Inside Out Girl

by Tish Cohen

  “Rachel…”

  “I just hope these counselors give them water breaks. There’s probably no shade over the ramps and pools—”

  “Bowls,” he corrected her. “And several of the half-pipes are covered by shade structures. Dustin will be fine.”

  “Right.” She nodded to herself. “He’ll be fine, I know.”

  “You can’t shelter them from everything.”

  “Only sun. And only on several half-pipes.”

  “You’re at your cutest when you get all worked up. Did you know that?”

  “I’m not ‘all worked up.’ I’m just considering my son’s electrolyte balance.”

  “Listen,” Len said. “I’m going to take about four days for myself. To prepare for an upcoming trial. I just didn’t want you thinking I’d disappeared.”

  “What about Olivia?”

  “My parents are going to take her. Not quite the understanding backdrop she needs, but it’s the best I can do.”

  “I have an idea,” Rachel said, making a quick left on a yellow light. “I know I don’t have a stellar track record, in fact I probably have the shittiest track record with Olivia that anyone could ever have, after the way I let her get lost in the busiest mall in the Hudson—”

  “Rachel. Stop apologizing. It could have happened to anyone.”

  She sucked in a deep breath. Nothing about her past relationship with Olivia indicated she could handle the child for any longer than the time it took to unwrap a candy bar. In fact, she was nearly certain she’d live to regret her words. “I’ll do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Watch Olivia. Bring her to my house. I’ll take a bit of time away from the office.”

  The phone hissed with Len’s pause. “You?”

  He didn’t trust her. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want me to, it’s totally fine. I mean, she knows your parents. She’d be at home. It was probably a stupid idea—”

  “You’d watch her? Seriously?”

  “Actually, I shouldn’t. I don’t know what I’m doing and it wouldn’t be fair to her to impose my bumbling—”

  “Of course you can do it! You’re a wonderful mother. Olivia lights up when she’s around you.” He paused. “You’d be just perfect for her.”

  “Are you sure…”

  “She’ll be thrilled when I tell her. Of course, she can’t know I’ll be nearby working around the clock. You’ll have to put up with me telling her I’m away. Far away. Los Angeles, maybe. Otherwise she’ll beg to call me in the middle of the night.” There was a crackling on the cell connection. “I know you’re not into lying to kids, but it’s the only way it’ll work.”

  She thought of Olivia on the floor of the pet store, chattering deliriously and pressing the hamster ball into her cheek. “You do the lying. I’ll do the rest.”

  Olivia arrived a few hours later. Twenty minutes into the visit, she sat at the kitchen table doing nothing but breathing. With every intake, her entire body puffed up taller, only to shrivel down again with the exhale, slumping all over the suitcase she held on her lap. Birthday Wishes Barbie lay, bare buttocks up, on the table. “How long is my dad going to be away again?”

  “Only four days,” said Rachel. “And you’ll be having so much fun with Janie, it’ll go by in a blink.”

  “Why can’t I have fun with you too?”

  Rachel poured dry macaroni into a pot of bubbling water. Lunch, if somewhat late, was all planned. Organic macaroni and cheese, baby carrots, and papaya-banana juice. The meal was, of course, completely monochromatic, unappetizingly orange and beige. She’d have to scare up some jazzier hues at dinner. “You will be having fun with me. I think we might even be having fun right now.”

  “No.” Olivia shook her head. “We’re not. Can I have my Lucky Charms cereal now?”

  “We’re having macaroni. And other stuff.”

  “But it’s Monday and at the end of the day I always have Lucky Charms on Mondays for lunch in the summer. My dad brings it to my KidFun daycare. Every single, solitary, actual, complete Monday.”

  “Not this Monday.”

  “Every Monday.”

  “Except this one. I don’t bring marmallowy cereals into the house. Especially those made with food dyes. Yellow is made from coal tar. And pink has been linked to thyroid tumors in rats.”

  Olivia’s eyes lit up. “Rats?”

  “Rats. Very little food coloring enters this house. It’s kind of a rule I have.”

