ALL THAT’S BRIGHT AND GONE
a novel
ELIZA NELLUMS
To my niece
Acknowledgments
It takes a village to raise a book. I want to first extend my love and gratitude to my parents, who patiently believed in me all these years. A huge shout-out to all the members of the Metro Wriders, and particularly to Jeff West and Kellie Small—a thousand thank-yous! To Chris Bucci, the kindest and best of agents, without whom this book would never have been published. To the wonderful folks of the Bethesda Writer’s Center, particularly Zach Powers, who took time to coach me on my next steps. To my editor Chelsey Emmelhainz, for all her patience with a first-time author. And to Maisy, who had to listen to me read the same chapters out loud over and over again every night for six months straight.
Chapter One
I know my brother is dead. I’m not dumb like Hazel Merkowicz from up the street says.
Sometimes Mama just gets confused, is all.
Like every year on the feast of Saint Theodore, his birthday, Mama sets out an extra plate for Theo, with a candle on it instead of food, because I guess Theo isn’t hungry. And Mama says, “Isn’t this nice? It’s like we’re all together again.”
I guess it’s nice.
“Alfie? Uh, Alfie Scott?”
That man with the clipboard probably means me. I stand up. “C’mon, Teddy,” I whisper. I cover my mouth with my hand, because Mama always tells me not to talk to Teddy out loud where strangers can hear me.
Teddy gets up when I do, walking on all fours behind me with his big head hanging down. We go over to the clipboard man, who is wearing pale-blue pajamas, and I say, “Here I am.”
“Is it Alfie, sweetheart? Did I get that right?”
“It’s Aoife,” I say. EE-fah. I have to say it a lot. Grown-ups never get it right.
“Oh, okay. Eva. Why don’t you come along with me and we’ll go see the doc, okay?”
Teddy growls, but I pretend not to hear him. “Okay,” I say.
We walk together down a white hallway that smells like bleach. “That’s a real interesting name you’ve got,” says the clipboard man. “The spelling of it, I mean.”
“My mama’s name is Sha-VOHN,” I say. “It’s spelled S-I-O-B-A—I mean, B-H-A-N.”
“Wow, I guess you-all must be Irish, huh?”
“No,” I say politely. “We’re from Chicago.”
The man stops at a white wooden door and knocks. “Come in,” someone says from inside.
“Dr. Pearlman, this is Eva Scott,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder and guiding me in. “She’s the little girl who was brought in from Westgate Mall.”
“Oh yes. Eva. Hello,” says Dr. Pearlman. She’s a gray-haired lady with a big necklace of yellow glass. There’s yellow beads hanging from her ears, too.
Teddy doesn’t like her.
“It’s with an f,” I say quietly. “Ee-fah.”
She looks down at her file. “What an unusual name,” she says. “I’ve never seen it before!”
“It’s after my grandmother,” I say, because that’s what Mama always says. “And my middle name is Joan because my birthday is on her special day.” I like that Joan is my saint, because she was brave. Mama says Joan was a warrior and Aoife is a warrior’s name, too, back in the old country.
“How lovely.” Dr. Pearlman doesn’t know it, but Teddy is biting her shoe. He’s going to pull it right off her foot if she’s not careful.
“How old are you, Ee-fah?”
“Six.”
“That’s great,” she says.
I’m not really sure why it’s great, but I nod anyway.
“Well, come on inside. Why don’t we sit down over here?”
She was sitting behind a desk, but she gets up to walk over to another table and chairs that are my size, like they have at school. She sits in one of the chairs—I think it’s going to topple over, but she’s good at balancing on it—and I pull out the other one. Teddy tries to sit in the third chair, but he’s fat, and he kind of splodges over the side.
“I think I have some play dough here,” she says. “Would you like that?”
I nod. Mama doesn’t like me to play with play dough because it makes a mess, but Dr. Pearlman doesn’t have to know that.
She hands me a carton with a blue lid. My favorite color is red, but I can be a big girl, so I don’t complain. I peel back the lid and stick my nose in, because I like how it smells like melted crayons. Then I dump it out on the table and start to make snakes. I always start by making snakes.
