Of course, she can’t write that. She writes “Happy Holidays Barbie” instead and knows that most wishes, anyways, don’t come true.
* * *
December 9th. The phone rings. It’s early morning, right before school, and everyone’s in a panic to get things done—Tiny to find some pants, Bubbles to find his math book, Charles his brain. Kat’s already left, because she gets a ride with Leah, her new choir friend. Rick calls from the top of the stairs, “Whoever’s ready in five can come with me!” Of course they’re scrambling because otherwise they’ll have to walk. And sure, it’s not ten feet of snow and below freezing in the San Bernardino Valley, but walking’s walking and they’d rather get a ride.
And then the phone rings, and Nenny’s closest to it so she picks it up.
“Hello?”
“Nenny. This is Keith. Can I speak with your mom?”
Keith is Kat and Charles’s uncle, Windsor’s brother. Nenny’s never met him, only heard about him—he lives in Berkeley and works at a science lab, his wife does ballet. He seems nice enough, so Nenny says, “Sure,” and calls upstairs. It doesn’t occur to her why he might be calling so early, or why he’s asking for Mom.
Something must occur to Mom, though, because she says, “Keith?” in a peculiar way, her chin tipped to the side, then says, “I’ll take it in my room.”
Nenny notices that she closes the door. In this house there are hardly ever phone calls behind closed doors.
* * *
December 9th. Phone rings. Bubbles is shouting, “Hurry up! Hurry up!” while books and rulers spill from his bag. His laces are untied, his zipper’s down. Nenny picks up the phone. “Nenny? It’s Keith.” Mom takes the call in her room. Mom shuts the door.
* * *
It’s 7:30 a.m. and the house is a shit show before school. Charles runs from room to room, looking for the cat, “Joe! Joey! Joe!”—why’s he looking for the cat?—and Bubbles opens and closes books, searching for his homework, and Kat’s shouting “See ya!” as she slams the front door, and Rick yells, “Three minutes!”
The phone rings, Nenny answers, Mom takes the call in her room, and Tiny shouts, “Oh no!” because he’s clogged the toilet again so there’s a scramble to find the plunger, and Charles finally has the cat but no shirt, and Bubbles says, “Put on a shirt, freak,” and Charles says, testily, “Don’t tell me what I am.” Before long, but who knows how long, they’re ready and waiting for Rick.
“Hey, what time is it?” someone says, because time got suddenly weird. They’re all sitting on the stairs.
The door opens then, and Rick comes out onto the landing. There are so many moments in any given day, and on December the 9th there’s got to be a moment, though hard to pinpoint, when Nenny realizes something is wrong.
“You guys go ahead and walk to school.” Is this the moment? Sitting on the stairs?
“We’ll be late,” Nenny protests, looking up at him.
“I’ll write a note.” Is this it? Does Rick write notes?
But no. Here it is. Here’s the moment right here: Nenny looks up and sees Mom, quickly passing behind the open bedroom door, and though her head’s bent, and she’s only visible for a flash, even from here Nenny can tell she’s crying.
* * *
“Maybe he’s in jail.”
“What?”
“I said maybe he’s in jail.”
“Who? Keith?”
“No, Michael Jackson.”
“Why would Keith be in jail?”
“I dunno. Maybe he killed someone.”
“Yeah, right.”
They’re walking to school, the clouds above like a sheet laid across the sky. Nenny’s got Rick’s note tucked in her pocket. It says, “Wallace/Sutter children late. Please excuse.”
“Keith is not in jail,” Charles says, with such authority that they believe him, though how could he know? He walks with his chin down, hands clutching his backpack straps. They’re not in a hurry by any means, but there’s something furrowed and determined about him, moving forward like a plow.
“Maybe someone died?” Bubbles says gently.
“Who?”
“Your Gramma Sadie, maybe?”
And Charles looks at him then with something indiscernible on his face, like trying to solve a puzzle when you haven’t got any clues. They’re all quiet for a moment because that’s a thing, that’s a possibility, for grandmas to die.
