Some Kind of Happiness

by Claire Legrand

  (Or not.)

  After a pause Pam starts typing away on her keyboard. She shows me articles on her computer. She prints documents. She babbles on and on, telling me words too awful to stick. They jump and slip around in my skull like panicked fish, and it is hard to get a grip on them, but I try. I scribble in my notebook. I must get this information out of my head and onto paper.

  Aunt Dee comes up behind me. “Finley? You about done?”

  I jump and slam my notebook closed. “Yeah. I’m fine. Why?”

  Aunt Dee takes a sip of her coffee and looks at me funny, but Pam hurries over before she can say anything.

  “Dee! Hi.” Pam gives her a hug. “Good to see you. I was just helping Finley with—”

  “Some research,” I interrupt. “For a story I’m writing. Thanks, Pam.”

  Now Pam’s the one giving me a funny look.

  “Well, thank you so much for helping her,” says Aunt Dee. “I’ll see you at choir practice this weekend?”

  “Sure, sure. Oh! That reminds me: Is your mom okay?”

  Grandma?

  Aunt Dee frowns. “What do you mean? Of course she is.”

  “I was only asking because she missed our Friends of the Library meeting last week. Didn’t leave a message or anything. It was so unlike her, and I wanted to make sure everything was all right.”

  Aunt Dee freezes for a tiny second and then relaxes into a smile. “Oh! That. Yes, I’m afraid we’ve all been a little behind on things since Finley arrived.” Aunt Dee squeezes my shoulder. “Trying to make up for lost time, you know? The kids have been over almost every day, and Mom’s been cooking up a storm.”

  Pam smiles at me. “I should’ve guessed. The famous Finley. Maybe if you have enough of your grandma’s cooking, you won’t ever want to leave! Her chicken spaghetti is my absolute favorite thing in the world, honest to God.”

  Aunt Dee says something, laughing, and Pam says something back, and somehow my feet are taking me out of the library, but I don’t realize it until the sunlight hits me.

  “I don’t get it,” I tell Aunt Dee. “Grandma said she went to that meeting.”

  Aunt Dee marches to the car beside me. “You must have heard her wrong.”

  “No, I remember it exactly. We were all in the dining room making masks, and she came in and said—”

  “Finley, your grandmother’s a busy woman. She probably got the schedule mixed up, is all. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “But she said—”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore, okay?” Aunt Dee holds the car door open for me. I can’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but her smile is front and center. “What do you say we swing by Carter’s on the way home, grab a batch of those frosted oatmeal cookies for dessert tonight, huh?”

  “Okay.” I climb into the car. The leather burns the backs of my legs. Aunt Dee turns on the car, and the air-conditioning roars to life. A song starts up, and Aunt Dee sings along. She doesn’t look at me.

  I concentrate on my notebook, trying to clear my head. I don’t know what to think about Grandma lying to us, and I guess Aunt Dee doesn’t want to think about it either.

  So I stop thinking, and read over my notes:

  NEW INFORMATION ABOUT THE EVERWOOD

  • Geoffrey Bailey

  ■ Jack, Cole, and Bennett’s dad

  ■ Frequently gets in trouble for drunk driving

  • Maggie Bailey

  ■ Jack, Cole, and Bennett’s mom

  • Grandma and Grandpa Hart

  ■ Gave a lot of money to the city (library renovation, courthouse restoration, parks maintenance)

  • The Travers family

  ■ Frank Travers: Worked at a small gas station on the outskirts of town (no longer exists). Deceased. Forty years old at time of death.

  ■ Joy Travers: Worked at Freddie’s Diner on I-35 (went out of business in 1991). Deceased. Thirty-five years old at time of death.

  ■ Cynthia Travers: Attended Billington Elementary. Deceased. Eight years old at time of death.

  • The Travers fire

  ■ April 17, 1994. Twenty-two years ago. (Dad was fourteen.)

