Somewhere Out There (20 page)

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “That must have hurt you so much.”

Brooke nodded, feeling a few errant tears slip down her cheeks. She never talked about her mother with anyone, and suddenly, here she was, discussing her with Claire. Maybe it was the fact that Claire hadn’t pushed her to talk; she’d simply shared a bit of her own story and made Brooke feel safe in sharing the basics of hers. And as the weeks passed by, Brooke found herself opening up more and more to Claire, and bit by bit, the weight she normally carried under her skin began to melt away. “I didn’t know how to stop myself from being bad,” she said after telling Claire about living with Jessica and Lily and how Scott had spanked her.

“Oh, honey, you’re not bad,” Claire said, pushing Brooke’s dark curls back from her face. Brooke was in bed, and Claire sat on the edge of her mattress. The only light in the room was that of the small lamp with the pink floral shade on the nightstand. “You were hurting, and sometimes, when we hurt, we lash out at other people so they will hurt, too. It doesn’t feel like that should make sense, but everyone does it at some point. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.”

“Really?” Brooke sniffed, allowing herself to feel a little bit better. “Have you?”

“Of course. I get lonely sometimes. And I get really sad, too. But the trick is not letting those feelings control you.”

“How do you do that?”

Claire thought for a moment, and then spoke. “Well, you know that saying ‘every cloud has a silver lining’?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Okay, good. So when I’m feeling sad or angry or lonely, I try to find something positive to think about, instead.”

“The silver lining?”

“Exactly.” Claire smiled and gave Brooke’s arm a quick rub. “I sit down and make a list of everything that I’m grateful for. All the good things I can think of. And pretty soon, before I know it, I feel better.”

Brooke pondered this. “What kinds of things?”

“That depends,” Claire said. “Sometimes it’s bigger stuff, like I’m grateful I have a job and a place to live. Other times I have to dig deeper and write down littler things, things I have to really think about to notice, like the way the sun sparkling on the lake makes me feel or how a bowl of ripe strawberries smells.” When Brooke didn’t respond, Claire screwed up her face into a funny expression. “That probably sounds weird, right? How smelly strawberries make me feel better?”

Brooke smiled and nodded. She liked how Claire wasn’t always so serious, like most of the other adults Brooke had known.

“I guess the point is forcing myself to focus on how there are so many good things in the world, even when I’m having a hard time,” Claire said. “I’ve found that the more I do it, the easier it gets, and the less often I feel bad.” She paused. “Tell me something. If you had to make a list like that right now, what would it have on it?”

“I don’t know,” Brooke said with a shrug.

“Come on. There has to be something you’re grateful for. Ice cream? Puppies? John Stamos?” Claire smiled at her, clearly teasing. She knew how much Brooke liked to watch
Full House
.

“I like ice cream . . . and puppies,” Brooke said, feeling her heart beating a little faster as she thought about what she wanted to say next. She looked at Claire, taking in her foster mother’s full, pink cheeks and sweet, loving smile, and suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. “But what I’m really grateful for right now is you.”

“Oh, sweetie, thank you,” Claire said, leaning down to hug Brooke. She pressed her mouth against Brooke’s ear, whispering the words “I’m grateful for you, too.”

After that conversation, Brooke felt like maybe the sad and lonely part of her life was over. Maybe Claire was the mother she was truly meant to have. Her foster mother worked as a medical transcriptionist for several different doctors, which meant she didn’t have to go to an office and was there every day when Brooke came home from school. They didn’t have a lot of money, but on Saturdays, they liked to take walks around Green Lake and feed the ducks bits of old bread; they spent their evenings playing Scrabble or watching shows like
Who’s the Boss?, Growing Pains,
and
Cheers
. Once in a while, Claire would surprise her with a copy of
Tiger Beat
magazine, and the two of them would spend a Friday night painting each other’s toenails and debating over who was cuter, Johnny Depp or Rob Lowe. Except for the time she’d spent with the lady who had made her clean the cat box, Brooke had always lived with at least one other kid, and she found that she liked being the only child in the house. She’d never had a grown-up’s undivided attention the way she had Claire’s. She absorbed it like a thirsty sponge. She’d learned from other kids at Hillcrest that most foster parents liked to have as many kids as they could because it meant the state gave them more money every month. Claire wasn’t like that. She was content having Brooke around, and never mentioned the possibility of taking on another child. She seemed happy.

