“V!” I call. But the room is empty, as is Gram’s bedroom with its neatly made bed, and Mom’s old room too.
There’s this episode of Golden Girls where Sophia accidentally donates Blanche’s leather bomber jacket, not knowing that there’s a winning lottery ticket inside the pocket. Once the ladies realize their mistake, they spend the rest of the show running around the city looking for the coat and the ticket, until they finally trace it to a homeless shelter and decide the people there need the prize more than they do. That feels nothing at all like Elle and my running around now. This is sheer terror.
“She’s not here.” Elle appears at my side. She doesn’t even bother saying that she’s sure my sister is fine. “What now?”
“Maybe we just drive around? Try the bus station? I don’t know.”
Though we don’t have any clear plan established, Elle and I sprint full-speed back to the car and start driving somewhere. The urgency makes us feel more productive and less helpless.
“Remember at the FishTopia event, she mentioned someone named Nell or Nina?” Elle is saying. “Maybe Chris knows her?”
“Good idea,” I say, but I bet he’s already tried her. “I’ll shoot him a text.”
We’re turning down Sunflower Street by our old house, when I notice a flash of something shiny in the backyard swing—my sister’s hair.
“Stop the car!” I scream, and Elle slams on the brakes. “There.” I point to my sister sitting in the backyard swing a quarter of a football field away.
Elle pulls up to the curb, puts the Jeep in park.
“I’ll go talk to her. Can you let Mom and Chris know?” I say, already unbuckled and halfway out the door.
Jogging through our old yard, I almost trip over an orange lawn sprinkler, and I’m struck by the sense that it doesn’t belong here, that our sprinkler was silver. How weird to be back in this place that’s no longer ours. I hope the nice family who bought it doesn’t mind a few trespassers.
As I’m getting closer, I call out Veronica’s name. She raises her head in acknowledgment but doesn’t get off the swing.
“Hey,” she says flatly when I’m finally next to her.
“You ran away from home to our old home?” I ask. Since she doesn’t scream or throw anything at me—doesn’t really say anything—I hesitantly sit down next to her on the swing where she and I must have sat thousands of times before.
She still has a few flecks of flour around her eyebrows and in the front of her hair, and she’s wearing the same tank dress she was yesterday, only it’s all bunched up. For once she doesn’t look as though she walked off the pages of Seventeen. She looks more like she’s the pretty but rumpled female lead at the end of an action film, having survived multiple chases/explosions and possibly even being shoved in a car trunk. Her skin is really cold and sort of clammy when I touch it.
“Did you go to Gram’s? Have you been here all night?” I ask. Of course the heat wave finally broke yesterday. It’s probably in the seventies now, but last night it got pretty chilly. Can you get hypothermia in Florida during the summer?
Shrugging, she tells me she walked around the park and the old neighborhood for a while before coming here. “I don’t think the new people are home.” She points to our old house. “I went up and looked in all the windows; they made it different.”
From the outside, I can see little changes. The new owners have painted it a slightly orange neutral, the bushes are trimmed, and they’ve planted these little flowers around the side. Whoever has my old bedroom has hung up lacy pink curtains.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were? Everyone was worried, and Mom is freaking hysterical.”
“Really?” V sounds almost hopeful.
“Yeah. Elle and I have been running around all over town looking for you. You can’t pull shit like that.”
“I’m sorry.” She looks at me, then down again. “Thanks.”
She just sounds so spacey and vague, I rub her cold arms. I’m really angry with her again. But not because she told Alex that I was sleeping with Dr. B., and not because she threw flour and insults at me in the kitchen. I’m angry because I was terrified that something might have happened to her.
“Mol,” V says. “You know I didn’t mean it when I told you to kill yourself, right?”
I did think she meant it, and I was really mad and hurt, but now it all seems really long ago. “It’s okay.”