  Olivia’s lips flat-lined. Her little nostrils flared and her cheeks burned with fury. She jutted out her jaw and growled, “When I don’t get Charms, I don’t eat until I get Charms. And that’s a kind of a rule I have.”

  “My rules are my rules.” At least Rachel hoped they were. With Olivia, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

  “I want Lucky Charms.”

  Okay. It was time to pull out a solid parenting technique. Something from the magazine. She thought about the situation.

  Fact: the child was disappointed.

  Fact: disappointment is part of life.

  Fact: helping a child cope with disappointment will build her confidence by letting her see she can survive a situation as difficult as…as running out of Charms.

  “Olivia,” Rachel began. “I know you’re upset because you can’t have your favorite cereal. I’m wondering what you will do to make yourself feel better.”

  “Starve.”

  “Starving is not an option.”

  “YES IT IS!” she screamed. “I’M GOING TO STARVE AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME!”

  “I’m going to have to send you to your room if you don’t settle down,” Rachel warned. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them, mainly because she had no idea whether a time-out would work any better.

  Without taking her narrowed eyes off Rachel’s face, Olivia reached her arm across the table and held a pointed finger up to the side of the salt shaker. She paused for a moment, then stabbed the shaker, knocking it sideways and dumping salt all over the table.

  “Now you’ve given me no choice. Go to your room, Olivia.”

  With her suitcase clutched tight in one hand and Barbie’s hair in the other, Olivia stomped from the kitchen. Rachel stared into the steaming pot of macaroni. She’d always found with Dustin and Janie that time spent in their rooms, thinking about what they could have done differently, made them emerge thoughtful and cooperative. Defused. Somehow having a little alone time matured them. With any luck, Len would come to pick up Olivia on Friday afternoon and she’d be a calmer, happier, more settled child.

  The front door slammed.

  Rachel wandered into the hall to find it empty. She could see upstairs that Janie’s bedroom door was shut. Peeking through the hall window, she gasped aloud. There was Olivia, dragging her suitcase down the driveway, halfway to the street.

  “Olivia!” Rachel shouted, racing out the front door. “Olivia, stop!”

  Gravel piercing her bare feet as she ran, Rachel caught up with the child near the edge of the road. “Where are you going?”

  The girl squinted up at her. Birthday Wishes Barbie, still hanging from her ponytail, twirled, wide-eyed, helpless in the breeze. “To my room. Like you said.”

  Oh dear. “Not your room at home, Olivia. Your room upstairs. Here. In my house.” She took the suitcase in one hand and Olivia’s limp little paw in the other and led her back to the house.

  She settled Olivia in the guest bedroom and ran for the ringing phone. Her heart caught in her throat as she read the display. Camp Black Pine. “Yes?”

  “Is this Mrs. Berman?”

  She could barely answer. “Yes.”

  “It’s Jordana Stein, I’m the director of Camp Black Pine. Your son Dustin’s counselor is here beside me. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of an accident.”

  By the time Rachel and Olivia reached the camp laneway, hours later, it was dusk. The car shuddered and thumped along a road so narrow branches scraped the wi
ndows. They passed under a CAMP BLACK PINE sign made of slender birch logs, and pulled into the parking lot.

  One building appeared to be larger than the others, so she swung the car in that direction, her headlights illuminating a teenage boy—staff, most likely—sitting on a bench beside a huge duffel bag and a boy with tousled hair, one arm in a sling and a sheepish look on his face. Rachel shut off the engine and jumped out.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” said Dustin as she marched forward. “No skate camp ever again.”

  Fighting the impulse to threaten to write the camp up in the magazine as a facility that broke children in record time, she kissed her son’s head and forced a smile. The camp was, after all, owned by Len’s client. She’d have to tread very carefully. “We’ll discuss it when we get home.”

  The teenager extended his hand, which Rachel shook with unintended force. “Mrs. Berman. I’m Steven, Dusty’s counselor. This kid’s a total trooper. Didn’t squawk at all when they reset the bone. It stuck right up, bulging under his skin. I thought I was going to die the way the doctor was jamming it back into place, but he’s one tough little dude…”

  Rachel grabbed the duffel bag. “I just want to get him home right now. Can you walk to the car, honey?” she asked Dustin.