There were times, though, when Brooke came home to find that Claire had never gotten out of bed. “I don’t feel well,” Claire told her when Brooke would sit on the side of the bed in her dark room.

“I’ll bring you some soup,” Brooke offered, but Claire refused it.

“I just need to sleep,” she said, and Brooke would leave her alone, spending the evening alone, warming up a frozen dinner, doing her homework and watching TV, worry aching in her gut. The morning after one of those days, Claire almost always was up and showered before Brooke, having made breakfast and packed Brooke a lunch, so Brooke told herself the episodes meant nothing. She told herself that everybody had bad days. Claire probably just hadn’t made a silver lining list for a while, and once she did, she’d feel better.

Brooke spent over a year with Claire, wondering when the older woman would tell her that she wanted to adopt her. “I love you,” Claire said each night when she’d tuck Brooke into bed. It took Brooke almost six months before she could tell Claire that she loved her, too. Brooke felt as though her future had been decided. She finally had the one thing she’d always wanted—a family.

Then one afternoon when Brooke was thirteen and returned to the apartment after school, excited to tell Claire that she’d gotten an A on her algebra test, she opened their front door to find the living room empty and dark, and instantly, she was concerned.

“Claire?” Brooke called out as she set down her backpack and took off her coat. The desk where Claire normally spent her days looked as though it hadn’t been touched. Brooke hurried down the hallway to Claire’s bedroom and threw open the door. The lights were off, and her foster mother was under the covers, not moving. There was a pungent, sour scent in the room, as though someone had recently been sick.

“Claire,” Brooke repeated as she took a few steps to the side of the bed. There was vomit on Claire’s pillow. “Hey,” Brooke said, reaching out her right hand to shake Claire’s shoulder. “Wake up!”

Claire didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t move. Her skin was white.

“Claire!” Brooke said, feeling her heartbeat thudding inside her head as she climbed into bed, kneeling next to the older woman. “Please! You have to wake up!” Again, Claire didn’t respond. “Claire!” Brooke shrieked, feeling the noise she made tearing at her vocal cords. “Help! Somebody . . . I need help!” She put both hands on her foster mother’s body and rolled her over onto her back. Claire’s jaw was slack, her mouth open, her tongue lolled partway out, a sight that made Brooke’s stomach turn.

Just then, their neighbor, Mrs. Connelly, an older woman whom Claire sometimes invited to join them for dinner, appeared in the bedroom doorway wearing one of her brightly colored housecoats and fuzzy pink slippers. “What in the world are you screaming about, child?” she said as she entered. Her eyes landed on the two of them in Claire’s bed. “Oh no. What happened?”

“She won’t wake up!” Brooke cried. Hot tears wet her cheeks as she shook Claire again.

Mrs. Connelly took a few steps across the room and reached for the cordless phone.

“Please, Claire!” Brooke sobbed. She could barely hear Mrs. Connelly talking over her tears, but it sounded as though the older woman had called 911. Brooke smothered her face against Claire’s ample chest, the smell of sweat and vomit mixed in with her foster mother’s favorite lavender body wash. Brooke liked the soap so much, Claire had bought her her own bottle.

“Help’s on the way,” Mrs. Connelly said, placing a hand on Brooke’s back and then pulling it away. “They’ll be here any minute.”

“She has to be okay!” Brooke said. “She just has to!” She didn’t know what she would do if Claire died. “Where’s her list?” Brooke asked, looking up at Mrs. Connelly with stinging and swollen eyes.

“What list?” Mrs. Connelly said. Her white, finely spun hair was thin enough for her pink scalp to show through, and her face looked like tissue paper that had been crumpled and unsuccessfully smoothed back out.

“Her list!”

“Honey,” Mrs. Connelly said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She reached out to Brooke again, but Brooke batted her hand away.

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, feeling as though something fragile inside her had shattered. Her heart was beating so fast, she could barely catch her breath. She wrapped herself around Claire’s body again, burying her face into Claire’s neck. This couldn’t be happening. She’d practically just found Claire; she couldn’t lose her already.

