Drenched in Light (5 page)

I heard his voice every time I felt myself sliding—his and Sister Margaret’s. This time, they stopped me from eating more ice cream, and from purging what I’d consumed. Instead, I tucked the half-empty container inside a Wal-Mart sack, grabbed a jacket, put Joujou on a leash, and headed out jogging. As we passed the public Dumpster at the park, I tossed in the ice-cream container, treating it like the evidence of a crime.

By the time we returned to the house, my lungs were burning from taking in frigid air, my legs felt like rubber, and Joujou was exhausted. She searched the rooms for my parents, then flopped down on the kitchen tile, too tired to consider making protest puddles. She’d worked up an appetite, and was happy to eat her portion of chicken Florentine, and mine too.

I put two plates in the sink, even though only one was used. The ice-cream spoon I washed and tucked away. The fork I left with chicken strings on it, beside a glass with milk dribbled inside, a perfectly placed display.

I did not purge the ice cream.

Grabbing my briefcase from the dining table, I walked to the entertainment room and sat on the sofa, feeling triumphant. Left alone for an entire evening, and the worst I’d done was binge on some ice cream and jog until my legs gave out.

Not bad. This was progress.

Joujou limped into the room, jumped onto the sofa, and curled into a ball by my thigh, then yawned a breath that smelled of chicken Florentine. Rolling her bug eyes upward, she smiled at me with her protruding bottom teeth, like we’d just been through a bonding experience—a couple of dingy dishwater blondes, partners in crime.

Neurotic sisters in Mom’s button-down world.

I worked on a federal grant application for the school’s new performance hall for half an hour, then set the application booklet aside and opened Dell Jordan’s cumulative folder and the confidential file. Thumbing through her paperwork, I pictured her sitting in my office, doe-eyed and silent like one of those sad, soulful Indian maidens painted on T-shirts and coffee mugs in roadside tourist traps.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let her off the hook so easily. She needed support, someone to talk to. I should have set up a regular schedule of appointments, kept the essay as leverage, and insisted she come back. I probably wasn’t handling her situation correctly. I was undoubtedly failing, and Mrs. Morris, as awful as she was, was correct in insisting that I shouldn’t have returned the essay.

What if the girl in the river really did have a death wish? Did I know enough to distinguish a serious emotional problem from normal teenage angst?

I should have paid more attention in my psychology classes, back when I never intended to become a guidance counselor, back when I thought grad school was just a way to avoid getting a real job. My part-time teaching position with the college’s high school outreach program had paid for my apartment and basic necessities. Most important, it had allowed me to focus on dancing in the college ballet and traveling to auditions for professional companies, until I could finally get into the corps somewhere. Who knew that the break into full-time professional ballet would almost be the death of me, and the counseling degree would turn out to be what really mattered?

Sister Margaret would have said,
“Life happens according to a plan.”
The problem is that when you don’t know the plan, you can’t adequately prepare.

Looking at the file in my lap, I couldn’t imagine what the plan might be for Dell Jordan. Half Choctaw Indian, no father in the picture, mother a habitual drug user who abandoned her child to be raised in the small town of Hindsville by a grandmother—now deceased. Finally taken in by foster parents, Karen and James Sommerfield, who enrolled Dell in Harrington, where she could pursue her gift for music. Now she was having difficulty adjusting.

Her story made my overly controlling parents, eating disorder, and failed ballet career seemed like a minor speed bump in the road of life. Suddenly, feeling sorry for myself rated as a pathetic waste of time. Compared to Dell, I was like Joujou, wetting on the floor because my mommy left me home alone.

When I returned to school tomorrow, I was going to find some way to get Dell back into my office—maybe call her in and ask more questions about the after-school arts program run by her foster mother. Anything to start up a conversation and dig a little deeper.

I spent the rest of the evening combing through her file with a new passion, a revitalized interest in my job. By the time I finished reading, I had a glimmer of hope that I might have learned enough about Dell to help.

Resting my head against the sofa pillow, I closed my eyes and pictured the place she came from—a tiny house in a row of decaying shacks squatting along the river bottom near a rural farming town. A grandmother who wasn’t equipped to raise a little girl, a small-town school where teachers tried to intervene, then found it easier to look the other way. A life that slipped from one year to the next, untended, unstructured, unprotected, unrestricted, in which Dell spent her time roaming the woods in solitude, stayed home from school when she felt like it, and largely kept to herself.

Compared to that, Harrington was the other side of the moon. All the fuss about her instrumental and vocal abilities, the constant scrutiny of teachers and instructors in the music department, undoubtedly felt like suffocation. In a place like Harrington, there was no breathing room, only pressure and expectations. . . .

My thoughts drifted away from the social worker’s report, away from memories of Dell in my office, away from my parents’ living room and Joujou snoring beside me, far from the half quart of Häagen-Dazs sitting like lead in my stomach. Miles from all that was real.

Shedding the weight of everything, I soared through a cloudless summer sky, gliding southward, where the Ozarks lay like folds in a thick green blanket. Nestled in the valley, the river wound through the shade of the sycamores, carrying glints of sunlight that sailed past the girl in the water, travelers on a journey even she could not predict. Stretching out her arms, she closed her eyes, let her head fall back, and floated on the surface.

I was the girl in the river, dancing the part of the Black Swan from KC Metro’s season opening performance of
Swan Lake.
Stretching out my arms, I sailed through the sunbeams, whirling like a floating leaf, lighter than air. . . .

The sound of the front door opening pulled me from my dream. Beside me, Joujou yipped and jumped up, then dashed from the room, spinning out on the tile as she screeched around the corner to the entryway.

