Fixing Delilah

by Sarah Ockler

  “Maybe you’d tell me what you’re looking for?” A voice speaks from the hallway.

  I jump up from the stool, knocking it over.

  “Mom, you scared me half to death!”

  “I was hoping you’d leave this room to me and Aunt Rachel.”

  I look down at my feet, which, along with everything around them, are covered in the talcum powder I dropped when I thought my grandmother was scolding me from the great beyond.

  “I just thought—”

  “It’s all right, Delilah.” Her voice is limp and wilting after the long estate meeting. “We were planning to start on it this week, anyway.”

  I reach for the chain around my neck and hold it up to show her the heart. “I found this with the jewelry,” I say. “I wasn’t going to steal it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Cut it out.” Mom sighs. “That day at Blush was just… look, I realize that I can’t be home with you very much. I know we don’t spend time together like we used to. And I’m sorry, but you know how much time and energy my job requires. I need to be able to trust you to take care of yourself so that I can go to work to earn money and plan for our future.”

  “I know. It’s just that—”

  “No, Del, I don’t think you realize how much pressure I’m under at DKI. Corporate budgets are being cut everywhere, and we need to work even harder to keep clients and win new business. That means a lot of hours for my entire team. What kind of message does it send if I have to constantly leave the office to follow you around and make sure you aren’t getting yourself into more trouble?”

  “I’m sorry. I know. I—”

  “And you have so much to look forward to this year. Your SATs are coming up in the fall, and soon we’ll be looking at schools and filling out applications… you really need to stay on track. I know this trip isn’t the ideal place for it, but I’m hoping we can use the time to regroup. Take a break from life back home and return at the end of the summer for a fresh start. I’m willing to forgive and forget and give you that second chance, but only if you’re willing to take it.”

  She lifts my chin with her fingers, smoothing my cheek with her thumb.

  “I love you, Delilah. I just want you to be happy and safe, okay?”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s go,” she says. “Keep the necklace. It’s pretty on you.”

  “What about the mess?” I find the empty makeup pot and try to scoop some of the talcum powder back in, sending up clouds of white dust.

  “Just leave it. I’ll vacuum tomorrow.” She reaches for the light switch, waiting for me to follow her out. Maybe it has to do with being in my grandmother’s room, here among her ashes and the common things of the dead that become sacred, wanting so much for my mother to like me, to understand me, to mean what she says about me being happy and safe… I don’t want her to turn off the light. I don’t want us to go.

  “Mom?” I look at her, my hand hovering near my hip, searching for something to hold. “Well… what happened at the estate meeting, anyway?”

  She pauses for a second. Her body leans forward as if to come closer, but her feet don’t cooperate. “Nothing to worry about,” she says, sliding out of her taupe suit jacket. “Just… you know what, Del? I’m exhausted, and I still need to check my e-mail before I call it a night. We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure, Mom.” I don’t believe her any more than she believes herself, but I nod and follow her out anyway, ducking back into my room to dust off the lingering powder as she pulls Nana’s door closed with a soft click.

  Chapter fourteen

  I didn’t tell Mom about finding Nana’s prescriptions last week.

  We didn’t talk about the pills or the estate meeting or Patrick’s show or the way Aunt Rachel is pulling away from us, hiding in the basement to sort through Nana’s stuff by day, out with Megan for drinks at night.

  I didn’t tell Mom about the diary either, the entries growing more intense and personal as Stephanie falls headlong for Casey and begins to lose some of herself in the process. When I think about Patrick’s show last week, hearing him sing as if it was for me alone, I understand how easy it would be to lose yourself in the heart of another. It’s frightening. Exhilarating. An ocean with no lifeguard. Stephanie was in deep with Casey, and knowing that as I do now, seeing it written and feeling it crackle in the air around the pages as I read the words… I can never share it with my mother. It would just about kill her, the intensity of Steph’s life on the pages a sharp contrast to the cold, unchangeable reality of her death. How can anyone accept that someone once so vibrant, so alive, is never coming back? The right to read the diary is more hers than mine, but even if I thought it wouldn’t wreck her… Love? Passion? Life? Mom and I just don’t talk about such things.

