David doesn’t look up from the TV. I ask again, “Hey, what day is it?”
“Friday.”
“No, what’s the date?”
David speaks like a robot. “May the tenth, nineteen seventy-four.”
“Duh,” I say in response, although I’m glad he added the year.
I walk back into the kitchen and start heating the food from the refrigerator. It’s like my head will explode, but it’s also like something else, something calming, as if I’ve stumbled on a big secret. If no one else knows I’ve been gone a long time, maybe I can time travel? Maybe this is what culture shock is?
I bring Wendy her plate in her room and leave. I tell David his dinner is ready and he walks up the stairs. I realize he’s enormous. About six feet tall. I stare. He gives me a mean stare back. I turn back to the stove and dish him out a plate. Then I sit with him and eat dinner.
The space between us at the kitchen bar used to be Moses’s seat. I’m aware of the space between us. I’m aware of everything. I notice all the details. The crumbs on the place mat. The stain on the kitchen wall in front of my stool. The scrubby texture of my wool sweater. The sounds David makes as he chews and drinks his milk. I taste my food and think I haven’t really tasted anything in a long time.
David asks, “Are you still mad at me?”
I don’t know what he means.
“I’m not mad at you. Why do you think that?”
He stops eating.
“Because you never talk to me anymore.”
David never acts like he cares about what I think. I wonder if I really haven’t talked to him or anyone for a month. How could this happen? I mean, how could I go for such a long time and not talk, or not talk much, or whatever I’ve been doing?
I’m also wild with curiosity and want to know exactly what’s been going on. I’m afraid of what might have happened while I’ve been checked out. Does everyone else know what happened to me? What have I been doing all this time? Did they put me in the loony bin? I can’t even remember how my schoolbooks got on the front porch or what I was doing wandering around up at Stillton. I’m in Withensea Middle School now, aren’t I? I haven’t gone backwards, right?
I try to breathe normally.
“Come on, I’ve talked to you a bit, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, a bit, but not much, and you’ve been acting … I don’t know …”
I wait for him to finish the sentence, but he doesn’t.
We continue eating dinner and not saying anything.
“Well, I’m not mad at you, and I think I’ve just been sad about Moses,” I finally say.
“Me too,” David says, and we finish our meal in silence.
After dinner I go straight to my room to think about everything. I decide I’ve gone off my rocker or something since Moses drowned. Maybe this is what people do when someone they love dies. They go away for a while. Still, I’m freaked out.
I wonder if Wendy slipped me another hit of LSD or something that makes you lose time.
They don’t make drugs that last that long, silly.
But maybe my brain got fried like that egg on the TV?
I scan the room. On my dresser, perfumes and knickknacks neatly line up exactly the way I remember them, but they’re covered with dust. Piles of papers are stacked against the walls. School papers, old drawings, and books. It seems as though I simply dumped things in piles. The walls are exactly the same. The same poems, paintings, and drawings I taped on them a long time ago.
Same crappy, soiled-white chenille bedspread on the bed.
Same old Persian rug on the floor.
In the corner I find a huge stack of library books. They’re stamped with return dates for May 20th, next week. So I know I’ve gone to the library recently since you can only check out books for two weeks.
I jump up and run to the bathroom, stand in front of the mirror, and study myself. Same pale face, same freckles, same everything else on my face, but my cheeks are hollow. My whole body seems thinner and longer than the last time I saw it.
I got even skinnier. Jeez. This is totally depressing.
Maybe I was abducted and returned by aliens? I make a plan to go to the library and check out books on aliens the next morning.
Wendy calls out from the landing that she’s going out to a friend’s. She needs to use the bathroom. I inhale a deep breath, step out, and slide by Wendy and into my room, where I wait.
When I hear her go downstairs I run to the stair landing window and watch as she climbs into the van parked in the driveway.
Her new car?
It resembles a big, brown, rectangular railroad car. Orange, red, and yellow paint accent a brown base, and the top has an accordion part that’s popped out. It definitely looks like it belongs next to the hearse. The psychedelic colors match. I wait until she drives away before going downstairs and finishing clearing the plates and cleaning up the kitchen.
David is back in the den, lounging, and I sit with him and watch TV. Everything is shaky and the TV programs help me calm down even though he wants to watch The Brady Bunch, which I hate. Luckily it isn’t one of the boring episodes. I go to sleep early.
When I wake up Wendy’s car isn’t in the driveway. I figure she slept over at her friend’s. I dress to go to the library.
I open my closet and see it still holds all of the same clothes I remember, but when I try them on most of them don’t fit anymore. Too big. The things still fitting are a few pairs of jeans and a few blouses. Lining the floor—my same shoes. I put on a pair of sneakers, but pull them off immediately because they hurt my toes. They’re all too small. The only pair of shoes that fit are the open-toed earth shoes I wore yesterday. Also, there isn’t any underwear in my drawer.
Maybe it’s all downstairs in the laundry room. Maybe I haven’t been wearing underwear for a while.
