by Beth Vrabel
I pulled out my notebook and scribbled a few more notes about the Sycamore, Mayor Hank, Gretel, and Mr. Hamlin.
“No way.” Mom stood with her arms crossed in the kitchen, shaking her head at me and Tooter.
“But Mom!” I whined. “I need to find out more about town!”
“There is absolutely no way in the world I’m going to let you take Tooter out of this house. He’s grounded until this Sandi thing blows over.”
“Can I go by myself then?”
Mom tilted her head at me and stared me down, like I was a tomato she was checking for dents and bruises before putting in the grocery cart. “I’m not comfortable with that,” she said after a long pause.
“Well, what am I supposed to do then?” I crossed my arms, too, and sized her up the same way she had me. She usually was still sleeping when Tooter and I left for the library. But here she was, up and dressed. She almost looked like Seattle Mom, who, by the time I got up in the morning, already had exercised, drank a couple cups of coffee, and was clapping her hands to get us moving. Only this Mom didn’t remember to brush her hair and clearly could use another cup—or pot—of coffee.
Mom must’ve noticed me taking in her frizzy cotton candy hair because she ran her fingers through it a couple times while making hmming sounds like she was trying to figure out an answer to my question. To me, the answer was obvious: Let me go to the library.
Poor Tooter! He seemed so confused about whether we were going or not that he just kept trotting around the kitchen island in sad little circles. After about the twentieth rotation, I snapped, “Go lay down!” But he kept going, so I turned my back to him.
I pulled out my folded cane from my backpack. “I can manage by myself,” I said to Mom. Okay, I sort of snapped instead of said.
Mom’s hands stilled mid–hair combing. “You’ve been using your cane?” she asked. She knelt down so her face was just a few inches from mine and touched the white cane like it was a long-forgotten friend come to visit. A little reluctantly, I remembered how much she used to plead with me to use the cane and venture out a little more on my own when we lived in Seattle. I never had, though. I always had Eliza or another friend to go with me.
“Yeah.” I shrugged but my mouth was having a hard time not breaking into a proud smile as Mom nodded with approval. Her own mouth seemed to be struggling with something, too. It kept forming silent words and stopping.
Finally, she settled on, “Why do you need to go to the library so badly?”
I pulled out my reporter’s notebook from my still-open backpack. “I need to pull together all my notes and start writing my Sinkville Success Stories essay.”
Mom’s eyebrow arched. Okay, time for another confession. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t my reporter’s notebook. Remember that I found a stack of them in one of the unpacked boxes? I figured Mom wouldn’t mind since they weren’t being used, but I never actually asked her permission. She bit her lip but didn’t say anything about it.
“Well, I don’t see why you need to go to the library for that.” Mom walked over to the kitchen table, which was covered with half-folded laundry, some unopened mail, and a couple dirty breakfast dishes. She stretched out her arm and swiped all of it into the laundry basket on the floor. “We can tackle it right here.”
My mind snagged for a second on we. I had been doing so much on my own lately. But I dumped the backpack on the floor and took a seat at the table. I texted Kerica that it didn’t look like I’d be coming in that morning. Mom sighed, but not her usual I’m-so-tired-and-going-back-to-bed sigh. This was more of a thank-you sigh, if that makes any sense. I squeezed her hand when she sat down next to me and searched her face. For some reason, her eyes filled with tears, even though she was smiling and I really thought she was feeling happy instead of sad. “I’m sor—”
But I cut her off before she could finish apologizing. “I’ve got a bunch of success stories, but I also have this tree story and I can’t figure out how to pull it all together.”
Mom’s eyes dried as I told her my stories. After just about a half-hour of talking in circles—but now eating peanut butter by the spoonful while at it—Mom suddenly said, “Stop!”
“What?” My heart hammered. Did she think this was stupid? That I didn’t have a chance?
“I think we need to take a field trip.” She grinned and pulled her hair back with an elastic band. “Let’s go, Alice. Show me around Sinkville.”
