Words and Their Meanings (22 page)

Daily Verse:

Fate is like a secret friend that helps push you back into life.

54

W
hen I open my eyes again, the pale rays of morning dance along the walls and floor like the long legs of a ballerina.

I stretch out, get still and coffin stiff. My eyes find a single spider thread swaying from the ceiling. I start to count seconds in my head. It takes until minute three to realize I've been pulling inhales deep, cleansing out yesterday's haze.

By minute nine, my fingers lock and reach up above my head.

By minute eleven, I'm humming Patti's song, “This is the
Girl.”

By minute fifteen, I give up and sit cross-legged on the bed. There is a note beside me. I don't have to read it to know he's gone.

55

D
ear Anna,

Sleeping on the couch sucked. It was uncomfortable, plus required me to take a cold shower and smoke an entire pack to keep from wandering back upstairs. I just want to tell you there
will always be us, okay? Read the Patti Smith book, and you'll know what I mean.

Love,

Mateo

P.S. If you aren't home by 11 a.m … .well … just go home.

I fold a crooked crane. I'd never been patient enough to learn how to make my corners crisp, my lines symmetrical. Still, it doesn't fall over when I set it on the nightstand. Or when the front door slams shut, shaking the floor from the first step all the way to the four-poster bed.

56

A
nna O'Mally, I know you're here. Best answer me on the first go-round,” Mrs. Risson calls as she walks up the steps. Her voice is soft. Even though she's yelling, it only sort of trickles to the second floor.

I hop out of bed and quickly pull the quilt up. I must have slept like the dead. There's barely a wrinkle, as if I'd been a stray sock.

“Mrs. Risson?” I answer like this is totally normal, me breaking into the museum and spending the night. I hope Mateo did the dishes before leaving.

We meet at the top of the stairs. Through her fierce hug, I touch the notches of her bony spine. Without a word she turns and walks back down and into the living room. I follow.

“How?” I ask.

“Natalie called me. My, that child has a flare for the drama. Said for reasons she could not speak of, she would not be able to come pick you up today. Made me swear on all great poets living and dead I would not call your mother, but would instead just come fetch you. A pact I did not keep, mind you,” she says, tilting her head down so she can look
me in the eyes without her glasses between us. “I'm a mother too, you know. That wasn't an option. Instead I told your mom exactly where you are. I offered to deliver you home, suggesting it might keep you from trying to run again. After speaking to your dad, she agreed, although with great hesitation.”

Mrs. Risson stands in a puddle of sunshine on scuffed wood floors. Her long black skirt, purple shirt, and multi-colored glasses take me back to my second row seat in her classroom. I am still her student, whether I want to be or not, and I plop on the couch and wait for her lecture.

But instead she sits down beside me and takes my hand. Like a friend.

“You know, when I first read your work in my class three years ago, I knew you were one of the brightest students I've ever had, probably will ever have, considering how close to retirement I am,” she says with a soft chuckle.

“There is a musicality of language that cannot be taught, Anna. And there is a perspective creative minds comprehend the world through, a lens in which all art is divined. You have such a mind. I pushed you because I believe in you.”

She pauses. I'm not dreaming, but it feels like a dream all the same.

“I flunked you last year because I still believe in you. Everyone thinks you stopped writing as a sign of your mourning. But I'm not so sure.”

I pop my head up in surprise.

“I think you were getting a lot of accolades. Also, a lot of pressure. Wanting to please people can be a terrible burden, especially when the pleasing is in direct correlation with what you produce from your mind. What I hope for you, Anna, what I've hoped for you all year, is for you to find your words. But not because you need to win awards or make people proud. Because you loved to write. It's the loving, more than the talent, that's the rarest gift.”

I finger the key re-tied around my neck. I hold tight to St. Dismas. The circle medallion warms in the center of my palm.

“Thank you for coming,” I say. My head rests on her shoulder. Her head rests back on my own.

A little while later, she goes through the house, room by room, making sure the museum feels as untouched and holy as it did before my arrival last night. When she returns, we walk together out the front door. Her key clicks the lock. I squint, feeling disoriented as cars whiz past and birds and squirrels chatter in the trees.

Everything is the same and different all at once, and I am going home.

57

W
e
moved to this house when I'd just turned thirteen and Joe was fifteen. He drove my mom's car, with me bouncing around—no seat belt—in the backseat and Mom fretting over every “rolling stop” as we traversed the three miles from our old home to our brand-spanking-new one. Joe was being such a teenager. I remember Mom complaining to Dad about this as we sat on cardboard boxes, eating pizza. He didn't like the new house because it lacked soul. Our old house was old, like built in the 1970s, she mimicked, her fingers making air quotations. Dad pulled her ponytail. He said Joe has more than enough soul for this house, that he'd fill it to the brim in no time.

It's true, because I feel it—I feel him—as I step through the front door. Mom rushes to me, grabs my face and smells my head, and with halting whispers says she loves me over and over and over again, turning me in circles to make sure I'm in one piece.

There are things I know I need to say.

