Lila Blue (33 page)

I wrote the numbers down, made sure
I'd copied them correctly, and thanked her again. Then I took a deep breath and
dialed the first number. It was the number for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting,
and the man said he couldn't help me because it was anonymous. He wished me
luck and said he'd pray for my mom. I thanked him and hung up.

Good comes out of everything, Lila
says, so now I had an alcoholic stranger praying for my mom. That was good. I
crossed out the first number.

At the second number a lady
answered the phone. There was noise in the background, a TV I guessed. It made
me realize that I hadn't even thought about TV in the past few weeks. I
explained who I was and how I got her number, and when I thought she remembered
my mom, I told her I was trying to find anyone who might know how to reach her.

"How old are you?" she
asked.

"I'm twelve. I'm staying with
my grandma in Oregon. I really miss my mom and need to find a way to talk with
her. Do you know anybody I might call?"

"I didn't know your mother
very well. I'm sorry."

"Do you know a man named
Roger? One who stopped drinking a few years ago? My mom dated him a few
weeks."

"Roger. Yea. Your mom dated
him?"

"Just friends," I said.
"Just a little while, but I was hoping for anyone who's seen her
lately."

"Okay, yea, I have an old
number for Roger. He might still be there."

She gave me a number for Roger
Hillmen, so as soon as I hung up, I dialed Roger.

He answered, and I sighed with
relief. "Hello. I'm so glad you answered," I said.

Before I could tell him my name, he
said, "Janice? Is that you?"

"No. I'm Sandy, Cassandra
Blue. Janice is my mother. I'm trying to find her."

"Sandy? The little girl
Sandy?"

"Yes, I'm twelve. I'm in Oregon
with my grandmother. Did Janice tell you about me?"

"She did, yes."

"I need to talk to her. Do you
know where she is? How I can call her? I'm worried about her. I miss her."
When I said it, I knew it was true. It really threw me for a loop that he thought
I sounded like her. I didn't sound at all like my mother.

"No, Sandra, I haven't talked
with her since the first of July. If you like, I'll take your number and call
you if I hear from her."

"Yes, please," I said. I
gave him Lila's number, and I told him how grateful I was for his help.

"Listen," he said.
"Are you okay there? Do you need anything?"

"I'm more than okay," I
said. "I'm better than I ever dreamed possible."

He chuckled. "Good," he
said. "We like to hear that."

"Mr. Hillmen," I said,
"I really hoped she would stop drinking. I hoped you could help her. Thank
you for trying."

"Now don't you give up on
her," he said. "Sometimes all it takes is one really bad experience
to wake a person up forever."

"Thank you," I said.
"I'll keep hoping and praying."

"I will too," he said.

When I said goodbye, he said,
"God bless you."

After I hung up I thought, There
are so many good people in the world. Now I've got two alcoholic strangers
praying for my mom. Good comes out of everything.

After I hung up from talking to
Roger, the phone rang, and I hoped it would be Janice. For a moment I imagined
all of us talking about her had attracted her to me, but I was wrong.

It was Shakti, and she was crying.
"What is it?" I asked. Shelly rarely cried, and then it was usually
mad crying not broken hearted crying. "What happened?"

"Ian left for England,"
she said, but she didn't sound like herself at all.

"Shelly?"

"Sandy, he broke up with me.
He took me out to lunch and recited this whole elegant speech. I didn't know
until after he was gone all his beautiful words meant he was dumping me."

"That's impossible," I
said. "No one in his right mind would dump you. Impossible."

"He did," she said.
"He said he would always remember me, that I was his jewel of the summer
sun, that I was sweeter than rain in the dessert, that I was the moon on virgin
snow. He got me all twisted up with poetic metaphors, and I didn't realize
until he said goodbye that all the metaphors said goodbye too."

"Oh, Shakti, I'm so
sorry." She cried some more and all I could do was twist the phone cord
around my finger and look out onto the ocean, this vast ocean bigger than
anything else on the planet. Like grief. Like love.

"He loved me," she said.
"He did. I loved him. How could he end it? How is that possible?"