They move through the crackle of dead leaves. Other things occur to Nenny because other things always do: Keith has a rare form of cancer, his wife is being held for ransom, he was at the lab and acid splashed in his face, they lost all their money in a crazy bet and now they’ve got nowhere to live.
“Maybe their house burnt down,” she says and feels it as the worst possible thing, for their house to burn down.
“I doubt it,” Charles says, but he doesn’t look at her. He walks along, steadily, shoving his feet through leaves.
* * *
When they get to school, the secretary takes the note and says, “Hm,” like it’s forged or suspect, but gives them each a pass.
* * *
December 9, 1988: Enter your classroom with the secretary’s note. Hand it to Sister Timothy, who scowls. Go to your desk. Put your backpack at your feet. Arithmetic. You’re terrible at math. Your homework looks like a war zone. Pay whatever attention you can. Next, history. Egyptians preserved in elaborate tombs. Notice that Matty Souza is smiling in his seat. Smiling at you? Forget that someone might have died. See Charles on the way to lunch, his slouch, his vacant eyes. Remember again. Spend the rest of the day in a liquid, faltering haze.
* * *
When they get home, Mom and Rick are both there. Something is palpably wrong. Kat walks in, and whatever is in the room is thick, a terrible fog.
“What the hell is going on?”
* * *
December 9, 1988. What the hell is going on?
* * *
Mom takes Nenny and Tiny and Bubbles to Uncle Max’s house because Dad is still at work. They don’t ask questions, just pile into the car because Mom says to. Usually when Mom drives she’ll put on Queen’s Greatest Hits and everyone will sing along, but they know it’s not that kind of drive.
Out of nowhere, Tiny says, “I’m scared.” Everyone hears it, though it’s nearly a whisper. Outside, the last of the orange groves slides past as they drive into a low canyon where the gravel company is, the huge craters of their operations like wounds in the sand.
* * *
Tiny says, “I’m scared,” but what’s there to be scared of? They’re just driving with Mom. Except there’s no Queen and outside the ground has been blasted to bits, earth exploded just to reach more earth, and Mom blinks then, long and slow, and looks at Tiny in the rearview, then at Bubbles, then over at Nenny, that look, how slow.
* * *
Uncle Max is standing at the kitchen sink with a glass of wine at four in the afternoon. Chester is nowhere around, though Nuisance is, curled under a chair. They come in through the back door, and Uncle Max and Mom look at each other, how adults share looks, and he points to the living room, and Mom takes them there and closes the door.
* * *
The living room is carved from another era. Carpet as thick and white as a slain bear’s fur, furniture all dark and low and teak, the couch like a big hand.
* * *
Mom closes the door and helps them off with their coats. Quietly, Tiny begins to cry. Who knows why, but everyone knows why—the phone had rung, Uncle Keith, no Queen. Mom pulls her sleeve over her palm and wipes his face, and then she’s crying too. They sit on the couch that’s like a big hand and Mom tells them what they’ve been waiting to be told but could never have seen coming.
“Windsor was killed.”
Nenny was right. There was an awful thing.
This is it. This is the awful thing.
* * *
This is a true and terrible story. As with all things terrib
le and true, the details do not emerge at once, but leak slowly and painfully out over the course of many years.
Two days earlier, police found Windsor’s body in the back of her delivery van. She was naked, hog-tied, and had been shot through the back of her head. Authorities guessed that some addicts had seen a van marked MEDICAL SUPPLY, assumed there were drugs on board, and somehow coerced Windsor—who was always, Rick said, picking up hitchhikers and hippie kids—into giving them a ride. Presumably when they discovered their mistake—that “supply” was not pharmaceutical, but walkers and ACE wraps and bedpans—they panicked and killed her. Whoever they were, they were never caught.
The strange thing—the thing that takes this from terrible to confusing and bizarre—is that a week later, thirty miles away, on a bench at a bus shelter in Barstow, the police found Windsor’s clothes in a neat pile, as if they’d been folded with the tenderest of care.
