B000FCJYE6 EBOK (24 page)

“I guess so,” I repeated.

“Well, okay. Are you coming out anytime soon?”

“Yeah.”

“But apparently not yet.”

We didn’t move. Exasperated, she gathered her skirt around her knees and crouched. “Well, I need to go to work.”

“So go,” Kate said.

“Oma and Opa are on their way over. They won’t be but a few minutes. Are you going to be all right?”

Kate rolled her eyes and sighed. “Mom,” she said.

“We’re okay, Mrs. Schiller,” Davey said, patting her knee. “Esau can be in charge.”

A worried look crossed her face.

She straightened. “There’s bologna in the fridge for sandwiches when you get hungry, and tell Oma she doesn’t have to make dinner,” she called, grabbing her purse. “Call me at the store if you need anything. No more knives!” She clicked down the hall.

I looked at Kate.

“She cries at night,” she said abruptly.

“She does?”

Kate nodded. “I hear her.”

“I heard her too,” Davey piped up. “And she talks.”

“Talks to who?”

They shrugged in unison. They were like a two-headed monster.

“I have to take a shower. Right now.” I crawled out from under the blanket. “I am completely late!” I yelled, and ran to the bathroom.

In the tub, I washed as fast as possible, in straight lines up and down and then crossways, both, and then I sat with my knees pulled up to my chin, letting the water pour over my face. I washed my feet super extra well, toe by toe.

Esau, I said to myself, just like my mom had last night, your father is dead.

He is just away for a while.

He is dead.

I put my left foot in my mouth and nibbled off my toenails until they were even.

He isn’t dead.

“Kate!” I yelled through my toes.

I knew he was dead before she told me.

I picked up my right foot and started working on my big toe. She didn’t have to tell me. I knew he was dead.

“Kate!”

“What?” she yelled as she came down the hall.

“I’m stuck!”

“In what?”

“Is Dad dead?”

There was a long silence. Then a loud whispering.

“Are you drownding yourself?” she finally called through the door. The handle was jiggled from the outside. “Can’t you come out of the tub until Oma and Opa get here?”

“I mean,” I said, lying down completely in the tub and chewing furiously on my left thumb, “he is, right?”

“Can Davey come in?”

“I guess so.”

Davey poked his head in. He turned to shut the door behind him and hopped up onto the john. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He watched me for a while. “Say, are you sure you’re supposed to chew your fingers like that?” he asked.

“No.” I put them behind my back so I could stop. It was easier when they were out of sight.

“Kate did that too,” he said, swinging his legs.

“She did?”

He nodded. “Yep. Chewed ’em clear off. Band-Aids on her fingers all the time.”

“When?”

“Right after your dad died.” He looked at the door. “Kate,” he called. “He’s not drownding hisself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Course I’m sure. I’m looking right at him, aren’t I?”

“How am I supposed to know?”

“I can hear you perfectly good. You don’t have to shout.”

“Fine. What’s he doing, then?”

Davey looked at me. “He’s just lying here thinking.”

“What do you mean, lying there?”

“He’s lying here.”

“Can I come in?”

“No!” we both yelled.

We looked at each other.

“Man, you are a weird little kid,” I said.

He nodded. “Ten-four.”

He hopped off the toilet and turned off the water. “’Bout done with your shower, then?” he asked.

I sat up. “Sure.”

We sat in a row on my bed with Kate in the middle. Oma and Opa were out in the living room, doing the crossword.

“Well, don’t
look
at it,” she said. “That’s only going to make it worse.”

“I don’t know. Maybe we should open it.”

“What for?”

“To see.”

“To see what?”

“What’s in there.”

“There’s nothing in there!” She sighed. “It’s just a
closet.
”

“Then why can’t I look?”

“Because you’ll go in and shut the door. Closets are for
clothes.
Not
people.
”

“Dad used to say that.”

I stared at it. The door was staying shut. That was good. I still didn’t trust it. Before I went away, it used to suck me in.

“Well, he was right,” she said.

