Worth a Thousand Words

by Brigit Young

He looked straight at her. “You’re Jake’s girlfriend or something?”

  “No.”

  With complete defeat he said, “Don’t tell him, okay? Don’t tell the kid. We promised Dave we wouldn’t tell.” Eugene sighed. “How do you worry your kid like that?” he said under his breath.

  “He’s here now, isn’t he?” Tillie moved her head around, looking.

  “No, he’s not,” Eugene answered a little too quickly, grabbing onto the side of his chair like he was ready to bolt.

  “He is. Of course he is.”

  “Just leave it alone, kid, okay? This is grown-up stuff you don’t want to get involved in. I tried to warn you. It’s a tough situation.”

  At that moment Jim showed up. He stood at the entrance to the cubicle, and he and Eugene shared a look. Tillie turned to Jim, said, “Please get out of my way,” and then moved right past him.

  “Hey,” she heard Jim say behind her. “Hey, you’re limping pretty bad. You hurt yourself? Why aren’t you in school? You need a hand? Hey, we’ll get you some ice or something. Let’s go,” he entreated her. “Come on.”

  “Yeah, I have a limp,” Tillie said without turning back to face him. “It’s permanent, Jim.” She paused and smiled to herself. “Mountain lion attack,” she deadpanned as she kept walking, peeking into every cubicle.

  Jim followed her, unable to grab a girl with a limp and therefore incapable of stopping her in any way. Behind her she could feel the two men looking at each other, maybe mouthing ideas about what they should do. She became vaguely aware of their voices telling her she had to leave, that it wasn’t her place to be doing this.

  But then she saw him. The lost dad.

  She took in the orange-yellow shine of his hair beneath the overhead lighting. Moving closer, she saw that on the inside of his cubicle he had put up some terrible drawings—one of a man in a wizard hat, one of a stick-figure boy in a cape, and countless others whose scenes were indecipherable—that must have been drawn by Jake.

  Jake’s dad was on the phone. He held it between his ear and his shoulder. He was speaking in the kind of voice that adults use when they work. Colorless. Tillie stood in his cubicle opening, waiting for him to turn around. When he shifted his eyes a little to see what the presence was behind him, his head froze, but not his mouth. He continued saying “uh-huh, yup, uh-huh” to whoever was on the line. Tillie just looked at him. Up close, she saw, he had more wrinkles than he did in the old pictures Jake had showed her. He had Jake’s eyes. Tillie looked right into them.

  “I’m missing art class today because of you,” Tillie said to Jake’s dad. “So thanks a lot.”

  Jake’s dad, still on the phone, all twisted up in his swivel chair, flushed with panic.

  “And I’m disappointed in you,” Tillie said. He started to say his goodbyes to the person on the other end of the line, and he motioned for her to wait a minute and stay, but before he could hang up, Tillie headed to the elevator.

  She did not look back to see what kind of trouble she’d caused.

  Tillie headed straight home, and went over and over in her head what she was going to tell Jake, and how.

  16

  Unavoidable

  A call would come from the school, it was certain. Someone would report her as having been missing from class. But so far it hadn’t happened. An eerie silence filled the house. Tillie had spent so many years wishing her mom would stop talking so much—that she would stop asking if Tillie felt okay, how her leg was feeling, what activities she was doing, reminding her that she could aggravate her leg and her gait could get worse as she got older. Tillie had been so tired, for so long, of saying, “I’m fine,” as she watched the other kids do things she couldn’t do.

  But now she wasn’t fine. And no one was asking her if she was or not.

  Tillie checked the clock. It was nearly 4 p.m. Time passed so slowly when you got home early.

  When her mom returned from work, Tillie heard her footsteps stop by Tillie’s bedroom to check for sounds. She shuffled some papers to let her mom know she was there. Moments later, she could hear her mom typing. Her mom always typed like she was angry at her computer. She cooked like that, too. Pots and pans smashing into cupboards.

  Tillie did something she rarely did. She put on some music. Bob Dylan. Jake’s favorite. She didn’t know how she felt about his warbly voice, but she liked the words.

