When You Go Away (19 page)

     "Not until tomorrow.  For like a half-hour.  Then we have to talk with Fran again.  That is if we can find Ryan.  And no one is talking about Brooke."

     "Listen, she's okay.  I'll sneak in today to check on her.  I know your Uncle Noel and Grandpa Carl are working really hard on all this.  You shouldn't be worrying about it."

     "But I'm the one who cared in the first place."

     "That's true.  But now the so-called adults are taking over.  It's what always happens.  No one cares and then too many people care, and probably the wrong ones at that.  But let me tell you this, no one is going to let anything else bad happen to Brooke."

     "Can you come get me?  Can I come stay with you?"  Carly said, forcing out the ridiculous words.  More than anything, she wanted a warm smell and a warm person, and if she were with Rosie, she'd be closer to her apartment and what was left of her mother.

     "Listen, if it were up to me, I'd come get you in a heartbeat.  No lie there, sweetie.  But I'm only an older woman with no real connection to you.  Not that I don't care, don't get me wrong.  I really do."

     Carly nodded, realizing it was true.  Maybe they hadn't known Rosie more than a week, but she did care about them.  She liked them, even Grandpa Carl.  Carly could tell.  She'd even been nice to Grandma Mackenzie.  "I know.  But I hate it here.  I hate my dad.  I don't hate my grandmother, but she's acting totally weird now.  Like she knows more than anyone else."

     "Too many people with too much to lose, Carly.  In a way, your Grandma lost your dad when he moved to
Arizona
.  And with him not home and your mom getting sick, she lost you three kids, too.  She’s fighting for you the same way your Grandpa is.”

     Carly had never imagined her grandmother needing anything other than order and quiet.  “You think so?”    

     “Sure do.  Everyone is digging their trenches.  But it can't go on forever."

     When she was little, forever seemed exactly that; time went on and on and on.  Summers used to stretch out in long hot waves of time.  But when she suddenly had to wake up to an alarm during the fall of her seventh grade year, time was cut in pieces, measurable chunks in periods, semesters, months.  Forever became a dream.  Now she wanted someone to tell her, "This will all be settled in exactly two months and one day" or something like that.  No one--not even Rosie--seemed to know anything.  "Okay."

     "Don't give up.  I'll call your grandpa and find out the latest.  Try to give me a ring tomorrow.  I have to work during the day, but I'll be home in the evening.  And then you can tell me what it was like to see your mom.  Just remember that it's going to be weird.  She's in a jail.  Don't let the setting scare you.  She's still your mom."

     "I know," she said, but she wasn't sure if she really meant it.  A mom didn't leave.  A mom didn't leave a child like Brooke.  "Bye, Rosie.  Thanks."

     "Bye, sweetie."

     As she hung up, she looked out the window at the tree, and there was Ryan, sitting on the same branch she'd clung to earlier, smoking a cigarette, not caring who saw.  But no one except Carly did see, and she watched him until he'd finished and smashed the butt on the branch, flicking it toward the house and then lighting another one.

     After a ton of phone calls that Carly pretended not to listen to, and a huge miracle, Grandpa Carl ended up picking both Ryan and her up on Sunday afternoon.  Grandma
Mackenzie had combed her hair like she was six again, but because Carly knew Grandpa was coming, she let her, even tolerating the purple barrette Grandma clipped in her hair.

     Ryan combed his own hair, parting it the way he used to a couple of years before, and they both sat in the living room by the picture window, waiting, their father pacing in the entry way.

     "I don't like this, Mom.  I don't see why we can't take them.  I don't think they should see her the way she is.  You know--strung out."

     "Graham, we've already gone over this.  And not here."  She pulled him into the kitchen, and Carly listened not to the words but to the inflections, waiting to see who would get mad first and if the anger would change anything.  She tried not to breathe, hoping the moments would pass, and then as if in her imagination, the Corvair rumbled and hummed up the hill.  Grandpa tapped out a honk, once, twice, and before Grandma Mackenzie or her father could do any more than say goodbye, they were out the front door.

