Yes, I Know the Monkey Man

by Dori Hillestad Butler

  “So … you knew I had a mom and sister out there this whole time.”

  There was a pause. Then I heard a faint “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  Silence.

  “I suppose Joe probably told you not to,” I said. “And you probably didn’t want to screw things up for him and me.”

  “I always told him this would come back to haunt him one day,” Gram said. “I always told him—” She broke off there. “I-I’m sorry, honey, I can’t talk about this today. I need to—”

  “Wait!” I cried. “Don’t hang up yet! There’s something else I need to ask you. And it’s not about my mom or Sam.”

  There was no easy way to bring it up, so I just asked straight out. “Did Joe have a sister?”

  Gram didn’t respond at first, but I knew she was still there. I could hear her breathing on the line. Finally, she said, “Someone told you about Katie.” It wasn’t a question the way she said it.

  I heard a door open upstairs. I was going to have to finish this up quick.

  “They didn’t tell me much,” I said. “All they said was Joe used to have a sister and her name was Katie.” I heard footsteps on the stairs, so I turned and faced the other direction. “They didn’t tell me what happened to her.”

  “She died. A long time ago.”

  Yeah, I knew that already. But I had to be careful I didn’t push too hard too fast. “Why didn’t you or Joe ever talk about her? Grandpa Wright died, too, but you and Joe talked about him.”

  “That’s because he died of cancer.”

  I didn’t get it. Why was it okay to talk about Grandpa Wright, who died of cancer, but it wasn’t okay to talk about Katie?

  “How did Katie die?” I asked, even though I could hear Sam coming into the room.

  “Joe’s the one who should be telling you this, not me,” Gram said.

  “Joe’s not here to tell me.” Please, Gram. Please tell me!

  “Or maybe Suzanne,” Gram said.

  I stared at the phone in my hand. Was she kidding? “You’d rather Suzanne tell me what happened to Joe’s sister than tell me yourself?”

  Gram took a breath. “Katie … got hit by a car. Your other grandfather … Suzanne’s dad … was driving the car that hit her.”

  “What?” No way.

  “I can’t talk anymore—”

  “Wait, Gram! You can’t hang up now.”

  But she already had.

  I turned and saw Sam standing right behind me. Her hair was rumpled and messy, but for once she didn’t seem to care about her appearance.

  “What did you find out?” she asked.

  There was no reason to keep it a secret, so I told her what Gram had told me.

  “No way,” she said as she flounced down on the couch beside me. It was exactly what I’d thought.

  “Grandpa Sperling is a really careful driver,” Sam went on. “He could never have killed anyone.”

  “Not intentionally, maybe,” I said quietly. “But anyone can have an accident.”

  Sam shook her head. “You said your grandma had a stroke or something. Maybe she got the story mixed up.”

  “I don’t think so.” Gram had sounded more “there” today than she had in a long time.

  “Then maybe she just made it up?” Sam put her feet up on the coffee table. “I bet your grandma doesn’t like my mom and my grandparents any more than my mom and my grandparents like her.”

  Suzanne and Grandma and Grandpa Sperling didn’t like Gram? Big surprise. “Well, if your grandpa killed her daughter, that would make sense.” It also explained why Joe and Gram had kept Katie a secret from me. They couldn’t have told me my Grandpa Sperling killed her without admitting I actually had a Grandpa Sperling.

  Would I ever know the whole truth about my life and my family?

  Sam looked at me. “There’s an easy way to find out whether that’s what happened or not.”

  I didn’t see why she refused to believe it.

  “We can look it up online,” she said, sitting back up. “Right now. Mom already packed our computer, but we could go to the library. Something like that would’ve been in the newspaper, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged. “Probably. But aren’t you supposed to finish packing your stuff before we go anywhere?”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Don’t you think this is a little more important than packing? Let me get dressed and then we can go.”

  Whatever. It wasn’t my room.

