“Robbie,” he calls. “Your mom—”
“Edna Rose Miller?”
“She went by Eddie.” He smiles big, and all sorts of wrinkles I’ve never seen on Grandpa’s face before ripple out from his smile.
And I smile big too, because she didn’t have some big-pink-bow name that doesn’t fit.
I nod back at Grandpa like I know what he means. And I think I do. That I’m just like my mom. My mom, Eddie.
chapter 16
“The family tree project is due next Thursday,” Ms. Meg reminds us. “That’s one week from today! And remember that tomorrow is a teacher planning day, so you don’t have school. Lucky you! A day off to work on the project!” She has to yell the last part because whenever we work on projects everyone gets kind of excited and loud. Not me.
The Chelsea/Brittany girls at the table behind us really did bring in papier-mâché, and they’re laying newspapers out across their table and dipping strips into this white stuff their moms brought into school in Tupperware.
And now I’m wondering where Ms. Gloria is because I told her we should work on this stupid thing in Group Guidance so we didn’t have to be around everyone being all annoying with their big tree ideas.
“Come on, Rob,” Derek says. “You have to turn something in. I’ll help you.”
“I’ll help too,” Candace adds. She brought in all these pictures of her parents and her aunt Jane and her cousins, and she’s laying them out on a big piece of poster board that takes up half our table. “We can do it together.”
I open my notebook.
Derek opens his notebook too and starts sketching. “I’m going to make mine like a board game, I think.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I don’t really care.
“Each square could be a person in my family, and if you land on a square you get to read about who that person is. Or something like that.”
It’s actually a pretty cool idea, though I’d never say that because nothing about these family trees is cool. Even if I do the project, it won’t be creative like Derek’s. Or have pictures like Candace’s.
But at least my tree will have my mom on it. I’ve been saying her name in my head all morning and imagining what she looked like. Like Grandpa. Like me. Eddie Rose Miller. Eddie.
I wasn’t going to tell anyone about learning her name because it feels like my own important secret. But before I know it I’m blurting it out to Derek. “I found out what my mom’s name was, so I can put her on my tree if I want.”
Derek drops his pencil. “What? When did you—? What?”
He’s so excited that he’s kind of getting loud, so I tell him to shut up and act normal because I don’t want the whole class staring at us.
“What is it?” he asks. “What’s her name?” He’s leaning in and trying to whisper, but he’s still so excited that it isn’t really a whisper. Candace leans in too.
“Edna Rose Miller,” I say. “But she went by Eddie.”
“Nice!” Derek exclaims and goes for a high five. “You have to put her on your tree!” Now people are starting to give us funny stares and Ms. Meg gives us that look.
“That’s great, Robbie,” Candace says. Then she looks right in my eyes, right under my Dodgers hat. “What exactly happened to her?” she asks. “I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s OK.”
Triples hit, single-season record: Chief Wilson, 36. Dave Orr, 31. If this were last week I would have pushed Candace out of her chair already, but I’m remembering everything Ms. Gloria says about getting mad and taking responsibility for my actions. And I’m thinking about making sure Grandpa never comes back here.
“It’s OK, Robbie,” Derek says. “Candace is just being nice, remember?”
I unclench my fists and pick up my pen.
“Sorry,” Candace says, and she puts her head down on the table. I don’t even feel bad for her because who goes around asking about people’s moms and how they died? And I’m mad that I don’t have an answer. I don’t know exactly how my mom died, so even if I wanted to talk about it, I couldn’t.
“Why don’t you write down your mom’s name on your list?” Derek taps his finger on my list of important family members, right beneath Grandpa. “Because no matter what, she was important. If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t be here.”
And I’m thinking that if I weren’t here, my mom probably would be.
But I do what Derek says, and just writing it out makes me feel a little better.
Important People in My Family:
Grandpa
Edna Rose Miller
Then I start to draw one of those family trees you see in textbooks sometimes, or on the first page of really complicated books with too many characters. I start with Grandpa and make the tree from there until I have everyone Grandpa told me about and I’m starting to feel like maybe I could do this project.
I don’t really want to include my grandma Lucy’s mean parents, the ones who thought Grandpa wasn’t good enough for their daughter, but I do anyway because it makes it look like I have more family, so if Ms. Meg bends over my work she doesn’t have any reason to linger around and try to help me.
Derek leans over and says, “Look at all those people!” and he puts his hand up for another high five when Ms. Gloria pokes her head in.
“Robbie, Candace, Oscar?” she says. “Bring your projects.” She winks at me because this was my idea, that we work on our family trees together.
I nod to Derek and close my notebook. “Oh,” I whisper. “This weekend we’re boiling. Saturday morning is Maple Day. Tell your mom.”
“Yes!” Derek says and pumps his fist. “We’ll be there!” And I already can’t wait for the weekend.
Candace lifts up her head from the table and grabs her book bag. I guess now I’m starting to feel a little bad that she feels bad because Derek was right. She was just trying to be nice. So when we’re in the hall I run a step to catch up and walk next to her and say, “It’s OK.”