  She opened her file drawers and leafed through some old pictures, stopping on one of her dad gazing at the birds, as he often did. He had one of those expressions she had spent so many hours of her life trying to dissect. What was he thinking?

  She’d landed on the whole “Dad” file. And this made sense because it took up a huge chunk of her archives. Tillie pulled it out. The file felt thick in her hand. Thicker than she remembered. Her mom was right—she needed to be more selective about what she chose to print. She peeked inside the folder, pulling on the corners of a couple of the photos in there to remind herself of what they were. She caught a glimpse of a picture far in the back. It was from right after she’d gotten the Polaroid camera. She knew this photo well; an old photo was like a favorite song you haven’t heard in a while, coming back in a rush.

  In the picture, Tillie’s dad had a face that looked like he had just seen something tragic on the news. He was sitting on a swing that was ridiculously too small for him. Tillie imagined that she, behind the camera, had probably been giggling. Probably she had hardly noticed his expression, but the camera had captured it.

  It had been Parents’ Day at school, Tillie remembered, toward the very end of the year, when all the parents come to look at the projects kids have done and watch a performance. She was still recovering from her injuries and surgeries, and hadn’t even been in school that spring except for a couple of visits here and there, but she had been desperate to join that day. Her dad had come with her. After sitting in on a few lessons, they’d gone outside to the playground. All the kids had run off in different directions with the groups of friends they always played with. Sydney and Zahreen had probably gone to play mermaids. And Tillie’s dad had taken her to the swings. They had tried to find a way for her to swing with his help, but nothing worked. Something about the unsteady movement hurt her back too much. He had told her she should feel free to go play with her friends, but she never played with them anymore, though he didn’t know it.

  And he’d sat in the swing, and she had taken a picture.

  And then, unbeknownst to her, she’d caught that troubled face.

  Maybe, Tillie thought, he’d been sad that she couldn’t go off to play. He didn’t seem to understand that she’d been happy just to be with him.

  Tillie put the picture back in the file and felt her phone buzz in her pocket.

  “Are you listening to Bob Dylan?” Jake said as she picked up. “I hear it.”

  “No,” she joked, turning the music down. Jake sounded happy, reenergized.

  “You like Bob Dylan now. That’s awesome.”

  “What do you want, Jake?” Tillie asked.

  “Getting down to business, I like that.”

  “I’m not going out anywhere, if that’s what you’re thinking, okay?”

  “If there were an Art Club, I’d join it,” Jake continued. “Ms. Martinez for an hour after school? Fine by me!”

  “You’re really annoying, you know that?” Tillie spat out.

  “Whoa,” Jake said, his voice oddly cheery.

  Tillie couldn’t take it anymore. Jake tried so hard to prove to the world he was doing okay. There was no way he really felt this good about the Alice Pierce “lead.”

  “I call it feisty, not annoying. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness, and the flip side of being adorable and charming is that you can be a little annoying, too. My mom told me that. Okay, so if we can’t go to the Pierces’ rental place or Dad’s work, I’m just going to come over. Time is moving fast and we gotta get some stuff figured out.”

  Tillie pa
used. “Over…?” She stumbled on her words. Where was the “over” he was coming to?

  “I think I could get my mom to drive me, actually. Oh, and if your parents want her to come in or something, she’s fine about that.”

  Parents came in when they dropped their kids off? There were so many obnoxious nuances to hanging out with other kids now that she was older. So much had changed since fourth grade. How would she ever learn it all?

  “When are you guys having dinner?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I can come after.”

  “Dinner? Well, I can eat whenever, so…”

  “You guys don’t have dinner as a family? Oh, okay. Weird. So then I’ll come over ASAP,” Jake said. “We can make a plan for the cubicle jerk.”

  Tillie felt a quick goodbye and then a hang-up coming. She was starting to figure out how Jake worked. Say what you want and then leave before anyone can dispute it.

  “No, it’s really not a good time,” Tillie said. “I mean, there’s no point. We can’t get anything done here. My mom listens to everything.”

