Getting Somewhere (24 page)

“But I knew that was the only day I was going to have like that, and I was so sad I could hardly bear it. I tried to sleep that night and I felt so tired, but I just wanted to spend every moment I could with her and that kept me pretty much awake. I know it sounds completely crazy that I could love her like that and do what I did, but that's why I thought I had to do it. Maybe I am crazy. I know they thought at the Center that I was retarded because I wouldn't talk or anything. Didn't they?”

She is looking at Ellie and sees that Ellie is rather astounded that Cassie knows this. Ellie nods her head.

“We know now it's not true though,” she adds. Cassie just shrugs.

“Anyway, the next day, I put Gram down for her nap right after lunch and just prayed she wouldn't wake up while I was gone. It is hard to believe but I hadn't been anywhere but the backyard and the creek behind the house and in the truck and”—Cassie hesitates but the words seem to have a mind of their own—“and to the place Gordon always took me at the lake, since Gram got really sick, maybe like five or six years, maybe longer. I figured I'd have to walk about six miles but it ended up being a lot less, like four miles, because they'd built a Walmart at the edge of Tacoma that I didn't know about.

“The walking was horrible because snow was pushed up against the edge of the road so I could either walk in the road or way back from the edge to get out of the deep crusty snow from the plow. There wasn't a lot of traffic until I got to the main road, and then I had to walk farther from the edge or get splattered by all the slush and mud. I'd wrapped the baby against me under my coat so she was warm and dry and, thankfully, she stayed asleep the whole time. When I got to the parking lot there, I walked up and down the aisles for quite a while, I don't know how long, trying to decide what to do. Then I saw a big black car, kind of like a truck, and the motor was running, I guess to keep it warm while they went inside. I couldn't believe it but the passenger door was unlocked so I laid the baby on the front seat and quickly walked away before I could change my mind. I could hardly see where I was going I was crying so hard, but I just kept walking, thought maybe the heated car and door being unlocked and everything was a sign that I was doing the right thing.”

Cassie pauses again, seems a little breathless. “Do you want me to finish?”

“If you want to,” Ellie responds.

“Yes, I want to tell the whole thing. Well, I had barely made it to the turnoff onto our road when the police car pulled up behind me. Someone must have seen me and called them right away. Only about forty-five minutes had passed before they found me, and the police officer asked me a bunch of questions, but I didn't know how to answer them so I just kept quiet. I did want him to take me home, though, so I pointed out Gram's house, her trailer, and he came in with me and they called the social services lady and that was pretty much it. I did tell her Gram couldn't be by herself and she said they would make arrangements. I never said a thing about Gordon and I don't know if they looked him up or found him or anything. They told me at the Center that Gram was in a nursing home and that she was fine, but I got the feeling they didn't really know, that they were just telling me that.

“The worst part was how badly my breasts hurt. They were so full of milk and dripping like crazy. I felt like I had two footballs under my shirt and they were so tender to the touch, I couldn't even begin to wear my bra. Well, it wouldn't have fit anyway. I didn't tell anyone though, and after several days, it got a lot better but made me unbelievably sad. I was in detention the first two days, and then a whole group of us was taken to the Center, I guess to wait for the hearing since there was nowhere else for us to go. We were there for, I don't know, maybe, like, a couple of weeks, maybe more, and then, after the second hearing and the sentencing, I was put back in detention until I came here. I asked them there about the baby, and they always said they would try to find something out but no one ever did or at least they didn't tell me. I could tell they thought I was stupid or maybe crazy, I don't know, didn't feel like they had to pay attention to me. I guess they were right.”

Cassie's shoulders droop, and she moves her head in a circle like her neck has become stiff. It is obvious to everyone that she isn't done, is framing the words she wants to say next.

And even Cassie has not recognized until this moment that the rock-hard tangled-up place in her gut, the stiffness at the base of her neck, the horrible sense that she doesn't know what happened to her baby, may never find out, will never know
her
are all grief. Before she can even find a way to express the feelings, she knows what she was about to say—that she just wants some information, to know she's okay—is not really true. She thought she would settle for knowing the baby is okay, but that's not what she truly wants. The thoughts are formed and the words are out before she has even been alerted to their existence.

