Return to Me (13 page)

After helping Mom rent a car late that afternoon, Grandpa was reluctant to depart for the airport to fly back to the Big Island alone. With a dejected expression, he lobbed one last plea to Mom in the kitchen: “Sweetheart, if you change your mind, call me day or night. I’ll get you the tickets.”

Perhaps it was superstition, but suddenly I needed my broken clock—that timepiece of love—fixed. If there was one
person who could repair anything, whether food processor or fairy house, it was Grandpa George.

“Wait a sec, okay?” I begged as he began to rise from his seat.

“Reb, he’s going to be late,” Mom admonished.

I sprinted upstairs to get the clock. Returning, I set the paralyzed timepiece before Grandpa on the kitchen table. Without saying a word, he cradled the device in his big hands, gentle as if it were a wing-injured bird. After inspecting the exterior, Grandpa slid on his bifocals to peer into the inner workings.

“I can fix it,” he said, turning his steady gaze on me.

I nodded solemnly back at him as though this were a pact. If only a broken family could be so confidently repaired.

As soon as Grandpa drove away, my invalid clock carefully swaddled inside his carry-on bag, Mom grabbed the broom from the closet and announced it was time to tidy the house. That led Reid to retort hotly, “You’re the only one who wants to stay here instead of go to Hawaii. So you clean the house yourself.”

Mom’s answer may have been just as pointed, but I heard the hurt coursing beneath her curtness as she swept the porch outside: “Stop being so disrespectful.”

My breathing quickened during this spat, and I had to escape to the laundry room, not only because I had run out of underwear and Mom hadn’t done the laundry in days, but because I finally knew why Reid’s scowl looked so familiar. Dad had worn the same defiant expression when he told Mom about his affair.

After rewashing everyone’s laundry, which had been left in untended piles for so long that all our clothes were wrinkled, I
checked in on Mom in the kitchen. As soon as I neared, she mumbled furtively on the phone, hung up, and continued washing our breakfast dishes. Her hands trembled so much our dishes were in peril.

“What was that about?” I asked, worried.

“Oh, nothing.” Mom nearly dropped a sudsy cup in the sink.

“Who was that?” I insisted. By the way Mom’s lips tightened, I knew it had been my father. “What did Dad say?”

Mom countered, “What do you want for dinner?”

“I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“You need to eat.”

I studied my gaunt mom. “You do.”

However much Mom protested, I was going to force-feed both of us a high-calorie snack at the very least. She had always maintained a strict five-day-a-week regimen of hot yoga and running, as well as her fresh-and-local dietary habits, but she was starvation-skinny now. Moments before I hustled downstairs this morning, I noticed that I, too, had become all jutting bones. Even my tightest pair of pants gaped at the waistband.

A smoothie, I thought.

Before I could open the refrigerator, Mom throttled full-force into our future as she picked up her clipboard from the counter, pen attached by a pink ribbon for last-minute list-making. “So, what should we do this week before we move?”

I forgot my smoothie-making intentions. “Wait. We’re still moving?”

“Yes.”

My vulture thoughts circled my parents’ dying marriage.
Dictatorship
was the first word that came to mind,
difficult
and
demanding
the fitting adjectives. Immediately, I felt guilty. My feelings teetered practically on the hour, every hour, first sympathizing with Dad, then siding with Mom. Angry at Dad, enraged at Mom. I felt like I was going crazy, mood-swinging dizzily between the opposite poles of my parents.

“You’re just giving up because of some stupid legend in our family. The curse isn’t real, Mom,” I said as I wrenched the refrigerator door open. Cold air chilled my neck, my shoulders, my brain. Sighing loudly, I was about to slam the door shut when I beheld the nonfat milk instead of 2 percent. Over the last few months—surprise, surprise—Dad had become suddenly obsessed about getting in shape. There was the organic blueberry yogurt he loved for breakfast. On another shelf, I spied the six-pack of the dark ale Dad swigged during his nightly ESPN–and–e-mail marathons. Dad’s favorite brand of Brie cheese, waiting for him like a faithful golden retriever.

Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad.

I sucked in my breath. This refrigerator was the still life of Mom’s quiet and constant devotion to my father. For as long as I could remember, she had always kept these items stocked for him. In the refrigerator’s chill, I could feel our family curse weave briskly around us.

At first I thought it was my scratchy sigh I heard, but I found Mom studying the refrigerator, too, her eyes filling with tears. Maybe neither of us could get our minds around the magnitude of Dad leaving us forever, what that meant for our family. But these little signs of lost love—an entire care package of a
refrigerator—these we felt keenly. And maybe discrete, doable steps, like moving back home and arranging therapy, made pushing through this pain possible. And bearable.

So I took one doable step now. I grabbed the container of nonfat milk and poured its contents down the drain, every last drop.

Mom jerked when the plastic container thudded against the bottom of the trash can. I thought she’d rail about Dad and his “emergencies” at work. I thought she’d become one of those hell-hath-no-fury women who’d cut the crotches out of all his pants and sell his prized possessions for a penny.

Instead, Mom moved to the lonely outpost of the kitchen window and hugged her clipboard to her chest. Without turning to me, she urged gently, “Go check on Reid.”

How little Dad—and I—knew my mother at all.

Late that night when my cell phone rang in my bedroom—not outside on the balcony, not in the one corner of our house with reliable cell phone coverage, but in my bedroom—I took that miracle as a sign.

Wouldn’t you know it? The miracle was Jackson.

“Rebel,” he said, “you’re alive.”

Not until I heard the familiar timbre of his voice did I realize how much I missed him. How much I ached to hear that “Rebel.”

“Jackson.” In truth, I sighed the two syllables of his name
with relief… and delight. I left my desk, where I’d been assembling Reid’s hobbit house, and snuggled into my bed.

Instead of berating me for ignoring him, or explaining his own incommunicado absence, Jackson began with this: “So what’s the latest?”

There are times when words tumble unexpectedly out of your mouth, expressing a wish you never knew you had until it was spoken aloud. This was one of those times. To my own surprise, I found myself revealing, “I don’t know if I want to go to Columbia anymore.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well…” I studied the cracked skin on my heels. I swallowed, my throat parched as if these last days had sucked every last bit of me dry. “I’m not sure it’s where I want to be. I mean, you should have heard Sam Stone! That’s where he went to school. And besides, I don’t even know if we can afford it.”

My thoughts, I knew, were disorganized, a rambling path to an unknown destination. I turned around to fluff my pillow and felt irritated when Jackson asked what I knew was only a clarifying question: “So you’re rethinking college because you think all the students are going to be Sam Stone clones or because of the cost?”

“I don’t know…. All of the above, I guess.”

“Well, this is a big decision. It could change your life.”

To maneuver from a topic that made me feel stupid for not knowing what I meant, I deflected: “No, what’s going to change my life is that Mom’s not even fighting to keep Dad!” That deep-seated frustration pushed aside my overworked censor, the one
that squashed every vision, the one that denied every premonition. I sat up in my bed. Now my confession flowed free. “She’s giving up all because of my stupid family curse. All of the women on her side are single because every single man has left them.”

“I thought your grandmother left your grandpa.”

“She did…. When Mom started college.”

“So that was some kind of preemptive strike? Kind of like you not talking to me?”

Darn it, I had forgotten how perceptive Jackson was. And how forthright. I said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Now was a perfect time to ask him about his cryptic update post, about the “good friend” who had accompanied him to the boondocks. But I didn’t want to know. So I changed the subject and told him that Grandpa wanted to take us to Hawaii.

Jackson said, “Escaping for a few days to regroup sounds like a good idea.”

“I know, but Mom wants to move back to Lewis. I mean, she hasn’t even tried to work it out with Dad.” If it was hard enough for me to maintain a long-distance relationship with Jackson, how was Mom going to repair hers with Dad if both of them lived on opposite coasts?