“Would you like to play too?” I ask, because Mama says you should be polite, even when there’s not enough clay in one carton for two people to make a lot of snakes.
Dr. Pearlman picks off a little corner. I guess that’s okay. She pinches it between her fingers and makes it into a little Frisbee.
“So Aoife, can you tell me about what happened this morning?” she asks. She says my name pretty close to right. I can hear the f.
Still, Teddy shakes his head no. He doesn’t want me to say.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Dr. Pearlman sighs. I look down at my hands and flatten one of the snakes.
“Tell me about your mommy,” she says.
I don’t call her Mommy, I call her Mama. “Her name’s Siobhan,” I say. “She’s trying to teach me cartwheels. But I can’t do them yet.”
“My mommy and I used to turn cartwheels too,” says Dr. Pearlman, smiling.
I try to think of how to describe Mama. If she was an animal, she’d be a horse, because she’s pretty and nice and has long hair.
If I could pick any animal, I’d be a bear for sure—as big as a house. But if I had to be the animal that is most like me, I’d probably be … maybe a squirrel? Or a chipmunk.
But I’d rather be a bear.
“She likes going to church a lot,” I say. “And she’s going to take me to see the fireworks for the Fourth of July, and I can’t wait.” We watched the Canada Day ones on TV, but these ones will be even better because we’re going to see them live and in person. “Mama is the best.”
“That sounds really fun!” says Dr. Pearlman. If she was an animal, she’d be one of those birds that deliver babies. She has skinny arms and a big head. “I bet your mommy is the best. But I guess she gets mad sometimes, too, right?”
“I guess,” I say. “But not very often.” She mostly gets mad at Mac, who she calls an old cuss when they are speaking. They are usually not speaking.
“Was your mommy angry this morning?” asks Dr. Pearlman.
“Aoife, I want to talk to you about something important,” Mama said. But she never told me what it was.
“She wasn’t mad,” I say. “But she doesn’t like it when I talk to Teddy. And I was talking to him.”
“Who’s Teddy?” Dr. Pearlman asks, looking around like she expects to see him. Which is dumb, because no one can see Teddy but me.
I motion to the chair where Teddy is sitting. “He’s there,” I say.
“Ahh.” Dr. Pearlman nods wisely. “Hello, Teddy. I apologize, I didn’t notice you there.”
I giggle. Dr. Pearlman is funny. Mama never, ever talks to Teddy.
“You know, it’s interesting, I notice in my papers here that you have a brother named Theodore,” says Dr. Pearlman, motioning to the file in front of her. It’s full of black boxes and squinty little letters. Even though I can read some things some of the time, I can’t read the little words on those pages.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding.
She reads a little further and frowns. I figure the papers are telling her Theo died. That’s one of the things that makes Mama sad. She goes to visit him every ot
her week, and sometimes I can tell she’s been crying when she comes home. One time we went to visit Gramma Aoife, and I was excited, but when we got there it was just a big field full of rocks, so I’m glad I don’t have to visit Theo with Mama.
“Did you call your brother Teddy too?” asks Dr. Pearlman, her voice softer now.
I don’t know. I shrug. I don’t really remember when my brother was around. “Mama always calls him Theo,” I say. “But I call my Teddy that because he’s a bear.”
Right now Teddy is almost as big as the ceiling. That’s why he doesn’t fit in the chair so good.
I don’t really miss Theo at all, because I have Teddy.
“I see,” says Dr. Pearlman thoughtfully. “So, your mommy doesn’t like it when you talk to Teddy?”
“She tells me not to do it,” I say.
“Sometimes mommies have their own opinion about what is good behavior,” says Dr. Pearlman.
I know what opinion means because Sister Mary Celeste, my teacher at Sacred Heart, told us. An opinion means, what do you think.
“It’s rude to talk to people when other people can’t see them,” I explain. “But Mama broke the rule, and that’s why she got in trouble.”
