Love, Aubrey

by Suzanne LaFleur

  We drive to the hospital. It is big and scary. There is a hallway with a big window looking on a room full of babies. Other brothers and sisters gather there with daddies and aunties and uncles, peering through the glass. Daddy hoists me up to stand on the wooden sill.

  “There she is!” He points. “Right in front of us. See her, in the pink blanket with the white stripe? That’s your sister. That’s Savannah.”

  Dear Ms. Engleheart,

  This summer I grew tomatoes.

  I didn’t plant them myself, they were there already. But they were a little sick (yellow& droopy& dry). I watered them every day after that, and pulled out the weeds from the dirt. It was hard work and I didn’t always like it.

  By the end of the summer there were tomatoes. Lots of them. Some were tiny and sour tasting, but some were big&red&juicy. When you sliced them they weren’t like slices from grocery store tomatoes, with a hard center. Instead they were all shaped different inside, with lots of squiggly, seedy compartments. Some tomatoes were not red but were orange or yellow.

  There were more tomatoes than we knew what to do with. We ate tomato sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We ate tomatoes plain, like apples. We gave baskets of them to our neighbors. Gram stewed some and sealed them in jars to cook with later. We made pasta sauce. We made veggie stew. I wondered if actually there were too many tomatoes. I also wondered sometimes if I even wanted tomatoes at all, because maybe I wanted something else, like a kiwi, or bananas.

  That was my summer vacation.

  Love,

  Aubrey

  Amy Carlisle’s office was a small room right around the corner from the main office.

  I skipped science to get there at ten o’clock. The door was shut, so I waited outside. A few kids walked by, but I kept my eyes down.

  The door finally opened. Marcus came out, smiling. “Hey, Audrey,” he said, trying to slap a low five on my hand. He missed and hit my lower arm instead. “Oops, sorry!” I didn’t correct him on my name as he shoved a handful of M&M’s into his mouth.

  I went inside the office. If Marcus was the kind of kid who came to see Amy Carlisle, I didn’t need to.

  She looked nice, sitting in one of two cushy chairs, with a notepad on her lap. Her hair was straight and dark, with no frizzies, and it hung in different lengths around her face.

  “Hi, Aubrey?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, dropping my backpack and sitting in the other chair.

  “Please call me Amy,” she said, getting up and closing the door. “Did your first day go all right?”

  “Yeah, it was fine,” I said. “Um … what kind of kids do you usually see?”

  “Kids aren’t kinds, Aubrey. Everybody is different. Everyone has his or her own stuff to deal with in life, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So sometimes some people find it easier to talk to a grown-up who’s not their teacher or who doesn’t live in their house. I’m here to be that grown-up to people who might want to talk a little.”

  “So that’s what we’ll do, talk?”

  “If you want to.”

  “So you … know about me?”

  “A little. But we don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

  I kept my mouth shut, to show her this was the case, that I didn’t want to talk about anything. Maybe Amy got that a lot, because she continued lightly, cheerfully.

  “So you live with your grandmother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you like to spend time together?”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that. Not since I’d come to live with her, anyway. “I mean, we used to,” I said. “Now it seems a little more business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s always cooking and cleaning stuff, and, you know, worrying.”

  Amy nodded.

  “Have you made any friends here yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wonderful!” Amy said. “Well, good, good. Does the schoolwork seem manageable?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I think the easiest way to adjust to a new school is to make sure you adjust academically and socially, wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Sure,” I said, feeling like it was kind of a stupid point.

  “So I’d really like you to try to keep up with your homework, okay? Also, this first week I’d like you to sit with someone you don’t know at lunch. Do you think you could do that?”

  I nodded.

  Amy wrote something on the notepad, tore off the top sheet, and handed it to me.

  “That’s our next appointment. I want to hear how everything goes. If you want to talk between now and then, stop by. If I’m not here, ask at the office and they can help find me, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, though I couldn’t imagine looking for her before our next appointment.

  “Don’t forget to take some M&M’s from the jar,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m good, thanks.” As I left her office, I wondered if everyone who walked by wondered what was wrong with me.

  After school I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework when Gram came in from gardening. She was all dirty and looked like she was hot.

  “Well,” she announced. “I suppose that’s the end of the garden for this year.”

  She wiped her hands on her jeans and put a pot of water on to boil.

  “This is the spaghetti water,” she said. “You’ll keep an eye on it for me while I go take a quick shower?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Gram was gone maybe five minutes when the phone started ringing.

  I stared at it. “Gram!” I yelled. “Phone!”

  The truth was, I was afraid to answer it. But Gram seemed to spend all day either on the phone or waiting for it to ring. She would probably be mad at me if I didn’t pick it up.

  I ran to the bottom of the stairs. “Gram!” I yelled again. She must have been in the shower already.

