by Amanda Foote
I answered for him. “We went to school together for a long time, but the first time we actually met for real was the day my parents died.”
Bobby leaned forward dramatically, suddenly more interested. “Really?” he said. “What happened?”
Both sets of big green eyes were wide with excitement in the rearview mirror. “He was one of the passengers in the car that hit my parents. I walked with his stretcher to the ambulance. Then we talked in the hospital a few days later. The day of the funeral.”
Dillard looked at me with surprise. I guess he hadn’t known that part.
“Hmm. Interesting,” Liberty Bell mused. “What a meet cute. If it can even be called that. Considering it wasn’t very cute,” she rambled. She sat back in her seat, pressing her fingers to her forehead. “Just ignore me.”
“No problemo,” Bobby piped up, having also returned to a normal sitting position. “So I had another wild dream last night,” he said. I had learned that Bobby was practically famous among his family and friends for his ludicrous dreams. Since knowing him I’d heard about a lion that escaped from a zoo, a time-traveling donkey named Egretta, and a dream set in the future, when Earth is a space station. “So, last night I dreamed that I was munching on some banana pudding at work when a little kid came into the office, all by himself. He said to me, ‘I think I lost my tooth in here.’ So I stood up and helped him search for it. We found his tooth under some papers on my desk. Upon returning the tooth to the little boy, he suddenly turned into a large white dragon who then proceeded to eat my desk.”
Six seconds of silence passed until Liberty Bell said, “You need to cool it on all the Game of Thrones you’ve been watching.”
“Don’t judge me,” he remarked, and we all laughed. We pulled into the bowling alley.
“Did you bring shoes, Dillard?” Liberty Bell asked.
Dillard laughed. “Yes, I keep a pair of bowling shoes in my back pocket at all times.”
Bobby and Dillard seem to hit it off straight away. As we walked into the front doors of the bowling alley, they were already hunched together up ahead of Liberty Bell and I, feverishly discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones and whether they faithfully followed the books.
We paid a very bored-looking teenager at the front and picked out our shoes, then grabbed a table near our lane. LB and I watched as the boys don their shoes and immediately start throwing large balls down a thin lane, trying not to hit the edges (unsuccessfully).
Liberty Bell turned to me while we wait for our turns. “So, why haven’t you told me about Dillard yet?”
“I still barely know him,” I said. “I didn’t know he was going to show up here.”
“You knew him in high school, right?”
I shook my head. “Not really. He hung out with the cool people. I hung out with my best friend Lila.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t really peg you for an airhead popular kid anyway. You’re not missing anything.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed vehemently and nodded her head toward Bobby. “He’s a lot more ‘popular’ than me. Everyone loves him. He’s on the soccer team, he’s smart, everyone says he’s cute but honestly I don’t see it, and he’s super social. But he likes to hang out with me, his sister, and not them. Nobody wants to hang out with me because I’m ‘weird and artistic.’ So they hold it against me. They literally hold it against me that I’m his sister. Like I’m taking him away from them.”
“Who is ‘they?’” I asked.
“You know,” she shrugged. “The ‘popular’ kids. The shallow athletic kids that rule the school in every cliche book and movie. The ones that steal your lunch money and laugh at the kids with glasses whose parents can’t afford contacts, the ones that take your paintings in art class, rip them up and shove them down the drain.” She glanced toward Dillard, and I began to feel like I knew Liberty Bell a little bit better than I did before. “So I think you’re wrong about him. He’s not like them.”
✽✽✽
After losing miserably at bowling and Dillard dropped me off at home, I came home to an upsetting sight. I came into my room and set my stuff down and almost didn’t notice Cadence was already in there… going through my parents’ boxes.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said through gritted teeth, slamming the door the rest of the way open.
She jumped, a guilty smile on her face. “Oh God,” she said, hand fluttering to her chest, “you scared me!”
“Maybe because you were doing something you shouldn’t. Like going through someone else’s stuff.”
She looked down guiltily. “I’m so sorry Heaven. I honestly thought you wouldn’t mind.”
