Forever, or a Long, Long Time

by Caela Carter

  Gloria smiles. “I sure do,” she says.

  We say our good-byes armed with new pictures and addresses and this weird feeling of warmth that comes when you find out someone you almost forgot remembers you and loves you still.

  And then, when we’re in the car, the most amazing thing of all happens.

  Person says, “Well, Florey. Looks like we’re going to have to get you a dog.”

  Later that night, Person takes us to a place for dinner. She calls it a restaurant but it’s hard to think of it like that because the building has no walls. It’s just a roof and a floor and a bunch of tables where families crowd around and talk-talk-talk.

  “Crabs are the perfect food for a day like today,” Person says.

  She’s sitting on the bench across from us. The table between us is covered with newspaper and the little critters are piled on top of it, pink with white bellies and red powder all over them.

  Person already taught us how to crack the claws and pick out the meat, how to lift open the tab on the belly to find all the best meat in the body of the crab.

  “Why are they perfect?” Julian asks.

  “Because Julian can’t steal one and keep it in his closet?” I say, my eyes on the back of my second crab.

  But when Person laughs, I look up. I realize that I don’t mind her laughing.

  Did I just make a joke?

  “Why couldn’t I hide it in my closet?” Julian says. “It’s easier to carry around than that slice of pizza you found in there.”

  We all laugh again.

  We aren’t supposed to laugh at Julian and the food. I punched Elena for laughing at Julian and the food. But something about this laughing feels different. Whole.

  “Well, you can’t keep crabs or pizza in your closet anymore or else my dog will find them and he’ll eat them and she’ll get sick.”

  I’m saying it to test Person. A dog, my dog, would be unbelievable. Nothing that good will ever happen to me.

  But Person says, “That’s true, Julian. You’ll have to think about that with a dog around.”

  Julian says, “You just said ‘he’ and ‘she’ at once.”

  I smile as I pull open the back of the shell. “That’s because we don’t know which one it’ll be yet,” I say.

  Then I realize that yes, I did say both “he” and “she.” That’s the most confusing thing I said since we sat down, but they both understood me. I’m having a conversation. It’s going on and on. And no one has said “huh?” or asked me to “explain.”

  “No,” Person says through the last few giggles. I’m looking at her but she has her eyes on the tiny legs as she snaps them in half and sucks out the saltiest meat. “Crabs are perfect talking food. Your hands are busy. Your eyes are busy. And eating them takes hours. It’s easy to talk while you’re eating crabs.”

  I keep my eyes on my own dinner as I de-shell it and begin to wipe out the “crab mustard” with a paper towel.

  “Plus, they’re delicious,” Person says.

  I focus on the salty and spicy flavor in my mouth. I’m nervous that talking about talking will make my words go back and get stuck again.

  But Person doesn’t want us to talk, I don’t think, because she keeps talking herself.

  “Did you know that my parents drove us to a town near here every summer when we were kids?” she asks.

  “Why?” I say.

  She laughs. “For vacation, of course. It was in Delaware, actually, but only a few miles from here. Aunt Alice and I would swim in the ocean or read on the beach all day. My parents too, I guess. And then at night we’d walk the boardwalk and eat crabs.”

  “Vacation,” Julian says. “Like family vacation?”

  “Yup,” Person says. “Those are some of my favorite memories from when I was a kid. So I always dreamed I’d be able to take my own kids back here someday. It’s a little weird when you live in New Jersey to drive south, past the Jersey shore, and go to these beaches in Delaware and Maryland, but I always wanted to anyway. I didn’t mind the extra hours in the car. Those weeks at the beach were my favorites.”

  “You always wanted to take kids here?” I say. Suddenly this whole trip feels bigger and more important. Even bigger than discovering where we come from.

  Maybe we’re making Person happy just by being here.

  “Yup,” Person says. “You’d never believe how far my jaw dropped when the adoption agency told me I was matched with a couple of kids who live on the Maryland shore! My eyes about bugged out of my head.”

  “You didn’t have to take us here, then,” Julian says. “You found us here.”

  Person reaches out like she’s going to pat Julian’s head, but then she remembers her fingers are covered in crab gook and red spice and we all laugh again.

  So much laughing. I’ve never felt so much laughing in one day. It’s like my shoulders are lighter. It’s like there’s helium in my brain.

  “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” Julian says. “I mean, I barely remember Gloria.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “There were always so many kids.”

  “And dogs,” Julian says.

  “Three dogs,” I say.

  “Maybe ten kids?” Julian says. “It always felt like more.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It felt like so many. Way too many kids for just one mom.”

  “Yeah,” Julian says. “Gloria remembers us though, better than we remember her. And . . . she liked us?”

  “She liked us,” I say. I’m not sure there are any words in any unstuck place that can explain how big it is that we found someone from those dark unremembered places, someone good, someone who is happy to see us and hoping and hoping that we’re happy.

  “She loved you,” Person says.

  When we look up she’s looking so serious and the whole thing feels too big again and I get itchy. I wonder if she’s right and the crabs really are making us talk.

