Tell Me Something Real Page 20

  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.

  She made a choice, conscious or not, to not love us. Not enough, anyway. Not in a way that is real and true.

  I know she is wrong. I know I’m worthy, as is Adrienne, as is Marie, as is Dad. We deserve to be loved. In the haze of crazy lies, I don’t doubt that.

  And here is this boy, who acts like he spent his life with a map and I’m the buried treasure.

  “You make it hurt less, too.” I rest my head on his shoulder and he traces the indentation of my spine with his fingers, hopping over vertebrae like a car on speed bumps. I need him on a cellular level. When he kisses me, I swallow my grief. I speak with my body, the only language I truly understand.

  He leans back so he can see my full face. “I’m never leaving you again. I swear.”

  A battered VW bus whizzes past, and I watch as it grows small in the distance. We are a couple of blocks from Mrs. Albright’s house.

  “I got into two of the conservatories,” I say. “They need to know my decision by next week. I’m going.”

  He runs his hand through his short hair. “You know what Kerouac wrote,” he says with a half smile.

  “I don’t have a clue what Kerouac wrote beyond what you wrote in your book.”

  “It’s from On the Road. ‘Nothing behind me. Everything ahead of me.’ ”

  “Everything is behind me,” I say. “Everything.”

  He inches closer and slips his hand around my waist, pressing his palm against the small of my back. The idea of restricting our time to the academic calendar, to only seeing each other on holidays, makes my stomach clench. We already lived in segments, time organized by Laetrile cycles and clinic trips. To recovering from infusions and seizing sudden bursts of energy. I rest my head on his shoulder, comforted by the knowledge that we can be together no matter what the circumstances. School isn’t the clinic. We don’t have doctors and needles keeping us apart.

  “So, your dad’s okay with you going?”

  Dad made it clear in so many words: No. Sorry. You can’t go. What would your sisters do without you?

  I stare at the asphalt, at the freshly painted yellow line in the middle of the street. “He told me I couldn’t transfer, but I know he won’t stop me. I just have to convince him,” I say.

  “How about Adrienne?” he asks.

  I laugh. “I think she wants to kill me in my sleep.”

  “So that’s why she’s so icy. I thought it was me.

  “Which ones did you get into? The San Francisco one?” he asks. “Kerouac used to live i
n San Francisco. I’ll go with you. Remember, I turn eighteen next month.”

  “They didn’t accept me. The famous one in LA did. Then there’s one in San Clemente.”

  “We just drove through there and it’s not even an hour away. You can come home every weekend. That sounds easy. Do you like it?”

  I remember the holiday concert at the San Clemente Conservatory last year, the villa-style building, the bubbling fountain painted in the same hues as peacock feathers. Their orchestra blew me away, playing with fervor, each seat filled with a passionate student. It was on the bus ride home that Mrs. Albright told me I belonged at a conservatory, and when I picture going away, it’s their auditorium I imagine, their music.

  I nod. “Yeah, it’s amazing.”

  He eliminates the space between us. “Remember what we talked about when I first stayed with you, how you were yourself when you played? That it was pure?”

  I almost feel the keys beneath my fingers. “Of course.”

  “I’m not surprised you got in. I’m really happy for you. My mom promised me a car, a Remission Car. I’ll drive you back and forth on weekends. Let’s check it out tomorrow. We’ll time it.”

  I kiss his shoulder, the knot of muscle left over from years of playing water polo. A swimmer’s shoulder. “I forgot how bossy you are.”

  “So are we taking a road trip tomorrow? ’Cause you can’t ditch me,” he says, smiling, trying to get me to do the same. He climbs onto the board and holds out his hand.

  “Move forward,” I say. “I’m going to lead.”

  I circle his waist with my arms, holding tight as I steer us home.

  Caleb and I follow the coastline north, whipping past the long stretches of sand, and when we approach the crab shack and pier, I look inland, away from the water and into the scattered scrub brush. I don’t avert my eyes until the menacing double domes of the nuclear power plant come into view.

  Last night, after dinner, we lounged on the couch and watched The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. Two hours of mindless comfort with Caleb’s hand in mine. We took up half the couch, with Adrienne and Marie claiming the other. Even if Adrienne embodied the Ice Queen, sitting as far away as possible, she occupied the same room without hurling wince-inducing one-liners.

  As we drive, I lean against him and hear the steady beat of his heart. Just by listening to the basic functions of his body—his breath filling and leaving his lungs, his heart pumping blood through his veins, and his muscles constricting and contracting with movement—I know I’ll push through the grief. I’ll never get over it, but for the first time, I have an idea of what my life could be. I only wish that Adrienne could be happy for me despite my act of treason.

  Quietly, we cruise up the highway until I spot the buildings nestled high on the hill.

  “Fifty-one minutes,” he says. “That’s nothing.”

  We can’t go inside, not on a Saturday. Dad, with his love of large picture windows, might as well have designed the campus. On the field trip, we were restricted to the orchestra hall, but now as we stroll around the grounds, I pause at the practice rooms, peering through the tinted glass into the closet-size spaces. Perfectly contained. The refuge I’ve been seeking. I turn around to check out the view of the ocean, something I would see every day.

  “Isn’t this what you want?” he asks.

  I tug his shirt, bringing him closer. “Yes, and you.”

  “Fifty-one short minutes away. You realize that’s half the time it took us to get to the clinic. And we won’t have to deal with the border traffic.”

  Or guards. Or Mom.