Dr. Pearlman puts down the file. “She broke the rule?”
“Yeeeah,” I say slowly. Teddy is watching me with his arms crossed. He’s pouting. But this time he doesn’t tell me not to say anything. “She was talking to Theo in the car. She was yelling.”
“Your mommy was talking to your brother?”
“Yes. But Theo wasn’t there,” I say. Because he’s dead.
Dr. Pearlman has made a heart out of her piece of play dough. “I bet that was scary for you, when your mommy was confused,” she says.
“Where is he, Aoife? What happened? What happened to him?”
“She was yelling,” I say. “She got in trouble because she wasn’t using her indoor voice, and that makes people mad.”
In school Sister Mary Celeste tells us to use our indoor voices, and I’m very good at remembering. In fact, I’m the best in the class because I don’t like to yell. I like to whisper. But now it’s summer, and I won’t see Sister Mary Celeste again until the fall.
I start making my snakes into a dog. One snake, folded in half, becomes the front legs, and one becomes the back legs. Then a really fat one becomes the body. That’s why it’s good to start with snakes. You can build anything out of snakes.
“Sometimes Mama doesn’t sleep so well, or she has bad dreams,” I say, trying to make a head out of a lump. My fingers are turning blue, and it gets under my nails. I don’t like that. “And sometimes she yells and stuff. My friend Hannah says she’s scary and she won’t come over to our house anymore.”
Dr. Pearlman looks sad.
“Hannah wants to be a detective,” I say. She’s my best friend, even though she’s already eight. She reads lots of books about kids who solve crimes, and she’s always finding us mysteries, too. She calls regular things like umbrellas or apples clues, and she says muddy tire tracks are evidence.
When I told Hannah I used to have a brother who died, she asked what killed him. I said I thought there was an accident.
“Maybe it wasn’t really an accident,” Hannah said, looking excited.
“What happened? What happened to him?” Mama said.
“Aoife, sometimes even really nice mommies get confused about things, and sometimes they need some help figuring out what’s real,” says Dr. Pearlman. “I bet there’s times when you’ve been confused and needed someone to help you?”
I nod my head, because there’s lots of times I’m confused. But that’s why Teddy is here, to tell me what to do. He’s really good at that.
“My friends and I here at the hospital want to help your mommy,” Dr. Pearlman continues. “Does that sound okay to you?”
I don’t know what she means, but I nod my head anyway because that’s polite. I look down at my clay doggy. It doesn’t look right. I bet Dr. Pearlman can’t even tell if it’s supposed to be a dog or a horse or a cat. I wish I was better with play dough, like Hannah is. I squish the doggy back into a lump of clay.
“I’m going to make a basket,” I tell Dr. Pearlman.
“That sounds like a good idea,” she says. She gets up from the table, and I work on making a little bowl out of clay, pushing my thumb in the middle to make the hole.
When Dr. Pearlman comes back, she’s carrying a blue purse by the leather strap.
“That’s my mama’s purse,” I say. I’m not supposed to touch Mama’s purse without asking. “You shouldn’t play with that.”
“Well, your mommy said it was okay if I was very, very careful,” Dr. Pearlman explains. “Because my friends and I are trying to help her, remember?”
Teddy thinks it would be fun to look in the purse, even though I know I’m not supposed to. But since Dr. Pearlman is opening the top of it anyway, I figure it can’t hurt to look inside just once. “Okay.”
There’s not much in there. Just Mama’s pill bottles that I’m not supposed to touch. Although sometimes Teddy likes to rattle them, and they make a lot of noise. That’s fun.
Dr. Pearlman puts them to the side, though, and reaches into the bottom of the purse to dig around down there. She pulls out Mama’s cell phone and her wallet.
“Do you recognize this phone?” she asks me.
Sure I do. Teddy loves Mama’s phone, and sometimes Mama will give it to us to play with. “You can play games on there,” I explain. “I like the one with the little candies.”
“I like that one too,” says Dr. Pearlman. “Do you know how to open the phone?” She shows me the home screen, where you put in the password.