  I’m so used to avoiding her now that when she knocks on my door this morning as I’m pulling on my painting clothes, it takes me a minute to remember the words to invite her in. When I do, she says she wants to talk. Needs to talk. And I wonder what I did this time.

  “Um, okay,” I say. “What’s going on?”

  Mom sits on the edge of the bed and smoothes out her robe, though it’s not wrinkled.

  “I thought we could talk about… I meant to tell you about the estate meeting,” she says. “I was so tired the other night and then it just slipped my mind.”

  “It’s cool. I kind of forgot about it, too,” I lie.

  “Apparently the town declared the house a historic point of interest last year. It’s one of the only remaining original settlement homes of its size in Vermont.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, lacing up my old sneakers. “We have to turn it into a museum or something?”

  Mom shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. Just more paperwork. They also think we can find a private buyer without listing.”

  “Oh.” I stand to look out the window. Patrick and Em wave from the backyard, ready for our painting party. “Okay. Well, we’re doing the shed today, so—”

  “Wait—there’s more,” she says. “My parents had some money saved—they were smart with their investments and still had a lot of Dad’s veteran benefits.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We won’t have any issues getting the house renovated and getting it on the market. Her funeral services are covered, too.”

  “Cool. Thanks for the update. Can I—”

  “Delilah, she also left quite a bit of money for you. For your education.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in a trust. It’s enough to cover a good chunk of your college expenses. Maybe a little extra.”

  Mom’s gaze slides to the jar of buttons on my dresser, tears gathering in her eyes.

  “But… I don’t understand, Mom. She had nothing to do with me since we left Red Falls. Why would she leave me anything?”

  She smiles, looking back to me. “I don’t know, Honeybee. I guess she wanted you to be taken care of, despite… well, despite a lot of things.”

  “But if she cared about me so much, why didn’t she try to call or write? All those years, I never heard from her. Now she’s trying to make up for it by paying for college? Who cares, Mom? You have money saved. I don’t want hers.” I rub the silver heart necklace on my collarbone, wishing I could trade all those thousands of dollars for the lost eight years between us.

  “Delilah, it was generous of her. We don’t know her motives. She’s gone. We’ll never know—”

  “I don’t remember her, Mom,” I whisper, my throat tightening. “I keep trying to see her face or to hear her voice, and I can’t.”

  Mom puts her arm around me and pulls me against her chest, but she doesn’t say anything, and soon I feel the unevenness of her breath on my hair and wish that we could just go back to Key, back to the day before Blush Cosmetics. I’ll remember to pay for the lipstick and I’ll convince her to stay home from work and disconnect the phones and we can order pizza and watch movies, jus
t the two of us. We’ll ignore Aunt Rachel’s call and we’ll never know that any of this ever happened and then we won’t have to be here now, sitting in her dead sister’s old room, wondering what the hell we’re supposed to do next.

  “All right,” Mom says, rising from the bed and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s going to be a beautiful day today, and you’ve done a lot of work already. You guys should enjoy the lake a little before the July Fourth crowd gets here. The shed can wait. Consider it a day off, okay?”

  Mom starts to move toward me, but stops midstep, distracted as if she suddenly realized she left the car running. She puts her hands in the pockets of her robe as she backs out of the doorway, our eyes locked until she turns away toward her room.

  Outside, Patrick and Emily sit with their backs against the shed in the shade, paint cans and rollers and tarps piled on the ground around them.

  “Day off,” I call out the window. “Let’s go kayaking.”

  Mom and Aunt Rachel don’t hear me as I approach the kitchen, but I hear them, bits and pieces of a whispered conversation floating to my ears.