“It was just pretty hard watching you sort of face-plant at life so much,” V continues, like I didn’t already forgive her. “And Mom had me believing if I didn’t keep you in my sights at all times, you were going to jump off the roof of the J&J factory. It was a lot, and then when you started giving me shit for dating some guy I wasn’t even dating, when you hadn’t even bothered to ask me about the guy I was dating for weeks, I kind of lost it.”
“I shouldn’t have done that. I should have just listened to you,” I say. “And I’m sorry I called you a slut. Chris seems like a really nice guy.”
She nods. “And I shouldn’t have told you all that stuff about Dad. I’ve wanted to tell you about it forever, and I kept telling Mom that we should, but you know, not like that.”
“Why do you even know all that stuff? Why did Mom tell you?”
“I don’t think she meant to tell me. When you got all screwy, I found her going over the accident report one night. At first she wouldn’t say anything, but once she started talking, she just kept going and going. It was like she couldn’t keep it a secret any longer without going crazy or something. So she passed the crazy on to me.”
She seems so sad and out of it and cold.
“V, it’s all good. Let’s go home, okay?” I wrap my arm around her.
“Okay.” She gets off the swing, and we start toward Elle, who’s leaning against the side of the Jeep trying not to look like she’s watching everything.
“Molly?” V asks.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Well, let’s see how thankful you are after Mom grounds you for the rest of your natural life.”
DAY 82
Huckleberry Heaven Cake
It’s hot again.
So hot that Elle finally convinces me to go to the outdoor pool at the Y with her and Jimmy, even though I haven’t been in a pool ADF.
The place is packed, but Gina and Tina from AP English are already set up at lounge chairs by the deep end, and they invite us to share.
Jimmy drops off his stuff and then charges forward and does a huge cannonball into the shallow end, soaking all the old ladies in bathing caps tiptoeing around waist deep. A million lifeguards blow their whistles.
Gina and Tina can’t stop talking about starting school in a few weeks, and all the college visits they went on over the summer. Zoning out, I focus on how delicious the warm sun feels on my back. When I hear that they’re talking about the summer reading and The Catcher in the Rye, which I finished last night, I perk back up.
“I don’t know why everyone loves it so much,” Tina is saying. “Holden is such a whiny little bitch.”
“I know, right?” adds Gina.
“Eh, he’s okay,” I offer. “He’s just depressed.”
During adult swim (I’m finally old enough to go in!) I get into one of the lap lanes and swim the length of the pool a few times. ADF I forgot the feel of the water under my palms. The way your lungs tighten when you need to breathe, how you can be hot and sweaty but cold and wet at the same time.
“Looking good out there, Byrne.” Elle hands me a towel when I get out. “You coming back to the Coral Cove Swordfish in the fall?”
“Not a chance.” It occurs to me that at some point between signing up for the team because Elle was doing it, and hysterically fleeing the starting block during the divisionals meet, swimming became something I didn’t really enjoy. It was something I was doing because I was good at it, and Coach Hartley kept telling me how important I was to the team. I was
never doing it for me. But I do decide to call Ms. Cromwell and ask if I can still get into the advanced art class.
When Elle drops me off, there’s a package for me. Inside is the backpack I left at Dr. B.’s, and a typed note.
Molly—
Once again, let me tell you how very, very sorry I am for everything. Like I said, you did nothing wrong. I was the one who let things go too far. I was the adult, and you were my patient.
I called my old adviser from Penn the day after everything happened, and he helped convince me to go back to Philly for a bit and help him with his research, I think that it might be good for me to reconnect with my family and friends up north. I’m leaving at the end of the week.
Please don’t let your experience with me prevent you from seeking treatment. I’m enclosing the information for Charlotte Frankel—the psychiatrist I told you about. She’s more traditional than I am, but she’s a good person, and I think that she’d be able to help you. Therapy is personal, though, so if she’s not the right fit, please try to find someone else to work with.
You really are a great girl. And there are a lot of people who would be very, very sad if you just disappeared, including me.
