by Tish Cohen
He stops unpacking, both hands resting inside the bag. Staring at me, he thinks about it for a moment. “I guess I’m just a sucker for a family. Anyway, what are you doing, roaming free on a school day?”
“I’m headed straight back. I just needed something from my room.”
“It couldn’t have waited until tomorrow?”
“No. It couldn’t.”
He sighs. “Run up and get it. I’ll drive you back to school.”
Forty-five minutes later, I step into the office and place a paper sack on the counter. I’m numb, shaking. But how I feel doesn’t matter. All I can think about right now is my confession. Whatever comes next can wait. One step at a time.
The office is unusually empty. Eventually an older teacher rushes out of an office with an armful of files. He looks up at me, shocked. As if I were a cheetah standing here instead of a student.
My stomach flips and I tighten my fingers around the folded bag. “Is Mrs. Pelletier around? I need to speak with her for a moment.”
The phone rings and he holds one finger in the air as he answers it. “Yes, it’s true. It’s the third-floor science lab. Room three twenty-nine. We don’t know. He hasn’t said much at all. Just mutters things we can’t understand and keeps right on scrubbing the sink as if he’s lost his mind. It’s been nearly an hour.”
Dad.
I grab the paper bag and run.
I can’t see past the swarm of kids at the doorway of the science lab. They’re all jostling and shoving to get a better look. Somehow when they’re in uniform, a crowd of Ants seems smaller, more compact. In their Grub Day clothes, with everyone wearing every color of the rainbow, they seem ten thousand strong. A wall I can’t penetrate no matter which opening I try to break through.
“What the hell?” says one kid.
“He’s been at it for almost an hour,” says another.
“This guy’s whacked.”
“The office called nine-one-one.”
Trying to attract as little attention as possible, I burrow through the bodies but don’t seem to get any closer to the door. At one point Carling calls out to me, something about my fever, but I ignore her, busy as I am looking for gaps in the crowd. I lift myself up on my tiptoes and peer between Griff and some older girls, but my view is still blocked by heads. This is no good. I need to get in there.
The principal, Mr. Oosterhouse, arrives and starts herding students away from the door. “That’s enough, people. Off to your next class. This is none of your concern.” He pushes his way through the kids and finally I’m able to make my move. I duck down and follow in his wake, not stopping until I’m standing in the doorway.
There he is at one of the sinks in the long counter, rag in hand. Red-faced and sweating, Charlie is scrubbing and scrubbing at the center sink. He has a wild look about him, with hair standing on end and eyes glazed, not really focused properly. I’ve seen this look before. In a rain-soaked garden in front of a little red bungalow in Lundon, Massachusetts.
This cannot be happening. Not here. Not now. It was hours before Dad allowed himself to be coaxed out of the rain, out of the sloppy black grave and into the house. And even then, he didn’t stop because he felt he was done. I cannot produce the real reason Dad stopped. I cannot produce my mother.
Just before we came to Ant, the sweater lost my mother’s smell. Something about being packed in a carton and shipped out of Lundon—where the sweater must have spent most of its life—stripped it of its scent. The cardboard greedily absorbed my mother’s essence, taking her from me for a second time.
It was the last week of school when I saw the cartons. Three days before prom. What should have been the sweetest afternoon in my life. Almost eighty degrees, sunny, and the trees had that urgent, early summer, acid-green tinge that begs you to look at them in wonder every time you step out the door. This freshness is fleeting—you know that from the year before—it lasts only until the heat of July makes their color deep and lazy.
I’d raced home after the last bell had rung and dumped my backpack in the dining room, praying my mother would be home early enough to practice curling my hair into prom-worthy ringlets. Turned out she’d been home already but had left again. I should have guessed from the cardboard boxes and suitcase outside her bedroom door that she was leaving for good. Instead—maybe because of the silky breezes outside, or the happy prospect of a long summer of suntanning with Mandy—I stupidly entertained the idea that my parents were surprising me with an unannounced vacation. I looked at Mom’s yellow plaid tote bag and green sweater placed neatly atop the big suitcase and hoped I wouldn’t have to share the overnight bag with my dad because the zipper could never be trusted.
