Dolphins in the Mud

by Jo Ramsey

  Mom just stood there like she had no clue what to do. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t at least trying to stop Cece. She’d seen Cece like this lots of times. Usually she sat down and stuck her leg out for Cece to hit her head on. Mom’s legs ended up bruised a lot. She said she didn’t mind, because hitting her leg hurt Cece less than hitting the floor.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, raising my voice so she would hear me above the piercing shrieks Cece kept letting out.

  “I tried to move her away from the window,” Mom said, her teeth gritted. “She needs to eat something. She hasn’t had anything since breakfast. I think she thought I’d let her eat in front of the window so she could keep watching the rescue, but the rule is we don’t eat in the living room. She knows that.”

  She sounded way more frustrated than usual by Cece’s behavior. Maybe I should have come back earlier to give her a break, but I deserved to have some time with friends. Or at least with people who weren’t Cece and my parents.

  Since Mom didn’t seem to want to do anything to stop Cece, I sat on the floor and waited for her to raise her head again. The second she did, I stuck out one leg so when she brought her head down again, she slammed it into my shin. I clenched my teeth shut to keep from yelping. The kid had a hard head.

  “You need to stop, Cece,” I said quietly. “Quiet down. Not okay.”

  She looked at me for a second, blinked, and screamed again. I shook my head. “Time to eat. No screaming.”

  I’d seen my parents and Cece’s home therapists do this kind of thing enough times that I could handle Cece’s tantrums without thinking about what I had to do.

  She bounced her head off my leg again and squawked, then sat back on her heels. For her to calm down that fast, either she’d been putting on a show or Mom’s anger had fed into Cece’s and they’d set each other off. I’d seen that happen before too, and I never quite knew what to do about it. Sometimes Mom had to shut herself in her bedroom to keep from making things worse. I’d overheard her telling Dad once that she was afraid she might hit Cece, and that if she did, she might not stop at hitting her just once. As far as I knew, she’d never reached that point, and for both her sake and Cece’s, I hoped she never would.

  At least Mom had yelled for me this time instead of losing it.

  “That’s better,” I said to Cece. “Good girl. No screaming.”

  “Doph!” she wailed.

  “The dolphins will be there after you eat,” I assured her. At least some of them probably still would be. The rescue had been going slowly. “You have to eat. Then you can see the dolphins again.”

  “Doph?” She looked up at Mom, and I thought I saw a little bit of fear in her eyes.

  Mom forced a smile. “Dolphins after lunch. Go to the table for lunch.” She walked over to the schedule she kept on the wall near the table and tapped the picture of Cece eating that was attached to the chart beside a picture of a digital clock showing twelve o’clock. “See? Past lunch time. Go to the table.”

  Cece shuddered in a breath and wiped her nose on her sleeve, then obeyed Mom. I glanced at the clock on the cable box. It was already after three. Cece should have had lunch right around the time I’d gotten up. No wonder she’d flipped out on Mom. Even when we didn’t have school, Cece was on a strict schedule. She needed it. Mom hadn’t followed it today, and that had messed things up. Plus Cece tended to be cranky when she went too long without eating, and she never asked for food when she was hungry. Either she didn’t know how or she didn’t realize she could ask.

  Mom put a sandwich and a sippy cup of soy milk in front of Cece. I bit my tongue. Dad, Cece’s teachers, and Cece’s home therapists had all told Mom to stop giving Cece sippy cups. The kid was nine years old, and she knew how to use a regular cup. Mom agreed with them to their faces, then gave Cece sippies when no one else was around because she didn’t want to deal with the mess if Cece spilled her drink. Or threw it.

  I fixed a ham and cheese sandwich and put it on a plate along with a handful of chips. Figuring that Mom probably still hadn’t calmed down enough to cope if Cece got upset again, I sat at the table across from my sister. Cece picked little crumbs of bread off her sandwich and rolled them between her fingers. I reached over and touched her hand. “Eat,” I told her, then demonstrated with my own sandwich.