“The thing is I know it's probably ridiculous, but I want to find out if . . . if there would be any possible way that I could get her back. I want to know where she is and be sure she's okay, but then I want to see if I can have her, be her mother and everything. Do you think there's any way you can help me do that? Do you think it's too late?”

Cassie can see across the circle that Ellie's eyes are wet, her head down. Cassie's heart is beating so hard in her chest she can hear it in her ears. She forcefully prevents herself from looking at the other girls, from worrying about the time she has taken, the reaction they might be having, what they are thinking of her now. She keeps her gaze focused on Ellie and, with each passing second, feels the knot on her spine tighten and grow and threaten to overcome her.

Ellie finally lifts her eyes to Cassie though, for once, she doesn't smile.

“I don't know, Cassie. I don't . . . well, I just don't know what to say. You've kind of taken me by surprise. I have no idea if what you're asking is possible. We need to talk about it a lot more before we make any decisions. I know you feel terrible about losing your baby, but it hasn't really been that long. So much has changed for you, and I'm not sure you've really had a chance to think through how you'll feel when, well, when that grief isn't quite so . . . sharp.”

“No.” Cassie's voice is loud and steady. “No. I know how I'm going to feel. I'm going to feel like I made the worst mistake of my life—and I don't mean the legal one—and that I need to do everything I can to fix it. I know that, before, when I made the decision, I thought that someone who didn't have a mother, or who hadn't had one in a long time, couldn't be one. I wanted her to have the best life, and I was sure I couldn't give it to her. But now I know that it might be something you can learn, that even if you make a mistake, a terrible one like this, it doesn't make you a bad person. I'd only be a bad person if I didn't try to do something about it.”

“Yeah, I mean, isn't that what we're supposed to be learning here? Don't you think Cassie can do it?” Sarah's gaze is focused on Ellie, but she has moved closer to Cassie, edged her hand up against Cassie's own.

Ellie looks startled.

“I don't think that's really the issue. Yes, I'm sure she can do it. It's just that it's such a life-changing decision. Cassie, she'd be completely dependent on you for a long, long time, and you're a teenager yourself with no other family to help you. It just seems like you'd want to imagine yourself free of that burden, give yourself a chance to grow up a little before you have to take care of someone else. Again.”

Everyone turns to the sound of Jenna clearing her throat. “So, she's just supposed to forget about it? Like, pretend it never happened?”

“No, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying—”

“Because that makes it seem like you think that, because she's a teenager, the feelings aren't real, that she can't understand them because she's too young herself.”

“No, Jenna. Of course that's not what I'm saying.”

“Because I think it wouldn't do any harm to find out. I mean, if it's impossible, then okay, Cassie has to give up on it. But, if it's possible, if nobody has taken her yet, then who would be a better mother than the person who loves her most, the person who really wants her? Cassie, better than anybody, knows how hard it's going to be. It doesn't seem fair for you to say that she doesn't have the right to do it anyway, that she's not able to know what she wants.”

“I didn't mean to imply—”

“And besides, I don't really see that it's your decision. If you don't want to help, that's fine. We can do it. Cassie and . . . us. What's all this crap about empowerment if it doesn't mean you can work hard for something you believe in?”

Cassie has never been so astounded. She is staring at Jenna with her mouth open, trying to digest what she has just heard. She can't believe that Jenna doesn't hate her now that she knows what Cassie has done. In fact, if Cassie understands correctly, Jenna is actually standing up for her, saying more words in a group session than Cassie thinks she has ever heard her speak. And what she is saying is that she thinks Cassie could be a good mother, that she'd even be willing to help Cassie get her baby back. Could Lauren have been wrong about Jenna?

Ellie is staring at Jenna, too, but when she shifts her focus back to Cassie, she appears defeated.

“Is that really what you want Cassie, to find out, to see if it's possible?”

Cassie doesn't trust her voice. She nods, making firm eye contact with Ellie, returning her gaze.