“These are my parents’ things. They don’t belong to you. Get out.”
She scrambled to replace the things she had taken out of the boxes but I said, “Just leave it. Get out.” She bit her bottom lip and nodded tersely, quickly maneuvering around me and out the door. In the hallway she stopped and said to my back, “I just wanted to get to know them a little better. That’s all.” She stood silent for another eleven seconds. “Heaven, look at me.” I refused to turn around and face her. After seven more seconds, she walked away.
I approached the mess of things on my bed. I hadn’t gone through any of their belongings yet, not even as I packed them. It hurt too much. Cadence had opened a box labeled “Mom’s Stuff.” She had pulled out a handful of pictures, my mother’s hair brush, her pearls, a stack of letters, a pad of legal paper, and some perfume. I shut my door then sat down on my bed, gathering her things around me. The perfume was her exact smell, but smelling it reminded me most of the days she didn’t wear it, like the weekends she and I would spend the entire day watching television on the couch in our pajamas while Dad was at work. Or the day she sat by my hospital bed and held my hand while they put fourteen stitches in my chin. Or the morning before she died, when she rushed me out the door so I wouldn’t be late for the bus, and she still had her nightgown on and she hadn’t brushed her teeth yet, and she smelled like strawberry shampoo and men’s aftershave, and she gave me a quick, tight hug and a “Have a good day” as I pounded down the pavement on my way out.
Her hair brush still had a few of her fine dark honey hairs in it. I set it to the side and picked up the stack of letters. There were twelve letters, and eight of them were from Aunt Marlene. I recognized her handwriting instantly. The most recent one was dated almost seven months before the day of the crash. I pulled it out of the envelope.
Hello beautiful.
I talked to Maria today and she told me this story about her three sons when they were five, seven, and eight. You remember Maria, right? Anyway, her story reminded me of that time when you were eleven and you decided you were going to climb that gigantic tree in Oak Park. You didn’t even make it seven feet high before you were falling, and I was looking up at you as you climbed and when you fell, you tumbled right on top of me, breaking my nose with your shoe and breaking your own arm as you tried to brace your fall. I had a bruise on my butt for a week from a stray acorn that was crushed beneath me as we both hit the ground hard. Despite all of this, it’s a good memory. We both wound up broken, but better for it. And Dad gave us both ice cream to ease the pain.
Sometimes, Gabriela, I miss them so much it hurts. And other days I can’t even remember Mom’s face. Or the color of her eyes. Or how long her hair was in the end. On those days it doesn’t seem to matter. But on the days I miss her, it feels like the worst thing in the world, that I can’t even remember her, yet she left this giant gaping hole right in the middle of me.
Sometimes I just want to curse him for leaving. Yell DAMN YOU at him, Damn you for leaving so soon. Damn you Mom for not taking better care of your heart, damn you Dad for going away when he lost her. Damn both of you for not finding enough reason in your two daughters to stay.
But I don’t do that. Instead, like yesterday, I go visit her grave and leave a bouquet of lilies. I’m not even s
ure she’s here, watching us, caring about us. For all I know, she’s just dirt in the ground. But I hope that she is.
I still send him letters. I know he gets them. I hope he reads them. But all I ever get in response are postcards. Postcards! He doesn’t even have the decency to write his daughter a letter back. I throw the postcards away, eventually. I don’t want them in my house, if he doesn’t want to be in my house. I’m ashamed of this man we called our father. What a fickle coward. I hope he stays there, and keeps his stupid postcards.
Anyway, my darling Gabriella...
Let me know how my stunning niece Heaven is doing. Ben said something to me about her wanting a car for her next birthday. Let’s try to make this happen. She’s almost a grown woman, she needs responsibilities of her own. Hope to see you soon. Please come visit.
Love, your sister,
Marlene
P.S. Have you heard from Cadence lately? How is she?
P.P.S. Thank you for the wine you sent.
