"Hey," one of the poor schmucks stuck with the night shift shouts at the skaters. He turns to a couple other poor schmucks in identical white shirts and aprons embroidered with the Price Cutter logo. They stare at each other like, Who's it going to be? Who's going to go after them? Not me, not me.
I shake my head and push my cart toward the lettuce. I wish there was some way to make a salad smell like a deep dish pepperoni pizza. Maybe if I fried a chicken breast and put it on top of some greens ...
Sack-of-salad is on sale, ninety-nine cents. But the kind Mom likes-the one with the romaine and radicchio-is closer to three. I look back down at my list. I could probably afford it, I think, since I don't have many toiletries listed-just toothpaste. (When was the last time I saw Mom actually brush her teeth, anyway?) And while I'm wondering if I should really spring for it, the expensive salad, the skateboarders fly by like twin funnel clouds.
"Get out of here," a middle-aged guy (probably the night manager) screams.
The kids laugh-like it's the only thing a grocery store's good for, you know? Just playing pranks, just ruffling feathers, just having fun.
"I mean it," the manager barks. "Get out."
I watch them careen outside, and it feels like somebody's grabbed the flesh above my belly button and started to twist. God, it'd be heaven if I could be on one of those boards, flying out the door. You stupid boring grown-ups, I'll never be like you, I am free now, and I will never need a giant metal cart, because I will never have to worry about anyone but myself. Just me and my board, to the ends of the earth, man.
I rub my head and try to concentrate on the saladHurry and decide, Aura. You've got to make this a fast trip, remember? There's only so much time before Mom wakes up again. I grab the salad Mom likes, and scratch paper towels off the list. No sense in buying the ninety-nine cent salad if she won't eat it, anyway ...
A baby's screaming its head off by the time I steer my cart to a checkout lane. And I mean, wailing. The kind of crying that bounces down every single bone in my spine.
"You know somethin' I don't?" my checkout lady asks. When I finally pull myself away from that sound-that god-awful, ear-drum-attacking wail-there she is, in her big blond hair and green eyeliner, grinning at me like she's either retarded or drunk. She's middle-aged and way too chipper for the graveyard shift, if you ask me.
Her age and her wide-eyed cheer slap me with surprise. Usually managers stick young desperates with the rotten hours. I instantly start to wonder what kind of forty-yearold works nights-maybe somebody who hates what's going on at home. Or maybe somebody with no one at home. And it hits me how much like heaven no one at home sounds. I hate myself instantly for even thinking it.
"You look like you're stockin' a bomb shelter, honey, or preparin' for a blizzard, what with all these canned goods here."
I try to crack a smile, praying my math has been decent and I've only gotten what I can pay cash for. At least there aren't any other customers standing in line behind me who will huff and puff if I have to tell the checker to take some items back.
Nobody but that baby-Why doesn't somebody shut him up already?
I know, from the roughly two-point-three seconds I was a babysitter, looking after a nineteen-month-old girl who lived about a block from my house, this isn't tired cry ing. Not whining because the baby didn't get a toy they wanted. This is serious crying. Hurt crying. Sick crying. And I suddenly wonder-Who shops with a baby at night, anyway?
A woman in the checkout lane closest to the door jiggles a baby on her hip. The baby's face is tomato red, his mouth screwed into an open grimace, slobber trailing from his bottom lip.
"He has an earache," the woman keeps apologizing. "Sorry. Sorry. We came to try and find some medicine, didn't we, sugar boy?"
When my chipper checkout lady starts ringing me upbeep, beep, beep, here go all my cans over the scanner-the woman with the baby turns around to look at me. Jesus. If the world isn't populated by ten people. There she is, Janny Jamison, bouncing Ethan on her hip.
My hand freezes for a second as we stare at each other. I'm not plopping cans on the conveyor belt, I'm staring at this old face. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought she was older than my checkout lady. From the way Ethan's screaming, I figure the reason Janny looks so rotten is that she's been up with him for days on end. And I feel like such a creep, because there is something wrong with him. Obviously.