  “Claire,” Rachel says, “instead of getting angry with me, why… talk to her about it?”

  “You know I can’t,” Mom says. “It’s way… complicated and…”

  “Because you complicated… the longer you… worse…”

  “Don’t you think…?”

  I take one more careful step down, straining to hear them through the wall of the stairwell and the chopping of Rachel’s kitchen knife against the cutting board.

  “No, I don’t,” Rachel says. Chop chop chop.

  “… bring it up here,” Mom says. “… expect me to say?”

  “… no idea,” Rachel says. “You… I didn’t agree… handled it… Casey?” Chop chop chop.

  My ears perk up at the mention of Stephanie’s boyfriend. What does he have to do with anything? Do they know where he is? I wish I could hear what they’re saying, but one more step down and they’ll see me.

  “… only sixteen,” Mom whispers. “The situation… extremely… won’t understand.”

  “… not an eight-year-old kid…” Rachel says. “Talk to her… truth.”

  I wait another minute, but there’s no more talking, just Rachel frantically chopping vegetables. I take the last step down and face them in the kitchen, both of them going as white as the curtains over the window.

  “Delilah?” Mom says, clearing her throat when the last part of my name sticks. “Are you… I thought you were going out for the day.”

  “I was upstairs getting ready. What were you guys talking about?”

  “What do you mean?” Mom looks at Rachel.

  “I heard you.”

  “Heard us what?” she asks. “We’ve been talking about things all morning.”

  “Come on, Mom. Just now. Rachel’s was trying to convince you to tell me something. What’s going on?”

  She looks at her sister again, but Rachel’s on a mission to dice up those carrots and doesn’t respond.

  “Your aunt and I were just discussing some of the details of the will,” Mom says. “I told her that I let you know about the college fund. We need to clear up a few more points with her lawyers in order to access money for the remodel and the headstone. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  I can’t connect the dots of complicated and Casey with will details and headstones, but Mom’s not going to share any more, and Rachel might as well be out drinking with Megan for all she’s contributing to this conversation.

  “Fine,” I say, grabbing an apple from the bowl on the table. “I’m going kayaking with Patrick and Em. I’ll be back before dinner.”

  “Veggie chili tonight,” Rachel says, as if her announcement deserves applause. “A favorite at Sundance.”

  “Sounds good. See you later.”

  “Delilah?” Mom calls as I reach the door. “Don’t forget to wear a lifejacket out there,” she says. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  Chapter fifteen

  “Do you guys know anything about Casey Conroy?” I ask as we walk to the dock where they rent out kayaks and paddleboats.

  “Never heard of him,” Em says. “Then again, I’m new here.”

  “I don’t think there are any Conroys in Red Falls now,” Patrick says. “I don’t recognize the name, but I could ask my dad. He’d know.”

  I tighten a blue-and-yellow life vest over my T-shirt. “No, don’t say anything to him. It’s just a name I’ve heard a few times lately. I think he knew my mom and Rachel.” I don’t tell them about the diary, the bits of conversation I picked up in the house today, or the initials carved under the bed. “You know me. Obsessive as always.”

  Patrick smiles. “Good. While you’re obsessing, we’re getting the boats.”

  As Patrick and Em untie the kayaks and drag them toward the shore, my mind drifts from Mom and Rachel to the other morning news: Nana’s trust fund. For eight years, she didn’t have a granddaughter. Yet she socked away enough cash to pay for my entire education? That’s tens of thousands of dollars. Why not leave it to the town or the forest or the National Saint Bernard Foundation instead? Was it her fault that we left Red Falls, and paying me off is her way to absolve the guilt? And what if I don’t get accepted into college? What if I decide not to go? Do I have to return the money? Will she come back from the dead and haunt me?

  And what does Casey Conroy have to do with any of this?

  This is the song that never ends… it just goes on and on my friends…

  “Delilah?” Em asks. “You coming?” She and Patrick bob on the water in their red and blue boats, waiting for me to push off and join them.

