“But why not?” Matt questioned matter-of-factly.
“I told you it’s not safe. There has to be an adult.”
“I’m going,” Matt countered as if that counted.
Dad shook his head.
I wasn’t sure Matt was helping my argument. I could already hear the answer: “All the more reason for an adult …“
“It’s probably the only time they’re gonna do it, Dad,” I continued, not about to give up.
“There will be more snowstorms,” Dad predicted.
“But it’s perfect right now. Pretty soon it’ll melt and then it’ll be all slushy,” I said.
“What if Mom went?” Matt asked. Mom sat in her favorite easy chair, her feet extended toward the fire. She’d never leave her cozy corner.
“I’d still say it’s the same dangerous hill and the same dangerous ice.”
“I just thought it would be fun,” I said softly, in my best disappointed voice.
Mom stared at me for a long time, twirling her slippered foot. “It might be fun,” she said at last.
Dad looked at Matt and me and then at Mom, shook his head as if in disbelief, and left the room.
That night we could barely see the path from the back of the gym to the bottom of the hill. With too much speed, the only danger was shooting off into the creek below. Each run sounded like one long scrape scratching down a sheet of ice. I’ve never sledded faster.
We had one sled, one toboggan, and two inner tubes, and they all worked great on the ice. Matt borrowed someone’s saucer, and one of his friends twirled him so many times that Matt shot down the hill faster than anything I’ve ever seen.
“He’s a bat out of hell!” Matt’s friend Jimmy yelled out. Matt skimmed beside the icehouse and, despite the churned layer of ice, overshot it by twenty feet.
“Matt, that seems too fast,” Mom cautioned when he returned panting from the climb. “It worries me.”
“Mom, everybody’s doing it. It’s fine,” he said. His breath hung like a cloud of fog. “Don’t worry, I never get hurt.” And then he took off down the hill with a running start, leaping into the air and flying onto the crest of the hill.
I looked to Mom, whose worried brow said she wished she knew what was at the bottom. “Invincible!” Matt yelled. “Look out beloooooow!”
At last Mom joined in and tested the ice on an inner tube. Matt spun her and she sailed down the hill, laughing. The snow shimmered and glowed in the darkness, the evening set in black and white.
Rita and I took the toboggan and I could hear my dad’s precautionary voice even though he wasn’t there. “Don’t get your legs caught out to the side or they’ll be pulled back.” I tucked my legs securely on top and we shot down what felt like a cliff.
“Look out below!” we called as kids scurried out of our path. We stopped short of the icehouse and the creek below. The next time we formed a chain. Everybody grabbed a hand or foot or the side of someone’s saucer and we whipped down the hill together like a snake on the snow, never knowing if the head or the tail of the snake would arrive at the bottom first.
“You wanna ride the saucer now, Abby?” Matt asked. “I could give you a real spin!”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I hated being out of control. I was the last one to learn to ride a bike, not because I was scared to fall, but because I hated the feeling I was about to fall.
“I think I’ll just do the inner tube a few more times,” I said, checking to see if Matt was disappointed in me. Matt shrugged his shoulders and took another flying leap, catapulting down the hill. Mom shook her head. “He’s crazy!”
When Matt came back I asked to borrow his saucer.
“It’s fast,” Matt said. “Do you want me to push you?”
“No. Don’t do anything. Let me just try it by myself first.” I carefully sat down on the saucer, and before I had a chance to even push off, I began slipping. “Woo-hoo!” I squealed as the saucer took off, clinging to its handles as I spun in circles. The wind whipped my face and I closed my eyes, wondering where I was headed. When I opened them, the world was still turning, and I was flying faster and faster. I was dizzy and disoriented and heading down backward. Then I hit the rough path where we had disrupted the surface and I clenched my teeth as I bumped through it. But I did not stop. I heard yelling and I wondered why, but it was too late.
