Sliding On The Edge (28 page)

Since October 22nd, there's
nothing this One Girl has to write that anyone would want to read,
especially me.

“You have all kinds of
good ideas, Carlie love.”

“I only have one idea and
it’s so not a good one.”

“Good or bad you have to
start sometime.”

I turn to a blank page and
take up my pen. “Sometimes bad things happen . . . even in
Channing.”

The first bad thing that
springs into my head is spelled c-a-n-c-e-r, then comes the vision
of that hospital room, the hours plodding forward. More memories
creep forward like tiny monsters and sit hunched, waiting for me to
notice them.

I drop my pen onto the
journal page, tasting rather than hearing the low sound just behind
my lips, not quite a cry, not quite a moan, just something
sharp-edged, something I’d like to keep hidden.

When I read what I just
wrote, some letters aren’t clear. Even though I’ve turned to a new
page, the tears have made the surface rough, so October 22nd has
bled through to a new day.

What can I write that won’t
tear at me every time I read it? What can I write that won’t crush
my heart and send me back to that day life changed?

The
answer—
nothing
.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say
softly, then I listen to the silence. I don’t know what’s worse,
when he talks to me or when he doesn’t.

From outside comes the
sound of a car pulling into the driveway, then the garage door
slides open. Mom’s home.

I change into my pajamas
and robe, brush my hair and pull it into a long dark tail that
hangs to my shoulders. I got the thick black mane from my mom’s
side of the family. Keith inherited Dad’s sandy color and the
spatter of freckles across his cheeks. We don’t look like we’re
related, except for our eyes and those are all Dad, sand pebble
gray.

Mom will make cocoa before
she goes to bed just like she did when Dad was here. Cocoa is still
a bedtime ritual, but it’s not the happy one it used to be. Now she
sits alone at the table, studying real estate books, or, as she
says, “sorting out the finances.” After being by myself most of the
night I need company, so cocoa and Mom to talk to sound
good.

“Hi Mom. How did the
fundraiser go?” She’s already pouring milk into a saucepan when I
slipper my way into the kitchen.

“Let’s see.” She sets the
saucepan on the cooktop, and stirs in cocoa. “I made a hundred plus
a fifty dollar bonus from the caterer at Maureen Fogger’s annual
charity event—proceeds going to Bangladesh or Milwaukee, depending
on which place needs it more this year.”

Mom’s attempt at keeping it
light doesn’t fool me. She was embarrassed having to work with the
catering crew at a party she should have been enjoying as a
guest.

“Oh, and I saw Eric
Peterson. He was parking cars.”

“Wonderful. Now I suppose
he’ll spread the word about our money problems.”

“I don’t think so. I gave
him an excuse about volunteering and escaped to the back entrance.”
She turns the flame under the pan to low and sits at the table. “It
was a small uncomfortable moment.” Mom’s humor fizzles
again.

For years she helped Mrs.
Fogger organize her charity party. She hired the caterers. She
walked in the front door with the guests. From the way Mom looks
and sounds, tonight's been an embarrassing hell.

“You didn’t go out? No
party at Lena’s this year?”

I shake my head.
There was a party. I didn’t go.

We jump at the sudden sound
of the front door slamming. Keith’s familiar shuffling footsteps
start at the entry and cross the dining room toward the kitchen. He
pauses at the kitchen door.

“How was the movie?” Mom’s
voice gives her away, at least to me. She wants Keith to stick
around and talk to us. She knows he won’t.

“Didn’t go. Stayed at
Mitch’s.” His jaw is tight like it’s been for months, and I’ve
forgotten when he looked at either one of us as if we were really
there.

“Do you want some co—?”
Keith has already started upstairs. When his bedroom door closes,
not with a bang, but something close, Mom slumps in her chair and
rubs her eyes.

Thanks to my mole of a
brother, she looks more exhausted than when I came in. Slowly she
straightens her back as if every muscle aches, then she goes to the
stove and pours cocoa for each of us.

We sip from our mugs,
staring into the steamy liquid and letting the quiet hang in the
air between us. We have more to think about than we have to talk
about.

