What Every Girl (except me) Knows

by Nora Raleigh Baskin

  “Then it’s really her fault, isn’t it?” Ian said. “Because she didn’t die—she killed herself”

  It was the first time he had said that; the first time I had heard that—And I knew it was true. She had killed herself. Not me. It was not my responsibility to keep my mother alive. She had not taken too many sleeping pills because I was too noisy in the morning. Ian could not have saved her by convincing the doorman. If it hadn’t been that time, she would have found another time.

  But I had come back to the last place and the last time I’d had a mother, and by doing so I acknowledged and even embraced her existence.

  And I said good-bye.

  Chapter 37

  We were mostly quiet the rest of the way, and so when we got to Grand Central we still had no plan. I remembered that Taylor was staying with her dad in New York City. Ian bought a pack of gum at a newsstand to get change for the pay phone. Now we had five dollars left. I called information and asked for Such. S-u-c-h. Fortunately there was only one in Manhattan. I dialed the number I was given by a recording.

  “Oh, Gabby,” Taylor answered anxiously. “Where are you?”

  “What do you mean?” I was confused by her worry. As far as she should know, I was simply calling her from my home in New Paltz.

  “Your father, Gabby,” Taylor explained. “He’s been looking all over for you. The flooding from the Wallkill knocked out the power at the university. All the weekend classes were canceled and your dad’s been home all morning. All afternoon…gee, it’s three-thirty already. He’s really worried, Gabby.”

  “He called you?” I was too shocked to figure this out. “In New York?”

  At this point Ian realized the point of the conversation.

  “Dad called?” Ian mouthed to me. “Where?”

  The first thing I felt was scared. Dad was going to be mad, really mad, maybe madder than he’s ever been at us before. But I was mad, too, and he had a lot of talking to do when I got home.

  “Gabby, are you there?” It was Taylor.

  “I’m here. I’m in New York City”

  “Gabby, what are you doing in New York? Even though, I think I have a pretty good idea,” Taylor said.

  “We were looking for something I’d lost,” I told Taylor.

  “Did you find it?”

  I looked over at Ian. I felt the power of what we had just done. Maybe what we had been looking for wasn’t exactly what we found. Nothing had happened. And yet everything had happened.

  “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”

  “Good… Oh, wait, my dad wants to talk to you,” Taylor said abruptly.

  The phone was in my hands pressing against my ear. I listened.

  “Gabby?” the new voice said. “This is Taylor’s dad, Walter Such. Where are you kids?”

  He sounded kind. Not mad. I suddenly wanted someone to just pick us up and take us home. I wanted so badly to go home.

  “We’re at Grand Central Station,” I told the voice.

  “Stay right there. I’ll be over in a cab to get you. Stand at the corner of Forty-second and Lexington. On the side of the station. And wait. I’ll find you,” he ordered.

  That’s exactly what we did and about fifteen minutes later a yellow taxi pulled up with Taylor inside waving frantically. Beside her, peering forward to see us, was an older man with a graying beard in dark clothes. He appeared a round figure, more friendly and welcoming than I had anticipated. The cab door swung open.

  “Gabby? Ian? Get in. I’m Walter Such. It’s okay, we called your father already,” the man said. “We let him know you were safe.”

  It was a short trip to Taylor’s father’s apartment. I saw that Taylor and her dad kept one hand on each other at all times. She wasn’t afraid to touch him. And he always hugged her back. And so I saw that it was from her father that Taylor got her kindness and her generous touch.

  Ian and I didn’t say a word; not to each other nor to anyone else. Taylor did all the talking.

  “First, your dad called my mom, but she was out with Richard and I don’t know where. I think he called Ian’s friend, remember, the one you thought was cute. What’s his name? Oh, whatever. But he wasn’t home, either. Anyway, he finally got my mom and she said I was in New York this weekend. I don’t know why your dad thought to call here, but…I’ve been worried about you all day, too.…”

  We arrived at the address and the driver pulled over. It was still light out when we got out of the cab, though the sun was low between two buildings and reached out with long, yellow fingers, as if pointing directly at us.

  Finally, Ian spoke. “Why are we coming here?”

  We all walked up the few steps to the apartment, following Taylor’s father.

  “I mean, wouldn’t it have been easier to just lend us the train fare?” Ian continued.

  Mr. Such turned the key in the first door, which led to a small vestibule inside and another locked door. “Your dad wants to come here and pick you up. He was really worried about you, Ian. I don’t think you understand.”

