I nod because I do understand—I understand that Dennis is a very good lawyer and that I need to keep my mouth shut—and go back to picking at my food. It’s hot in here, too hot to eat. I take another sip of water, think of Greg leaving the soda in the bathroom for me, and want to weep. I don’t know why he did it. He knows what I did, what I am—and he still did it. Why? I excuse myself and go to the bathroom. It’s tiny and even hotter than the restaurant, pink seashell soaps melting in the real shell that holds them. I wash my hands carefully, slowly, and then go back to the table.
Dennis is signaling the waitress for more coffee. I realize everyone is watching us. The noise my chair makes as I pull it out sounds incredibly loud. Mom looks up from her breakfast—mostly untouched, I realize—and smiles at me.
I smile back, say, “You should eat, you know, because if I’m driving we’re not stopping at any fast food places for at least a hundred miles.”
“What?” She’s looking at me like I’m crazy.
“I’m kidding, Mom. We can stop whenever. I’m just…I’m really ready to go, you know?” I want to be away from here so bad I can taste it.
“Baby, we aren’t leaving now. We’re—” Mom stops talking, her face turning bright red. I stare at her, wondering what’s going on. Has she seen something or someone? Is she choking? Even Dennis seems to realize something is wrong, looks up from the pancakes he’s eating and says, “Are you all right?”
Mom nods, shuddering, and after a moment, starts coughing, the sound loud and wet.
“I think you might want to go to a doctor.” Dennis seems concerned. He must really cost a lot of money. I keep looking at Mom, waiting for her to smile or say something that will make Dennis and maybe even me laugh, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything. She just keeps taking deep shuddering breaths.
“I will,” she finally says, the words coming out quiet, small, and that’s when I know something is wrong. Very wrong.
27
Mom doesn’t go to the doctor. After she tells Dennis she will, the two of them start looking at each other in a way that makes me wonder if I’m going to have to spend some time sitting around outside when we get back to the house.
It turns out that I don’t, but that’s only because Mom comes up to me after inviting Dennis in “to discuss some things” and taps my shoulder, hands me some money, and says, “Go out for a few hours.” Before I can even say anything, like ask how I’m supposed to go somewhere without a car—ours certainly isn’t anywhere around—or even a phone to call a cab, she’s nudging me outside and shutting the door.
So I go out. When I get back Dennis is gone and Mom’s sitting outside looking out at the water.
“Did you go to the doctor?” I ask.
She gives me a look.
Of course she didn’t. Stupid of me to even ask, but then I’m feeling a little scattered right now.
“Sorry,” I mutter and sit down next to her. “I guess you’ll go before we leave?”
“Please. I’m fine. Look at me. Do I look sick to you?”
“No, but—”
“I’m fine.” She puts an arm around me, pulls me close. “Really, I am. I promise. Okay, baby?”
“Okay.” She does seem fine. Maybe I was worried for nothing. I mean, she did look a little strange at breakfast, but then I’d been up for who knows how long, and oh yeah, spent most of that time sitting in a police station. “So, when are we leaving?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Mom?”
“Soon, baby,” she says. “I need to take some time, think things over. And right now I need a nap.” She leans over and kisses the top of my head, then goes inside.
She never asks where I’ve been.
This is what happened when I went out:
I walked to the beach. I walked and it felt nice; the wind was blowing, not hard but just enough to make it feel like summer, and the sun was shining strong and bright.
I could hear the ocean the whole way there too. It got louder as I got closer to the beach. I hadn’t ever been to the public one. I’d driven by it, talked to—talked to Allison about it—but I’d never gone. It was crowded and as I walked down the street that ran alongside it I felt like just another tourist, walking around staring at the signs for food and fun and T-shirts. The whole place even smelled like the beach, like suntan lotion and sand and the sea.
I stopped at one place, a hamburger stand, thinking I’d get something to eat since I hadn’t eaten much breakfast. I ended up buying just a soda because the girl who was working the cash register stared at me like I was a ghost.
“You’re that thief,” she said right after she asked what I wanted. She pushed my soda across the counter hard, spilling most of it, and when she gave me my change she wouldn’t touch my hand, just dropped coins into it.
I wanted to go home after that but I couldn’t. Well, I could have, but I’d have had to wait around for Dennis to leave and besides, Mom clearly wanted me gone. So I kept walking, but now I noticed everyone who looked at me and then pointed or turned to say something to whoever they were with. I threw my soda away and crossed the street, heading for the beach.
There was a line to get in. A line of cars and even a line of people. The people waiting in front of me—a guy and a girl, clearly together—didn’t seem to know who I was. They told me they’d come for “a day of fun” and asked where they could rent an umbrella. They also asked if I knew why the police were there.
“I mean, is there some sort of crime spree going on around here?” the girl said, laughing.
I smiled back, weakly, and thought about getting out of line. But I was too close to the front and I knew walking away would just attract more attention.
