Chasing the Milky Way (2 page)

A
S
I
CLIMB IN THE WINDOW
and bounce off my bed, I smell that strawberry cake batter, but there's something burn-y about it, too. I sniff and head into the living room.

And stop.

It doesn't look like it did last night. When we went to bed it was all clean. Mama's desk had a few open books on it, but otherwise everything was mostly in order. I scan the room. Now the books are . . . everywhere. Some lie open, some closed, some are hugging on to others like their covers are arms. Some lie flat like they flew off the shelves with open wings. I can't even see the coffee table. It's got books, magazines, and newspapers. There's a shoe jammed in the bookshelf and a book in the shoe bin. The dehydrator that Mama uses about once a year is in the middle of the floor and it's got a bunch of dandelions in it.

“Mama?” I say, heading toward the kitchen. When I swing the door open, the smoke billows toward me and I cover my nose and mouth with my hand, blink my eyes. The kitchen looks like a bomb exploded in it and the smoky-sweet smell is strong. Mama has finished the cupcakes. Yup, they're done all right. A tinful sits on the stovetop, looking more like charred barbecue chickens than birthday-morning treats. Mama is nowhere to be seen. I open the door leading back into the living room and crane my neck. “Mama?” I put my ear up to listen, but if she's anywhere in here, she doesn't want to be found. Why'd she call me in the first place?

I go over to the table. It's like everything in Mama's head fell out her ears. Mama's a writer. She used to be a professor at Columbia University in New York City, but story has it that when I came along she thought it would be best to raise kids in the country, so she moved back to Vermont so we could be close to Gram. She worked at Bennington for a while. Then things got hard. So hard that we ended up in Sunnyside.

I push aside a few crumpled pieces of paper. Lift a book and look at the board above the table. There are articles pinned to it. Articles about the Curiosity Rover.
Tell Lucy
is scribbled in the margin. Next to it is an article headlined
ROBERT FROST SCENIC BYWAY
, and to the right there's something about the FBI. Pinned underneath is a list titled “Seahook”:

Seahook

Go to Science and Nature Center

Eat at the Lobster Pound

Walk on the beach

Eat shaved ice

Watch the BotBlock Challenge

Midnight wishes

DON'T FORGET TO PACK

There are also a few poems and doodles pinned up. I look down at the table. A cluster of papers and envelopes are spread out next to each other, like they're supposed to fold and seal themselves. I spot the stem of a tipped-over wineglass. I reach out and grab it. Pull it up and turn it. A little drop in the bottom of the glass spins and smears across the side.

I eye the number for Dr. Vincent tacked to the board next to the door. When Gram passed away, Mama seemed like she wanted to follow her, at least halfway. Mama's right foot is still planted next to Izzy and me here in Sunnyside Trailer Park, but her other foot is behind Gram, trying to journey into a world we can't see. I don't blame her for missing Gram. I'd run out behind her, too, if I could.

“Hey, Mama!” I shout. I put the glass in the sink. This is the one spot in the house that looks cleaner than the rest. That's funny 'cause last night it was the only place in the house that was a mess. I open the cupboard. No plates? Just as I close the door, I spot Mama through the window. She's got the dish bin. And a shovel. I check the other houses and pray it's still early enough that no one will be around to witness this. I hurry out the door and around the side of the trailer. Mama's wearing a kerchief over her curly hair, big sunglasses, and a jacket. She's breathing heavy as she digs into the dirt.

“Morning, Mama,” I say, taking it easy, stepping over to her like I'm walking on glass.

“If I have to look at one more goddamned dish,” Mama says, putting one of the teacups into the ground. She covers it with dirt and moves a foot to the right and starts digging again. I see three little mounds running alongside the trailer. Three tiny gold-edged handles barely peeking out of the freshly dug soil. Like she's trying to grow a new set of china. I hear some roots pop free as she pulls up another layer of ground, dumping it to the side.

“Constant goddamned mess,” Mama says.

