Julia's Daughters (9 page)

“I wouldn't
do
anything with Izzy. She'd just stay here with you. Go to school like she does every day.”

“I can't be taking her to her tae kwon do lessons and stuff like that. That's why we agreed you'd only work part-time. So you can do that kind of stuff.”

I rest my hands on my hips. “It's not like I've done anything for the last two months.”

He just sits there, looking at me.

“If we did this, Izzy could just skip her lessons. Or get a ride with Ann's mom. Your mom could help out.” I warn him with a finger. “As long as she lays off the afternoon cocktail.”

He looks at me, shaking his head. “I don't know, Jules. When I said we needed to talk about Haley, I was thinking more along the lines of . . . does she need to go to drug rehab? Do we put her right back in school? Get a tutor? What?”

I exhale. Stare at the floor. He's in his stocking feet. He's left his boots in the laundry room, the way he usually does. There's a hole in his sock. A big one. Big enough so that his toe is sticking out. “I don't think she has a drug problem, Ben. She might be doing some drugs, but I don't think that's her problem.”

“Based on what?”

I shrug. “I don't know. My gut instinct? My . . . mom instinct?”

The look on his face tells me he's not buying it.

“I was just thinking that maybe if we spent some time together, away from her friends, away from school, we could . . . talk.” I push my hair back, looking past him. “Maybe it would be good for me, too, Ben. To get away. Because we both know”—I force myself to look at my husband—“we know I can't go on this way. Our lives can't go on this way.”

“And you think driving alone in a car with Haley will help you do what? Deal with Caitlin's death?”

I fight the tears. The pain that threatens to swallow me up. “Maybe,” I whisper. “Maybe it will help us . . . maybe we can find our way back.”

“Find your way back to where?”

The way he says it makes me feel foolish. Naïve. He's right. It's a bad idea. What makes me think Haley would get in a car and ride across the country with me, anyway? It's all I can do to get her to ride to her grandmother's. “It's just something to think about,” I say, feeling a little defeated. “A possibility.”

I stand there for a minute, looking at him. Him looking at me. The closeness I felt with him a few minutes ago is gone. Or maybe it was never there.

“I think I'm going to go to bed.” I motion in the direction of our bedroom. “You coming?”

“Maybe in a little while.” He picks up the remote. “I'm not tired yet. But you go on.” He points the remote toward the TV and the volume begins to come up.

I stand there for a second, considering begging him to come to bed with me. Not to have sex. Just so I don't have to be alone. Just to curl up against each other. Hold each other. But if he doesn't want to hold me, doesn't want to be with me, that kind of makes me a little pathetic, doesn't it? To still want him?

I walk out of the living room, fighting my tears that seem like a different kind tonight.

Chapter 14

Haley

 

I shuffle into the kitchen Sunday morning . . . Sunday afternoon, technically. It's almost one o'clock. The house is quiet. Dad's already gone to work; he catches up on paperwork at the office on Sundays, supposedly. I think he just says that so he doesn't have to hang out with us. Mom's probably lying in her bed crying because her favorite daughter is gone. I don't know where the sister brat/girl genius is. Maybe at Mass. She goes with her friend sometimes, which is kind of funny because we're not Catholic. We're not anything. Mom's stepdad was some kind of Holy Roller. After Mom left home, she never went to church again. She never took us to church.

Which suits me fine.

I go to the fridge. There's not much in it, but there's milk. In the pantry, I find a box of cereal and grab a bowl and a spoon. I carry it all to the breakfast table under the window. There's a bird in the bush outside looking right at me. It hops from branch to branch, watching me. I wonder what kind of bird it is. If Caitlin was here, she'd google
gray bird with pale yellow belly in eastern Mojave Desert
. She did silly stuff like that all the time. If she were here right now, she'd figure out what kind of bird it is and then she'd read the Wikipedia description to me while we ate our cereal.

I actually consider going to her room and getting her iPad and trying to figure out what it is. Then I realize that's stupid. If Caitlin were here, it would be fun because it would be my little sister Caitlin and she made everything fun. But me sitting here alone? That's just stupid.

