Welcome, Caller, This Is Chloe

by Coriell, Shelley

  Duncan broke to one of Frack’s PSAs.

  “That bitch,” Clem said when the On Air sign went dark.

  “But Chloe handled the whole thing pretty well,” Duncan said. “We didn’t need to use the seven-second delay.”

  Clem nodded. “True, but I’m not letting her on the air anymore. She’s psycho.”

  I didn’t argue. I didn’t know this version of the person who used to be my best friend, and I didn’t want to.

  The remainder of my Heartbeats debut remained wonderfully Brie-free, although occasionally her empty laugh found its way into my head. At those times I quickly pushed it aside. This was my world, not Brie’s.

  When I signed off the air, Duncan switched the station over to the automated programming that would run for the next twenty-one hours. I took off my headset, wrapped the cord, and put it away. I refused to look at him, even when he said, “Great show.”

  “Mmmmmm-hmmmmm.” I gathered my notes and put them in my bag.

  “I, uh, liked how you handled the guy with the poems. You made him feel comfortable and, by the end, confident.”

  “Mmmmmm-hmmmmm.” See, I could do this. I could work with Duncan and not let my bruised heart get in the way. I stood and pushed in my chair.

  Next to me Duncan stood. “Are you okay? I mean with that whole Brie thing, she didn’t get to you, did she?” He settled his fingers on my arm.

  My elbow sparked with a gush of heat. Anger at Duncan and anger at the dancing sparks on my stupid elbow flared. How was I supposed to safeguard my heart if he wouldn’t stay away? I yanked my arm from his touch. “Like you care.”

  The vertical line creased his forehead. “Okay, I deserve that. My life’s been pretty messed up lately.”

  “Well, let’s buy matching T-shirts and start a club.”

  He jammed his hands in his back pockets. “Listen, Chloe—”

  “To what? To things you won’t or can’t say?” Dunc’s life was messed up, and I didn’t need any more messes, but I took a few deep breaths and waited for him to go on.

  He craned his neck as if making space for words. None came. When it came to anything personal, he shut down and shut me out.

  Enough. Dead-Guinea-Pig Girl put me over the edge today. “Fine, I’ll say the words for you. You don’t want to date me. You prefer machines to people. And you suck at self-expression. I accept that.” I yanked my bag over my shoulder and left the control room.

  He followed. He shouldn’t be following me. Duncan may be good at keeping things close to the chest, but I wasn’t.

  “But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt,” I said. For the past two hours I’d talked about love and relationships, and I’d given out comfort and advice. I’d gone deep into my heart, and maybe a part of me was still there, because I turned to Duncan and for once forgot he was a nice guy who worked too hard and didn’t have time for fun. “Now, if I were the kind of girl who hid her emotions, I wouldn’t tell you you’re so caught up with your stuff that you neglect to see other people’s stuff. I wouldn’t tell you that picture-perfect families have heart-shredding problems that can’t be fixed with a hammer and duct tape. I wouldn’t tell you that silence can hurt worse than mean words. And I wouldn’t tell you that you can be a first-class j erk. But I’m not someone to keep things bottled up, am I?”

  I bulldozed past him and out the door, but not before I heard Clementine’s voice. “Man, Dunc, you freakin’ screwed that up.”

  TODAY AT MINNIE’S PLACE!

  7 a.m. Sit and Fit Exercise Class!

  9 a.m. String Art in the Butterfly Garden!

  10 a.m. Watercolor Workshop!

  1 p.m. Quilting: Advanced Squares!

  3 p.m. Pole Dancing!

  7 p.m. Bunco with Sue!

  WELCOME TO SWEEPS WEEK AT THE SOAPS, WHERE VILLAINOUS vixens are at their most vile. They steal triplet newborns from their half sisters who’ve been fighting infertility for seventeen years, and they sleep with their best friend’s husband, son, and therapist.

