Bringing Me Back

by Beth Vrabel

  “You? Nah.” I almost laughed. “No way. You’re like, always mellow.”

  “Now.” Jeff did laugh. “Then, I was more likely to spit in your face than say how-do-you-do. Until Convey. Know what I did first when the old man took me in?” Jeff didn’t wait for my answer. “I trashed the Shop, swiped cash from the cashbox, ran away. When my foster caseworker tracked me down—wasn’t hard, I was at the closest arcade—he loaded my scrawny butt right back. I wouldn’t go in the door. No way this old man was going to tell me what to do. I had been taking care of myself just fine, no matter where they put me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Convey said he wasn’t giving up on me. As long as it took me to understand what it meant to be a gentleman, he was going to stay with me. I said, ‘Well you better plan on adopting me then, ’cuz it’s going to take forever.’” Jeff rubbed the corner of his mouth with his knuckles.

  “What happened?” I pushed.

  “He adopted me, not that I believed it right away. Truth is, I went out of my way to make the old man miserable. For six straight months, I was grounded, never allowed to leave the old man’s sight. He’d walk me into the school, walk me home the end of the day, make me sit on a stool at the Shop, and locked me in my bedroom at night. I hated him. Made sure he knew it, too. But, man, he was good. Made it impossible for me to run.

  “We’d toss the ball back and forth in the backyard for hours. Bam, bam, bam, just the ball being thrown back and forth. I threw it hard, too, hard as I could. The old man almost always caught it anyway.” Jeff tilted his head back against the wall. “And soon? I was talking. It was easier, somehow, to talk while we threw that football back and forth. Each toss, I’d tell about a different house I’d been forced into and out of.

  “Enough nights went by and I realized I wasn’t talking about where I’d been anymore. I’d talk about where I wanted to go. Told the old man that the second I graduated, I’d be out of there. Off to see the world. Backpack if I had to. Never be tied down to anyone. Just on my own. That was the only time the old man said anything back.”

  “What’d he say?” I prompted when Jeff didn’t pick up the story.

  He cleared his throat. “‘What about a family?’ And I said, ‘No way.’ But he just laughed and said, ‘You just wait.’”

  Jeff shifted, slowly rising to his feet. “You know, it’s kind of crazy. I don’t remember when I started calling him Dad or when we stopped needing a football to talk. I hardly remember his voice at all. Just that he listened.”

  “Did you?” I asked after another long pause.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you take off after graduation?”

  Jeff shook his head. “Dad was sick by then. Cancer.”

  Glen had told me once about that, about how Mr. Convey had gotten sick and how Jeff stuck around to take care of him. When he died, Jeff inherited the Shop.

  “Do you wish you had left?” I whispered.

  Jeff just smiled. “I have everything I need right here.” He tilted his head toward the doors. Slowly, I stood.

  His hand outstretched to push open the door, Jeff paused again. “That old man was the first person I’ve ever trusted. Only one who ever earned my trust. It’s—it’s tough, even now, to rely on anyone. And he taught me something I carry to my core, Noah. Don’t budge. Don’t give up on someone you love. And I never will. You’re family, Noah. Family doesn’t budge.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  All around, people sat at round tables. The noise bouncing around the room put the middle school cafeteria to shame. Instead of trays of food and teachers monitoring, people played board games or cards and correctional officers watched over the room for trouble. Seated at each table was a woman in an orange jumpsuit.

  My eyes swept the room for Mom. From the way Jeff had acted, I thought I’d hear her before I saw her. He had made it sound as though she’d be tearing down the walls if I weren’t in there. But I didn’t hear her. And at first, my eyes floated right by where she sat.

  Here’s the thing: My mom was tiny but tremendous, all at once. She was shorter than me, and so skinny that old ladies at the grocery were always telling her to eat a cupcake. Her hair was a wild, curly mess that always reminded me of a nest, her pale face the egg in the middle. But when you saw her, your mind recognized right away that she was anything but small.

