The Year of My Miraculous Reappearance (3 page)

“Nineteen-year-old girl like you must have a license.”

“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. I forgot it. Like you said.”

He leaned farther over the seat and he smelled like Old Spice aftershave. “Did you know it's against the law to run
away from home?” My stomach got all iced and tingly. I didn't answer, even when I tried. “But let's give you the benefit of the doubt. You're on your way home, like you say. Where might that be?”

I gave him our address and he drove us home.

He walked up to the door with us and knocked, even though I tried everything I could think of to talk him out of it. The sun was up now, barely, and my mom came to the door in that ratty tan robe, with her hair all squished and little pillow lines in her face, and I was embarrassed for the sheriff to see her that way.

“These little strays belong to you?”

Mom's eyes got wide. “Did she do something wrong, officer?”

“Just headed out of town is all.”

“Well, thank you very much for bringing her home. I'll take care of this.”

He smiled at me before he left, and I was so convinced that he was an okay guy that I gave him a dirty look, like to say, Yeah. Thanks a lot.

It was almost five; it would be light soon. Nanny and Grampop would be up packing to go. Packing Bill. I had a talk with myself. I said, what kind of momma lion are you? You scared of a little old sheriff?

Truth is, I don't think I was scared, really. Because I don't think I really cared what happened. I mean, if Bill was going to be gone, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

It was more like I couldn't really move. I don't know quite
how to say this. Like I was a sailing ship and all of a sudden the wind stopped blowing. And all I could do was drift around on all that glassy water. Or maybe that sounds too nice. Maybe it was more like one of those awful dreams where you have to run to save your life, but you can't run. You just can't. Your arms and legs turn to lead, and that's it. Sitting duck.

Whatever it was, next thing I knew, it was morning. And we still weren't gone.

Nanny puttered around Bill's room, packing his clothes and a few toys. She almost left his elephant in the bottom of the crib. See, this is why they couldn't take him. How could Bill live with someone who didn't know the elephant was the very most important?

“I take care of Bill,” I kept saying. If I'd said more, I'd have cried.

“Well, now you can have a childhood and not worry.” I kept trying to think of something to do. Wrestle her down or something. Instead I kept taking Bill's clothes out of the suitcase and putting them away again. Nanny would give me a look, then take the things out and put them back in the suitcase. I'd grab them again and put them back in Bill's dresser drawer.

“Stop that, Cynthia,” Nanny said.

But I wouldn't stop. I was getting more and more upset. I was starting to throw things into drawers instead of just setting them down. I warned her. I warned her I wasn't letting them take Bill away.

She grabbed my arm, and I pulled it away so hard and so fast, I almost pulled her right over. So I guess it looked almost like I was trying to hit her or something, but I was only taking my arm back.

Then I saw Grampop standing in the doorway, and he yelled at me. He yelled, “Cynthia, you get out of this house if you can't behave!”

Something about that and about getting arrested, it made me feel tired and little, like no one was home inside, like nothing would do any good. Everything in the world was bigger than me. I never won and I felt like I never would. I went up to my tree house and cried where nobody could see.

After a while I heard Grampop calling, telling me to come say goodbye. At first I wasn't going to do it. I didn't want to see Bill's face in that car when they drove away. But then, when I heard the car start up, I climbed down and ran after them.

Grampop stopped the car, and Nanny got out and said, “There you are, Cynthia. We almost didn't get to say goodbye.”

Bill was in his car seat in the back, half turned around to look at me, and he was talking. I could see his lips move, but I couldn't hear him, but I knew he was saying “Thynnie,” because that's the only word Bill knew how to say. And I started to cry, right in front of everybody.

“Take
me,
” I said. “I want to get out of here, too.”

Nanny hugged me too hard and said somebody had to stay and help my mom, and I should be a big girl about it.

I said, “I want to live with you and Bill. Please?”

She got that look on her face, like when I hurt her feelings, and said it'd been hard enough to talk Grampop into taking Bill.

