The Things We Keep (27 page)

My cell phone rings in my pocket and I snatch it and glance at the screen, ready to silence it. Then I notice the call is coming from Clem's school. “Sorry, Clara, I have to take this.”

“Yes, of course. Go ahead, honey.”

I punch the button. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Bennett, this is Kathy Donnelly from Clementine's school. I'm afraid we have a little problem.”

 

34

Clementine

“Clementine, it's Miss Weber. Can you open the door, sweetheart?”

I put down the toilet seat and sit. I'll wait here until everyone has gone home, and then I'll come out. By that time, Mom will be here, and she'll take me home and I'll tell her I never want to come back to school again.

“It's just me,” Miss Weber says. “All the other kids have gone back to class. Why don't you come out and tell me what happened?”

“I don't want to.”

“Clementine, s
omething
must have happened for you to lock yourself in here. I want to help you, but you have to talk to me. Did someone say something to upset you?”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. Can you tell me what they said?”

Your daddy was a bad man. Everyone hated your daddy.

“They told lies.”

“What kind of lies?”

There's writing on the toilet door:

I suddenly want to write something.
Miranda stinks.
Or maybe,
Miranda is a liar.
But I don't have a pen.

“Clem?” It's another voice; not Miss Weber. Immediately I feel a rush of tears.

“Mom?”

“Yes, it's me.”

Everyone hates your mom, too.

I throw open the door and run headlong into Mom's belly. “What is it?” she says, cradling my head. “What happened?”

“I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet,” Miss Weber tells her. “Something happened at lunchtime. Clem didn't come back to class, and I found her in here. I've tried to get her to talk, but she hasn't said anything except that someone said something to upset her.”

Mom stands back and looks at me. There is a wet patch on her shirt from my tears. “Who said something to you?” she asks. “Was it Miranda?”

I'm crying too much now to get any words out, so I just nod. Mom kneels down in front of me and makes her voice all quiet. “What did she say, hon?”

I know how he died. He wasn't old or sick.

“I want to go home,” I say. “Can we go home?”

“I'd really rather know what happened,” Miss Weber says. “Then we can deal with it. If Miranda did say something to Clem, I'll talk to her, talk to her mother—”

I squeeze Mom's hand. “
Please
can we go?”

“Actually, Ms. Donnelly wanted to speak to you, Mrs. Bennett,” Miss Weber says to Mom. “She said it's important.”

Mom's face goes white.

“Please!”
I cry.

Mom looks at Miss Weber. Finally Miss Weber nods.

“Tell Ms. Donnelly I'll call her,” Mom says.

Miss Weber gets my bag and then walks with us to the parking lot. At Mom's car, she squats down and gives me a hug. “We'll work this out, Clementine. It makes me very sad to think that someone has upset you. I'm going right back to class now and I'm going to talk to everyone about how we shouldn't say things to upset our friends.”

“Even if they're true?” Mom says quietly.

Miss Weber and I look up, but I don't think Mom is talking to me. Not to Miss Weber either. She's just kind of talking to the air.

*   *   *

On the way home, Mom calls Eric to say she's not coming back to Rosalind House. She says she's sorry, but it's a family emergency. I want to tell her that I don't mind, that I like being at Rosalind House, but then she says, “I'm taking my daughter home, and
that's that,
” and hangs up the phone.

At home, Mom makes her homemade mac 'n' cheese, and she lets me eat it on the couch.

“I know you don't want to talk about it,” she says, sitting beside me. “But I would really like to know what Miranda said to you.”

“I don't want to tell you.”

“Okay,” she says. “Well, is there anything you want to
ask
me?”

I dig my fork into my bowl. “Was Daddy a bad man?”

I don't look at her. She is quiet for a few seconds, then I
do
look.

“Daddy
did
do some bad things,” she says finally.

“What things?” I ask.

“Well. He took other people's money and he lied about it.”

“Oh.”

I start to look down, but Mom lifts my chin and looks into my eyes. “Is that what Miranda said? That Daddy was a bad man?”

“And … other stuff.”

“What stuff?”

I push my macaroni around, say nothing.

“You don't want to tell me?” Mom says, and I nod. “Okay, you don't have to tell me now. But maybe later, when you've thought about it, you might tell me then.”

I swallow. “Yeah, maybe.”

I don't feel like eating anymore, so Mom and I watch some TV. I don't really pay attention. I'm thinking about what Mom said.
Daddy did bad things.

Later, when we're in bed, I'm still thinking about it. Mom falls asleep quickly and I watch her for a while. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open.

“Mom?” She doesn't answer, so I tap her shoulder. “Mom?”

Her eyes fly open and she jerks upright. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“Miranda said Daddy killed
himself.
”

Mom blinks; then her eyes get wide and sad. She sits up.

“Did he?” I ask. “Kill himself?” I wait with my heart booming in my chest.

Mom tries to cuddle me, but I sit back. I need to see her face. Finally she says, “Yes, Clem. He did.” Her eyes are shiny. She reaches for me again, but I move even farther back.

He
did.

Daddy killed himself. Daddy was a bad man.

I dive under the covers and cry and cry.

 

35

It's hot in Dr. Felder's office, hot enough to make me want to go back out into the rainy, horrible day. Outside, people scrunch their faces against the wind. Mom is waiting in the room outside. I had an appointment with Dr. Felder anyway, she said, but we were able to move it up, probably because I cried so much last night. Last night, I thought I might never stop crying. Then, this morning, I stopped crying all at once, like I'd suddenly run out of tears.