“It’s just us,” Mom called, the way she used to when I was home alone as a teenager. “Anyone awake in here?” She came into the room carrying Joujou, who was happily slathering her face with kisses.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, and stretched, slipping the files back into my briefcase.

“Did you girls have a good time?” It was hard to tell whether she was talking to me or Joujou. “How did your evening go?” Her gaze gravitated toward the kitchen. What she really wanted to do was check the plates, then weigh and measure the leftovers.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked.

“Oh, he ran down to the store for some milk.” Setting Joujou down, she blinked in surprise when the dog hopped onto the sofa with me. “Didn’t want to be out of milk at breakfast.”

“We should call his cell and tell him not to bother. I picked some up on the way home.”

Mom gave me a panicked look, no doubt imagining a shopping cart full of binge food and laxatives. She glanced toward the kitchen again. “Oh, he’ll be back in a minute.” Instead of finding an excuse to check for leftovers, she sat down on the sofa next to me.

I sensed an old parental tactic—the one in which Dad conveniently left the house so Mom could tell me something, or discuss a girls-only subject, or, lately, question me about food. “So, I have some news.” Twining her hands together in her lap, she plastered on a broad smile obviously meant to bolster me. “Bethany and Jason made a little announcement tonight. They’re getting married. Next month, if you can believe it. Jason just got word that he’s to be transferred out of state, and . . . well . . .” Mom leaned close to me, holding a hand beside her mouth, whispering, “They’re expecting.”

I sat blinking at her, the words spinning around me. My little sister was getting married, moving out of state, and having a baby? Where was I when all that was taking shape?

“Of course, they didn’t intend for it to happen—in that order, I mean,” Mom continued on, still whispering, as if Joujou shouldn’t hear. “But, you know, times change. These days, it’s not nearly the issue it used to be, way back when.”

The sentence ended there, but I mentally finished it with,
When you had me. It’s not the big issue it was when you had me.
“That’s big news,” I heard myself say. “I’ll call her tomorrow and tell her congratulations. I’m kind of wiped out tonight.” Suddenly, my body felt five hundred pounds too heavy. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

Mom felt my forehead. “Sure. Are you OK? I could make you some herbal tea.”

“No . . . no, that’s all right.” My feet were in quicksand. “I’m fine. I just need to get some rest.” Not trusting myself to say anything else, I hugged Mom good night, climbed the stairs to my bedroom, and locked the door. Below, I heard my father come home and their voices vibrating in a low hum—no words, just muffled tones of concern.

Joujou scratched at my door, and I let her in. We curled up on the bed together, and I hugged my body around hers, wishing I could slip out the second-story window, run down the street, fish the other half quart of ice cream from the Dumpster, and eat until the lost feeling went away.

Instead, I closed my eyes, hoping I could fall asleep and dream of the girl in the river, dancing
Swan Lake.

I
awoke to a wintery wind howling outside the window and Mom tapping on my door, asking if she should call the school to tell them I was home sick this morning.

My thoughts floated between past and present as I opened my eyes, bringing into focus the white jewelry box beside the dresser mirror, its tiny plastic ballerina frozen in time. Around me, a dream of dancing hung suspended, luring me to close my eyes and go back to sleep.

Rolling over, I checked the alarm clock, and everything snapped into focus. Friday, six-o-one a.m. It was a workday, and if I didn’t get moving, I would be late.

“No, Mom, I’m fine.” Scrambling from the bed, I scooped up Joujou and handed her out the door. “Thanks for waking me up. I forgot to set my alarm.”

“You don’t look well this morning.” Mom’s brows knotted. “Why don’t you stay home and go have lunch with Bethany and me? We’re going to talk about wedding plans.” She looked exhausted, as if she’d been up all night worrying. “I don’t know how we’re going to put together a wedding in less than a month, but I guess we will.”

My burst of adrenaline drained away as reality solidified in my mind. My little sister was moving on in life, which made my failures seem that much more monumental. “I can’t,” I rushed out. “I’m in the middle of some things at work. I’d better get going. I have hall duty this morning.”

Mom smacked her lips in disgust, the lines deepening on her forehead. “They shouldn’t be asking you to perform hall duty when you live all the way across town.”

I had a vision of her calling the principal to complain. “It’s all right, Mom. It’s a good way for me to get to know the students.” Kissing her on the cheek, I backed away. “When I left St. Francis, Dr. Leland said the best thing was to keep busy, remember?” Anytime I couldn’t win a debate with Mom, I could fall back on Dr. Leland’s advice.

“All right,” she muttered, starting down the hall with Joujou under her arm. “I’ll hurry down and fix some breakfast for you.”

“No. Don’t bother. No time.” Every morning, we repeated the same painful ritual in which Mom produced a June Cleaver breakfast, and the three of us sat down together. Mom silently counted every bite of food going into my mouth, and Dad hid behind his
Wall Street Journal,
trying to remain neutral, the Switzerland of food wars. This morning, we’d have to do that
and
talk about Bett’s wedding and unexpected pregnancy.

“It won’t take a minute,” Mom called back as she disappeared. “I’ll have it ready in a jiffy. The weather’s turned cold and nasty this morning. You’ll need something solid in your stomach.” On the way downstairs, she cooed to Joujou, probably asking what she wanted for breakfast.

I hurried through showering, then put on makeup and combed my hair back, twisted it upward and secured it with a clip, so that little blond shoots stuck out the top.
Not great,
I thought, looking at the woman in the mirror in her bra and panties, studying herself with a hollow blue gaze.

I hated the way my eyes were rimmed with dark circles and sunken in around the cheekbones. I looked older than twenty-seven—sallow and weary, like the homeless people who lived under bridges and pushed shopping carts on downtown streets.