     Grandpa had put the top down, and Carly sat in the back seat.  After a couple of windy miles, her Grandma-ed hair flipped up and out of the barrette, the smooth spring air pushing at her face.  Grandpa Carl had the radio on the same oldies channel, and when she closed her eyes, it was three, four, five years ago, and he was taking her to
Tilden
Park
to ride the little trains or to the merry-go-round.  Ryan was with them, talking about soccer, and Brooke was home in Monte Veda, Leon giving her a workout on the big rubber ball.  Her mother and father were drinking coffee at the kitchen table, and nothing at all was wrong anywhere. 

     They were silent the whole way to the jail--all of them pretending to listen to the Hotel California song.  When they finally arrived, Carly's body was full of swirling wind and air, her head buzzing as she slid out of the back and closed the door.  The parking lot was almost deserted, and downtown
Martinez
was quiet except for a few cars and people on bicycles swooshing by.  Right now, she guessed that no one thought she was a girl going to see her mother in jail.  Maybe they thought she was a girl going shopping with her grandfather and brother, a typical Sunday thing to do.  Or maybe it all showed, the terrible things that had happened in the past year like writing on her back, the words spelled out in glitter pen on her shirt:
I'm a girl whose mother went crazy.  I'm a girl whose parents don't care.

     "Come on, guys.  Here we go," Grandpa Carl said, and he did know the way because he'd come here yesterday.  He knew what to expect because he’d seen her already.  When they first got in the car, he told them both, "She's better.  She really is. She’ll be more like the Mom you remember."

     Carly and Ryan followed behind Grandpa, letting him lead the way past security devices and guards.  Carly closed her eyes as a woman guard whisked a wand over her body, thinking of the cartoons and comedies she'd watched where an enormous file or gun was hidden in a cake.  Did they really think she would do that?  Did they really think she would try to get her mother in more trouble after all of this?  Carly wanted to catch the woman's eyes to tell her it was better her mother was in jail than wandering the streets or driving to another state in the Honda, but the guard was all business, and soon Carly was waiting for another guard to finish with Grandpa Carl.

     After doors opened and shut behind them once, twice, they were in a room with a door on the other side and windows in a row.  There were empty tables and chairs pulled away from them, evidence that another visiting family had just left. 

     Carly pressed her hands flat against the new jeans Grandma Mackenzie had bought her at Macy’s.  She wondered what it would be like to have two strange people in her family, Brooke and now her mom.  She'd gotten used to having Brooke, knowing that some girls wouldn't want to be her friend, as if what Brooke had was contagious.  Her friends would be grossed out by the way Brooke's body twisted and by the strange way she had to be fed, so Carly didn't talk about her, and no one ever asked to see Brooke.  Once, even before the divorce, she'd found her mother crying, the telephone in her hands.  When her mother had seen Carly, she'd stood up, wiped her eyes, and hung up the phone, saying only, "When it comes down to it, Carly, some people aren't really friends."  Carly expected the looks strangers gave them as they took Brooke places, especially after her father left and her mother had to carry her into appointments.  She saw the "Poor family" and the "What's wrong with the kid?" in their eyes, Worse was "How disgusting" and "They should keep her inside" when her mother took Brooke to the swimming pool or the movies.

     But now her mother was strange in her own way, locked up in this concrete building, guards at every door and window, everyone stern and focused, knowing that they kept good people safe from the bad.  The newspapers had gotten hold of the story because Grandma Mackenzie had grabbed the Metro section before Carly could look at it, saying, "Maritza, take this to the recycling."

     Carly sighed, and then looked up.  What happened next was like a movie, her eyes the camera, her body somewhere behind it.  Her mother walked down the hall beyond the row of windows, step by step coming closer to the door.  In front of her was a woman guard, who wouldn’t know that this was the very first time Carly or Ryan had seen their mother since she'd run away.  If she did, maybe the guard would be whispering to her mother, telling her the right things to say and do, which would make Carly feel better, like there was a plan to all of this. 
What do you say to your mom after she abandoned you?
  Carly wondered. 
How could she ever say she understood?