  Somehow she could fill up a room. I didn’t know how to explain it. I guess it was like the woodstove in Jeff’s living room. Just a black, boxy thing, but warmth poured from it so you felt cozier even if you’re on the other side of the room. That was how it was with Mom. Well, when Mom was happy, anyway.

  When she was angry, that heat could singe. Just ask Johnny Martins, the fourth grader who swiped the dessert out of my lunchbox every day on the bus back when I was a scrawny second-grade twerp. Mom yelled at the kid the entire way back to his house when she found out. When Johnny ran through his front door, Mom kept on railing against the kid’s dad, who was at least the size of a giant and width of a doghouse. The man cowered in front of her. And my Oreos were safe from then on. In fact, Johnny gave me his dessert.

  But I didn’t see that presence anywhere in this would-be cafeteria. Finally I saw Trenton, who spotted me at the same time. He half-stood in the back of the room, waving me toward him. Next to him sat someone who made me think of a tiny bird, perched on the edge of a branch, too terrified to fly. Why was Trenton sitting with this small, pale woman, whose thin arms wrapped around her folded-up knees? But then the woman noticed Trenton’s waving and popped to her feet.

  “Noah?” I saw her mouth form the words but didn’t hear the sound. Her chin wobbled and she held out her arms, but I couldn’t move. Jeff poked me, hard, between the shoulder blades, and I stumbled toward her.

  Soon—too soon—I stood a few feet from her outstretched hands. “Can I hug her?” I asked Trenton, not remembering the rules.

  Then I felt Mom’s arms around me. Her chin rested on my shoulder, her hands squeezing across my back. She shook. No, that’s not right. It’s more like she vibrated. Like what I imagine a cloud does before lightning shoots out of it. Mom was like bottled-up energy. Her head tilted against mine. She still smelled like lavender. Maybe it wasn’t the shampoo. Maybe it was just her. “Noah,” she said again. “I love you.”

  An officer’s heavy steps tapped against the tile as he made his way toward us. Mom glanced over then let her arms trail to my sides. She gripped my hands for a second and then dropped them as the officer moved closer. I wondered why I wasn’t feeling anything. “Sit down,” she said, and pointed to the chair across from the one she had been sitting on. And suddenly I did feel something: Irritated. Did she really just ask me to have a seat? Like this was one screwed-up tea party?

  I guess she saw me gritting my teeth because she snorted. “I know, right?” she said. “I’m acting like a hostess or something. I’m not sure how to act, Noah.”

  I shrugged and slumped into the seat, looking everywhere but at her.

  Trenton coughed. “Ah, Jeff, how ’bout we get some coffee?” He jerked his thumb toward the vending machines lining the back wall of the room.

  “Yeah, okay,” Jeff said after a small pause. “You want anything, Diane?”

  “Um, maybe a Heath bar, if they still have any?” She and Jeff smiled, and I realized there was something there, some hidden joke borne over visits I had refused to go on. “You want anything, Noah?” Mom asked. “They have Starbursts, I think.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t like them anymore,” I lied.

  “Oh.”

  Jeff half-reached toward Mom, then let his hand fall. “Be right back,” he said. I knew he was glaring at me, but I stared at a scratch in the floor.

  “So,” Mom said as they left. “I know we have a lot to talk about.” I shrugged and rolled my eyes. Mom took a deep breath through her nose. “But I just need to know first—your head? Is it okay? I mean, your last concussion made you a little slee
py, but Jeff said you blacked out this time, and I just need to know—”

  “My last concussion?” I broke in. I shouldn’t have looked up. Because my eyes caught hers and I couldn’t look away.