My head hurt, my back ached, and my face was numb. I heard mumbling and somebody saying my name over and over; it sounded sad and I wondered if I was dead, so I opened my eyes to find out if I was. Mom stood over me, a blur, saying my name, but I couldn’t answer. I was pretty sure this wasn’t heaven.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I’m fine,” I said, before I really knew if I was. I didn’t want her to worry.
“Abby, count my fingers,” Mom said, holding up her hand. But I couldn’t focus right away and everything seemed as dizzying as the spinning ride down the hill. Rita was crying.
“Can we go home now, Mom?” I said faintly.
“I don’t want you standing yet, honey,” she answered. “Let’s wait a minute. I think they’re calling an ambulance.”
My eyes widened in fear. I wasn’t that hurt. I couldn’t be that hurt. People who went in ambulances died. I tried to get up but my head hurt too badly and I felt like I was going to throw up. My pillow was the icehouse. A cracked windshield. Shattered glass like a punctured spiderweb. Fragile. I had run smack into a structure I had once sprayed solid.
“Did I break it?” I asked Rita, and everybody laughed but then abruptly returned to concern.
“No, but it nearly broke you,” Matt said, and he wasn’t being funny. He looked big as he towered over me. I wanted him to pick me up and carry me home. “I shouldn’t have given you the saucer,” he added.
I wanted to tell him it was okay, but everybody was talking too much.
Finally, one of the kids who lived nearby ran and got his dad, who was a doctor. By the time he arrived, I was sitting up.
“She’s suffered a concussion,” Dr. Hutchinson concluded after asking me a few questions and feeling my head. “I see these things all the time,” Dr. Hutchinson assured my mom. “Just keep waking her up every hour and asking her questions. It’s probably not serious, but she shouldn’t do anything that might bang her around for a while.” Sledding was over for the night and, I feared, the season. “And Renee?” he said softly to Mom. “Her face is awfully thin. Is she eating enough?”
Mom searched my face as if she hadn’t seen me before.
“I never should have let you go,” she said.
“No, Mom, I wanted to go,” I said, my head pounding. “It was really fun. I shouldn’t have taken the saucer. It was just an accident.” Matt was strangely silent. I was so relieved he hadn’t pushed me down the hill. He didn’t need to feel guilty, too.
“You really had me scared, Bee,” Mom said softly. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
Matt and Mom carried me to the car, my arms draped over their shoulders. After we got home, Dad threw open the door and raced out without a coat. “I can’t believe you took them out. What on earth happened to her? Did she break something?” Dad’s voice was full of anger.
“No, Dr. Hutchinson says she’s going to be fine.”
“Fine? Fine? You’re carrying her home and she’s fine? I heard she hit her head and couldn’t walk.”
“He said we need to keep watching her through the night. In case it’s a concussion,” Mom explained.
Dad was quiet. I hated the silent treatment. It was worse than getting yelled at.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mom apologized. “I … we were having a good time. But maybe I shouldn’t have taken them out. Maybe it is my fault.” Mom’s voice was as thin as a crack in the ice.
Dad shook his head and took me in his arms. “I’ll take her upstairs to our room,” he said at last.
Mom and Matt stayed at the bottom of the stairs. I’m okay,
I mouthed as Dad carried me away.
Mom came up a few minutes later and then Dad left. Mom helped me get on my nightgown, tucked me in their bed, turned out the light, and then crawled in beside me. Light from the hall spilled into the room until it was darkened by Dad’s silhouette.
“I’m sorry I yelled. It was wrong of me to blame you for what happened.”
“I was so scared,” Mom said softly. “I mean, when we were on the hill.”
“I can imagine,” Dad answered back. “Actually, I don’t want to imagine it. I feel like I was there somehow.”
“Maybe it was just too familiar,” Mom concluded. Her arm made long, stroking motions across the top of her quilt in the place Dad usually slept. “Sometimes it seems like the only thing we share is watching our kids in pain.”
“I don’t want to think about that right now,” Dad said, coming toward us. “Tonight I’m going to sleep on the floor on the other side of Abby. We’ll take turns waking her up and checking on her.” Dad set a pillow on the floor and unfolded a blanket off the foot of the bed.