I turned around and faced the wall. “When did he die?” I scratched at a chipped spot of light-blue wallpaper. It worried me. There was another, darker blue underneath. I chipped a little more.

“Christmas,” Davey finally said. “He died at Christmas.”

“On
Christmas,” Kate corrected him.

“On Christmas.”

“I fell in the snow by the hole.”

I looked at her.

“She got all dirty,” Davey added. He lay down on his stomach, carefully, and waved his cowboy boots in the air.

“What hole?”

“Where they put him,” Kate said. “But he’s only partly there.” She picked a scab on her knee. She looked up at me. “Do you think he got cold?”

I wanted very much to go in a hole. “I think I would feel better if we could open my closet now.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said loudly, and went over to it. Her hand on the doorknob, she turned to me. “If you go in there, I’m getting Opa. I mean it.”

“I won’t.”

“Cross your heart.”

I did.

She flung open the door. “See?” she demanded. “Nothing there.”

My treasures. On the floor. A flashlight, a blanket, a little beanbag, the size of my hand, that sounded like stars.

“Okay,” I said. “Shut it. Quick.”

She climbed back on the bed. “Better?”

“Yeah.”

The three of us sat there, worrying. I wiggled my thumbnail into the hole in the wallpaper and got a grip and ripped off a big chunk.

“Well,” Kate said, looking at it. “Now you’re going to have to do the whole room, I guess.”

I nodded glumly. It was going to take forever.

No matter how long I stared at the wall, my dad was still dead.

I couldn’t sleep that night. That was okay. I didn’t mind night nearly as much as day. If I had my way, I’d have it be night all the time, sometimes. But I had a maximum. I was only supposed to have three nights awake and no more or I got pretty wonky.

So I was sitting on my windowsill looking out at the yard when I heard the music.

At first I worried I was inventing things. Which was okay, because imagination is all right, as long as you can tell when you’re
imagining
and when you’re
inventing.
Imagining is like drawing in your brain. Inventing is really thinking the thing.

I listened intently.

The music was real, and it was coming from outside my room. I got off the windowsill and opened the door slowly.

My mother was dancing barefoot, with a cigarette.

She turned and for a second I thought she saw me. But instead she made a face and sat down suddenly on the couch, as if she was exhausted. From where I stood, it looked like she was staring at my dad’s old chair. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she said. “Come on. Join us.” She swept her arm at the empty room, put her face in her hands, and started crying.

Her cigarette ash got long and eventually fell on the floor.

I tiptoed through the room and knocked on the couch. She looked up, her eyes all red and wet. She smiled.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” She patted the couch. I sat down next to her.

“Why are you crying?” I settled into her side, tucking my feet under me.

“Oh, you know. Just stuff. Nothing serious.” She rubbed my head.

“You look sad.”

“Yeah. Well, you know what, kiddo?” She looked down into my face. “I am sad. I get sad sometimes. But there it is.”

I worried.

“Quit looking so worried,” she said.

I started plucking lint off her nightgown. She watched me do that for a while. Then she said, “You almost done with that?” so I stopped.

“Dad’s dead,” I said. I started gnawing on the heel of my hand.

“Yep.” She took my hand.

“Since Christmas.”

“Yep. Katie tell you that?”

“I asked her.”

She nodded. “Did you go in your closet?”

I shook my head, pleased.

“Hot damn,” she said, and squeezed my hand happily.

I sat there feeling warm. “Night’s almost over.”

“How did it go today?” she asked. I could feel her watching me.

“Okay. Scary,” I said. “It felt like Dad was around here somewhere. The house is all funny now.”

“That’s for sure. Do you miss State?”

I flushed. She’d caught me. I shook my head.

“You can, you know.”

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She understood. “So many things are different,” I whispered.

“I bet.”

“It was so sunny today,” I said. “And I got stuck in the bathtub.”

“You did?”

I nodded. “And then we had to look in my closet, and then my afternoon medicines made me stupid and I couldn’t draw and I fell asleep on my floor.” I sighed.