“I do have some good news
for the start of the year.” Her words should sound hopeful. They
would if the way she said them did. “When I finally opened last
week’s mail I found I made ninety percent on my first realtor’s
exam.”

“Great, Mom.” I try to mean
it, but everything that has to do with her real estate course
reminds me how different our lives are now.

“It’s only a practice test,
but I feel a lot more confident after taking it.”

We fall into more silence.
I have no good news, except that Lena called to tell me
the
Nicolas Benz might
be asking me to the Spring Fling. It’s not a sure thing, so it’s
only semi-good news and not as important as it was last
year.

“Carlie. . . I,” Mom clears
her throat and looks up at the ceiling. She does this when she has
things to tell us that aren’t of the good news variety. When Dad
was first diagnosed with cancer, she studied the ceiling for a long
time, letting the tears trickle back into her hairline before she
looked Keith and me in the eyes and told us about the
reports.

I can’t take too much more
of her staring-at-the-ceiling news.

“I made a decision.” Now
her eyes are on me and the way the word, “decision” sounds sets off
an alarm in my head.

“I wasn’t going to say
anything yet, but . . . Well, there’s never going to be a good time
to tell you. It’s not something I decided tonight either, and it’s
something—” Mom sits back in her chair. “We need to sell this
house.”

“Sell?” I sound like all
the air is leaking between my ribs.

Mom puts her hand over
mine, but I snatch mine back.

“We can’t make it
otherwise. I have to free up some capital and the house is the only
asset that will get us out of this mess. The health insurance
company isn’t coming up with any more money to cover the last of
the hospital bills unless we sue. I can’t face that right now. Not
ever.” She sighs. “All I want for a while is some
peace.”

“But Mom! It’s the middle
of my junior year!”

“I know, Carlie. It’ll be
very hard for you and Keith, but no matter how I add the figures, I
come up way too short. Even if I finish the real estate course and
start working by summer, we’ll lose everything. I can’t even
promise you college right now.” Mom gazes into her mug as if she’s
looking for answers. “We can’t afford to live in Channing
anymore.”

“No!”

“I borrowed money on the
house and now the payments are—” She presses her hand against her
lips as if she doesn’t want the words to escape. “They’re bigger
than I thought. I made a mistake when I figured out how much I’d
have to pay each month,, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew I
needed money, so I got it the quickest way I could.”

I push away from the table
and get to my feet. “You can’t do this. There has to
be—”

“It’s late. We’ll talk
tomorrow. Let’s keep this between us until we have a family
meeting, okay? Your brother’s so edgy that I need to choose one of
his good moments to tell him.”

I hurry out of the
kitchen.

“Wait.” She catches me at
the stairs. “I need you to understand.” There's pleading in her
voice, something I've never heard when she talks to me.

I yank my arm free and run
up the stairs.

“I wouldn’t do this if I
didn’t have—”

Slamming my door, I lean
against it, squeezing my eyes closed and tasting the salt tears at
the corner of my mouth. Quicken jumps from my bed and rubs against
my legs until I pick her up and cry into her short gray fur. She
nuzzles her Siamese understanding and sympathy under my
chin.

With her tucked close to
me I open my bedroom window, inviting the sound of the Pacific
inside. When I set her onto the window sill she wraps her tail
tightly around her haunches and stares across our beachfront. Like
me, she's never lived anywhere but here. The steady rhythm of waves
has always rocked me to sleep, and I’ve never thought how important
that sound was until this moment. I get one of those heart shock
moments.
What if there’s no ocean where we
end up living?

I lift Quicken and close
the window, leaning my forehead against the pane, wondering where
we’ll wind up and what the next bad event will be that we have to
face.

The shelf over my desk
holds a paperweight I won in the eighth grade poetry contest. Two
Channing Yearbooks lie stacked next to it and on top of those sits
my broken Jack-in-the-Box. When I crank the handle of the metal
toy, it swings around freely, not catching the tiny gears. The
puppet’s trapped inside.

Cradling Jack’s small
prison, I lie curled around it on my bed.
I hate you for dying, Dad. I can’t bury my face any deeper in
the pillow. I hate everybody in this stupid world.

“Carlie love, this is
tough, but you’ll be fine. I know it.”

No! This will not be just
fine.