Chapter Eleven
Before we left, Mom grabbed her camera bag. She never was famous for her photography, but she had an awesome camera. A photographer she used to travel with sold her the camera when he upgraded to a newer model. It’s the kind that has a huge telescopic lens. Seeing it, I had this weird déjà vu moment where I heard the fluttering of quick clicks as I toddled around our old kitchen.
Mom pulled the camera out of the bag and wiped off some of the dust with an old towel. She held the camera up to her eye and clicked a few times, then aimed it at me. “Smile, Sunshine!” She pressed the button a few times. “We need some images of the reporter in action.”
She was the one smiling as we stepped outside, pulling sunhats onto our heads, but it quickly turned into a grimace. “Ugh! That smell! It hits me every time we leave the house.”
“What smell?” I asked, clicking the cane down the sidewalk toward the lake.
Just like I had hoped, Mr. Hamlin was sitting on the dock whittling as we approached. “Hey there, Gnome Girl,” he drawled as I skipped up the wooden planks toward him.
“Alice! Be careful!” Mom shouted. The planks were a little crooked, and I guess skipping up or down them when your eyes move back and forth all the time and you aren’t exactly a good swimmer isn’t the brightest thing in the world to do, but I was having a skippy sort of day.
“Ah, you’ve brought a friend today,” said Mr. Hamlin, rising slowly out of his lawn chair.
He and Mom shook hands and introduced themselves like adults while I picked up the work-in-progress from Mr. Hamlin’s chair. It looked pretty much like a picked over piece of wood. Little chunks were missing from a couple sides and he had cut it so it was more like a triangle than a square.
“What’s it going to be?” I asked as he finally settled back into his creaky chair.
“Not sure yet,” he answered. “Fingers haven’t decided.”
I handed it to him and he went back to work, pecking away at the wood. It made a steady scraping sound. Combined with the laps of water against the dock, it made sad background music as I told Mom the story of Mr. Hamlin’s drowned house. Mom, who had been snapping shots of the lake, turned her camera toward Mr. Hamlin as I got to the part about Sarah wanting to be a farmer and how she was going to college next year even though she was only a year older than James.
I didn’t have to see to know that Mr. Hamlin was smiling. I could tell by how Mom leaned in and clicked the shutter a bunch more times. She handed me the camera and I squinted into the little square display of the picture. I had to hold it about a half-inch from my eye and shade it with my hands, but I could see the soft little grin on Mr. Hamlin’s weathered face.
“Well, we’ve got more of Sinkville to check out,” I told Mr. Hamlin a few minutes later. He nodded and sort of grunted but didn’t look up from the piece of wood.
I heard him mutter, “Come on now, whatcha gonna be?” to the wood as we walked back across the dock toward land.
“That was kind of a sad story,” Mom murmured. She twisted her neck back and forth like she was shaking off muscle pain. I sighed through my nose. Here’s where it was going to end, this little glimpse of my old mom. Here’s where she’d tell me she was tired and we needed to go home. Stupid, stupid, stupid of me to start off with a flooded house story. I felt like slapping myself on the forehead. She was depressed! Depressed. And the first day she was ready to see Sinkville, I tell her all about a man watching his house drown.
Sure, I focused on how it led to Mr. Hamlin’s son going t
o college and how proud he was about that. But Mom would focus on the sad part, I just knew it.
“All right,” Mom said with a sigh. Here would come the “let’s go home.” But instead she said, “Where to now?”
“You mean it?” I squealed. Like, seriously squealed. It was as if she asked me if I wanted a chocolate bar or a new puppy.
Mom laughed. “You tell me, kiddo.” She adjusted the camera strap around her neck. “This is your project. I’m game to keep going if you are.”
I started to say, “Are you sure?” but bit it back. I thought for a second instead. I wanted part of my essay to focus on how Mayor Hank supported civil rights through the Williams Diner. Both he and Gretel would be found at the diner, but given that it was where Sandi and her mom had been such jerks to us the night before, it probably wouldn’t be the best place to go. I was kind of toying around with making Mr. Hamlin’s granddaughter a story all of its own—the way she benefited from the lake but wants to go back to farming—but I figured wherever we found Sarah, we’d find James . . . and James probably didn’t want his mom to show up wherever his crush was. So that left one place. The Sycamore.
