Ask Him Why (13 page)

I needed to go pretty badly by then, so I made my footsteps loud on the stairs. And they shut right up.

I got past them without incident. I mean, without further incident.

Lunch was tuna-fish sandwiches and lemonade. I liked tuna okay, but it was another reminder of what I’d be missing this summer. Too bad we couldn’t take Isabella on the road with us.

The last thing I ever wanted was to see myself as spoiled. But it’s a funny thing, spoiled. It sneaks up on you.

“I’m going to try to call the prison right after lunch,” Aunt Sheila said.

The interesting thing is that she waited until I’d shoved the last bite of sandwich into my mouth to say it. Like she was smart enough to know it would make me lose my appetite. And she was right. It did.

See, my parents would never have thought to wait. And I don’t think they were any less smart. I think they just didn’t pay attention to stuff like that. They either didn’t care, or didn’t see anything outside themselves. Or some other explanation I might not have guessed. Because I was me, not them.

I chewed fast and swallowed, even though my stomach didn’t really want the last bite anymore.

“You mean to see if we can visit?” I asked her.

“Right.”

Ruth spoke up, startling me. I’m not sure why.

“Why didn’t you find out before we got here?” she asked.

Aunt Sheila looked a little hurt. I tried to remember if she ever had before. Nothing my dad said ever made a dent in her. But she’d had decades of experience with him. Maybe it was different with us.

“I was hoping you’d want to come visit me either way,” she said.

“Oh, we do!” Ruth said, too fast and too loud.

But I was busy wondering if I did. If we couldn’t go see Joseph, and if the reporters might know we were here, maybe I’d rather be home. For a strange reason, I realized. Because then I wouldn’t have to give up my weekly sessions with Luanne.

“It might take a while to find out,” Aunt Sheila said. “I’ll have to get somebody on the line. And then maybe Joseph can call me back collect. I mean, if this is a day or a time he even can. Or if he gets to make outgoing calls at all. I don’t know. And if he . . . you know . . . will. Or maybe somebody will have to ask him if he’s willing to have visitors, and then call me back. Or I can call back and hear his answer. I just want to warn you that it’s not always quick or easy getting through to the prison.”

“I’m going for a run,” I said.

I trotted down to the basement. Changed into my shorts and track shoes. Fast. Before I could hear even a single word Aunt Sheila said into the phone.

Aunt Sheila lived only a few blocks from the beach. So it wasn’t too hot. Hot, but not scorching. I wouldn’t have cared if it had been a hundred and twenty degrees. The sidewalks rolled up and down easy hills. I wouldn’t have cared if they had gone straight up the sides of brick walls.

I just ran.

I ran past tiny homes on tiny lots with peeling paint and overgrown weeds. And others with tended roses and freshly painted fences. I ran past schools and churches and libraries and frozen-yogurt shops. I ran past playgrounds with basketball courts, and kids on Big Wheels, and old ladies walking their dogs.

I ran until my chest ached and sweat poured off me and dripped into the breeze. Until I could feel the heat radiating out of my face. And then instead of backing off, I pushed harder. Sped up. I could feel how much I’d needed a vent for all this anger and frustration. All the not knowing, but pretty much knowing I wouldn’t like what was there to know once I knew it.

I felt like if I ran until I collapsed and couldn’t move a muscle, that might almost be enough.

I looked down at my watch and saw I’d been running for twenty-
five minutes. Which I didn’t figure would be long enough.

Besides. I was completely lost, I realized. I had no idea where I was, or where Aunt Sheila’s house was in relation to that.

I slowed to a jog. Turned down every street, in every direction I could think of.

It took me nearly an hour to find my way back.

When I stepped through the doorway, I knew. Aunt Sheila was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee between her hands. Frowning down into it. Ruth was staring out the window.

I knew they knew I was there. But for a minute, there was no sound except the gasp of my breathing.

Then Ruth said, “Joseph says no.”

My whole body felt tingly. That was all I could feel. For the moment.

“He said that himself?”

“Aunt Sheila asked an administrator to find out if he’d take visitors. And he said no.”

“He probably meant visitors in general. Not us.”

Ruth shook her head. “He knew which visitors,” she said.

Aunt Sheila never once met my eyes.

Something started to change inside me in that moment. At the time, I couldn’t have told you what it was. It felt like milk going sour or soft bread turning rock hard. Inedible. Except it was happening inside me somewhere. And it was part of
me
that was turning unusable.

“I’ll be in the basement,” I said.

I ran down the stairs two at a time. Next thing I knew, I was standing next to the bottle collection, my hand raised to scrape off a whole shelf. I could almost hear the shattering glass. So satisfying. I saw it so clearly. It was in my head as if it really happened.

But then I was sitting on the cot. Hunched over my own gut.

Nothing was broken. Not outside me.

For the first time in thirteen years of life, I didn’t react to pain with rage. Sounds like good news. It wasn’t. This had moved me beyond that somehow.

I curled up on my side on the cot. Stayed that way until bedtime.