"I don't know," I said.
"I could never stop loving you."

"I'm so miserable," she
said. "I trusted him. We'd planned to write and see each other at
Christmas. Now he's going to be kissing some other girl and I'll just be his
summer trinket."

"He's a jerk," I said.
"He's a deceiving jerk. If it was just for the summer, he should have told
you."

"Maybe he got tired of
me," she said. "Maybe he got tired of my kisses."

"Impossible," I said.
"He's a jerk. He's not worthy of you."

"I should have known,"
she said. "I should have realized that a gorgeous fifteen year old genius
would get tired of a kid like me."

"Stop it," I said.
"You sound like my mom when some jerk dumps her. You're wonderful. Don't
put yourself down. If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at him. You didn't
do anything wrong. He did. I'm mad at him and I don't even know him. Give me
his address. I'll write him a hateful letter. Let me punish him."

"I don't have his address,
Sandy. He left me nothing." She started weeping again, and I wanted to
find this Ian fellow and punch him in the nose. Hard.

"Cassandra, talk to me,"
she said. "Take my mind off this. Tell me something funny."

"The only news around here is
Lila wrote a column in the paper about guns and some drunk shot up her barber
shop."

"Oh no," she said.
"Lila's hair shop?"

"Yea, the police called and we
went to the crime scene at three in the morning. They had flashing lights and
evidence bags and everything."

"Were you scared?"

"First I was, but after we
found out no one was hurt and they caught the guy right away, it wasn't
scary."

"What did Lila write?"

"Oh it was very reasonable,
just that everyone should get together and talk about handgun safety. That's
all. She worked really hard to not feed opposing opinions. I saw the first
draft. I'm glad she didn't publish that. The whole town would have been shot
up."

"Wow," Shakti said.
"Talk about the Wild West."

"The guy's name is Fred. He's
in jail."

Shakti started laughing. "I
should have stayed in Oregon," she said. "It was dull here this
weekend. Except for Ian dumping me, of course."

"He's a jerk," I said.
"A mean jerk."

"Eloquent, though," she
said. "I never knew someone could tell you to get lost in such a pretty
way that you don't get it until they've been gone an hour."

"That's skillful," I
said. "Lila says good comes out of everything. Maybe you should write down
his parting words in case you ever need to dump someone without him knowing it."

"I don't need his exact words.
Knowing the concept is plenty."

"Knowledge is power," I
said, the lead in to one of our favorite word games.

"Power is sweet," she
said.

"Sweet is life," I said.

"Life is light."

"Light is love."

"Love is knowledge."

"Bingo!" We both said,
and then we laughed our old kid laugh, and things were better.

We shared a little more news about
our families and promised to talk more often. She started school in September,
too, so we only had three more weeks of summer.

"Remember the assignment I
gave you," she said.

"How could I forget?" I
asked. "Now I'm giving you the same assignment."

"No problem," she said.
"If Ian thinks I'm going to waste seventh grade pining away over lost
love, he really is a jerk."

"He's a jerk," I said.

"Good. We got that all
settled. I love you Cassandra, Prophetess and Truth Speaker," she said.

"I love you Shakti, Goddess of
Feminine Energy."

After I hung up, I thought, If Ian
has any brains at all, someday he is going to realize he was an idiot to let go
of that girl.

By then I was tired of phone calls,
so I looked for something useful to do. When Lila and I were getting brooms for
the window clean up, I noticed the garage could use a good sweeping, so I went
out to do it while Lila's car was gone.

There were boxes of canning jars
stacked on top of an old desk over in the corner, and I moved the jars to make
sure I got all the cobwebs out of the area. The desk was a pretty one, with
drawers on each side and curved sturdy legs. The top was scarred with water
marks and a burn ring, as if someone had put a hot skillet on it. The rest of
it seemed pretty good. As far as I could tell in the poor light of the garage,
the wood was reddish and fine grained.

I stacked the canning jars in the
corner and pulled the desk out to get a better look. It was dusty but sturdy,
and even though the top was stained, it was smooth enough to be a good work
surface. I thought it would make a fine desk for me. I would need a place to
study when school started.

