by Darlene Ryan
Harmony slides down off the stool. “Look, I got some stuff to do. Thanks for breakfast,” she says. “I’ll find you later.”
She takes off and I count out enough money for the check and a small tip. I have a bit more than a hundred dollars in my purse—most of it money I conned out of my mother. I think about ordering something else just so I can stay here a bit longer, but I know I have to watch my cash.
My school ID card is tucked in the front of my wallet. I pull it out and look at the picture. I’m not her anymore. That life is over. Just the way my dad’s and Seth’s lives are over.
Tears fill my eyes and I swipe at them with the sleeve of my jacket because I’m not going to cry. Not here. I bend the card until it snaps in half, and I break those pieces too. I drop them all in the garbage can by the door.
I start walking back toward the library, and when I turn the corner, there they are. My mother and Marissa are standing on the sidewalk in front of the main library entrance. I back-pedal without looking where I’m going and step into a narrow alley between an art supply store and a candy shop.
They’re stopping everyone who walks by. Is that my picture my mother’s showing people? What’s that pile of papers Marissa’s holding? Flyers? What do they say? Have You Seen This Girl?
They want D’Arcy. I have D’Arcy’s face, but that’s all. Her life is over. She doesn’t exist anymore. Would they understand that? Everyone D’Arcy loved is dead. Now D’Arcy is dead. Or close enough.
My mother and Marissa are looking for a dead person. I turn down the alley and walk away.
thirty
I head back to the hill and the old hospital, walking the way Harmony brought us, sticking to alleys and the back of buildings as much as I can. At the back of one old brick building, there’s a row of blue recycling bins. One of them is filled with magazines and newspapers. I look around. I don’t see anyone. I reach into the bin and yank out several magazines without even looking to see what they are.
Then I take off, hugging the magazines to my chest.
I don’t stop for a breath until I’ve climbed up over the stone wall and found the path up the hill. I sit on the dried grass in the sun, with my back against the old hospital wall. The sun’s already warmed the stones, and the heat soaks into my back.
I lay out the magazines. I have an issue of People from last week, plus Vanity Fair and National Geographic from a month ago.
I read the magazines and watch the cars go by on the street below. There’s an article about Mexico in National Geographic. My dad went to Mexico to take pictures for a story in some other travel magazine. I’m never going to Mexico. I’m never going anywhere.
When I’m hungry again, I head down the hill and walk over to the park Harmony talked about, staying off the sidewalks as much as I can. I use the washroom and then I get something to eat at a little store across from the park that sells newspapers and cigarettes and other stuff—a wrapped sandwich with ham and pickles, a banana, a bottle of apple juice and a bag of chips.
Harmony doesn’t come back until it’s getting dark. “You hungry?” she asks. She’s carrying a brown paper bag. There’s a big grease stain on one end.
“Yeah, a little,” I say.
Harmony sits, cross-legged, on the ground and opens the bag. She hands me what turns out to be a bacon cheeseburger, unwraps one for herself and pulls out a bottle of wine cooler. She takes a long drink and offers the bottle to me. I wipe the opening on my shirt, then take a drink. It’s kind of sweet, but I don’t really care. I turn the bottle around—Mandarin Mango the label says.
We finish our food, passing the wine cooler back and forth until the bottle is empty.
“That’s all I have,” Harmony says, setting the empty bottle spinning in the dirt. “You got any more money? I can probably get us a bottle like last night.”
“I have a little left,” I tell her. I take a twenty out of my purse and hand it to her, careful not to let her see how much cash I actually have.
“Let’s go,” Harmony says, getting to her feet.
We go back to the same place at the bend in the road. I wait, the same as I did the night before, and just like then we end up with a bottle of wine and a few cigarettes.
We walk back to our place along the old hospital foundation. “You don’t mind I got a few smokes, do you?” Harmony asks.
“I don’t care,” I say. The warm buzzing in my head from the wine cooler is already disappearing. All I care about is the bottle.
For some reason it seems to have more in it or be lasting longer. Maybe it’s a magic bottle. Maybe it’s never going to be empty. I hold the bottle up and try looking down the neck. When I do that, I see two bottles. My magic bottle has split into two bottles.
“I have to pee,” I tell Harmony.
She helps me partway down the hill because the magic bottle has cast an evil spell on my legs and they don’t work so well. Behind a clump of alders, I manage to squat and get my pants down before I pee myself. “I’m camping,” I shout to the world, flinging my arms in the air.
I fall backward and slide a few feet farther down the hill. “Olympic luge,” I shout. “Go for the gold!”
Harmony helps me stand and fix my pants.
“I could do it,” I say. “I could be a luger. Or is that a lugette?”
“How would I know?” Harmony says. She sets me against the wall.
I reach for the bottle, almost knocking it over. “To luging,” I say, raising it high in the air before taking a drink. I fall sideways. Harmony grabs the bottle before I hit the dirt. And then there isn’t anything else.
I’m puking. I feel puke on my face and my hair, and I can’t get my head up. I press my hand over my mouth and vomit spews between my fingers and down my arm.
I can’t...can’t breathe. Can’t...breathe. I try...I try to get a breath...no air...
Flashes of light go off in my head. My mouth hangs open and I’m twitching, grabbing at my throat, trying, trying to breathe.
I can’t...no air...
Something, someone, kicks me hard in the back. I roll forward onto my face, vomit one more time, turn my face just a little and somehow suck in a breath.
“She’s all right,” a voice says from far away.
I take another rough breath and another. Finally, somehow, I manage to sit up. I wipe vomit off my face. There are clumps of puke all down my front.
It’s dark. Shivering, I curl into a little ball against the wall. My head feels like it’s too big for my body, and I can’t keep my eyes open.