  “Tillie,” Jake said, and there it was: the freaked-out, worried Jake that she knew simmered underneath. “We don’t really have a choice. Can you say we’re doing homework?” All the optimism dropped from his voice. “My mom has gone so far as to say things to me like maybe next weekend we’ll go visit her family in Michigan. She doesn’t even seem like she’s trying to lie to me now, and I don’t know what that means. It’s like my dad is just gone. Also, how did she find out about Pins and Whistles? Maybe she’s onto me. Maybe she’s trying to get me away from a threat. Look, too much time has gone by since he left. Too much time.”

  “Fine.” Tillie relented.

  “We can look at all the photos, huh?” Jake asked. “Look at the timeline?”

  Tillie didn’t know what to say. “Okay, Jake,” she managed.

  Jake paused for a minute, as if waiting for her to protest again, and then said, “Great! Bye!”

  The photos of Jake’s dad and Ms. Martinez still lay in piles on the floor. Tillie collected them and shoved them in a drawer. She pulled out all the pictures that told the fake story, and spread them out on the bed.

  Then she went to go tell her mom that Jake was coming over.

  * * *

  When Jake’s mom came in, Tillie looked away. If his mom recognized her, Jake would wonder why she hadn’t told him she’d gone to his house, and then the whole story would come up, and she hadn’t figured out how to explain all of it yet.

  The moms introduced themselves, but Tillie saw that her mom was mostly staring at Jake. Jake’s mom didn’t acknowledge that she knew Tillie at all. It seemed like she didn’t even remember her.

  His mom looked much more depressed than Jake realized. It was like his mom couldn’t see Jake and he couldn’t see her.

  When they got to her room, Tillie prepped for all possible embarrassment by just coming out and saying, “She thinks you’re my boyfriend.”

  “Ha! Yeah, Abby’s mom thinks I’m hers, too.”

  “Oh,” Tillie said, a little relieved. “Oh, okay.”

  “You have a minimalist style going on here, Tillie,” Jake said, looking around and touching everything. “I’m into it.”

  “So what was it you wanted to do again?” Tillie asked. “I’ve got the pictures over here.” She stood with her hands in her pockets, pointing her bad foot toward the floor and then flexing it. She tried not to stare at the drawer with the kiss pictures. Her glasses were falling lower down the ridge of her nose than usual, loosened up by a nervous sweat.

  Jake sauntered over to the spread.

  “Chronological. Cool.”

  “We have the office photos”—she stuttered on the word “office,” thinking of Jake’s dad sitting so casually and unperturbed there in that cubicle of his—“and then the car right after. And then Maple Street.” They shared a look, remembering the scared girl and the beard and the craziness, and they laughed. “And then there’s Pins and Whistles, of course. And”—she sighed—“that’s it.”

  Tillie heard a car leaving their driveway. Jake’s mom had left. Now, no matter what, she had to entertain Jake for who knows how long until he decided to get picked up. What did people do when they had someone over? Tillie saw Jake looking down at the pictures on her bed and the kiss flashed through her mind over and over again like someone was flipping the lights on and off. She shook her head, trying to shake the image out.

  She couldn’t tell him. She just couldn’t do it. This would destroy him.

  Jake knelt down in front of the bed and picked up each photo as he spoke. “Clearly, whatever trouble Dad is in has to do with these jerks at his job. Otherwise, he never would’ve left his family. It must be real bad. With friends like these, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’s strange. Maybe they’re not bad, though,” Tillie offered. “Maybe it’s … something else. Something we haven’t thought of.”

  “What do you mean? They’re acting all weird about Dad not being at work and then one of them shows up at the place Dad called from and yells at me? And they’re not bad?” Jake spoke to Tillie, but his eyes stayed on the picture of him and Cubicle Man—Eugene Doyfle—at Pins and Whistles. It hit Tillie that Eugene must have told Jake’s mom about Pins and Whistles, and that was how she’d found out.