  “Sorry, guys.” I shake away all the what-ifs and grab the sides of my yellow boat, leading it off the sand and climbing in, one foot at a time. After several shaky attempts, I manage to get inside and stay upright long enough to position the paddle across my legs.

  It’s the last time I’m vertical for our entire kayaking adventure.

  “Not bad for my first time out, right?” I ask Patrick, leaning on him as I limp into Alphie’s Pie in the Sky, the pizza place around the corner from Luna’s.

  Patrick cocks an eyebrow. “You didn’t drown, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Don’t worry, Del,” Emily says, pulling out a chair for me. “It gets easier. Next time will be better.”

  Patrick laughs. “Who says there’s a next time?”

  “Hey! I’m certainly not the first person to get hurt trying this, am I?”

  “No,” Patrick says. “People get hurt kayaking all the time. They aren’t ready for the roll and get water up their noses. They drop the boat on their toes carrying it up to shore. They overextend their shoulders paddling too hard. But in all my years of living on this lake, every single summer for my entire life, I have never seen someone come away with a knee injury caused by the water, twenty feet away from any kayaks, docks, or people.”

  “The waves knocked me down!” I say. “I didn’t see it coming. I totally could’ve drowned. Emily? Back me up here.”

  Em smiles. “Del, you were only in up to your shins. I honestly don’t know how you wiped out.”

  “And you managed to dump yourself out of the boat about, well, eleven times,” Patrick says, setting a Coke in front of me. “Not that I’m counting.”

  “I was testing my balance.”

  “You failed!” Em and Patrick say together, laughing as I prop my leg up on a chair.

  The three of us share a cheese pizza and a large Greek salad, and even though my knee is throbbing, I keep laughing, keep encouraging the jokes as we recap our day, because being the star of the punch line is the only thing that keeps me from being swallowed up by the sinking realization that, without question, my mother is willfully hiding something from me. Something about me. Something major.

  And Rachel knows about it, too.

  “What happened to your knee?” Mom asks as I limp through the sid
e door with Patrick and Emily.

  “Just a scrape.” I grab some peanut butter granola bars for dessert, inspecting the army of porcelain figurines lined up on the kitchen table, flanked by the dolls from Nana’s dresser.

  “What’s all this?” I ask.

  “We had an appraiser come in,” Rachel says. “He agreed that we should try to sell the house furnished so we don’t have to sell the furniture individually. Most of this other stuff will go at the estate sale, but there was one surprise in the lot. We can take it to auction if we don’t find a private buyer.” She holds up a blue-and-white china creamer in the shape of a cow.

  Patrick moos.

  “This hideous thing is early seventeen hundreds blue Delft china from Holland,” Rachel says.

  Em picks up the cow for a closer look. “She’s not that hideous,” she says. “I think she’s kind of cute.”

  “Yeah, so does the appraiser,” Rachel says. “Four thousand dollars kind of cute, hiding in the basement in a box of Christmas ornaments.”

  “Four grand?” Em sets the cow back on the table, far away from the edge.

  I open the trash can to toss out my granola bar wrapper and spot the bottles from Nana’s dresser, see-through orange, tipped into the trash with the organic eggshells and coffee grounds.

  “You went through Nana’s entire bedroom today?” I ask.

  “Most of it,” Mom says, wiping down the kitchen counter with a velocity the average household germ would never see coming. “I left the books and jewelry if you want to look through them. Nothing really valuable up there, though.” The dolls on the table look offended, but like everyone else in this family, they don’t say anything. And as I let the trash can lid slap closed over the pill bottles, neither do I.

  Later, after Patrick and Emily leave and Rachel walks to Crasner’s for more fruit, I pour two glasses of iced hibiscus tea and sit next to Mom on the porch, rocking the swing with my foot.

  “Did you have fun on the lake today?” she asks, taking a sip from her glass.