There were two cops talking to people. One of them I didn’t recognize. The other one was Greg. He was wearing a hat but his nose was sunburned even worse than it had been the day he took me to lunch. I knew I shouldn’t have thought about that, should have just thought about what he was, a cop, and nothing more, but then he looked up and saw me.
He smiled. He smiled when he saw me. Not a cop smile, an “I’ve got my eye on you” smile, but a smile like the ones he’d always given me. A smile that was just a smile. A smile like he was happy to see me.
I stepped out of line then, walked back down the street. When I saw him smile I wanted to smile back. I wanted to ask him about his nose and how his day was and talk like we always did. I was stupid, so stupid. Things could never be like that. Maybe they never were like that.
I knew that was a lie. Somehow, in some strange way, we’d connected. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did.
I kept walking. The food stands and souvenir stores disappeared, replaced with houses, the small ones I never paid much attention to before. I looked at them then, really looked at them. Everyone I saw—people hanging up beach towels or looking out at the ocean or even just sitting around—they all seemed happy to be where they were. I wondered what it would be like to feel that way, to be where you were and not worry about what might happen, not always know you’d be moving on. I wished there was a way I could feel like that, even if it was for just a little while.
I walked over to the beach again. It was marked FOR RESIDENTS ONLY but the sign was peeling and hung crookedly, like it had been forgotten. I took off my shoes, felt the sand sink hot under my feet and between my toes. I watched two little kids fight over who was going to fly a kite, then walked down to the ocean. It still wasn’t much to look at but then its blankness seemed comforting.
The water was cold, a shock after the warmth of the sand. Nearby I heard a girl laugh, saw her race into the waves, looking over her shoulder to smile at the guy she was with. It was Allison. She stopped smiling when she saw me and walked back onto the beach.
I wasn’t surprised to see her. It seemed like it was something that had to happen. She didn’t move away as I walked hesitantly toward her, but she didn’t look at me either, just stood staring out at the water.
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“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was out walking and—”
“No. I mean here in town still. After everything you and your mom did, why stay?”
“We’re leaving soon.” I took a deep breath, watched as one row of waves hit the shore and then another. “Why did you do it?”
She was quiet for a moment. She didn’t ask what I meant.
“I did it because I feel sorry for you,” she finally said. “Everything you have isn’t real, isn’t yours. It’ll never be yours. That must really suck.”
A guy called her name then, a question in his voice, and I watched her turn and smile at him. I could tell from her smile that he was Brad, knew she’d found the right words to say. I watched him smile back at her.
“You’re right,” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice crack. “It sucks. And look, I—Allison, we were friends. Maybe we could—”
“I thought we were friends,” she said, and finally looked at me. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “But we weren’t. We never will be.”
She walked away. She didn’t look back. I watched her go and then I turned around, headed back across the sand. My eyes stung, and I lied to myself, said it was just from the sun.
28
I wake up with a start in the morning, open my eyes to see Mom looking down at me with an expression on her face I can’t read. I scramble up off the sofa, head into the kitchen. She doesn’t ask why I slept downstairs, just comes in behind me and sits down, looking out the window. The only sound is the coffee brewing and her breathing.
She keeps looking out the window while she drinks her coffee. I refill her mug twice. “I need a few days’ rest,” she finally says. “I need a chance to tie up some loose ends.”
“But we—everyone knows what happened. You won’t be able to do anything.”
“Is that so?”
“I didn’t mean it like that. I—we’re not leaving?”
“We are leaving. Just not today.”
She’s going to try something. Getting away but not getting anything—she’ll see that as a challenge. I think of the look on her face when we first drove through Heaven, her expression when she saw all those houses, and know we aren’t leaving because she needs to be inside one of those houses and take something before she’ll be able to move on.
A couple of days later, everything’s still the same. We’re still here and Mom still isn’t ready to leave. She’s been gone a lot and when she’s home she’s…she’s not here. I mean, she is, and we still watch movies and I tell her she looks great when she twirls around before she leaves, but that’s it.
She won’t talk about what happened, not with the silver, not with anything. She just says, “It’s over. Sometimes that’s how it has to be.”
I haven’t done anything. I’ve stayed here. I haven’t gone out since that one awful afternoon when I saw Greg and Allison, as if I needed a reminder that everything I’ve done here has totally turned to shit, as if I hadn’t already known that I screwed up and hurt Mom, hurt myself, hurt…hurt others. Allison and I could have been friends, real friends. Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s just the thing. I don’t know and I never will. I can’t even start to think about Greg. It hurts too much.
This morning Mom slept late and then took a long shower, longer than usual, so long that I heard the hot water pipes squeak in protest. I have coffee waiting for her when she comes downstairs. It takes her forever to walk to the kitchen, her breath coming in slow, straining gasps.
I get up and walk over to her. We have to talk sometime and it might as well be now, but before I can say anything she smiles at me, stops me from talking by pushing my hair back with one hand and saying, “We’re going to be all right. You’ll see. I’ll take care of everything.”