  Last summer during sweeps on Passion Bay, wicked Valerie Westcott, disguised as a priest, visited the hospital room of the long-suffering but much-loved Loretta Hooper Chesterfield Hayes, who had brain surgery. Val injected an evil yellow liquid into Loretta’s IV, and dear Lottie immediately went into cardiac arrest. Despite the beeping and spastic machines, the two nurses on duty didn’t come to her rescue. Val had bound and gagged one nurse and locked the other, along with her doctor lover, in the cleaning closet where they had their nightly trysts.

  “Loretta’s never going to get herself out of this,” I’d told Grams.

  “Of course she is, Poppy. Good always conquers evil. Everything will be hunky-dory.”

  I needed Grams right now. I needed to hear her say that despite all the chaos and conflict, everything would be hunky-dory, because I didn’t feel hunky-dory. Brie’s twisted laugh about her dead guinea pig still echoed in my head, and the look on Duncan’s face when I stormed past him in Portable Five still haunted me. Duncan, who kept his emotions locked away and tied with a scraggly scarf, looked like I’d clouted him with a giant conch shell.

  When I got to Minnie’s Place, Grams wasn’t in her room, the butterfly garden, or in any of the communal areas. I immediately checked the logbook, but she hadn’t checked herself out.

  “My grandmother’s missing.” I tried to keep my voice calm as I spoke to the attendant on duty, because everything would be hunky-dory.

  “Did you check the movie room?” the attendant asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The butterfly garden?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman with blue hair and a three-pronged cane hobbled over. “Did you say you’re looking for the new girl again? The one who has the life-size picture of Brad Pitt in her room?”

  “Yes. That’s Grams. Have you seen her?”

  “Try the laundry room. She seems rather attached to dryer number seven. That new girl hangs out in the strangest places.”

  Grams was not in the laundry room, so the blue-haired woman took me to the maintenance closet, then to the shed that held a pair of three-wheeled bicycles. Eventually, we found Grams in the food pantry sitting on a supersize can of peaches reading an entertainment magazine with Brad Pitt on the cover.

  “See”—the blue-haired woman pointed her cane at Grams— “she’s always hiding, like she doesn’t like us.”

  “Nothing personal, Aggie.” Grams handed the woman a giant box of Fig Newtons. “Just needed a little private time with Brad.”

  After the blue-haired woman left, I pulled up a five-gallon bucket of oatmeal and sat next to Grams. For a moment I pushed aside the chaos of my world to figure out why my grandmother was sitting in a pantry on a giant can of peaches. “What are you doing?”

  “Checking Brad’s marital status.” She winked, but I didn’t smile.

  The ridge of the oatmeal bucket dug into my butt. I shifted, but I couldn’t get comfortable. “Grams, why are you reading in the food pantry?”

  “Because today is laundry day.”

  “And . . .”

  “And someone is sitting on the bench near dryer seven.” She delivered the line with no trace of humor, like she was announcing, The sky is blue.

  I rubbed at my head where an insistent tapping had started somewhere between Brie talking about dead guinea pigs and Duncan reaching for my elbow. “What does that mean?”

  “There aren’t many places you can be alone here, and, Poppy, there are times when this old girl needs to be alone.”

  I didn’t miss that irony, either. For the past few months, Grams had been chasing solitude, while I’d been running from it. I massaged my temples.

  “But the good news is”—Grams closed the gossip magazine with a gleeful clap—“in less than twenty-four hours, I’m outta here.”

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow I’m headed back to the Tuna Can.” Grams tucked the magazine under her arm. “I talked to the restoration boys this mo
rning, and they said the whole place is dried out and painted. New carpet is down. They’re airing it out tonight, so tomorrow Brad and I are going home.”

  And World War III would start again. The tapping at my temples morphed into cannon booms. “Does Mom know?”

  Grams hopped up from the peach can. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

  “Well, maybe you should.” My words were soft. If we weren’t in a food pantry the size of a refrigerator, Grams wouldn’t have heard me.

  But she did. Her knees creaked as she squatted so we were eye to eye. “This has been hard on you, hasn’t it, Poppy?” Grams ran a hand along my rumpled hair. “I hate that you’ve been put in the middle of this. I hate seeing you hurt.”