I'm halfway through my bowl of slightly stale Golden Grahams when Izzy comes into the kitchen. My chubby youngest sister is wearing running shorts, a T-shirt, and her gym sneakers and she's got her frizzy red hair in a high ponytail. Too high. I've never seen her dressed like this before. It's not like she's athletic or anything. She does take tae kwon do lessons, but I think that's because she's still at an age when our parents can force her to do things like play a sport because it's healthy for preteens. It's a bunch of bull. Playing a sport when you're not athletically inclined doesn't make you healthier; it makes you feel like a bigger loser than you already are. Caitlin was the athlete in the family. I haven't played a sport or taken a lesson since the seventh grade when I quit club softball because I sucked so bad.

I think about asking Izzy what she's doing in the getup, but I decide not to waste my breath. She won't answer me. She hasn't spoken to me since Caitlin died. I know she thinks the accident was my fault. Which it totally was. And she thinks that if I hadn't been driving, Caitlin wouldn't be dead right now. Which is also probably true. But she doesn't know the whole story. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could tell
someone.
Then maybe everyone wouldn't hate me quite so much. But what would be the point? Caitlin would still be dead. So I might as well let everyone go on thinking she was perfect.

I stir my cereal with my spoon and watch the little bird outside the window. It's still flitting around from branch to branch, looking at me. I wonder if it can see through the glass. Or is there a reflection and it's really interested in itself and not me?

I can hear Izzy at the refrigerator. She's getting her orange juice. Dad bought the wrong kind again. When I make the grocery list, I'll have to write in bold or maybe circle “no pulp” so he won't screw it up again. Izzy never asks for anything from anyone. He could at least get the right damned juice for her.

“There's a bird out here looking at me,” I say. I move my spoon in front of the window, but the bird doesn't react. It must not be able to see through the glass or it would have flown away. Or it's a crazy bird and it's about to fly into the glass and commit hara-kiri. “See it? It's kind of pretty.”

I hear Izzy chugging the juice. Guess she doesn't hate it with pulp too much or she wouldn't be guzzling it, would she?

“It's gray with a little bit of green on its back. And its belly is a really pale yellow.” I don't look at Izzy because I know if I do, she'll probably walk away. I don't want her to go. Even if she won't talk to me, I just want to hang out in the kitchen with her for a few minutes. I feel like people are always leaving the room I'm in. I mean, who wants to hang out with a sister-killer?

“I was just thinking,” I say, my voice sounding weird in my ears, “that if Caitlin were here, she'd google what kind of bird it is.” I kind of laugh a little. “You remember how she was always googling weird stuff? Like . . .
can you eat an armadillo.
Or
how many M&Ms are the in a one pound bag of peanut butter M&Ms.
” I finally glance at Izzy because I'm beginning to feel pretty dumb talking to the room. She's writing something on a notepad on the counter.

I watch her put the pen down and take the jug of juice back to the refrigerator. She goes into the laundry room and out the back door without once looking in my direction.

So we sit there, the bird and me. I finish my cereal. I'm just getting up from the table when Mom comes into the kitchen. She looks like she just woke up too.

“Good morning,” she says. Her hair is sticking out all crazy. She looks like she's already been crying.

“Morning,” I answer, walking away from the table. I don't know what I'm going to do today. No homework. Which is a good thing about getting expelled from school, I guess. But now what do I do? I usually do homework on Sundays. Or hang out with my friends. I'm pretty sure I'm grounded. I could go out the window again, I guess, but I'm kind of lying low. Dodge has been calling me and texting me so I blocked him on my phone. Luckily, I never told him where I lived.
Who's the smart one now, Caitlin?

I take the ball out of the little pocket of my sleep boxers. I bounce it gently, just hard enough so that it pops back into my hand. I'm getting good at it. I know just how much pressure to exert on a particular surface to make it come right back into my hand.

Mom leans on the counter, a coffee mug in her hand, and reads the note. “Izzy went running?” She glances at the clock on the microwave. “She just left? Since when does she run?”

She must have put the time on her note. She's such a geek.

“She just left,” I confirm.