  “Maybe they’re doing something nice,” Tillie said. She knelt next to Jake in front of the bed and picked up a picture of the girl screaming on Maple Street. Her eyes were so afraid. The photograph was great, actually, she noticed, with a little pride. “Maybe they’re the ones hiding him from the people who really are bad, who made him run away,” she suggested.

  “I don’t think so.” Jake dismissed her, moving on to shots further back in their timeline. He scooted around her and went back to the beginning, to the one that started it all—a shot of the office, a shot Tillie had taken just before they went inside. “But I suppose it’s possible.”

  They heard a knock on the door.

  Tillie pulled herself up to answer it, opening the door only a crack so that it blocked the bed and all the photos covering it.

  It was her mom, peeking through at her. “Could I speak to you alone for a minute?”

  Tillie glanced back at Jake, who wasn’t even paying attention.

  “Sure,” she said to her mom, shutting the door behind herself. Her mom started walking toward the kitchen and Tillie followed. Tillie was about to get a be-careful-with-boys talk, she knew it. She should have kept the door partway open or something, but then the photos would be visible to her parents and they would want to see them and would have lots of questions about all the places she’d been sneaking off to recently. Now she had to get a lecture about having friends over, something everyone else did all the time, every day.

  “The school called,” her mom said, sounding exhausted. “Where were you?”

  She had almost forgotten. But she’d been practicing her answer. Tillie was about to say she had had a pain in her back that made her feel claustrophobic at school, and she didn’t tell her mom because she didn’t want to worry her. But another voice spoke before she could.

  “Tillie!” she heard from her bedroom. “Tillie!”

  Tillie opened her mouth to speak to her mother, and then looked back to her bedroom door.

  “Tillie, what is this?” Jake yelled.

  “Tillie, what’s going on?” her mom asked sharply, moving closer to Tillie and touching her arm.

  Tillie looked toward her mom and back toward the bedroom, then turned her back on her mom and walked away. She opened the door. Jake held a picture in his hand, his face red and pulsing.

  “What is this?” he asked, his voice low.

  “What?” she said, hoping it was something else, anything but what she knew it was.

  “What is it?” His hand shook and the photo fluttered.

  Tillie stepped closer and took the picture from him. She must have missed it when she was picking
the photos up earlier. It must have gone flying in the morning when she’d pushed all of them under her desk.

  In her hand she held the profile of Ms. Martinez kissing Jake’s dad. Their features were clear. Their love was clearer. Looking at it again, Tillie saw how closely their bodies pressed together.

  “Tillie, you tell me what this is right now.” Jake’s voice quivered. But he was not about to cry, like before. He looked like he was about to scream.

  “I—” Tillie went to the drawer of her files and pulled out the one with all the pictures from that terrible day. Turning back to Jake, she stayed by the desk and extended her arm, holding out the fateful file. He snatched it from her and sat on the bed, crinkling up all the pictures they already had out.

  He pulled the pictures out of their folder and began to flip through them violently. As Jake tore through each one, the series of images went through Tillie’s mind in crystal-clear chronological order, like she was watching a movie. Tillie knew that they began at his house, the photos obscured by leaves, and ended with Ms. Martinez in his dad’s arms.

  When Jake was done, his face had gone from red to white. The pictures lay strewn across his lap, some cascading down to the floor like leaves. Bob Dylan was singing about being tangled up in blue.

  “What am I looking at? I don’t understand.”

  The unavoidable truth spilled out. “Your dad is living at Ms. Martinez’s house.”

  Jake took a breath through his nose and his chest rose higher and higher with each inhale. “Why?”

  “They’re having … an affair, Jake.”

  “But that makes no sense.” He shook his head. “No sense.”

  “Your mom must have known. She must have not known how to tell you, or—”

  “Why was she looking at bank statements then, huh? Why was she…” Jake stuttered and couldn’t finish.

  “I think…” Tillie said, trying to be gentle, “I think because they might divorce, maybe? I think that was why?”

  “No.” Jake stood up. “No, no way. My mom and dad love each other. They’re Gimli and Legolas!”

  “I know,” Tillie said.