It’s just beginning to get light when I wake up. My head feels like someone is beating on it with a hammer. When I move, something sharp stabs into the middle of my back. I get to my feet slowly, holding on to the brick wall.
My clothes are covered with dirt and puke. My hair is matted with dried leaves and bits of gravel. I know before I look inside my purse that all my money is gone. I feel sick.
I don’t know what to do.
There’s a crumpled piece of purple paper on the ground. Marissa was carrying a pile of purple papers when I saw her with my mother outside the library. Was that yesterday?
I pick the paper up and smooth it flat. The words float in front of my eyes as though they’re going to sail right off the page: SETH IS ALIVE.
That’s all it says, in big black letters. But I was at the hospital. He can’t be. He can’t be. I asked God to make it different, to make my father be alive, and he didn’t. So how can Seth be alive? It’s just a trick to get me to go home.
I hear the Chuck Wagon pull up. I take a couple of steps around the wall and look up the hill. The old van is there, the back doors already open.
And my mother is there, pouring coffee and showing the flyer to everyone. And then I see Marissa and Mr. Kelly and Alice from across the street in her sandals and wool socks.
I look down at the paper in my hand. My eyes swim with tears. I swipe at them with the back of my hand. I watch my mother move from pe
rson to person, slowly getting closer to where I’m standing. I should move, hide, but I don’t.
She hands a cup of coffee to a girl in a long black coat, and as the girl moves away, my mother looks down the hill and sees me. She takes one step toward me, eyes on my face as though she expects me to run. Then another step. And another. She slips, puts out a hand and almost falls, but she keeps coming, scrambling down the bank to me.
Her hair isn’t combed. She’s wearing jeans and a heavy dark sweater with buttons. She reaches for me and I take a step backward. Her hand drops to her side. “Oh baby, I’m so glad you’re all right,” she says. A tear trails down her cheek. She brushes it away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you felt you had to run away.” She lets out a breath. “I haven’t done this right. I don’t know how to be a family without your father. But I’m going to find out. I promise.”
I don’t speak. I don’t move.
Mom sees the paper, crushed now in my fist. “You saw it,” she says. “I was afraid you thought...He’s not dead.”
I make a fist and hit her forearm. “You’re lying,” I say. She shakes her head. “No.” I hit her shoulder with my other fist. She grabs my arm. “Seth’s alive,” she says.
“You’re lying!” I shout, beating on her with my free hand. One punch catches her on the side of the face and her eyes fill with tears. Another lands just below the collarbone.
Somehow she manages to get both of her arms around me. She doesn’t seem to care that I’m filthy and I stink. “Seth’s alive,” she says again.
I don’t trust her. “Let me go!” I shout. I try to twist away, but she won’t let go.
I hit and kick with all my strength, but she won’t let go. I scrape her arm with my fingernails. She keeps holding on to me.
I can feel something raw and angry inside me trying to get out. “Why did he leave me?” I scream, and I don’t know if I mean Seth or my father.
Mom holds me tight against her chest. “I’m not going to leave you. I’m not letting go,” she says. “If you run away, I’ll never stop looking for you. Never.”
I try to pull away, but I can’t fight her anymore.
“Never,” she whispers again.
And then something breaks inside me. I feel a sharp pain in my chest and I sag against my mother, shaking and crying—for Seth, for my dad, for me.
Part Three
Spring
thirty-one
I think this park is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. There are trees everywhere I look. Strong, tall trees that will still be here when it’s time for someone to say good-bye to me. But today we’re here to say good-bye to my dad.
I push Seth’s wheelchair up to the top of a rise that seems to. Have slid in just under the sky. I breathe deeper and I feel, somehow, connected to all of this.
The right side of Seth’s body doesn’t work the way it used to, that’s why he needs the wheelchair. When he tried to kill himself, he had a stroke. He has to learn how to walk again, how to feed himself, how to write his name, how to talk. But Seth’s alive, and that’s all I care about. I’m teaching him how to juggle, and that makes us both laugh.
The trail ends in an open area. This is the place. A forest fire a year ago destroyed this part of the park. But I can see so many tiny green things growing again, up through the sooty ground. We’re here to plant a tree for my dad, to celebrate his life with a living thing.
I set the brake on Seth’s chair. He gives me his loopy, lopsided smile and takes my hand with his good one.
Mom stands beside us, puts her arm around my shoulders, and I put mine around hers. We’ve talked a lot in the past few weeks—just the two of us and with a counselor too. Some of the things have been hard to say and hard to hear. But I’m learning that saying the words and living the feelings help.
And I’ve talked to Marissa too. I’ve fixed things with her. But not with Brendan. He wants the person I used to be, and I’m not that person anymore.
Overhead the sky is a deep, cloudless blue that seems to go on forever. I like to think that Dad still goes on somehow. I hate what he did, but I don’t hate him. I close my eyes, and even though it feels kind of hokey, I send my love out into that endless blue, to wherever he is, whatever he is now.
Tomorrow my mother and I are going to see Claire. I don’t know if we can be the family Dad wanted, but I am going to try, harder than I have ever tried at anything before.
Tomorrow I’m going to hug Claire and find out whether or not she will hug me back.
acknowledgments
Thanks to Judy Gorham, who has known me since I was a geeky teenager—and has the pictures to prove it—for always cheering me on. Thanks to Andrew Wooldridge for his excellent editing. And special thanks to Susan Evans for reading the early versions of this book and for urging me to finish it. I’m glad you’re here. This book is for you.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing muscle weakness, atrophy and paralysis. There is no known cure. Suicide has been called a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you suspect someone close to you is thinking about suicide, please tell someone.
Darlene Ryan is the author of Saving Grace, Responsible and Rules for Life. Darlene lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.