She looks up from the floor and smiles. “Thanks, Robbie.” Then she pats my shoulder, and I’m not usually a touching-type person unless it’s Grandpa or Harold or Paul or sometimes Derek, but it feels OK, so I don’t say anything.
We start with a check-in, but Ms. Gloria says we’ll get to use the rest of our time to work on our projects.
Alex’s chair is empty, and I can’t believe his mom actually let him stay home from school today, especially since we have tomorrow off anyway. I guess she’s way cooler than she seems, because I don’t know anyone else’s mom who would do that.
“I’m a three,” Candace says, which is her all-time low. “Stuff’s just hard right now.”
Then she passes the talking wand to me. I turn it back and forth in my hands, but then I decide to do what Candace always does because I think she might want to say more but just needs a little help to do it. “Are you sure you don’t want to say anything else?” I reach the wand back out to her in case she wants to take it again.
And maybe it’s because I asked her nice, or maybe it’s because Alex is absent, so there’s no one to laugh and break all the group norms and make everyone feel crappy, but Candace reaches back for the talking wand and says, “OK.”
She pulls a little on the bottom of her shirt and shifts in her chair. It’s kind of hard to see her face from underneath the brim of my hat, and I actually do want to hear what she says, so I turn it around backward. Ms. Gloria nods at me and smiles, and that feels pretty OK too.
Then Candace taps the wand on her knee and says, “My sister and I used to be really close. Best-friends kind of close.”
She takes a deep breath and I can tell she’s trying not to cry, and I hope she doesn’t because I suck at being around crying people. It makes me feel awkward and like I’ll do something wrong. Like holding a baby. But I guess I did OK at that with May. So I take a deep breath too and just keep listening.
“She started high school this year and got all these new friends who don�
��t want to hang out with me because I’m just some fifth grader. They’d rather wear makeup and message their friends on their phones and make fun of me for being chubby.”
Then she does it. She starts crying, and it’s not awkward at all, just like it wasn’t awkward to hold May. It’s OK, and I actually kind of feel like I could cry right with her about Grandpa and my mom and how Grandpa packed up his bags and he didn’t even know why. But I blink my eyes really fast and look away from Candace and think about baseball, and then I don’t have to cry anymore.
“She’s just so mean now. And she and my mom are always screaming at each other. I miss the old her.” Then she passes the wand back to me and says, “Thanks, Robbie.”
“That sounds like it really sucks,” I say. “Sorry.”
Ms. Gloria looks at me and smiles and I know what she means. She means good job, Robbie because even though I said sucks I helped Candace share and I followed all the norms.
“I’m a seven,” I say. “I found out my mom’s name, and it’s Eddie.” I want to say more about Grandpa and all the questions I have left to ask him before it’s too late, before his memory wears out and all that information gets locked up tight in his brain. But I think I know what happens to an eleven-year-old when her only branch snaps, so I don’t say anymore.
And all of a sudden I’m feeling more like a five or a six than a seven.
I pass the talking wand to Oscar.
Oscar’s a six because he and his mom just finished unpacking boxes from their move. “Finally,” he says. He’s still talking to the ground, but he’s loud enough to hear, and Alex isn’t there to say something mean. He tells us he misses his dad a lot, but every time they hang out it kind of stinks because his dad talks crap about his mom. “And my mom says all this bad stuff about my dad too. Like I’m supposed to pick a team or something,” he says.
He hands the wand back to Ms. Gloria, and she says that she’s a seven today because she’s sad to hear about some of the hard things going on in our lives but so happy that we are talking through them together.
She also tells us she’s looking forward to tomorrow, when all the teachers have a big planning day and the students don’t come to school. “We’ll be preparing for our big family open house next week.”
Oscar laughs a little under his breath and says, “We’re looking forward to it too. No school!”
Ms. Gloria smiles. “I bet.” She says she’s looking forward to meeting all our families next week. And I’m thinking she’s already met Grandpa. Too many times. But I’m not telling Grandpa about any family open house after school anyway.
“Robinson had a great idea yesterday that we could work on our family trees together here in Group Guidance,” Ms. Gloria announces.
“Yes!” Candace says.
Oscar nods his head.
“OK, then,” Ms. Gloria says. “I’ll let you guys work. Let me know if you need anything.” She goes to her desk in the corner of the room and takes out her own notebook and a pen.
Candace lays out her poster board on the table in front of us. “How do you think I should arrange these?” she asks as she spreads out a whole bunch of pictures of her family members.
“Which one is your sister?” I ask.
She picks out three pictures. “This one is us at our aunt’s house after our first day of swim lessons,” she tells me, pointing at the first one. “This is us in our matching Christmas pajamas three years ago. And this one is the most recent. It’s the first day of school. Fifth grade for me, ninth for her. My mom always makes us take first-day pictures.”
In each picture they have their arms around each other and are smiling big.
Then she slides over another picture. “This is her ninth-grade class picture.”
It makes me feel bad to see the last picture because I can see how much she’s changed, which I know makes Candace sad. In the last picture her hair is dyed white blond with two purple streaks down the sides, and she’s wearing black makeup around her eyes and bright pink on her lips.