“Long day.” She played with my ears. It made me sleepy. “You know, you can call me at work. Anytime you want, and I’ll come home. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. I would try to be well, but it was still good to know. The number was easy, and I liked it: 218-9786. “I’m better now, though,” I said, looking at her. “Night’s better. Safer.”

“I have to agree.”

“Is that why you don’t sleep anymore?” She didn’t answer me. She looked so sad.

I reached up and petted her cheek. She smiled.

“You’re lonely. I bet,” I said, hesitantly. I had a list of feelings that they gave me at State.

She nodded. “Sometimes.”

We looked out the window, watching the sky turn a dark red at the horizon, over the Andersons’ house and the fields out in back of it.

“Me too. Sometimes,” I said. I looked at her. “Dad’s not coming back.”

“No.”

“For always.”

“That’s right.”

I nodded.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?” she said.

I thought about lying. I wanted to be all right. I concentrated, but it came out the truth anyway. “No.”

She took my face in her hands and put her forehead to mine. “That’s okay. Me neither.”

“Oh,” I said. I put a pillow on her lap and looked up at her. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

We turned to watch the sky turn purple, then orange.

My mother was putting lilacs in Ball jars all over the house. Kate thrust her face in the great purple and white bunches and breathed in as deep as she could and bruised the petals and staggered around dizzy. They were her favorite smell.

We were going to school.

Davey and I were sitting at the table, eating pancakes. Sarah was in an old high chair, leftover from when Kate was a baby. Mrs. Donna, Davey’s mom, brought out a fresh batch and piled them on our plates. She was over a lot. I liked that. She was comforting.

“Pancakes with your syrup?” she asked Davey. He ignored her and kept mashing the soggy mass on his plate with a fork. “Li’l Miss Kate, git your butt over here and eat something before you pass out,” Donna said, and went back into the kitchen. Kate staggered over and collapsed in a chair.

She looked at us dramatically. “I just love spring,” she gasped.

“Eatcher breakfast,” Davey commanded, and pushed her plate closer.

“Eatcher own breakfast.” She picked up her fork and started eating the edges.

“What if they hate me?” I said. I didn’t want to go. I wondered if it was too late to back out. Mom had told me a million times I could change my mind. I cut my pancakes into square bites.

“They won’t hate you,” Davey said. “Why would they?”

“’Cause I was gone.” I felt so sick. I put my hand to my forehead.

“So what?”

“So no one else just suddenly disappears because they’re crazy or something,” I snapped at him. He looked hurt. I felt bad and put my cut-up pancakes on his plate.

“You’re not crazy,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kate said loudly. “And we’ll beat ’em up if anyone says different.”

“We can’t,” Davey said. “They’re bigger than us.” Kate looked crestfallen.

“Does everyone know Dad’s dead?” I asked.

Kate shrugged and nodded.

“How does everyone know?”

“’Cause one day he was alive and then one day he wasn’t,” Donna said. “Claire! That damn bush is gonna be totally bald, you take any more flowers off it. Leave it be.”

My mother came in through the screen door, her arms loaded down with flowers. She stood there with the morning light behind her, a fiery halo of red hair.

“Look at you,” she said to all of us at the table.

“Esau’s going to school today,” Kate said.

She smiled. “I know.”

I opened my mouth, but I still couldn’t think of a reason I shouldn’t go. Maybe if I didn’t have to talk all day it would be all right. Maybe if I just said absolutely nothing. My words were sometimes not totally organized when they came out of my mouth. They’d think I was an idiot. I wasn’t an idiot. I was better than any of them, as long as I didn’t have to talk. My dad would know what to do. My dad was dead. I wanted to go to math so bad I could hardly see. I wanted to show everyone how much I knew now, and then they’d be sorry they ever said anything to me, ever.

I decided that if I were my dad, I would tell me to keep my trap shut and show those fools what’s what.

“What if someone asks me where I was?” I asked no one in particular.

“You tell ’em,” Kate said, pointing her fork at me severely, “to go
straight
to hell.”

That was what it was like, once my dad died. Or maybe it was always that way. No one could remember anymore, what with the lilacs everywhere, and my mom so sad and strange, and me trying to stay well so they didn’t send me away.