Very in Pieces

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  I walk to my parents’ room, knock softly, and get no response. Using both hands, I push the door open. Mom is spread diagonally across the bed. Dad is already gone for the day, back to his office to work on his book, as if nothing at home has changed. Maybe he is reworking his résumé, cruising college sites for job listings. Maybe he is having office hours with that Kaitlin girl. I close the door as gently as I can.

  Unlike Ramona, I call the school.

  “We really need to hear it from the parent, Very,” the attendance secretary tells me.

  “My mom’s still asleep. She’s really struggling with . . . things. I wanted to call before first period.”

  She pauses. “Okay, just this once. You’ve never been in any trouble.”

  I hang up before she can ask if Ramona will be out, too.

  I don’t know what to do next. I’ve never skipped school before. I don’t want to stay home, I know that much. Mom will wake up eventually, and I’ll have to talk to her. Only I have no idea what to say.

  So I put on sneakers and head out through the garage, where I walk past Nonnie’s car and instead pick up this creaky bike of hers. It’s an old-fashioned kind, like the one the witch rides in The Wizard of Oz, before you know she’s the witch, with a wicker basket and everything. I take off toward town. Most of Essex is just beginning to rise. There are kids waiting for the school bus. The air is warm, but fall is here. I breathe in deeply and smell it.

  I ride through campus into town. At an intersection I watch all the people walking by. Students in their ratty jeans and fleece jackets. Professors dress the same, only they wear khakis. Everyone looks like they are from the L.L.Bean catalog, and I wonder if they even realize how much the same they look.

  I swerve among the acorns in my path like it is some sort of obstacle course, letting my weight steer the bike toward Main Street. I park the bike in a rack and now I’m just standing on Main Street watching the people go by.

  I can smell the food from Ruby’s and realize I’m hungry. Inside, I take a seat at the counter, where I order a muffin from an older woman with orange hair. Not bad orange, but clearly dyed. It’s poofy and doesn’t move when she does. Yet despite all its orange poofiness, it actually seems to suit her.

  The only other person at the counter is an older man with a trucker-style baseball cap and an old down vest. The waitresses all wear polyester pants, polo shirts, and ruffled aprons. Most of them are old, but there is one younger girl bustling around in the back room. I bet she hates those polyester pants.

  “Here’s your muffin, hon.”

  I turn around and there is the orange-haired lady, smiling at me and holding the muffin. As she puts it down she says, “You’re Veronica Woodruff, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say, and then add an unusual-for-me “ma’am.”

  “I was so sorry to hear about your grandmother. She was a nice lady. Used to get frappes in here some Fridays with her students. Or alone. We’ve got a postcard,” she says. She takes a few steps over to the counter and grabs a postcard off a small spinning rack. It’s a picture of the town from above and it says, “Essex Is Woodruff Country.”

  “It actually sells pretty well. You can have that one if you want. On the house.”

  “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  I pick at the bottom of my muffin; I like to save the sugary tops for last.

  “I went to high school with your mother.”

  “Really?” The woman looks a good ten years older than my mom. And not just because my mom looks so young: this woman looks ten years older than my mom’s thirty-nine years. I check her name tag: Allison.

  “Uh-huh. You look just like her, hon. That’s how I knew who you were. The spitting image except not as splashy.”

  Not as splashy. Somehow I know this is meant to be a compliment.

  “I voted for her for prom queen. Some of the girls wouldn’t. They said it didn’t make sense to vote for someone so new, but I knew they were just jealous. Anyway, she was always nice to me. And she was pretty. And popular. Pretty, popular, and nice—that seems like the perfect combination for prom queen to me.”

  Allison and the man look at me, so I agree.

  “She didn’t win,” Allison says. “I don’t think she even went to the prom.”

  “So you knew her?” I ask. “My grandmother?”

  “Oh sure, both of us did, me and Henry,” Allison tells me. “She used to scribble ideas on napkins and then ball them up and throw them away.”

