The Breakdown Lane

by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  “There’s nothing I wish more in the whole world,” I told her.

  “But I will come soon. In two years. And we will have coffee,” she said.

  “Oh, Tee,” I said to her. “You know we won’t. You know…you don’t know about me. You don’t know I’m not a smart medical student kind of kid like you. In fact, I’m giving it one more semester, just for my mother’s sake, and then I’m quitting.”

  “Quitting school? Gabe, you must not do this ever.”

  “It’s not getting me anywhere. I can take this test that proves you learned everything you needed to learn in high school, and any idiot can pass it, and then I’ll go to college later. My mother has Cathy here, and she’s better a lot of the time now, and she doesn’t really need me.”

  “I know that you have a special class for reading. This is not a lack of intelligence. Gabe, you told me that yourself.”

  “And you believed it.” I looked at myself in the mirror. My skin had gotten bumpy, probably from stress and junk, and I realized why the comparison is often made between people with acne and pizza with sausage. “Well, you won’t feel that way in two years.”

  “We’ll see, Gabe. After the coffee, right?” She was so relentlessly practical and upbeat. I had gotten all the way to upstate New York, why not Bangkok? We could run away and pretend to be Mr. and Mrs. Dead Kevin. But even if I showed up there, Tian’s father, after giving me food and tea and probably a shirt handmade by his personal tailor, would put me right back on a plane home.

  I could never escape.

  I grabbed my coat and sat on the porch.

  Even if I quit school and somehow got into a college on the basis of test scores, I would still be a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old kid who would have to ask somebody for help, even though when Gramp came to America, boys my age got married and went to work. And did I even want that? Did I want to go to work flipping burgers alongside girls with mall hair?

  I felt so sorry for myself that I didn’t hear the screaming until after I came back inside and was about to flip on the TV. My mother was hoarse; I don’t know how many times she’d called me. In the dark, I couldn’t see her on the bed, so I went to flip on her light. “Don’t, Gabe,” she said. “Don’t turn on the light. Go call Gram. Right now.”

  “What, Mom? Did you hit your head or something?”

  “Just…go call Gram. Wait. Before you leave, let me tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “That I’m a lousy person. Getting sick doesn’t give you the excuse to be a bully. I’m a bully, Gabe. Maybe it’s because I’m scared and I think that being a bully will make you behave and be safe because I can’t.”

  “It’s doesn’t work that way.”

  “I know that. And right now, I deserve to have you hate me for the rest of my life. But please don’t, Gabe. You’re a mensch. Gabe, you’re more of a human being now than most men I know ever get to be. Stay that way. Be a bigger person than I was tonight. God forgive me, Gabe. Because I’ll never forgive myself.”

  Gram was over there in about fifteen minutes. But it turned out I had to pull Mom up out of bed because Gram was too little. I could smell the sharp tang, the stink of piss. Gram drove her to the hospital, and the doctor decided to put in what’s called a Foley catheter for a day or so, the better for my mother to conserve her strength for the formality of losing my father. Gram slept on the blow-up bed in my mother’s room. Every time I emptied that rubber bag, I didn’t want to know myself, and when I’d come back into the room, she’d put her face in the pillow and pretend she was asleep until Gram got it hooked back up. I would stand in the hall.

  I know she wasn’t asleep.

  All that time, I wanted to tell her I forgave her for almost slapping me and for scaring Aury. I wanted to tell her that there were houses I knew of right on this street where crap like that happened all the time, and nobody took people’s kids away for it. I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t a monster, she was just in a bad way at a really bad time.

  But I couldn’t. She was out past the fence of shame, in new territory. She was out there by herself, and we couldn’t go.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Gabe’s Journal

  My grandpa Steiner was the one who told me that my parents’ marriage was over, officially history. My mother hadn’t wanted to come right home from the courthouse, so Cathy drove her around for a while, I guess.