  “After you get your GED, you should go into real estate.” Sound spills from the edge of campus—voices and music. “Must be the dorms,” I say, suddenly feeling more like an intruder than a prospective student.

  “Come on,” Caleb says as he keeps walking. Then, looking back over his shoulder, “Don’t you want to see? You don’t have to talk to anyone.”

  Around the corner, a small circle of kids lounge on the lawn. A girl I recognize from music camp strums a guitar. Not someone I hung out with, but a familiar face, even though I can’t remember her name. D something. Donna or Dorothy or Denise. She doesn’t look up; it’s a relief that I don’t have to explain my presence.

  The low two-story building lacks the large picture windows, but it looks comfortable enough. It hits me then—really hits me—how I’d spend nights away from home. I would escape the memories of Mom, but in doing so, I would leave my sisters behind. I would be away from Marie, who climbs into my bed after a nightmare. And Adrienne, who lets me do the same.

  A new layer of grief washes over me. This is where I need to be. This school. These buildings. But in leaving, I’ll lose them. Not completely. Not like Mom. But it will never be the same again. In letting Mom go, I’m letting them go too. It’s the choice I have to make, but it splits me in two. This will be my new home, but now, this minute, I need to go back and be with my sisters. I need to look at them from head to toe, take them in, and know that even though I’ll move away, we’ll stay connected.

  “Come on,” I say to Caleb. A nearby kiosk displays brightly colored posters announcing concerts across the state and travel abroad opportunities. Summers in Florence. Semesters in London. He doesn’t move, preferring to be a voyeur. “Caleb, I want to go home now.”

  Confused, he turns around. “But we just got here.”

  The Suburban hulks in the parking lot, so big it almost takes up two spaces. My eyes move from the car to him. “I’ve seen enough.”

  He joins me at the kiosk. “What’s going on? Does this mean you don’t want to go here? Look at this place.”

  I close my eyes and collect my thoughts, sort out all of my conflicting feelings, the excitement and the fear. Mostly the guilt. “No—I want to be here, but I don’t know how to leave. What if I lose Adrienne by coming?”

  He steps closer but stops shy of touching me. “You deserve a place like this, you know, for your music. I want this for you. Adrienne will too. She just can’t see it now. I swear I’ll be here every Friday to bring you back home.”

  “I know,” I whisper. “But I’m so worried about my sisters.”

  He pulls me closer, my own private cocoon. “You dad can handle things. Adrienne will come around.”

  “You can’t say that about Adrienne,” I say. I take a final look at the campus, picturing myself as a student, sitting alone before the piano, practicing for hours while gazing at the ocean. Alone in so many ways, but maybe that is a necessity, a requirement. My price.

  Sixteen

  I flatten my feet against the floor in the hope of feeling some sort of foundation. My fingers curl inward, strong fists, and I bang them against my knees. I see the movement but don’t feel the pressure on my skin, much less in my muscles. I want to turn everything off: the light, the sound, and the merry-go-round that has become my mind.

  I play the message again.

  You have a collect call from Buena Vista Hospital. Then, in the background, Vanessa! Pick up the phone, sweetheart. Vanessa! Vanessa! Click.

  The front door opens and Dad rushes into the kitchen, the color draining from his face.

  “Play it again,” he says.

  As soon as it ends, he walks to the wall and unplugs the machine.

  “What are you doing?”

  “She tried to contact you,” he says, ears and cheeks scarlet. “This is harassment. Between this and the fact that she took a blood sample from Marie, we might be able to extend her ninety-day commitment. This could be enough. Hopefully for a restraining order, too.”

  “Dad,” I say. “You have to let me transfer. You have to let me go.”

  “This is about more than music,” he says.

  I nod. “You said you wanted to protect us. This is how you can protect me. I know she can’t get out tomorrow, but she could get out in a couple of months.” I can’t jump whenever the phone rings, feeling like Mom is reaching for me through
the telephone wires, from photos, from memories. He must understand that.

  He places the answering machine on the kitchen table. “That’s what I’m trying to prevent.”

  “I know, Dad, but even if you win in court, it’s not like she’s going to be locked up for years.”

  He waves to the empty chair across from him. “The lawyer says I have a good chance of keeping her committed until Marie is older. This is Munchausen by proxy now. There are criminal implications.” He taps the machine. “This will make a difference. I’m sorry it happened, but it could change everything. She’s a danger to herself. We need to prove she’s a danger to others.”

  “She’s a danger to me now,” I whisper. “You promised you’d do anything for us.”

  I stare at his hand, at the faint white scar on his knuckle from punching the window. When I look up, he nods.

  “Do you remember when Marie said you were next to have a blood sample?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s not something I’ll ever forget.”

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t want to keep it from you, and it’s the reason why I’m going to say yes to the conservatory. You’ve seen her now. You know what she’s like. When I first admitted her and she spent days screaming, she was screaming for you. She said that you took care of her. She was fixated on you and Caleb. She said you understood illness. She said that you might have cancer. She tested Marie, but she was focused on you.”

  We lock eyes. “I worry about your sisters, but with your mother, I worry about you the most. She was attached to you in a way she wasn’t attached to your sisters—even Marie. I thought if Caleb came back, things could get back to normal and you’d begin to have a sense of peace. I was wrong.”

  A combination of sickness and relief washes over me. My stomach seizes and my head clears. For once, Mom spoke the truth. Within the framework of cancer, I thought I knew what she needed: the right pillow, the right pill, the right song, the right food. Clairvoyant in so many ways, yet not in the way it mattered. I refuse to be her medicine now.