Marlene’s stunning prose never failed to bring me to tears, but yet again I refused to cry. I guess it made sense that Marlene knew about Cadence all along. She was, after all, Mom’s sister, and was probably there when Mom gave Cadence up for adoption. To be honest, there were probably signs my entire childhood, I just didn’t know what I was looking at. Whispered phone calls, hushed conversations, that time Dad went on a “business trip” for a week when I was eleven. Dad’s a teacher. I doubt they even have business trips. All that counting I’ve done, and I never added that up.
I shuffled through the rest of the letters but none of them seemed very important. I picked up the photographs. They were all of me and Dad. Mom was always the one behind the camera, very rarely in front of it. But there was one picture in the back of the set that had all three of us in it. We were all wrapped up in winter clothes, hats and scarves and boots and giant coats. It was snowing all around us. I was about seven in the picture, and they had picked me up and squished me between themselves for the picture. Mom was smiling, looking at me, Dad was grinning, looking at her, and I had my mouth open, catching snowflakes on my tongue and in my curly hair. I remembered this day. We were visiting Aunt Marlene for Christmas. We went to the park to take pictures in the snow. We built snow forts and snowmen and then I built a snow cat so my snowman would have a friend. Marlene took the picture.
I picked up my mother’s pearls gingerly and set them aside with the other things. I laid back on the bed and thought about them for a while, my parents, until I finally got up and made my way to the kitchen. Marlene and Cadence were sitting at the island, a glass of wine in Marlene’s hand and an oreo in Cadence’s. Bliss was in her new high chair, munching on a banana. “Cadence,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled sadly as I sat down across from them. “Nothing to be sorry about.”
“There is though. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. You were just curious. And honestly you have just as much claim to that stuff as I do.”
She patted my hand. “I don’t, actually. But thank you for the sentiment.”
We all had dinner together before Cadence retired to her room with Bliss and Marlene went upstairs to try to write. I sat by myself for a while in the dining room, just thinking. But then I noticed something on the fridge. I got up from the table and approached it, it was clasped to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a cat. It was a postcard. It had palm trees on the front and big yellow letters that read “Thinking of you.” It was ripped in the middle then carefully taped up, as if perhaps it was ripped in half out of anger, then taped up with sorrow and guilt. I flipped it over and realized that it’s dated two weeks after the death of my parents. There’s no note on the back, just Marlene’s address and one handwritten name:
Fernie.
Not dad. Fernie.
I went back upstairs after dinner. I pulled the journal Cadence bought me out from under the papers I’d thrown over it on my desk. I picked up a pen and started writing.
I made a list. A list of things I didn’t understand, so I can cross them off when I finally do.
1. Mom's addiction to cherry lip gloss
2. Why Cadence has cancer
3. Why is Dillard here
4. Why does Liberty Bell even like me
5. Marlene's postcard
After that, I just kept writing and writing, and I didn’t stop until it felt right.
✽✽✽
Dillard showed up the next morning with what he claimed to be a “brilliant plan.” He picked Bliss up, giving her an eskimo kiss that she giggled at, and announced, “I think we should all go to the zoo.”
“All of us?” I asked.
“Yes!” he grinned. “You, me, Marlene, Cadence, Bliss, Liberty Bell, Bobby, and anyone else you want to bring! Like one big, happy family!”
I raised my eyebrows at him but didn’t object. He personally called Liberty Bell and Bobby who were ecstatic and arrived within twenty minutes. We were all piling into two cars when I realized someone very important was missing, so I ran across the street and knocked on the door. Denise answered, clad in a juice-soaked apron and her pajamas. “Hi, Heaven. What’s up?” she greeted me.
I smiled as sweetly as I could muster. “Well, my family and friends are all going to the zoo today and I wondered if you might let Rosebud join us.”
She matched my smile. “I’m sure she’d love that. Rosebud!” she called toward the hallway. “Want to go to the zoo with Heaven?” There was a small crash that came from down the hall, then complete silence for eight seconds until we both heard a sharp whizzing sound as Rosebud sped down the hallway and out the door, past her mother and me until she was climbing into the car with Liberty Bell, Bobby, and Dillard. “I guess that’s a yes,” Denise laughed. “Could you call me when you get there so I know you didn’t die in a fiery car crash on the way there?” she smiled.