“Does he want to work it out?” Jackson asked.

I sighed, flipped onto my side restlessly, and studied the hobbit house that I had left on my desk.

In Jackson’s voice, I heard its echo, louder than the original question:
Do you?

Louder yet was my answer: “I don’t know.”

W
hen I got home from running to the post office to mail the bills for Mom, dinner for once wasn’t on, and she was sleeping heavily. So pulling my best Mom, I called Ginny and asked her to step me through preparing a meal while catching up. Multitasking with the best of them.

“Where’s all your food?” Ginny demanded after I had inventoried aloud the paltry ingredients in our pantry, refrigerator, and freezer.

“I guess none of us have gone grocery shopping,” I admitted guiltily. Why hadn’t I swung by the grocery store after the post office? I had assumed Mom would take care of us, the way she always had.

“I am so mad at your dad!”

“Geez, why are you so angry?” I peered into the pantry
again, as if a bounty of ingredients had magically materialized inside. “This is
my
father.”

“That’s just it. I mean, he’s your
father
. Fathers are supposed to stick around. Fathers are supposed to put family first. Fathers don’t just pick up and leave, not when they have a
choice
.” That last word verged on a baleful wail, and I ached for Ginny at that unwitting admission. We may have both lost our dads, but mine was still alive.

“You’re right,” I said as I opened the refrigerator door. “So, we have some Brie cheese and pears. Beer and a couple slices of turkey.”

“What are pears doing in your refrigerator? Never mind, take them out. Do you have bread? Please tell me you have bread. Or tortillas,” Ginny asked in quick succession. “Tortillas will work.”

“Bread!” I said, spotting the loaf with the relief of a shipwrecked sailor at the sight of a rescue vessel.

Placated, Ginny carefully walked me through preparing melted Brie-and-turkey sandwiches punctuated with thin slices of pear. Pathetic as it was, I needed her detailed instructions because my kitchen skills were so abysmal.

“We should have read cookbooks for at least one Bed and Bookfest.” Ginny sighed. After describing precisely how to cut the Brie cheese—leave the rind on—she added, “So I have to tell you something. Your dad’s ‘my money’ comment has my mom worried. She thinks your dad might have been planning this for months.”

I bit my lip and stopped slicing the bread for fear I might cut myself. The truth was, it worried me, too.

“We need a plan,” Ginny said.

“Trust me, Mom’s got that covered,” I said, remembering her list:
divorce lawyer
! Nudging aside the bread, I made room for the pears on the cutting board.

“No, trust
me
. She doesn’t. After Dad died, my mom got lost driving home from the grocery store. Did you wash the pears?”

Chagrined, I carried the pears to the sink and rinsed them off while telling Ginny, “Well, my mom was an accounting major. And if she wants to fast-track the divorce, she can be on top of the finances herself.” My paring knife sank into the overripe pear with such ease, I wasn’t prepared, and nearly sliced my finger. Hastily, I set the knife down.

“This is about you guys knowing what you have. None of us thought my dad would die when he was thirty-eight. Thirty-eight, Reb. My parents did zero financial planning. Zero.” Ginny sighed, then added quietly, “Your mom helped me and my uncle sort through everything.”

“She did?” I stared at the phone on the counter that I had just switched to speakerphone mode so that I could assemble the sandwiches with both hands.

“She did.”

What else didn’t I know about the people who were closest to me—Dad and Jackson’s father with their affairs, Mom jump-starting Ginny’s financial wizardry, Grandpa’s Big Island property.

“Your mom’s plan rescued us,” Ginny said.

My mom’s plan.
That stopped me short from buttering the
thin slices of bread, and I remembered Grandpa’s fierce defense of Mom:
She’s making a plan to protect you.
Still, this paper trail I was supposed to construct, leading us sordid dollar by sordid dollar to all the details of Dad’s deception? This was too much. I jerked away from the kitchen counter, strode to the oven, and turned it to
BROIL
.