Love, Aubrey

by Suzanne LaFleur

She hugged Uncle David extra tight. He kissed her cheek. Gram turned to me then. “You be good, duckling,” she said. She hugged me for a long time. “Carry my bags to the car for me?” I nodded and picked them up. She unlocked the trunk and I loaded the bags.

  Gram stood in the open door of the car, lingering in the goodbye.

  “Anything … anything you want me to tell your mother?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Gram nodded and blew me one last kiss. Then she got in the car, started it, and drove away.

  Uncle David wanted to see my school. I hopped in the front seat of his car and told him which turns to take. He said it looked like a pretty nice school. He parked out by the basket ball courts and told me to get the ball out of the backseat. Then we played basketball for about an hour, until I was feeling a little sweaty and very thirsty.

  Back at Gram’s I poured us each a tall glass of juice from the fridge. Uncle David took his and drank standing up at the counter, but I sat down because my legs felt tired.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  “You too,” I replied.

  “It’s good for Gram to go to see your mother. For her, but also for your mother. She likes having visitors. It helps.”

  Suddenly I felt very hot. Hotter than I had playing basket ball. “How … how is she?”

  Uncle David set his empty glass down on the counter. “She’s… good…. Aubrey, let’s go out. Let’s go out and we can talk.”

  I didn’t know why it would matter where we were, but I shrugged and went to use the bathroom and get a jacket before we left.

  We drove to a diner. I hadn’t been out to eat in forever. I looked at the menu for a long time. It had a lot of things on it, even though nothing was too fancy. I didn’t feel very hungry, but I ordered the turkey-on-toast hot dinner plate. It came with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. Uncle David ordered a Reuben with chips and a pickle.

  After the waitress had taken our menus, I tore open a packet of sugar and poured it on the table. I drew swirly patterns in it with my pinky finger.

  “So how is she?” I asked.

  Uncle David raised his eyebrows at the sugar mess, but didn’t say anything. He sat back, put his hands behind his head, then changed his mind and leaned forward. He watched me push the sugar around the table.

  “She’s doing okay.”

  “Then why can’t I see her? Why doesn’t she call? You said she likes visitors. I could be a visitor.”

  “Well, honey… she is still adjusting. She needs some time to heal. And so do you. If you saw her now, she might seem like the mom you lived with in the summer…. We want you to see her when she’s a little better, more like the mom you remember from before that.”

  I took the salt shaker, tipping it upside down, and tapped a pile of salt onto the sugar swirls.

  “Did she say anything about me? Is she mad at me?” I asked.

  “Why would she be mad at you?” Uncle David asked.

  I flattened my hands around the salt-and-sugar sea, pushing the grains into a steep mountain peak. I used my pinky to tap the mountain back down. Then I swept the whole pile into my hand and dumped it over the side of the table, onto the floor.

  “You know,” I said, “I heard her leave.”

  “You did? Why didn’t you tell someone?”

  “I didn’t know she was leaving leaving. It was in the morning, and I was in bed. The house was all quiet. It was always quiet in the morning, once it was just us. If Mom ever got up before me, I could hear her in the kitchen making coffee. Sometimes she dropped her mug on the floor and cried, and I had to go clean it up and help her. So I always listened.

  “One morning I heard her walking around. That wasn’t so weird. Then I heard the front door. I heard the car door. The car started, and she was gone.”

  “Did you get up? Go after her?”

  “No, I…” I closed my eyes to think. I covered them with my hands. The memory was so far away. “I thought maybe it was okay. I thought she was just going out for a little bit. I was glad that she was doing something. I thought she was coming back.”

  “So that morning … ?”

  “I went back to sleep. It was nice, too. It was so quiet, and still, but not like when Mom was there. It was different. I felt alone and it felt good. When I woke up, it was almost lunchtime. She wasn’t back, so I made some lunch and turned on the TV. I started to wonder if I should be worried.”

  “Were you?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t want to be. So I just shut her out of my mind.”

  “When she didn’t come home that night…”

  “That was scary. But I had to act like it didn’t bother me. I had to. I was mad at her for being so … so …”

  “It’s okay. Tell me.”

  “Well, she didn’t seem to care if I was okay, so why should I worry about her? She was the one who left.”

  Uncle David nodded.

  “But there was this other part of me that really didn’t want anyone else to be mad at her. I wanted people to leave us alone. They all kept saying they were sorry, but no one really knew what it was like.”

  “I understand that, Aubrey.”

  “Do you?”

  “I think I do.”

  “It wasn’t right, was it?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Uncle David relaxed his face just a little bit. His jaw and nose looked like Mom’s. “She didn’t want to hurt you, either. Her doctor told me that she was so sad about what happened—and she was getting more and more sad, not less, as time passed—that her brain decided to pretend that nothing had happened. It couldn’t pretend so easily at your house, where your dad and sister were missing, so she had to leave. If she was off on her own, maybe all three of you were okay together, somewhere else. She just couldn’t feel any more pain—so her body took over, took her away from things. Made her get in the car, and just… drive…. Her doctor says she can be okay again. She’s already starting to come back.”

  “What—what was she like?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Growing up. What was she like?”