  But Gramp and Gram came right back, to make sure we were okay. Both their eyes were red, but Gramp at first seemed like he was almost celebrating something. “The judge gave it to him, Gabe! He told him that his wish to work less and live more was incompatible with his wish to procreate, that he had four minor children to support, not one, and a disabled wife, and that his earning capacity far exceeded Julieanne’s, no matter what the current status of her health. He said that he could either give Julieanne half the proceeds of selling the house up in la-la land or he could give up his share of the proceeds of this house, and he would have to pay support for you and all the children until your eighteenth birthdays, in the amount of about thirty percent or something of what he used to make at the university unless Julieanne remarried, which we know, God help her, she never will, plus college, but Julie spoke up and said that college was taken care of, by her own father’s estate. Leo was all red in the face; he was so mad. You could see why no lawyer I ever called would mediate, because he was all ipso facto Havana banana and all that, just like they said. His knowledge of the law so far outruns Julie’s, it would have been a joke. But the judge just finally said, Look, Mister Steiner. I respect your abilities as an officer of the court or I would not instruct you to use them to your fullest capabilities to provide family maintenance for the children you have chosen to abandon, however you choose to describe that abandonment. You are at the peak of your earning power, Mister Steiner…” And then Gramp began to cry. He took his handkerchief and blew his nose so you could hear it in Milwaukee, the way old men do. And he just sat there.

  “Gramp?” I said finally.

  “Here I am. Kvelling over my son’s loss. And his idiot behavior. Here I am cheering against my own child,” he said, hanging his head.

  “It’s pretty hard to cheer for it, Gramp,” I said, sitting down next to him. “But, look, Dad could change. He could wake up. I don’t really…think he’ll ever come back here, but he could still have a good relationship with, like, Caroline, even just summers and holidays, because she’s basically so shallow she’ll end up being best friends with Joy and Amos. Aury’s just a baby. Mom says we’re going to start calling her ‘Rory,’ because it’s more normal, and she’ll start liking little Amos, and when they have the new baby—”

  “The new baby?” Gramp cried.

  “What baby, Gabe?” Gram asked.

  “She’s expecting,” I said. “Joy is. Dad’s girlfriend.” I hated myself for the misery I saw further crease their old faces.

  “Gotten Himmler,” he said, though I didn’t see what it had to do with history. “And you, Gabe. What about you and your father. If he should wake up, as you say, will you forgive him?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You’re lying,” Gramp said.

  “Yeah, I’m lying,” I admitted.

  “But he is your father, Gabe. You’ll never have another. And there is good in him. People make mistakes. He didn’t kill anybody. He’s wrong. But he’s done so much in his life that’s good, for me, for you. You know that.”

  “I know that, too. But I can’t see how I could ever see his point.”

  “Maybe when you’re grown up, and you fall in love,” said Gram.

  “I have been in love,” I said.

  “Puppy love,” she said. “Milk-tooth love.”

  “No, Gram, real love. I don’t mean, like, for the rest of my life. I’m not going to be that lucky. To keep her. But I know how he feels. But then I just look at Aury…or Rory, and I think I wouldn’t hurt her even for that, what I felt. And she’s not my kid,
she’s my sister.”

  “I’m changing my name, too,” Caroline announced, walking out of her bedroom, still blurry from sleep, wearing her pajamas and socks, her earphones hanging around her neck.

  “To what? Lead Ass?” I asked. “It’s one-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “To Cat. I like it. Cat Steiner. It sounds like a visual artist. Or singer.”

  “When did you make this decision?” my grandmother asked her, putting her arms around Caro and nuzzling her hair. “Let me get you some toast or a bagel before Mama gets home.”

  “When I was out there, out where Dad is,” Caroline went on, and bounced over to the window seat. “I liked the way they chose their names. They were all free, you know? They all did exactly what they wanted….”

  “He won’t be doing that anymore, Caroline,” said Gramp.

  “But he’ll still be happy. He’ll still be tapping his own trees for syrup and stuff. And making birdhouses and shelves. He might even start making guitars. He’ll still be able to drink out of his own spring, and he’ll still wake up every morning and hear Joy singing. She’s really a good singer. When I stayed overnight, she was singing ‘Once Upon a Dream’ to the baby….”

  “Mom used to sing that to Aury,” I said murderously. “When she was a baby.”

  “Yeah, that’s right! But Joy has a better voice. I like mezzos. I’m a mezzo.”

  “You’re a ditz.”