But all I can do is walk up the stairs and slink into my bedroom, pushing the door shut behind me. The Bea-shaped lump at the bottom of my bed wiggles up and out from under the covers. She throws herself into my arms with the velocity of a penny thrown from the Empire State Building and wraps her spindly legs monkey-style around me.

“Don't ever go away like that again,” she sobs into my neck. “I won't hide anymore. I won't try to make time stop for us. I'll be good, and if you want me to hate Josephine Arabelle, I will. Even though she is really, really cute, Anna, with bright-red hair and big blue eyes and a kinda pointy head but our same ears. But I'll still call her Pukerella and Frog Face. I promise. Just stay.”

I cradle my sister, soothe her with shushes. Josephine with strawberry hair and blue eyes. Josephine with our elvish ears. My sister. My sisters. Bea nuzzles against me without question or expectation of a response. Buzzy's understanding of what people need is always crystal clear.

Through the door, I hear my mother's light frame leaning, then sliding, down the wall. I hear muffled whimpers. I hear all the things we don't say to each other.

And then I fall asleep again, caught in a web of sister and home and mother and loss and not knowing what will come next.

58

M
om sits on my bed, watches Bea sleep. Watches me watch her.

“It's time to let Gramps go,” she says.

Her voice shakes and I reach out my hand. She squeezes it.

“I'm glad you're here,” she whispers. I move closer to Bea so the three of us can share my double bed. Mom curls up next to me, but she doesn't start to cry. Instead she repeats, “I'm glad you're here,” like when her old turntable needle sticks and Mick Jagger croons the same line over and over and over again because Mom's favorite record,
Black and Blue
is scratched.

I lift the needle by telling her about yesterday. I tell her how I wanted Gramps to be free from pain, how I wanted to protect them from having to hope or choose. How I whispered William Stafford to Joe. I tell her about the croissant bag stinging my bloodied knuckles. About Ma
teo's cooking. I don't tell her about Nat and Joe, because I'm not sure it is my secret to share. So I talk about Adam under the bridge and how I ran away from Dad while he sat on the hospital floor, and how I slept in a real poet's room, and I just keep talking and talking until my throat is dry and Bea is stirring and my stomach is rumbling again. Mom listens to every word. I can tell because her whole body leans into the stories, the way she used to lean into my imaginary tales of tree-house villages and secret universes inside flower pet
als.

When I finish, I straighten into my coffin pose. I close my eyes and I tell her what I've locked underneath dyed hair and stolen words. I tell her I gave Joe my germs. It's my fault our family fell apart, and now I'll never be able to make it right again.

Only after she knows I have no words left does she sit up.

“Oh my love,” she says, stroking my hair. “I'm so sorry. I wish you told me a year ago. I can't believe I let you suffer like this…I can't believe I didn't see…Anna, please, listen to me. It wasn't you. He could have caught that bug anywhere.”

“Yeah.” I cringe. “Anywhere.”

“And even if it was the same flu you had, honey, even if you tried to share your germs, it wasn't your fault his body failed him. And everything—everything that happened in the aftermath, your dad and I own that. Those were choices we made. Not you. Please, baby, believe me when I say life is too short and too uncertain to let shame or guilt guide you.”

She's crying and I put my head in her lap.

“I'm glad you're here,” she says once more.

“Me too,” I say. I think I mean it.

59

M
y father lifts me off the ground in a hug to rival any straightjacket. Mom told me he drove around the city all night looking for me. Tabs of skin under his eyes fold over and over again. His thick black hair stands up in every direction. He bears the mark of new dad, and old dad, exhaustion.

“Anna Banana,” he says, squeezing me until I can't breathe. He lets go at the same speed as a blood pressure cuff. He's afraid I'll slip away.

“Congratulations, Dad.”

“Where were you? Do you have any idea how worried we were? What it was like for your mother—”

“Jack.” Mom steps in gently. She rests a hand on his arm. He looks at her a long moment, and backs off.

“I'm so glad you're okay, honey.” The tears aren't sad or scared. They're filled with joy. I can't remember the last time, or any time for that matter, my dad cried this way.

“How's the baby?” I ask.

He grins, then covers his mouth, like he did something wrong.

“It's okay, Dad,” I say, tucking short hairs behind my ear. “Um, Bea told me her name. It's beautiful.”

“I'd love you to come downstairs and meet her,” he croaks, afraid to meet my eyes.

“Now or later?”

“Later.” His tone has shifted into familiar space, like when he used to tell me I couldn't go hang at the coffee shop without getting my homework done, or that family dinner—no friends invited—was a non-negotiable.

The four of us walk down the hallway. No one says it, but the memory of one year ago shocks our bodies with varying degrees of pain and missing. I clear my throat.

“Mom,” Bea pipes up beside me as we reach the room. “Where will Gramps go when he dies?”

My parents exchange glances. My dad clears his throat. We make the same coughed-out “ahem” when we're nervous.

“Well, Bea,” Dad begins. “He'll go to heaven with God and Gran and Joe, and my parents, and—”

“No, Dad,” Bea says, wrinkling her nose. “I know he'll be with Joe and they'll watch over us, of course, because Joe is right now. I meant his body. Where will it go?”

