“Hmmm. I guess the two-way switch was on,” she says, reaching over and turning off the monitor.
“I guess.”
Nikki sighs. “Not that you need to hear any sad stories right now, but . . . we thought we were getting a baby. Adopting. This is all Penny’s doing,” she says, indicating the room with a wide sweep of her arm. “Everything was set and then, at the last minute, things changed and there was no baby. Just the room. Whatever you heard through the monitor . . . that’s what it was about.”
“It’s okay,” I say, not that anything will ever be okay again. It’s just something to say.
“Come have some breakfast.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Just try,” Nikki says. “You should at least eat a little something.”
I follow her out to the kitchen and Penny hands me a plate with toast and fruit. I take a bite of banana but it turns dry and sawdusty in my mouth and I can barely swallow it. I sit at the table, moving fruit around on the plate, tearing the toast into small pieces, staring at the mess I’m making while Nikki bustles around doing morning stuff—feeding the cat, emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash.
“Do you want to come sit outside with us for a little while?”
I shake my head.
“Well . . . We’ve got to do a bit of gardening. It won’t take long.
Then I’ll take you to the sheriff’s station. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“It’s nice outside,” Nikki says, pulling on her gardening gloves. “Sure you don’t want to come out?”
Again, I shake my head.
“Well . . . at least try to eat a little more breakfast,” she says, walking out the back door.
I go back to the bedroom and get my cell phone out of my gym bag. There are two messages from Danni, frantic, saying she’s heard what happened and doesn’t know where to find me. Then there are three more from her just saying to call. There’s one from Jason, in Iowa, saying he heard about the accident, saying he’ll call again later. Then there’s an old message from Dad from two days ago.
“Hey, Kid. I’m bringing home pizza. What kind do you want? Call me, otherwise I’ll assume you want pineapple.” He gives his maniacal laugh. “Only kidding,” he says.
I play the message over and over, wondering how it’s possible that I will never again hear his voice, or that laugh, except on an old phone message.
I call Danni and as soon as I hear her voice I start crying.
“Autumn!”
I can tell she’s crying, too.
“I can’t believe it!” she says.
“It’s so . . . so . . . ” I can’t finish the sentence for crying.
“Where are you? I’ve been calling everywhere trying to find you.”
“I stayed with Nikki last night.”
“It’s so bizarre,” Danni says. “We were all at Barb ’n Edie’s and these guys in the booth behind us were talking about some horrible accident down on Live Oak. The conversation with Krystal and Stacy was getting sort of boring and I started listening to what the guys behind us were saying . . . I can’t believe . . .”
Danni takes a deep breath, like she’s trying to keep from crying again.
“. . . I was just half-listening, thinking about maybe eating your garbageburger, or half of it anyway, because you were so late, and I heard this one guy say how he saw this awful accident on his way home from work—a big gravel truck hit a little car—I wasn’t paying that much attention but then . . . then . . .”
She pauses for another long breath.
“Then he says this big yellow dog came flying through the front windshield and it landed on the street right in front of him and it had one of those special blind dog collars on and . . . I got so scared! I started yelling at him about what color was the car and who was in it and . . . and . . . I knew who it was. I tried to find you everywhere . . .”
“They wouldn’t let me come home. They wanted to take me to some foster home place.”
“You should have called me,” Danni says.
“God, Danni. I couldn’t think what to do—I still can’t.”
“I’ll come get you right now. I know Mom’ll let me borrow the car. She’s really worried about you. Everybody is.”
“I’ve got to go to the sheriff’s station pretty soon. Nikki’s taking me.”
“I’ll meet you there . . . I can’t believe any of this . . .”
“Me, either,” I manage to gasp out.
I shut off my phone and lie back on the bed, pulling the pink comforter up over me. How can this be? Please let it be just a dream I’ll soon wake up from. A dream to tell at breakfast. I try to go back to sleep, so I can wake up at home, so the nightmare will be over. It doesn’t work.
On our way to the Hamilton Heights Sheriff’s Department, Nikki starts talking about volleyball, and how proud she is of our team, how we’ve got a good chance for State this year, how this will bring in even better scholarship offers for seniors, etc., etc. Maybe she’s trying to make me feel better. You know. Like take my mind off things? Or maybe she’s just uncomfortable with the silence. It’s not like I can think of anything to say.
When she runs out of volleyball talk she starts in on the adoption screw-up.
“It’s not easy for two women, you know, like me and Penny, to get approved for adoption. But we did all of the right stuff, had our lives looked at under a microscope for the home study, did biographies and turned over all of our tax information and financial stuff—three years of jumping through hoops. When we were finally approved we advertised on the Internet and got an interview with this birthmother who seemed perfect—three months pregnant, healthy, smart, all the right stuff. We ran it past our adoption counselor and everything seemed to check out.
“We flew to Phoenix to meet the mother in person. The reason she was giving up her baby was because she was a single mom with two other kids and she was very strapped financially. We visited with her in her apartment, which was tiny and not in a great neighborhood, but it was neat and clean. We took her and her kids to the park. We talked with the mom while the kids climbed play structures and went down the slides. They were great little kids! We could picture ourselves with a kid like that. The mom, Sherry, liked how we were with her kids. We decided we were a match.