  “Oh.” Uncle David thought for a minute. He squeezed the lemon in his water against the side of the glass with his straw, then stirred it. “Lissie was just fine. Wonderful. She was sweet, loved to be the center of attention, and usually got to be, being the youngest. But she shared it, you know. She wanted to be with you, one of us—with someone, at least—all the time.”

  She sounded like Savannah. Maybe sometimes Savannah had reminded her of herself.

  Uncle David opened his wallet and took out a photo of four children, himself and his sisters. He studied the photo, then handed it to me. My eyes settled on the widest smile, fixed on the face of the youngest.

  “I know what you’re looking for.” He sighed. “I’ve been looking for it myself. Some hint from before that something was wrong.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s not there,” he said.

  “No,” I answered. “I guess it isn’t.”

  The waitress brought our plates. We stared at them for a minute. Mine looked huge, with heaping gobs of gravy, and the meat on Uncle David’s sandwich was piled so thick I didn’t know how he was going to fit his mouth around it.

  “Let’s eat,” he suggested.

  I took my knife and fork and cut several bite-sized pieces, but didn’t eat them. Uncle David noticed and put his sandwich back down. When he stopped chewing, he sipped his drink.

  “She loves you,” he said. “I know it’s hard right now, but she does.”

  I nodded and stuffed a bite into my mouth. Chewing was so hard. I sipped at my own soda, even though I hadn’t swallowed yet.

  Dear Jilly,

  It was nice to see Gram when she came back. Even though she was only gone a few days, I missed her. I didn’t even know it until she was back and I saw her again.

  Gram says that Mom is okay. She is still very sad, and doesn’t talk to
anyone in the family about what happened, but she is talking to the doctor a lot. That seems to help her more than when she wasn’t talking about things at all. Gram says everyone is trying hard and helping to make her better. Someone takes her out every day to spend some time outside and to do some errands and just to be with her so she doesn’t feel alone. Aunt Linda got there before Gram left to stay with Mom for the next few weeks.

  That’s all I have to tell you.

  Love,

  Aubrey

  My breath came in short gasps. The creases of my palms filled with sweat. I stood at the window, wishing away the weather.

  “It’s okay to wait,” Gram said. “I’ll drive you over when it stops.”

  I’d ridden the school bus in the rain before, but it was a drizzly, soft, and safe rain. This rain was pounding, sweeping, dizzying.

  My hair was braided, in two tails, the same way Bridget would wear her hair, the way we’d planned.

  I was going to see Amy today.

  I had a science presentation. My report, “The Understory Story: The Life Cycle of a Forest,” was tucked in my backpack. It was six pages, plus the bibliography. Gram had marked the end of several days’ work by buying me one of those clear plastic covers with a red plastic spine that slides on to hold the whole thing together.

  “No,” I answered Gram. “I—I’ll get on the bus when it comes.”

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The bus finally appeared and pulled to a sloshy stop.

  “Bye, love,” Gram said, walking me to the door.

  I ran outside, getting soaked. At the same time, Bridget sprinted toward the bus. No, toward me. When we met in the squishy grass, we stopped. I looked at Bridget’s quickly soaking braids as she took my hand in hers.

  “Thank you for your note,” Amy said. “The one you left in my box last week.”

  My toes squirmed in my tennis shoes. Wiggling my toes made my damp socks stick a little less.

  “I was really glad to get it,” she added, unable to see my toes. “It made me think about a few things. Do you mind if I share them with you?”

  I shook my head.

  “It made me wonder whether you keep a journal, or spend any time writing.”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Well, sometimes I write letters.”

  “Who do you write to?”

  “No one.”

  “If you are writing letters, they are probably to someone.”

  I felt embarrassment creep into my chest. Probably my cheeks were turning pink and showing it, too. “I write to Jilly.”

  “Who is Jilly?”

  “She’s—was—she was Savannah’s imaginary friend. We used to play with her, a long time ago.”

  Amy didn’t seem to think it was funny at all. “Why do you write them?” she asked kindly.

  I wondered if I could lift my toes individually. I couldn’t. Just my big toes.

  “Does it help you to write to her?”

  I shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “To do something.”

  “Do you tell Jilly about how you’re feeling?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Even if you don’t tell her how you’re feeling, does writing to her change how you’re feeling?”

  I stared out the window. A bird twitched in the browning leaves in the bushes outside the office. It looked in two directions, then quickly flew away.

  “Is it really Jilly you want to talk to?” Amy asked.

  The sky was slowly becoming bluer as the rainy day drifted away. Gray clouds still hung in the sky, but they were lighter.

  “No,” I whispered.

  When I looked back at Amy, I saw that she was nodding and staring at me with searching eyes. Finally, she looked away and tapped her pen on her paper.

  “I’m going to give you a tough assignment this time, Aubrey. I don’t want you to do it this week, or this month, or even soon if you are not ready. Just sometime.”

  “Sometime,” I repeated, to show I was listening.

  “I want you to write to them. To the people you really want to talk to.”

  To them.

  Even though Amy’s office was small, suddenly it seemed like she was sitting a million miles away. She was still talking, somehow. I closed my eyes to try to listen.