That night, I slept in their bed next to Mom, Dad beside me on the floor. I was between them. Every hour after their alarm went off, I’d find them both hovering over me, asking who was the president or how many fingers they were holding up or what day it was. “Richard Nixon, four, February twenty-seventh,” I’d answer. When I passed the test, I closed my eyes and got to sleep for another hour.
Only one time did I have trouble falling back asleep. Dad kept coughing and turning and rustling his covers.
“Renee?”
“Yes?” Mom whispered back quickly. She wasn’t sleeping. Whispering always seems louder to me than talking and sometimes even louder than shouting, and it certainly gets my attention.
“Couldn’t she see where she was going?”
“She was spinning and she was backward.”
“I’m going to go knock that icehouse down,” Dad said.
“Shhh, John,” Mom said gently.
“What if someone else hits it and breaks their neck?” Dad asked.
“I’m sure someone did something to it after we left. Everybody knows what happened.”
I did my pretend deep breathing to keep them thinking I was asleep, but they didn’t seem to have anything more to say. The next hour when I awakened, I said, “Peter Pan, fourteen, and Christmas Day,” and opened my eyes just enough to see Mom and Dad look at each other, wide-eyed, and then I heard their laughter. With them being together again, I didn’t think I had ever felt more loved.
EIGHTEEN
I thought we were making progress,” Mom said. Their bedroom door was cracked open, and I could see Mom sitting up as Dad pulled a sweatshirt over his head and then sat back down on his side of the bed.
I leaned against the wall surrounded by framed family pictures that told our ages by our teeth. Matt without teeth and then Matt with teeth and then Matt with braces. My biggest smile sported two missing top teeth. Most of the pictures had bluish-gray backgrounds and were taken at school. All except Joel’s pictures. There was one of him barely able to hold his head up, another holding his favorite monkey. When we first came home last summer, Mom took down Joel’s pictures. But a faded outline of each frame, a silhouette, remained on the wall, making the absence greater, and she put them back up.
“I thought last night was different,” Mom said, her knees up to her chest, her arms cradling her legs. “That whole thing with Abby. Even though it brought back …”
“I can’t think about it. That’s something I don’t want to relive.”
“But then we’re back to nothing. We’re stuck again.”
There was a long silence. No response. “You’re in the basement every day,” Mom continued, as if explaining her point.
“While you’re at Patti’s,” Dad countered, looking at her then turning away.
“I have to do something, and we need the money. At least I’m not trying to avoid anything or anyone.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to Patti’s to avoid thinking about him?” Dad said.
“Him?” Mom asked. “Him? He has a name,” she corrected over his shoulder. “And maybe I am. But just because I’m trying not to think about Joel doesn’t mean I don’t remember Joel each day.”
Dad jumped up and grabbed a tennis shoe from under his side of the bed.
“Running again?” Mom asked. She picked up the shoe’s partner from a pile of clothes, but when Dad reached for it, she pulled away. “Where do you go, anyway?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?” Dad responded by snatching the shoe and sitting down to put it on. That he wouldn’t even answer Mom made my stomach hurt. Mom shook her head and closed her eyes. “I don’t understand you anymore, John.” Her voice was not angry, but full of sadness.
I stepped back from the door and headed down the hall before Dad left the room. After last night, we weren’t going to church. This would be a good day to be at Miss Patti’s. Maybe we were all running. And maybe there was really nothing that could bring us back.
“Morning, Abby,” Dad said as he passed my room, as if everything was all right when it was so very wrong.
That afternoon I left Rita’s early. I had a plan. As I looked up and down the street, I could see which houses had their television sets on by the lights flickering from their windows, calling me home with the hope that maybe tonight our family would sprawl across vinyl beanbag chairs and shag carpet and share an evening brought to us by NBC. I had forty-five minutes before Tinkerbell lit the castle to convince them.