  ■ Cause of fire: negligence; illegal garbage fire spread to house (from fire department records)

  ■ Joy and Cynthia Travers died in the fire.

  ■ Frank Travers died in the hospital three days later.

  ■ My aunts saw the fire, tried to save the Travers family, but couldn’t.

  As Aunt Dee brakes at an intersection, she finally looks back at me. “Are you all right, Finley? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  How do I tell her what I am thinking?

  Pam showed me an article about the Travers fire. I have two copies of it in my notebook. The article explains how my aunts saw the flames from the backyard of Hart House. They crossed the river and ran through the Everwood to help. But they couldn’t.

  They were heroes, the article says, the three beautiful Hart girls.

  No one is surprised, the article says.

  The Hart family is a pillar of strength in our community. Those Harts have always shined.

  “Finley?” Aunt Dee looks worried. “Do you need me to pull over?”

  Why has no one ever told me about this fire?

  Why did I have to find out myself?

  It seems odd that Grandma Hart would not have wanted to tell me about my aunts, after they did this great thing.

  And why doesn’t this article say anything about Dad?

  I shut my notebook. I cannot ask these questions until I talk to someone about this. I need to talk to Gretchen, or Jack.

  “I’m fine,” I tell Aunt Dee. “Reading in the car gives me a headache.”

  19

  I HAVE STARTED ACCOMPANYING GRANDPA on his drives—not every one of them, otherwise I’d be out of the house nearly every afternoon, but some of them.

  I never ask him to let me go with him, not after that first time. I do not want to bother him. I understand how a person might want time to himself.

  (Sometimes when I am sitting alone in a quiet room, with only my Everwood stories for company, I feel like I am truly me.)

  (I do not have to talk when I don’t want to.)

  (I can get lost in my thoughts and not miss anything other people think is important.)

  (I do not have to pretend to be happy when I am not feeling happy.)

  So usually I wait until Grandpa finds me.

  Every afternoon before his drive, I hold my breath and listen while Grandpa moves through the house. I hear the jingle of his car keys, the garage door open and shut. Then he is gone.

  But today he finds me in the squashy armchair by the giant living room window. The house is quiet because Grandma is napping.

  I am trying to work on an Everwood story, but I cannot stop thinking about the Bone House and the list of questions tucked inside my notebook.

  “Feel like going for a drive?” he asks me.

  “Can we listen to Beethoven?”

  He smiles. “I’d like that.”

  Most of the time Grandpa takes the same route through Billington, and we end up at the farm stand and buy a basket of strawberries.

  Today we go a different direction. Instead of turning left out of the Hart House driveway, we turn right. We take a country road out to these big rolling prairie fields full of grazing cows.

  The sky is huge, a cloudless blue carpet that never ends. Nothing gets in its way—no trees, no buildings, no mountains.

  The second movement of the Pastoral Symphony is playing. It is this really sleepy part of the symphony that sounds like a slow dance.

  Grandpa isn’t talking today, and I am not sure why. Usually he asks me about things back home, like my friend Rhonda next door or how in art class last year I painted a forest in tiny pieces of color, like a stained-glass window.

  But not today.

  He stares out the window ahead of us, not looking at the sky or the fields of cows.
He turns the volume of the radio up and down.

  He looks very tired. At a stop sign he rubs his face, sliding his glasses up his forehead.

  My notebook, with the newspaper article inside, sits in my lap like a brick.

  Words rush out of me:

  “Aunt Dee took me to the library this morning. I found out about the Travers fire.”

  Grandpa finally snaps out of his tiredness and looks at me. “What?”

  “It says Aunt Bridget, and Dee and Stick, they were heroes.” I take out one copy of the article to show him.

  Grandpa snatches it away from me. He looks at it for much longer than it would take to read the article. The paper trembles in his hands.

  “How come no one ever talks about it?” Now that I have brought it up, I might as well ask my questions. “I think it’s really nice. They must have been so brave.”

