But when Eleanor walked in the house, it was like her siblings didn’t recognize her.
Ben just glanced at her, and Maisie – Maisie was sitting on Richie’s lap. Which would have made Eleanor throw right up if she hadn’t just promised her mom that she’d be on her best behavior for the rest of her life.
Only Mouse ran to hug Eleanor. She picked him up gratefully. He was five now, and heavy.
‘Hey, Mouse,’ she said. They’d called him that since he was a baby, she couldn’t remember why. He reminded her more of a big, sloppy puppy – always excited, always trying to jump into your lap.
‘Look, Dad, it’s Eleanor,’ Mouse said, jumping down. ‘Do you know Eleanor?’
Richie pretended not to hear. Maisie watched and sucked her thumb. Eleanor hadn’t seen her do that in years. She was eight now, but with her thumb in her mouth, she looked just like a baby.
The baby wouldn’t remember Eleanor at all. He’d be two … There he was, sitting on the floor with Ben. Ben was eleven. He stared at the wall behind the TV.
Their mom carried the duffel bag with Eleanor’s stuff into a bedroom off the living room, and Eleanor followed her. The room was tiny, just big enough for a dresser and some bunk beds. Mouse ran into the room after them. ‘You get the top bunk,’ he said, ‘and Ben has to sleep on the floor with me. Mom already told us, and Ben started to cry.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ their mom said softly. ‘We all just have to readjust.’
There wasn’t room in this room to readjust. (Which Eleanor decided not to mention.) She went to bed as soon as she could, so she wouldn’t have to go back out to the living room.
When she woke up in the middle of the night, all three of her brothers were asleep on the floor. There was no way to get up without stepping on one of them, and she didn’t even know where the bathroom was …
She found it. There were only five rooms in the house, and the bathroom just barely counted. It was attached to the kitchen – like literally attached, without a door. This house was designed by cave trolls, Eleanor thought. Somebody, probably her mom, had hung a flowered sheet between the refrigerator and the toilet.
When she got home from school, Eleanor let herself in with her new key. The house was possibly even more depressing in daylight – dingy and bare – but at least Eleanor had the place, and her mom, to herself.
It was weird to come home and see her mom, just standing in the kitchen, like … like normal. She was making soup, chopping onions. Eleanor felt like crying.
‘How was school?’ her mom asked.
‘Fine,’ Eleanor said.
‘Did you have a good first day?’
‘Sure. I mean, yeah, it was just school.’
‘Will you have a lot of catching up to do?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Her mom wiped her hands on the back of her jeans and tucked her hair behind her ears, and Eleanor was struck, for the ten-thousandth time, by how beautiful she was.
When Eleanor was a little girl, she’d thought her mom looked like a queen, like the star of some fairy tale.
Not a princess – princesses are just pretty. Eleanor’s mother was beautiful. She was tall and stately, with broad shoulders and an elegant waist. All of her bones seemed more purposeful than other people’s. Like they weren’t just there to hold her up, they were there to make a point.
She had a strong nose and a sharp chin, and her cheekbones were high and thick. You’d look at Eleanor’s mom and think she must be carved into the prow of a Viking ship somewhere or maybe painted on the side of a plane …
Eleanor looked a lot like her.
But not enough.
Eleanor looked like her mother through a fish tank. Rounder and softer. Slurred. Where her mother was statuesque, Eleanor was heavy. Where her mother was finely drawn, Eleanor was smudged.
After five kids, her mother had breasts and hips like a woman in a cigarette ad. At sixteen, Eleanor was already built like she ran a medieval pub.
She had too much of everything and too little height to hide it. Her breasts started just below her chin, her hips were … a parody. Even her mom’s hair, long and wavy and auburn, was a more legitimate version of Eleanor’s bright red curls.
Eleanor put her hand to her head self-consciously.
‘I have something to show you,’ her mom said, covering the soup, ‘but I didn’t want to do it in front of the little kids. Here, come on.’
Eleanor followed her into the kids’ bedroom. Her mom opened the closet and took out a stack of towels and a laundry basket full of socks.
