by Lisa Wingate
I’d come so close to being only a regret in her life. A person dead and gone, with whom amends could never be made.
“It’sss all right—” The words formed a bit more easily now. “I’m n-n-not going . . .” Anywhere. Anywhere was the final word, but I couldn’t force it out. My lips trembled, and of all things, tears pushed into my eyes. The image of my daughter blurred.
“Dad,” she said softly.
“I’m h-here.”
She crossed the room, opened her arms, and leaned over the bed, her sob dying against my chest. I encircled her clumsily, the movement feeling awkward, but any affection between us would have been, after so long a time. We were in uncharted territory. Like Surveyor landing on the dry seas of Oceanus, Mission Control uncertain what would lie beneath the surface.
For a while, there were only tears, Deborah’s and mine. I held her and thought of all the missed moments, the missed connections, all the things I’d waited too long to say. Perhaps there had always been, inside me, the little boy from the house with the seven chairs—afraid, alone, trying to hide the bruises by keeping anyone from getting close enough to touch him.
Emotions so many years in the making take time to vent. Nearly an hour had passed before Deborah slid into a chair beside the bed and mopped her face with a Kleenex from the dispenser on the night table. She looked a wreck, and now somewhat embarrassed, perhaps even a bit wary of broaching the next step in the conversation.
I rested against the pillow, my body filled with lead. I wanted to sleep, but I couldn’t allow myself. So much territory needed to be covered yet.
Deborah discarded one Kleenex and reached for another.
“The h-house?”
I formed the words carefully, cast them out into the empty space between us.
Deborah dabbed at mascara stains and wiped her nose. “The house is fine. Terrence has been looking after things. His daughter, Dell, and her husband were down for a visit last week, so they stayed in the house.”
I felt a sense of relief disproportionate to an inanimate object. Terrence was looking after my house. Everything was fine there. Everything was as I left it.
Deborah looked away, as if there were more, but she was reluctant to share it. Her eyes hid beneath lowered lashes, then turned my way again. “I read the letter you wrote to me . . . on the notepad from the bed-and-breakfast in Groveland.”
“G-good,” I whispered. If she’d read my letter, then she knew. She knew that I loved her. She knew that I regretted the sort of father I’d been, the things I hadn’t taken the time to say. I reached for her, held her hand. “I’m s-sorry.”
Squeezing my fingers, she nodded, sniffled, dried another tear. “Dad, why did you do . . . Why did you take off like that? And with Epiphany? With a sixteen-year-old girl? What were you thinking? Why would you help a teenager to run away from home?”
“R-r-run . . .” What was she talking about? Hadn’t Epiphany told her? Hadn’t Epiphany explained why we’d gone to Houston, what we’d found? Why would Epiphany have kept that secret after I was in the hospital? Unless . . .
Unless Epiphany wasn’t there. Unless she’d run away when I was rushed to the emergency room in Houston. Had Epiphany left before Deborah came, before anyone could stop her? “Epie . . . di-d-didn’t te . . . tell . . . you?”
A fan of wrinkles formed around Deborah’s nose. “Tell me what? Dad, her parents had turned her in as a runaway. By the time I got to the hospital in Houston, the police had her in custody. I haven’t seen her, and I’m sure that’s for the best.” Deborah sneered a little, her eyes hardening. “Why would you let her talk you into taking off for Houston? I mean, I guess I’m partly to blame for getting the whole thing started, with her working at your house. I should have known that a kid from her sort of background might . . . take advantage, but, Dad, you shouldn’t have . . .”
I lifted a hand to quiet her. Suddenly the effort seemed astronomical. If I let my eyelids touch, I’d be asleep in an instant. “Where isss . . . she?”
Deborah drew back, straightened her neck, irritated. “I don’t know, and I haven’t asked. After what she did, I’m not inclined to try to find out. I trusted her. I trusted her with you, with the house, and she took advantage. It’s just fortunate that this whole thing didn’t turn out worse. Her parents don’t seem inclined to press any charges, thank goodness.”