Aunt Sheila came down and asked if I wanted dinner. I said no.

She came down one more time to see if there was anything I needed.

A few hours before, I would have said I needed Joseph. But now I didn’t. Now there was nothing left to reach for. Even if I’d still wanted to save myself, there was no saving option. At least, not that I could think of at the time.

Chapter Eleven: Ruth

The three of us were sitting at the table eating breakfast, which was really just cereal, which made me miss Isabella. Aubrey hadn’t said a word yet, and Aunt Sheila looked like she was still half-asleep.

I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t saying it. I couldn’t think of a thing that was wrong with it or a single reason why I should be afraid to say it, but I was.

Maybe I was afraid to say anything that day.

“I had an idea,” I said, because I knew if I could just spit that much out I’d have to keep going.

“Let’s hear it,” Aunt Sheila said, sounding more awake than she looked.

“Since we can’t go see Joseph, maybe we could go see Hamish MacCallum.”

I expected her to ask me who that was, but I should have known better. Everybody who knew Joseph’s situation knew who Hamish MacCallum was, and everybody knew Joseph’s situation.

We both looked at Aubrey, but he might as well have been in a room by himself for all he seemed to register anything.

“That’s an interesting idea,” she said. “But I’m not really sure how we’d find him.”

“It’s a pretty small town. And he’s been in the paper a bunch of times. So people around there will know him. I might even be able to find his house just by the description of how it sits on the cliff. And it has a fence, a chain link fence with a big slash cut into it, and there’s a reason he never gets it fixed, but now I don’t remember what the reason is.”

I think Aunt Sheila and I were both surprised when Aubrey the zombie spoke.

“Because then people would just go somewhere else to jump,” he said, staring into his cereal and stirring it. “And then maybe nobody would notice. He’d rather they try to get through there, so he’ll notice.”

“Right,” I said. “Anyway, if I’m wrong, and I can’t find it, I bet we can find somebody to tell us where he lives. But I can’t guarantee it, and I can’t guarantee he’ll be willing to let us in and talk to us, so maybe it’s just another one of those things that you won’t want to try if it might not do any good.”

“Oh, hell, I’ll drive three or four hours up the coast on guesswork,” she said. “That’s a far cry from Texas. And your parents never insisted that you don’t see Hamish MacCallum. Which I guess is the downside for them of forgetting to mention to you kids that he existed at all.” We both looked at Aubrey, whose face showed nothing. “We have to do
something
,” Aunt Sheila added. “It’s only the second day of your visit. First full day. And already this summer is in the toilet. Total disasterland. I’ll try anything at this point.”

“I don’t want to go see Hamish MacCallum,” Aubrey said.

“It’ll be an adventure, Aubrey,” I said. “It’ll be the next-best thing to seeing Joseph.”

“I don’t want the next-best thing to seeing Joseph. I don’t even want to see Joseph. Not anymore. As far as I’m concerned, there is no Joseph. He might just as well be dead. He doesn’t exist to me. At all. And I definitely don’t want to go talk to somebody who knows him. I don’t care anymore.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“You can believe whatever you want, Ruth. But it’s true. I don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” I said.

“Fine,” he said. “Go. Leave me here.”

“No way,” Aunt Sheila said. “You’re thirteen. We didn’t get you out here for the summer just to leave you unattended.”

“I’m old enough to stay alone!”

“Debatable. But I won’t debate it. You’re going. For the ride at least.”

“Fine. I’ll just wait in the car.”

I didn’t think he would. I thought once we found the place, his curiosity would get the better of him and he’d go in. I also thought he was lying about Joseph not existing to him, and that he would get over that proclamation quickly enough.

I was wrong a lot that day.

“I don’t even want to be here,” Aubrey said from the backseat of Aunt Sheila’s car. “And I don’t just mean here on this drive. I mean here at all for the summer. Now I just want to go home. And I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings, Aunt Sheila. I don’t mean it to. It has nothing to do with you. I just want to go home so I can go back to seeing Luanne.”

“Who’s Luanne?” Aunt Sheila and I both asked at almost exactly the same time.

“My new therapist.”

“Oh,” Aunt Sheila said. “Well, I really don’t think that’s an option, kiddo. Your folks planned on having you away for the summer, and they’re not going to like having the plan changed on short notice. Maybe you could do some phone sessions with her. Do you have her phone number with you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “She gave me her card.”

Seconds later he was dialing.

“Luanne?” he said into his phone.

Then, “I didn’t think you’d pick up. I thought I’d just get your voice mail. I thought you’d be in a session.”

Then, after a pause. “Oh, right. Because the sessions are fifty minutes. I actually didn’t even
know
it was five to anything. This just happens to be when I called.”

Another brief pause.

“Everything totally sucks right now. And I was wondering if we could do a phone session.”

Pause.

“You do? That would be great! Two o’clock would be great! Thanks!” he slid his phone back into his pocket. Then, to us, he said, “She had a cancellation.”

“We won’t be home by two,” Aunt Sheila said. “Not even close.”