  “It’s my wrist. Not my leg.” He waved good-bye to Steven with his cast, which Rachel could now see was covered in signatures. “Bye, Stevie.”

  “Later, buddy. Come back when you’re all healed.”

  Rachel let out a half-laugh, swung the bag into the trunk, and slammed it tight.

  “Mrs. B., the director’s inside. She wants to see you—”

  She hurried to open the passenger door for Dustin and help him sit down, fasten his seat belt. “Tell her I’ll call her in the morning,” she said. “Right now, I have a long drive ahead of me with two tired kids…”

  “I’m not tired,” called Olivia from the backseat. “I want Lucky Charms.”

  “I want McDonald’s,” said Dustin. “I totally deserve some fries.”

  Steven stepped closer as Rachel climbed into her seat. He handed her a large square envelope. “These are his X-rays. Jordana wants you to sign some stuff and talk to you about how it happened. It’ll only take a few minutes. It’s camp policy.”

  Camp policy. After they break your only son, they have a policy about signing. She slammed the door and opened the window. “I’ll call Jordana in the morning.” As Dustin turned on the radio with his good hand, the car sped off into the trees.

  “Hey! There’s mosquitoes back here!” Olivia slapped her leg. “Hundreds.”

  “Mom,” said Dustin. “It’s not what you think…”

  “If you’d gone to computer camp, you’d be in one piece right now,” Rachel said. “That’s it for skateboarding. We’re lucky it was only your arm.”

  “Mom…”

  “You could have taken up archery, sailing, soccer. What’s wrong with soccer?”

  “I love this song!” said Olivia, tapping her feet to the raging punk music playing on the radio. Then she whispered, “No mainstream bullshit.”

  Dustin spun around, then looked at his mother. “Did you hear what she said? I bet Janie taught her that!”

  “Don’t try to change the topic, Dustin. Karate—there’s a safe sport.” She glanced at his cast as they rambled through the trees. “How much pain are you in? Did they give you any Tylenol? What time did it happen?”

  “Three fifteen.”

  Rachel squinted. “Three fifteen? The bus wasn’t even supposed to get here until three fifteen. And where were your wrist guards?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It had nothing to do with skateboarding. I was so happy to get out of the bus, I jumped over a chain that blocks off the parking lot and caught my foot in it. I broke my fall with my hands.”

  Nineteen hours into her stay, Olivia was in full hunger strike mode. She’d consented to four glasses of chocolate milk, but not so much as a crumb of food. On the way home from camp the night before, Rachel offered her a Happy Meal. When they arrived home after midnight, a peanut butter sandwich. At breakfast, a blueberry muffin and a cheese string. To all selections Olivia turned up her perfect nose and announced she would only open her mouth for Lucky Charms. Nothing else would tempt the child. And Len had been quite clear with his “only if Olivia’s on fire” instructions.

  Sagging in front of her milk glass, Olivia already seemed to have shrunk. Rachel sipped her coffee and tried to work out a plan. The Charms weren’t going away. They were only going to be shifted into the Tuesday lunchtime slot. This child had a will of marble. No, granite. Marble was too absorbent. There was nothing porous about Olivia’s resolve.

  Rachel had to give in. She was going to have to get in the car and go pick up a box of goddamned Lucky Charms before stopping by Dustin’s pediatrician’s office with the X-rays.

  Twenty-one and a half hours into Olivia’s sojourn, Rachel was back. She’d left Dustin and Olivia upstairs with Janie for an hour while she learned Dustin’s injury was a clean one, requiring nothing more than six weeks in an autographed cast. Assured the country doctors had set the bone to the city doctor’s satisfaction, Rachel had been free to traipse through three different stores in search of Lucky Charms. Original, not Berry.

  With arms full of shopping bags, Rachel stepped into the house and called up the stairs. “Janie? You’re off duty now. I’m home.”

  Janie whooped with glee and slammed her door.

