The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance (16 page)

Snake snuck up into my tree house while I brought the milk in to my mom. I tried to slip in and out real quietly, but she heard me.

“Know what I was thinking, Cynthia?”

Oh, God, I thought. Not now. Please not now. I wanted to get up into the tree house and talk to Snake. See where he'd been. If he was staying. If he was mad at me or what. Please just let me slip out again.

But she stuck her head in the kitchen and went on. “I was thinking maybe we could get Bill back here for the summer.”

I dropped the milk carton on the floor. But that just dented it. I didn't lose any of the milk or anything. “Are you serious?”

“Well, yeah. I was just thinking, if I'm sober, and you're home from school, we oughta be able to take care of him. Right? Between the two of us?”

“Of course we can. I'll do all the work.” I always did, I almost said, but I caught myself. This was no time to be snotty. “God, that would be so great!”

“I know how much you miss him,” she said.

Then she disappeared, and I stood there, leaning on the sink, thinking about that last thing she said. I guess I always thought she didn't get that. How much I missed him. And now that I knew she did, had all along, I couldn't figure out which was worse: if she knew and didn't fix it, or if she didn't get it at all. But she was offering to fix it the best she could. For a whole summer! But then I started thinking how awful it would be to say goodbye all over again in the fall. But that still
had to be better than not seeing him at all. Then I thought how she said
I
missed him, but she didn't say if
she
did.

I went into my room and lay on my back on the bed, and stared at the ceiling, and tried to let it all in. Just let all that different stuff roll around in my head.

I'm guessing that went on for a good five or ten minutes before it hit me what I'd forgotten.

I was on the cot mattress, and Snake was lying on the tree house floor. We both had our hands laced behind our heads, and we were looking up through the leaves at the stars. I think my mom was downstairs drinking warm milk, but I couldn't be sure. Even when I wasn't looking at him, it didn't feel the same to be with him.
He
didn't feel the same. And I guess neither did I.

He said, “Maybe we shoulda put more like a top on this, huh? I just ran out of blankets.”

“Nah. I like it like this. I wouldn't want to keep the stars out.”

“Remember when we were building this?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only it seems like a real long time ago now. Like a former lifetime or something. Where were you?”

“Kind of all around. I hitched a ride on this flatbed truck with a bunch of guys who were doing stuff they call ‘casual labor.' Picking crops, mostly. It's pretty good work. Nobody cares who the hell you are. They just point and you work and at the end of the day they pay cash. I think I was back in California most of the time.”

I thought about the letters I'd been writing him all day. I wished it was light so I could tell which was which. The last one was the best. If I knew which it was, I'd have given it to him right then.

I said, “You're really brave.”

“No, I'm not. I was scared the whole time.”

“But you did it, though.”

He didn't say anything for a long time. I could hear him breathing. “If I was brave, I'd have gone home. I didn't want to get hit in the face anymore. I kind of lost the stomach for it.”

“Why'd you come back?”

“I don't know. It's weird not being home wherever you go. It's like you're always somewhere, but it never feels quite right.”

“Did you see your dad yet?”

“No. And I'm not going to, either.”

“Where are you gonna stay?”

He didn't answer, and I didn't ask any more questions. We looked at the stars for a while, the way the dark shapes of the leaves shifted around in between. I was thinking that he used to be my boyfriend but back then I didn't much want him to be. Now I wondered why I'd been so sure back then. I wasn't sure how I felt about that whole deal now.

After a while I went downstairs and called Pat. It was so weird and amazing, what had just happened. I couldn't wait to tell her.

I said, “Pat. The weirdest thing happened. You're not
going to believe it. I just said this prayer that if I saw Snake, I'd make amends to him. And guess what?”

Pat said, “Let me guess. You bumped into him about a second later.”

I was so excited about the whole thing, I forgot to ask how she knew. I just said, “Yeah. Weird, huh?”

Pat said, “I don't think I'd call it weird, no.”

“Well, what would you call it, then? If it's not weird?”

It was quiet on the line for a second, like she was waiting for me to think of it myself. Then she said, “I'd call it your Higher Power working in your life. I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard a story just like that.”

I didn't even answer. At first it made me kind of mad. I told her about this wonderful, amazing thing, this miracle, and she was acting like it was no big deal. Like it was just the normal way of things. But then I thought, maybe it would be cool to be like Pat and live in a world where miracles were just the normal everyday thing.

Pat said, “You made your amends yet?”

“Not yet. I wrote stuff out for him. But I didn't give it to him yet.”

“Well, go on,” she said, and we got off the phone.

As soon as we did, I realized I hadn't even told her about Bill. It felt like there was too much happening at once. Good stuff, pretty much. Just too much of it.

I made Snake a baloney and cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. I was glad we had milk. I'd brought that big pile of letters downstairs with me, and I dug around until I found the
best one, and I put it on the plate with the sandwich. I took the milk up first, but it turned out Snake was already asleep. I knew he must have been real tired. I went back for the sandwich and the letter. I left the whole thing beside the mattress, for morning.

I slept in my room downstairs. Just before I fell asleep I thought, That worked out pretty good for something I didn't even understand. I thought, Maybe I'm not even supposed to understand. Maybe if I put a message in a bottle for God, maybe only God needs to know how it gets where it's going. Maybe that was never my job at all.

Then I went back to thinking about Bill.

CHAPTER 11
A Girl Needs a Momma

The meeting started at five. My mom showed up. I hadn't had time to talk to Pat much about that. There'd been too much going on.

