Very in Pieces (28 page)

She looks past me at him, and her posture softens. She nods and tugs on the feather boa.

Of course.
Of course.

I was so sure it was Dominic—so wrapped up in that drama—that I missed it.

I keep walking, slowly, until I'm right up beside her. “I thought—” I began. “I thought you didn't care. I thought—”

She shifts the weight of her bag on her shoulders.

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“About what?”

“That it was you, I mean. Why didn't you let anyone know?”

“I didn't want anyone to know. It was between me and Nonnie.”

“Why did you do it?”

Her body tightens again. She leans on the long pipe and it seems to be holding her up like a shepherd's staff. “For Nonnie. It's what I needed to do. It's like it's a part of me, to give to her, and if I don't take care of it—” She stops herself as if she's afraid she's revealed too much. She turns her back to me.

Dominic moves up so he is standing by my side. “Come on, Very.” He puts his hand on my upper arm.

“Ramona, please let's just go home.” She bends over and picks up another small piece of metal and drops it into her pack. I don't think there is any chance we will get her to leave, and so I turn to go with Dominic.

“Okay. We can go home.” Her voice is soft. I hear her put down the pipe and she follows us to the car.

She crawls across the backseat to the driver's side, leaving the front passenger seat of his two-door tilted forward. It is almost an invitation—the only one she's given me recently—so I climb in back with her.

Ramona's hip digs into mine as every slight bounce seems to jostle her.

When we turn onto School Street, “Veronica” comes on the radio.

After the first verse, Ramona turns to look at me. “This is a crappy song.”

“Yeah,” I agree.

“To be named after, I mean,” she clarifies.

Dominic's eyes lock with mine in the rearview mirror. “It's not so bad,” he says.

“It's better than being named after a children's book character.”

“You're not named after that Ramona,” I say.

She picks at dirt I can't see on the back of Dominic's seat. “Yes,” she insists. “You named me after the books. Mom says.”

I shake my head. I hadn't even been a fan of Ramona—always getting in trouble; I found her bratty. I definitely related more to older sister Beezus. I wanted to name Ramona Charlie, after a boy in my swim lessons, but then she was born a girl. “Dad named you after the Ramones,” I tell her.

She frowns.

“Think about it,” I tell her. “I was only two when you were born. I wasn't reading Beverly Cleary yet.”

“Whatever.” She stares out the window at students kicking a soccer ball back and forth as part of gym class. I can see Adam Millstein, with his Ronald McDonald hair. Ramona doesn't seem to see anything.

iv.

Ramona practically climbs over me to get out of the car. Her feather boa falls off. I pick it up off the ground, as Dominic gets out of the car. He walks around and tucks his head into the backseat, then extends his hand to help me out. Once I'm standing, he doesn't let go, so I tug my hand free. “I should go,” I say. “I need to get back to Ramona. I'm going to take her home.”

“Of course.”

I look over my shoulder and see her sitting in my car. The top is down, and the wind dances her hair around her head. “She looks like a fairy. Not that I ever believed in them. She did. Not me.”

“Well, they aren't real. You can't fault yourself for not believing in them.”

“I could've pretended.”

“She'll be all right.”

“Ms. Pickering told me I should bring her to the school psychologist. Maybe.” I shake my head. “I guess maybe I should.” Then I laugh. “And maybe I should go, too.”

“Maybe,” he says.

A crow circles above us, then lands on the power line. Immediately after another joins it.

“Dominic, I'm—”

“Sorry. I know. You said that. Several times.”

“I lied to you the other night. You're right. It was easier than the truth.”

“What is the truth, then? Tell me the truth of your lie.”

“Maybe someday—” I twist Ramona's feather boa in my hands. One of the pink feathers slips out and twists toward the ground. Dominic bends gracefully and catches it in his hand.

“I don't operate in somedays, Very.”

He turns his head and looks across the parking lot. I turn in the opposite direction, toward the school. So we stand there like birds on a wire, staring away.

He speaks first: “Here's what it comes down to: I like you. A lot. Neither of us knows what's going to happen, so you just have to make the best of every moment, and for me the best possible moment is with you.” As he speaks, he rolls the base of the pink feather between his fingers. “I don't want to be that guy, you know, pestering you after you said no, but I guess part of me still thinks I have a shot.”

The first crow caws and a third crow joins them. They balance on the power line as it sways in the breeze. Do they feel unsteady up there? Or have they gotten used to life on that slack line?

“Why do you use that smile?” I ask. “The fake wolfish one?”

His eyes look up from beneath the blue-veined lids. I think for a moment that he's going to deny it, maybe even flashing the wolf smile while he does so. “I guess you're not the only one trying to write a story about yourself.”

“It's not a good story,” I tell him.

“It's not.”

“None of your stories are. The one about your dad. Your
mom. But you, actual you . . . Hope is the thing with feathers, right?”

“I guess.”

I unfold his hand, where the pink feather is now lying matted and crushed. “Hope,” I say.

“Veronica Woodruff, did you just use literary symbolism?”

“I'm not entirely sure. And it's not a promise.”

“I know. It's hope.”

I watch his feet walk away from me. Sand falls out of the treads of his Doc Martens in faint footprints. His car door opens. Shuts. The car starts. I could wave my hand, and he would stop. He'd throw open the door and I could run across the parking lot and jump into the warm, sweet-smelling car. We could drive away without looking back.

I don't, of course. I know I have to take Ramona home.

v.