“Sherry showed us a prescription from her ob-gyn that she couldn’t afford to get refilled. She was also supposed to be taking certain prenatal vitamins that she hadn’t been able to buy yet. We left her with $200 for medicines and vitamins. The minute we got home, we contacted our adoption counselor, signed pre-agreements, and spent the next six months planning for a baby.
“The month after our visit, Sherry called, crying, saying they were about to be evicted because she was behind three months in her rent. We dipped into our savings to pay her back rent of $3,000 and then sent her money to pay her rent through the rest of her pregnancy.
“The baby was due September 13. We knew it was going to be a girl and, as you may have noticed. Penny went crazy with pink. Around the first of September, we heard the baby was going to be a week late. Then it was going to be two weeks late. When we finally started checking things out, we found that it was all a scam. The woman hadn’t even been pregnant. We’d been duped.”
When Nikki’s finished with that story, she starts talking about how things were when she was in high school. By the time we get to the sheriff’s station. I’ve heard her whole high school career. Every detail. Before we get out of the car she reaches over and smooths my hair, leaving her hand resting at the base of my neck.
“I’m sorry, Autumn. I’ve just been filling space with words because I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t know what to say, either,” I tell her. “I just . . . I can’t believe they’re gone . . .”
Tears start again and Nikki reaches into her glove compartment for a stack of Starbuck’s napkins.
It’s funny. Not funny LOL but funny strange. I remember t
hat night in the gym, getting the news. I remember everything the sheriffs said, and where they stood, and spending the night at Coach Nicholson’s. I remember how her car smelled like volleyballs and nets and girl-sweat. I remember the tabby cat, and sunlight filtered through pink curtains, the too-dry-to-swallow banana, and everything Nikki said in her nervous monologue on the way to the sheriff’s station.
I remember walking through the door at the sheriff’s station, and Danni and her mom waiting there for me. They rushed to me and put their arms around me and we stood there hugging and crying until a sheriff came to get me. This was someone different from the night before, a woman named Erin Stroud, from the juvenile division.
Only one person could stay with me during “processing,” so Carole stayed and Danni left with Coach Nicholson.
We were taken back to a small room with a desk and a few chairs. Sheriff Stroud sat behind the desk and Carole and I sat side by side across from her. Carole kept a tight grip on my hand, the way she used to when we were little and she’d have me on one side and Danni on the other, walking us across the street to the park.
I remember Sheriff Stroud handing me a plastic bag with my dad’s wallet, and the “contents of his pockets,” and my grandma’s purse. I had to go through all of the items and sign a receipt for them.
Gram’s purse was super neat, with all kinds of compartments where she could keep her dollars separated, ones in the highest compartment, then fives, tens and twenties. She never carries anything bigger than twenties. Carried. She never carried anything bigger than twenties. There were six ones and two fives and seventy-seven cents in change.
Her talking key chain was attached to an inside key ring and her tin of breath mints was tucked next to her house keys in an outside pocket. I signed the receipt that itemized all that was in Grams’ purse, then looked through Dad’s stuff. There was $86 in his wallet, plus his driver’s license, two credit cards, a picture of me and Mom before she got sick, a picture of me in my volleyball uniform, and a news clipping about last Saturday’s game that mentioned me as one of the star players.
From Dad’s pockets there was some change—a nickel, two dimes, and six quarters. He always keeps quarters for parking meters. Kept. He always kept quarters for parking meters. Grams never carried any bills higher than a twenty. Kept. Carried. Kept. Carried. The words marched through my head in huge, black, block letters. Kept—Carried—pounded against the back of my eyes and pushed at the top of my head, banging, whirling, until I was so dizzy with kept and carried that I couldn’t see the quarters, or the wallet, or anything else on the table in front of me. Then, slowly, the letters lost their shape and ran together. Black became gray and substance became mist, filling my head with a cold, dense, murky fog.
I have no clear memory of anything that happened for more than a month after the fog came in—came in and stayed.
Chapter
6
One day at lunch, a tiny crack opens in the curtain of fog. I’m at our regular table with Danni and a bunch of other volleyball players.
Over the noise of the lunchroom, Shannon yells, “Hey, listen to this!”
Somehow, that gets my attention. Then Shannon tells this lame joke about a girl who brings her boyfriend home to meet her parents. The guy’s all tattooed and pierced and the mom takes the girl aside and tells her she’s worried that the boyfriend doesn’t seem like a very nice boy.
The girl says, “Oh, puh-lease. Mother! If he wasn’t nice, why would he be doing five hundred hours of community service?”
Lame as it is, I follow. I get it. I smile.
“Hey, look! Autumn’s smiling!” Krystal says.
They all look at me as if I’ve maybe just grown another head. Then they start clapping. I can feel the smile muscles working, breaking through the numb slackness of all these past weeks.
In Government, I actually pay attention to what the teacher is saying. I even take a few notes. English, too.
That evening, standing in the kitchen talking with her mom, Danni tells how I’d smiled at Shannon’s joke. Carole stops stirring the spaghetti sauce and turns toward us.