Ellie shrugs, nods her own head slowly, though she still isn't smiling. Her voice is restrained. “Okay, then. I guess there's your answer. I'll see what I can do.”

MONDAY, JULY 16

“SO, IT'S LIKE A TRADITION IN YOUR FAMILY? SOMETHING
your grandparents did and everything?”

Sarah is clutching the top leaves of a large celery plant, gathering them in both of her hands while Grace takes the double sheet of newspaper Lauren is holding out to her and wraps it snugly around the tall stalks, tying at top and bottom with strips of baler twine. It's been unbearably hot almost all summer but the last two days have felt like some satanic monster is at the weather controls, cranking up the temperature a few more degrees with every sign of human distress.

“I guess you could say that. It was actually my great-great-grandfather Henry who first settled this land though, back in the 1880s.”

Sarah can really only see the top of Grace's head, though she knows her face is red with heat and effort, marvels at how the woman never seems to slow down. Possessed, that's what she is, maybe controlled by that same meteorological monster. Tend the crops until you drop. Sarah reaches with her tongue for a drop of perspiration making a run down the crease beside her mouth toward her chin but misses.

“So you mean, like, your family has been here ever since then?” Sarah tries to figure out how many of her lifetimes fit into the last hundred and twenty-five plus years but quickly gives up.

“Well, more or less. People kind of came and went. Nobody in my family has exactly been the settled type.”

This whole conversation started with the stupid celery. They are halfway down one side of the wide bed, blanching the plants in the two staggered rows they can reach and will return down the other side for the last two rows. At first, Sarah thought it was cool that Grace grows celery every year just like her family always has, even though she has admitted that there's no great market for it. Now, Sarah feels like she is squirming under the heavy weight of that connection, her ears full of the names and stories of these hardworking ancestors. She is picturing Grace seated confidently on the limb of a broadly spreading family tree, reaching her arms down to bring the girls up to a perch beside her. Sarah thinks that, along with water, she is afraid of heights.

Yet, she wants to know, needs to feel these pinpricks of reproof, understand exactly what she may have had a hand in contaminating.

“So, Henry was a celery farmer?”

“He was at first but when he bought this place he also grew a lot of flowers.”

“Flowers?”

“That's how the story goes. I guess his son Cornelius wasn't all that interested in flowers because he left the farm for quite a few years. When he finally came back, he got married, sometime in his forties—his dad had married late in life, too. Anyway, Cornelius and his wife had one son, named Jacob, and he was my grandfather.”

“Why did they wait until they were so old to have kids?”

“I don't know. Just circumstances, I guess. But that pattern didn't hold. Jacob and my grandma Marie had my mom when they were only twenty, and my mom was just eighteen when she had me.”

Grace clears her throat, and Sarah feels like she can see her swallowing a mouthful of words that have surged forward uninvited. Lauren is clearly becoming impatient with the story, hasn't noticed that the narrative has taken a tense turn, and begins to hum. Sarah flashes her a dangerous frown, and Lauren looks at first scandalized, then flippant. Sarah's hands are getting tired, but she doesn't want to complain. Lauren, of course, has the easy job, just separating the sheets of newspaper and spreading them flat as she hands them to Grace, pulling the pieces of twine from her pocket as Grace needs them.

Sarah realizes that she knows next to nothing about her own family, doesn't know where her grandparents came from or what they did for a living, never heard any childhood stories from her mom at all. Maybe everything just sucked and so nobody ever wanted to mention it. Maybe that sort of thing gets in your blood, a kind of legacy of failure and unhappiness, and it's best not to talk about it since there's not a damn thing you can do to change it.

Sarah suspects that the thing she wants to hear about is the exact thing that will make Grace stop talking. This is the most she's ever heard her say in all the time she's been here, though they've spent many hours working side by side. She's afraid of being too nosy, getting too personal, and yet all of it seems to be leading to that, to bringing them closer and closer as if that is the only direction to go. It becomes suddenly clear to Sarah that this is what Ellie wants for the counseling sessions, to arrive at the place where they know each other's pasts in order to become a part of a shared future. Sarah wonders if whatever secrets Grace is protecting feel the same as her own, sometimes just fuzzy and ticklish, like a litter of kittens trying to climb and paw their way out, and sometimes with claws bared, kittens grown to tigers, camouflaged but always ready to spring.

