Banana Split

by Josi S. Kilpack

  He put all that together himself? If he could do it, anyone could. She wasn’t safe here anymore.

  He looked back at the paper and smoothed it out again. “I just wanted to ask you some questions about her.”

  Sadie held her shaking hands together in her lap and swallowed. “You don’t want to know anything about that, I promise,” she said.

  “Everybody says she was high, but she wasn’t doing drugs no more so—”

  Sadie stood up, cutting him off and wringing her hands as though the hair—Noelani’s hair—was still wrapped around them. “Look, I’m really, really sorry about your mom. I can’t even . . .” She paused for breath, trying to keep her anxiety at bay, but images of that day in the water flashed in her mind and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could focus. For the first time, she pictured some kind of tattoo on the woman’s forearm. She hadn’t remembered that before, and she wished she hadn’t remembered it now. She didn’t want to think about this anymore. “I’m so sorry,” she said again. “But I didn’t know her. I only . . . found her, and I don’t know anything else.”

  “You weren’t her friend?”

  “No.” Sadie shook her head, surprised by the question. “I’d never seen her before.”

  He pulled his eyebrows together and looked back at the paper in his lap. “But I thought . . . I thought you must have been with her.”

  Sadie’s confusion overrode her anxiety for a moment. Why would he think that? Had the newspaper insinuated something like that? “No,” she said. “I didn’t know her, and I don’t know anything about her now. I didn’t even know she had a son.” Her voice cracked.

  Charlie pursed his lips together, and she noticed his face darken. Embarrassment? Disappointment? A moment later, his shoulders slumped forward, and he hung his head, staring into his lap.

  Sadie sat back down in her chair, unsure what to do. Was he crying? Should she comfort him? She could imagine herself sitting next to him on the futon and pulling him into a hug, but she couldn’t move. She didn’t want to touch him. Just as she couldn’t have an in-depth conversation with her son about what had happened in Boston, she couldn’t bear the responsibility of trying to comfort this little boy.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help,” Sadie said, feeling bad about how much she wanted him to leave. She wondered when her prescriptions would be delivered. She had a feeling she’d need the anxiety one very soon.

  Charlie sniffed and wiped his eyes.

  She felt horrible, but she really couldn’t help him. She didn’t have anything to give. “Can I call someone to come get you?”

  He sniffed again and stood up, moving for the door. The paper from his pocket was crumpled in his hand.

  She stood, too. “Wait,” she said, though she didn’t move. “Let me call someone, uh—Who . . . who do you live with?” What a horrible thing to ask him!

  “I don’t live with nobody,” he said loudly as he grabbed the doorknob and pulled it open.

  “No one?” Sadie asked, taking a nervous step toward him. “Now, that can’t—”

  He ran outside without looking back. She hurried after him but stopped at the threshold as though it had a force field keeping her inside.

  “Wait,” she called, but it was halfhearted. She couldn’t help this little boy? She was that messed up? “Wait,” she said again, but it was a whisper.

  Charlie disappeared around the corner, and a moment later she couldn’t even hear the sound of his footsteps on the street. She raised a shaking hand to her mouth, then closed and locked the door. One, two, three.

  She was a mother!

  Sadie’s heart continued to shudder in the wake of what she’d just learned, and she rested her back against the door and brought her hands to her face.

  Just a body.

  Just a body.

  Oh, please, can’t it just have been a body?

  But she’d never been very good at fooling herself. A sob rose in her chest, though she tried to push it down. She pictured Charlie in her mind, a sad little boy trying to find out what had happened to his mother. Piecing together enough little details to track down Sadie in hopes of getting answers no one else would give him. Believing Sadie was the one person who could help him. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t help herself let alone anyone else. Another sob followed the first, and finally, she gave in, feeling her face contort behind her hands as she gave in to the tears she’d been holding back for what felt like years.

  It wasn’t a body.

  The woman was a real person who’d been living a real life.

  Noelani Pouhu.

  Sadie would never forget that again.

  Chapter 5

  Not long after Sadie’s meltdown, there was another knock at the door that instigated the same panic. It turned out to be Reg, the delivery boy from the market. She knew she looked a sight with her swollen eyes, but he was too polite to say anything. She gave him a generous tip and put the perishables in the fridge before turning on the TV in search of some distraction. The anxiety and emotion had passed, but she still felt jumpy, so she took one of the pills Dr. McKay had prescribed for the anxiety in hopes the medicine would chase the last of her undone-ness away.

  Sometime during the first or second episode of Wizards of Waverly Place, Sadie fell asleep. When she woke up, there was an infomercial on. She turned off the television, knowing she was not strong enough to resist. She felt heavy and thick as she sat up and blinked into the darkness. She hadn’t had any lights on when she’d collapsed on the futon, so the house was dark and silent.

  Dr. McKay hadn’t said the anxiety medication would help her sleep, but she certainly wasn’t complaining about that particular side effect. She’d sleep twenty hours a day if she could. She continued to sit on the futon, hoping her brain would wake up more fully if she didn’t rush it. Eventually, Charlie came to mind. She could only hope he’d been lying about not having a home. Pre-teen boys were prone to exaggeration, and he’d been upset. Surely he wasn’t truly on his own. Then again, his mother was dead.