  I have to say Sam was dressed and ready to go in record time for her. She came back in about fifteen minutes wearing blue shorts and a T-shirt. Her hair was combed and she even had a little makeup on. “Ready?” she asked, putting her purse on her shoulder.

  “Sure.” I gave Sherlock a pat good-bye, then followed Sam out to the garage.

  She pressed a button and the garage door went up. “You can ride my mom’s bike,” she said, nodding toward a red and silver bike in the corner.

  Bike?

  “Uh, Sam?” I said as she wheeled the other bike toward the open garage door. “I don’t know how to ride a bike.” Sam stopped. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.” I definitely was not kidding. Bikes cost money. Plus we haven’t lived a lot of places where you could ride a bike. “I know how to drive a car, though.” Not that that helped us any right now. There wasn’t one here to drive.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “Right. You can’t ride a bike, but you can drive a car.”

  I probably shouldn’t have told her that, but I didn’t want her to think I was an idiot just because I couldn’t ride a bike. “Look, don’t tell your mom,” I said. “But Joe taught me to drive when I was ten.” Eleven, actually. Because when I thought I was ten, I was really eleven.

  Sam leaned against her bike. “You really know how to drive?”

  “Lots of farm kids learn how to drive when they’re really young,” I said. Not that I was ever a farm kid. But that was what Joe had told me. He said he’d learned to drive when he was ten.

  “Wow,” Sam said. “That’s so cool. I’ve never even sat in the driver’s seat of a car.”

  I remembered the first time I sat in the driver’s seat. I was a little scared, but Joe told me to relax. To think of the wheel as an extension of my arms and the pedals as an extension of my feet. He said driving wasn’t any more complicated than walking. And it wasn’t. It was amazing. I felt like I was flying every time I did it. Not that I got to do it a lot.

  “Well, I don’t know how we’re going to get to the library if you don’t know how to ride a bike,” Sam said glumly. “It’s like two miles to the library from here.”

  “Two miles?” That was nothing. “Can’t we walk?”

  “Walk?” Sam gaped at me.

  “Yeah. It only takes half an hour to walk two miles. Forty-five minutes tops.”

  “I guess,” Sam said. “I don’t know how else we’re going to get there.”

  The library was a small brick building on the edge of downtown. We went in and immediately headed for the row of computers. It turned out the Clearwater Gazette had all their newspapers online. Even the ones from back when our parents were kids. And they were searchable. Sam typed Katie’s name in the box. Several articles came up.

  Sam clicked on the top one. “Here we go,” she said, squinting at the screen.

  Gram was right. According to the article, Katie Wright, age twelve, had been riding her bike home from school when she was hit by a car on Rosewood Avenue. The driver of the vehicle was Samuel Sperling, age fifty-five. The twelve-year-old unexpectedly swerved into the path of Mr. Sperling’s vehicle. Katie Wright died at the scene. Mr. Sperling was not charged.

  For a while, Sam and I just stared at the screen. Neither of us said a word.

  “How come nobody ever told me about this?” Sam asked in a small voice.

  “No one ever told me, either,” I reminded her.

  Sam scrolled back to the beginning of the article,
then all the way to the top of that day’s news. “Look at the date on here. Mom would’ve only been fourteen when this happened. This was before our parents even got together.”

  “I’m surprised they ever did get together,” I said. “Their parents couldn’t have been very happy about it.”

  “My grandma always said the two of them should never have gotten married,” Sam said. “I always thought she meant they were just so different. But if Grandpa Sperling …” She couldn’t even say the words.

  “Their marriage was doomed right from the start,” I said.

  We logged off the computer and left the library. We wandered around downtown for a while, each lost in our own thoughts. If this was The Parent Trap, we would’ve been trying to figure out a way to get our parents back together quick before Suzanne married Bob. But I think we both realized how hopeless that was. Even before I knew about Katie, I couldn’t imagine Joe with someone like Suzanne at all. She was obsessed with rules. Joe hardly paid any attention to rules.

