Questions I Want to Ask You
Page 11
Aunt Reggie lets me go and pats my arm a couple of times. “I know it seems like the pain and sadness of this will last forever, but I promise those feelings will fade. They won’t disappear for a long time, but someday you’ll be able to look back on the time you spent together and remember the good things, and think about what you both learned from one another, and the bad feelings won’t be the ones that dominate. It may take a while, but you’ll get there.”
“I hope so.” I want to believe her, but she doesn’t know me and Maddie.
“When did it happen?” she asks.
“This weekend.” It feels like minutes but also years, in a weird way.
“Is that what made you decide to come?”
It kind of is, but not necessarily in the way Aunt Reggie might think. There’s an easier way to explain it. “Partly. But really it’s because I got this letter. From my mother.”
Aunt Reggie’s head draws back in shock. “She wrote to you? That’s surprising.”
“Well, it was definitely surprising to me. I didn’t even know she was alive. It’s all been really confusing.”
“I can imagine,” she says. “How about we go downstairs and I make us some tea—do you drink tea?—and you can tell me all about you. I know I said we’d talk about your mother, but I do need to get my thoughts together, so perhaps we could do that tomorrow. Tonight I’d like to get to know you a little better. Does that sound okay?”
As much as I want to know the story, I respect that it makes sense for her to want some time. She’s been so cool about the fact that I just showed up here out of nowhere; the least I can do is give her one night. “Sounds good to me,” I say, and follow her back downstairs.
13
I stay up with Aunt Reggie until well after midnight, which, for someone who’s usually up before six, is practically like pulling an all-nighter. It helps that she makes us black tea—it has way more caffeine in it than I realized, so I start feeling a little buzzy.
But really I’m able to stay awake because Aunt Reggie is so easy to talk to. She’s curious about me and wants to hear everything I’m willing to tell her; I see where Mia got her whole tell-me-your-life thing. She knows how to ask the right questions, and I find myself blabbing away about everything—the breakup, my lack of plans, how Dad wants me to go to college but I’m not sure. I can tell she’s being careful to skirt topics that might lead to my mother, like how she doesn’t ask too much about Dad other than to follow up on things I said. We spend most of the time talking about Maddie, anyway. Even though I’m here to learn about my mother, Maddie’s still basically the only thing on my mind.
I want to know more about Aunt Reggie, too, but she’s good at deflecting questions away from herself. Instead, she tells me more about my cousins. Matt left out more than just his interest in guys; he doesn’t really need a baseball scholarship to go to college. Aunt Reggie wants him to go to Yale, but he thinks that’s too close to home. “He must be really smart,” I say. Even I’ve heard of Yale.
“He is,” she says. “They both are, in their own ways.”
I tell her how much I like Mia, and how glad I am that she likes me. “She’s a special girl,” Aunt Reggie says. “Making friends has been one of her challenges—not everyone can see what makes her so wonderful. I’m glad you can.”
It doesn’t seem that hard to me, but then again, the world is full of judgmental assholes. Not that I say that to my aunt. I’m not used to watching my language except at school, but I don’t want her thinking I’m some kind of degenerate.
We finally call it a night when Aunt Reggie catches my eyelids drooping—I’ve practically fallen asleep sitting up. “It’s been a long day for you, hasn’t it?” she asks, and I know she’s referring to more than just how long I’ve been awake. “We’ll plan on talking tomorrow night. You okay to hang out with Matt tomorrow? Mia will be at camp again.”
“No problem,” I say.
As tired as I am, I have a hard time falling asleep. I can count on one hand the number of nights I’ve spent not in my own bed, and it feels so strange being in someone else’s house. Not to mention that I’m still not used to ending the night without talking to Maddie, or texting her. I haven’t checked in with Dad, either, though I don’t know that he’d expect me to, if I were really where I said I’d be. My brain keeps bouncing between Maddie and Dad and what I might learn about my mother tomorrow until all my thoughts blur together and I finally conk out.