I wonder, as my eyes go dry from staring, if Janny's going to say something to me-I actually start to get all my hopes boiling over the possibility of a hello. I have so much to tell her ... about Dad and my birthday, and the bushes Mom yanked, and Jeremy. God, even Nell. Janny doesn't know about me working at the studio-because I always thought there'd be more time, a right time to tell her about my grandmother. And there are so many things I'm not sure I'm handling right, and if only I could just say them out loud, maybe some of it would make sense. But Janny just turns away, like she's fascinated by whatever her checkout lady's telling her. Like it's some great motherly secret that Janny hasn't clued into yet.
She grabs her plastic shopping bag of over-the-counter medicine and her change. Her back gets as stiff as a ladder as she sprints for the door.
As I'm watching her go, I tell myself I'd better get my hiney back to school tomorrow. I've probably missed at least one quiz and who knows how many assignments, and I've got so much work to do, I feel as backed up as the thirty-year-old garbage disposal in my kitchen sink. And I sure don't want to be a dropout, not like Janny, no way.
"Ma'am?" the checkout lady says. "Ma'am? Anything else?"
Because I feel like the whole world is against me, and if only I could get half a break or just something, anything to make me feel better for a minute, I say, "Yeah. Pack of lights." I point at the cigarette display, confident that she'll never ask to see my ID, which I don't have, anyway. She'd never guess I'm as young as I am. I mean, what sixteenyear-old would be caught looking like me, out buying groceries when everyone else who goes to Crestview is probably getting ready to hit the hay? I sure don't look like the future. I don't even look present. I look like the dried-up past.
Sure enough, she pulls down a pack and scans it into my total.
Schizophrenics have abnormalities of left or right brain functioning. The left brain (the center of logic) seems to be most affected. Which means the right side, the creative side, takes over. „ And that's why a schizophrenic is like a child playing dress,up, afraid of monsters, living in a world of make~believe.
he next few days, our answering machine is so busy it practically has smoke coming out of it.
"Yes, ah-this is, ah, Pat Harrison," an increasingly familiar songbird voice chirps. "And as I stated before, I am no longer allowed to, ah, simply take a call regarding any more of Aura's absences. I will have to turn the matter over to our, ah, vice principal if I do not see you, Mrs. ah, Ambrose, in, well, I have to see you in person to discuss the matter. Ah, today."
"Ms. Ambrose? This is Janet Fritz, just touching base. My afternoon is free, and we really do have to discuss this schedule-"
"Yes, this is Mr. Mitchells, the vice principal at Crestview. We've got a disciplinary problem regarding one-let's seeAura? Ambrose. We've got to straighten this out, okay?"
"This is, ah, well, Pat, ah, Harrison again. I notice that Aura still has not checked in to class today and I just-"
A cartoonish sound explodes-something like a spring breaking, twanging, and I rush down the hall, my heart sick of being asked to beat this hard.
"Hammers!" Mom screams. "Those hammers are going straight into my head!"
Again, a spring boings. I pick up the pace, jogging into the living room.
Mom's thrown every single music book we ever bought into the middle of the floor. She's got the top popped on the Ambrose Original, and her fingers, completely covered in yellow paint, are making terrible streaks where she touches the piano. Clumsy yellow blotches are ruining her gorgeous painting.
Anger is a blowtorch in my gut. I watch, horrified, as Mom pulls her head from the Ambrose Original, picks up a pair of tree lobbers, and dips them inside the guts. She snips, and another spring snaps. Only they're not springs that are breaking at all, they're strings. She's cutting all the strings, screaming, "Putting those hammers straight through my head!"
"Mom," I screech, instantly furious because she's destroying the last thing I ever shared with my dad, the last time I was even his. I wrench the lobbers away from her and grab her arms. "Stop!" I shout. "No one's playing it." I'm shaking her-God, like she's some ketchup bottle, and if I squeeze hard enough, her insanity will pour out. "Listen to me! I mean it-stop!"
Mom wiggles away from me, grimaces, and covers her ears with her hands, as if to prove me wrong. "Hammers," she moans. "Those hammers are going straight through my head!"