They have made it to the end of the row and are ready to turn back down the other side when Sarah sees Jenna crossing the bridge over the creek, heading their way. Lauren is watching her, too, until the drone of a distant jet reaches their ears, drawing their attention to the white exhaust trail in the sky.

To the west is a dark gray line, inching like a shade pulled slowly over the blue, and Grace bends to the next plant with a little more urgency, the sheet of newspaper formed into a cone around it by the time Jenna steps up to where they are working.

When Grace looks up to greet her, she scans Jenna's hands, black up to the wrists, her knees the same down to her ankles, smiles, and comments, “Thought you'd bring some dirt along with you, I see.” Jenna glances down at her legs and makes a ghoulish cackle, wiggling her hands as if to wipe them on Lauren, who shrieks and raises her own hands in alarm.

“Need any help?”

“You can do my job.”

Both Grace and Sarah say, “Lauren!” in protest, and Lauren shrugs her shoulders, rolls her eyes.

Jenna says, “I finished the broccoli. Do you want me to start on the new lettuce?”

Grace stands up, stretches her shoulders. “Too hot. Just stay back here with us for a bit. Take a break.”

“Yeah, Grace was telling us all about her grandparents farming this place. Maybe you can get her to tell us all the juicy parts she's leaving out,” Sarah says slyly.

“If you guys are going to gang up on me, I can still find something else for you to do,” Grace says in a teasing tone.

Jenna plops down on the ground and draws her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around her legs. There is suddenly a sharp nip in the gusty wind and it is no longer sunny.

With Jenna here, Sarah feels a bit braver. Her hands are free for the moment so she holds out a pretend microphone, angles it toward each of the others in turn, and says, “Okay, so, we're each going to share our family's deepest, darkest secrets, right? Um, let's see. Here's a question to get us started.” Sarah checks the reaction and everybody is looking at her with open faces so she continues.

“So, who here knows who their father is or has actually met him?”

Lauren is the only one who raises her hand. They all look around at the others and start to laugh. Sarah asks, “Does Cassie know who her father is? I don't think she does.”

Jenna shrugs.

Sarah goes on. “This is important. We could actually be solving the nation's adolescent crime epidemic.”

“But I thought you knew yours, Sarah.” Grace looks up at her questioningly where Sarah is looming above her, now back to her task, the dark green celery leaves poking out of the tops of her hands like a bouquet.

“Well, I know his name and everything, but I haven't seen him since I was, like, two years old or something. He has a whole other family now, on the West Coast.” Sarah shakes her head. “I guess when you have a stepdad like mine, you're not all that anxious to have another dad. What's your dad like, Lauren, since you're the exception here?”

“I don't know. What do you mean? He's a rich asshole who takes advantage of anyone stupid enough to cross his path and makes a killing doing it. Is that what you want to know?”

Sarah bites her lip, takes the baler twine that is hanging from the end of Lauren's fingertips, and hands it to Grace who is reaching for it, their eyes meeting.

“I don't know. Is he, like, a good dad or anything?”

“Like, played ball in the yard with me when I was a kid or bought me a puppy or something? You gotta be kidding. One time we were talking about my cousin's baby and the name they chose for her and my dad couldn't even remember my middle name. I'm sure we're some kind of classic psychological syndrome. You know, like, absent father and drunken mother raises criminal daughter. Does that fit your experimental parameters, Sarah?”

Sarah avoids Lauren's gaze. “Probably,” she responds.

“Worse for my brother, though. My dad totally expected him to go into the family business, you know, wear a suit and screw everybody in town. But my brother thinks he's going to be an artist.” Lauren laughs bitterly. “Probably gay or something.”

Sarah is sure Lauren told them she is an only child. She wonders if Lauren is lying now, just made it up to get a dig at Grace, or if she was lying then. Sarah glances over at Jenna and sees that she is on her knees now, looks ready to spring into action. Her fists are clenched in the dirt at her sides, her forehead knitted into a deep frown.