When I got called on to share, I just talked about amends in general, and about forgiveness. I didn't say anything about Snake. About the little note he left for me in the tree house. I had it in my pocket, but I thought it might be better to talk to Pat about that privately. Especially with my mom hanging around.

Once while I was sharing I looked at Zack and he was looking right at me, and he looked really sad. It felt awful to see him looking so sad. I felt so bad about it, I almost didn't have room to feel mad anymore.

When I was done sharing I could tell my mom wanted to talk. She was leaning forward, staring at me, and her eyes said, Pick me. Pick me. But I wasn't sure how. Was I supposed to call her “Mom” in front of all these people? Or “Rita”? It seemed rude to point like you do with a stranger. I said, “Does anybody
feel
like sharing?”

She raised her hand. I wanted to tell her you don't have to do that. Just say your name and start. I nodded at her. More than ever, I was wishing she wasn't here.

“My name is Rita,” she said. “I'm an alcoholic.” It felt weird to hear her admit it.

“I haven't been sober for what you'd call a long time. Just about—” She looked at her watch. “—maybe thirty-six hours.” She got a round of applause. That surprised her. In AA people always applaud the time you've got. No matter how short it is. They know it's a long time to the person who just got it.

I was hoping she wouldn't say much more, but she did.

“It wasn't always this bad. The drinking, I mean. Used to be something I could control pretty good before Cynthia's father died. That's when everything just sorta went to hell. I'd gotten pregnant with my first girl when I was just a kid, just a couple years older than Cynthia. The guy took off and I was on my own all those years. And then I met Billy. He was just such a wonderful guy. He adopted my oldest girl. How many guys would do that? And then we had Cynthia, and our lives was going along so good until he got killed in that boiler explosion at his work. There I was with this thirteen-year-old girl, just getting rebellious, and this clingy three-year-old girl. She needed me and she needed her daddy and I had to work
and I couldn't be all those things, and all the time thinking Billy was the only real true love in my whole life and now here he was already gone. I just missed him so much.”

She started to cry. I could hear it in her voice. I was looking down, running my fingernail along the plastic molding on the edge of the table.

I got this terrible feeling all over, and then a minute later I knew why. Those three silver dollars. I hadn't thought about that at all. It's like I made myself forget. It made me feel like the worst person on the whole planet. How can you make amends to a person who's already dead? Or maybe the person I should be sorry to was me. I would never have those dollars again. I couldn't believe I did that to myself. For a crappy bottle of wine.

I tried to think what I could remember about my dad. I remember he used to carry me on his shoulders, with my arms around his forehead, holding on, and he'd hold my ankles. Sometimes my hands would slip down over his eyes and he'd grope around like a blind man and say, “Who shut off the lights?” And I'd laugh. I thought I remembered how he'd take me sometimes to his favorite pub and sit me up on the bar, and I got to have either a pickled egg or a pickled pig's foot, and I always took the pig's foot because it was bigger. But maybe I just remember being told about that. Maybe it never happened. Now I wouldn't eat a pickled pig's foot on a bet, but I was only three.

It was real hard to hear my mom cry.

“No matter what I do,” she said, “I don't think that girl
ever can forgive me, and I don't guess I blame her. Running this long string of men through the house in front of her, and her having to raise herself up, and her brother Bill in the deal. Girl needs a momma. Sometimes I dream about Billy at night and I tell him I'm sorry I did such a lousy job with his daughter. I only had all those boyfriends trying to find a man like the one I lost. I know you got to make amends down the line, but I just can't figure how I'll ever make it right with my kids. Poor little Bill. Sometimes when I can't sleep at night I get to thinking maybe if I hadn't kept drinking while I was pregnant with him—” Her voice kind of broke off with a crack, like a dry stick snapping. Then she got real quiet. “Maybe he wouldn't have the problems he's got.”

My face and my stomach got all tingly. I had never once thought about that.

By now she was crying hard enough that she couldn't keep going. She just sort of waved her hand to pass it on to somebody else. The somebody else was Phyllis, the new secretary.

Phyllis reached over and patted my mom's hand. She said, “Rita, honey, just keep coming back to these meetings. Not a one of us can undo everything we did. Can't change the past, but there's always the future. Just keep coming back.”

Then Phyllis went on sharing about her own stuff, and Pat reached over and squeezed my arm a little. People I knew in the meeting looked at me and smiled. I was right on the edge of crying. I guess it showed.

After the meeting my mom went home by herself. Pat and I stayed after. We were on the clean-up committee. We were in the big utility kitchen and Pat had one of those giant coffee urns upside down in the sink, washing it.

“Care to talk about it?”

I said, “You know, at first I didn't want her here at all. I didn't even like her anymore. It's like I didn't even
want
to like her. But now, you know … after today …”

She nodded, her head bobbing up and down for a few long seconds. “More you know about somebody, harder it is to stay mad.”

I almost said I was never mad, I just sort of didn't care. But I didn't say it, because I started to know that it probably wasn't true. I was probably plenty mad without really knowing. And I probably did care. It takes me a long time, sometimes, to figure out how something is supposed to feel.

My mom was right about one thing. A girl does need a momma. I wasn't sure how to say that to Pat. Like, all of a sudden, for the first time ever, I was thinking, Maybe she really
will
get sober. And be like a mom again. And then I could be like a kid. Which would be this huge weight off me. I wondered if this was how my dad felt, having to lug me on his shoulders with my hands over his eyes. You can get used to a weight like that and almost forget you've got it. But it sure would feel good to put it down.

I said to Pat, “You know, if she really does stay sober, we're going to get Bill back for the summer.”