“I know. But if you and Ruth are in talking to that guy, I’ll call her from the car. If not, maybe you could go get something to eat or something. Because this is really important.”

“How much you want to bet it’s that one?” I said.

We’d been following the coastline through a pretty much uninhabited area. Just rocky cliffs and big drop-offs and not much else. There were no houses along this part of the coast, and then all of a sudden there was just one, sitting out on a jut of high cliff all by itself.

It wasn’t fancy. It was on this huge, incredible lot, the kind of lot you’d build your dream home on, some thousands-of-square-feet mansion. But it was just a little cottage made of wood boards painted a dusty green. It almost didn’t stand out from the untended vegetation around it.

Mom had a friend in her book group who was a real estate agent, and I remember hearing her say you’re supposed to build a house that’s four or five times the value of the lot. I figured that cliff was worth over a million dollars and the cottage maybe a hundred grand at best. But I knew just enough about real estate at my tender age to know he could sell the place for millions and the buyer would turn around and bulldoze the cabin and put up a McMansion in about ten weeks. Apparently, he wasn’t selling.

On either side of the cottage, a high chain link fence stopped people from walking right up to the cliff—except on one side, it didn’t. To the left of the house, somebody had cut a long vertical gash in the links, which now curled back at the bottom like some ancient scrolls of wisdom somebody would recover from the bottom of the sea after they’d been lost for generations.

“It does look promising,” Aunt Sheila said.

“This is stupid,” Aubrey said. “Why did we even come here? What do you think he’s going to tell you that’s going to help? It’s not going to help.”

Aunt Sheila only gave him a frowny look.

“Fine, so just sit here,” I said. “Aunt Sheila and I are going to knock.”

“Actually . . . ,” Aunt Sheila said.

“You’re not going in?” I gasped, immediately ashamed of the panic in my voice.

“I’m starting to think of this as your thing, Ruth. If you’re brave enough to let it be. If you absolutely can’t do it without the moral support, I’ll go with you. At least to get you started. But what would be really terrific would be to watch you cowgirl up and bite off this project for yourself. It’ll be good for you. It’s a very grown-up thing to do.”

My heart was doing an unusually thumpy dance as I reached for the car door latch.

“How much time do I have? I mean, if it works. If it’s him, and he lets me in.”

“No limit. However much time you need.”

“But you don’t want to sit out here for hours.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “If Aubrey and I get hungry, we’ll go find something to eat. If you come out and we’re gone, just sit. We’ll be back for you.”

“I have my phone appointment at two!” Aubrey screeched, as if someone were already trying to wrestle it away from him.

Aunt Sheila asked, “Are you getting reception here?”

He stared at his phone for a second, then said, “Yeah, it’s fine.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I’m not going to talk to her right here!
You’re
here!”

“Then go
there
,” she said, pointing to a stand of trees overlooking the ocean.

Aubrey didn’t argue, so I figured everything was settled except the hard part, which was the part I was about to try to do.

I took a huge deep breath and stepped out of the car.

The way to the cottage was sharply uphill. It was hard to walk, and it took my breath away. Either that or I couldn’t breathe because I was scared, but I figured it was probably both things at once, because that steep hill was definitely enough. I thought about what Aubrey said—that it wouldn’t help, what I was about to try to do, and it felt like a prediction that might well be about to come true.

I stopped, puffed a little, and looked up at the cottage again, wondering if anybody saw me out the window and knew I was coming. Nothing moved inside the house that I could see. Then I wondered if it would turn out that nobody was home, or even that he’d moved away from here or died. That would be the biggest letdown of all, to come all this way and knock on the door and never get any answer and never know why.

I moved uphill again, looking at that big gash in the fence. It gave me the shivers, thinking of people walking through it and right off the cliff to the rocks below. I wondered if he’d stopped them all, or if some of them got by him unnoticed. I wondered how bad your life had to be before you started thinking that was the best plan for you. My life had gotten pretty bad since Joseph came home, but I sure had no intention of leaping off any cliffs.

Of course, the most important question—to me, anyway—about the people who walked through that fence was whether my brother Joseph had been one of them.

Then I was close enough to almost reach out and touch that opening in the chain link, and it gave me the shivers. I stopped, as if the broken fence still had some power to keep me out. Then I ducked down and stuck my head through and kept going. I knew I was trespassing on private property, and it scared me to do it, but something kept pulling me forward.

The ground evened out as I came through the fence, and turned into a level pad that somebody had flattened out to build the cottage. It took only a couple dozen steps to get close enough to the edge to see over—barely see over. I wanted to look straight down, but I didn’t dare get so close to the cliff. A good strong wind had come up, and even though it was not wild enough to knock me off my perch, I felt like some unseen force might—a rogue gust, or maybe the ground would crumble under my feet, or I’d get dizzy.

The roar of the ocean beneath me sounded far away, but it rose like an echo. The drop from cliff to sea was probably three hundred feet. That’s just a guess, but it’s a decent guess, I think. I could see the waves turn to white foam around the rocks below.