I pick up one of the library books from the pile on the floor. Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie. I can’t remember borrowing it, but pieces of my memory are coming back now. I remember walks to the library, down the hill, near where Leigh lives.
Leigh. I can’t remember talking with Leigh or hanging out with her lately. I go back to the memory of going to the library to see if I can remember her there. I remember talking with the librarian about the books I checked out, but I don’t remember Leigh being there. I remember carrying big stacks of books home from the library, but I can’t remember reading them.
This is scary.
I run downstairs. David sits in the den eating a huge bowl of Wheaties and watching cartoons. My stomach rumbles and I realize I’m really hungry. I pour myself an enormous bowl of Raisin Bran and sit in the kitchen by myself to eat.
David comes into the kitchen and asks, “Is Mom back yet?”
I stare at David, amazed at how much he’s grown.
“Nope, I don’t think so. I think she stayed out all night?”
“Probably.” He sounds annoyed.
David grabs more Wheaties and milk from the refrigerator. As he opens the refrigerator door a rancid smell wafts out I didn’t notice before. Something has turned. I’ll have to check that out later.
David sits down at the counter to eat with me.
I decide to pump him for information, but I know I need to be tricky so he doesn’t figure out anything.
“So, how long do you think Jack will be in Big Sur?”
“I don’t know. I hope forever.”
David’s never liked Jack, though Jack doesn’t bother me. I decide to agree with David so he’ll tell me more about what’s been happening.
“Yeah,” I say. “He’s a pain.”
“I don’t think it’s fair she buys him a big CB antenna. She bought him all that stuff—the van, the camera stuff, and a whole darkroom full of things downstairs. Meantime, we have nothing. She won’t even buy me a new tennis racket.”
David plays tennis now.
“She likes him better than us. I don’t even think she cares what we do or
if we die.” He’s quiet again.
I don’t know what to say to him. I agree with what he’s saying, but I think it will make him more depressed if I tell him so, like agreeing will make it seem truer in a way or something.
“I wish they had let us go to the funeral,” I finally say.
David doesn’t answer. He pours out more Wheaties and examines the back of the box on the counter.
I remember Moses’s funeral—or rather, the day of Moses’s funeral.
I remember that day clearly.
David and I begged to be able to go. We didn’t want to stay with a babysitter and miss going to the funeral, but Howard insisted it wouldn’t be good for us and Wendy agreed.
My grandfather wanted us to go. I remember he took David and me aside and told us he thought we should go, but he couldn’t convince Howard.
It was the first time my grandfather’s talked to us like we were grown-ups. I don’t know much about my grandfather’s life, but he seemed lonely. This was not the first funeral in the last few years we weren’t allowed to attend. First my Great-Uncle Mosher, then my Grandmother Yetta. My Great-Aunt Rose, a few months before Moses.
As bad as it got for me with Moses being gone, I knew my grandfather must feel even worse, even more alone. But he never shared this with us.
On the day of Moses’s funeral I felt closer to him than I ever have before. He sat with David and me and held our hands for a long time before they left for the funeral. Mostly we sat without saying anything.
I kissed him and told him I loved him and planned to try to persuade Wendy to bring us to visit more often. We’d been visiting less and less.
“I know you must be sad about Moses and there is nothing I can say to take away your sorrow,” he said to David and me.
We nodded.
“It’s important you remember him. Remember his goodness and the gift of time you shared with him. Remember how much you love him. He is still a part of your family. He will always be a part of you. You have a bit of him inside of you. Remember this and he will never be gone. Now you must take good care of each other. This is most important.”
I remembered Hemingway and said, “You expect to be sad in the fall. But the cold rain has kept on and killed the spring and a young person has died for no reason.”
“Weird,” David said.
My grandfather hugged me hard.
Howard came up the stairs to my room where we were sitting. He told David he needed to go to his room if he chose to keep crying and he could come out when he finished. He said men don’t cry. My grandfather got angry at Howard and called him a fool, but David got sent to his room anyway. I guess crying is okay for girls, though, because he didn’t say anything to me. Or maybe I wasn’t crying? I can’t remember that part.
Howard made me stand behind the bar and mix cocktails for everyone after they came back from the funeral. I didn’t care. I still had the old mixology book from the Little Corporal and it gave me something to do.
The drunker everyone got, the more they talked to each other about the whole thing, which was great because no one would tell us anything directly. David didn’t come out of his room all day. I took him plates of food. He was still crying every time I went into his room.
Wendy told us my grandfather went to his apartment after the funeral to sit shiva. I didn’t know anything about the custom, but I remember wishing David and I had been allowed to go home with him.
Howard left that night after the funeral party. I remember this. I remember being relieved because he bossed everyone around all day and Wendy was angry with him for not calling to let us know he wasn’t going to show up the morning Moses went off fishing by himself. He hadn’t even gotten on the plane from California to fly into Boston that day.
Who knows if that would have changed anything? Who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t stayed at Leigh’s that morning? I know I should have made sure Moses waited for me to go fishing. Or I shouldn’t have told him I would go fishing with him so he didn’t get the idea in his head.
I should have been at the house. I knew he’d still be alive if I’d been there. I think I won’t ever be considered a good person ever again, even if I try hard to be one for the rest of my life. The rest of my life will be lived in a story about a girl whose brother died. I still can’t believe the girl in the story is me. I should have come back earlier and checked to see if Howard came. I would have gone with Moses. It wouldn’t have happened like it did. He wouldn’t have drowned.
I know it was my fault. Wendy told me it was my fault the day it happened.
That night, when David and I got back from the yacht club, we called around to find Wendy. She called the police and the Coast Guard. She screamed at me and told me it was my fault if something happened to him. I should have come back and waited with him for Howard. She told me I was rotten.
She was right. The biggest thing I was supposed to do was take care of my brothers. Even my grandfather told me this when I was younger. It was my job because I knew Wendy wouldn’t do it. Howard is gone. Jack is catatonic. David lives in a television set. My grandfather doesn’t know what’s going on. Moses died because I didn’t do the one most important thing I was supposed to do.
We waited up all night while everybody searched for him, but they didn’t find the boat until the next morning, and they didn’t find Moses until later that day.
The boat turned up about a mile out from the yacht club. Both life jackets were still in the boat. Moses hadn’t put his on. He couldn’t swim well. He should have been wearing it. Those were the rules.
His body washed up on the bay side of the island where the tides run.
We never saw him. They wouldn’t let us see him. They wouldn’t even talk to us about it. Everything we knew we overheard when they thought we weren’t listening, mostly at the funeral reception.
Howard treated us like little kids. He doesn’t know us anymore.
I wonder about Howard and what he’s been up to.
“So, what about Dad?” I ask David while I crunch my Raisin Bran.
“What about him?”
I’m not sure how I’m going to ask this now. “Are you mad at him?”
I know it’s a stupid question, but I figure it might give me information about where he lived and what’s going on with his situation.
“I don’t know. Aunt Doreen says he’s gonna stay in California this summer. I don’t think we’re gonna see him …”
His voice trails off and he seems maybe mad or sad or something, he doesn’t show much on his face.
“Good. It’s better when he’s gone. You know what I mean?”
David nods. I can tell he isn’t going to say either way.
A breeze blows through the kitchen window over the sink and its smell fills the space with the scent of lilacs. “So, I’m going to the library today. What are you gonna do?”
David stares at me funny.
“I don’t know, hang around with Joseph. Maybe go play tennis. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I might bring a friend over later and I wanted to know if you were going to be here bothering us.”
“Who?” he asks. Now I’ve made him curious and he seems interested to know who it might be.
“Leigh.”
David has an odd look on his face. “So, you made up with her?” he asks. “I thought you guys were still in a fight.”
You had a fight with Leigh.
I scramble to come up with something as I rinse my bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher. “Yeah, but you know,” I say, and hope he doesn’t ask me any more about it.
David walks over and hands me his spoon and bowl to rinse. He stares hard at me, but he changes the subject.
“Hey Jules, we’re gonna be in the same school next year. It’ll be freaky-deaky, huh? We haven’t been in the same school since elementary. Oh, by the way,” he adds, “I saw that guy, Timothy Zand, drop your books off on the porch yesterday. He left before I could ta
lk to him. How did he end up with your books?”
“I must have left them up at Stillton.”
Timothy. Who the heck is Timothy?
“You know, Timothy? The new kid who moved into one of the aluminum siding houses? He’s a freshman in high school and sometimes he takes the bus with me? Is he your new boyfriend?”
I’m flustered. Avoiding his eyes, I fill the dishwasher soap well and play with the machine’s buttons.
“What? No, I don’t even know him. No,” I say.
I wonder if I have a boyfriend now and I don’t even know it. Now that would be big news. A boyfriend.
“Then why did he have your books?”
“I don’t know. I forget.” The steam from the dishwasher starts to filter out the vents.
David doesn’t seem like he buys my story. I blush, even though I’m telling him the truth. I can’t remember. I decide to hightail it out of there.
“I gotta go. I’ll see you later. If Wendy calls will you tell her there’s no food in the freezer and if she can bring back dinner or go shopping, it’d be great?”
“Yeah, Burger King,” David says.
I smile at him. He smiles back.
“Are you gonna be nice now?”
“Have I really been a jerk?”
David hesitates and thinks about what to say. “Yup, you’ve been a real jerk. You’ve been ignoring everyone and going around slamming doors.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’ll try not to be one from now on.”
“We’ll see,” he says and laughs.
I laugh too, and I slam the door hard when I leave.
Maybe I can trace my steps backwards from the library to remember everything that’s happened.
At the library I bring my books in and leave them on the table. I recognize the librarian, and the room smells familiar. Dust and Lemon Pledge. I’ve connected my past to the present. I remember everything about the library. I remember being there not long ago. I remember walking in and I remember walking out.
I can’t remember the librarians name though.
She seems happy to see me, and I realize we’re friends now. I mean, she’s as much of a friend as an adult can be. I can recall several conversations we’ve shared recently.
The Belief in Angels Page 19