  “I kept one of ’em,” Henry said. “I figured it might be worth money someday. I can’t say that I understood it.”

  “I don’t understand a lot of her poetry, either,” I confess.

  “Well, I think it’s beautiful.” Allison leans forward. “I like to read it in the bathtub.”

  “Now there’s an image!” Henry says.

  She swats at him. “I got her to read one to me once. I know she didn’t like to, but it was my birthday. Her voice was different when she read. Deeper, you know, and more slow. It was like, I don’t know, like she picked me up and carried me with her.”

  “Now don’t you go trying to write poetry.”

  Everything they say is kind, but I just want them to stop because it seems like they are piling all of their memories on me and weighing down my own. I dig through my wallet to find the money, and push the plate away, muffin top uneaten.

  “You have a good day, hon,” Allison calls to me from the far end of the counter.

  “You, too.”

  “Don’t forget your postcard.”

  I had left it beside my plate. “Right. Thanks.”

  I exchange nods with Henry, and then as I walk out the door, I look at the back of the postcard. There is a line of her poetry printed at the top: a spot so lovely, like the moon.

  The moon of Jupiter.

  And so I cry the whole way home.

  When I get there, Mom is back in her usual place on the sofa in the sunken living room. She has the afghan pulled up over her, and a drink in her hand. The ice has melted, or maybe she just forgot ice altogether, and there is only clear liquid left in the glass. She is reading The Bell Jar, which she left on my bed the previous year, claiming it is a book that should be read by every adolescent girl, but only by adolescent girls. “Once you get out of your twenties, it seems more self-indulgent than profound.” She said the same thing about The Catcher in the Rye when I read it in ninth-grade English. So, what it means that she is reading Plath again, I’m not sure. Britta would say it means she is regressing. Nothing seems so obvious with my mother anymore.

  She barely moves when I walk down the three stairs into the living room, and doesn’t look up. I sit down on the chair next to the sofa and regard her. There are crow’s-feet around her eyes, and wisps of wrinkles around her lips, like smokers get, though as far as I know she was never a smoker. She blinks slowly, but frequently, her hazel eyes disappearing and reappearing. She lets me watch her for several minutes, the in and out of her breathing, before she finally says, “So.”

  “So,” I echo. “I met an old friend of yours today. Allison.”

  “Allison who?”

  “I don’t know. She’s a waitress at Ruby’s.”

  “Allison Wooster. Wooster Rooster. She’s been doing that dye job since high school. I remember she always claimed she was a natural redhead.”

  “She voted for you for prom queen.”

  “I didn’t go to prom.”

  Outside a herd of sparrows lifts up and flies past the window, squeaking and squawking. They dance together and apart like someone is choreographing them.

  “You have to forget everything I said last night. All of it. Everything I said and did.” Her eyes are glassy. “Come sit with me, Very.” She draws up her legs so there is space for me on the couch. When I don’t move she says, “Please, Very. Please. Forget.”

  I sit down on the edge of the couch with a pillow on my lap.

  She lolls her head toward me. “I don’t expe
ct you to understand.” She gives me the sad smile again. “You’ve got your numbers. That’s what speaks to you. You’re steady. And I’m glad you are. But there are some things your sister and I share, as artists, that don’t fit with your worldview. It makes me a terrible mother,” she says. “But it doesn’t make me a terrible person.”

  My mother has summed herself up in a single sentence: not a terrible person, but perhaps a terrible mother.

  “Maybe. But you are her mother first and foremost.”

  This makes her wince. “I’m your mother, too. You’re my little girl. You were my baby once. You used to coo and brush my eyebrows. I don’t know why you did that. I’d be holding you in my arms, and you’d reach your fat fingers up and brush the hair of my eyebrows. I’d move them around and you’d laugh and laugh and laugh. I could get drunk on baby laughter back then.”

  “Ramona needs help,” I tell her.

