Tell Me Something Real (28 page)

She asks him what changed, and he details Barb's suspicions, my injury, and the emergency room visit. “So,” she says, “you first suspected something when Vanessa hurt her ankle.”

“Yes,” he says, and I wish I'd chosen the empty seat next to his. “It's true that I knew something was wrong—I just didn't know it was this. Our friend was suspicious, but even she didn't see Iris's duplicity. We thought she might be minimizing or exaggerating symptoms. Nothing like what was really happening.”

“If I may.” Dr. Shepherd pauses. “This is an extremely difficult situation, but I am curious why you allowed her to continue with Laetrile if she said it was hopeless. Why did you let her keep going? Why did you let her take your daughters down there?”

We all watch Dad, especially Adrienne, who assumes the posture of a cobra.

Dad hangs his head and I strain to hear him. “She said that it could give her more time. She was desperate about it. I didn't know how to say no to her.”

“That's exactly right,” Dr. Shepherd says. “Iris assumed all of the power. Do you all see that? Even if you suspected something was wrong, your mother was in control of the situation. Not you. This could have gone on indefinitely, but you stopped it.”

“I think I could have done something,” Marie says.

Adrienne scoots her chair closer to Marie's. “Don't be crazy. You couldn't have done anything. It was all Mom's fault. That bitch Lupe, too.”

Marie shakes her head. “I saw Mom do things at the clinic. She would boss Lupe around and tell her how much medicine to give her. Lupe would say that it wasn't right, but Mom took the medicine anyway. She made Lupe hand her the shot and then Mom injected it herself. Even though they talked in Spanish, I knew Mom was lying about something. She made Lupe cry, especially when Lupe took my blood. That's why I don't think Lupe meant to hurt us. I forgive her.”

No one says a word, not Adrienne, not Dad. When Marie meets my eyes, I remember the night of the storm, of the dining room filled with tea lights, and Marie's plain words:
You're going to die.
She looked at Mom in a similar way, almost a challenge, or a plea:
Tell me I'm wrong.

Dad makes eye contact with Dr. Shepherd. His face is paler than Mom's was at her sickest.

“Marie, honey,” he says. “Lupe drew your blood?”

Marie nods. She stares at her lap as though she is in trouble. Dad speaks gently, as reassuring as possible.

“That's why I knew that Lupe didn't want to hurt us. She cried a lot, but Mom screamed at her and forced her to do it. Mom just wanted to make sure that I don't have cancer.”

Marie meets my eyes. “She did it to you too, didn't she? Mom said you were next.”

It's as though the air in the room freezes. Goose bumps cover my skin, and my lungs feel frostbitten. Cold sweat runs down my back. I'm drowning in arctic water. It takes a minute before I can breathe or speak. Finally, I choke out, “No, she didn't.”

I poke at the inside of my arm, at the shadow of veins beneath the skin. When I meet Dad's eyes, I understand that everything is different. Mom hurt Marie. Who knows what else she would have done if she'd had the opportunity?

“That means I knew, doesn't it?” Marie pulls her rosary—the one she made from the kit, the one lacking the mourning beads—from her pocket and fingers the beads.

Adrienne covers Marie's hand with her own. “That doesn't mean you understood what Mom was doing.”

“Adrienne's right,” Dr. Shepherd says in the kind of voice one would use when talking to an injured animal.

We could make a list, the four of us, Caleb and Barb, too, itemizing the small inconsistencies, the elements that felt strange, just a little off. Maybe then, looking at everything
at once, compiled, we might have guessed. Marie couldn't have known what she saw—it's too inconceivable, too much to accept.

“Does this mean I helped her?” Marie asks. She tucks her feet under her body, curling up, looking half her nine years.

I shake my head, but it's Dr. Shepherd who speaks. “No. It means that the situation was too complicated to understand. Like Adrienne said, your mother is responsible.”

Marie shifts her gaze to Adrienne.

“Why didn't you say anything?” Adrienne whispers.

I reach for Adrienne's other hand, but she yanks it away.

Marie slides off her chair and stands before Adrienne, tall, emulating Joan. “I didn't know what to do, and then I didn't want you to be mad at me.”

“Girls,” Dad says, ready to intervene if Adrienne loses it. But she doesn't. She scoops up Marie and holds her close. I want to share the same chair, at least move closer, but Adrienne won't even look at me.

Dr. Shepherd starts to explain the complexities of Munchausen's, deconstructing Mom's tactics, pathologizing her every move. My concentration remains on my sisters, but with each second that Adrienne refuses to look at me, I feel more disconnected. It's as though I don't share their grief. Maybe I don't, not the same brand anyway, considering I spent yesterday afternoon with Mom. Marie burrows her face into Adrienne's shoulder, and I look away.

Her words take their time reaching my ears. I look
out the window, at the sun dipping into the ocean, at the lapis-colored waves, until I hear my name. Everyone is looking at me. Even Adrienne. I don't know what they said or how long they've been talking.

“Vanessa,” Dr. Shepherd repeats. “If you could have anything from your mother, what would that be?”

I don't hesitate. “I want her to disappear.”

It's her or me.

In the beginning of the summer, back when they moved in, Dad presented Barb with a key. A new one fresh from the hardware store, the metal shiny and unblemished. But when they arrive, they ring the bell. Visitors now. Dinner guests. Nothing more.

Barb folds me in her sturdy arms. “Vanessa, I'm so glad to see you.”

I hold on tight, overwhelmed by how much I missed her. I won't let Barb pull away, too gripped by my sudden neediness. She understands and squeezes tighter, cooing “dear one” until I can stand on my own.

“Sorry,” I say.

“What on Earth for?” She gently pats my shoulder.