“Isn't that more work than washing them?” I say, putting my hands into my pockets, trying to act casual.

Mama laughs, tilting her head back to the sky. “It's not the washing. It's the look of them. If I have to look at one more flower on one more china teacup I'm going to lose it. Absolutely lose it.”

“You take your meds today?” I ask, thinking she is kind of already losing it. She freezes. Then starts shaking her head.

“Lucille, I'll remind you that I'm the parent. I'm the adult.”

The light in Mrs. Barlow's trailer flicks on. She's the eyes and ears of the whole park, and I don't really feel like being part of her morning broadcast. Not today. I pick up the bucket of dishes. “I can wash these and put them in the cupboard, okay? Then you don't have to look at them. They'll be in the cupboard. Okay?”

Mama stops and looks from side to side, then she reaches into the pocket of her oversized jacket and pulls out a book,
The Poetry of Robert Frost.
Mama is stuck on Robert Frost 'cause she is a Robert Frost scholar. Meaning she has talked a lot about him and read a lot about him and even written some articles about him. She runs her finger along the index, tears out a page, and puts it into her pocket. She drops the rest of the book into the freshly dug soil and covers it quickly.

“You're right. We'd better get inside.” She stomps on the fresh mound and then heads around the house to the door of the trailer, pulling the poem from her pocket and rubbing it between her fingers. We walk inside.

“Mama, maybe you should call Dr. Vincent,” I say as I set the dish bin in the sink.

But she swats my words right out of the air. “No, no, I don't think so. He won't want to hear from me. I don't think so.”

I flip the water on as Mama takes her glasses off her face. She closes her eyes, but I see them flick around underneath her lids, like she's searching for something in there. I wonder if she'll see my birthday.

“Are these cupcakes for me?” I say.

Mama opens her eyes. “Who do you think they're for?” she asks.

I flip the light above the sink on and Mama slaps her hand over her face.

“Way too bright,” Mama says. “Too goddamned bright. How can I get any work done? Much less pack for vacation. It's impossible to move.” She puts her sunglasses back on and settles into a chair at the table.

I flip the light off, grab the dish soap, and shake the last bit out of it. I look at Mama out of the corner of my eye. “I can help you pack after school if you don't get it done by then. I don't mind.”

She gives off an exasperated groan. “I'm sure I can pack my own bag, Lucille.” She slumps in her chair. I don't press it 'cause I can see she's blasting off. That's what Gram would say if she were here. The first time this happened we were out on Route 36.

• • •

My seventh birthday. Mama was going to bring us to the carnival. But instead, halfway there she got an idea in her head that it would be more fun to bring a carnival to us. Two seconds later, she pulled into Best Buy and bought two cell phones.

“One for home and one for the road,” she said.

Seconds after that, she had activated an account and was hiring the Ringling Circus to come and do a demonstration at Sunnyside Trailer Park. It was called Circus School. She filled out the paperwork online and a few keystrokes later she had deposited a whole bunch of money into it, and we were ready to be entertained. I couldn't believe it. The Peeveys, getting lions, tigers, and bears to roam around the trailers? Mama had a flare for making magic happen. Of course, I still had that carnival flyer in my hands. The rides looked awful tempting and it was going to take a while for the circus to get to Sunnyside. One thing I knew was that if you whine a tiny bit, adults get sick of it and do what you want. So I did. But this time, Mama got mad. She said we were ungrateful little brats. Yep, my own mother. She said that. Only it was like it wasn't her.

After she told me a thing or two about myself, she sped down the highway to the Camden General Store. Then she got out of the car and leaped into the bed of a pickup truck that was pulling out of the parking lot. And I sat glued to my seat, wondering what she was doing as she sped down the highway, far away from us.

We waited in the car for an hour. My eyes didn't leave that spot where the truck disappeared until a big scary trucker knocked on the window. I hunched way down and snuck closer to Izzy in case this guy was some psycho killer. He told us he wouldn't hurt us, but what type of psycho killer says, “Hey, open your door, I'm going to kill you.” So we just buttoned up and stayed where we were. I wished right then I knew how to drive that car.