A few minutes later, the medics arrived and two men had to pry Brooke from the bed. “No!” she cried. “I won’t leave her!” She fought them, kicking and scratching and doing anything she could to stay next to Claire. In the end, one of the paramedics had to stand with his thick, muscled arms holding Brooke with her back to his chest, her arms restrained while the other medic examined Claire.

“Is she all right?” Mrs. Connelly asked in a tight, worried voice. “Is she going to be okay?”

“We need to take her to the ER,” the medic who was examining Claire said. “Can you stay with the girl?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Connelly said.

“No!” Brooke said. “I want to go with her!”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” the man who was holding her said. “And I need to help my partner, so if I let you go, will you promise to let us do our work?”

“Yes,” Brooke whimpered, forcing her body to relax. She would do anything, anything at all, if it meant that Claire would be okay. The man released her, and Brooke watched as the medics lifted Claire onto a yellow backboard and transferred her to the gurney they’d brought with them. One of her arms fell off to the side, looking as though she were reaching out for help, and Brooke rushed over to squeeze her hand. “I love you, Claire,” she whispered. “I love you so much.”

“Let them go,” Mrs. Connelly urged her, and Brooke released Claire’s hand, stepping aside so the medics could wheel the gurney out of the bedroom, down the hall, and out the front door. Brooke stood in the living room, feeling helpless, the tears still running down her cheeks.

“Why don’t you come sit down?” Mrs. Connelly said as she lowered herself onto the couch. When she patted the cushion next to her, the sagging jowl beneath her chin jiggled. “We need to call your social worker.”

“No, we don’t!” Brooke said, shooting the older woman a hateful look. Her throat felt raw from crying; she thought about how the last time she had a cold, Claire had made her lemon tea with lots of honey and fed her cinnamon-sugar toast until Brooke felt better.

“She needs to know what’s happening,” Mrs. Connelly said. She reached for the yellow pages Claire kept on the end table. Brooke had to fight the urge to run over, take the thick book from her, and toss it out the window. Instead, she shut the front door and shuffled to the couch, slumping down in the corner farthest away from her neighbor. She held a pillow to her chest, gripping it tightly, waiting as Mrs. Connelly looked up the number for Social Services and eventually spoke with Gina, relaying what had happened. After Mrs. Connelly hung up, she picked up the remote control and turned on the TV. “Just for distraction,” she said as Bob Barker appeared on the screen, asking if the contestant on
The Price Is Right
wanted what was behind door number one or door number two.

But Brooke was already distracted enough. All she could think about was Claire, the way her skin had gone from white to gray in the time it took the medics to arrive. All she wanted was for her foster mother to be okay.

Two hours later, Gina knocked on the apartment door. When she entered, she had dark half-moons bruised under her eyes and her flowered, black gunnysack dress with the white lace collar was rumpled.

“I’m not leaving!” Brooke said as she took in her social worker’s unkempt appearance. Her entire body went rigid, bracing itself for whatever Gina might say or do. “You can’t make me!”

Gina glanced at Mrs. Connelly. “Thanks for staying with her. Can you give us a minute?”

“Of course,” the older woman said. She rose from the couch and headed toward the door, pausing before she went through it. “I’m in Two-B, if you need me.”

Gina thanked her again, and then joined Brooke on the couch. “I just came from the hospital,” she said.

“Is she awake?” Brooke said.

“No, honey, she’s not. She’s stable, for now, but still unconscious.”

“Why?” Brooke’s bottom lip trembled.

“Because she took too many pills.”

“Maybe it was an accident . . .”

“It wasn’t an accident, Brooke. The doctors had to pump her stomach. It was a suicide attempt.”

“She did it on purpose?” Brooke began crying again. If Claire had felt bad enough to try to kill herself, then she’d been lying to Brooke. Writing a list couldn’t make anything better; focusing on a silver lining didn’t do a damn thing to help. “Why? Was it . . . me?”

“Oh, honey,” Gina said. “You didn’t have anything to do with it. The truth is she has a history of depression that we didn’t know about, and now she needs to work on getting better. She won’t be coming home for a while.”

“But I can help her when she does!” Brooke said. Her nose began to run, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. “I’ll take care of her! We take care of each other!”