"You're sick!" I bark, because I know that word, more than anything, will hurt her. Sick is a knife that digs straight into her flesh, that tears her apart, that doesn't just wound her, it kills her. "Sick!" I scream again, mad enough to slap her-I swear, just slap her, beat her, and I will-I'll hit her if I don't get out of the room.
So I race away, trying to climb back down from the insane high of my anger. In the garage, I slam the lobbers into a space below the workbench, hide them behind an old carpet steamer and a leaf blower.
I swallow air in deep, steady gulps. I breathe so evenly you'd think I was trying to rid myself of the hiccups. Finally, my heart begins to slow down some. But my hands still tremble.
Slowly-timidly, almost-I step back into the kitchen, already feeling horrible for the things I've said to Mom. I know she can't help it. She can't-and I've probably just made everything worse with my outbreak. So I decide to try to make it up to her with food.
Our giant aluminum soup pot bangs against the cabinet door as I pull it out. Flour, salt, and I let a chuck roast sear while I turn to chopping up an onion-enormous white circles that will turn translucent in the heat before they caramelize.
As I'm chopping, I hear the outside faucet squeal to life. Is she trying to water the rose bushes? I wonder. The same rose bushes she already yanked right out of the ground? Does she still see them? Think they're in full freaking bloom?
But I don't go outside, because the roast is crackling a warning not to leave it alone. The onions are strong-it's like I'm trying to pierce my eyeballs, the fumes are so sharp. And while I'm chopping, I remember that onions were a freaking dollar and a half a pound the last time I was at the supermarket, and baby carrots were two-fifty a bag. So I'm probably going to use almost two dollars' worth of vegetables in the roast. Not that I guess that sounds like a lot, really-I mean, two bucks. Get in the real world, Ambrose. Two dollars is just a down payment on a tube of cheapie Walgreens lipstick.
Thinking about money makes me wonder about the utility bill-when it comes, or if it's already due this month. I wonder if anyone would know if I forged a check for Mom. Nausea starts to break in waves as I think, Would I really need to do that? Is she really so bad off she wouldn't be able to fill out a check?
The pipes continue to hum, making me envision numbers clicking away on our meter, tallying up all the drops of water we've used. I'm suddenly somebody's grumpy old dad-the kind that's always barking about turning off the lights and shutting the door to keep from letting all the heat out.
"Mom," I shout as turn my back on the stove just for a second, I think-and throw the back door open. I'm mad enough to scold her again, even though I shouldn't. I should just back off, it's such a silly thing, some water trickling out a hose-but I'm ready to really get after her. Mom, do you think money grows on trees it doesn't it comes from Dad thats the only place now because who would ever let you come back to the museum? So you d better turn that faucet off right now right now...
But there's no one to hear.
And I don't mean that in some poetic, metaphorical way, either. I don't mean I'm staring at Mom right now and she's so distant she makes me remember Florida postcards, wish you were here. I mean literally there is no one to hear. The hose is like a dead snake in the grass-a snake that Angela Frieson got her hands on and decapitated, wanting to know what's inside. Water spills onto the lawn like blood.
I rush to crank the water off.
"Mom?" I shout, scanning our backyard. "Mom!"
I run toward the back fence, where the trees are all overgrown because Dad was the one who knew how to work our chainsaw. He was the one who put that burn bin in the center of the backyard-made it out of chicken wire-and tossed everything he trimmed into it. Burned every last bit of our unwanted waste. And because Mom would rather use her money for brushes, acrylics, oils, pastels, watercol ors, pencils, we've never really been able to afford a tree service to step in where Dad left off-not even the guys who drive through neighborhoods with second-hand trailers hitched to the backs of their trucks, knocking on doors and taking any kind of work they can manage to get. The evergreens along the back fence are wild and unruly-schizo, that's how the trees look.
"Mom!" I scream again, checking behind the old shed where we still keep our lawn mower and our snow shovel and the tent we never went camping in. But there's no one-and the latch on the back gate has been lifted. The back gate is open.
I sprint through the back door and lunge for the roast with a pair of tongs. I flip the giant hunk of meat and sigh. It hasn't burned yet. Almost. But I've saved it. At least thats one thing I can save, I find myself thinking. Dinner aromas explode through the kitchen, but Mom's not here to smell them. They can't tickle Mom's nose, because I don't know where Mom is.