“Char-ges?” My eyes fell shut, and I pushed them open again. My thoughts were starting to blur now.
“Yes, charges,” Deborah snapped, and then seemed to catch herself. She paused, as if she were silently counting to ten. “You can’t just take off with someone’s child . . . a minor . . . a young girl, without permission. Given the type of family she comes from, we’re lucky they haven’t spied a gravy train and decided to . . . make something of it.” She hooded her eyes, embarrassed by the idea.
“Epiph-any wouldn’t . . .”
“Of course she would, Dad. Don’t be naive.” She clipped the last word, catching herself again, closing her lips tightly and swallowing something bitter before continuing. “She’s run away before. Did you know that? And she’s in all sorts of trouble with the school. This isn’t some innocent sixteen-year-old kid.”
“No.” I shook my head, my scalp scratching against the stiff institutional sheets. “We . . .”
Deborah didn’t wait for me to put together the rest of the sentence. “I’m not trying to be critical of you, all right? I blame myself. I should have checked things out more carefully. Her mother isn’t even a regular employee with the university cleaning service. She’s just a temp. I shouldn’t have let either of them in the house. Thank goodness something worse didn’t happen.”
The fog swirled through my mind, pulled me under. Images flashed by—the hotel, the dime store, the lion’s head, tombstones, the picture of the VanDraan family, Cecile’s face, my father’s. . . .
Deborah smoothed a hand over my shoulder. “It’s all right, Dad. Just rest now, okay?”
Just rest. . . . I wanted to rest, to let myself tumble into sleep, to tackle this another day, but another day might be too long. What if I drifted off and didn’t wake again and the truth never came to light?
“No,” I whispered, then took Deborah’s hand and pulled her close. “Listen.” Opening my eyes, I took a breath and began as best I could to tell the story of the house with the seven chairs.
Chapter 24
Epiphany Jones
After a couple weeks, I finally got to move from my bedroom to the porch. I could sit out there after Russ picked me up from school and dragged me home, where he could keep an eye on me while Mama was at work. She’d told everyone, including Russ, I was a runaway, and that I’d done it before, and she didn’t have a clue what my problem was or why I liked to take off. She’d even told the school counselor and two different social workers that.
“Epie’s just trying for attention,” she’d said, and really I think it was her that liked the attention. She liked having people sit there and listen while she griped about me and acted like she was the model mother. “It’s been just me and her for a long time, and she’s having some trouble with there being a man in the house now. I think that’s her problem, mostly.”
The counselor and the social worker ate that up whole, even though none of it was true. It’d never been just me and Mama. There was always some man with her, or a friend who took us in after she broke up with a guy, or somebody we met by showing up a few times at some church, or an older lady like Mrs. Lora. There was always somebody who got talked into feeling sorry for Mama and helping her out.
I don’t know why I thought the school would be any different. Really, the principal just wanted to get the problem off his desk by letting me finish the year in the in-school suspension room, where you got watched all day, like you were in prison. You couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless it was time for the whole group to go. During bathroom breaks, some teacher hung around outside the door. That was fine with me, th
ough. It kept DeRon and the rest of them away from me, and I got my classwork done without having to worry about being jumped during the school day.
Some of the worry about getting jumped went away after Russ and his buddies caught DeRon’s crew at the convenience store. Russ let them know what would happen if they ever messed with me again. When Russ picked me up from school that day, we dropped by basketball practice, too, and Russ had a little talk with the coach. I could hear him telling the coach that if he didn’t teach his star player some manners, there wasn’t gonna be enough of DeRon left to play basketball. I stood over in the corner, and DeRon never even so much as looked in my direction. On the way home, Russ told me I wouldn’t have any more trouble with those punks, only “punks” wasn’t the word he used. The next day at school, DeRon changed his story about J. Norm and me. He said he didn’t know what’d happened between us—he was just assuming stuff. He probably choked on the words. That was some satisfaction, anyway. Weird as it was, I had Russ to thank for clearing my name. It crossed my mind that I would’ve been a whole lot better off if I’d told him about my problems with DeRon and the trouble with the other kids at school in the first place. If I hadn’t tried to handle it on my own, maybe J. Norm and me wouldn’t have gone on the run, and the heart attack never would’ve happened. It’s funny how mistakes are so much clearer after you’ve already made them.