  Eventually we got hungry and wandered into a diner called The Redhead, which was kind of a funky place. None of the tables matched. Each one was painted bright red or yellow or blue or green. The menu was written on a chalkboard at the front of the restaurant and water was served in glass jars like the ones in Gram’s basement that were filled with green beans or pickles.

  Sam and I both ordered the grown-up grilled cheese sandwich, then we sat back and waited for our food to come. I wondered what was going through Sam’s head. She was the one who’d started this whole thing when she went searching for her dad. She was the one who’d wanted to know the truth about what happened all those years ago. Did she ever, for just one second, wish she hadn’t found anything?

  “Are you going to tell your mom and your grandparents that we know about Katie?” I asked Sam.

  “I’ll tell my mom. Eventually. What about you? Are you going to tell Joe?”

  Joe had kept all kinds of secrets from me, but I’d never kept one from him before. I’d also never done something he specifically told me not to do before. Not until earlier this morning when I called Gram and told her all the things Joe didn’t want me to tell her.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Thinking about Joe right now reminded me I’d never called back to see what the deal was with those tests yesterday. But I couldn’t sneak away to make a call now. The waitress was coming with our food.

  “So what’s Grandma Wright like?” Sam asked as she put her napkin in her lap. “Is she like Grandma Sperling? Or is she more like Bob’s mother?”

  “Neither,” I said, picking up my sandwich. How did someone describe Gram? “She’s not as uptight as your Grandma Sperling … and she’s not as bubbly as Bob’s mother. She’s just … Gram. She’s strong and smart, at least she was before her stroke.” I never would’ve guessed she’d had a kid who died. She’d never seemed sad or depressed.

  I took another bite of my sandwich. It was made with fancier bread and stronger-tasting cheese than I was used to, but I liked it. There was something weird about the fries, though. I couldn’t decide whether I liked them or not.

  “What’s the deal with these?” I asked, holding one out to Sam. They were a different color than most fries. More orange.

  “They’re sweet potato fries,” Sam replied.

  “Sweet potato fries?” I dropped the fry onto my plate. “I don’t like sweet potatoes.”

  “I don’t like them, either,” Sam said, popping a fry into her mouth. “I hate that marshmallow stuff people put on them at Thanksgiving. But they’re okay as fries.”

  “Really?” I picked up another fry and nibbled on it. Maybe I could get used to them. Gram always said you could get used to anything if you tried.

  The waitress cleared our plates after we were done eating, but neither Sam nor I made any move to leave.

  “Do you actually remember when Joe and I lived with you and your mom?” I asked.

  Sam picked up the saltshaker and turned it around in her hand. “A little,” she said. “It’s mostly just bits and pieces.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Playing Barbies.”

  “Barbies!” I croaked. “I’ve never had a Barbie doll.”

  Sam laughed. “We had all kinds of Barbies and Barbie stuff. It’s still in our basement.”

  “It’s probably all yours. I never played Barbies.”

  “Yes, you did,” Sam insisted. “We played Barbies together. With Mom. That’s something I remember.”

  I didn’t believe it. “I was only three when I.” What would you call it? What did I do? “When I went to live with Joe,” I decided. “You don’t give a Barbie doll to a three-year-old. They could choke on all that crap Barbie wears. The shoes and purses and whatever.”

  Sam’s smile grew wider. “I’m telling you, you played Barbies.”

  The weird thing was I was starting to see a picture of it in my head. Sam and me playing with a Barbie tent and camper. Setting all our Barbie dolls around a makeshift campfire.

  No, I would never have played Barbies. Would I?

  “Did we have a Barbie camper?” I asked. “Yellow with—”

  “Pink decals,” we said together.

  How could she remember this stuff right off the top of her head? I had to really work at it.

  “What else do you remember?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” Sam put the saltshaker back.

  “Nothing? Please tell me you remember something else about me besides playing Barbies.”

  “Well.” Sam lowered her eyes. “I remember when you died.”