—Glen
He also enclosed Dr. Frankel’s card and the DVD of Say Anything . . . with a Post-it note stuck on the front. In case you want to watch the ending.
So that’s it, I guess. He’s gone.
I remember the fluttery vagina butterflies I’d sometimes get when we made eye contact during a session. How soft his lips were during the good kiss.
Maybe it’s the newness of this information, or maybe it’s that it hasn’t sunk in yet, but I actually don’t burst into waterworks or fall through the floor. No, I just feel sort of numb.
I go downstairs and taste the day’s cake.
DAY 84
Asian Bubble Tea Cake
I’m on my way downstairs to watch the Golden Girls block, when I notice V sitting up on her big frilly canopy bed, surrounded by thick fashion magazines.
After running away from home to our old home, V wasn’t grounded for the rest of her natural life, but pretty darn close—three weeks. While half the kids at school have their phones confiscated as a form of punishment, Mom required V to essentially safety pin hers to her sleeve at all times. Plus, V had to get one of those Find My Phone apps. The big shocker? Even though V hemmed and hawed, you could tell she was pretty darn pleased that Mom was so concerned about her. The two of them are actually getting along way better than at any time I can remember.
V’s bedroom door is open (she’s also not supposed to shut doors if there is any question about whether or not she’s home), but I knock anyway, and she waves me in.
“Do you maybe wanna go downstairs and, you know, bond?” I ask.
“I’m in the middle of something here. Maybe in a little?”
Telling her sure, I turn, but she stops me. “Do you wanna take a look? It kind of involves you.”
For the first time I notice that she’s not reading the articles about how to make your man crazy in bed or get killer abs in three minutes a day. Instead she’s marking up the outfits in the fashion spreads, cutting images out, writing notes. Next to her is a chunky sketchpad where she’s drawn her own designs in colored pencil. Slim skirts and long sleeveless tops, and these breezy but fitted dresses. Everything is classic and clean and perfect for Florida summers. The sketches themselves are really well done, and I wonder how I never realized we had that in common.
“Oh, they’re so pretty,” I say. “I didn’t know you could draw like that.”
“Well, I’m no Molly Byrne, but I get by.”
I tell her that I’m going to take Ms. Cromwell’s advanced art class and that she should take it too.
“Two Byrne girls in the same CCH classroom? That might be fun, or the start of the apocalypse. I’ll definitely think about it.”
Explaining that those weren’t the sketches she wanted to show me, V flips back a few pages in her notebook, settles on some drawings of female figures in these fluffy-looking jackets with animal heads. Climbing onto the bed next to her, I get a better view.
“Ohmygod, are those . . .”
“They’re the stuffed animal pelts that Jimmy made from the playroom tiger!”
“For serious?” They are honestly adorbs.
“Yeah, Jaclyn liked them so much, she said we could make prototypes to sell at the store.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Here’s the kicker. To help make them I was going to go to this dressmaker in Maxwell who sometimes does stuff for Jaclyn. But then Mom found out that the Baker’s Journey woman has a sister who did A Seamstress’s Journey.”
“Get out!”
“So yeah, when Mom finishes with the cakes, she’s going to start that and try to figure out all the stuff in the sewing room. I told Jaclyn we might not have the prototypes for a while.”
Mom and V together, thick as thieves. After all my complaining about the cakes, there’s a part of me that’s a little jealous. Is that the problem with a group of three, that things almost always break down so there’s an odd one out?
“Well,” I say. “There’ll probably be a good amount of fingers stitched together at first, but after a month on that thing, she’ll be ready to set the fashion world on fire.”
“Have you talked to her yet?” V’s tone is weightier. “About all the Dad stuff?”
“Mom and I are fine.” This is true-ish. The second everything started going down with V disappearing, any active anger I had toward Mom instantly evaporated. Nothing like the thought of a new potential tragedy to foist togetherness onto everyone and make an old tragedy less tragic. Since then I’ve been perfectly polite. I’ve eaten a piece of each day’s cake (that hasn’t entirely been a hardship; Mom has gone full-on Duff Goldman) and answered any surface question she asks about my day. Like I told Elle, I know that whatever she did, she did it to protect me. But I still can’t shake the feeling that she unilaterally took away Pluto.
