and in person.

  “Oh, look, Dad! Little Bear is gonna cry!” Junior said in his most annoying older-brother teasing voice.

  “Oh, shut up!” Reesie punched him in the shoulder.

  “Business as usual.” Daddy shook his head, watching them. Reesie saw the pride in his eyes. She cut hers at Junior.

  “Just ’cause you’re in college…,” she muttered, taking his computer bag and one of the shopping bags. It was amazingly heavy. She glanced down.

  “Don’t you dare look, nosy!” Junior adjusted to his lighter load.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Reesie said, “if you carried all this on, how much stuff did you check?”

  “You’re dipping into Santa Claus’s eggnog now, Reesie. What’s your mama doing, anyway? Parking in New York?”

  Reesie fell off her cloud nine with a thump. He expected Mom to meet him at the station? Although her mother had reassured Reesie that things were better between them, this looked bad, very bad. She glanced at Junior, who mouthed, Where is she?

  “Lloyd Boone!” Aunt Tish sang out his name dramatically, so that even strangers stopped to look. “How in the world are you, brother-in-law?” She swept past Reesie and took her father’s arm. “Jeannie is so caught up in making things just right for you that I volunteered to trek down here. Baggage pickup is this way. How are things coming along in the Big Easy?”

  “Still trying to keep the peace and still digging ourselves out of Mississippi River mud,” Daddy said. Aunt Tish followed immediately with another question, and for the moment New Orleans was their only topic.

  “Is Mom avoiding him on purpose?” Junior whispered.

  Reesie tried to sound positive. “I really thought she was finishing up a double shift. Maybe she and Aunt Tish are cooking something up!”

  “I hope it’s red beans and rice. Dining hall food is the worst, and Dad is not too swift at the stove.”

  Reesie elbowed him, slowing down as she watched her father and Aunt Tish round a corner underneath a BAGGAGE CLAIM sign.

  “What’s it like at his apartment?” she asked. There had been so much damage at their house that her father couldn’t live in it.

  “Well, it’s real small, and—”

  “Wait. Never mind that. You can tell me later. What does it feel like being at the house now? You said you’ve been going on weekends to help clean up, so…”

  Junior shook his head slowly. “Honestly?”

  “Honestly.”

  “There’s nothing left, Reesie.”

  He had to be kidding, making some kind of sick brother joke. “You mean stuff got wrecked,” Reesie said. “I saw what the wind did—”

  “Water is the most dangerous element in the universe, girl. It took a week for all the floodwater to go down, and it took a while after that for Dad to get back to the house. He said the watermark was at the ceiling. Everything made from wood was soft. Soft! The carpets were already mildewy, and mold was growing on the kitchen walls.”

  Reesie gasped and wrinkled her nose. “That’s like poison,” she said.

  “Yeah. We had to wear heavy-duty masks and some kind of hazmat suits to get rid of all our furniture and appliances and clothes.”

  “Clothes?” She’d thought—hoped—that some things might have been saved.

  He looked sincerely sympathetic. “Dad pulled down a section of Sheetrock last week when I came down, and there was crazy mold inside the walls, too.”

  A faint “oh” was Reesie’s only response.

  “I don’t see how we can ever go back. Dad’s in denial about it, but we’d have to tear that thing down and build it back again!”

  “Don’t call our house ‘that thing’!” she said. “I mean, I know it sounds bad.”

  “Yeah. It’s bad.”

  “You two coming, or you gonna stand there all day catching up?”

  Daddy and Aunt Tish were halfway to the exit. Reesie shifted the heavy bag to her other hand. This holiday was going to be much tougher than she’d imagined.

  Chapter Nineteen

  During the ride to the house, they stayed away from New Orleans talk, with the attention mostly on Junior’s college life: Daddy bragged on his record-breaking backstroke, Aunt Tish asked about girlfriends. Junior tried, very obviously, Reesie thought, to avoid the word grades. She would normally have been cracking up over making him squirm, but her mind was on other things. What would happen when her parents were finally in the same room?