Days later I would remember other details, like all her perfume bottles and lotions were missing from her bathroom. Her antique alarm clock was gone. If I’d thought to open her closet door, I would have seen nothing but wire hangers on her side, huddled together at one end of the rod, trying to appear, to my father’s jeans and shirts and bathrobe, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, as if they hadn’t been left behind at all but were simply waiting for fresh laundry to arrive.
But, drunk with anticipation of Friday night, I turned on the shower. Dropped my shorts and T-shirt to the bathroom floor, stepped into the scalding-hot water. It wasn’t until I’d lathered, rinsed, repeated, that I realized something was missing from the front hall. Without stopping to reach for a towel or to turn off the steaming water, I bolted out of the shower and slipped and skidded my way to the front of the house. I stood there dripping water onto the floor, staring at a square of red paisley wallpaper that glowed brighter than the rest of the faded old wall, thinking it should be the other way around. It was the patch where our mother-daughter photo used to be that should be faded away, if only to show a little respect for the girl who’d refused to accept what the late nights, the broken promises, the affair with her teacher really meant.
Her mother was leaving home.
A group of teachers huddle behind my father in the science lab, unsure what to do. Mr. Oosterhouse approaches, lays a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, but Charlie is too obsessed to feel it. It’s as if no one is around and all that stands between life as we know it and deadly microbes taking over the earth is this stainless-steel sink and Charlie’s overworked arm.
I want to lay my hand on Dad’s shoulder. I want to run across the room and hold him. Tell him everything’s going to be okay now. That I’m starting to like it here and won’t study so hard anymore. Tell him I’ll stay home every night to play Scrabble with him if only he’ll go back to normal. Tell him I love him even if my mother doesn’t.
“You’ve done a great job, Charlie,” Mr. Oosterhouse says. “We couldn’t ask for a more pristine sink. Now what say we pack up and move on to another classroom?” He leans over and picks up Dad’s bucket. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“No,” says Dad, still erasing something that isn’t there. In this light, I can see the sharp creases in his clothes from where he’s been ironing his uniform. Some of the seams in his jacket, his trousers, are frayed white from repeated heat and stress. I look around. No one else is as unwrinkled as my dad. “No,” he repeats. “There’s a small mark.”
Mr. Oosterhouse moves closer. “It’s an old sink. One that has endured many science experiments gone wrong. There are many stains that will never come out.”
That’s not it! I want to shout. He’s not scrubbing to rid the sink of stains. He’s got it in his head that this spot is wicked with danger. It doesn’t matter that his opponent doesn’t exist, it just matters that he feels he won. That’s the enigma of OCD.
At the doorway, more teachers have gathered and are herding the students down the hall. I slip past them into the laboratory. Once inside, I hear Mr. Oosterhouse whisper to a small redheaded teacher to call 911. He says Dad needs medical care. The teacher nods and shoots out of the room, slamming the door shut, her sturdy pumps making threatening rat-a-tat-tat ma
chine-gun sounds as she retreats to the relative normalcy of the hallway.
The thought of paramedics racing in here and shooting Dad up with tranquilizers like some gorilla that’s escaped from the zoo, only to strap him to a stretcher and whisk him off for observation at Massachusetts General, is more than I can take.
Mr. Oosterhouse, the only person besides Mrs. Pelletier who knows I exist, looks at me. “Are you his daughter?”
“I’m Sara.”
The kids are gone, along with many of the teachers. I pluck the bottle of bleach solution, Charlie’s liquid solace, his pacifier, from the cleaning bucket and push past Mr. Oosterhouse.
Knowing full well it’s like giving the alcoholic a beer, I hand the bleach to my father. “Try this.”
His wild eyes focus on me but he says nothing. Just removes the cap, douses his cloth in fluid, and wipes the sink with it. He stands back and watches the sink go from shiny and silver with wetness back to mottled and dusty-looking silver. The sound of the microbes screaming, dying, is nearly audible, and right away I see his jaw slacken and relax. It’s the sanitary equivalent of having dug the perfect hole.