  Mom smiled at me and, for just a second, she grew bigger in my mind. “You wouldn’t remember. You were only a toddler. You would hop into a laundry basket, and I’d push you around the room like it was a race car. Took a corner too fast and you whapped your head on a doorframe. God, I panicked. Insisted they admit you to the hospital for the night, even though the doctor kept telling me you were okay and it was just a minor thing. But it was the first time I ever hurt you and—”

  This time I didn’t need to interrupt her. Everything that had happened slammed down between us. I went back to staring at the scratch. Mom’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Certainly wasn’t the last time I hurt you, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You don’t want to talk. I get that,” she said. “Jeff tells me you won’t even open the letters I’ve sent. I can’t make up for what I did, Noah. I know that. I can’t imagine how scared you were that night. I feel sick every time I try. But here’s the thing, Noah. I was sick. I know that now. I had—have—an addiction. I can’t drink alcohol. It makes me a different person, a person I’m ashamed of.” She leaned forward so I’d look at her again. “In here,” she said, “it’s not just sitting around and watching the clock tick, though there’s plenty of that. I’ve been working with Trenton, going to recovery meetings. I realize that I can’t drink, not ever.”

  “You’ve said that before,” I muttered. Another movie started in my mind, full of scenes I had blocked out before. Images of her sprawled out on the couch, an empty wine bottle beside her, when I got up in the middle of the night for water, a thick, syrupy smell like a cloud around her. Scenes of her with glassy eyes and dark circles under them in the morning, stumbling around the kitchen to pack me lunch because the alarm didn’t wake her. I remembered shivering at a bus stop with her in the winter, waiting for it to take us to day care so she could take another bus to work. She couldn’t drive us then because her license had been taken for driving drunk. Each scene ended with the same words: “I’m never drinking again.” For a long time, she didn’t. That sip of beer with Landon’s mom at Sal’s was the first time she had since we met Jeff.

  “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s different this time,” she said. “I’ve got a plan. I know where to go for meetings. And you can come, too, if you want. Trenton has this saying, ‘All our struggles are family struggles.’”

  “Yeah, he’s said that to me, too.”

  Mom bit her lip and nodded at me. After a pause, she said, “Next week, after I’m out, I’m going to take college classes online.”

  I let my eyes slide to hers.

  “I’m going to get a business degree,” she said, a smile tugging at her face. “All online, but my counselor says I could get a great job, even with a record like mine.”

  “That’s great,” I muttered.

  “I’m talking too much about myself.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I want to know what’s going on with you. Jeff tells me a lot. He sent me the newspaper. I’m proud of you, honey. That you care that much about the bear.”

  I had forgotten all about Bucket Bear. Had Ron caught her? I itched to get back to my phone and find out. But I didn’t want to leave, either. I know it’s stupid, but a part of me felt like the less I said, the longer I could stay there as this bird woman turned back into my mom.

  I made my mouth move. “It’s nothing. She just needs help, that’s all.”

  “No, it isn’t ‘nothing.’” Mom’s voice hardened. “It’s everything to that bear. That’s what counts, that you helped.”

  “Micah came over yesterday,” I blurted.

  Mom’s hands flew to mine. She squeezed my fingers. “Hands off!” the officer barked. “Do that again and visit’s over!”

  I jerked my hands out of Mom’s. She sat on her own hands. “Jeff told me,” she said as if the officer hadn’t spoken. “Are you okay?”

  I chewed my lip, remembering how Micah looked me in the eyes. How he said he forgave me, even though I didn’t deserve it. How suddenly it made my chest feel light as air. I nodded. And like a stupid baby, like a weak little boy, my eyes stung and spilled over.

  All I wanted, more than anything, was for Mom to put me together again. I wanted to fall toward her. Even though she was smaller than me, I bet my head still fit on her shoulder. I wanted to hear her heart thumping the way I used to when I was little and had a skinned knee or a fever. “Oh, Noah,” she whispered.

  And I was angry, so, so angry. I didn’t want to need her. Not when she put herself in here. Not when she would do something that took her from me.

  But her murmured words blanketed me. She was Mom. A frailer, skinnier, less polished Mom. But Mom. And even though I didn’t want to, I needed her. Even though she couldn’t be there for me. She rocked back and forth slightly, still sitting on her hands, and I knew this was even harder on her. “I’m sorry, Noah. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I looked her in the eyes, wondering if she could see the boiling anger and sadness inside of me. Instead, a slurry of regret and pain reflected back to me.

  “I forgive you,” I said, hearing those words echo in Micah’s voice.