  Another ring or two and the person would probably hang up. I ran back to the kitchen, held my hand on the phone for one more ring, picked it up, and then clicked the Talk button.

  “Hello?” I asked, hoping whoever was on the line couldn’t hear my pounding heart.

  “Hi.” I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was a woman. “Who is this?” she asked. She sounded extremely worried.

  That was a funny question. She was the one who had called me.

  “It’s Aubrey,” I said.

  “Oh, thank God! Are you all right? You’re with your grandmother?”

  “Who’s calling?” I asked.

  “It’s Aunt Janet,” she said.

  “I don’t have an aunt Janet.”

  Just then Gram, who must have heard the phone from the bathroom after all, came running into the kitchen, dripping, in a towel. She grabbed the phone before I could say anything else.

  I sat down at the kitchen table. At first, Gram just said simple things, like her name, and yes, and no, and a few things about me—that I wasn’t by myself was one—but then she was saying “Thank God. Thank God!” as she held her towel tightly around her chest.

  My ears started buzzing. It felt like Gram was speaking in a faraway tunnel. I got up from the table, slowly, and then, moving more and more quickly, made my way up the stairs. I rushed to my bed, lay down, and counted my breaths, waiting.

  * * *

  An hour and over a thousand breaths later, Gram came into my room, looking less wet but still wearing her towel. Her gray curls were limp around her face.

  “I know where she is,” she said. Her voice sounded happy, but extremely tired at the same time.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “It must be at least some relief to you?” Her voice went up at the end.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to hear where she is? Don’t you want to know how she got there?”

  “Nope … Who’s Aunt Janet?”

  “Aunt Janet was a fri
end of your mom’s from college. She says you met her, when you were little. You don’t remember?”

  “Nope.”

  “Your mom is with her.”

  “Where?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Colorado?”

  “It’s where Janet lives.”

  None of this news made any sense to me. “She’s… okay?”

  “She’s… safe,” Gram said carefully.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I don’t understand.” When Gram didn’t respond, I repeated it a third time.

  If she was okay, then what was she doing in Colorado? Why wasn’t she with me?

  “Aubrey?” Gram said.

  “I’m going to be sick.” I leaned over the side of the bed. Gram looked alarmed.

  “Duckling, darling …” Gram hurried over and lifted my head. She held me against her toweled chest. “Take deep breaths. Everything’s okay now. There’s no need to be sick.” She waited until my breathing had returned to normal, then said, “I’m going to go get dressed. We’ll talk then, okay?”

  I sat back against the headboard, feeling my forehead start to sweat.

  Gram came back in a few minutes, dressed and with combed hair. She sat down on the bed and took my hand. “Your mother went for a very long drive,” Gram started slowly. “We don’t think that she really had a plan. She stayed at motels, mostly, or campgrounds where it was okay to park a car for the night. It seems like she was entirely alone until she ended up stopping in at a friend’s house in Colorado.”

  “Aunt Janet’s?”

  “Yes. Janet and your mother hadn’t talked in a really long time, so she didn’t know about anything that had happened recently. And when your mother got there, she was acting as if everything was fine, saying she was just off on a girl’s adventure. When Janet asked how everything was and how you girls were, your mother said you were fine. Janet invited her to stay for a little while. But after just a few days Janet could tell that something was wrong. Your mom would sleep through the whole day. She didn’t sleep peacefully, she kept calling out. When your mother wouldn’t call home, Janet felt that something was really, really wrong.” Gram paused, to check how I was taking everything. I had my eyes shut, but I was listening. “She got your mother to talk about it this morning. She realized that you had been left behind. She didn’t know who to call, so she found your mom’s address book in her things and called the phone number that said ‘Mom.’”

  “You,” I said.

  Gram nodded.

  “That’s the whole story?” I asked. “That’s all you know?”

  “There’s a little bit more,” Gram said. “I talked to Uncle David, too. He’s going out to get her. He’s leaving right away. He’ll bring her back to Virginia and take her to a doctor. Not the kind of doctor who checks your bones and things like that. The kind who checks your feelings.”

  “I know what kind,” I said.

  Gram was very quiet for a few minutes. Then she suggested, “I could get that spaghetti water started again.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll leave you alone,” Gram said. She got up and went to the door. I got under the covers, as if it was bedtime.

  “Gram? Do you know …”

  Gram paused in the doorway and turned. “Do I know what, sweetie?”

  “Did she call for me, at all? You know, when she was sleeping?”

  “I’m sure she did,” Gram said.

  After Gram left, I felt like I had eaten a whole pot of spaghetti, and that it had turned into squirmy worms in my stomach.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep at all,” Bridget said to me on the bus the next morning. “Your eyes are all red and streaky.”