  “So talk with Mom,” I said. “You’re good with people. Surely you can talk with her and find a living arrangement that is okay with both of you. Because she’s not going to give up. You realize that, right? She’s not going to stop worrying.” I grabbed her hand, pulling her close. “Do something, Grams, for me. If I’m that important, do it for me.”

  Grams squeezed my hand before she pulled away and stood. “No, Poppy. I can’t give in.”

  I stood so fast, the bucket tipped over, and a hill of papery oats spilled onto the floor. I didn’t care. “You wouldn’t be giving in, you’d be working things out.”

  “No, Poppy, I’d be giving in, and once I start giving, they’ll start taking more.” Grams took two steps, then turned. Another two steps. Turn. Oatmeal whirled around our feet.

  “What are you talking about? What are they taking?” Sometimes Grams didn’t make sense.

  “First they took my car. Now they want my home.” Grams paced faster, her steps growing more unsteady. Was it anger, fear, the Parkinson’s? “Then they’ll take my phone, saying I can’t push the buttons. They’ll take my magazines and movies, saying I can no longer see them. They’ll take my computer, saying I no longer know how to use it. And you know what, Poppy? They’ll be right. Because by then they’ll have taken my hands, my eyes, and my mind. Pretty soon there will be nothing left of me.” Grams stilled, the oatmeal now powder beneath her feet. “So, you see, Chloe. I have to keep holding on to the Tuna Can as long as I can.”

  I found Mom at home in the backyard sitting on one of the swings of my old play gym. She wore her scrubs—a bad sign. It meant she was too busy or too upset to change into normal clothes at the hospital.

  “Do you know that scientific teams throughout the world have studied the act of swinging?” Mom said. “Studies have shown that repetitive self-stimulatory behavior such as rocking or swaying releases endorphins, which reduce the sensation of pain and have the ability to block pain.”

  I sat on the swing next to her and made a hmmmmm sound.

  “It’s why mothers rock fussy babies,” Mom went on, “why couples swaying to music fall deeper into a blissful state, and why junior high girls spend hours on end talking and swinging on old swing sets.”

  I’d forgotten that. Brie and Merce and I would swing and talk. Talk and swing. But we hadn’t since . . . since before summer.

  As Mom gave a hefty pull on the swing chains, I kicked off and started to pump. “So what’s on your heart?” I asked.

  Mom’s mouth curved in a weary smile. “On the drive from Minnie’s Place, I heard part of your show. You sounded great. I’m so proud of you.”

  I ignored the compliment and focused on the bombshell. Mom had been to Minnie’s Place. This afternoon. “You talked to Grams?”

  “She’s determined to live in the Tuna Can. Alone. And she can’t. She’s a danger to herself and others.” Mom bit her lower lip. “I started to fill out the paperwork today to have guardianship of Grams transferred to me.”

  I sucked in a gasp of air. “Mom, she needs to make this choice on where to live on her own. You said I know Grams better than anyone. I do, and if we force her out of the Tuna Can, she’ll be miserable for the rest of her life.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “She’s losing control, and she’s scared,” I said. I needed to help Mom understand what I saw in the pantry amid oatmeal dust. “She’s grabbing whatever she can to keep from being swept away by a disease she can’t control, and in this case it’s the Tuna Can. We need to give her a little more time.”

  “We’ve given her time. It’s been more than six months since the doctors first recommended she find new living arrangements. Since then she’s crashed her car into an ATM. She spent a near-freezing night wandering the beach. She almost sliced off her thumb doing yard work. And she set fire to her home, then flooded it. What’s next, Chloe? Will she seriously hurt herself or someone else?” Mom’s voice cracked.

  I pictured Grams’s Jeep folded around that ATM, her blue-white lips, her bloody hand, her soot-covered face. Old fears and worries danced with new ones.

  “Do you think I like taking away her independence?” Mom pumped higher in the swing. “Do you think I want to take control from a woman who raised me? Who cared for my children? Who gave them her time and wisdom and heart?” A tear leaked from the corner of Mom’s eye. “It’s going to kill me to force her from the Tuna Can. Absolutely kill me.”

  “Me, too,” I said, but I don’t think Mom heard because she was swinging too high.