     The heavy door opened and closed with a whish of air, the sound of the lock a metal echo that seemed to rattle the empty tables and chairs.  The guard stood just outside the door, looking in but probably not really seeing anything, probably thinking about her real life. 

     Carly's heart was pounding, but she couldn't do it, couldn't look at her mother.  Ryan wasn't looking either, his skateboard shoes sliding back and forth over the dust on the linoleum.  There was movement she felt with her shoulders and legs, and her grandpa was standing, his arms around her mother.  Carly felt her mother's sadness, the same heavy air that had hung in the bedroom for two months.  But still she couldn't look up, and she reached out for Ryan, who seemed to have been searching for her at the same time, and they held hands while their mother cried into Grandpa's shoulder.

     Then there was a pause, the space before something had to happen, like just after something bad happened and the punishment that would follow--a slap on the playground and the time it took for so-and-so to get the teacher or the yard duty.  Anything could
happen then.  She and Ryan could get up, beg the guard to open the door, and walk into the parking lot, a place where their mother couldn't go.  Nothing had been said yet.  Nothing was changed.  But any second her mother would say something to make everything worse, and they all had to go now, now, now.

     "Carly? Ryan?" her mother said, and Carly sucked in a breath.  It was too late.  She moved her head up toward her mother, who was standing in front of her and then kneeling down.  She had to force her eyes to look at her mother's face.  And it hurt, all the muscles in her cheeks and forehead not wanting this, this look at a new, terrible mother. 

     Her mother smelled different, wrong, like the soap in the girls' bathroom at school, pink and grainy, the paper towels brown and rough.  Her skin was blotchy, red and white, her pupils huge, floating in a shimmer of water, her hair flat and stringy against her head.  Her body was hidden in ugly orange clothes, and she held one arm close to her body.       

     Grandpa Carl was wrong.  This wasn’t the Mom she remembered.  This wasn't her mom at all.  This was some Peri Mackenzie put together by someone else, a Frankenstein mom someone was trying to pass off as hers.  This was the woman who had done all those crazy things in
Arizona
and who had left Brooke.  Her real mom was somewhere else, maybe in the jail still or, even better, far, far away, on vacation in
Maui
, a place they all loved.

     But then this fake mom turned her head slightly and smiled wide, none of her teeth showing, stars of lines at her eyes, and Carly shook her head.  It was her mom.  This was her mom's smile, the smile that even Brooke could mimic.  They all used to sit around her
bed and say, "How does Mom smile?" and Brooke would tilt her head and break into as big a quiet smile as she could, not one tooth showing. 

     "Mom?" Carly asked, making sure.

     "Yes."

     Carly glanced at Ryan, who was looking up now, too.  He knew it was Mom, the one who had left them for real.  So much was going on her in her body, Carly wasn't sure what to do.  Her fingers tingled, and her thigh muscles burned.  Inside, her stomach was full of bubbles and even lower, something was churning away.  She had to go to the bathroom.  She squeezed herself shut, but whatever it was wasn't going to wait.

     "I have to go.  I have to go now," she said, turning to Grandpa Carl.

     "We just got here."

     "The bathroom."

     "Oh," he said, standing up, looking at the guard behind them, who had already opened the door.

     Carly stood up, clutching her stomach, and ran toward the guard, who motioned to another guard down the hall.  Hearing her grandpa behind her, she ran, all her feelings pressing against her guts like spikes, scraping down her body desperate to get out.  She wouldn't make it, she knew, not in time, but the guard held the door open, and she rushed in, ripping the button off her new jeans as she pushed them off, and sat on the toilet.  It
was fast, but it took forever, so much locked inside her.  Would she ever be able to stand up again, weak and jittery after the waves pulsing out of her body?