When You Go Away (32 page)

     "I know.  Grandma told us."

     "Did she tell you what happened?"

     "Sort of.  She said she'd let you tell us the whole thing."

     Her mother opened her eyes.  "She did?"

     Carly nodded.  "Yeah."

     "Well, listen."  Her mother sat up, and took Carly's hand.  "I pleaded guilty to a charge of neglect.  And the judge said that I didn't have to go back to jail."

     Carly nodded.  She'd asked her grandmother the first thing, made her tell the most important parts because she didn't want to think of that terrible place again, her mother's
stringy hair and empty eyes, the long corridor she had to run down.  "That's good.  I hate that place."

     "But I have to do other things.  I have to stay with Grandpa like I'm doing now.  And I have to go to my doctor and take classes and meet with Fran."

     "Oh."

     "And I can't live with you.  Not for a year at least.  The judge will decide.  He'll look at all my records, and talk to my doctor and Fran, and make sure I went to all my classes.  He'll also want to talk to you and Ryan.  Maybe Brooke if she keeps doing as well.  Did you see her sitting up today?"

     Carly nodded, feeling her leg bones against the lawn, everything in her so heavy.  A year.  A year in Phoenix with her dad and the wife who never wanted to talk or visit.  "Yeah.  I saw her.  Leon comes over all the time."

     Her mother hadn't met face-to-face with
Leon
, but Carly had heard him talking about her with Maritza, saying, "I don't know if I can forgive the woman.  Look what's happened to Brooke!"  He didn't even know the worst, the way it had been in the apartment, the smell, the red patches on Brooke’s skin--bedsores--the terrible way she'd looked at Carly in the morning.  If he'd seen that, he'd think this Brooke was a miracle, rounder, happier, saying, "Car e, Car e" instead of "Ka."  He didn't know anything.

     "So you might have to go live with your dad for a while."

     "I know."

     "Are you . . . how do you feel about that?"

     She didn't want to go to live with her dad; everything she knew was here, even if it made her mad, like her grandmother keeping Maxie out at night when all the dog wanted was to sleep on the rug in the laundry room.  But that wasn't anything.  She knew that now.  "I want to stay here."

     "With Grandma?"

     "Yeah." 

     Her mother breathed in deeply, pushing her short hair off her forehead.  "Well, that's another court case.  Not the one I just had.  We have some time to work on it, you know?  And if all of you are doing well there, it might just happen."

     "But he's our dad!"  Carly said too loudly, feeling her words fill up the front yard.  "Who's going to keep us away from him?"

     "I don't know," her mom said.  "But I'm going to try.  I promise.  I know I don't have much credibility these days, but I’m going to do my best."

     All along, that's what her mother had been doing, even when she was in the bed, silent, unmoving.  She hadn't died or hurt herself or them.  She'd even run away because she was scared something worse was going to happen.  And because her brain was sick, she couldn't imagine what that would mean for Carly or Ryan or Brooke.  The last thing she'd thought of was not hurting her children.  Carly looked at her mother and then closed
her eyes again, her whole body alive in the spring air, feeling summer and the rest of her life just on the edge of the sky.

     "Peri?  Peri?  It's me."

     Peri sat up in bed, her heart pounding, the phone pressed hard against her face. 
The kids
, she thought. 
What's wrong with the kids
, figuring in her half-awake mind that Graham knew something, had to have bad news, just like he always did. 
Brooke
, she thought. 
Oh my God.  Brooke
.

     "What is it?  What now?"

     "I need to talk.  I wanted to talk with you the other day at your dad's."

     She turned on the light and looked at the clock.  Twelve-thirty.  "I pleaded guilty if that's what you wanted to know.  I can't have the kids for a year, so you won.  You got it all.  You get them, and I don’t."

     He didn't say a thing, the silence behind him like a sad ghost.  Her dad had told her Graham had gone home, back to that great stucco house, the door that must be fixed by now, the gate keeping everyone out, the wife who screamed and called the police. 
She saved my life
, Peri thought now, touching the smoothed-out but still red scar on her arm. 
Graham's wife saved my life
.

     "I don't want them."

     "You don't want them?"

     "I can't have them.  I . . . don't know how to live with them
anymore
.  I only knew how to live with them when you were there."

     Peri felt the old balloon of rage in her chest grow, and this time, it found voice.  "You don't want the children?  How could you not want them?" she said before wanting the words back, the ones that might convince him she was right.  Why did she care so much about his words, when it meant that the children would stay here, in
Piedmont
or
Oakland
, by her?  How could he not want the best thing they'd ever done together?  Breathing sadness out into her room, she knew she was hearing Graham's words as Carly and Ryan would hear them, words from a father they'd loved for years before things went wrong.  She saw their eyes, blue and brown, their hurt during these weeks when she'd not been able to be the mother she knew they needed, and she wanted to find the trowel and do what she'd held back from doing that day in the garden.  "They are beautiful!"

     "I know.  I know they are.  But it's too late.  I waited too long to remember how to be their father.  And Brooke."

     "Too much work, right?  Like always.  You couldn't hire someone like your mother does?  I saw that house of yours.  You could give them everything."

     "Not everything."

     "What do you mean?"

     "I couldn't give them you."

     She stopped talking, staring at the wall, the yellow reading light casting her shadow against it, a shape she was used to seeing, the lump of her body under the covers.  But now she felt charged, her anger at Graham, her sorrow for her children, beating alive all her nerves, even those the drugs tried to tamp down.  And when his words repeated in her head, his acknowledgment that she was good for her kids, the tears came.