  Dead.

  The word made her shiver, and she saw another flash of the body—Noelani Pouhu—in the water, but only a flash this time. Thank goodness. Sadie entertained the idea of somehow checking up on Charlie, finding out who was taking care of him, but that was only a flash too. Trying to find information about Charlie would be a step into a world she felt ill prepared to enter.

  She rubbed her arms and wrapped them around herself despite the thickness of the night’s humidity. Even with central air conditioning, she always felt slightly sticky, no matter the time of day, but she’d heard that humidity helped prevent wrinkles, so it was a trade-off she could live with. A glance at the VCR clock made it easier to decide against making any phone calls about Charlie. It was two o’clock in the morning. She’d slept for hours and still had hours and hours of night left to go. What time had she fallen asleep? Four o’clock in the afternoon? Had she really slept for ten hours? Maybe next time she’d take half a pill, assuming she wouldn’t want to sleep that long.

  Sadie turned on the lamp beside the futon, then stood up to turn on the kitchen lights as well. Immediately, she noticed that the blinds over the sliding glass door were still open. Her heart began to race. She moved toward them, intent in closing herself in again, but then she wondered if this was an opportunity to prove herself stronger than she felt.

  After a moment of contemplation, she turned her back on the open blinds and returned to the kitchen area—determined to be brave. Her stomach growled, so she put the shoyu chicken and rice Konnie had given her into a covered dish and put it in the oven, heating it to 200 degrees, just like Konnie had said. Then she spied the brownie mix she’d ordered on impulse and remembered the quote she had on her fridge at home: “Chocolate makes everything better.” She increased the oven temperature to 350 degrees and made a note to keep an eye on the chicken to make sure it didn’t dry out.

  Mixing the eggs into the brownie batter and sliding the pan int
o the oven was both familiar and new, but as the smell of baking chocolate filled the air, Sadie felt lighter, a little bit more herself than she had before. She ignored the sliding glass door completely.

  She’d come to enjoy watching old movies at night when she couldn’t sleep, and Tanya had an extensive collection. She chose The Searchers and put the tape into the VCR. It wasn’t that Tanya couldn’t afford to update the condo, there was just no reason to do so when it was all so very functional. Sadie’s condo was the smallest—only one bedroom—and was therefore the least rentable, which made it a perfect maid’s quarters, and it was where Tanya stayed when she and her husband came each summer. The outdated technology wasn’t a problem for them, so they didn’t bother changing anything.

  Listening to the Duke and Jeffrey Hunter was like having old friends come for a visit, and Sadie felt herself relax even more. She removed the chicken and rice from the oven after twenty minutes and began straightening up while it cooled.

  She scraped the burrito from that afternoon into the garbage, washed the plate and the brownie preparation dishes, wiped down the counter, and swept the tiled floor. Then she put about half of the chicken and rice on a plate and sat down at the kitchen table. It was really good, and though she considered asking Konnie for the recipe, she was embarrassed to do so for reasons she didn’t entirely understand.

  She looked outside again as she pushed the chair underneath the kitchen table, her plate and fork in hand. The blinds were still open but everything on the other side of the glass was dark. A sudden thought entered her mind that she should go out there. It would be healing; it would prove she was getting stronger. The timer dinged, and she jumped, shaking her head with embarrassment as she turned to the oven. She removed the brownies, placing them on the stove top to cool since she didn’t have a cooling rack.

  Five minutes later, she pulled the blinds back from the sliding glass door, causing a pileup of the vertical slats on the far left side. She stood there challenging herself to open the door—to face her fears.

  The sound of the door sliding along its track was soft and fluid, but as soon as it was open, the outside sounds filtered in with the coolness of the night. The croak of the coqui frogs that infested the islands sounded like loud, creepy crickets, but she could handle it. Someone’s dog was barking. No people sounds. “Nothing to be afraid of,” she whispered to herself.

  She stepped out onto her little square of concrete patio, scanning for the huge centipedes that always gave her the willies and ignoring the two darting geckos poised on the stucco above the sliding glass door as she slid it shut. She could tolerate the lizards because they kept down the even more distasteful bug population.

  I’m outside, she told herself, trying to pump herself up as she looked at each of the patios belonging to the other seven condos. Three of them were rented out this week, but all the windows were dark. It was close to three o’clock in the morning after all. Only the jungle and Sadie were awake. The heat had dissipated somewhat, and a breeze raised goose bumps on her arms—or chicken skin, as Konnie would say. She tried to rub the bumps away and wondered if it was really the breeze creating the reaction.

  She waited for the panic to descend. She thought about returning to Garrison in a few weeks. Did she want to return to a state of healing and strength? If so, then she needed to meet new challenges and prove herself capable of such things.

  You’re safe here, she told herself. And it’s a beautiful night.

  A gentle wind tousled the palm fronds overhead. The stars were vibrant, and a quarter moon looked crisp in the ink-colored sky. Sadie began walking along the black lava rock path that connected the patios and encircled the pool and common barbeque area in the center. Everything looked fine. One of the renters had hung a swimsuit on the turning clothesline near the pool, and the same wind that played amid the foliage of the trees moved the swimsuit gently back and forth. The showerhead near the pool dripped water onto the brick-lined drain area. