“What about me?”
“You don’t need to stay here the way I do.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Oh, please…because of Harrison? I’m sure there are people who smell like salami sandwiches in Connecticut, too. Maybe you’ll even find someone better. Someone who smells like bologna.”
“Shut up,” I say.
“I’m sorry, but I have a career to consider,” she says.
“A career?”
“I’m going to be a ballerina.”
I groan and shake my head. “Your neck’s too short.”
“Shut up,” she says.
“Shut up yourself,” I say. I know I should leave now, but somehow I don’t want to. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe she’s serious. “When are you going to tell Mom?” I ask.
“I’m not going to. I’m going to have Miss Margo do it.”
This makes me crazy, mostly because I see how clever it is. My mom will never say no to Miss Marion Margo. She thinks Miss Marion Margo is an utterly perfect human being. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need you, anyway, because my real parents are coming any day now,” I say.
“Oh, right. Just like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny,” Elizabeth says.
“Fine.” I shrug. “Don’t believe me, then. But they are coming tomorrow morning at ten,” I say. My heart is beating in my head. I am shaking, I am so angry. Even so, I know this is the stupidest thing in the world to say.
Elizabeth makes a rapid fire hut-hut-hut sound in the back of her throat. “That’ll be the day.”
“They are…so just shut your ugly face!” I storm out of her room and slam the door so hard her Dancer-in-Training sign falls off. I go to my room and blast my door, too. Then I put Pistachio on the bed. He is shaking and looking at me. He hates it when I get angry. It is the one thing in the world that terrifies him. I whisper to him and pet him over and over in the same spot. When he is calmed down, I get out my real parents’ book:
Dear Real Mom,
I don’t get it. Why do we move so much more than other people? Why? It’s not as if Dad works for the army or something. How come his jobs never last long? How come he gets a job and then decides it isn’t THE ONE? Why are they always wrong? And how come my mom always goes along with it? How come she never says no? And why didn’t my dad tell me the truth in the first place? Why did he lie about where the job was? That was lousy. It was.
Love,
Ant and Pistachio
P.S. I told Elizabeth you would be showing up tomorrow. I know you’re not going to be there because you don’t exactly exist to anyone but me. But Pistachio thinks maybe you will come. You know how he is.
21
MY REAL PARENTS
I am sitting on the front steps of my house. My two books are in my lap. The one full of photos of me and artwork. The other with letters to my real parents. They are covered in a patchwork of rickrack, buttons, and lace.
I also have a backpack full of stuff: my orange jumper with all the zippers, my plaid pants, my green toothbrush, and my blown-glass deer babies. Plus I have food for Pistachio because he’s supposed to have this special kind that’s hard to find. And I have Pistachio’s leash and a chew toy for him. He’s asleep in a patch of sun over by the mailbox. He is like a lizard. He loves to sleep in the sun.
It is Sunday morning. My dad and my mom are sleeping late. Kate is watching TV and Elizabeth is in the kitchen. I want to say good-bye, because I want them all to know I am leaving. But I haven’t yet.
I don’t have a watch, so I go peek in the kitchen to see what time it is. It is ten minutes until ten o’clock. Your Highness is at the counter eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. She seems to have forgotten I said my real parents are coming this morning. I don’t remind her. I don’t want her hovering, waiting to make fun of me. Besides, I haven’t exactly figured out what I’m doing. Maybe I’m running away.
“Have you even talked to Miss Marion Margo about going to live with her? Does she even know about this plan?” I ask.
Your Highness’s head jerks up from her bowl. “Will you shut up about that? God, you have a big mouth!”
I shrug. “Kate’s watching TV, she couldn’t hear if I screamed in her ear,” I say.
“She better not find out. You swore on Pistachio, and that’s all I have to say.” Your Highness shakes her cereal spoon at me.
“So, have you?” I whisper.
“Why do you care?”
“Just curious,” I say, though I am more than curious. I can’t stand that Elizabeth has figured out a way to stay and I haven’t. It drives me nuts that she is even finding a new family better than me. I go back outside and sit on the steps. They are hard cement and my butt is tired of sitting here. It’s so stupid that I am doing this. But I can’t get myself to get up and go.
The lady across the street is planting flowers. She is wearing a floppy green hat that ties under her chin and stretch shorts. She waves at me. I wave back, though I hope she doesn’t come over and ask a lot of questions. I don’t feel like coming up with some big story to explain what I’m doing.
How long am I going to wait? If I’m going to leave, I should do it now. I pull my jacket out of my backpack and sit down on it. The step is a little softer this way.
The lady across the street goes inside. I’m glad she hasn’t asked me what I’m doing, but I’m sorry she’s gone inside, because now I have nothing to watch.
Now my dad comes out. He’s carrying a couple of golf clubs, a tee, and two balls. He will probably practice his swing on the lawn. He doesn’t get to go golfing very often, but he practices his swing a lot.
“It looks like you’re at a bus stop there, Antonia,” he says. He slips a golf ball in his pocket. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’ve been waiting for the last hour for nothing?”
I nod. I’m surprised he knows I’ve been here that long. But I’m happy about it, too. I hate to be invisible.
My father sets a tee in the grass, places a ball on it, then practices hitting the ball without ever actually touching it. I wonder why he does this. If I were him, I’d want to give the ball a good whack. I’d want to see how far it would go.
Now he’s putting down one club and picking up another. He goes back and forth between clubs, still not hitting the ball.
“Are you going to hit that thing or what?” I ask.
“Antonia,” he says, looking over at me. He shakes his head and groans as if he’s sick of me. “If this is some kind of running-away theatrics …” He waves the golf club at me.
“If I were running away, why would I be sitting here?” I ask. This is a good question. I haven’t exactly figured this out myself.
He tips the metal end of his golf club against the ball and seems to try to forget I am here.
After a few minutes, he sighs and looks up at me. “You know, I came out here to hit a few balls and clear my head. I don’t have the energy to deal with you right now, Antonia.”
“Take vitamins.”
“What?”
“Take vitamins, then you’ll have more energy.”
“Very funny.” His eye tracks the ball.
I watch him as he taps the ball. Once, twice, three times until it settles in the little dirt hole he dug.
“Not bad, huh, Antonia,” he says, then seems surprised to see me sitting with my bag of stuff on the front step of our house.
“I’m going to get your mother.” He sets his club against the tree and begins to walk toward the house.
“Wait, Dad! No! Please wait,” I call.
He stops. His shoulders move as if they have heard what I said. He turns around.
“Why do you take Mom’s side all the time now?” I ask.
“It’s pretty clear the problems are yours, Antonia. Not hers.”
“Well, that’s because you hear everything from her. Don’t you
ever want to know my side?”
His chin gets stiff. His shoulders tighten. He flips his hand at me as if I am onstage and he is introducing me. I hate the way he does this. But I don’t want him to get Mom, so I keep talking.
“She doesn’t treat me the same as Elizabeth and Kate. She doesn’t. It’s like she loves being their mother and she hates being mine. She’d be happier if I didn’t live here. She would.”
When I say this last my nose feels tight and prickly. I’m not crying, but tears seem to have backed up into my nose.
He shakes his head. “You know, Antonia, you get what you put out in life. Elizabeth and Kate don’t give trouble, so they don’t get trouble. You give your mom trouble, she gives you trouble. You stop giving her trouble, she’ll stop giving you trouble. It isn’t so complicated as you make it.”
“What about the opposite? What about if she stops giving me trouble, I’ll stop giving her trouble. What about if she loved me, I’d love her. Why do you assume the problem starts with me?”
“Look, Antonia, I don’t want to debate which came first, the chicken or the egg.”
“How come everything I think is too much trouble for you to talk about?”
“I am talking about it.”
“You just said you didn’t want to have this discussion with me.”
“What do you want from me, Antonia?”
I think about this. “Remember that time you took just me and Kate camping, and then in the middle of the night you saw a spider and got really scared and I had to hold your hand, and then we got to go to the Holiday Inn and eat French toast with boysenberry syrup?”
“Yeah.” He smiles a little. Not the smooth, charming smile. The funny smile I love.
“That was fun. When can we do that again? You’re always working now. It’s like you only have energy for me if I do exactly what you want. You only have space for a perfect daughter. You don’t have room for me.
“Antonia, I do the best I can.”
“Why do we have to move again, Dad? Why don’t you get a new job here?”
My father makes a short angry noise, part groan, part grunt. “Antonia, I’ve been through this a hundred times with Elizabeth already. I’m not talking about the move anymore. I’m just not.”
He heads toward the house. The door bangs shut behind him.
Inside, I hear him call my mother. My mother says something, but I don’t hear what it is. “I tried to ignore her,” my father says. I strain to make out the rest. I can’t, but from the tone of it I know my father is telling on me. His voice sounds just like Kate or Elizabeth when they report to my mom about me.
Now my mother appears. She is dressed, but she hasn’t fixed her hair or put on her makeup. She doesn’t usually go outside looking this way. Not even to the front yard.
“What in the world are you doing, Antonia?” she asks.
“I’m waiting.”
“Yes, I can see that, but what for?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t go to the zoo today, do you?”
“No.”
“Are you waiting for that teacher?” My mother always calls Just Carol “that teacher.”
“No.” I try as hard as I can not to cry. But I lose the battle. The tears spill down my face.
“Well, who are you waiting for?” I can see my mother is getting exasperated. But she seems alarmed, too. I almost never cry in front of her.
My lips form the words “My real mom,” but I don’t say them. I can’t say them out loud. Instead I say, “You’re not my real mom.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…Antonia,” my mother says.
“You’re not,” I say. My voice is hoarse and so full of tears I can hardly speak. “You don’t love me. Neither does Daddy,” I whisper.
My mother is frowning. Her lips get small and closed, like when you tie off a paper bag with a rubber band. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“You don’t,” I say.
“I don’t cook what you like for dinner, I make you clean up your room, I punish you for getting bad grades, and what do you know.” She snaps her fingers. “I’m not your real mother. You know, I’m really tired of it. I learned a long time ago that being a mother is not about winning a popularity contest. So I don’t expect you to say thank you for all the things I do for you. But I am up to here”—she puts her hand to her forehead— “with this nonsense.”