  “Yeah, right,” Ian mumbled. “He’s real worried.”

  I was too afraid to speak. I no longer had the desire to confront my father. I was too tired and by now fiercely thirsty. I was probably hungry, too, but I couldn’t feel it. My legs ached. I could feel a huge blister on my left heel.

  We walked through the second door and to Mr. Such’s apartment. It was on the ground floor. Another key opened the inner door. It was all so odd and different, being here and wanting to be here but knowing I wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Taylor, Ian, and I watched TV while we waited for my dad to arrive. Mr. Such offered us something to eat, but Ian wouldn’t have anything. I wanted only a drink, please.

  Taylor cornered me when I went to put my glass in the sink.

  “I knew it. I knew it about you the first time I met you, up on the hill. Remember, Gabby?” Taylor said.

  I could hardly muster the strength to respond. “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “You did it, Gabby” Taylor took my arm. “You were scared but you did it. You went to New York. You looked for your mother. I always knew you were brave.”

  “Me?”

  “I think your mother would be so proud of you,” Taylor said.

  I think maybe Taylor was right.

  *

  When the doorbell rang in the three tones we all jumped. Mr. Such got up to answer it. When my dad walked in I thought I had never seen how old he was before. He was slightly bent, his hair was mussed, his face was drawn with deep lines around his eyes and his mouth. He looked as though he had worn his worry all day.

  Ian and I were expecting the teeth gritting, huffing, angry face that we have witnessed before. I had seen it when I accidentally turned on the lawn mower and it ran through my dad’s tomato plants. And I think Ian had seen that particular face of our dad’s even more than I had.

  Our dad had driven all the way in from New Paltz to get us, we had been missing all day, he had to call strange people and parents he didn’t know, looking for his two children. I would be mad, if it were me.

  And yet there he stood, worn-out and sad. I knew then that Taylor, who always talks too much when she gets nervous, had told my dad why we came to New York. He knew what we had been looking for and where we had gone.

  “I was so scared,” he said. He lifted his arms. “I don’t know what I’d do if…” He didn’t finish his sentence.

  He wasn’t angry at all. He sounded sad and worried and nearly as lonely as could be. I wanted only to be held by those arms that were reaching for me. When I got inside, right up close next to his body, I could feel my dad’s arms still open. For Ian.

  I buried my face into my dad’s shirt, into the familiar warmth that was my father. He smelled of oil paints and turpentine. Ian took his time. I could hear his feet shuffle slowly across the wood floor. When he was close enough, he stopped. My dad ruffled Ian’s hair and let him go, but Ian stood close by. Then my fa
ther closed his arms around me tightly. I could have stayed that way for a long, long time.

  Chapter 38

  We all went to dinner, Taylor and her father and Ian, me, and our dad. Walter Such knew some great Mexican restaurant in the Village. It turned out to be one of the most wonderful, fun nights of my whole life. Walter Such was an artist, too. Not a painter like my dad, but a photographer. He said he worked “as mild-mannered ad-agency guy by day and by night as the mad shutter-bug man.” That was his joke. He and Ian and my dad got along really well. They talked about “art.”

  Nobody talked about what happened or what Ian and I did, or why. Still no one said her name. No one mentioned 435 East 79th Street. But we would soon, I knew. We had a lot to talk about.

  Taylor kept nudging me all through dinner and making faces. Finally she said she had to go to the bathroom and did I want to go?

  “No, I don’t have to,” I said.

  “But, really, you should.” Taylor lifted her face in that funny way that only a YBF can see.

  I finally got the message she was transmitting with her eyebrows. I agreed to accompany Taylor to the bathroom, even though I really didn’t have to go.

  “So what is it already?” I asked Taylor. We stood inside the tiny bathroom with a naked bulb and the metal pull-chain dangling just above our heads. The bathroom was only meant for one person and probably a tiny person at that.

  “I got it,” Taylor whispered, though I could pretty well say for certain that we were alone. “I could hardly wait to tell you.”

  I smiled. “You got your period?”

  “Yeah. Yesterday, when I got to my dad’s.” Taylor nodded her head up and down. “My dad didn’t know what to do. He was so nervous. I’m so glad you already told me everything I needed to know,” Taylor said.

  Funny, wasn’t it? After all, it was from me that Taylor had gotten her information. It was me, Gabby Weiss, girl without mother, who gave out advice on womanhood to my best friend, Taylor Such. Imagine that!