The paramedics’ walkie-talkies buzz and hum in the hallway like a swarm of killer bees. Mr. Oosterhouse heads to the door to wave them in. As Dad bends over to pack up his things, I check the area for students, then, assured we have a split second to ourselves, I say, “Are you all right?”
He nods.
I want to kiss his bearded cheek more than anything. Smother it with kisses like Mom did to bring him out of the rain. But all I say is, “I’ll see you at home, Dad. Okay?”
“Don’t worry, Sara. I’m fine.”
Paramedics rush in as I slip out. Dad’s calm now. They won’t have reason to do anything but ask a few questions and recommend he make an appointment with his dead doctor.
My heart races when I see Leo waiting in the hall. I’d forgotten all about him. It’s just like Mandy said, right away I have my answer. His eyes soften when he sees me and a sweet smile spreads across his face. And, I don’t know if it’s my imagination or just the excitement, but it looks like he might be blushing. He stares at me and mouths the word Hey.
I whisper, “Hey.”
I clutch the paper bag behind my back. There’s no returning the yoga pants now. Not with the current state of my dad’s mental health. His daughter confessing to theft, getting suspended, maybe even expelled, could make him really lose it. All I can do now is lie low. And pray.
Behind Leo are Griff and Willa. Griff asks, “How did you get a backstage pass, London?”
“I just slipped inside to help.”
“But why?” asks Willa.
“Yeah,” says Griff, pulling up his drooping pants. “Is Crazy Charlie your father or something?”
I shoot him a look meant to shut him up. To show him he’s the one who’s crazy.
This isn’t like last time, when Dad’s OCD plowed my social life deep into the flower bed on Norma Jean Drive, not to be unearthed and dewormed for a full two years. At least I still had a real family. I still had a real friend. Mandy was willing to stick by me even if it meant eating lunch every day with the kids who made shadow puppets against the radiators.
But nothing is real anymore. My mother is gone. My dad moved me far, far away from my rock, Mandy. And the friends I’ve replaced her with are cheap imitations. There’s not a single, solitary student at Ant who would stand by me if Charlie’s OCD showered me in muddy droplets right now. I would be completely alone.
“Well,” giggles Willa. “Is he your dad or what?”
I thought they’d keep Charlie longer. The paramedics. I thought they’d look into his eyes and listen to his pulse and slide a stethoscope under his crisply ironed shirt to hear his heartbeat. I thought they’d ask him to breathe in and breathe out. Make him answer endless questions about his medical past. I thought Dad would say something about vintage ambulances being superior to modern ones and ask them if they’ve ever considered retrofitting an old vehicle with modern-day lifesaving equipment.
If I thought for one second Dad would be finished with them, walking out of the science lab, and passing behind me—fake friends or no friends—I wouldn’t have said it.
“No.” I shake my head as if Griff is the one who has lost his mind. “Charlie is not my father.”
My eyes meet Dad’s the moment the words have tumbled off the tip of my forked tongue. His face crumples like he’s been shot.
chapter 26
the tiniest key
When too many things spin out beyond your reach, the human body takes notice. Only, instead of pumping evenly timed doses of soothing serotonin, warmed up like a baby’s bottle, through your veins to modulate your mood and leave you clear-headed enough to battle your way out of your problems, your body declares mutiny by hammering on your nerves and making your breath reedy and shallow. This has the cumulative effect of leaving you with a sick stomach, tingling fingertips, and a perpetual feeling of faintness.
It’s a case of life imitating art. Rascal killed the old pawnbroker to make the world a better place. But her innocent, underappreciated cleaning-lady sister walked in and he offed her in the process. What I’ve done is no different. I thought I was killing off the OCD. Saving myself from a lonely existence. Making the world—okay, my world—a better place. But I axed my father’s soul in the process.
I don’t know how to make it up to him. How do you bring someone you’ve murdered back to life? Once you’ve stepped on an ant, just because you could, there’s no going back. You’ve done what you’ve done and you simply have to live with it. No amount of apologizing will erase it.