I flinched.
"Oh," she murmured, her face turning red. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
It's okay.” I said. “Of course I'll call you.”
I don’t think Dillard had planned on the fact that this was a hot summer day and the locals had all decided to bring their entire households and extended families to the zoo that particular day. It was wildly crowded. We were waiting in the ticket line for at least twenty minutes and Bliss was starting to get fussy in Bobby’s arms when we finally reached the window and purchased our tickets. Rosebud grabbed my hand and rushed me through the entry area that had a floor painted as a giant world map, pulled me toward the entry gates and finally, into the zoo. Everyone else was still several steps behind us when she stopped short.
“What should we visit first! I really love the giraffes but the elephants are great too! Then there’s snakes and the lizards and the frogs and the turtles and the hippos and the birds and the gorillas and NO WAIT I know what we should go see - the LIONS!”
She stared at me expectantly but didn’t even seem out of breath. “Okay,” I said, “lions it is. We’re going to see the lions first,” I said to everyone else as they approached.
“Fantastic!” Dillard beamed.
Cadence was pale and slightly out of breath as she struggled to push the stroller toward us, but she agreed with a smile, “Yes, lions!” Liberty Bell patted her hand and took over control of the stroller, at which Cadence gratefully sighed and grinned.
As we walked toward the lion area, Rosebud was still talking a mile a minute. “I’m so excited to be here my mom never lets me go anywhere and just forget about my dad taking me somewhere and this is the first time I’ve been anywhere in FOREVER and I’m so excited oh I said that already okay and I think we should see the giraffes next because they’re the most magical creatures on the whole face of the planet and I can’t believe they don’t live in America you know full-time like in American safaris they have those right-”
“Wow,” Dillard said to me, walking to my left. “Do you think she’s excited to be here? I don’t know, she seems kind of disappo
inted to me.”
“Completely apathetic,” I agreed, “It’s like she didn’t even want to come.”
He laughed. He had the most unique laugh of anyone I’d ever met. Bubbly, but controlled. Genuine and honest.
The lions were roaming around in their cage when we reached them. A female dipped into a neat pool of cool water at the inner wall of their chamber and shook the droplets loose, which splattered half-hazardously onto the glass in front of her. Bliss shrieked with an ear-splitting laugh and clapped excitedly. “Cat!” she kept shouting. “Cat! Cat!”
Cadence, whose hair had previously been down but at some point had inconspicuously put itself into a high ponytail, waved a paper fan she made out of a zoo map in front of her face as she leaned down to the stroller and said, “No, baby, that’s a lion.” She pointed at the lioness. “Can you say ‘lion?’”
“Lion!” Bliss mimicked.
“Good job!” Rosebud also leaned toward the stroller, as everyone else began to move back toward the path. “What else can she say?”
Cadence stood up, taking the stroller handle into her delicate and pale hands. She wore a thin silver ring with a dolphin on it that I had never noticed before. I wondered briefly if I had simply never noticed, or if this was the first time she’d worn it in my presence. “She doesn’t say a whole lot,” Cadence answered Rosebud as we followed the others toward the ape enclosure. It was called the “Great Escape.” Cadence smiled at Rosebud and continued. “She definitely knows how to say ‘no,’ and ‘mama,’ and ‘bite,’ ‘cookie,’ ‘cat,’ ‘baba,’ which is our word for food, ‘gaga,’ which is our word for poop,” here Rosebud giggled, “‘cup,’ ‘hi,’ ‘bye-bye.’” She was ticking them off with her fingers as she listed them, pushing the stroller in front of her with her stomach. It kept veering off to one side and she’d have to grab it with one hand and straighten it up. “And she growls a lot when she’s angry,” she laughed. “But even though she’s incredibly smart, I mean, she walks really well, when we watch a movie she actually sits and watches it, and all that, but I feel like she isn’t talking as much as she should. But the doctors say every child develops at a different pace, so I shouldn’t worry quite yet. I still do though.”