  They slammed out of the car, and Aunt Tish popped the trunk before she crunched across the snow to open the kitchen door. The spicy aroma of red beans and sausage wafted out on the warm air. Reesie relaxed, even as she dragged Junior’s heavy duffel bag. Mom was home, all right, and she’d been cooking Daddy’s favorites. That was a good sign.

  While Junior muttered about his load, Reesie followed her father inside without taking her eyes off him. He strode past the pots steaming on the stove, moving straight through the open dining room door. Reesie stopped short.

  Her father had spotted her mother in the next room. Aunt Tish, who’d been standing beside her sister, instantly vanished.

  “Missed you at the station,” Daddy said, easing his arms around their mother’s waist and nuzzling his chin into her neck. He whispered something else to her.

  “Lloyd.” She didn’t say it with a laugh, or even with much love, but her body seemed to go limp against him. Then she turned around and kissed him.

  Junior crashed into Reesie’s back. They were both momentarily paralyzed by what they were watching.

  “Yes!” Reesie pumped her fist and turned to high-five her brother. Junior didn’t look so cheerful.

  Reesie’s smile faded, and she let the swinging door close. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  Junior shrugged. “I’m just saying…” He opened the fridge and stood there, eyeball-shopping like he was in the grocery store freezer aisle.

  “What? And get out of Aunt Tish’s refrigerator!”

  “I’m not so sure Mom and Dad are going to just make up and play nice. Dad probably won’t admit this, but he feels like Mom abandoned him, and I kinda think he’s right.”

  “What?” Reesie wanted to call him wrong, but she couldn’t get the words out.

  “Life is not a movie,” Junior said, his back to her. “In real life, stuff hits the fan, a man wants his lady to be there for him, and she ups and leaves. Now, in the movie version, some slow music would play and they’d meet up by accident and hook up again like nobody was hurting. Girl, everybody in New Orleans was hurting! I think Mom should’ve hung in.”

  “Are you serious?” she said angrily. “You weren’t even there, you don’t know—” She caught herself before she added, “They were fighting over me!” Not the time, she told herself. Not the time.

  “Listen, don’t jump all over me. You want me to say that I predict Dad and Mom will be like newlyweds by the time that ball drops on New Year’s Eve? Okay. Your fantasy.” He turned to see his sister’s unhappy expression, and he softened his tone. “I don’t mean that they’ve stopped loving, but there is some deep anger they gotta work out.”

  Reesie said nothing. Was Junior right? Had her mother aband
oned her father? Was the thing between them not about her, or his job, at all? She slipped back to inch open the dining room door, not knowing what to expect.

  Their parents were sitting together on the sofa, their heads together as they spoke in low voices. That didn’t look like deep anger. They were talking, and it had to mean something. She didn’t care what Junior’s two cents were.

  Before Reesie could ease away, Daddy looked directly up at her.

  “Come on in, Reesie. We won’t bite you—or each other,” he said, waving her in with one arm and keeping the other around Mom’s shoulders.

  Reesie’s heart began to beat fast. Then her mother patted a spot on the sofa and smiled, looking younger somehow.

  “Really, it’s okay,” she said. They seemed so much the way they used to be, so close to their hugging, kissing displays of affection that embarrassed Reesie and Junior and entertained their friends. So close.

  Reesie walked slowly past the brass reindeer marching through tinsel across Aunt Tish’s dining room mantel. She blinked as the sparkling ball decorations on the Christmas tree shook and shimmered, bouncing points of light into the huge mirror between the front windows. Everything was reflected there: her parents’ bodies so close that they formed one shape; Reesie’s own expression of anxious hope. She looked away.

  “We want to talk,” her mother said. Reesie sat down beside her.

  “Hey, Lloyd Edward Boone Jr.!” Daddy called loudly.

  Junior appeared holding a double-decker sandwich with both hands.

  “Mmmm?” He’d taken a bite out of it.

  “Get in here. Your mother and I have something to say!”

  Junior sauntered in, draped himself over an upholstered armchair, and then took one look at his father and slid to the floor.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled. “S’up?”

  Reesie wanted to throw something at him. After the conversation they’d just had in the kitchen, he couldn’t imagine what was up?