  She meant bloodshot. I rubbed them. I hadn’t slept much. But I think around three or four in the morning, knowing I had a plan, I fell asleep for a little while. When I was asleep, I dreamed about Mama, and riding in a car way out somewhere dusty to meet her. I couldn’t tell in the dream who was driving the car. Then I would wake up, and when I shut my eyes, the dream would start again.

  “My mom … turned up,” I said. “She’s in Colorado. But my uncle is bringing her back to Virginia.”

  “Oh,” Bridget said. “That’s… good, right?”

  I shrugged.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  When Mom left, I couldn’t go after her. I didn’t know where she was. Now I did.

  Bridget looked at me. Then she gasped. She wrestled my chubby backpack out of my arms and unzipped the main section.

  “Aubrey!” she cried. She lowered her voice. “Aubrey, no!”

  I snatched the backpack and shoved the jeans, socks, and underwear peeking out quickly back in.

  “How are you planning to get there?” she whispered.

  “Train,” I said. I knew that the eighty dollars in my pocket wasn’t going to get me all the way there on the train, but it would be a start. “Or the bus. There are plenty of buses in this country.”

  “No,” she said.

  I hadn’t yet considered bicycle, but that was a good option. I could steal one at school. It would take a long time to get there, but I knew how to take care of myself.

  “I have to,” I said. “If I leave now, I can be back in Virginia by the time she gets there.”

  “No.”

  The bus pulled into the school parking lot. Kids started getting off. I stood up, and Bridget followed closely. When we got off the bus, she said, “Aubrey, it’s okay.”

  “Nothing’s okay.”

  “She’s safe, and you’re safe.”

  I shook my head and walked into school with my fat backpack. I hadn’t had room in it for homework, or books, so I wasn’t quite sure why I wandered to class just to get in trouble. I knew that with people coming into school it would be too hard to sneak away first thing in the morning. When I said I didn’t have my homework, Ms. Engleheart said to bring it tomorrow. My math and science teachers said the same thing. Well, it didn’t matter, because I wouldn’t be there tomorrow.

  At lunchtime I didn’t go into the cafeteria. Instead, I pushed open an exit-only side door and slipped outside. I went to the bike racks and started looking for an unchained bike. That could get me at least as far as the train station. If I remembered how to get there.

  “Aubrey,” a voice said. I turned around. It was Amy. Great.

  “What are you doing out here, with your backpack? You aren’t heading home?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Come inside. I want to talk to you.” Amy ushered me back inside.

  Gram must have called her. I should have known.

  I dropped with a thump into one of the chairs in Amy’s office.

  “I saw you leave the building,” she said. “But I wasn’t sure where you’d be going right now. Is everything all right?”

  “I …” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know if my news was good news or bad news. If it was good news, to know where Mom was and that she was okay, why did I feel so hurt and upset?

  There was a knock on the door. A secretary poked her head in.

  “Aubrey’s grandmother is here to pick her up,” she said.

  I was surprised to hear that. Had Gram heard something else? Had Mom herself called?

  “I’ll walk her to the office,” Amy said. The secretary closed the door. “Before we go, is there anything you want to talk about?”

  I shook my head.

  Amy walked me to meet Gram in the front hallway. They shook hands and Gram thanked her. Gram said she had already signed me out, so we walked out to the car. When I opened the door, I was surprised to see a plastic bowl with a lid on it sitting on the passenger seat.

  “What’s Sammy doing here?” I asked.

  “He didn’t like thinking he’d been left behind,” she said. “So I told him we could catch up with you.”

  I picked up his container, got in, and put him in my lap. Gram got in, too, but b
oth doors were still open. Gram didn’t even bother to put the keys in the ignition.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Let’s just say a nice little girl we both know told a little lie. When she found herself without her friend in the cafeteria, she said she was sick and had to see the nurse, and then she told the nurse she had to call home. Then she told her mother to go next door and tell me that I had to come to school right away, because Aubrey was going to run away.”

  “Bridget?”

  “Who else?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I talked to her today,” Gram said.

  “Bridget?”

  “No. Your mother.”

  “Oh.” My heart started pounding. Maybe Gram had brought Sammy because she was going to take me there. Maybe she was going to put me on a plane and send me back to my mother. “What did she say?”

  “Just that she was sorry, over and over. She is sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For leaving.”

  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear she was sorry for. I thought maybe if I could just get back to her, she would see how wrong she had been, and how much she loved me.

  “I was thinking,” Gram started slowly, “that maybe you would like to talk to her.”

  There was utter stillness in the car, just a slow blup blup from Sammy, and the flutter of his fins.

  I nodded.

  “You would?”

  “Very much,” I whispered.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  We shut the car doors and drove slowly home.

  Only when we got into the kitchen did I realize it was such a cloudy day. Without the lights on, even though it was just one o’clock, it seemed so dark inside the house. We left the lights off. I sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Gram? After, can I go up to bed? I’m really tired.”