‘I couldn’t bring all your things when we moved,’ she said. ‘Obviously we don’t have as much room here as we had in the old house …’ She reached into the closet and pulled out a black plastic garbage bag. ‘But I packed as much as I could.’
She handed Eleanor the bag and said, ‘I’m sorry about the rest.’
Eleanor had assumed that Richie threw all her stuff in the trash a year ago, ten seconds after he’d kicked her out. She took the bag in her arms. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
Her mom reached out and touched Eleanor’s shoulder, just for a second. ‘The little kids will be home in twenty minutes or so,’ she said, ‘and we’ll eat dinner around 4:30. I like to have everything settled before Richie comes home.’
Eleanor nodded. She opened the bag as soon as her mom left the room. She wanted to see what was still hers …
The first thing she recognized were the paper dolls. They were loose in the bag and wrinkled; a few were marked with crayons. It had been years since Eleanor had played with them, but she was still happy to see them there. She pressed them flat and laid them in a pile.
Under the dolls were books, a dozen or so that her mother must have grabbed at random; she wouldn’t have known which were Eleanor’s favorites. Eleanor was glad to see Garp and Watership Down. It sucked that Oliver’s Story had made the cut, but Love Story hadn’t. And Little Men was there, but not Little Women or Jo’s Boys.
There was a bunch more papers in the bag. She’d had a file cabinet in her old room, and it looked like her mom had grabbed most of the folders. Eleanor tried to get everything into a neat stack, all the report cards and school pictures and letters from pen pals.
She wondered where the rest of the stuff from the old house had ended up. Not just her stuff, but everybody’s. Like the furniture and the toys, and all of her mom’s plants and paintings. Her grandma’s Danish wedding plates … The little red ‘Uff da!’ horse that always used to hang above the sink.
Maybe it was packed away somewhere. Maybe her mom was hoping the cave-troll house was just temporary.
Eleanor was still hoping that Richie was just temporary.
At the bottom of the black trash bag was a box. Her heart jumped a little when she saw it. Her uncle in Minnesota used to send her family a Fruit of the Month Club membership every Christmas, and Eleanor and her brothers and sister would always fight over the boxes that the fruit came in. It was stupid, but they were good boxes – solid, with nice lids. This one was a grapefruit box, soft from wear at the edges.
Eleanor opened it carefully. Nothing inside had been touched. There was her stationery, her colored pencils and her Prismacolor markers (another Christmas present from her uncle). There was a stack of promotional cards from the mall that still smelled like expensive perfumes. And there was her Walkman. Untouched. Un-batteried, too, but nevertheless, there. And where there was a Walkman, there was the possibility of music.
Eleanor let her head fall over the box. It smelled like Chanel No. 5 and pencil shavings. She sighed.
There wasn’t anything to do with her recovered belongings once she’d sorted through them – there wasn’t even room in the dresser for Eleanor’s clothes. So she set aside the box and the books, and carefully put everything else back in the garbage bag. Then she pushed the bag back as far as she could on the highest shelf in the closet, behind the towels and a humidifier.
/> She climbed onto her bunk and found a scraggly old cat napping there. ‘Shoo,’ Eleanor said, shoving him. The cat leaped to the floor and out the bedroom door.
CHAPTER 5
Park
Mr Stessman was making them all memorize a poem, whatever poem they wanted. Well, whatever poem they picked.
‘You’re going to forget everything else I teach you,’ Mr Stessman said, petting his mustache. ‘Everything. Maybe you’ll remember that Beowulf fought a monster. Maybe you’ll remember that “To be or not to be” is Hamlet, not Macbeth …
‘But everything else? Forget about it.’
He was slowly walking up and down each aisle. Mr Stessman loved this kind of stuff – theater in the round. He stopped next to Park’s desk and leaned in casually with his hand on the back of Park’s chair. Park stopped drawing and sat up straight. He couldn’t draw anyway.
‘So, you’re going to memorize a poem,’ Mr Stessman continued, pausing a moment to smile down at Park like Gene Wilder in the chocolate factory.