I wake up to the sun shining through the curtains. It’s just before six, when I usually get up, so I guess my body doesn’t care that I’ve barely slept. I open the guest-room door as quietly as I can and tiptoe down the hall to see if anyone else is up. Unsurprisingly, I’m alone.
I decide my best plan is to get in a workout, so I slip out the front door, get in the truck, and check my phone for a public park. There’s one not too far away, and the park’s empty when I get there, with a running track, which is perfect. I spread a mat on a patch of grass inside the track so I can do some rounds of push-ups, sit-ups, and squats before getting in a run. I push myself hard, something I usually find difficult without other people cheering me on, but I need the energy today. Even the running, which I usually hate, is helpful; I go faster than usual so I can clear my head, which is still spinning from all the different thoughts swirling around. I run until my lungs ache and I can practically feel the lactic acid building up in my legs, and I don’t slow down until I can’t breathe. I jog for a while then walk to cool down, and by the time I’m done it’s nearly seven, so my aunt and uncle are probably up, even if the cousins are sleeping in.
If I were a better person, I’d probably go find some bagels or doughnuts or something, but I don’t have a ton of money on me and I’ve been away from that stuff for so long I probably wouldn’t know what to order. Besides, maybe everyone is still sleeping and they won’t even realize I’ve been gone.
It becomes obvious how untrue this is when I open the front door. Everyone’s awake and in the living room, talking at the same time, but their voices aren’t loud enough to drown out the sound of my aunt. Sobbing.
“What happened?” I ask. Has someone died? Am I going to miss meeting a family member by just one day? That seems too unfair to be real.
Aunt Reggie runs over to me and grabs me so hard I think she’ll knock the breath right out of me. “You’re here!” She’s still crying, but she doesn’t let me go.
I feel bad—I probably stink after that workout, but she doesn’t seem to care. “Of course I’m here. I just went to get a run in. Is everything okay?”
“She’s crying because she thought you left,” Mia informs me as Aunt Reggie sniffles into my shoulder. “She thought you were mad she didn’t tell you about your mom yesterday and that you left and were never coming back.”
Now I feel worse than bad. I squeeze Aunt Reggie a little tighter and then let go, hoping she’ll take the hint that I kind of need to be done with the hug now. She gets it and pulls back, wiping her eyes. “You must think I’m so ridiculous,” she says. “But after you finding us, the thought of losing you again was just too much.”
It doesn’t quite make sense to me, especially given that I’d been wondering about how she never reached out to me in the first place. But maybe that’s all part of the story. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m not used to anyone noticing me coming and going—Dad usually works out with me, or else he’s sleeping or at work when I get up. It didn’t occur to me anyone would notice I was gone. I didn’t mean to cause trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Uncle Mike says. “Your aunt’s just a little sensitive right now. I’m sure you understand.”
I mean, I don’t exactly, but whatever. “Sure.” Now that I’m not being smothered in the hug, I notice that Uncle Mike and Aunt Reggie are all dressed for work, but Matt and Mia are still in pajamas. Matt just has on a ratty T-shirt and shorts, but Mia has a matching outfit with rainbows and unicorns on it, which seems fitting.
“It’s true,” Matt says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry before.”
“We’re not big criers around here,” Mia says. “Dad’s the only one who cries a lot.”
Now Aunt Reggie is smiling. I can’t tell whether Mia ratted out Uncle Mike to make Aunt Reggie happy or if it’s just a coincidence, but I’m inclined to think she did it on purpose. She’s a smart one, that Mia. And a lot like her mom.
“I do get a little emotional,” Uncle Mike admits.
“Yeah, at the really important stuff,” Matt says. “Like TV commercials.”
“And pretty much all family events,” Mia adds.
“What can I say? Family is important to me.” Uncle Mike seems unfazed by how hard his kids are selling him out.
“Don’t forget movies,” Aunt Reggie says. “I can hardly take him anywhere. And if Beaches or Terms of Endearment ever comes on TV, just forget it.”