Then she kissed me on the cheek and drove away, and all the way down the driveway Bill's lips were still moving.

That night I couldn't get to sleep. My stomach was all twisty and full of needles. I tried to think what people do when they feel this bad. There had to be some way to make it stop. Even for a little while. I knew what my mom would do. She always drank at times like this. I would have tried anything to feel better by then. I'd thought about trying it lots of times before, but back then I didn't, because who would've taken care of Bill?

I borrowed a beer from the refrigerator and took it into bed with me. It tasted really nasty. I thought, how can anybody drink this junk? But by the time I was half done, things got a little fuzzy inside, which was good. Then I could see why Mom liked the stuff. I still felt bad, but in a muddy way. And the needles in my stomach were gone.

I finished the beer and lay there whistling a little tune. I don't remember which one. Just that nobody sang it back to me.

It was only me, whistling in the dark.

CHAPTER 3
Kid Trees

At first I hung out in the tree house by myself. I was in no mood for Richie and Snake. Then, even when I let them come up, I was still in no mood for them. They came up and hung blankets around the tree house to make it like a tent. For more privacy, you know? But that turned out to be too much of a good thing, because Snake, who was fourteen, started getting big ideas. I guess we'd made it
too
private a space.

All of a sudden he got this weird look on his face and said, “We could be doing it, you know. We're old enough.”

Right in front of Richie, he said that. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know if he meant with each other or in general. But it was pretty much a “no” either way.

I said, “I've heard all about that. Nobody is old enough as far as I'm concerned.”

He gave me this look like I was a big baby or something.

Even if I'd wanted to do it, which I didn't, I don't think Snake would have been the guy. He looked too much like a bulldog. He had this flattop that he thought was cool, and he was kind of chunky. As he squatted in that tree house, ragging on me about it, this little beam of light came through a hole in the blanket right over his head and made him look like he was wearing a halo, which just didn't fit.

Then he said, “Your mom and that Zack guy are doing it.” He looked kind of weird and eager, like it was something he'd been dying to talk about.

I said, “Well, I'm not really so sure.” I was, of course—I mean, it was pretty obvious—but I just didn't feel like going on about it.

Then Richie, the little squirt, the one who couldn't even keep his own nose clean, he said, “Your mom does it with everybody.”

So I decked him.

I spun around and slammed him one, only not the way I wish. I wanted a nice roundhouse punch, but really I'd never thrown a punch in my life. I just gave him a shot to the nose with my elbow. It wasn't pretty but it worked. He stumbled backwards with blood squirting out of his nose, hit one of the hanging blankets, and took it down with him. All the way down he kept swinging his arms like he could get his balance, like there was still time not to fall.

I remember the sound he made when he landed.

I guess I was supposed to feel sorry about what I did, but I didn't feel much of anything. I looked at him lying down there and felt like he deserved it. I knew if I'd had it to do over, I'd have done it just like that again. Maybe thrown a cleaner punch. Some things are pretty much worth what you have to pay for them. Sometimes it's just worth it.

Snake came up into the tree house the next day. I'd been hanging out up there by myself since the whole Richie thing went down. This time I was in no mood for anybody, but I let Snake come up because I wanted to hear what was happening.

Snake had a big knot of bruise on the side of his head. I think he must've gotten in fights a lot, because it seemed like he had bruises most of the time. I never saw him fight, but then lots of things happen with people when you're not around to see.

He sat cross-legged on the boards. “You really messed him up,” he said. “You broke his nose, and then he broke his arm when he fell.”

“I bet he ratted me out, too.”

“No. He told his parents he just fell. But he told a couple of the guys at school. So now the word is out. So now you're pretty much poison. I don't think anybody's gonna hang out with you now. Not even the guys.”

I was liking people less and less, so I didn't take the news all that hard. “Fine,” I said. “Who needs 'em?” It was kind of better, when you didn't even pretend to have friends. When you just made up your mind not to. It was easier.