‘Brains love poetry. It’s sticky stuff. You’re going to memorize this poem, and five years from now, we’re going to see each other at the Village Inn, and you’ll say, “Mr Stessman, I still remember ‘The Road Not Taken!’ Listen … ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood …’”’
He moved on to the next desk. Park relaxed.
‘Nobody gets to pick “The Road Not Taken,” by the way, I’m sick to death of it. And no Shel Silverstein. He’s grand, but you’ve graduated. We’re all adults here. Choose an adult poem …
‘Choose a romantic poem, that’s my advice. You’ll get the most use out of it.’
He walked by the new girl’s desk, but she didn’t turn away from the window.
‘Of course, it’s up to you. You may choose “A Dream Deferred” – Eleanor?’ She turned blankly. Mr Stessman leaned in. ‘You may choose it, Eleanor. It’s poignant and it’s truth. But how often will you get to roll that one out?
‘No. Choose a poem that speaks to you. Choose a poem that will help you speak to someone else.’
Park planned to choose a poem that rhymed, so it would be easier to memorize. He liked Mr Stessman, he really did – but he wished he’d dial it back a few notches. Whenever he worked the room like this, Park got embarrassed for him.
‘We meet tomorrow in the library,’ Mr Stessman said, back at his desk. ‘Tomorrow, we’re gathering rosebuds.’
The bell rang. On cue.
CHAPTER 6
Eleanor
‘Watch it, raghead.’
Tina pushed roughly past Eleanor and climbed onto the bus.
She had everybody else in their gym class calling Eleanor Bozo, but Tina had already moved on to Raghead and Bloody Mary. ‘Cuz it looks like your whole head is on the rag,’ she’d explained today in the locker room.
It made sense that Tina was in Eleanor’s gym class – because gym was an extension of hell, and Tina was definitely a demon. A weird, miniature demon. Like a toy demon. Or a teacup. And she had a whole gang of lesser demons, all dressed in matching gymsuits.
Actually, everyone wore matching gymsuits.
At Eleanor’s old school, she’d thought it had sucked that they had to wear gym shorts. (Eleanor hated her legs even more than she hated the rest of her body.) But at North they had to wear gymsuits. Polyester onesies. The bottom was red, and the top was red-and-white striped, and it all zipped up the front.
‘Red isn’t your color, Bozo,’ Tina had said the first time Eleanor suited up. The other girls all laughed, even the black girls, who hated Tina. Laughing at Eleanor was Dr King’s mountain.
After Tina pushed past her, Eleanor took her time getting on the bus – but she still got to her seat before that stupid Asian kid. Which meant she’d have to get up to let him have his spot by the window. Which would be awkward. It was all awkward. Every time the bus hit a pothole, Eleanor practically fell in the guy’s lap.
Maybe somebody else on the bus would drop out or die or something and she’d be able move away from him.
At least he didn’t ever talk to her. Or look at her.
At least she didn’t think he did; Eleanor never looked at him.
Sometimes she looked at his shoes. He had cool shoes. And sometimes she looked to see what he was reading …
Always comic books.
Eleanor never brought anything to read on the bus. She didn’t want Tina, or anybody else, to catch her with her head down.
Park
It felt wrong to sit next to somebody every day and not talk to her. Even if she was weird. (Jesus, was she weird. Today she was dressed like a Christmas tree, with all this stuff pinned to her clothes, shapes cut out of fabric, ribbon …) The ride home couldn’t go fast enough. Park couldn’t wait to get away from her, away from everybody.
‘Dude, where’s your dobak?’
He was trying to eat dinner alone in his room, but his little brother wouldn’t let him. Josh stood in the doorway, already dressed for taekwando and inhaling a chicken leg.
‘Dad’s going to be here, like now,’ Josh said through the drumstick, ‘and he’s gonna shit if you’re not ready.’
Their mom came up behind Josh and thumped him on the head. ‘Don’t cuss, dirty mouth.’ She had to reach up to do it. Josh was his father’s son; he was already at least seven inches taller than their mom – and three inches taller than Park.