“Gone too far,” Uncle Mike says.
“And Steel Magnolias,” she says.
Everyone’s laughing now. I’ve stumbled into a long-running family joke. I’m not sure whether to feel left out or included.
“What about you, Pack?” Mia asks. “Do you get weepy at sad things?”
I shake my head. Dad and I are both pretty stoic. But then again, nothing that bad has happened to me. Even the breakup with Maddie makes me more angry than sad, though I suppose the sadness will kick in eventually. “I can’t remember the last time I cried. Maybe when I was little?” I had a neighbor who was into bike stunts and taught me to power skid by braking into a pile of dirt and then swinging the bike around. The first time I tried it I skinned my knees pretty bad, and with all that dirt, it stung something awful. I’m sure I sobbed like a baby then.
“Well, then, you’re like us,” Mia says.
With that, warmth washes over me. I’m one of them. I like it.
“Reggie, we should get going,” Uncle Mike says. “If we leave any later, traffic will be a nightmare.”
Aunt Reggie touches my arm, as if to confirm I’m still there. “You go on without me. I’m going to call in. I’m sure Pack’s anxious to talk about his mother, and I’m obviously a nervous wreck. I’d be useless at work anyway.”
Uncle Mike doesn’t seem too surprised at this. He nods, gives her a kiss, and heads out the door.
“Can I stay home from camp, too?” Mia asks. “Please?”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Aunt Reggie says. “Matt got up just to take you, and you know how much he loves to sleep in. If it turns out to be for nothing, who knows what he’d do?” She keeps her voice light, but there’s an undercurrent of nervousness there. Maybe Mia’s someone who throws fits when she’s angry. Maybe Matt’s not the only one who yells.
Mia grits her teeth. Something’s about to happen, and I don’t want it to. I don’t want to lose that warm feeling. “I promise I’ll tell you everything when you get home,” I say, and try to silently telegraph to Aunt Reggie that I’ll edit out whatever Mia shouldn’t hear. “I won’t keep secrets from you.”
“You promise?” Mia looks uncertain, but it sounds like she’s willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, even if I haven’t earned it yet.
“I swear.” I hold up my right hand and hover my left hand in front of me as if placed on an invisible Bible.
It takes a second for Mia to give the okay, but Aunt Reggie’s sigh of relief is audible. “Wonderful. Now that that’s settled, I’m going to change out of my work clothes into something more comfortable. Mia, you go get ready for camp. Matt, please tell me you’re not going to drive her there in whatever it is you’ve got on right now. Pack, there’s a pot of coffee brewing in the kitchen, and I didn’t know what you liked for breakfast so I left out all the cereal. There are hard-boiled eggs in the fridge, or I can make you some oatmeal once I’ve changed. Whatever you like.”
“Eggs and coffee are perfect.” I say. Thank god there’s more than just cereal.
They all go off to their rooms to change, and I go into the kitchen to get some food and decompress from what just happened. So much emotion—Aunt Reggie went from crying about me being gone to laughing about Uncle Mike and his movie sobbing in the space of what, five minutes? It’s not what I’m used to, that’s for sure.
Neither is the coffee. I don’t know what kind of fancy stuff they drink in this house, but it’s about a thousand times better than the Maxwell House we brew at home, and at least a hundred times better than the Starbucks I splurge on every once in a while. I’m not usually crazy about hard-boiled eggs, but I’m starving after that run and I’m on my third one when Aunt Reggie comes back into the kitchen, dressed in jeans and a pink shirt. She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down with me.
“Egg fan, are you?” She points to the pile of shells on the paper towel in front of me.
“Am I eating too many?” I suppose it’s too late to stop, but still.
She laughs. “Eat as many as you want. We go through three cartons a week around here.”
Mia and Matt come running down the stairs, Mia in jeans and a rainbow unicorn shirt that isn’t pajamas, Matt in a version of the workout clothes I saw him in yesterday. “You hitting the gym on the way back?” Aunt Reggie asks.