We were quiet for a minute, thinking how life gets real dark and heavy all of a sudden, and then you go back and look for that moment when it changed, but it's too late to undo it.

At least,
I
was thinking that. I don't really know what Snake was thinking.

When I looked up he was staring at me. I could tell he wasn't mad or anything, but something about his face made my stomach feel weird. Just for a minute I thought I sort of liked him, because he looked at me like I was really there. I couldn't think of one other person who looked at me like I was really there.

I looked at his eyes and thought maybe I'd never really noticed how cool they were. Kind of light blue, clear, like ice.

“I'll still hang out with you,” he said.

“But then you won't have any friends, either.”

He looked down at the board floor. Shrugged. “Even so. I'll hang out here if you want.”

“No,” I said. “Don't do that just for me. Just wait. Things'll blow over. I'll be fine on my own.”

He shrugged again. Then he got up and climbed down the ladder and disappeared. He never said anything, not even “bye.”

What his problem was, I didn't know.

After a few weeks alone Zack came to my rescue. He took me for a ride on the back of his motorcycle, probably because he felt sorry for me.

He had on a black leather jacket, and that was cool, but it was the only thing about him that was, the way I had it
pegged. Well, okay, his boots were cool. I wanted ones just like them, but I knew Mom would have a fit, because she thought I didn't dress enough like a girl. I mean, who would want to?

Anyway, I wouldn't hold on to Zack, because that's too creepy. It's not like I was his girlfriend or anything. I held that strap that goes across the seat, but there was nothing behind me to lean on, and when he put on the gas, I felt like I was going to blow right off the back.

And boy, could he put on the gas.

Once I got a peek at the speedometer and we were doing eighty-five. Just at that moment I think I might have understood what Mom saw in Zack. What Zack saw in Mom, now that's another story altogether.

He took me out the old reservoir road, and the leaves on the pavement did this little whoosh thing as we came by, kind of turned a spiral and ran away. When we came around curves the bike leaned over until I thought our knees would scrape the pavement. At first I was afraid to lean with him, because I thought the bike would dump right over, but it didn't, and I started to get into it. Scary, but cool.

Just for a minute I was ashamed of myself for feeling good. I'd been so careful not to lately. But then I decided Bill wouldn't mind.

I got to watch black and white cows hanging out in front yards and barns that looked like a good wind would take them down. Old combines and tractors rusting right where they had broken, and avocado trees, and persimmon trees, and the fence posts seemed to rush by like they were under their own steam.

Not that I hadn't seen all this before, but these things don't really come through the car window. Like that old saying about how things suffer in the translation.

All of a sudden I had this thought about perspective. But I'm not sure how to say it so it makes sense. Like, what if there was a farmer in the field and I could talk to him somehow, like by cell phone. And I said the fence posts were racing by and he said no, they were standing still. Wouldn't that be a stupid thing to argue about? But we do that all the time, argue with each other about what things are or what we think we see, and maybe that's the problem all along. Like we're not standing in the same place, or at least we're not moving at the same speed, so maybe it's all about perspective. I'm probably not explaining it right at all. I just decided that life was like a farmer standing in a field and a kid racing down the road on a Kawasaki, arguing about whether the fence posts are rushing by or standing still. Each thinking the other is crazy or blind or both, neither willing to give up until the other sees the light.

We got off by the reservoir, which was good, because my butt hurt. I wouldn't have said so. By that time I was thinking this Zack was a pretty cool guy, but then he took off his helmet and it was back to geek city. What do you expect of a guy who just got kicked out of the Air Force? I don't know what he did wrong, but it sure wasn't refusing to cut his hair. It was, like, a quarter-inch long, with little ridges where the helmet had squashed it down, and his face was sort of shiny. If he hadn't
been six foot four, he wouldn't have looked much older than me.

Actually, I think he was only about ten years older than me, which made him about the same age as Kiki. That was the age of the three kids in our family: twenty-three, thirteen, and three. Mom used to say, “Yeah, well, once every ten years whether I need one or not.” Everybody thought that was funny. Except me.