  Cece loved to copy me, so she picked up a piece of her sandwich, which Mom had cut in quarters, and took a bite. Mom stood beside the table and watched us eat. After a minute, she apparently decided things were under control and went downstairs to her bedroom without saying anything.

  I tensed. I didn’t think Cece would have a tantrum with me. She almost never did. But after the way she’d been acting when I’d come in, I wasn’t 100 percent sure. I didn’t like Mom leaving me alone with the kid when I didn’t know what Cece might do.

  Just as Cece and I finished our sandwiches, Mom came out of her room wearing different jeans and the coat she usually kept for parties and church. “I’m going to run some errands. Looks like you’re all set here. I have my cell, so call if there are any problems.” She walked over to the table and kissed the top of my head. “Thanks for your help, Chris.”

  “No problem.” I didn’t want her to leave, but we’d probably be okay. Cece would want to go back to watching the dolphins through the window. That would probably keep her occupied until Mom returned, unless she decided she wanted to go outside. Or unless something else set her off.

  Naturally I didn’t tell Mom to stay. She vibrated with anger, even after taking some time in her room, and if she didn’t leave the house for a while, she’d be completely ticked by the time Dad came home. Which would mean they’d fight. Which would mean I’d have to take Cece down to the basement playroom where we wouldn’t be able to hear our parents. Unless they decided to fight in their room, in which case I would have to keep Cece upstairs with me.

  Being alone with her for an hour or two would be better than that.

  Chapter Three

  AFTER MOM left, Cece slid off her chair and made a beeline for the couch. She knelt in exactly the same spot she’d been in before and leaned over the back of the couch far enough to press her nose against the window. “Doph,” she said triumphantly.

  “Yep.” I joined her, kneeling beside her just far enough away that I wouldn’t bug her by invading her space, but close enough to grab her if she tried to break the window or something.

  With all the people and vehicles around the cove, it was hard to tell, but it looked like the rescuers might have pulled another dolphin or two out of the mud. The kids I’d been talking to earlier had wandered away and a tall blond guy stood where they’d been. A guy I recognized. Noah had come back, and I couldn’t go talk to him because I wasn’t supposed to take Cece outside by myself, and I definitely couldn’t leave her alone in the house.

  Cece and I stayed right there for most of the time Mom was gone, except for a couple of bathroom breaks. Cece watched the rescuers trying to pull the dolphins out of the muck. I mostly kept my eye on that blond head. I didn’t know why Noah interested me so much. Something about him had just struck me.

  Plus, I wanted to find out more about him. Like why his family moved around so much, and why he didn’t hang out with the others our age around the cove.

  About two hours after Mom had left, someone knocked on the door. Cece didn’t even react to the sound. She still had her eyes glued to the sight outside.

  I hopped off the couch and went to the door. “Who is it?”

  “Me,” Mom said. “I didn’t want to open the door until I was sure everything was okay.”

  “It is.” I opened the door to see Mom standing there with a grin on her face and a grocery bag in one hand. She seemed a whole lot calmer than she had when she’d left.

  She walked in and headed to the kitchen. I closed the door behind her and made sure to lock it, then followed her to see what she’d bought.

  She pulled a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream
and a few microwave dinners out of the bag. “I don’t feel like cooking tonight,” she said as she shoved the stuff into the freezer. “TV dinners won’t hurt us once in a while. I even found one with the things Cecelia likes to eat.” She held up a box with a picture of a penguin dancing around chicken nuggets and corn, two of Cece’s favorite foods.

  “What about the ice cream?” My mouth was watering, but I didn’t want to touch the ice cream unless Mom gave the okay. Last time she’d bought something like that, I’d eaten some without permission, and she’d ranted at me for fifteen minutes.