“Really?” V arches a perfect eyebrow.
“Yes, really.”
As she is showing me more of her drawings, we talk about the looks she likes and how her dream is to design something for Jennifer Lawrence on Oscar night.
“Why haven’t you ever stopped by Jaclyn’s?” she asks. “Even after I told you they were selling my bracelets, you never came in.”
“I guess I thought you wouldn’t want me there.” I shrug. “That you’d be embarrassed to have the crazy girl who tanked the divisionals meet show up.”
“Whatever, Mol. You’re my big sister.” V gives her signature eye roll. “And seriously, who besides Coach Hartley cares about some stupid swim meet from two years ago? You’ve got to get over that.”
Maybe she’s right; maybe the rest of the world really doesn’t view the world as BDF and ADF.
“Fine. I guess I’ll have to come, then.”
Lowering her eyes, she says that Elle came into the store a while ago. “She told me that you weren’t hooking up with your shrink . . . and then she gave me a forty-minute lecture about how my nail polish was going to render the planet uninhabitable in two years or something.
“That’s Elle.”
V shrugs. “So, um, what was going on with you and him the night of the fish thing?”
A part of me wants to just tell her the whole story—like I know she wouldn’t go all Law & Order the way Elle did. “It was just a misunderstanding,” I say.
She nods, even though her face is a portrait of utter disbelief. “Anyway, I told Alex you weren’t sleeping with Dr. Brooks. I hope that’s okay.”
Alex knows Dr. B. and I were never together, but he still hasn’t reached out? I guess that speaks volumes. Maybe it’s better that way.
“Thanks. That means a lot to me.” I know it’s probably not fair to ask, but I do it anyway. “How is he? Alex. Do you see him much?”
“Chris said Alex went to one of his pool things last w
eek—not that I was anywhere but here.” She closes her magazine and flips over onto her back. “You really did a number on him, Mol.”
“I know.” I let my head fall back against one of the pillows. “What is wrong with me?”
“You’re a cock tease?”
“Shut up!” I throw one of the model-home pillows at her.
“Too soon?” She smiles all innocent-like and bats her eyelashes.
“Yes, too soon! A hundred years from now will still be too soon.”
“Sorry.”
“So, what about you?” I ask.
“What about me, what?”
“Like, Chris seemed pretty freaking worried when his poor little Ronnie was out in the cold Florida night. . . .”
“It’s really none of your business.” She smiles again, devilish this time. “But if you’re asking if V is still in the V club, yes, I am a card-carrying member. . . .”
This is sort of surprising, but it makes me happy. Not because V hasn’t been getting her sexy on, but because she sounds more like my sister.
“But,” she continues, “I’m definitely the girl to call if you need a hand . . . job.” She throws the pillow back at me. “Or at least I used to be, before Mom put me on lockdown.”
It’s not quite how I imagined V and me sharing this stuff, but it’s pretty darn close.
And it feels good.
DAY 87
Fun No-Fry Funnel Cake
Dr. Frankel is a dead ringer for Dorothy from Golden Girls!
Unfortunately, we don’t have the witty back-and-forth banter Dorothy has with Rose and Blanche. I’m ruler-rigid in one of the two chairs in her office. It was the only seating option; there aren’t any couches or chaise longues like Dr. B. had. I remember my first sessions at Dr. B.’s, when I gave one-word answers and twisted up into myself, unclear on what I was supposed to say, until he finally got me talking about music. Probably not gonna happen that way here; there isn’t a stereo or any DVDs. If it weren’t for the diplomas on the wall (LSU, Tulane; and graduation dates showing she’s old enough to be Mom’s mom), it would pretty much be the police investigation room on any cop drama.
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