I’ve told Charlie I’m sorry. I’ve told him I love him. I know it sounded tinny and false when I said I was proud of him, but I am. He’s handling our broken situation as best he can. He’s doing the best he knows how. And in some screwed-up way, his worsening OCD is part of that. He’s been trying to scrub our lives clean.
His reaction? I love you, Sara. I understand, Sara. Now don’t stay up too late, Sara.
If he’d yelled at me, if he’d grounded me—if he’d disowned me, even—it would have been easier to take. But this. This absolute acceptance. It’s making me sadder than sad.
The school handled it amazingly well. Mr. Oosterhouse met with him in private. Asked Dad about his stress levels. Suggested Dad consider a leave of absence to give himself time to unwind; after all, he’s had the big move and the change in schools. The principal doesn’t even know about the biggest stressor of all: Mom. Mr. Oosterhouse even went so far as to give him the card of a board-approved doctor, an actual live doctor, to help him.
The Antmasters, they aren’t so bad. Think about it—they could have fired him after an episode like that. For all they know, he could get violent. But Charlie is Charlie. To know him is to want to protect him, and Mr. Oosterhouse wants to help.
The thing is, aside from this whoopsie, Dad’s been good for the school. People always say the place has never looked so good. Mr. Oosterhouse knows it. Plus the staff has grown to like Dad. And what’s not to like? He’s a good man.
If he takes the leave of absence, he’ll still be paid. Union rules. But while spending his days at home relaxing might be good for my father in terms of resting and coming to terms with his new life, it would probably end in another unnecessary cleaning frenzy in the apartment. So when Dad refused the paid leave, I didn’t argue. He did, however, put the doctor’s card in his pocket and, later, tack it to our bulletin board in the kitchen. Whether he plans to call or just took it out of politeness, I don’t know.
I didn’t sleep Monday night because there was a terrible storm, heavy wind that tore huge branches from trees and set off more than a few car alarms. So by the time Dad calls out that it’s time to go, I’m still pulling on my uniform and I tell him to leave without me.
With cleanup crews gathering fallen tree limbs all over the city, traffic is terrible. Once the bus pulls up to my stop, an elder
ly couple, clearly from out of town, begin arguing with the driver because he can’t change a twenty, blocking my path down to the front stairwell. There doesn’t appear to be an immediate solution beyond the old man stuffing twenty dollars into the fare box, so I dig through my pockets and slide three dollars into the box for them. They seem shocked and touched that a young person mustered up a little generosity and selflessness, and the woman touches my shoulder as I pass, saying, “What a sweet girl.”
If only she knew.
The twenty gives me a great idea that might just help me feel I’ve regained some shred of control over my life. As I shuffle toward the school, I reach into my backpack for my plane ticket, wandering closer to the street, where early-morning traffic is whizzing by. The wind hasn’t fully died down from last night and if I time it well, I should get a nice tailwind in the wake of the next passing bus.
It’s not long before a city bus comes roaring down Charles. I hold the ticket out toward the road and wait until it starts to kick and flap like Carling’s twenty-dollar bill in the T. I open my fingers and watch the ticket dart up toward the sky, then cartwheel back to earth over the street, where it gets ripped beyond recognition under the wheels of dozens of passing cars.
I trot up the school steps toward the front doors to find Isabella leaning against the chipped railing, arms folded across her chest. She looks me up and down. “Hey, London.”
“Hey.”
“Are you okay? You look tired.”
“I’m fine.”
“I hope you don’t have that flu bug. I hear it can be nasty.”
“What do you want, Isabella?”
She feigns shock. “What a question. Can’t a good friend be concerned for your health?”
“Not if she’s you.”
“See, now I’m hurt. And all I want to know is why you look so terrible.”
“Long story.” I turn away. “We’d better head inside.”
She steps in front of me, thrusting out one bony hip. “You’re full of long stories, aren’t you? In fact, I’m pretty certain you’ve been telling us a whole pack of lies.” She leans closer and lowers her tinkly voice. “Is that true, London?”