  Watching him, I breathe very carefully. My heartbeat gets louder and louder. Maybe this was a terrible idea, although I cannot imagine why. Does it have something to do with Dad? Why wasn’t he in the article? Grandpa is scaring me with the terrible, lost-looking expression on his face, but all the same, I have to know.

  My words rush out: “So how come Dad—?”

  “Finley, this was a very painful time for everyone,” he says abruptly, crumpling the article into a ball and throwing it out the window. “It was frightening for us, and for your aunts, and sad for a lot of people, and I’d prefer we not talk about it.”

  “But—”

  “End of discussion. Can’t we just enjoy the day?”

  He drives away from the stop sign. Beethoven’s music now sounds unbearably loud.

  “Grandpa,” I whisper, because it is really bothering me, “you littered.”

  He sighs sharply. “I know, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “Can we go back and pick it up?”

  “No!”

  I try to scoot away without him noticing. My eyes are stinging, and I look out the window so he can’t tell.

  We drive for a long time, until we reach a dead end, a dirt road, a NO TRESPASSING sign. Grandpa sighs, turns the car around, stops.

  “I’m sorry, Finley. I shouldn’t have snapped at you. There was no excuse for that. Can you forgive me?”

  I nod, because the last time I opened my mouth, things came out that apparently should not have. And my question about Dad, it still balances there on my tongue, itching to be said.

  “Good. Thank you.” Grandpa starts driving again. The music waltzes through our silence. “Why don’t you read me something out of your notebook? Something that makes you happy.”

  That sounds like an awful idea; I do not read things out of my notebook to people. It is my own private space.

  But Grandpa looks so hopeful, and if this will make his conscience feel better about littering, then perhaps I should help him with that.

  “All right.” I flip through my notebook, making sure to hide the second copy of the article so he won’t crumple that one up too. “I like to make lists sometimes.”

  “Oh? What kinds of lists?”

  “All kinds. Like . . . I have this one, for example.”

  He glances over. “What is it?”

  I hesitate. “Why I Love My Dad.”

  (Don’t ask the question, Finley.)

  (Let’s only talk about nice things, just now. Nothing about then. Nothing about why.)

  Grandpa goes quiet for a while. Then he says softly, “Will you read it to me?”

  I scan the page. “Some of these are from a long time ago. They’re kind of cheesy.”

  “That’s all right. Go ahead.”

  So I do:

  WHY I LOVE MY DAD

  • He is tall.

  • He is strong.

  • He sings songs.

  • Brown eyes. Like me!

  • He tells me funny stories before bed about Yellow Peach.

  (“My stuffed rabbit,” I explain to Grandpa. He nods, and I keep reading.)

  • He likes pizza.

  • He dresses up for Halloween, and other dads don’t.

  • When he writes, he makes funny faces, but I pretend I don’t see (but I think he knows I see).

  • When I have nightmares, he doesn’t think it’s silly.

  • He pronounces Beethoven “Beeth-oven” because it’s funnier that way.

  • He is a good teacher.

  • He doesn’t like scary movies either.

  I read and read. The list is fifty-seven items long. When I get to item number fifty-seven, I say, “He—” and pause.

  I added this last one a couple of weeks ago.

  “What is it?” Grandpa asks.

  “It’s stupid,” I tell him.

  “I doubt that. You don’t want to finish?”

  “You won’t laugh?”

  “I won’t.”

  I take a deep breath and say the last item on my list:

  • He looks like Grandpa.

  Like he promised, Grandpa doesn’t laugh. He holds my hand instead, even though I am pretty sure one-handed driving is unsafe and illegal.

  He does not say anything, but he does not need to. The symphony continues, and the cow fields roll us back toward home, and that is enough for me.

  20

  THAT EVENING BEFORE DINNER, I show Gretchen and Kennedy the newspaper article Grandpa did not throw away, and I tell them everything I have learned about the Travers fire.

  We agree not to talk about it with the little ones, and we are certainly not mentioning anything to the adults. I learned my lesson after trying to discuss it with Grandpa.