  “I think it will be hard. But I think, in the end, it will help you. Those things we never say can stay with us forever. If we can find a way to say them, a little weight will be gone. I truly believe this will help you. I don’t want to see what you write, you can just tell me if you do it, okay?”

  I stared at her. I couldn’t say anything.

  I couldn’t do it.

  Amy held my gaze, as if to say You can.

  She scribbled something on the paper. She handed it to me.

  “This note is for you to go back to class. I’m giving you ten extra minutes, so you can walk slow, get some water, think, whatever you like. Please take your time.”

  I nodded.

  Amy picked up an orange envelope from her little round table. She handed it to me. It said “Aubrey” in perfect loopy black print.

  “Your invitation. I’m having a Halloween party for my students. I would love for you to come. You can bring a friend. It’ll be during lunch on Halloween.”

  I nodded and stood up. Amy held out the M&M’s jar. I shook my head and picked up my backpack.

  Amy opened the door for me.

  “You’re doing really well,” Amy said. “Please think about what we talked about, okay?”

  Amy had been right about a lot of things. She had been right about sitting with people at lunch. She was right about doing my homework. She was right about spending time with Gram. But she couldn’t be right about this.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  I was pouring my soda very slowly, listening to the fizzies spreading out in the plastic cup.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What?” I asked. I looked up to see Bridget staring at me from across the cafeteria table. “Oh, nothing.”

  “Well, guess what,” Bridget said, lowering her voice.

  “What?” I asked, lowering mine.

  “See that boy over there?”

  “Bridget, there are hundreds of boys in here.”

  “That one, in the blue stripes?”

  “Oh, that one?”

  “Don’t look at him!”

  “You asked me if I saw him! How am I supposed to see him without looking?”

  “Sorry,” Bridget said. “What do you think of him? Do you think he’s cute?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “Well, he is,” Bridget said. “He’s totally cute.”

  “He is? Since when?”

  “Since this morning.” Bridget had a dreamy look on her face. “Christian Richards.”

  I started laughing. “You have a crush!”

  Bridget lost the dreamy look and scowled at me. “You shouldn’t talk. You’re the one who has a crush. On Marcus.”

  “I do not!” I said. My eyes flitted over to where Marcus sat with a group of boys. I didn’t have a crush on him. I couldn’t explain it. Something about him drew my attention, but I didn’t quite know what it was.

  “Are you done with lunch?” Bridget asked quickly.

  “What? No.”

  “Look, Christian’s heading to the trash. Let’s go throw our stuff away. We can run into him,” Bridget said.

  I rolled my eyes, but I shoved the rest of my lunch back into my paper bag and let her tug me out of my seat.

  “Hi, Christian!” Bridget said when we got to the trash can.

  “Hey,” Christian said. “Are you guys coming to my Halloween party?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” Bridget said. “Maybe we’ll see you there?”

  “Sure, see ya,” Christian said. He headed back to his table.

&n
bsp; Bridget guided me out of the cafeteria toward the girls’ room. “He invited us to his Halloween party!”

  “Everyone is invited. We got invitations in the mail. It’s thrown by the class parents.”

  “I kind of—Did you want to go trick-or-treating?” Bridget asked.

  I trick-or-treated with Savannah every year. This was going to be the year they let us go on our own, with me in charge, because I would finally be old enough.

  I would never trick-or-treat again.

  “No,” I said. “Let’s go to the party.”

  It wasn’t until I saw Amy in her costume that I realized I really didn’t want to see her. I think she was supposed to be Little Bo Peep. She had a huge dress and a huge bonnet and a shepherd’s crook.

  I gave her a small wave and pinched Bridget’s elbow to steer her toward the food table. I could have guessed there would be M&M’s, and there were also dark chocolate cupcakes with orange frosting. There was a veggies-and-dip tray and turkey sandwiches on nice rolls that probably came from a bakery.

  I took a celery stick and a carrot and put them on a plate. Bridget gave me a funny look and put a turkey sandwich and a cupcake on my plate, too.

  The party was in a classroom near Amy’s office. There were plenty of people there. Everyone had brought a friend, so only half the people there were Amy’s kids. Once everyone was mixed up, you didn’t really know who was who, though Marcus showed up without a friend. I watched him say hi to Amy. When he talked to her, his smile grew wider and even his eyes smiled. She gently touched his shoulder as she moved to say hi to another kid.

  My eyes followed Marcus as he went to the food table. He looked different; it was something about his eyes.

  Another kid walked up to Marcus and threw an M&M at him. Marcus laughed, put a candy in his left hand, and pinged it at the kid with his right thumb and middle finger.

  But after the boy walked away, Marcus let his hair flop in front of him, and his smile went away.

  I realized that Marcus was sad. Sometimes I forgot that I wasn’t the only person in the world who could feel sad.

  Bridget and I decided to go to Christian’s Halloween party as cowgirls. I put on a jean skirt and a sleeveless white blouse, plus tights and a jean jacket, because Gram said I had to have them in the cold. We did our hair in braids and painted freckles on each other’s cheeks. Bridget lent me a cowgirl hat and boots.