  “Now, Ramona was not a cheerful baby. She would cry whenever you put her down. She always wanted to be held. I ended up getting a sling and tying her to my back like the women in Africa. It was the only way I could get any work done. Do you think that’s why she’s more artistic than you? I always thought it was genetics, but maybe it was being up there with me, soaking it all in.”

  “I don’t know, Mom, but right now, right now she’s really struggling.”

  Mom takes a long sip from her drink. “That, I think, is a matter of perspective. If her goal is to get through high school, then maybe. But perhaps she has higher aspirations. You shouldn’t mess with the artist’s temperament.”

  “Well I’m not just going to sit by and watch her collapse,” I declare.

  As if a switch has been flicked, she sits up, her hair wild and mussed, staring at me wide-eyed. “What are you going to do?”

  That is the twenty-million-dollar question, isn’t it? What am I going to do? That’s why I went to my father, and to her, because I simply don’t know. “I guess I’ll have to figure it out on my own.”

  My lack of confidence soothes my mother, and she sinks back into the couch. “Very, love, don’t get involved in matters you don’t understand. You aren’t prepared.”

  It’s true. Walking the straight line, doing what I am asked, it hasn’t prepared me for this.

  sixteen

  i.

  THIS IS WHAT I know: I need things to be stable. To be the same. And so today, sixty-odd hours after Nonnie died, I decide to go to school.

  I have jeans and a T-shirt picked out, and then I remember that today is the Math Around U conference. I’m supposed to go present with Mr. Tompkins and then meet Professor Singh. So I dig a skirt out and pair it with a short-sleeved sweater. My new haircut has the unexpected benefit of being easy to care for, and so I call this good.

  Easy. Normal. I can do this.

  But then I can’t find Ramona. I wait for her first in the car, then back in the house. Then I go upstairs and her bed is still covered with CDs pilfered from our dad, dirty laundry, Magic Markers, and a stack of notebooks. She didn’t sleep there. She left for school or wherever she went the day before and I haven’t seen her since, which means she could have been missing for twenty-four hours. Isn’t that the baseline for filing a missing-person report? That’s how it is on television anyway.

  I go to school by myself, and park in my usual space. As I shut the door behind me, my mind clicks: Ramona is missing and I am the only one who knows.

  Telling myself that this is nothing new, that this is what she’s been doing for weeks, I try to stop my brain from imagining ever more dire scenarios. Kidnapping. Rape. Walking into the ocean with stones in her pockets. She wouldn’t even need the stones. The water is so cold, that alone would kill her so long as she let herself slip under. If that is her intent. Which I don’t know if it is. I don’t know what she is thinking at all.

  In homeroom Mr. Tompkins gives me a sad smile, which I wonder if teachers practice the way that Dominic practiced his rakish one. Is it part of teacher training? He puts his hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Very. It’s all going to be okay.”

  Grace stands beside me and squeezes my hand.

  “Are we going to drive over together?” I ask Mr. Tompkins. “Or should I meet you at the conference?”

  “The conference, Very? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Push Ramona down. Push Nonnie down.

  I can do this.

  “Good.” Mr. Tompkins’s smile relaxes. “I went back and forth but never actually canceled with Professor Singh. Truthfully, after all it took to set up the meeting, to convince her to meet you, well, I was a little scared to cancel even under the circumstances. But I know you’re such a rock, you would rally for this.”

  Rock and rally. “Sure thing.”

  “Great!” He’s positively beaming now.

  Push it down.

  “I have to go to English.”

  “Of course, Very. Meet me here after fourth period. We’ll drive to campus together.”

  When I take my seat in class next to Britta, I say, “Ramona never came home.”

  Her eyes widen, but before we can talk about it more, Ms. Staples comes in and starts class. Dominic isn’t here.

  Britta writes on the corner of her notebook: When did you see her last? Her handwriting is straight and firm.

  Yesterday.

  When yesterday?

  In the morning.