Mom looks at me, frowning. “To go
running?
”

“If that's what the note says.” I bounce the ball. Catch it. “I guess that's what she was doing. She didn't say anything to me.”
Bounce. Catch.
“Of course, she never says anything to me.”

Mom sighs and turns to the coffeepot Dad turned on before he left this morning. He leaves coffee for Mom every morning, even though she rarely drinks it anymore. “You have to give her some time.”

“Time.”
Bounce. Catch
. “Right,” I intone. Another word for our list.

Mom turns around suddenly, leaving the mug on the counter. There are little lines across her forehead; I don't remember Mom having wrinkles before. She's always been so beautiful. Maybe even more beautiful than Caitlin.

“Haley . . . where did that ball come from?”

I bounce it.

“It was Caitlin's, wasn't it?” She closes her eyes for a second. Then opens them. “I remember her bouncing that pink ball.” She points at me, clearly trying to bring up a memory. “Not that day. A couple days earlier. We'd gone out for pizza. I asked her to put the ball and her cell phone away.”

I don't say anything. Mostly because I'm afraid I'll cry. And I'm not willing to do that. That next morning Caitlin had looked everywhere for her pink ball. I head out of the kitchen, bouncing the ball.

“Clean up the table, please,” Mom says just before I make my escape. “And put the milk away.”

I take my time going back to the breakfast table,
bouncing
. . .
bouncing
. Mom pours her coffee. I tuck my ball back into my pocket and carry the milk to the refrigerator. I put the bowl and spoon in the sink.

Mom heads out of the kitchen. “Rinse it off and put it in the dishwasher,” she calls as she goes.

I flip on the kitchen faucet, annoyed and I don't even know why. I mean
logically,
I get that I shouldn't leave my bowl with milk and cereal on the table or in the sink to get all scuzzy, but I . . . I guess I hate being told what to do. As I reach for the bowl, I get my sleeve wet. I'm such an idiot. I yank up both sleeves, wondering why I got the stupid genes. Caitlin was so smart and Izzy . . . Izzy, she's scary smart. So why—

“I meant to ask you,” Mom says, stepping back into the kitchen. “Are you going—”

She stops midsentence, just like they do in movies. And I kind of feel like I'm
in
a movie, all of a sudden. It's as if the world has slowed down. I'm thinking fast,
really
fast, but I'm
moving
too slowly. It's as if my body isn't getting the signal from my brain quick enough. That brain signal that's yelling “Sleeve! Sleeve! You moron.” I reach with my right hand to pull down the sleeve on my left arm, but it seems like it takes forever.

Mom stands there in the doorway to the kitchen, her coffee mug in her hand, staring. She's wearing one of Caitlin's cheer shirts and no bra and I realize in a split second that she's gotten really skinny. When did Mom get skinny? I mean, she was never fat, but I've never seen her collarbone like that before.

“Haley.” She says it in a half whisper, a half cry and I feel so bad. So bad because the look in her eyes, it just . . . it hurts so much that I feel dizzy. Like I'm going to faint. I know what it feels like because I fainted the night Caitlin died. Right there in the middle of the road. When I woke up, I was on a stretcher and the paramedics were talking to me slowly, like I was a two-year-old or had brain damage.

“Haley, what have you done?” She comes toward me, putting her mug down on the edge of the counter. I still feel like everything is in slow motion. Except for the running water. It just keeps pouring out of the faucet. Gushing.

Mom catches my left hand. I try to pull away, but she's strong. Way stronger than I would have thought. She holds my hand and pushes up my sleeve.

Both of us look down at my arm and I have the weirdest reaction, as if ... as if it's not my arm. Like it's someone else's. Because this forearm, it doesn't look like mine. It's got ugly, raised welts. Scars. And red marks that are oozing. And white gauze taped on with packing tape because I couldn't find any of the white stuff under the bathroom sink where it's supposed to be. It's so weird because I remember pulling off pieces of packing tape, but I don't remember my arm looking like this.

“Oh, Haley, sweetie,” Mom whispers, looking up at me, looking into my eyes. Her eyes are full of tears. “What have you done to yourself?”

“I don't know,” I hear myself say, in the same soft voice.

Because, honestly . . . I don't know.