  “He can’t call me that, Gramp!” Caro said, kicking off one of her puffy monster shoes, which hit me in the chest.

  “You can’t call her that, Gabe.”

  “Sorry…Cat.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Are they back yet?”

  “They were going to get some coffee and pick up Aury,” I told her. “I mean, Rory.”

  “I meant Dad.”

  “Dad’s not coming here.”

  She sat down. Grandma had gone to toast her a bagel. She selected a piece of hair and wound it around her finger, examining it for split ends. I knew this was her way of looking like an idiot while she thought something through, and, in fact, she finally said, “Well, he is, Gabe. He’s coming to get me.”

  “I’m not going to dinner with him,” I said.

  “I’m not going to dinner with him, either,” said Caro, now Cat. “I’m going with him. I’m going back with him. School’s almost over, and I can finish with the homeschool program out there, and I already have two teachers who are going to let me take my finals early…. Dad’s going to wait until the end of next week….”

  “For how long?” I asked. “Not the whole summer. I can’t do this all alone the whole summer. It’s not fair to Cathy.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Caroline mumbled. “So I thought, I’d stay out there. And then, there’d be one less mouth to feed, and one less person taking up space in this place, and there’s plenty of room for me in the new house, Dad says, and Joy says it’ll be like having two little sisters, and she’ll need the help, with two babies—”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?” I asked her, ignoring Grandma’s “Hush” as I jumped up off the couch. She stood between me and my sister, the bagel on its blue plate with its cream cheese spread delicately to the edges of each half held in her hand like an offering. “You’d leave Mom? You’d go there and live with that bitch and her babies? You’d leave Aury?”

  “She’s in a phase, Gabe. She’s a whiny little brat. She’s always taking my things….”

  “She’s practically a baby!” I grabbed her arm. “You blame her for using your lip gloss? You won’t help your own mother crawl to the bathroom after her shot. You think it’s ‘gross.’ You’re mad at your own little sister? But you’d help Joyous with her babies? Have you even mentioned this to Mom? Because if you do, I swear to God—”

  “I don’t have to tell Mom! I’m almost fifteen, and I can make my own choice! Dad says—”

  “You want to know what Dad cares about, Cat? He cares that he won’t have to pay support to Mom for you, that’s what. Ask Gramp! He can feed you a couple of alfalfa sprouts a day and have free child care and not have to spend so much time working, which would suit him fine! He wouldn’t feel all confined and start thinking people looked like badgers and hedgehogs! You think this is because he loves you so much? Did you see his face when his slut opened that door and he saw us standing there? That wasn’t love, Caroline. That was ‘oh shit.’”

  “Gabe, stop,” Grandma said.

  “He does love us, Gabe,” Caroline said. “He’d love to take Aurora, too, if Mom would let him. But she won’t. She says Aurora’s too little to be away from her mother! But nobody around here has any use for me anyhow, and anyway, I’m sick of school. Joy’s going to homeschool me, and teach me how to put up jam and weave, and introduce me to all these kids that go to their Quaker meeting.”

  “Quakers?” my grandfather bellowed.

  “Well, Dad and Joy aren’t Quakers, but they hang around with them, and they’re really nice, and they don’t believe in war and there are, like, fifteen kids my age right in the same valley. They go there sometimes. It sounds neat. You don’t have to pray or even stay awake. You just think.”

  “But can you bring your headphones in? And wait! You’d leave Mallory and Justine? You’d leave Ryan?” I was starting to feel sick to my stomach, starting to think that she really meant this, that she really was about as deep as the sole of her shoe, that my mother could lose her husband and her child, that this was not my problem, but also that it would be this bog I’d be stuck in for the rest of my life.

  “Ryan is so over with, Gabe,” she said. “And I can come back and visit. I won’t, like, never see you again.”

  “But I’ll, like, never speak to you again.”

  “Fine,” Caroline said then, and I could see the puma part of her gathering to attack under her fluffy yellow pajama top. “Don’t ever speak to me again. Spend your whole life changing your mother’s diapers, you freak!”

  “Caroline, God forgive you!” my grandmother said, with the obligatory heart grab. “Gabriel doesn’t change his mother’s diapers. Your mother doesn’t wear diapers.”