“She smiled?” Carole says.
“She smiled!” Danni says.
“You smiled?”
“I guess I did,” I say, smiling.
Carole reaches out, taking each of us by a hand and bowing her head.
“Dear Lord, thank you for answering our prayers, and bringing sweet Autumn back to us. Give her the strength to get through this most difficult time, and guide us all to do thy will. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
“Amen,” Danni echoes.”
I say “Amen” too, because I know I’m supposed to. Just like I know I’m supposed to bow my head when Danni’s father, Donald, says grace at dinner. I don’t know what it means exactly. I just do it to be polite.
During those weeks when I was lost in the fog, everyone says I seemed sort of okay—kind of distant, not so talkative, but . . . okay. All I know about that time is what people tell me. Danni’s been filling in the blanks. She told me that when the sheriff said I had to go to the county home until a foster placement could be found, her mom threw a fit. I don’t know the details, just that Carole and Donald had to go through the hassle of getting an emergency foster care license so I could stay with their family. Otherwise I’d have been sent to live with strangers.
The week after the accident, Danni and her mom had helped me finish packing all of our stuff—Dad’s, Gram’s, even Casper’s papers and extra harness. Everything. We . . . I. . . had to be out of our old house within a week of the funeral. Because the escrow papers never got signed, there was no new house to go to. So besides being a total orphan, I’m also homeless. Not only that, I’m destitute. My dad had a small insurance policy for me, plus there was money for the down payment on the house, and a savings account. Not a lot, but probably enough for at least a year of college. But it’s all being held in a special account that I can’t get to until I’m eighteen.
Except for my clothes, my dad’s wallet, and my grandma’s purse, everything from my old life is in storage now. That’s how I feel, too. Like I’m in some kind of dark, locked-up storage place, packed away from life.
People tell me that I didn’t even cry at the funeral—that I talked to everyone and thanked them for coming. Jason’s dad organized a big celebration at their house.
“A celebration? Dad and Grams are dead and he wanted to celebrate???”
“No. No,” Danni rushed to explain. “Celebrate their lives—not their deaths. You know, remember all of the good stuff and the funny stuff—sort of a really, really, totally sweet goodbye party.”
She said people from Dad’s work brought tons of food. They all talked about what a great guy my dad was, and how he’d help anyone in trouble.
“You know how your dad used to always tell us to be part of the solution, never part of the problem?” Danni asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well. I guess he did that with everyone at his work, too, because at least five people who worked for him mentioned how he’d helped them be part of the solution when all they could see were problems.”
She said later in the afternoon someone told a funny story about Dad, which got other people started on funny stories, and pretty soon it seemed more like a comedy show than a funeral. She told me that I even talked about how Dad and Grams and I always reported our dreams, and about Dad’s pancakes. I guess I led a bunch of people in the yellow submarine song. I don’t remember any of that.
Casper and Grams’ trainer, Wayne, drove all the way down from the guide dog center. He said what a great match Casper and Grams made, and he also talked about what great potential I showed when I did my internship there. I wish I could at least remember that part.
The night after I started remembering, and after Danni told me about the funeral, or celebration, or goodbye party, or whatever, Carole came into the kitchen where Danni and I were at the table, doing our
homework. Well . . . we were sort of doing our homework. I’d been in such a fog, for such a long time that nothing on my assignment page made sense. As for Danni, she always only sort of did her homework.
Carole pulled a chair up next to me.
“I don’t know if now is the time to give this to you, but . . . it was such a nice . . . celebration, and you don’t remember, and . . . I thought . . .”
She put a dark green photo album down on the table in front of me.
“I’ve been saving this for you, for when you’d start remembering. But you don’t have to look at it right now. Just put it away for another time if you want.”
I opened the album to the first picture—a group shot of a bunch of Dad’s friends, and all of the Hopkins family, and Jason and his family, and Casper’s trainer, and me. We’re standing in front of a big banner that says “IN CELEBRATION OF THE LIVES OF TIMOTHY GRANT, AND MARTHA GRANT, AND CASPER.”
The following pages are snapshots of people talking in small groups, or gathered around a table full of food. There are flowers everywhere.
In every picture I’m standing close to someone who has an arm around me. In the group picture, it’s Casper’s trainer. Near the food, it’s Carole and Donald. Outside at the door, it’s Jason’s mom and dad.
The next to last picture is of Grams and Casper at their graduation from the Guide Dogs for the Blind place. The last picture is of Dad, leaning against our yellow submarine mailbox, wearing a sea captain’s cap.
When I finished looking through the pictures I started over again, this time remembering some of the things people said about Dad, and Grams, and Casper. When I started through for the third time, Carole eased the book from my hands.
“I’m sorry . . . I thought . . .”
“No. Thank you. Thank you,” I said, wiping tears from my eyes. “I want to remember. It’s just . . . I miss them so much . . .”
Carole sat close to me, rubbing my back, until my tears were all used up.
Since the funeral, I’ve gone to school every day. We just got preliminary progress reports, though, and my grades are in the pits. I guess I’ve just been sitting zombie-like in class, not doing any homework, or participating in discussions—just sitting.
No More Sad Goodbyes Page 5