Russ wasn’t so bad, really—as Mama’s men went, that was. He’d picked me up after the whole runaway thing, and he hadn’t asked me a whole bunch of questions, which was good because I didn’t figure anybody would believe the truth. I could see myself trying to explain about the VanDraan house, and the fire, and Cecile, and Mr. Lowenstein in the feed store. They’d think I was so full of it. Next thing, Mama’d be trying to send me away to a loony bin. The day the police picked me up in Houston, she’d warned me that if I kept giving her trouble, she could get me committed someplace, and the state would pay for it.
Russ didn’t make threats like that. He’d just told me that first day I came home that he’d had a little sister who ran away when she was sixteen and got killed. “She was a real pretty girl. Had a whole life to live yet, you know?” There were tears in his eyes when he said it. “You gotta take your time, Epiphany. I know you and your mama don’t get along good, but you’re not ready to be out on your own. You gotta hang on a couple more years and get your school finished up, and then figure out what you want to do, all right?”
I said, “All right, Russ.” And I guess I meant it. The idea of taking off for Florida was out, anyway. My money stash was gone. Besides, I couldn’t leave without knowing what was happening with J. Norm.
It took me a while to come up with a way to find out about J. Norm, but finally I did. I looked up the number for the guy who lived in J. Norm’s garage apartment, Terrence Clay, and I called him from Russ’s cell phone while Russ was outside working on his Harley, which was about all Russ did since the wreck. Russ was hoping for a big insurance check and maybe some disability money, too.
When I called Terrence Clay, he told me where J. Norm was and how he was doing. The word “coma” hit me like a brick to the head.
“But for how long?” I asked, peeking between the blinds to make sure Russ was still outside. “He’s gonna wake up, right?” By then, it’d been almost three weeks—a long time to still be unconscious. It was my fault. Terrence had said the coma was due to lack of oxygen to the brain during the heart attack. If I’d been smarter that day in Houston—if I’d paid more attention, taken J. Norm to a doctor when he wasn’t feeling good that morning, everything would be different.
“They don’t know how long it might be before he wakes up, or what shape he’ll be in when he does,” Terrence told me. “His daughter has him in the nursing home here, at least for now.” He sighed, like he didn’t see anything good coming, and then we got off the phone.
After that, I called Terrence whenever I could get a chance at Russ’s phone. It wasn’t as good as being able to go visit J. Norm, but it was something.
The third time I called, Terrence told me that J. Norm had woken up. I was so happy, I almost squealed out loud. Terrence was out of town right then, so he didn’t know many details. He just knew that J. Norm was awake and talking a little. “He’s got you to thank for that, Epiphany. If you and that truck driver hadn’t gotten him out of the car and started CPR, he wouldn’t be here.”
I felt pure joy for the first time since J. Norm and me were on the road.
“When you see him, can you tell him I asked about him? Tell him I’m okay. He doesn’t need to worry about me.”
Russ was on his way in, then, and I had to hang up. I put the phone back on the end table with Russ’s wallet. I hoped he wouldn’t notice I’d used it, but if he did, I could probably make him understand. Russ listened, at least. He was even starting to like me all right. Most days, I helped him out with his projects, or fetched beers and sodas out of the fridge when his buddies came to hang out. Russ was kind of weirdly parental about it, though. If anybody looked at me the wrong way or said something rude, he gave them a dirty look and said, “Hey. She’s a kid, okay?”
I decided that, somehow, he’d started to think about me like the little sister who ran off and never came back. Maybe even a guy like Russ wanted to make up for the things he’d done wrong in the past. I guess he wished he’d looked after that little sister while she was around.