I squinted at Mom, who was pulling some spray sunscreen out of her bag and shaking it, getting ready to squirt it all over my arms. This was a very, very Mom thing to do. As in, regular Mom. Seattle Mom.
“The Sycamore,” I said.
“The sycamore,” Mom repeated. She didn’t say it with a capital “S,” I could tell. But I knew she would soon.
We stopped by the library to use the restroom and to renew Mom’s books, and, of course, say hi to Kerica and Mrs. Morris. While there, Mom asked for the quickest way to get to the Sinkville Sycamore. Mrs. Dexter, in her cloud of lavender, didn’t shout the directions out as loudly as she would’ve if it were just me. But she did cross her arms and glare down her long, shiny nose at me.
“One more thing,” she said as we turned to go. “I’ve heard that . . . that . . . dog of yours is just a regular dog.”
Mom’s cheeks flushed. “Yes, I’m sorry about that. If I had any idea that was happening, I would’ve—”
With a wave of her arm and another punch of lavender in the face, Mrs. Dexter broke in, “I just want to know one thing.”
Mom and I tilted our heads toward her in unison.
“How did it know what I was saying? I told it where the children’s section is, how to get to the lake, and so on. And it listened! The blind girl here, she got to those places!”
Mom’s mouth twitched as she turned toward me and back to Mrs. Dexter. “The blind girl here? Her name is Alice. And she can hear.” Mom leaned against the reference desk toward Mrs. Dexter like she was sharing a secret. “Alice’s eyes might work differently than yours, but she is just as intelligent as someone with 20/20 vision. Maybe even smarter than some. Have a nice day, Mrs. Dexter.”
Mom was practically bouncing as we left the library, although the Mill stink made her crinkle her nose. She squished up her face a little at the smell then grinned at me. “Was that woman like that every time you came to the library?”
I nodded.
She snorted. “I hope you didn’t let it bother you.”
I shook my head. “Nah.”
“Good,” Mom said. “So what’s so special about this tree?”
I told Mom all about Mayor Hank saving the tree to impress Gretel as we made our way toward the Sycamore. I could tell we were getting close when Mom adjusted the camera and started clicking away.
By now we were crossing the circle of boulders. The tree’s twisted limbs scratched at the sky. It seemed even bigger than the first time I’d seen it.
“This is the Sycamore?” Mom murmured. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. She went around the tree, snapping shot after shot. I settled down at the trunk and pulled out my notes, adding details from our day, like Mr. Hamlin’s soft grin and just how green the grass around the tree grew.
It took me awhile to realize the clicking camera was much closer. Mom was taking shots of me sitting under the tree. After a few minutes, she moved to sit beside me.
We didn’t say anything to each other for a long time. I mean, a really long time. Like the sun dipped lower in the sky and the clouds purpled. Everything I was carrying with me—all my worries and responsibilities and frights—suddenly trickled down from my shoulders onto my lap. I was so focused on myself—on this project, on what was going to happen to Tooter, on where I was going to go to school next month—that it took me way too long to realize the same thing must’ve happened to Mom. Because she was crying.
Not sobbing cries like the ones I sometimes had heard from behind her closed doors shortly after we moved to Sinkville. But quiet, steady cries. Her tears slid down her cheeks like the waves on the lake. Just like the lake, they shouldn’t have been there. But they were.
“Mom,” I finally whispered, my voice softer than the breeze around us. “When are you going to be okay?”
Mom just tilted her head onto my shoulder, the way I had done with Kerica a day earlier. “I’m trying, Sunshine. I’m really trying.”
“I’m sorry I brought you here,” I said as those worries clawed back up to my shoulders.
“No, no,” Mom said, slipping her arm around me and giving me a squeeze. It was like she knew what was happening and was blocking the worries. “No, darling. I’m glad I’m here. This tree. It’s magical, isn’t it?” She turned a little and ran her fingers along the bark between us. “It looks like it’s inside-out. I think it turned me inside-out, too.”
