Tangled Webb (14 page)

Naturally, I shouldn't have said a word of it, I should've let it choke me first. Because catch anybody paying attention to
my
vote, especially with my voice shaking and the decibels turned all the way up.

Daddy finally said, “That'll do, Juniper!” in the voice that says
I mean it
. Then he went on, quietly, but as if he had his teeth gritted, “This was a private—and very
preliminary—
conversation. Nothing at all is settled about moving. It wouldn't be the end of the world if it were.”

“It would,” I said. By that time I
was
kind of choking. “It'd be the end of
my
world.”

“No, it wouldn't, whether you think so or not. And other people's needs have to be considered. That's all we're doing, considering. I realize you can't be expected to understand, but it's hard for Kelsey. . . . It's hard for any woman to live in another woman's house. She—”

“That's not it!” I cried. “That's not the reason she wants to move at all!
Is
it, Kelsey?”

“Juniper Webb!
” Daddy snapped out.

Well, I shut up. I knew I'd blown it. Kelsey was looking as if I'd just hit her in the face, and Daddy hadn't missed it. And anyway, wouldn't you
know
, I'd got such a death grip on my toast that now I had a handful of mush and jelly I didn't know what to do with, and how can you make anybody think of you
as a real person, with real arguments, and a
vote
, when you've got mixed up in a third-rate comedy routine?

I said, “I'm
sorry
!” and ran—back through the living room to the kitchen to get rid of that
stupid
toast, and then went up the stairs three at a time and locked myself in my room.

Crying didn't help much, though it got me past wanting to yell and kick and hate somebody, and left me just feeling hopeless and tireder than I ever remember feeling. By the time Daddy spoke to me through my door about half an hour later, I was ready to let him in.

Of course, that didn't help either. He was calm but stern, and said all the things I expected. That Kelsey was under a lot of stress and couldn't take much more. That he realized she was oversensitive, overprotective of Preston, inclined to be nervous. I must remember she's pregnant. She so much wanted to be friends and she'd tried and I'd been making it very difficult. And he thought I owed her an apology for that remark I'd flung at her—whatever it was supposed to mean.

“I'm sorry I said that,” I told him—and I
am
, because all it did was make him mad and put me in the wrong. I did try to convince him that
I
think Kelsey's running away from some sort of danger—but I guess it just sounded like I was making an excuse. He said the only danger for Kelsey was a nervous breakdown if I didn't try to avoid upsetting her.

It was no use trying to explain everything—in fact, anything. Even if I'd known how. I guess it's no wonder he thinks I'm just inventing stuff. There's a lot he doesn't know a thing about. And so much I'm not really sure of that I sometimes wonder, myself, if I'm just making it up. So I just nodded, and he put his arm around me and rubbed his beard against my hair, and left.

Writing in this book has helped a little—kind of calmed me down. Maybe I'll never be able to explain all that about Kelsey. But I've got to explain to him how I feel about moving. Maybe this evening, before he's had a chance to think too hard about Kelsey's needs and everything. I've got to talk to him calmly and
reasonably
. I mean, I have lots of
good
reasons and a right to my vote. Haven't I? He's not always going to do every single thing Kelsey wants him to, forever—is he? I still count too, don't I?

Later

I decided to try Blanche one more time before I talked to Daddy. About four o'clock I walked up to 7-Eleven and dialed the number. By now I know it by heart.

She was there. I got stage fright and nearly dropped the phone but I somehow gabbled out, “Ms. Mitchell, this is Marianne again, but
please
don't hang up till I ask you just one question because it's
really
important and not just a bet with my friend.” I didn't give her a chance to say no, just barged right on and asked her
why
she was sure, and
when
she was sure that little boy wasn't her nephew.

Well, she barely hung on to her patience, but she told me. “I was sure when he took off his hat. My nephew has red hair.”

I
knew
it.