I feel like a scavenger, a young raccoon, rummaging for scraps of motherly affection. She steps inside and he fills the door. I waited so long that I began to forget the small details of his body. Has he always had so many freckles?
His forearms look almost tan. Curls sprout from his scalp.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

I pull him inside and feel that familiar rush when Caleb takes my arm. First, our hands touch, then our entire arms, shoulders, legs. This is the closest two people can get while standing side by side. Our legs should be bound together for a three-legged race.

“Caleb!” Marie yells. “We made something for you!”

Adrienne and Marie spent the morning in Adrienne's room. While the door remained open, I wasn't invited in, not even when I walked past, slowly, peering inside as they continued the assembly line of saint shirts.

At the sound of Caleb's voice, Marie bounds to the door, clasping a shirt in one hand and her saint book, fatter than a dictionary, in the other. “We made you a present!” She wears a proud grin as she holds up the shirt, adorned with a drawing of a teenage boy sporting a bowl haircut. He stands at the forefront of dozens of others. “In 1570, a bunch of Portuguese missionary boys fought off a band of pirates. San Juan was the only one who survived. You would totally fight pirates.”

Adrienne emerges and drapes her arm over Marie's shoulder as though our little sister belongs only to her. “Welcome back, Cancer Boy. Hope it fits.”

Marie leans into Adrienne, and I want to pry them apart like an oyster shell.

Caleb pulls the shirt over his head. “It's perfect. Thanks.”

“We'll leave you to your make-out session,” Adrienne says as she leads Marie back to her room. “Let's go finish Saint Agnes.”

Familiar sounds of clanking pots and the whir of the blender come from the kitchen.

“My mom's making her own bread now. She's really into flax seed. Consider yourself warned. She's talking about becoming a nutritionist.”

Barb could serve me cardboard and gravel—I'm that happy to have her back. “I thought maybe we could go for a ride? Since there's a full house,” I say.

He follows me into my room, stopping as soon as he steps inside. “It looks so empty.”

Except for the Kerouac, my bedside table remains cleared. It's not like I do anything but orchestra. Unlike the chaos of the rest of the house, the public space, I keep my room monastic neat. Purging Mom freed it of clutter.

“Here.” I hand him the Kerouac.

“You had it?”

“You left it at the hotel. I went looking for you and the manager guy gave it to me.”

He sits down on my bed and flips through the pages.

“Don't sit there,” I say. “Let's get out of the house.”

A flicker of hurt crosses his face, darkened eyes and a frown. “I never wanted you to read this. I'm sorry.”

“It's not that,” I say, meaning it. I found the book just
hours before Dad told me, and I can't separate the two. They speak the same truth, oral and written testimony, and I don't blame Caleb for recording it. I have too, now that I wrote the piano piece, now that I played it for Mom. If I learned anything, it's that we all are keepers of our own stories. Some too dangerous or too sacred to share in entirety or in fragments.

“I just hate being in the house, even with you,” I say. “I want to go outside.”

He drops the book onto my quilt. “Is it okay if I leave it here?”

I consider myself the book's rightful owner. He may have written the words on the newsprint-thin pages, but the revelation is about my mother. He's a witness—nothing more. “Yeah, that's fine,” I say.

I pick up the board and accept his hand.

Stray bougainvillea flowers blow along the sidewalk, crepe paper petals dotting the concrete like breadcrumbs. We follow them down the driveway. I surprise him by taking the lead, by steering and braking, by showing him that I can own the board. I have more control than before, more confidence navigating the seams in the sidewalk, the rogue tree roots that bulge through the concrete.

“You're going fast,” he says. “Careful. It's different riding with two people.” He grabs my hips and my body responds like he never left. I need to concentrate on the curves of the road, not the way my muscles tighten. I pump my leg harder.
I want to soar off a cliff and glide through the clouds. I want to put distance between me and the house. I want to join the gulls in the sky.

He lowers his foot and drags his sneaker until we come to a halt. “You're going to make us wipe out, speed racer.”

“Sorry,” I say, sitting down on the curb. “I can't shake it. It's like she's still in the house. I don't know how to explain it.”

I want to be plain happy to see him, not muddled with my feelings about Mom, not so wrecked. It isn't as bad as the phone calls, when everything felt intertwined. Now, Caleb is Caleb and Mom is Mom, and the painful absence of one isn't the same as the other. He stares down at me and I feel loved, belly-deep, and I wish it wasn't polluted by what happened at the clinic. I wish we met at school, where I would have admired him in class, sneaking glances at his profile. I want him to distract me from studies. I want him to eclipse everything else. No chance of that. We'll never have the luxury of being ordinary.

“You don't have to,” he says. “I spent the week putting my dad's stuff into trash bags. We filled the whole garage. He wouldn't even help us load the U-Haul. When we were driving down the coast, I kept thinking about how even though it was really hard seeing him, I know where I stand now. He's not going to suddenly be a different person and show up tomorrow and act like he actually gives a shit. I kept thinking that there was a chance that things were going to change. But that's a bunch of crap. It sucks, but at least I know that
now. There's something good about knowing. I'm not saying it's the same thing with you and your mom. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know what it's like to feel like garbage.”

“You're right. I saw her in the hospital—the mental one—and it is better knowing. It doesn't make it hurt less, though.”

He looks at me like he did that first time we walked on the beach, when I recognized that he understood, that he totally got it. He lowers himself onto the curb and moves the board back and forth with his foot. “You make it hurt less.”

I reach for his hand, and unlike Adrienne, unlike Mom, he holds on. Something has cracked inside me, something small and delicate and essential. I know I'm capable of repairing it on my own, but there's something devastating about being unloved, the most unique kind of pain. Mom volunteered for death, abandoned us with such brutal ease, like we're nothing, like medicine matters more than her kids. Like we're a nuisance.