I squeezed the fingers of the hand still wrapped around me, then scribbled INSIDE-OUT TREE in my notepad.
“Want to go home?” I asked as her cheeks dried.
“Sure,” Mom said. “But first, let me tell you I’m proud of you, Sunshine. You really did what I couldn’t. You put yourself out there, made new friends, made a new—”
“Home,” I finished for her, but quietly. I waited a couple seconds and held up the reporter’s notebook. “Mom, there are a lot of other notebooks in that box outside your bedroom. If you wanted to write a little . . .”
Mom grabbed my notebook, flipping through the pages. “What would I write about?”
I shrugged. “You used to say everyone had a story. You could write yours.”
Mom handed me back the notebook. She sighed quickly and slapped her hands against her legs, like she was pushing down a thought. When she spoke next, her voice was different—deliberately happy and louder. “When is it due, anyway?”
“What?” I asked.
“The Sinkville Success Stories!” Mom laughed, less forced than before. “When is it due?”
I shrugged. “You know, I never really checked.” I pulled the flyer out of my notebook. “Oh man! It’s due in two weeks!”
“Better get started on the writing part,” Mom smiled and pulled me closer before standing up. “Race you to the boulders?”
Then the cheater took off! I scrambled after her, knowing she’d let me catch up.
Just as we were leaving the park, I saw Mayor Hank. He was walking toward the tree with a basket under one arm. The other arm was around Gretel.
Chapter Twelve
By the time we reached our block, Seattle Mom was fading fast. I could see it happen, the same way I could see when James tightened up and curled over as he got closer to the house on the days I was out with him. Only Mom didn’t go into herself. She just sort of faded away. First her smile wasn’t as bright. Then it wasn’t there at all. Her footsteps went from brisk and steady to soft and slow. Her grip on my hand loosened until I was clasping just her fingertips.
“Are you tired?” I asked.
Mom smiled, but I could tell she had to work to do it. She nodded. “This . . . this thing I’m dealing with . . .”
“Depression?”
She startled at the word, her eyes cutting over to mine. “Yes. This depression. It takes some time. I think I’ve kicked it, but then . . .”
I s
queezed her fingertips again. “We’re almost home. I’ll make dinner,” I suggested.
Mom nodded, but I don’t think she was really listening. I don’t mean to brag, but I make a mean cup of chicken noodle soup. Open the can myself and everything. Chicken noodle soup and buttered bread for dinner.
Once we were home, Mom went straight to bed and I pulled the ingredients out of the pantry. Well, the ingredient, that is.
I was stirring the soupy globs apart and adding a can of water to the saucepan when James rushed through the kitchen door, skateboard kicked up into his hand and yelling Tooter’s name.
“What’s going on?” I asked. Mom’s bedroom door opened and she rushed out, Tooter running at her heels.
“James?” she asked.
But James still looked panicked. His eyes wide, he knelt and picked up Tooter, who licked at his ears. “We’ve got to hide Tooter! They’re going to be here soon!”
“Who?” Mom and I asked at the same time.
“The animal control people! They’re coming for him!”
The doorbell rang just as my heart exploded in my chest.
James had been shadowing Sarah around Sinkville Animal Rescue when the veterinarian, Dr. Ross, told Sarah to prep the quarantine area for a potentially dangerous dog.
“This happens sometimes,” Sarah told James as she lined a cage with a fleece blanket and filled a water bottle. “When someone reports they’ve been assaulted by a dog, animal control workers go collect it and it’s quarantined here for ten days while the doc looks for signs of aggression or rabies.”
Dr. Ross snorted. “Don’t know how aggressive this dog is going to be, with a name like Tooter.”
After that, James took off for home.
Mom let the animal control workers into the house and I saw them smirk when they saw Tooter still licking at James’s sweaty ears.
“This really isn’t necessary,” Mom told the two workers.
One of them, a woman, went up to Tooter and rubbed at his ears. “I’m sorry, ma’am. The dog has to come with us. Dr. Ross will take good care of him at the shelter.”