* * *
When they get home from Max’s late that night, Charles is playing Super Mario in the den downstairs. They stand in the doorway because it’s clear he doesn’t want to talk, and anyway what would they say? Sorry about your mom. You can share ours now? They stand quietly and watch him while he lets himself be watched. Slowly the boys move into the room and stand behind him, then scoot forward and sit down, and without a word he hands them each a controller and, sound off, they play.
Upstairs, Kat is on her bed, crying. She’s on her back with her arms over her face, and when Nenny comes in, she looks up, her face streaked with tears.
“Did I hug her?” she says through hiccupped breaths.
Nenny moves close because she’s not sure she’s heard right.
“Did I hug her? Last time she was here? Did I hug her goodbye?”
Most people will tell you that lying is wrong, that lying is a sin. But some lies need to be told, some lies mean everything—and if anyone tells you they don’t, then let anyone be damned.
“Yes, you did. I saw you,” Nenny says and puts her hand on Kat’s back. “I was standing on the landing and you did.”
But of course, Nenny has no idea.
Fear #1: Disappeared
MOM, FOR whatever reason, doesn’t come home.
They never see her again.
House Two:
Citrus Grove
Decisions
JANUARY HITS hard and heavy as a fist. It’s colder, it seems, than it’s ever been. Mornings, frost spreads like fingers across panes of glass, and small puddles are capped with thin sheets of ice. Smudge pots smolder in the orange groves, which hasn’t happened, apparently, for years.
At Kensington, decisions have been made: Nenny and the boys will move in with Dad, just for a little while, just until things “settle down.” As if settling down’s what you do when someone’s been killed. The kids aren’t consulted on the matter—children never are. Adults will ask you what flavor ice cream you want, what show you want to watch, if you want your hair down or in braids, but they won’t consult you on the most basic questions of where and how you want to live.
Like this: they’d buried Windsor the week after Christmas, and Nenny and the boys did not go. No one asked them if they cared to. It was assumed that because Windsor was not their mother, that because they’d only met her a handful of times, they would not be affected by her death, as if being in the same family tree is the only way to feel if someone’s died. If there was a dusty church, they did not see it. If there was a moving eulogy, they had no idea. If Gabe came in drunk and Gramma Sadie collapsed on the floor and wailed because someone, some monster, had stolen her daughter’s life, there was no way for them to know. When Kat and Charles came home from the funeral and went silently into their separate rooms, Nenny and the boys were left to imagine what happened, which everyone knows only makes things worse.
Now a suitcase yawns open on the bed like a howling mouth, and Nenny has to pack for a weekend with no end. A suitcase and an interminable weekend and questions about what this means are all vast, gaping holes—no matter how hard you try, they cannot be filled.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Mom says later, somehow guessing at Nenny’s true thoughts: What happens now? What about Charles and Kat? “You’ll see each other on weekends and at school.”
As if that’s enough, as if that could ever be enough.
Citrus Grove
CITRUS GROVE apartment complex isn’t exactly a crap hole, but it’s far from luxurious. All the apartment doors are painted red, as if this eccentric splash of color could compensate for termites gnawing the walls or a swimming pool that’s never cleaned. The inhabitants are people like Dad, regular folks, teachers and public service workers and electricians, single moms and single dads and young families struggling to grab ahold of some kind of one-income respect, people too busy or bothered to swim. The superintendent’s name is Chuck Baldy, a name that describes better than any adjectives can.
Dad lives in 3B, a two-bedroom on the second floor that he struggles to keep tidy. Shelves bow heavy with the weight of his movies and books, his “memorabilia” spread around like shrapnel. He’s cleaned things up for the big change: where once there were button-downs slung like corpses over chairs, there’s now a laundry basket by the couch where errant socks and undershirts can rest in peace. He’s done the dishes, all of them, cleaned the clutter off the counters, and the paper-grading table has been cleared off and restored to its original purpose as a place to eat. He answers the door nervously when they knock, as if unsure how to proceed in his own apartment, with his own kids.