  “You, your dad, and I can share that.” She took out a box of frozen fruit pops. “These are for your sister, since she can’t have ice cream.” Somewhere along the line, someone had told Mom and Dad that a dairy allergy might have caused Cece’s autism, so they’d stopped letting her have any dairy products. It hadn’t made a difference in her behavior, so they’d let her try eating the stuff again. She’d gotten sick, so now she didn’t eat any dairy.

  “Did running errands help?” I asked. Mom was acting much calmer and happier, but I couldn’t quite get a read on her mood.

  “It helped a lot. Sometimes all I need is a little time away.” She smiled. “Thanks for watching your sister. No trouble?”

  I shook my head. “She just sat there watching the dolphins the whole time. Do you think it would be okay if I went back out? It’s kind of hard to tell what’s going on from in here.”

  She hesitated and glanced at Cece, and I figured she’d say no. To my surprise, she nodded. “You’ve helped out a lot today. Go ahead. Just come back in when it starts getting dark.”

  I thought about telling her I wasn’t ten anymore, decided to keep my mouth shut, and hurried out the door before she changed her mind.

  The rescuers were lugging another dolphin in a blanket over to the wheeled cart when I reached the edge of the cove. The cove had filled with quite a bit of water, since the tide was almost high now, and people were soaked. None of them seemed to mind, even though they had to be freezing.

  Noah still stood in the spot where he’d been earlier. No one was near him except a few kids from the neighborhood, who stood a little distance away whispering and glancing at him. If he realized they were talking about him, he didn’t show any sign. I decided to ignore the kids too.

  “Hey,” I said, taking a spot next to Noah.

  “Hey.” He nodded toward the cove. “They figured maybe the tide would get the dolphins loose, but I guess some are still stuck.”

  “I hope they can free them.” I didn’t like anything dying. Especially dolphins. I didn’t have any huge connection to them, but because of Cece, I kind of liked them, and I wanted to see these sent back safely to the ocean.

  I also didn’t want Cece to find out if any of the dolphins didn’t survive.

  “I’ve been out here a long time,” Noah said. “I kind of hoped you’d be back sooner.”

  “Had to watch my sister while my mother went to the store.” I leaned against a tree. “I was out here earlier, and you weren’t here.”

  He shrugged. “My father wanted me inside. Too many people and too many cameras around here. Plus I had something to do.”

  “Your parents don’t like you having your picture taken?” I looked down at the vehicles and spotted a couple of the Boston channels’ news vans among them. Camera-people stood around with people who were dressed too nicely to be standing near mud. “Guess this is a big deal.”

  “Strandings usually are. There’ve been a few since we bought the house.”

  He hadn’t answered my question about having his picture taken. I decided not to push him, even though it was another thing to be curious about. Like the rest of it, the picture thing was none of my business.

  The sun started going down after a while. Some of the workers unloaded floodlights from a couple of vans, including one of the news vans, and the light illuminated the rescuers and the dolphins. From where Noah and I stood, I couldn’t hear too well what people were saying, but it sounded like a couple of dolphins had already died. I glanced up at the cottage, thankful that Cece hadn’t heard that.

  Headlights came down the road toward the cottage and stopped just short of it, which meant Dad was home. He was early for a change.

  “I have to go,” I said to Noah. “My dad’s home from work.”

  I wasn’t sure why I bothered saying anything to him. He hadn’t spoken to me in a while. We’d been standing there in total silence while we watched the action below. Just like before, the silence hadn’t bothered me, but I kind of took it to mean he wouldn’t care if I left, assuming he even noticed.

  He turned and smiled at me. His eyes lit up a little, and I felt a quivery flutter in my gut. The last time I’d felt that had been with my old boyfriend. Not that there was much chance of anything happening between Noah and me, since he probably wouldn’t be around. But he was definitely cute, and I wouldn’t have minded finding out his opinion about dating a guy.

  “Thanks for hanging out with me,” he said. “Most of the people my age around here think there’s something wrong with me. I can’t remember the last time anyone even really talked to me.”