  “Can I see the pictures again?” I ask.

  And even though there are still four crabs lined up on her side of the table, Person takes a few minutes to wipe her messy hands and passes me her phone.

  I stare at the pictures, flipping back and forth between them.

  Even if I’m not a born person, I realize, I was a person here. I was a person before I was Person’s.

  That night, in bed, Julian and I pass the phone back and forth quick-quick-quick as we tell Dad everything that happened that day. We’re talking too loudly. We’re coming-out-of-our-skin excited. We’re like the other kids who were always bouncing everywhere in Gloria’s house.

  We’re like kids.

  “That’s great, guys,” Dad keeps saying.

  I have the phone in my hands when I say, “We got pictures! Did Mom send them to you?”

  “She did,” Dad says. “I’m so glad to see them . . . I wish I was with you all though. I miss you.”

  Something weird and dark twitches in my heart. I don’t want it there after such a good and whole day.

  I say, “You and Elena? Today?”

  Dad smiles. “We had a nice day. We went to the farmers’ market and bought some fresh fruits and veggies. Then we came back here and made a raspberry pie from scratch.”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “I sort of wish you guys were here too, for the pie,” Dad says. “And that we were there. I miss you guys.”

  “But if we were there and you were here we still couldn’t see you,” I say.

  Dad laughs and I laugh with him and Julian laughs beside me. I just made another joke. Two jokes in my entire life, both on the same day.

  “Good night, Flora,” Dad says.

  “Good night, Dad,” I say. I hand the phone back to Julian and lie down under the blankets. Because Dad’s right.

  We’re finally on a family vacation. We finally feel whole.

  But really, we aren’t.

  THEORY #742

  We come from crabs, my brother and me.

  We’re made of good
stuff, but you have to work to get to it.

  Our good stuff is cased under hard shells that will cut your fingers and burn your hands when you try to break through them.

  Our good stuff is hidden under layers of guts and gross yellow goo that will make you say “yuck” the whole time you’re cleaning it away with a paper towel. And just when you think you’ve gotten all of the bad stuff out of the way, there’s more guts, more shells, more goo.

  But we’re made of good stuff. If you work really, really hard.

  Eighteen

  FAMILIES HAVE UPS AND DOWNS

  “SO THAT’S POINT TWO FOR US,” I say to Person, after I finish telling her about the newest theory.

  Person is sitting on a low beach chair. Her white cover-up spreads across her bigger belly, and she rests a magazine on it and stretches her legs in front of her into the sand. She isn’t actually reading the magazine though. She’s talking to me.

  I’m sitting near her feet, burying my legs in the sand, letting my hands and arms and chest get a dusting of sand too. Person says she couldn’t stand to have all that sand on her but to me it feels warm and the right sort of scratchy. Julian is playing by the shore a few feet away.

  We went to the beach in the morning today because we don’t have any appointments until the afternoon.

  “Uh-uh,” Person says. “No way. You can’t just make up a new theory and use it as a point for you guys. That’s not how it works.”

  I squint at her. “But why?” I say. “It didn’t make sense?”

  It felt like all the words were there when I was explaining it to Person. It even felt like they almost all came out in the right order. I only stumbled a few times.

  Person smiles. “Actually, it made perfect sense. Except why is it number 742? Wasn’t the one before it number 1046?”

  “Because,” I say, watching a stream of sand fall out of my hand and onto my thigh, “numbers don’t always go in order.”

  “They don’t?” Person asks.

  I know why she sounds surprised. She knows I’m good at math.

  “Sometimes things don’t make sense. Like Julian and me. Anyway, you can’t stop us from making new theories because we do it all the time and it’s one of the only things I know we’ve always been doing,” I say.

  Then I think, Whoa. Those were important words. And they all came out.

  I’m happy but I start to shake anyway. Happy and Scared are so close together inside me. They press up against each other like two people sharing a bed that’s too small. I can’t wake up Happy without Scared being a little bit disturbed.

  I reach over and dribble a handful of sand onto Person’s foot so that I don’t have to look at her face and see her reaction to all those real words.

  But she says, “OK.”

  “OK?” I say. “So we get another point for the crab theory?”

  “Yup, sure,” Person says.

  I jump to my feet, spraying sand everywhere, but Person doesn’t yelp or complain. “Yes!” I say.

  “But you know what else that means?” Person asks. She sounds almost serious, but she’s smiling.

  “No,” I say. “What?”

  “Well, if you’re a crab . . . I just might have to eat you!”

  In a flash, Person reaches out over her belly and latches on to my arm. She pulls me toward her mouth and opens it and closes it going “num num num num num.” With her other hand, she reaches up and tickles me in the side.

  I yelp and twist and squeal and try to get my arm back.

  She keep num-ing.

  I keep trying to get away but I’m laughing too hard to do it.

  I don’t know why I’m even resisting.

  I have never enjoyed being touched so much as I do in this moment.

  That afternoon is our second visit. After we clean up from the beach, we eat lunch and pile into the car. A little while later, we pull in a driveway next to the biggest house I’ve ever seen. It’s the biggest house ever built. Before we get out of the car, I count the windows.