     "I know you didn't mean it.  You were sick, Peri.  And I can't . . .  I can't live near you and see what I did.  I know I did it.  I tried to pretend, and it was easy to for a long time.  But when I saw the kids and they kept telling me they didn't want to be with me, I realized how I screwed up.  And it started years ago.  I let you be the main parent, especially with Brooke.  And you were a good mom, Peri.  All those years.   I'm sorry.  I really am.  I know it doesn’t mean anything now, but I am so sorry."

     The silence behind him filled with the echo of his sorrow, his tears against her ear.  He'd cried in her arms in joy at a baby, with anger at his mother's harsh criticism, in frustration at yet another diagnosis for Brooke.  There were times in her marriage he’d turned to her.  These were moments she'd mentally put in snow domes, shaking them now and again to relive the moments he'd needed her.  And now, even though they were no longer married, this was one of them, a time she'd think about over and over again, shaking her mind to remember his apology, his gift of their children, watching the snow fall over the moment when he gave them back to her.

     "I've withdrawn my petition.  My mother is filing for custody on Monday.  I made her promise that she won’t fight you when you’re able to petition for custody again.  And I won't let her change her mind."

     Peri’s father quietly opened her door, and she waved, letting him know everything was all right, and he closed it softly.  "What about support?" she asked Graham.

     "Everything is fixed.  I've made the payment to make up for everything from before, when I didn't pay.  You’re getting the wheelchair and the van.  I have to special order both and Brooke will have to be fitted for her chair.  There's a great place in Berkeley.  But it won't be long."

     Peri felt her body relax and shift, her pulse slow and rest.  There were so many words lined up on her tongue, but did they matter now?  Even if she kept pounding him with sentences, she would still be here, at her father's house, her brain chemistry righting herself, her arm healing, her children safe and sleeping at Garnet's.  If she told him again and again what a terrible father he'd been, they would still be divorced.  He'd still be living in the stucco house in the desert with another woman.  He still wouldn't love her anymore.

     "Okay," she said finally.  "I'll tell my lawyer tomorrow. You know there is a chance the guardian ad litem might not think Garnet's is the best place for them.”

     "I know.  But that's not likely.  They are all together.  Near you.  Near your dad and Noel.  With my mom, their grandmother.  At least in this, I think we'll be okay.
They like being there, Peri.  It’s safe.  It’s solid.  It’s known."

     She nodded, hearing Ryan skating off to his lesson at the park, Carly tell her about a friend at school, Brooke giggling with
Leon
.  “You’re right.”

     “So, I’ll—“he began.

     "Do you love them?" she blurted out, remembering their tiny packaged bodies, the swaddled infants the nurses had passed to Graham who had cooed and held them to his chest.  If she searched through all the photos in storage, she'd find him, his arms on Ryan's and Carly's accepting shoulders, his laughter at birthday parties, his serious Christmas-card face, all their bodies pressed together.  There were only a few photos of him with Brooke, and then none at all, as if he’d been trying to erase himself from their lives, as if those other photos had never been taken at all.

     "Of course.  Oh, God, Peri.  I do."

     "But not enough to keep them."

     "Maybe I love them too much to keep them.  Maybe I know I'm not good enough," he said, and then they were silent together, holding each other in space, listening to what wasn't said as they had done so many nights in the last years of their marriage.

     "Noel.  It's me.  Nothing's wrong."  Peri heard fumbling in the background, a clock falling to the floor?  A book?  The scratch of Noel’s whiskers against the receiver, the rustle of blankets.

     "What's wrong?  Is it the kids?"

     "Nothing's wrong.  I think things are right.  I'm sorry to call this late, but I had to tell you."

     Noel covered the receiver with his hand, and Peri listened to the scratch of his voice, the intense whisper of someone hoping not to be heard.  He wasn't alone.  Peri closed her eyes, swallowed down the joy in her throat, trying to take in the possibility that at this minute, both she and her brother were happy.

     "Sorry.  What's going on?"

     "Graham called.  Now wait!  It's not bad, at least not for me.  He's withdrawing his petition for custody.  Garnet's filing.  They're going to be able to stay here."

     "He what?"

     "He changed his mind.  He's going to let Garnet have them for the year, and then--they'll probably come back to me."

     "Oh, Periwinkle."

     To be honest, Peri hadn't known for years what an actual periwinkle looked like.  Without asking her father who knew the regular and fancy name for every plant, she decided it was a purple flower, purple for the p that began the word, purple for the royalty in a special name, the one her brother and mother and, sometimes, her father called her, their hearts tender for her, the name making her tender for them, her family.  Later, she discovered the flower she'd picked in the back yard as a child, the blue and white star-shaped flowers tucked deep inside green leaf clusters, weren't simply the "sweet" flower, the name she and Noel had given them after learning there was nectar at the base of the flower.  They were periwinkles. “
Vinca
,” her dad had said.  “Periwinkle, too.  Why didn’t you ask?”

     Back when they were little, she and Noel would sit in the shade of the yard and pick the flowers, sucking out all their juice, throwing the flowers behind them when they were finished.  That's how she'd felt for years, sucked out and discarded, but now, she was the undiscovered flower, the one hiding in her leaves, full of nectar no one had touched, a happy future she could almost believe in.

     "I know.  I can't believe it."

     "That coward.  He's such a coward, Peri.  Why would he do that?"

     She was about to agree, but then prickled defensively.  There it was, her old habit of covering up for everyone and making everything look all right.  Maybe now, though, Graham was actually being brave by admitting he wasn't good enough for his children.  "I don't know.  I just know it might be fine.  It might turn out okay."

     There was more rustling, and Noel paused, the shape of his silence round and full of expectation.