Luckily, a few seconds later something jingle jangled, and when I leaned up to see what the noise was about, I spotted one of Mama's new phones sitting right there on the seat. I called up Gram and she came and got us.

We got back to Sunnyside and Gram wrapped us in blankets and she called everyone in the phone book to see if they had seen my lost mama. No one had. No one did, not for a few days.

The second night without Mama I got to thinking we must have really upset her, to make her run away like that. I tried to keep my crying small so it wouldn't wake anyone up, but Gram sure had good ears for an old lady. She came into my room and sat down on the side of the bed.

“You have nothing to do with why your mama left,” she said. Then she leaned up against the wall. “Lucy, you're old enough to know this now, so I'm going to tell you. I won't be around forever. I want you to be prepared for what's to come.”

I sat up on my pillow and peered over to make sure that Izzy was genuine sleeping, not just faking it. Her thumb was hanging half out of her mouth and her breathing was long, so I nodded at Gram.

“Your mother has manic-depressive disorder.”

“Manic what?” I said. Wondering if manic was the same as maniac. There was a kid in my class at Poughkeepsie that Mrs. Sophia called a maniac. He mostly jumped around a lot. It didn't seem the same as what Mama was doing.

Gram adjusted my blanket around my belly. “It's when—” She stopped and smoothed the corner of the sheet that was sticking out. “It's when you go three steps past imagination.” I looked at her, wondering what the heck that was supposed to mean.

She leaned toward the window a little and looked up at the sky. One thing about the Peevey family is that everyone likes the look of the stars. She got a little glint in her eye. “It's like when one second you're so high you can taste the sweetness of the Milky Way.”

I looked out the window, too, and pictured my head way up, blasting off past the clouds into deep space. Clear as crystal. Sweet as candy.

“That's good then,” I said, thinking how happy you would be like that.

“It's better than good. It's sharp, it's quick. It's filled with purpose. But only for the moment. When you have manic-depressive disorder, the next second it's like you have your head in the sand, and any sort of critter can go wandering in one ear and out the other.”

I slammed my mouth shut, thinking about plummeting in my spacecraft, crash-landing, and the suffocation of sand all around my head.

“When you're that far down, everything in your head gets all muddled up and confused. And sad.”

I just looked at her, thinking of what that would be like. To have any manner of stuff running around inside your head, making you fuzzy and sad.

“Your mother has a mental illness,” she said.

And just like that all of the sand and insects that I imagined running around in my head thundered down into my stomach and started churning. She kept talking about it, but it seemed like she switched into a different language all of a sudden. She said schizoaffectivesomething psychoticsomething episodes. Bipolar type. Mixed diagnoses. She must have seen the look on my face as I tried to understand what the heck she was talking about, because she took a deep breath and put her hands on either side of my head.

“I have a mental illness, too,” she said. “It runs in the fam
ily. It takes a long time to understand.”

Gram's eyes were filling up with tears. I put my hands on either side of her gray head, just like she was putting her hands on mine, and looked at her close. Her brain didn't seem very sick to me. Not as far as I could tell. Gram was the best and I started wondering if maybe mental illness was a good thing? I wondered other things, too. Could I catch it? Like a cold?

“Do I have a mental illness?” I whispered, wondering what an ill brain would feel like, wondering if I'd be able to detect mine coming down with something.

She pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket and wiped her nose. “You're not showing a predisposition to bipolarity, Lucy, not yet. And anyway, doctors, scientists, they're all on the case. They have medication that helps.” Her teeth hit together as she said medication. I pictured little pills being crushed between her molars. “And there are other things you can do, too. To help balance the brain.”

That night I went to sleep. The next day, they located Mama and she went to Kensington. We went and saw her there, played board games and stuff. But she didn't like it. Not one bit.

• • •

“Are those birthday cupcakes?”