Matt looks over at me, then back at her. “Oh, so I’m not going to be part of this conversation either? Great. Come on, Mia.” He blows out the door so fast I don’t have time to say anything. Mia just shrugs and follows him.
“That went well,” Aunt Reggie says after they’re both gone. “He’s pretty upset with me. I suppose I can understand that. We’ve talked a lot about honesty in this family, and now he sees me as a hypocrite. Which is somewhat true.”
I want to tell her it isn’t, to say something to make her feel better, but what do I know? “We’re big on honesty too, me and my dad. But he didn’t tell me about my mother. He even let me think she was dead up until recently. I was mad too.”
“How long did it take you to get over it?”
“I’m not sure I have,” I admit. “That’s one of the reasons I came here. I was so frustrated with him. I wanted to know the truth. Can you—will you—?” I’m not even sure what to ask.
“I’ll tell you what I know, and I’ll be as honest as I can,” she says. “But I don’t know the whole story, and I don’t know what your dad’s told you, so I don’t know if we see things the same way.”
“I get that. I just don’t think he told me the truth. But I didn’t think the letter was real either, at first, so I guess I don’t really trust my own judgment right now.”
She nods. “I know that feeling. Do you think it would be possible for me to read the letter? That might give me a good place to start.”
“Sure.” I’ve still got my backpack with me from working out—I haven’t even gone upstairs to change, myself—and I get it out of the front pocket and hand it to her.
Aunt Reggie takes the letter out of the envelope carefully, as if it’s something she could break. I like that—she knows how important it is to me, and that matters to her. I watch her read and remember how I watched Maddie read, too. There’s no shock on Aunt Reggie’s face like there had been on Maddie’s, though, no real surprise. She purses her lips a little, but that’s about it. When she’s done, she folds up the piece of paper and puts it back in the envelope as delicately as she took it out, then hands it back to me.
“Natalie put a lot of time into that,” she says. “She never used to care so much about words.”
That’s not what I expected her to say, but then again, I didn’t expect anything in particular.
“When did you get this?”
“On my birthday, about a week ago. She sent it to school so Dad wouldn’t see it. That’s the part I don’t understand.” I pause. “No, that’s not right. There are like a million parts I don’t understand.”
�
��I’ll see what I can do to help,” Aunt Reggie says. “Now that I’ve seen the letter, I’m guessing you came here hoping I could tell you where your mother is, and I don’t want to leave you in suspense. I don’t have the answer to that question, Pack. I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her in over fifteen years.”
“Most of my life.”
She nods. “Not just me, either. That’s how long it’s been since anyone in this family has seen her, or talked to her. As far as we were concerned, she may as well have died back then, just like your father led you to believe. Your mother—she had a lot of problems, and we tried for a long time to help her, but at a certain point she went too far, and we had to let her go. It was hard, but we didn’t really have a choice.” She looks down. “This is so hard to talk about. It’s been years since I tried. I hope you’ll bear with me.”
I’ll do whatever it takes to get the whole story. “What did she do, though? What could be so bad her whole family would cut her off?”
Aunt Reggie looks back up, right into my eyes, and then she says something I couldn’t possibly have predicted. “She kidnapped you.”
14
“She did what?” I ask. I can’t have heard her right.
“She took you away from your father and tried to leave the country. She got caught before she could leave, and—” Aunt Reggie stops herself. “Let me back up. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to start.”
I feel like she’s just dropped a bomb on me, but that doesn’t mean it was a bad place to start. It does mean Dad’s done a whole lot more lying than I thought.
“This is going to be harder than I imagined.” Aunt Reggie stands up and starts pacing around the kitchen. “It helps me to walk while I think.” Another thing I bet she has in common with Mia.
I want to say it’s fine, that I understand, but I need her to keep talking and I don’t know what to say to make that happen. “Please. It doesn’t have to be in order. I just need to know whatever you can tell me.”