“Yeah!” I say. I take the phone and show her how to slide the bottom so the password window comes up. “You put the code in here,” I say, punching it in. 1113. Mama plus me plus Theo equals three. Or as Mama says, one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost.
The phone starts up, but Dr. Pearlman takes it back before I can open a game. “Thank you very much, Aoife,” she says. “It’s a big help to us that you know how to open up your mommy’s phone. Your mommy is going to be very proud of you when I tell her how you helped us.”
“What are you doing?” I want to know. “Are we going to play a game now?”
“I was hoping you could tell me about some of the people your mommy has in her phone,” Dr. Pearlman explains. That doesn’t sound like a very fun game to me. “The number we have in this file is disconnected. It would be a big help to your mommy if we could call someone she knows to help us take care of you. Can you tell me if your daddy is in this phone? Or your grandma, maybe?”
“My gramma’s dead,” I explain. “I don’t have a daddy.” That’s what Mama always says. She says I’m like a Cabbage Patch doll, that she found me growing in a garden and took me home.
“I see,” says Dr. Pearlman. “What about this person … ‘Stephanie’? I see that your mommy called Stephanie this morning. Is that a member of your family?”
“Stephanie babysits for Hannah and me,” I say. Stephanie comes almost every day in the summer. My mama and Hannah’s mom split the money to pay her, even though Hannah told me once that really she could stay with her cousins and her mom is just doing it to help Mama.
“Ah. How about ‘Mac’ … do you know who Mac is?”
“That’s Mama’s special friend,” I say, although I don’t think they’re friends right now.
Sometimes Mac is around a lot, but most of the time he’s not. Sometimes he goes away for months and months, and Mama says we’re well clear of him this time.
Dr. Pearlman keeps scrolling. “How about ‘Donny’?”
“That’s my uncle Donovan. He’s nice.”
“Oh? Is Donovan your mother’s brother?”
I have to think about this. I think he is. I shrug and put my basket upside down on the table so it’s a roof.
“Does he live nearby?”
“I’m going to give your uncle Donovan a call. How does that sound?”
“That sounds good,” I say. I like Uncle Donny, and so does Teddy.
Dr. Pearlman stands with the phone pressed to her ear. I can hear it ringing. I’m bored of playing with play dough, and I want to play on the phone. “Can I have it back when you’re done?” I ask.
Dr. Pearlman puts her finger on her lips. “Hello? Is this Donovan? Yes, hello, this is Dr. Louise Pearlman at Botsford Hospital. Do you know a Siobhan Scott?”
She stands up with the phone squished between her shoulder and her ear. “Aoife, do you think you can play here like a good girl for just a minute while I talk to your uncle?”
I shrug again. Sometimes when grown-ups ask if you can do something, they are really just telling you to do it. I don’t think Dr. Pearlman is going to let me play with the phone no matter what I say, so who cares.
“Thank you, sweetheart,” says Dr. Pearlman. She picks up the papers on the table and puts them back in the folder. Then she takes the phone and the folder and goes out into the hallway. I can hear her talking, but I can’t make out the words.
Teddy leans against the doorframe with his ear pressed up against the door, but he can’t hear anything either.
“Teddy, do you think we should look in Mama’s purse for some gum?” I say. Because the purse is right there by Dr. Pearlman’s chair, even though she hasn’t told me it’s okay to play with it. I don’t like to get in trouble.
But Teddy thinks it would be okay.
“Do you want some?” I ask when I find the pack and open it up. The little pieces spill out of the foil faster than I expected, and some of them fall on the floor. I blow them off like Mama showed me before I put them in my mouth. One, two, three times so it’s clean now. Three is Mama’s special number. Teddy says he doesn’t like gum, so I have to eat all of it myself. For a little while it’s fun to chase the pieces around on my hands and knees. The last piece is almost under Dr. Pearlman’s desk.
I have a loose tooth, and it squishes between the other teeth when I push the gum against it. I can feel it tugging on the threads that connect it to my head, and it feels good.
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