While I finished sweeping out the
garage and straightening it up, I imagined myself at the desk on rainy
evenings, doing homework, writing calligraphy notes to people, being a scholar,
maybe even writing poetry in my journal. It was an Emily Dickinson desk, and I
claimed it as my own.

Back in the house, I scouted around
for the right place to put it. My bedroom was too small, Lila already had her
desk area, but there was a spot on the other side of the archway from the
fireplace. I thought the desk would fit perfectly in that area. There was a
small bookcase, a floor lamp, and a little chair there. In fact, the chair was
probably the mate to the desk. It had the same dark cherry wood and sturdy
curved legs.

When Lila got home, I had dinner
ready, a nice pasta salad with ham, cheese, and blanched broccoli in a creamy
dill dressing. After our dessert of pineapple sherbet and sugar cookies, I
asked if I could use the desk.

She thought it was a fine idea. We
went to the garage, cleaned it with lemon oil furniture polish, and wiped it
down with clean rags to remove the excess oil. Then we brought the desk into
the kitchen and measured it. The wood was a beautiful color in the good
lighting of the kitchen, and sure enough, it would fit perfectly in place of
the bookcase.

Next we unpacked the bookcase, and
Lila had to sort through which books to move upstairs and which to give away,
and after we got those all dusted and sorted, we moved the bookcase to my
little bedroom, so I'd have plenty of space for school supplies.

Then we set up the desk with its
chair and the floor lamp. Lila found a silk scarf one of her clients had
brought her from Nepal to place over the stained desktop. The scarf was gold
with delicate fringe at the ends, and it fit perfectly over the desk to dress
it up. I collected all my pens and pencils and put them in Dante's ceramic pot
and arranged that along with my journal on the right side of the desk. It was
lovely.

I turned on the light and sat in
the chair, and I felt like Goldilocks when she sat in the perfect bear chair.
Just right!

There was a little window within
arm's reach on my right, and I opened it a bit to let in the salty evening air.
I could write in my journal every morning and do my homework every evening with
a view of the ocean. It was heaven.

"What if Janice doesn't send
back the papers we need?" I asked Lila. "School starts in three
weeks."

"Don't worry, Cassandra. I'll
take care of that. You're here, and I'll make sure you start school on
time."

I was in such a habit of worrying
about whether my mom was getting things right, I didn't know how to relax and
let adults handle adult business. I'd heard adults say, Childhood is the best
time of your life. Enjoy it! I had always thought, If this is the best, why
hang around for the rest? Now I was beginning to suspect their childhoods were
nothing like mine. Maybe I hadn't even had a childhood.

"I tried calling Janice this
afternoon," I said. "But there was no answer. I did talk to Roger,
though. Remember the Roger she was seeing when she sent me here?"

Lila wanted to know how I found
him, so I told her, and she said I was a brilliant detective.

"I was only being
logical," I said, thinking how Lila grossly exaggerated her praise of me.

"Logical, persistent, and
fearless in the pursuit of truth," she said.

"Grandma, I made a couple of
phone calls. I didn't solve the great American bank robbery crime. I didn't
solve anything. I can't even find my own mother."

"She's not lost, sweetheart.
She'll find us."

The next morning I woke up dreaming
Mark and Jamie were flying in an airplane over a mountain. When they got to the
top, Jamie said goodbye to Mark, opened the door of the plane, and stepped out
into the sky. Mark called him, but Jamie turned into a seagull and flew in
front of the plane, letting Mark know he was could fly on his own.

I told Lila about the dream in the
morning, and she smiled and said, "This dream seems more positive than the
tsunami one. Did you write it in your journal?"

"No," I said, "Do
you think it might be another prediction dream?" I asked. "I don't
want any more prediction dreams. I want to be left in the dark."

"Please be careful what you
wish for, Cassandra. You were in the dark about a lot of things when you first
came here. Is that what you really want?"

"No, Grandma. I want to be in
the light."

"Okay, then. The light allows
you to see things very clearly."