  I shivered. “You do?”

  “Again, just bits and pieces,” she said.

  “Tell me,” I said, leaning forward. “What do you remember? Do you remember the day I … disappeared?”

  Sam paused for a second. “I remember when Joe came to pick us up. It was the last memory I had of him before this year.”

  She had almost no memories of Joe. And I had almost no memories of Suzanne.

  “It was the last time he was going to see us for a while,” Sam said, “because you and I were going to move to Florida with Mom so she could go to medical school. We were all going to live with Grandma and Grandpa Sperling and they were going to take care of us while Mom was in school. But I was sick that day, so Mom wouldn’t let me go with you and Joe. They had this huge fight because it was the last time he was going to get to see us and he wanted me to go with you guys, even though I was sick.”

  “What happened when Joe came back without me?” I asked.

  “He didn’t come back.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. When you guys left, that was the last time he was ever at our house. And it was the last time I ever saw you.” She sounded so sad when she said that. Like she really lost something that day. Which I guess she did. She lost her sister. Her twin sister.

  But what about me? I lost my sister, too. The only difference is I never knew I lost anything. Why didn’t I remember her the way she remembered me? How could two people have such different memories?

  “I think you and I should make a pact,” Sam said suddenly. “Right now.”

  “What kind of pact?”

  “From now on, no matter what happens between us or our parents or anyone else, we should always tell each other the truth. About everything. Okay?” She looked at me expectantly.

  It was a nice idea. And right that second I felt closer to her than I’d ever felt before. Maybe even closer than I’d ever felt to anyone. After everything we’d been through, I liked the idea of Sam and me always telling each other the truth.

  But I couldn’t tell her the whole truth. Not about everything. Not about Joe being in the hospital. If Suzanne and the Sperlings found out, they wouldn’t let me go back to him.

  “You don’t want to make a pact?” she asked when I didn’t answer right away.

  “No, I do,” I said. “From now on, we tell each other the truth.” I even held out
my right hand over the table so we could shake.

  But I crossed my fingers on the hand in my lap.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They’re back, Suzanne!” Grandma Sperling called up the stairs as soon as Sam and I walked in the front door. She and Grandpa Sperling were all dressed up and ready to go to the rehearsal.

  Footsteps pounded down the stairs. “Where have you girls been?” Suzanne asked as she strode barefoot into the room. Her white blouse hung loosely over her dark blue skirt. “I told you girls to be home at three. It’s almost three thirty.”

  “Apparently Sarah was never taught to respect the clock,” Grandma Sperling said as she adjusted Grandpa Sperling’s tie.

  “It wasn’t T.J.’s fault,” Sam spoke up right away. “We were talking and—”

  “Regardless of what you were doing, Samantha,” Grandma Sperling said, her back to me, “you know what’s expected of you.”

  I was getting awfully tired of Grandma Sperling’s attitude toward me. “Are you saying I don’t know what’s expected of me?” I asked.

  “No one’s saying anything of the sort,” Suzanne said with a pointed look at Grandma Sperling. “Now you girls really need to start getting ready—” She tried to lead Sam and me toward the stairs, but I pulled away.

  “Why don’t you just say what you’re thinking. Say it to my face,” I told Grandma Sperling. It was time she and I had it out once and for all. “You think Joe is a bad father, don’t you?”

  Grandma Sperling didn’t say it, but we all knew she thought it.

  “I know he made a mistake when he took me,” I went on. “But it’s not like he’s the only one who made mistakes.” I could feel Sam tense up beside me. “Sam and I know about the mistake he made.” I waved my hand at Grandpa Sperling. “We know he killed my dad’s sister!”

  Grandpa Sperling sank to the couch and closed his eyes. All the color drained from his face.

  “That is hardly comparable to what your father did,” Grandma Sperling said in a tight voice.

  “Are you kidding? Look at me!” I spread my arms out. “I’m alive! But Joe’s sister isn’t. How is what your husband did any better than what Joe did?”