  • • •

  When I got to school the next morning, A. Lungren slinked down the hall and crooked a kitty claw at me. “In my office, Chloe. Now.”

  I didn’t want to deal with my guidance counselor, not when my head was too busy trying to figure out how to make one final bid for peace between Grams and Mom. I understood Grams’s need to hang on to her independence, to control her own life, but I also understood my mom’s need to keep Grams and others safe. As I told Mom last night, the key was for Grams to choose to give up the Tuna Can. But where was the freakin’ key?

  “I don’t approve of this Heartbeats program, Chloe,” A. Lungren said as I took a seat across from her desk. Her sharp kitty nail stabbed my JISP progress report notebook. “It’s not the best use of your JISP time. You have a twenty-page report and fifteen-minute oral presentation due in less than two months. You should be analyzing your empirical data, gathering supporting research, and getting ready to pre-write.”

  I should be getting to econ. I sank deeper into the chair because in econ I’d have to deal with Duncan. The whole I-kind-of-like-you-but-I-can’t-be-your-boyfriend-because-I-have-stuff was not okay. His inability to share a piece of his heart with me was not okay. The way he closed me out was not okay.

  A. Lungren made her hacking fur-ball noise. “Plus, it’s the spring semester of your junior year, and you should be seriously looking into colleges, but you haven’t even created your online college prep account yet.”

  Maybe if I sunk deep enough into the chair, I’d disappear. And college would disappear. And World War III. And dead guinea pigs. And boys with silver eyes and scraggly scarves.

  “Chloe, I want you to cancel the Heartbeats program.”

  And evil-kitty school guidance counselors.

  I rotated one ankle, then the other, but the glint of light off my shiny 1944 two-tone red-and-black patent-leather pumps didn’t cheer me. “I can’t cancel Heartbeats. It’s part of my JISP.”

  “No, your JISP is about you taking on a clearly defined project, following through, and reporting on it. With this Heartbeats program, I think you’re taking on too much.”

  A. Lungren’s words were too loud, too wrong. The walls of the office closed in on me. Was this how Grams felt, people telling her what to do when she knew what was best for her?

  I settled both pumps firmly on the floor. “I’m perfectly capable of handling a second show.”

  “I’m sure you are. But it serves no purpose.”

  “Of course it does. Heartbeats will help increase Monday’s audience, making us a better value to potential underwriters.”

  “Your report last week indicated that Clementine already secured eight companies and organizations w
illing to support the station.”

  “True, but what’s wrong with getting more?”

  My counselor folded her arms and leaned toward me, inviting a confidence I didn’t want, didn’t need. “Chloe, why are you really doing this second show?”

  Like Brie, I could lie. I could make up a cockamamie story about wanting to be a counselor and say the whole Heartbeats thing gives me an up-close-and-personal look at people and their problems. However, I wasn’t a liar.

  Like Duncan, I could be silent. I could walk around with the weight of the world on my shoulders in quiet misery. But I was a gal who wore her heart on her sleeve for the entire world to see.

  “Because it’s fun.”

  My counselor studied me. Did she know how much I needed fun? Did she realize how important it was for me to succeed at something because I had failed Brie and Merce? I abandoned them when they needed me. I’d failed to smooth things between Grams and Mom. I’d even failed Duncan, messed-up Duncan, who wanted to talk to me but couldn’t figure out how.

  Man, I needed a new pair of old shoes.

  A. Lungren whisked her kitty paws together. “Okay, I’m going on record that I’m concerned about the widening scope of your project, but I know whatever you take on, you’ll give it your all. So let’s go ahead and schedule the time for your JISP oral.” She scrolled through her calendar and jotted a date and time on a notepad and slid it toward me.

  April first. No joke. I’d be giving my JISP oral presentation on April Fool’s Day.

  After school I went straight to my car. I probably should have gone to the station to give Mr. Martinez my notes for Friday’s show, but I had to get to the Tuna Can.

  Grams had moved into her trailer this morning, and I’d promised Mom I’d check on her. I also didn’t want to run into Duncan. I needed to be focusing on Grams, making sure she was all right.