  Rachel called Olivia to come down for lunch. She pulled a bowl out of the cupboard, filled it with Charms, then turned around to set it on the island, knocking a bag of groceries onto the floor with a crash. Damn! That would be the bag with the olive jar. Almost immediately, a cloud of fine white powder billowed into the air. Unbleached flour. Coughing, she scooped up what she could and dumped it into the trash. The floor was a pasty mess of olive juice and flour. The more she wiped at it with the torn paper bag, the worse it looked. She reached for a tea towel and tied it around her nose and mouth so she could breathe, and remain conscious long enough to rid the floor of glass shards, then dropped down to the floor and began to scrub.

  “Olivia!” she called. “Don’t come in here yet. I’m cleaning a—”

  “What?” the girl answered from behind her.

  Rachel spun around and clutched her chest, her face still covered. “You scared me—”

  Olivia’s eyes bulged. Her mouth tripled in size. She screamed, running in place. Rachel lunged closer in an effort to console her, but the closer she came, the louder Olivia howled.

  Janie tore into the room. “What’s going on? Why’s it all cloudy in here?” She waved her hands in front of her face, coughing. “Are we on fire?”

  Dustin was next. “Man, that kid has some chords! Can’t you shut her up?”

  Rachel shouted through her tea towel mask, “I don’t know how! Go open the windows so the room can clear out.” She pushed powdered hair out of her eyes. “Olivia, sweetie, please stop!”

  “YOUR MOUTH!” Olivia screamed, still hopping around. “WHERE’S YOUR MOUTH?”

  Rachel ripped off the towel and smiled. “Honey, it’s just me! It’s Rachel.” Olivia threw herself into Rachel’s arms, the hysterical screaming giving way to gentler, quieter sobbing. Once she settled down, she grabbed her bowl of dry cereal and padded out to the backyard.

  “Hey,” huffed Dustin, waving his cast through the dust. “How come she gets Lucky Charms?”

  CHAPTER 33

  A Pretty Good Door for Slamming

  Under the lilac bush, Olivia perched her paws on the rim of the bowl like a rodent and wiggled her whiskers as she chewed. She thought about how much better the cereal tasted at Rachel’s house, even when she forgot to cry for milk.

  She heard a noise next door and looked up, using her whiskers to see because rats don’t have very good sight. Janie’s friend Tabitha was on her patio, looking under chairs and under cushions. Then she said the
swear that sounds like duck but not quite. The one Dad said when he got real mad.

  Janie’s friend yelled, “Mom, I can’t find your stupid keys!” and went inside the house and slammed the back door. It sounded like a pretty good door for slamming.

  Lucky.

  Olivia ate up the rest of her cereal, wiped a rainbow of marshmallow smears onto her Snoopy shirt, and ran back into the house to burrow into Rachel’s couch.

  CHAPTER 34

  “Sitting in My Room”

  —THE RAMONES

  Friday evening, Janie wrapped a bottle of wine in a pillowcase and stuffed it into her backpack along with two of her mother’s good wineglasses—each one wrapped in a winter mitten—and her Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks CD. “Bollocks” meaning scrotum or testicles, this particular CD would add just the right subliminal anti-male ambience to the evening.

  Tabitha would spend all day Saturday at her father’s crap wedding and should arrive home by seven. Janie wanted her arrival for the sleepover to coincide with Tabitha’s changing out of her strapless dress and into her sweatpants. She figured she should probably show up at about 7:02, just to be safe.

  The last things that went into the backpack, after the troll doll and a toothbrush, were Janie’s brand-new nightie—hot pink like Tabitha’s pool noodle—and a pair of plaid flannel pajama bottoms, in case the nightie seemed over the top.

  Zipping up the bag, Janie plopped down onto her bed to wait. She tapped her foot and glanced at the clock radio.

  5:57.

  She thought for a moment. Twenty-five hours and five minutes to go.

  CHAPTER 35

  Improper Seaming

  Know your limitations. We all have them.

  —RACHEL BERMAN, Perfect Parent magazine

  One hundred hours into Olivia’s visit—almost time for another dreaded meal—and Dustin had accidentally soaked his cast in the bath, Olivia had finished off all the Lucky Charms, Janie had locked herself in her room, and Rachel was desperate for a shower. She winced as she pulled out the efficient ponytail she’d worn for two days straight.