I don’t believe her. That frightens me. But what frightens me more is that she doesn’t sound like she believes it either.
She makes her way to the kitchen and drinks her coffee, then picks up her keys and says she’s going out. We have another car now. I don’t know what happened to the other one but I suspect Dennis made it disappear, just like he took care of everything else. We had a package from him the other day, a bunch of papers delivered by an overnight service. Mom read them and then had me sign some. I didn’t ask why. I kept Dennis’s card, though. It was clipped to the stack of papers. His last name is Patterson. His office is still in New York.
I did ask Mom if we’d have to pay for having the papers sent. She rolled her eyes and said, “Baby, he’s a lawyer. What do you think?”
After she leaves, I sit down and watch television. It’s either talk shows or judge shows and I turn it off, get up, and open a window. I can smell the ocean today. I lie down and listen to it, one arm dangling off the sofa, my fingers tracing patterns across the floor. I still love this house. That’s the funny thing about all of this. I know we should be gone and I even wish we were. But when it’s quiet like this, when it’s just me and I’m tired of thinking about stuff—the thing is, when it’s like this, I’m still glad we’re here.
I hear a car coming up the driveway. Mom, back already?
It isn’t Mom, because it’s not her car. It’s Greg’s.
I start to head upstairs, to pretend I’m not home, but you know what? Forget it. I’m pretty sure I know what this is about, and when he gets out of the car and I see he’s in uniform I know I’m right. And that’s fine. I can handle this. I have to. I owe it to Mom.
I walk outside, meet him as he’s walking toward the steps.
“Hey,” he says, like it’s just an ordinary day. “I came by to see if you’re okay.”
“You mean you came by to make sure we leave town.”
“No, I mean I came by to make sure you’re okay.”
“Dressed like that?”
He looks at me. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but they just don’t like it when I wear a clown suit to work.”
I start to laugh and then turn it into a cough, stare down at the ground. “What do you want?”
“I thought that maybe—” He clears his throat. “I thought that maybe you might want a hot dog.”
“What?”
“I brought some with me. I figured you probably hadn’t eaten.”
“You brought me food?”
“Yeah.”
I look at him and he’s staring solemnly at me, his eyes shining brilliant green.
“I haven’t eaten,” I say, and he smiles, goes to his car, and comes back with a paper bag. He sits down on the steps.
After a moment, I sit down next to him.
“How are you?” He asks me that as I’m finishing my second hot dog. I put my hands on my knees, stare out at the water.
“I—okay, I guess.” I wonder how long he’s known about me. Did he know before he saw me at the police station? Should I ask?
Do I want to know?
I do.
I take a deep breath. “Did you—when did you know about me? About…about what I am?”
“Didn’t,” he says. “I knew you were hiding something, but figured you and your mom were running from a bad family thing or something. It was a real surprise to see you in the station.”
“Oh.” He didn’t think I was a criminal. He was—when he said he wanted to spend time with me, he really meant it. He always meant everything he said. I dare a look at him. “We’re—we’re leaving soon. I know someone must want to know that.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Oh,” I say again, my heart pounding hard. “But still. We are.”
“Where are you going?”
“Nebraska.”
“I guess I asked for that. But I’m not asking as a cop. I’m asking for me. I’m asking because I want to know you’re going to be okay.”
I look at him. He looks steadily back at me.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I never do. We just go somewhere and stay for a while. And then—”
“Can I tell
you something?”
“Can I stop you?”
He grins at me, that grin that’s gotten to me from the first time I saw him, and then rubs one hand against his knee. “Look, everything that happened, the silver getting stolen and then—” He stops. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You get a little”—he points at my forehead—“crinkle when you’re mad. But I’m not here because of that and I think you know it. I came because I…” He looks down at the ground, then back at me. “You deserve more than not knowing where you’re going or how long you’ll be there. Don’t you want more? Don’t you—?”
“You don’t get it. It’s all I’ve ever known. All I’ve ever had. What you have, what everyone else has, a normal life—I’ve never had that. I’m never going to fit in anywhere, never going to be able to stop—”
He presses two fingers to my mouth and I stare at him, silenced and waiting, a fierce heat rushing through me.
“You can stop,” he says. “You can do whatever you want.”
I pull back, startled by what he’s said, by how he’s made me feel.
“Why? Because you say so?” I’m trying to sound tough but have to settle for surprised and breathless.
He grins. “No. Because you can say so.”
29
Mom comes home really late and in a strange mood. She’s smiling but it doesn’t reach her eyes, just stretches as a false curve across her mouth. She asks me what I’m watching but clearly doesn’t listen to my answer, stands next to the sofa with one hand curved tight into it, pressing so hard her fingers sink deep into the cushion.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she says, but the words come out slowly, strangled and breathless. I turned off all the lights earlier, but in the flickering glow of the talk show that I’m not really watching, her face is strained, lit blue and red and green as she tries too hard to breathe normally. Before I can say anything else she turns away and goes upstairs.
Stealing Heaven Page 15