“God, you are really obsessed with that, aren't you?”

“Geez, Jenna. I'm just kidding. Don't you think you're a little oversensitive?”

Jenna jumps up, brushes off her knees, a little loose dirt trickling down around her ankles. “I'm going to go start on that lettuce, if it's okay.”

“Hey, wait. I was just going to tell you about my dad. For the study, you know?” The girls all turn to Grace, see that she is smiling.

Jenna purses her lips sourly. “Okay, what about him?”

“Captain of the football team.”

Jenna's face breaks into a grin. Sarah whoops out a loud, “No way!”

“Yup. My mom was seventeen. Still in high school. She graduated in like her seventh month of pregnancy, right before they probably would have kicked her out of school. She never told him directly, though everybody pretty much knew it was him. He never even asked her about it. I think she was afraid she'd have to marry him if she tried to make him responsible, and she always said she was fine with a baby but not with a husband. She took a year off, then she actually went to college, got her degree in teaching while my grandmother took care of me. Wouldn't live out here at the farm with them though. She wanted to do it on her own, I guess, plus she and my grandfather didn't get along all that well. We had a little apartment upstairs from a beauty parlor in Somerset. Stunk like hell, especially in the summer. I have kind of weird images in my head of looking down on the tops of those ladies' hairdos when they came out of the store, making up stories for who they were and where they were going.” Grace shakes her head with the memory.

“What happened to your dad?” Sarah asks quietly.

“He went to some Podunk college somewhere to play football but didn't do that great, I guess. I don't know what happened after that. I think my grandparents considered finding him after my mom . . . when she died . . . but decided against it. He must have come back some time to visit his own parents but, obviously, never gave a damn about me. I was lucky though. Maybe because my grandparents felt more like a mom and dad, better than what most people have, it didn't matter that much.”

“But you didn't become a criminal,” Sarah says.

Grace smiles sagely. “How do
you
know?”

Sarah and Jenna laugh, but Lauren is occupied tying one of the baler twine strings into little knots.

“What did happen to your mom?”

The voice is Jenna's and the words crackle in the air like a bolt of lightning. Sarah is completely startled by hearing the exact question she has most wanted to ask. For just a second, Sarah thinks Grace is going to drop the newspaper cone she is holding in one hand and the baler twine piece she is holding in the other and walk away, never speak to any of them again. The silence is so heavy that Sarah feels like it is pressing down on all of them, with Grace the only one strong enough to lift it.

“My mom committed suicide.”

Sarah looks down at Grace's head below her and believes she can see the fragile bubble that Grace has been so careful to maintain popping, leaving her open and exposed. But without that bubble, Sarah can also feel a sudden closeness, a connection she never expected. She wants to tell Grace that she understands how hard it is to lose someone, that she knows exactly what it's like to be the one left behind and to live with the constant feeling that you have to somehow make up for it. But she can't get any words to come out of her mouth.

Grace is reaching for the loose end of the newspaper, has her hand on it and is bending to wrap it around the next celery plant in the row when Sarah sees fingers folding over Grace's shoulder, light at first, then firmer, causing Grace to look up and follow Jenna's eyes as she kneels beside her. “I'm sorry. I bet it hurts every time you think about it. I shouldn't have asked.”

“No, it's okay.” Grace is nodding, turns back to the next celery plant in the row, but the newspaper hangs from her hand, fluttering in the wind.

“They thought my grandpa did it.”

Jenna is still kneeling beside her, a frown forming on her face. “What do you mean?”

Grace shrugs like it's no big deal, but the celery seems to have been forgotten.

“She shot herself, in the head,” Grace says, motioning with her own head toward the barn so that all the girls turn to look in that direction. “My grandpa had a bit of a reputation around here, had even been arrested when he was a young man for an assault, though that was pretty much just two kids getting in a fight. Still, he and my mom had kind of a history between them, and everybody knows everybody else's business around here. They thought it might be murder. The police came and hauled him away. He was in jail for, I don't know, a week, maybe longer, until they finally ruled it a suicide. Even after they let him go, some people couldn't seem to forget that he'd been suspected.”