I didn't even hear her bawling me out, if she did, or telling me not to phone again, I was so busy thinking of that one-eighth-inch of rusty-gold at Preston's hairline, and
seeing
him, there on the escalator, pulling off his hat to uncover a head of dark brown hair.

Daddy can say “dyed hair is no disguise” if he wants to. This time it was—and it worked. That's what
I
think. But he doesn't listen to what I think. I had to
know
.

I said, “Did . . . his mother . . . ever call him ‘Bitsy'?”

There was a dead silence at the other end of the phone. Then suddenly she asked, sounding breathless, as if I'd hit her in the solar plexus, “What do you know about his mother?” I didn't say anything and she went on, her voice harsh and urgent. “Where is the boy? Who are you, anyway? Marianne—? Marianne! What did you say your last name was? Marianne, are you still there?”

I said, “Yes,” but I had to gulp for breath, too.

“Then answer me! Where is he? How do you know about him?”

I sort of whispered, “I can't tell you. I can't tell you anything else.”

“Of course you can! You've got to. Tell me where you live—the address. Your phone number. I've got to talk to you. . . .”

The demanding voice went on squawking out of the phone but all I could hear was Pete saying
You'd better find out
all
about this before you go blowing the whistle
. . . . Finally Blanche's voice stopped. The dial tone was buzzing in my ear before I remembered to hang up.

So now I'm certain. I'm not making things up. Something is really, really wrong. Because Kelsey's
still
trying to run away. In fact she wants us
all
to run away now from our own perfectly good house and hide in the country.

Maybe it's time to blow the whistle. I've got to do something. Daddy's got to listen.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13

I know I can't put it off any longer. I've got to get it all down, so it'll be straight in my mind when I write Alison—when I can bear to—and as Pete said yesterday, so I'll remember facts and plain truth instead of just my
feelings
about everything. Actually, I don't think I'll ever forget a single fact
or
feeling about the last three days if I live to be a hundred and fifty.

I don't know how to start.

Well—I blew the whistle on Kelsey. Last Sunday evening about an hour or so after I wrote in this book, I got Daddy to listen. I did it by dropping a bomb. And ever since, I've felt like somebody who's dropped a real bomb because pieces flew everywhere and innocent people are probably going to get hurt—
Preston
, for one,
especially
little Preston—all because of me.

Okay, okay. Facts, not feelings.

At the time, I was
full
of feelings, just desperate to do something, anything, because I didn't want to move to the country, because Daddy wouldn't pay attention. I waited till Preston was in bed and the rest of us were in the kitchen stacking the dishwasher. Then I asked Kelsey straight out if she knew anybody named Blanche Mitchell.

She let go of the plate she was holding. It hit the edge of the counter, cracked against the open dishwasher door, and smashed into fragments on Margo's Mexican-tile floor.

For a minute we all froze, like a video on pause—Kelsey clinging to the counter as if she couldn't stand upright, Daddy with a platter in his hand, staring at her, me beginning to turn numb and scared, while a final little shard of our blue-rimmed everyday china spun around on its bottom and finally settled. I knew already I should never have opened my mouth.

Then Daddy quickly put aside the platter and bent over Kelsey, pulling her up against him and saying angrily, “Juni, what are you talking about?”

All I could say was, “Ask
her. Please.”

He glared and said, “I'm asking
you
” but Kelsey shook her head and made vague motions with her hand, and he went back to peering at her, holding her by the shoulders and frowning into her face. She was white and thin-looking, her freckles plain, and the bones of her face sharp, and her eyes darker than usual and sort of unfocused. He said, “You're going to sit down. Then we're going to talk about this. Juni, get her some water.”

I did that, fast, and he made her drink a little, then walked her to the breakfast nook and put her in one chair and sat down in the next one, and gave a jerk of his head at me. So I went over there, too—not feeling my feet—and slid into a chair across from them.