  According to the others, that was because his parents wouldn’t allow anyone to. I wondered if Noah even knew that. He sounded way too sad about not having people speak to him to have realized his parents had something to do with it.

  “Maybe they don’t always know when you’re here,” I said. “You said you move around a lot.”

  “Yeah.” He sounded skeptical. “Anyway, what I said before about you coming by the house sometimes, I meant. We’re going to be here at least a month this time, Dad said, so I’ll be around, and I probably won’t have anything to do besides my schoolwork.”

  “Sure, I’ll stop by.” If I had time between school and Cece.

  His smile grew. “Sounds good. See you around, Chris.”

  “See you.”

  I walked up the slope, conscious of his eyes on me. Maybe developing a little bit of a crush on the guy wasn’t so stupid after all.

  Dad was standing outside the door when I reached the house. “Your mom’s home, isn’t she?” he asked.

  “Yeah. She was when I went out, anyway.” I didn’t think she would have gone anywhere with Cece, and she definitely wouldn’t have left Cece by herself. Besides, she’d already had her couple hours out of the house.

  He frowned. “She isn’t answering the door. I think we need to reconsider the lock thing. Maybe put in something we can unlock from outside as well as inside. Like we should have done in the first place. I don’t know what your mother was thinking insisting on having that bolt. If something happened to her, no one would be able to get inside to help.”

  He banged on the door. “Anna! Let us in!”

  I walked around the side of the deck to look through the window. Why Dad hadn’t thought of that, I didn’t know. He probably figured Mom should be opening the door because he wanted her to, and her reason for not answering didn’t matter.

  Cece still had her face against the glass. She didn’t even seem to see me. Mom stood on the far side of the room at the kitchen sink. Her shoulders were shaking, either in anger or because she was crying. After the way the rest of the day had gone, I figured crying was probably more likely.

  “Do you see anything?” Dad called.

  I went back to him. “Mom’s crying at the sink, and Cece’s watching the dolphins like she’s been doing all day.” Not that she could see the dolphins at this point. She’d probably just gotten so used to kneeling there it hadn’t occurred to her to move. She was like that sometimes.

  He walked around to the side, and I heard him tapping on the window. After a minute or so, the door opened, and Mom stood there, puffy-eyed. “Sorry,” she said, glancing at Dad to include him in the apology. “I didn’t hear you knocking.”

  “Are you all right?” Dad asked.

  I went inside, since I was getting cold, and I didn’t want t
o listen to my parents’ discussion or argument or whatever it ended up being. Even before we’d moved to Wellfleet, they’d sometimes bickered or even stopped speaking to each other. Since we’d moved, that had gotten worse.

  The door closed behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. Both of my parents were outside now, which meant they didn’t want me to hear what they said. At least we were on the same page about that. I didn’t want to hear it either.

  I figured they were right outside, so I didn’t lock the door. Instead I went into my room and kicked off my sneakers, then went back to the couch and sat next to Cece. “Still looking at the dolphins?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer except to tap on the window.

  “What’s wrong with Mom?” I didn’t know why I bothered asking. Cece wouldn’t be able to tell me even if she knew. She probably hadn’t even noticed that Mom was upset. I didn’t know if Cece ever noticed how other people felt.

  Mom and Dad came inside, and I stopped asking questions that my sister wouldn’t answer. “Mom, are you okay?”

  “Yes.” She gave me a fake-looking smile. “You know it’s been a rough day. I think I’m going to go to bed early tonight. Maybe a good night’s sleep will help. Right now, I just want to rest until supper.”

  “We’re ordering out for supper,” Dad said. “That Chinese place will deliver here, and I think one of the pizza places does too. Why don’t you go ahead and figure out what you want, and then I’ll place the order?” He gave Mom a one-armed hug. “You go lie down for a little while. I’ll bring you the menu after Chris’s done with it.”

  “You know what I like for Chinese food,” she replied. “Just order what you think I’d want. Or if it’s pizza, I’ll just have some of whatever you and Chris order. Thank you.”