  Taylor was going on and on. “And Gabby, I’m so glad you’re my best friend. I’m so happy you’re here tonight, even if it had to happen like it did.… I was… Oh my God, watch out for the toilet!”

  In my excitement for Taylor’s news I had stepped back a little and was now practically falling into the toilet, which was open, and had no lid even if someone had wanted to close it.

  “Watch out for the toilet?” I laughed. It sounded so funny.

  “Yeah, watch out for the toilet,” Taylor repeated, catching on right away, because we were YBFs.

  I said, “I looove the chocolate glaze.”

  “Got milk?” Taylor answered.

  “Hurry, get a paper towel,” I added my line.

  “Why be elves!?” Taylor said.

  “Watch out for the toilet,” I finished the sequence to date.

  When someone started banging on the door and shouting to us in Spanish we doubled over and laughed so hard. We hugged and laughed and nearly did fall in the toilet. And when we unlatched the door and spilled out, we both had stupid, laughing faces, watery eyes, and blotchy red cheeks.

  Chapter 39

  My Journal

  The red book—last entry

  You’ll never believe, or rather I’ll never believe, when I read this twenty years from now, because that’s how long I’m going to wait till I open this journal again and read it. This will be my last entry, since there are only a few pages left and then I’ll have to start a new one. This is the red book that Cleo gave me almost a whole year ago. Every time I pick it up I remember how awful I felt when I realized Cleo was gone, and then when I saw the inscription page torn out (you can still see the ripped part in the front of the book), you can imagine.

  I used to pretend I didn’t care about Cleo. I was afraid, I guess. Being afraid can stop you from doing a lot of things. It can stop you from wanting to know the truth. It can stop you from telling someone you love them. I’m trying to teach my dad not to be so afraid but he’s a slow learner.

  My mother was afraid, too. I’ve come to understand, sort of, why she did what she did. She was afraid when she and my dad broke up and she didn’t think she could go on. I think what she really wanted was for my dad to come over and find her and save her. I don’t think she really wanted to die. But it didn’t happen like that. I’m still sad sometimes, and sometimes I feel lonely again. But I’ll never be that afraid, no matter how bad things get.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever find out what really happened. I’ve talked to Grandpa, and Ian some more, and Dad, and even some old friends of my mother’s that my dad told me about. Everyone has their own story. Now, I have mine.

  Cle did come back (she’s been back for a while now) but that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say: You’ll never believe what I found! The other barrette!

  I was riding my bicycle home from school (seventh grade is really hard, by the way), and just as I turned down my dirt road driveway I saw it. Right in the middle of the road. It wasn’t even muddy or dirty. I still have the first one Taylor and I found. It’s safe in the drawer of my night table, but I’ve never worn it.

  Now I’ve got them both back. It’s like a miracle because I don’t know how long it’s been there, or how many times I just went right by it without noticing, or how it got there in the first place. And stayed in perfect condition!

  A miracle.

  Which reminds me, Dad told me it was my mother who named me Gabby (he’s been trying to tell me little things as they come up and Cleo is helping to make him do it). Gabby is short for Gabrielle (I already knew that part) and Gabrielle is the girl version of Gabriel, who was an angel. An archangel. They were going to name me Zoe, but when my mother first saw me after I was born, she said I was truly an angel, her angel, and she named me Gabrielle. I’ve started signing my papers in school like that. Gabrielle Weiss.

  Which reminds me again, Taylor and I have George, but for earth science this time. He said last year’s flood was the worst New Paltz has seen in a hundred years—more sediment was dumped on the flood plain than modern farmers have had the pleasure of enjoying in a long while (he said that!). He said that when a river floods it deposits nutrients all over the ground, which is why crops grow so well here. I believe Mr. Everett about the river and the flooding water. But not for the reasons he talks about. The river brought me my two barrettes again, and pretty soon I’m going to get up the courage to wear my hair down with two butterflies alighting for a brief rest.

  So, Cleo is back with my dad again. My dad went all the way to Colorado on a plane shortly after our adventures in New York City just to ask Cleo to come back. And she did. They aren’t married yet. Soon maybe, but Cleo, she keeps telling me how sorry she is that she hurt me by tearing that page out when she left. She said sometimes grown-ups make really big mistakes that they can’t even make up a good excuse for. I suppose I can relate to that.

  I’m still deciding if I can totally forgive Cleo or not. But I’ve got time for all that.

  I’m only thirteen.