We don't talk the whole drive. We are each waiting for the other to do something. Ramona waits for me to question her; I wait for her to make a confession. I feel her glancing at me, a shift of the head, and then a shift right back. And I peek at her, too. But neither of us manages to say anything.

I park the car right in front of the sculpture, we both sit still for a moment, staring at it. I leave my hands on the steering wheel and look at the instruments below, as if the odometer
could tell me not only my distance but also how to talk to my sister. Instead I hear the click of her unbuckling her seat belt.

“Thanks for the ride,” she mumbles.

“No problem.”

She stares out the window. The air between us is growing warm, stale. I want to tell her that I understand, even though I don't, and that I'm there to help.

“I'm going to take it down,” she says.

“What? Why?”

“It's ruined now.”

“No it's not. It's beautiful,” I tell her.

“Mom doesn't like it.”

“Mom loves it.” That's the problem, although I don't tell Ramona that.

“I thought we could have, you know, something nice here. I thought it would make us happy.” I notice then that she is crying. She wipes at a tear with her wrist.

“It did make us happy.”

Her hand is still on the door handle. Dirt is packed in around her nails. Her hair, too, is greasy, and I wonder when she last showered.

I watch her go inside, and check my clock. Plenty of time to get to school and meet Mr. Tompkins. I can just drive back and stroll into the building as easily as I went out. Unless they stop me. Today isn't a day that I have class at the college, and so I have no reason to leave campus. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel. I need a good excuse, and I've been working the Nonnie
one too hard. If I go in and get my graphing calculator, then I'll have a plausible story.

I'm halfway up the stairs to my room when I hear a thud from my mom's studio.

If your mom trashes her studio, and you pretend not to hear it, does it make a sound?

I can't just leave. I want to. I want to get in my car and go back to school, find Dominic, and maybe get some French toast sticks from the cafeteria before I meet Mr. Tompkins and head to the conference. But instead I pivot and make my way to her staircase.

I hear three more thuds before I reach her studio, low and hollow.

With a deep breath, I press open the door. The studio is spotless, no trace of her outburst, not even one wayward shard of glass. She's by the window stretching canvas over a frame and hammering it in.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi, yourself,” she replies. She has nails in her mouth, pressed in her lips, but she takes them out and tucks them into the pocket of her denim painting apron. Her eyes seems clearer than they have in weeks, but they're surrounded by dark, sleepless circles. “So I'm starting again,” she says. “Again and again and again.”

“On the portraits?”

She shrugs. “Maybe I'll do something more abstract. Reinvent myself. A series on the body that shows a square of flesh or
a strand of hair, all out of context.”

“Good. I'm happy for you.”

“Don't be. It's not like I have a choice. We begin again. That's what we do. Over and over, even though we know it's going to be another disappointment. Boats against the current and all that.”

“It doesn't have to end the same way.”

“That's what your grandmother always said, and look how it wound up for her. She made something new, and it disappointed her even more than her first life.”

“She wasn't—” I stop myself, shaking my head.

“I'll paint and I'll hate them and then I'll paint again. You're lucky, you know.” She bends over to grab another canvas and I see gray streaks at the roots of her hair. I didn't even know she colored it.

“I brought Ramona home. She's sick.” My voice is flat.

“But you're leaving?”

“Yeah, I just needed to bring Ramona home. I'm going back. I have—I have this thing with Mr. Tompkins.”

“Oh, don't go down that road, Very. He's a handsome man and all, but don't go down that road.”

“I'm not.” I stop myself from lobbing an insult at her.
I'm not like you, Mom. Not like you. Not ever.
“Ramona's sick. Let her sleep.”

Mom smiles wanly.

The canvas and the wood make the studio smell more like a workshop than usual. Mom tucks some hair behind her ear.
“This weekend we're going to need to have some conversations. Family conversations.” She forces a chuckle. “Maybe you and Ramona can make dinner again.”

“I don't think so,” I say. I don't think Ramona will be up for much of anything for a while.

“We need to talk about the house, and—”

“You've already made up your mind, Mom.” Maybe it's not entirely fair to say this. If Ramona's right, Mom and Dad won't have much of a choice: they can't afford the mortgage payments. “Will Dad be there?”

She touches her fingers to her temples. “We need to talk about the house and where we're all going to be going. Dad has some ideas of his own.”

“You do what you need to, Mom—”

“Come on, Very. Enough.” Her voice cracks with exasperation.

I step farther into the room so I'm standing next to a butcher-block counter where Mom usually keeps her paints, but there are none on it. No paints or brushes. “I'm not being bratty. I've got seven months left of school, and then I'll go to college. I'll figure it all out.”

Mom shoves her hands into the pocket of her apron. “You always were our practical girl. Nonnie and I would watch you, you and Ramona, and we'd say, ‘We can run off, run back to New York City. Very will take care of it all.'”

So I guess I was Ramona's keeper all along.

“I have to go, Mom.”

“Date with Mr. Tompkins, right?”

“Mom. It's a math thing.”

She picks up another frame. “It's that math conference, right? Mathematics and You?”

“Math Around U.”

“Close,” she says. “Bet you didn't think I remembered.”

I look past her, out the window. The leaves of the oak tree wave in the wind. I catch a glimpse of Ramona sitting on the branch, and then she's gone.

Mom takes a nail from the pouch in her apron and starts pounding nails into the stretched canvas, holding it to the frame. She already has a stack of seven canvases ready to go, but her paints and brushes remain packed away.

“See you later, Mom.”

“Not if I see you first.”