My whole body feels rubbery-like there's nothing inside that's firm. I could take my arm and push the sides of it together like it's the hose outside. Like there are no bones in me at all.
I throw the roast in the oven and turn to grab the car keys.
As I back down the driveway, I feel like I'm trying to do a balance beam gymnastics routine on a long butcher's knife. It'd be useless to pray my feet won't get cut, because I know they will. They're bound to. Good God, Grace Ambrose has just disappeared.
Mom, don't do this to me.
My short fingernails don't offer much to chew on, so I bite off a cuticle. It bleeds, but I'd gladly take ten thousand times worse, if it would only mean I could find her.
"Don't drive too fast," I scold myself, like I'm a shorttempered driver's ed teacher. Hands at ten and two, I head north on National Street, trying to stay calm. But inside I'm screaming, I'm terrified. I've let her wander away, just like a really bad babysitter who loses a kid at the mall because she's too busy picking out a new bracelet at one of those kiosks to pay attention.
"The museum," I whisper, suddenly sure where I should look. I veer into the turn lane a mere three blocks from our house. But all I'm thinking of is Mom-I imagine her trespassing through backyards and having near-misses with the grills of SUVs on the side streets she'd have to cross in her shortcut-so I don't realize I'm cutting off a guy in a Jeep who blares his horn at me. I cringe and try to wave an apology in the rearview, but he's pissed, like I guess he should be, and while I'm waiting for the signal to turn, he passes me by, screaming at me and flipping me off.
I wave and smile, cussing under my breath. Got to be more careful. Just got to watch it.
As I'm on the edge of my bucket seat, waiting for the green to pop in the turn lane, I keep staring at the it that the city insists has to be art-the awful, ridiculous sculpture on the corner, the giant pile of bright yellow metal sticks. Yellow like road signs that warn of approaching dangers-sharp curves and slippery streets and school crossings. When I look at it, as much as I don't want to, I think, Caution, broken pile of Grace up ahead. Detour now.
Yeah, I'd like to, I'll admit, but I can't-I can't detour, I can't just steer around her and go on my way, happy as a freaking lark. I have to go get her. I have to find her and collect the pieces and try to put them into something like order.
I careen into the museum parking
lot-I don't mean to, but I make the tires squeal.
Mom's here. In that little park behind the museum, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the grass. I'm relieved to find her, but finding her presents a whole new wad of problems. I mean, she's not some lost and found little kid. Something's led her out here-some shadow, some lie, some hallucination that she thinks is real-and can I really convince her that it's not? Or will she fight me, scream and carry on so that the curator will hear it from her office and call the police, have her hauled away?
My mouth burns, it's so dry. Mom's sitting in front of the outdoor theater made of stone-the one I'd been sketching the day Jeremy gave me his board.
In better times, Mom and I spent our summer evenings here. As soon as she'd wrapped up her last class of the day, we'd walk right out of the museum and head toward that stage, for free concerts or pottery showcases. Once, we even stayed for Shakespeare in the Park -A Midsummer Nights Dream. Mom was okay then; her hair was floating in the July breeze, and she was so beautiful-all fleshy and curvy and strong, in her sleeveless top and her jeans, sandals in the grass beside her and her toes painted a rosy pink. She knew the difference, that summer, between the actors onstage and the people around her who'd started gathering up their blankets and lawn chairs in the middle of the play.
"Where do you think you're going?" Mom shouted at them. "The play's not over. Haven't you been paying attention? It's only intermission."
Yeah, that's the Mom I want-that's who I really wish I could find. But when I get to her side, it's like that freaky Angela Frieson has gotten there before me, and she's gutted Mom. Emptiness, that's all I see when she looks at me.
"Mom," I say, wiping my eyes. "I've got a pot roast in the oven, so we'd better get back. Aren't you going to be hungry? Don't you want a nice dinner?"
I grab Mom's wrist and try to pull her to her feet, but she brushes me away. "Don't," she says, pointing at the stage. "It's only intermission."
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