I have heard this popularity contest speech a hundred times before. I know she will go inside now and leave me out here to “learn my lesson.”
She sits down on the step. This surprises me. I move away from her, but I don’t stop crying. I can’t. The tears are pouring out of me.
She is quiet. Any moment I expect her to get up and go inside. But she doesn’t.
“Antonia,” she starts, but then she sighs and says nothing. We sit watching a hummingbird buzz around a blue flower and then fly off. I wish he would stay.
“Antonia,” she tries again, “I do love you. I just don’t understand you. And when I talk to you, I feel as if I’m talking to a brick wall. Like nothing I say gets through.” She looks over at me. I can’t stand to look at her. I focus on the speckled gray cement step. There is a slight glitter to it I never noticed before.
She sighs. “I get so frustrated with you, I could scream. And then I never know if you’re telling the truth or not. I always feel like you’re trying to make me look foolish.”
“I don’t want you to be my mother,” I say, scooting as far away from her as I can while still sitting on the step.
“Well, some days I don’t want you to be my daughter, either. But you are my daughter and I am your mother. We’re stuck with each other, so maybe we should try to make the best of it. Now why don’t you go and get yourself cleaned up and put that stuff away.” She’s tired of talking to me. Her voice has that I’ve-had-enough-of-this edge.
I don’t move.
“What is that you’re holding, anyway?” she asks.
“Books.”
“Scrapbooks?”
“Sort of.”
“They’re pretty the way you’ve decorated them. Can I see?”
“They’re for my real parents,” I say.
“Antonia, you’re way too old to make up stories like this. You don’t really believe any of this, do you?”
She waits for me to answer. I say nothing.
“Do you?”
“Maybe,” I say.
“May I look?” she asks, running her fingers over the cover of the book.
I shake my head so hard my hair flies in my face. “No.” This is the only power I have. If I say yes, she will look at my books and tell me how silly I am for writing them. But if I tell her no, she’ll always wonder. She’ll never know what’s inside.
She nods as if she’s expecting this.
“Are you ready to come back inside?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her, but I am.
After she leaves, I take my books, my backpack, and Tashi and I climb the back trellis and shimmy in through the hall window. Then I tiptoe back in my room. I don’t want her to see me come back in. I have to win at least this much. I just do.
22
MY MOM’S PLAN
It is half past seven on Saturday and no one in my house is up except me. I like being awake when nobody else is. It makes me feel as if I have important things to do and all they have to do is sleep.
Besides, getting up early is a good way to avoid everybody, which I have been doing a lot lately. I’m pretending I’m a boarder in this house and I have no connection with anyone. I hate them all, anyway. I do. Pistachio is the only one who is totally on my side.
I look outside to see if Just Carol is here yet, but there are only parked cars on the street, the same ones that are here every morning and every night. I put my green plastic bowl in the dishwasher and get out my lunch so I will be ready when they come. I set my lunch sack on the desk by the door. Usually, my mom has everything neat on this desk. Bil
ls, school flyers, coupons, everything has its own little cubby. But today, there are loose papers all over: moving estimates, notes about a security deposit, a Connecticut newspaper. And then I see a flash of purple. The color stops me. I know that purple. I have trained my eye to look for it so I can put it in the bottom of my bucket and cover it with dog poop. But wait, I tell myself. Just because a paper is purple doesn’t mean it’s one of those creepy pamphlets. It could be a flyer advertising a sale on vacuum cleaners. It could be anything. I tug the tiny corner of purple and pull the paper out. My chest tightens. The golden retriever is looking at me with his sad old eyes. The clock asks: “Is it time to euthanize?”
My eyes search out Pistachio. He is under my kitchen stool, curled in a ball, his nose resting on his tail. I try to think about when my mother could have gotten that brochure. And why? Maybe she needed a piece of scratch paper one day. I look to see if there is anything marked on it. There is. She circled something. “Changes in environment can be especially upsetting for an old animal. Plane flights, extended kennel stays, and long car trips are not advised.”
I know my mom doesn’t like to take Pistachio in the car. She says he sheds on the seats and makes the car smell like a kennel. My dad says we are going to rent a U-Haul truck and drive our stuff to Connecticut. But what about Pistachio? He can’t go in the truck, and if my mom won’t take him in her car …
And then it hits me. My mom’s not planning to take him with us. She’s planning to…My heart is beating fast. There is no way I am ever going to let Pistachio out of my sight. I will never leave him alone with my mother. Not ever. I scoop him up and go upstairs and get a book bag and slip him inside. Just Carol won’t suspect the bag, because she’ll think I have my lunch in it. I can’t put my lunch in the bag with Pistachio, though, because he’ll eat it. But I’ll have to bring a sandwich, otherwise Just Carol will be suspicious. It won’t make sense that I have brought a lunch bag and forgotten the food. I get some masking tape out of the drawer and I use practically the whole roll taping my sandwich and my banana to my belly. It’s lucky I’m skinny and don’t wear tight clothes. There is plenty of room to rebutton my jeans around the sandwich bag.
Notes from a Liar and Her Dog Page 13