Which sucked.
Park pushed Josh out the door and slammed it. So far, Park’s strategy for maintaining his status as older brother despite their growing size differential was to pretend he could still kick Josh’s ass.
He could still beat him at taekwando – but only because Josh got impatient with any sport where his size wasn’t an obvious advantage. The high school football coach had already started coming to Josh’s Peewee games.
Park changed into his dobak, wondering if he was going to have to start wearing Josh’s hand-me-downs pretty soon. Maybe he could take a Sharpie to all Josh’s Husker football T-shirts and make them say Husker Dü. Or maybe it wouldn’t even be an issue – Park might never get any taller than five foot four. He might never grow out of the clothes he had now.
He put on his Chuck Taylors and took his dinner into the kitchen, eating over the counter. His mom was trying to get gravy out of Josh’s white jacket with a washcloth.
‘Mindy?’
That’s how Park’s dad came home every night, like the dad in a sit-com. (‘Lucy?’) And his mom would call out from wherever she was, ‘In here!’
Except she said it, ‘In hee-ya!’ Because she was apparently never going to stop sounding like she just got here yesterday from Korea. Sometimes Park thought she kept the accent on purpose, because his dad liked it. But his mom tried so hard to fit in in every other way … If she could sound like she grew up right around the corner, she would.
His dad barreled into the kitchen and scooped his mom into his arms. They did this every night, too. Full-on make-out sessions, no matter who was around. It was like watching Paul Bunyan make out with one of those It’s a Small World dolls.
Park grabbed his brother’s sleeve. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ They could wait in the Impala. Their dad would be out in a minute, as soon as he’d changed into his giant dobak.
Eleanor
She still couldn’t get used to eating dinner so early.
When did this all start? In the old house, they’d all eaten together, even Richie. Eleanor wasn’t complaining about not having to eat with Richie … But now it was like their mom wanted them all out of the way before he came home.
She even made him a totally different dinner. The kids would get grilled cheese, and Richie would get steak. Eleanor wasn’t complaining about the grilled cheese either – it was a nice break from bean soup, and beans and rice, and huevos y frijoles …
After dinner, Eleanor usually disappeared into her room to read, but the little kids always went outside. What were they going to do when it got cold – and when i
t started getting dark early? Would they all hide in the bedroom? It was crazy. Diary of Anne Frank crazy.
Eleanor climbed up onto her bunk bed and got out her stationery box. That dumb gray cat was sleeping in her bed again. She pushed him off.
She opened the grapefruit box and flipped through her stationery. She kept meaning to write letters to her friends from her old school. She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to anybody when she left. Her mom had shown up out of the blue and pulled Eleanor out of class, all ‘Get your things, you’re coming home.’
Her mom had been so happy.
And Eleanor had been so happy.
They went straight to North to get Eleanor registered, then stopped at Burger King on the way to the new house. Her mom kept squeezing Eleanor’s hand … Eleanor had pretended not to notice the bruises on her mom’s wrist.
The bedroom door opened, and her little sister walked in, carrying the cat.
‘Mom wants you to leave the door open,’ Maisie said, ‘for the breeze.’ Every window in the house was open, but there didn’t seem to be any breeze. With the door open, Eleanor could just see Richie sitting on the couch. She scooted down the bed until she couldn’t.
‘What are you doing?’ Maisie asked.
‘Writing a letter.’
‘To who?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Can I come up?’
‘No.’ For the moment, all Eleanor could think about was keeping her box safe. She didn’t want Maisie to see the colored pencils and clean paper. Plus, part of her still wanted to punish Maisie for sitting in Richie’s lap.
That never would have happened before.
Before Richie kicked Eleanor out, all the kids were allied against him. Maybe Eleanor had hated him the most, and the most openly – but they were all on her side, Ben and Maisie, even Mouse. Mouse used to steal Richie’s cigarettes and hide them. And Mouse was the one they’d send to knock on their mom’s door when they heard bedsprings …
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