  Obviously something is being kept from us; otherwise I’m sure I would have heard about the fire by now, and how my aunts tried to save the Travers family. My cousins would have already known about it. They would have told me right away after finding the Bone House. They wouldn’t want to hide that their mothers are town heroes.

  I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t know about this. We are in this mystery together, my cousins and I.

  I tell Jack everything in a note and leave it in the Post Office with the article.

  Jack’s response, a couple of hours later, says this:

  Dear Orphan Girl,

  I didn’t know about your aunts and the fire either. Cole says same for him.

  I noticed one thing. Why doesn’t the article talk about your dad? It says your aunts saw the fire, and it talks about your grandparents. But it doesn’t say anything about him. That’s weird, right?

  Your friend,

  Captain Jack

  P.S. Don’t worry, we won’t talk about this to the troll, either.

  Standing beside the Post Office, I stare at the article, which Jack has returned to me. A messy circle in blue ink surrounds the paragraph talking about my aunts—and not my father.

  So Jack noticed it too.

  Even if the article just said, Thankfully, the youngest Hart, Lewis (14), wasn’t home at the time, and did not have to witness this terrible tragedy, that would make sense to me. So why doesn’t it say at least that?

  I stare at the photos included in the article. The burned Bone House. My three aunts, golden-haired. Grandma and Grandpa standing behind them with their hands on my aunts’ shoulders. Grandpa’s face is blank. Grandma’s smile is gentle and sad. It looks, I think, just like someone should look if they are being photographed after something awful has happened.

  Dad may not be in this article, but he has to know about the fire.

  And if that is the case, why has he never told me about it? Even with everything that happened, and his huge fight with Grandma, it seems strange that he would have been able to resist telling such a dramatic story for eleven years.

  He is hiding something from me. They all are—my aunts, my grandparents.

  I am going to find out what.

  • • •

  We sneak out after dinner to meet with the Baileys. Avery is covering for us again, but I don’t think she’s happy about i
t. This time Dex, Ruth, and Bennett are coming with us.

  Gretchen is making notes on her map of the Everwood, which she does every time we’re outside.

  Jack has a backpack crammed full of cleaning supplies.

  So do I. And so does Kennedy.

  We are quite serious about cleaning tonight. I have insisted upon it. The Bone House needs us.

  I raided the pantry and the garage, sneaking things back up to my room while the adults were busy.

  I am a thief.

  It feels good.

  I try to think about that feeling instead of the article, or the fire, or my father.

  Gretchen and Kennedy are arguing about something, hissing back and forth. The sounds become wrapped up in the whispering trees until I cannot tell the two apart.

  Ahead of them Cole is herding Dex, Ruth, and Bennett like cattle.

  So back here it is just me and Jack. I like that.

  I think I have a crush on Jack.

  This is not the first crush I’ve had. Last fall, when Dad was working on an important journal article and Mom was wrapped up in a huge house renovation, we ordered cheap pizza all the time. The delivery boy was freckled and a teenager and had shaggy, sandy-colored hair. He smiled at me and remembered my name.

  I quickly fell in love with him. At least I think it was love. I have read about falling in love, and I have watched movies in which people fall in love. Whenever the delivery boy came to the door, I could feel myself becoming silly, like I might start either laughing or crying at any moment.

  After a couple of weeks, he stopped delivering pizza to us.

  At this point in my life I like to think he got a better job or went on vacation. But at the time I feared he had sensed my love and had run as fast as he could in the other direction.

  I did not eat pizza after that, even though refusing pizza and requesting Chinese instead made Dad cranky. The sight and smell of pizza had become too painful. Every time I even thought of it, my throat clenched up and my stomach flipped over, and I wished the world would swallow me up so I wouldn’t have to feel that way ever again.

  If that is what falling in and out of love is like, it is no wonder Mom and Dad don’t want me around this summer.

  (It occurs to me that this is the first time I have accepted the possibility that Mom and Dad are not in love anymore.)