“My mom says she’s just adjusting to high school. But they yell at each other all the time. My dad rolls his eyes and says, ‘Teenagers,’ and my mom rolls her eyes at him and tells him he should be doing more as a father. I hate it all so much.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tessa.”
“Maybe you should put the pictures of Tessa and you at the middle of your project,” I suggest.
Then Oscar adds in, “And her ninth-grade class picture could be at the top. You know, like you’re all supporting her or something. Like holding her up. Even if she’s kind of being different and mean. Like you’ll be there for her and love her anyway.”
That’s definitely the most I’ve ever heard Oscar talk. And though I’m not going to say it out loud, I like his idea even better than mine.
“I like that,” Candace says. “Maybe I could make all my family members into, like, some kind of net at the bottom or something, like we’ll be there when she decides to stop being so mean. You know, like those safety nets at the circus or something.”
Oscar and I nod and Candace starts arranging the pictures of Tessa on her poster board. “Thanks, guys.”
As I watch her sorting through her family I wish that Grandpa had pictures of Eddie. I always wondered why he didn’t at least keep one. Even if he put it somewhere secret where he didn’t have to see it every day and get sad by remembering.
Oscar’s sketching two trees on a blank page in a cool-looking black leather notebook. In the middle of the two trees he starts drawing a picture of himself, and it’s really good. Each time he swipes his pencil across the page, the drawing looks more and more like him. He sketches himself with his arms stretched out between the two trees.
Then he catches me staring. “One tree is my mom’s side and the other is my dad’s,” he explains.
I’m thinking this kid is some kind of genius. “Is everything you do always this deep?” I ask.
He laughs, and I guess that means yes.
All this time Ms. Gloria’s working on her own family tree project. She’s cutting something out of blue construction paper.
“You have to do this project too?” I ask her.
She laughs. “I guess I don’t have to.” She presses a glue stick into the construction paper. “But it’s good to reflect on family every once in a while.”
Everyone has some kind of creative idea, even Ms. Gloria, and I don’t. All I have are boring lines and the names of some people I don’t even know.
For the rest of the period I help Candace smear the glue stick across her poster board and press down the pictures of her and her sister.
When the bell rings we all start to pack up our projects and Ms. Gloria says to have a great long weekend and she’ll see us Monday. And I’m thinking how I’ll get to spend all day tomorrow in the garage helping Grandpa, then on Saturday we’ll boil sap, which is about the most perfect weekend I can think of.
“Hey, Robinson,” Ms. Gloria says, and I turn around before I push open the door. “So it went OK with your grandpa?”
I nod. “But I’ve got more questions.”
She smiles and gives me a thumbs-up. That’s when I see the beginning of her project, blue birds cut out of construction paper, flying in a V across her white poster board. But there’s one bird that’s not in the V, one who’s flying off in a different direction alone.
I didn’t know that a teacher’s family could be not perfect. I never really thought about the fact that Ms. Gloria had a family. And I wonder if that was Ms. Gloria flying off by herself and where she was going.
chapter 17
The fire is burning hot in our backyard pit on Saturday morning by the time I hear Derek and his mom pull into our driveway in their Subaru Outback. I peer around the house and see Derek open the passenger door and jump out before his mom even puts the car in park.
“Maple Day!” he screams and runs out to the yard with his purple mitten up the whole
way, ready for a high five.
His mom follows behind him, walking carefully through the snow in her big boots. She looks just like the adult version of Derek—short, twig skinny, all bony elbows and knees, and off balance.
“Welcome!” Grandpa calls and walks over to help Derek’s mom through the melting snow.
Yesterday in the garage Grandpa and I did two car inspections, three oil changes, and put new tires on a Toyota Prius. All without Harold. And Grandpa talked with customers and didn’t get his words crossed either.
“Glad you could make it,” he tells Derek’s mom.
“Are you kidding? There’s no way we’d miss an invitation to boil sap,” she says. “Derek talks about this all year.”
Today is going to be another good day just like yesterday.
The flames from the fire pit are burning high up over the brick walls that are sunk into the ground. I know that high flames mean it’s time for another couple pieces of dry, split wood from our pile.
“Come on.” I pull Derek toward the shed. “Let’s get your gloves.” Derek and his mom have boiled with us for so many years that we keep a pair of gloves for both of them in the shed.
Derek’s mom pulls on her work gloves and sits down on the stump chopping block. She helps sometimes, but mostly she likes to watch and take pictures of Derek and me.
“More wood,” I order, and Derek and I race to the woodpile. I hold my arms out palms up while he stacks two pieces on my forearms to carry back to the fire.
Derek’s always too scared to throw another piece of wood on the fire, so that’s my job every time. Grandpa pokes at the burning wood in the pit and says, “OK, Robbie.” That’s my cue that I can throw the next piece on and step back fast because the sparks fly up and you don’t want them to catch your clothes.
Grandpa’s bringing over the metal bars that stretch across the fire and the big lobster pot we’ll use to boil. His brain is hardwired for boiling, so he’s remembering all the steps, and his memory doesn’t seem tired at all, which is good because there’s no reason for Derek’s mom to raise her eyebrows.
Just Like Jackie Page 9