  Where do you think she is?

  No idea.

  She looks up at me from the paper. I’ve been managing to keep a cap on my panic, but seeing it in Britta’s eyes cracks the seal. I bite my lip hard, just shy of making it bleed.

  “Ms. Staples, Very’s not feeling so well. I’m just going to take her down to the nurse.”

  Ms. Staples looks at us, and says, “Of course.”

  Britta leads me out of the classroom. “I’m sure Ramona’s fine. Really. I mean, there’s a lot going on for you guys right now, but she’s always been a little flighty, you know? Remember that time when we were in fourth grade, so she would have been, what? In first, right? And your mom and Imogene brought us to the beach, and she wandered off? We were all going crazy looking for her, and she had found some other family and was just sitting down on their blanket.”

  My hands are shaking. “She was eating their sandwiches.”

  I rub my eyes, and Britta pulls me into a hug. “It’s going to be fine,” she says. And I believe her. I want to believe her. “I just think we should go to the office and let them know and then they can help. Okay?”

  I nod.

  When I open my eyes, I see Christian standing behind us, concern across his face. “Are you all right?” he asks. “I was in class across the hall and saw you guys come out. I got a bathroom pass.” He holds up a giant wooden board that says, To the LOO, no B.S.

  I don’t want to say it out loud. I mean, maybe Britta is right. Maybe it is nothing. But if I say it out loud, then Christian will react. He will go into protector mode, trying to console me, and the only person I want is Britta.

  “Ramona’s missing,” Britta says. “We’re going to the office. It’s all under control. But thanks anyway.”

  “Okay,” he says, but his voice isn’t sure. He swings the bathroom pass. “I can send some texts around.”

  “No,” I say. “We’ll find her.”

  “Okay,” he says again, like he’s one of those dolls that talks but only has a certain number of phrases. Okay. You look nice today. I love you. Why’d you break my heart?

  “Actually,” he says. “I know this isn’t a good time right now. I mean, of course it isn’t a good time. Duh. But once you find Ramona, maybe we could talk. I just want to let you know, I mean, we haven’t had a chance to talk about the other night and—”

  “Please let’s just not talk about it.”

  “I just want to let you know that it’s okay. That I understand. You just lost your grandmother, and something is clearly going on with Ramona, right?”
r />   I nod.

  “We should go,” Britta says.

  Christian doesn’t seem to register her words. “So it’s okay. We can just forget about it for now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t want to. I mean, trust me, I want to.”

  This is decidedly not not talking about it. “Okay.”

  “It’s just that if we get back together, I want it to be about us, and not about, you know, the other things going on in your life.”

  Getting back together? The full force of my mistake hits me.

  “And I guess we’d need to talk about those other things.”

  “Okay,” I say again. What else is there to say?

  “We’re going,” Britta says as she pulls me down the hall to the office. “Sister, when this is over, you’ve got a whole lot of talking to do.”

  Before we make it to the bend in the hall, someone calls my name. “Very!”

  I turn around and there is Dominic. He’s walking right past Christian. Mistake one and mistake two.

  He trots to catch up with us. “I need you to come with me.”

  “And good morning to you, too,” I reply.

  He stiffens his back, but says, “Why, good morning, fair Veronica. How are you this fine day?”

  I shake my head. “Not today, Dominic. Ramona is missing.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Very, is everything okay?” Christian asks as he strides up to us.

  “I’ve got it under control,” Britta says.

  “It’s nothing,” I say.

  Dominic scoffs.

  Christian turns to him. “Very’s been under a lot of pressure lately, so—”

  “I think I know what’s going on with Very, thanks.”

  I feel like a fire hydrant between two dogs.

  “You boys just settle this among yourselves. Very and I are going to the office.”

  “I know where Ramona is,” Dominic says. “Let’s go.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes, right now.”

  “You want me to cut class?”

  Stupid, stupid. Why would you say that?

  “I’d think you’d want to see this.”