Kelsey didn't say a word, just sat there with her shoulders slumped, looking exhausted. And Daddy finally did what I'd been begging him to do. He took hold of her, gently, and turned her to face him, and said, “Kelsey, baby. What's wrong? Whatever it is, I'm with you. All the way. Come on, get it off your chest. Juni insists you're in some kind of trouble. ‘Danger,'
she says.” He halfway smiled at the word, even then. “Are you? Tell me.”

For a minute she just looked at him, with this terribly
sad
expression—as if she was trying to memorize his face, as if she might never get to look at it again. Then she took a long, tired-sounding breath and said, “Not me. Or maybe I am, but that doesn't matter. It's Preston.”

I got this sudden knot in my throat even though I
knew
she was going to say that—at least, I'd dreaded it, all along. Daddy just looked baffled, then almost relieved.

“Preston?”
he said. “Well, you can quit worrying right now. I'll protect Preston! Why, I'd defend him with my life—you
know
that, Kelsey! If for no reason but that he's
your
little boy.”

She smiled at him, painfully, but almost as if
he
was the little boy. “Charley  . . .” she said. She hesitated one last time, then came out with it. “He's not my little boy. He's my little brother.”

Her little brother.

There it was—the key to everything—finally out in the open and staring us in the face, while Daddy and I stared back.

All the puzzle pieces in my mind were spinning in a kind of whirlwind and gradually settling down into a brand-new pattern. Her little
brother
. It began to make a sort of sense.

I guess it didn't to Daddy. He said, “
Step
brother?”

“No, no, Charley. My own brother, Robert Shelby. My mother's child. That's the trouble,” Kelsey added desperately. “He's not mine.”

“But—” Daddy was still struggling with the bare idea. “You've got a brother
twenty-three
years younger than you?”

Kelsey took another long breath and swallowed hard. “I lied about my age, Charley. I—I'm just nineteen.”

“Nine
teen
?” said Daddy, sounding stunned.

I was pretty startled, too, though I've always thought Kelsey looked younger than twenty-five—lots younger. Well, heavens, she's only six years older than
me
. Or anyway that's what it'll be when I'm thirteen, two weeks from now. No wonder I could never think of her as a mother. Nineteen—that's like a
big sister
. Which is something I never dreamed I'd have.

“God help me,” Daddy said in this unreal voice. “And I already thought I was—was robbing the cradle.”

“Oh, Charley, I'm
sorry
” said Kelsey. She clasped both hands together, tight, and hid her face for a minute, then straightened up and added, “I might've known I'd spoil it somehow. I did know, really.”

“Now, take it easy,” Daddy told her. I thought he looked as if he was finding it hard to take it easy himself, as if he was saying “nineteen” over and over in his head. But he said, “Just relax and tell me. Your mother is dead?”

“Dead drunk, more likely,” said Kelsey, in that same flat, hard voice, like when she'd talked about drug users that time. Her expression matched the voice. She suddenly seemed older, though she'd just told us she was younger. She seemed almost like somebody else.

Well, she
is
somebody else—just as I always suspected. She's Sharonlee Shelby from Boise, Idaho, as she told us right then, though I'll never, never think of her that way. But before this I hadn't
seen
the person she was trying to change from, trying to escape. Neither had Daddy. He settled back slowly in his chair, watching her, looking as if he was bracing himself against he didn't know what. He said, “Go on.”

“Well, you can guess, can't you?” Kelsey burst out. “I stole Bitsy from her. I just—left her. To go ahead and drink herself to death. My own mother. I—I didn't know what else to do.”

Daddy said gently, “Start at the beginning.”

Instead, Kelsey said, “Juniper, how much did you tell Aunt Blanche? You must have talked to her.” She studied her hands when she said it—as if she couldn't bear the sight of me. I couldn't blame her.

“Nothing,” I said. “I guess she's—pretty sure Preston is her nephew, Robert.” It seemed funny to call him that. “Bitsy” suited him lots better. But all at once I realized why Kelsey had panicked the day I'd heard her say it. Even his real
nickname
had to be kept secret in case someone recognized it—and, in fact, Aunt Blanche had.