  “Well, you do it, or fix her pee hose or whatever! I saw you last week. I couldn’t bring anyone in this house. They’d think she had…cancer or Alzheimer’s.”

  “And if she did?” my grandfather said. “You wouldn’t want to know her?”

  “Gramp, I love my mother. I love the mother I had! But it isn’t just that she’s sick, it’s that she acts like…she’s mean to Aurora, and she’s always depressed or busy with one of her talks or picking on me to do something, Caroline! Do something! If I wanted to be a nurse, I’d be one. I don’t want to live with Mom and her friend, the lesbian. I want to live in a normal household….”

  “Oh, then definitely go live with Joyous and Easter and whatever their sisters’ names are, Tree Frog and Sunflower. They’re a real normal bunch.”

  “It’s better than here! Anything’s better than here!”

  None of us saw Mom standing in the arch, holding Rory by the hand. She tried for a smile that quivered and sort of dissolved into a puddle.

  “Cathy went to see her mom,” she said. “It really isn’t fair to turn her out of her own house while I have ma petite crise, is it? And I have them so often. But…I guess this is the last one. Huh? It’s…so funny. Isn’t it? They make you go together, to be apart. They make you go to the courthouse and sit side by side—some people have lunch afterward—while you cut your marriage up into steaks and chops. You get this haunch. I get this quarter. A slice here. A slice there. You cut up your life. You sign the same papers, the way you did when you got married. I, Julieanne, give you, Leo, away forever. Before these witnesses.” Her face crumpled up like Rory’s did before she cried, and was suddenly a waterfall of sooty tears, which she made worse by rubbing her eyes. “I had to give Leo away, and he said, ‘Why so bleak, Julieanne? You’re getting what you wanted.’ And I said, ‘No, Lee, I’m getting
what you wanted.’ And he put his arms around me and patted my back! Papa, Hannah, how can he leave me?”

  Caroline got up, quickly, and tried to duck around our mother on her way to her room. But Mom reached out and held her. “Don’t be angry with him, Caro. My sweet girl. My beautiful sunflower head. He loves you so. He loves Gabe. I know he does.” My mom held Caro against her, crushing Caro to her, leaning down to put her head against Caro’s cheek. “It’s not always going to be like this, sweetheart. I promise. I heard what you said. This is the worst it will ever be. Mama will make it better. We’ll have fun again, Caro—”

  “I have to go get dressed, Mom,” Caroline said. “Don’t cry.”

  “Okay,” my mother said, and then she turned to look at the rest of us, crouched on the sofa like the three monkeys, with hands over various parts of our heads.

  Caroline stood in the hall. “Mom, listen. We might as well—”

  “Shut up!” I shouted at her. I think the whole neighborhood heard me. “Shut your stupid mouth!”

  “What?” my mother asked. “What’s wrong? Are you sick, Caroline?” There were tears all over the front of her good white satin blouse. Her nose was running.

  I don’t want to remember the rest of that night. My mother kept going back into Caroline’s room as Caroline packed, resolutely, also crying, but placing roll after roll of her embroidered jeans and her minuscule sweaters into her big Land’s End duffel, the one from camp, embroidered HCS. We could hear her, pleading, “Caroline, no. Darling, wait. Please think it over…just ’til summer, how about that, Caro? Just until summer? Huh?”

  I personally couldn’t wait to see her walk out the door.

  That is a lie.

  I…loved my sister. More or less. Then.

  I still think about her. It was all part of that time, but you are supposed to have your future with your siblings. That’s a guarantee. Like that your father will take care of you.

  But I had also heard enough to know that what Caro was doing could throw my mother into a relapse. Stress was hard on anybody, but particularly hard on a person with multiple sclerosis. It must have been so hard for her to beg like that. But then, there was nothing she wouldn’t have done for us, any of us, not because she didn’t want us to be with Leo—it was never like that—but because she wanted us to be with her. She thought it had always been her job to take care of us, to be the one of them who was the most parent, the less outside support. It wasn’t like Caroline finally said, the next morning—as though Mom was Grandmother Gillis and had this set of china that would be missing the gravy bowl. We were literally all she had left.