  Mom rocked harder, wrapped her arms around herself instead of me. We stayed like that until Trenton and Jeff came back, arms loaded with candy bars. Jeff dumped a dozen or so candy bars and bags of chips on the table. “Thought we should celebrate,” he said. “Looks like things are going well.”

  Mom and I cracked up.

  “Yeah,” said Trenton, rocking back on his heels. “So, you ready for next week, Diane?”

  Mom wiped her eyes and smoothed her frizzy ponytail. “You mean am I ready to lose the orange jumpsuit?” She smiled at me. “You better believe it. Especially now.”

  Jeff’s gaze shifted to me. I saw the question there. Was I ready for Mom to come home? I nodded.

  It’s funny how a couple hours can be so fast and too slow all at the same time. Too slow because I couldn’t think of what to say to her. Every time I looked at her, all I saw was the orange jumpsuit. The officer hovering in the background. The circles under her eyes. Too fast because suddenly our time was up. An officer told us it was time to leave. Mom’s goodbye hug was just a quick squeeze. “One more week,” she whispered in my ear. “I love you.”

  Too short because I didn’t know what would happen when that week was over. We never got around to talking about what it would be like when she got out. Yeah, I forgave her. But would anyone else? Would she fit back into Jeff’s house? My house? My life?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I don’t know what made me remember it, but as we drove home from the jail, I kept thinking of this time when I was little—I don’t know, maybe five or six—and I ate an entire loaf of bread.

  It was the middle of the night. I was hungry, and Mom was asleep on the couch, the television still blaring. She didn’t wake up, even when I yelled “I’m hungry!” in her ear. An empty wine bottle was on the floor by the couch. So I found a loaf of white bread in the kitchen—I loved white bread.

  Mom wouldn’t move so I sat on top of her legs with the bag of bread in my hands. Crusts were gross so I avoided them—I curled my fingers into a fist over the mushy white part and pulled it out. It was so soft I could roll it into a ball, so I did, popping it in my mouth. Again and again and again. Even as my stomach stretched and ached and felt like it was filled with rocks, I grabbed and rolled and ate.

  Soon my fingers reached the end of the bag and I had to stop, even though that meant I finally had to feel how thirsty I had become, how full I was. Soon I was crying, great big hiccupping sobs.

  Mom finally woke up and saw me, hand in the empty-except-for-crusts bread bag and belly huge. “Noah?” she asked.

  I remember holding up the bag. “I ate it all.”

  Her eyes went to
the bottle on the floor. “You and me, my boy. We’ve got to work on our limits.” And then I threw up all over her legs.

  What’s sticking in my mind, though, is the bread left in the bag. Just the crusts, piled on top of each other with the centers gone.

  That’s how I felt as we left the jail. Like someone had reached in and scooped out everything soft inside me, leaving just the crust.

  Ron had texted me while I was visiting Mom. No go on Bucket Bear. Slipped away. Time to turn in the towel, kid.

  I texted him back. Don’t give up yet. Please.

  His reply beeped in a second later. Bear was downright bony.

  Again I typed: Don’t give up on her.

  Ron didn’t reply until we were halfway home.

  It’s been months. We’ve got limited resources. The bear’s not going to make it. Enough is enough.

  Landon was on the porch when we got home. I had forgotten about him wanting to track the bear with me. “Don’t stay out late,” Jeff said as I opened the car door. It was the first time he spoke since we got in the car.

  “I won’t.”

  “And, Noah?” Jeff grabbed my coat sleeve, keeping me in place.

  “Yeah?”

  “I need to tell you something.” Jeff raked his hand down his face. “You asked if I was keeping you out of guilt. I’m not. But I do feel guilty. More guilty than you can imagine.”

  I closed the door, holding up a finger to Landon to wait. He nodded and went back to playing a game on his phone. “Well, knock it off.”

  “No, let me finish.” Jeff turned off the engine and turned toward me. “I went there, to the party. I tried to get her to give me her keys. When she didn’t, I just left. I left you there, Noah. That’s why I feel guilty.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “It isn’t. But I’ll keep making up for it.”