  Twenty-two.

  Just in the front of the house.

  “We lived here?” Julian says.

  “How did we even know our way around?” I ask.

  I’m getting better at this joking thing.

  But Person doesn’t laugh. She shifts in the front seat in a way that makes my heart race. “I don’t know,” she says. “This is the address our old agency gave me and . . . well. Here we are.”

  Julian looks at me. We both swallow. The shiver in Person’s voice reminds us of that bad thing: we’re here because we asked for it. Person doesn’t actually want to see where we used to live. Person doesn’t actually want to know about foster care.

  But this house does not look like foster care.

  “This is the woman who should have your files. She might have baby pictures. Or she should at least have some information about your biological family.”

  Biological family. First mother. Those are the things that come with being born. I don’t want to think about them.

  A white woman opens the door with two packages in her hands, one wrapped in blue, the other wrapped in pink. Her face is familiar: skinny nose, gray eyes, pale skin. I’d recognize her anywhere, but I wouldn’t know why until now. She used to be my mom.

  “Isn’t it lovely to see you two again?” she says.

  She’s shorter and skinnier than Person. Skinnier than Person ever was, even before the baby. She looks younger too.

  “Are those for us?” Julian says, sounding excited.

  “Of course,” she says. She hands over the packages and opens the door.

  “Thank you,” I say. I squeeze my pink package. I don’t think I want a present from this woman but I’m not sure why. And it makes Person happy when I say thank you.

  The woman freezes and turns. “You’re welcome, Flora.” She seems surprised to see me, even though she must have known we were coming because she bought us gifts. “Follow me to the dining room,” she says.

  We walk through a big room full of brown wood with a large staircase at the front, then we walk through a living room with a white sofa and a cream carpet, then we walk into a beige room with a long dining room table. Everything is shiny and fancy. I’m nervous to touch any of it.

  It seems like everything in this house is made for a different kind of kid. A not-foster-kid kind of kid.

  Julian turns to Person and says, “This isn’t the white house. We were somewhere else.”

  “Yeah,” I confirm.

  Person nods and waves her hands, urging us to sit at the dining room table with the woman. There are glasses of lemonade at four of the twelve chairs at the big table. Julian and I sit together on one side. Person sits across from us. The woman sits at the head of the table.

  “Thank you for having us, Marta,” Person says. “We thought it was very important to gather as much information about the past as we can.”

  Marta looks confused. “Well . . . I’ll help . . . if I can . . .”

  “There’s a lot my children don’t remember,” Person says.

  “I don’t remember living here at all!” Julian says.

  “Me neither,” I say. “The house is big enough to get lost in.”

  Marta looks at me like she’s surprised to see me sitting here next to Julian, again. Then she laughs, but it’s a fake one. Not mean but strained. “You two didn’t live here with me. I bought this house only about a year ago. We lived a bit closer to the shore. And yes, that house was a little smaller.”

  “Was it the white house?” I ask, but I’m too quiet. I don’t think it was anyway. That white house was full of kids: they’re in both our memories. This woman doesn’t look like she likes kids at all.

  “Do you have pictures of it?” Person asks. “The house you all lived in together?”

  “I, um . . . ,” Marta says.

  “And you must have some pictures of them, right?”

  “I, well . . . ,” Marta says. “You see, they are
two children. They had acquired a lot of stuff. I’m afraid I’m not sure. I donated most of it.”

  “You donated their pictures?” Person asks. She sounds more confused than angry.

  “Of course I still have some pictures of their time with me. But, well, the Lifebooks were mixed in with the rest of their books so—”

  “Lifebooks?” I interrupt.

  “We had Lifebooks? Who made us Lifebooks?” Julian asks.

  “I’m not sure but—”

  “Did they say where we come from?” Julian asks.

  “I don’t exactly know,” the woman says. “They were mostly pictures. I never got any information about your biological family, though I did ask for it.” She says this like she deserves applause just for asking the same question that Person is taking us all around to try to answer.

  I raise my eyebrows at Julian. Here’s another one. One more person from our past who thinks we were born but doesn’t know anything about how or why or where or who else was there.

  “Wait,” Person says. “Wait. Someone made books of these children, of my children. Someone made them books. And you lost them?”

  “Most of their things were donated and—”

  “Why would you do that?” Person asks. “I’m not . . . I know there’s so many hard things to learn but . . . you donated them? Why? How could they have any value to anyone except these children here at this table?”

  “That’s enough,” Marta says calmly. It seems extra mean to be calm when Person is on the verge of tears.

  “Enough? What do you mean?”

  “I will not be lectured in my own home,” Marta says. “It’s hard on me to have to relive any of this.”

  “Hard on you?” Person asks. “What about—”

  “I’ll be happy to email you pictures. I do have some of those. It’s just, I was so sad when Julian was—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Person interrupts Marta. “We want to hear that. We want the story of how they came to live with you and why they left. But first, please, tell me what you know. Where were they before they were with you? Who were they with? What information do you have?”