Once I knew that J. Norm was awake, I started working on Russ. I tried to make him see, little by little, that I wasn’t going to end up like his sister who ran away. If I could convince him of that, maybe I could convince him to take me to visit J. Norm.
Russ didn’t have a clue that I had something in mind, of course. He was just happy I’d listened to him about the runaway thing, and after school finally let out for the summer, he was glad to have somebody out on the front porch every day, watching for cars to go by. “Now that I got this disability claim goin’ on,” he said, “I can’t be havin’ some investigator from the insurance company drive up and see me putting an engine on the hoist, or running the grinder on some motorcycle part.” He grinned at me, like he was pretty proud of himself for thinking it through. “You keep an eye on the road while you’re sitting out there, okay? Holler at me if you see any cars that look like they don’t belong in the neighborhood.”
“All right, Russ.” I gave him a smile and a wink to butter him up. “I got your back.” Just like that, Russ and me were the best of friends.
Things were going so well between Russ and me by the second week of summer vacation that I got the courage to ask him to take me to see J. Norm at the nursing home. Russ had downed a few beers that morning, and he was just hanging out on a stool in the carport, tinkering with a carburetor, so I figured it was a good time to bring up my big question. When I asked, he gave me the same look he used on his buddies if they tried to check me out. That look said, You just crossed the line, and you better get back on your own side. “You’re gonna have to talk to your mama about that.” He picked up a spark plug and blew on it, like the conversation was over.
“You know what she’ll say,” I pushed. I hadn’t been able to get ahold of Russ’s cell phone for a week. He’d started keeping it in his pocket. I wondered if he’d figured out I was using it. “You and I could just go, Russ—while she’s at work. We can run over there, and she won’t know anything about it.”
For a minute, I thought he was considering it, but really he was just looking for the little piece of sandpaper that’d blown off the cable spool he used for a workbench. I picked it up and handed it to him. “I’m not gettin’ involved in that. I’m not gettin’ in the middle between you and your mama. That man’s daughter . . . what’s her name . . . Deborah? She’s called twice in the last couple weeks, and your mama wouldn’t even talk to her on the phone. That tell you anything?”
I stomped a foot, frustrated after six and a half weeks of being trapped here in jail. “Come on, Russ. Mama doesn’t e
ven have to know. It’d just be between you and me.”
He looked me square in the eye then, his mustache crinkling on one side, like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “I’m not your daddy.” I took a step back, felt like he’d hit me. I’m not your daddy.
Russ looked away again, sanding the contacts on the plug. “I can be your friend, Ep, and I can take you by Wal-Mart for the grocery shopping, and keep watch over you now that it’s summer break, and make sure that DeRon kid knows what happens to little boys who jerk a girl around, but I’m not gonna get into it with your mom. Her and me are good together, you know?”
I gave up then and went back to the porch to watch for cars and read To Kill a Mockingbird. It’d been an English assignment to begin with, but I’d missed taking the test on it while I was stuck at home after all the hoopla about the runaway thing. The teacher made me keep the book after the end of school, because I had to write the paper before she’d release my semester grade. I was bored enough that I’d read the story more than once. It made me think about Cecile and the women in the baby pictures with me. They lived in times like that, in places like that. If anybody’d caught Cecile taking off with those five little redheaded kids, she’d have been dead, and nobody would’ve done a thing about it. Everybody who helped her hide those kids would’ve been dead, too.
Did Cecile and the sheriff argue about whether to go through with it? Did they worry about what might happen to their own families? How did they know who they could trust? How did they find people like J. Norm’s mother, who would take in a little child and keep the secret? Did the maids really arrange it all, like Mr. Lowenstein said?
I still needed to know the rest the story—as much of it as there was left to find, anyway. J. Norm did, too. Some way or other, I had to get back to see him again.
I tried to leave off wondering and think about To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though I’d read the book three times, I couldn’t come up with the right thing to say about it in a paper. Maybe I didn’t care if that English teacher flunked me for not making up the assignment. What was the point, anyway? So many people had written about that book, anything I said would be a repeat of stuff somebody else already came up with.