Dr. Felder is a therapist. She has spiky black hair and red glasses that hang on a chain around her neck. Her nails are painted red, and she has lots of silver rings on her fingers. She also has a lot of toys. A huge dollhouse with lots of rooms, and lots of dolls to go inside it.

She sits on the beanbag next to me, her hands folded in her lap.

“How are you today?” she asks.

“I'm okay.”

“Would you like to play with something?”

“No.”

“How about we just talk, then?”

I trace a line in the swirly carpet with my finger, say nothing.

“Is there anything you'd like to talk about, Clementine?”

I miss you every single day. I miss the way we used to play.

“No.”

“Sometimes it can be hard to talk,” she says. “Particularly about things that are painful. But it's important we talk about things, or they can become stuck inside us. You know that feeling people get in their bellies, when they're feeling sad or worried about something? It can feel like butterflies or a clenched fist or sometimes it can even make you feel a little bit sick?”

I know the feeling she's talking about. It's the one I get when Miranda is around.

“That's what happens when you hold feelings inside,” she says. “If you talk about what's bothering you, sometimes that feeling won't feel quite so bad. And sometimes, it will even go away entirely.”

“My daddy killed himself,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “Do you miss your daddy?”

I shrug. I
did
miss him. Now I don't know.

“Sometimes,” Dr. Felder says, “when you lose someone suddenly, the hardest part is not being able to say the things you need to say to them.” She looks at me. “What would you say to your daddy if he were here right now?”

“I'd tell him I was very angry with him.” I look at Dr. Felder's face, at her funny glasses and spiky hair, and I wonder what she will think about this.

But she doesn't seem to think anything. “What are you angry about?” she asks.

“I'm angry that he left us.”

“That's understandable.” Dr. Felder is quiet for a bit.

“And I'm angry that he is a bad man.”

“Oh?” Dr. Felder's eyebrows rise up. “Why is he a bad man?”

“He did bad things. With people's money.”

She nods. “It must be hard for you to hear that your dad did bad things.”

“It is,” I say. “I thought he was a good daddy. I thought he was the best daddy in the world.”

Suddenly, the tears come back.

Dr. Felder takes a box of Kleenex from her desk and holds it out. I take one.

“Is there anything else you'd like to say to your dad, Clementine?”

I think of a night not long before Daddy died, when Mom went out late. Daddy and I ate pizza and then he let me put pink lipstick on him and clips in his hair. When it was time for me to go to bed, he promised he would keep the lipstick on until Mom got home so she could see it. In the morning, he told me he
did
keep it on, that Mom thought he looked
very pretty.
I giggled.

Now I wonder if he was telling the truth.

“No,” I say. “Nothing else.”

 

36

Eve

That night, I sit on the sofa with a large glass of white wine in my hand, rehearsing.

Hello, Angus.

Welcome to my home.

Won't you come in?

It is supposed to sound sensual, but it all sounds ridiculous, coming out of my mouth. I'd spent the last hour going back and forth about whether I should even be going ahead with my date at all. But every time I pick up the phone to cancel, Anna's voice speaks to me. And I put the phone down again.

At 7:30
P.M.
on the dot, I pick up my phone again. It's late notice, but I'll fake an illness or something. But before I can dial Angus's number, it starts to ring.

My heart flies into my throat. I'd received two phone messages today, one only an hour ago, from Ms. Donnelly at Clem's school. Her message simply said to call her back, but her voice was clipped—the voice of a determined debt collector. She must know something. I picture her at her desk behind her thick glasses, circling our address in red pen, and I want to curl up and cry. But when I look at the phone, it's Mother's number on the screen. I exhale in relief.

“Clem?” I say.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Are you having a good time at Nana and Papa's?”

“Yeah.” She giggles. “Papa keeps saying he's not ticklish, but he is.”

In the background, I hear Dad insisting that he is not, in fact, ticklish. This is followed by loud (obviously false) laughter on his part and real laughter from Clem. It warms my heart.

“Clem?”

“Yeah?”

A crackling sound, like a radio between channels, blasts into the room. The buzzer.

“What's that?” Clem asks.

“Oh, a delivery, probably,” I say quickly. “Anyway, Nana is dropping you home early in the morning, so I'll walk you to school, okay?”

“Okay.”

I exhale. I'd been expecting some protest at the word “school,” but she seems in good spirits. “Okay. Have sweet dreams, hon.”

“I will. Bye, Mom.”

With a racing heart, I buzz Angus inside. Then I glance in the mirror. I wish I'd gone for the jeans and soft black sweater instead of the cleavage-hugging red wrap-dress, but it's too late now. I peel open the door, and Angus is standing there, holding a brown bag full of produce and a small bunch of pink roses.

“Hi,” I say. So much for my sensual welcome.

“Hi,” he says.

I smile. We stand there a minute.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

“Oh! Sure.” I giggle and open the door farther. What is it about Angus that makes me behave like an imbecile every time I see him? “You can put the bags in the kitchen over there. Thanks again for getting the groceries.”

Angus heads straight to the kitchen, and I follow. “Where I come from, you don't ask a woman if you can make her dinner and then ask her to buy the groceries.”

Angus unloads the bags onto the bench and I quickly realize that with Angus and all his groceries in the kitchen, there's not enough room for much else. Including me. I stand there awkwardly for a moment until Angus clears a small amount of bench space and pats it.