We stop and stare at Bea. The matter-of-fact way she spoke of Joe makes the hair on my neck stand up. Leave it to Bea to know the language of stars and souls and a world not quite here.

“Uh, his body will go to the funeral home, and the funeral director will, um…” Mom pauses and looks to Dad for help.

“He'll turn Gramps into ashes, sweetheart. So we can scatter his love in all the places he held most dear.”

Bea screws up one side of her face for a minute, working out what she's just heard. Then she nods once, curiosity satisfied.

“I'm really going to miss our dates to the County Fair,” she says, turning sharp to face Mom. “He'd want you to still take me, and to ride the teacups with me, even if I do throw up every
time.”

A nurse comes in wearing purple scrubs. She has a clipboard of papers and says the doctor will be by in just a moment to go over everything. She holds her hand on the clipboard longer than necessary, so it touches my mom's, gently.

The doctor sounds a lot like the movie scripts. The information is dry. It's delivered as kindly as possible, but the words are the same, big and technical and resulting in death. We listen. Bea flies Gramps's favorite paper crane, long wings catching an invisible airstream above her head. Dad holds his father-in-law's hand. He keeps his eyes on Mom. In this moment, I love him again.

The nurse comes back with an envelope, the kind for bills or business letters. It has my name written across it, in a familiar, carefully slanted script.

“This was left for Anna?” She raises her voice into a question as she says my name.

It's rounded at the crease from something inside. Scooting to the corner of the room, I face the windows and pull out a string of wooden beads, perfectly smooth, some dark, some light. A small cross hangs in the middle. Also, a piece of paper, torn small and folded in half.

This is my grandmother's rosary. A prayer with each bead. M

The envelope floats to the floor. I hold the rosary tight.

“Maybe Bea and I should … I mean, maybe Bea and I will go to the chapel for a while,” I say.

My parents turn to each other first, without shyness or anger or uneven sadness. Mom speaks for both of them.

“Okay. But it might not be long now.”

I move to Gramps. Dad backs up, giving me room. I hear an alarm go off down the hall. Someone is being saved. Someone not named George.

Leaning my forehead against his forehead, I think of all the things I can't say, hoping he'll hear me. It feels like he does. Against the windowsill, next to the fern my father sent, Bea is shrinking. She's trying to hide and trying to be here all at once.

I grab her hand and lead her through the heavy automatic doors to the room with dark blue carpet, pale blue walls, oak benches, and a yellow cross with Jesus pinned to it. He's painted tan with white tattered clothes and bright-red blood running from his palms and feet. This Catholic hospital has a very strange version of the word “comforting.”

We sit side by side and hold hands. Bea rests against me. I move my fingers back and forth against each bead. Fifty-nine prayers. That hardly seems like enough.

“Knock, knock.”

Nat.

She's standing in the doorway of the chapel, dressed in her white button-down shirt with black button covers and matching black skirt.

“Hey.” I move over to meet her, my legs already stiff from sitting.

“Are you okay?” she asks, head lowered. “I had to come and—”

“I'm okay. It might take some time, for both of us, you know? But it will be okay. I mean that.”

Joe's paper crane is tucked in my back pocket.

“I'm so sorry.” It comes out as a whisper. Her chin trembles. She doesn't move any closer.

“I lied to you too,” I say.

She meets my eyes.

“I lied to you,” I repeat. “About the receipt.”

“I—I don't understand.”

“I found a letter Joe wrote. Not a motel receipt. I don't know why I told that story. I guess I wanted to have part of his secret for myself. But it isn't mine. So … here.”

I hold out the crumpled crane. Nat stares at the paper like it's dynamite.

“Trust me,” I say. This time, my voice falters. “You want to read this. You want to know.”

I glance away. When she takes the origami from my hand, I shed the weight of a boulder, not a folded page of Joe's story.

“Thank you,” we say at the same time.

“Do you have time to sit with us for a few minutes?” I ask, turning back toward Bea.

Nat, being Nat, knows I need to lighten the mood. She steps in and pulls my sister onto her lap and sings some Mary Poppins tunes. Bea twirls a piece of Nat's hair as she listens. I sit beside them, my fingers gliding along the rosary. The minutes tick by. Bea hops on and off our laps. She makes snow angels on the carpet.

“I have to go,” Nat announces, putting on a brave face and rolling her eyes. “There's a private party at the Bay City Yacht Club tonight. Verrrrrrryyyy fannnncccy.”

“Hey, Nat,” I hesitate. “I'm really sorry you lost him too.”

I go back to my rosary. Bead one. A prayer for my parents.

They walk in a bit later holding hands, and for a single wild second, I think we're whole again.

But then my dad lets go and Mom rushes to us and scoops Bea up and motions for me to crawl into her embrace and she cries without noise while Dad sticks his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans, unsure of where he belongs.

“It's all right, Mom. It's all right.”

Sometimes roles reverse in families. Sometimes a daughter soothes her mother. Sometimes she meets her father's eyes and communicates without words, the way grown-ups do, that she understands.