“They’re all set,” Mom says, indicating their bags. “Play clothes, uniforms…”
Dad nods vigorously, which is a weird way to nod given the circumstances. Suddenly, Tiny bursts into tears.
“Oh, sugar,” Mom sighs. She crouches and pulls him close. “You’re okay.”
“C’mon, now,” Dad says weakly. “You’re gonna have fun here.”
And Nenny thinks, He’s six, he’s not stupid. This is about being marooned—it’s not about fun. Every night for the past week, Kat has lain in her bed across from Nenny, a pillow pulled over her face, and cried. Nenny is nine years old. Everything she’s ever learned about anything (state capitals; planets; the difference between verbs and nouns; war exists and in war everyone kills everyone, stupid) is wholly inadequate and offers zero groundwork for what has come and for what lies ahead. With a shotgun and a coil of rope, someone has ripped to shreds the cloak between the world that is and the world that isn’t, and exposed not imagined fears—earthquakes and thieves and the ghosts of the Vietcong—but instead the cold, naked truth: the world is a terrible, ugly place, and here we are in it.
“Tell you what,” Dad says, putting his hand on Tiny’s shoulder. “I’ll call the super and see about cleaning the pool.”
By the Pool
BOOTS IS the kind of person you can talk with about anything. You don’t have to pretend you’re feeling something you aren’t, or aren’t feeling something you are. Boots knows something of the world because her grandfather shot himself, late last year. He’d been diagnosed with cancer and couldn’t bear to suffer what was to come. Her aunt found him on the porch.
“Oh my god,” Nenny says when Boots tells her. “What was…I mean, what—”
“His brains?” Boots finishes her thought. “His brains were everywhere. They had to build a new porch.”
The girls are sitting by the pool. Chuck Baldy, the superintendent, told Dad he’d fix it up two weeks ago, but it’s doubtful that will happen by summer. It’s still a decrepit swamp. Yellow algae floats faintly on the surface of the water. They swirl it back and forth with sticks.
“What’d she do?”
“Who?”
“Your aunt, when she found him.”
“Oh. My mom said she got sick, then called the police.”
“Got sick?”
“Threw up.”
“Oh.” It’s hard not to imagine the scene: an old man toppled over in a lawn chair, h
is legs frozen midair, blood and goo and brains, his daughter puking her guts out. Nenny thinks of the officer who found Windsor. He probably didn’t throw up because cops are used to that sort of thing. But then again, maybe he did.
“What about your grandma? Is she, like, okay?”
“Okay?” Boots stops to think, her swirling stick paused. “She’s not as fun anymore.”
Nenny doesn’t need her to explain. Here’s the thing that sets Boots apart from everyone, everywhere: other people, grown-ups, they lie straight to your face, pat your arm and say “It’ll be okay.” But not Boots. Boots’s dad left Boots and her mom when she was just four years old, so she knows a thing or two about a thing or two and does not beat around the bush and would never lie.
“It’s stupid,” Boots says after a pause.
“What’s stupid?”
“When someone dies.”
“Yeah,” Nenny says, and swirls her stick some more. Above, the awful stillness of a winter sky.
What Nuns Should Do
THE FIRST day back at school and everyone stares. Nenny and the boys have taken two weeks off to move and to readjust, and in that time the news of their tragedy has spread like a vapor through every classroom, down every hall. When Dad drops them off, a visible flutter moves through the crowd of students playing on the asphalt before the bell. They all turn and stare like something’s fallen. Finally, Sister Renata, Tiny’s nun, blows her whistle to put an end to whatever this is and to signal the start of class. Lines begin to form. Nenny watches as Renata kneels before Tiny and puts her hand on his shoulder and says something that Nenny can’t hear, but it must be something comforting and sweet, because that’s what nuns should do.
Every Other Weekend Page 11