Every Sunday evening, as the Baptists convened at Calvary Chapel, I said a very quick thank-you that God had called Dad to presbytery. For if I had been fully dipped like the Baptists who go to church all morning and night, I would have missed congregating with my family for an evening of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. On those Sunday evenings I felt that all was well with the world—or at least the Magic Kingdom, if it was indeed a real place and not just something magical coming out of our black-and-white Zenith. After all, when you’re from Ohio, California seems like a huge leap of faith.
I opened the door to find Dad in the kitchen laying out bread and butter for grilled cheese sandwiches. Mom came down the staircase with a stack of bills in her hand.
“You want to watch Wild Kingdom?” I asked. “It’s about to start.” I liked Marlin Perkins and thought it was a nice warm-up to Disney.
“I have to finish this, Abby. But maybe Matt? Where is he, anyway?”
“Dad?” I asked, hoping he might want to join me. I knew he’d say no, but I’d make him say it.
“You know what, Abby? I think I will,” he said, much to my surprise. “Let me finish this and I’ll be there.”
“Jiffy Pop?” I suggested.
“Dinner first,” he said as the butter sizzled in the pan.
“It’s not an easy year with the taxes,” Mom began. “Patti’s trying to help me.”
“Do we owe?” Dad asked, immediately concerned. He buttered the bread and set each slice in the hot fry pan.
“Actually, I can’t tell. I’m not far enough along.”
The doorbell rang, and when I saw Uncle Troy I thought the more the merrier, but when he and Dad left for the living room, I knew I was running out of time. We were going to miss the animals, but we could still watch Disney if the discussion was short.
Fifteen minutes later, Dad came back to the kitchen and his very melted cheese sandwiches. Dad explained to Mom that since the interim minister was local and had a house nearby, he didn’t need the parsonage. But the church would begin a search for a new pastor, and when he was selected, we would need to move. In the meantime, they thought it best not to rent out the house, under the circumstances.
“Under the circumstances?” Mom asked. “You mean like pitying us? Or do you mean because they don’t want bad renters?”
“They can’t pay two salaries, but they’re extending the housing through August.”
Dad set a sandwich on each plate. “They hope to have a new minister by then.”
“I don’t want one,” I said, pushing the sandwich plate back. It was quarter till and we had to hurry.
Dad found the popcorn and pulled out a pot, pouring a thin line of vegetable oil into it. He wasn’t making Jiffy Pop.
“So, are you glad about this extension?” Mom asked. “Because I’m not.”
What was she thinking? An extension was good; I didn’t want to move.
“I’m afraid this extension means we’re still in limbo,” Mom said. The oil began to sizzle, followed by a few lone pops before Dad clamped the lid shut and the percussive rattle followed. Dad shook the pot as tiny explosions released the sweet smell of popped corn. Dad focused on listening and shaking, listening and shaking. But Mom wanted an answer.
“At least you know you have doubts, and you question how to live out your faith. Maybe that takes the most faith,” she suggested. Dad didn’t respond, so she continued. “There are a lot of people who are searching; maybe you’re the person to point them in the right direction.”
“If I only knew what that was,” Dad answered. “I’m not exactly a beacon of light.”
“Then, by the strength of God, step back into that pulpit and preach something that might start making sense to somebody, somewhere. If it doesn’t work, hell, we’ll just move to Washington State and you can take over the farm.” Was that a challenge or a threat? Or was she daring Dad to say something? Anything. Just like she did that morning. Dad grimaced, perhaps at the thought of farming. Or perhaps at Mom’s uncharacteristic vocabulary.
“Mom, you really shouldn’t swear,” Matt chided as he came in the back door and headed for the refrigerator.
“Dad made grilled cheese.” I pointed to the remaining plate.
“You’re serious. Farming?” Dad asked. “You’d be a farmer’s wife?”
“Depends on who’s the farmer.” Mom smiled playfully. Dad didn’t.
“Dad, farming? No wonder everybody’s upset,” Matt added, taking out a jar of peanut butter from the cupboard. I hoped Matt wasn’t going to spread it on his grilled cheese.
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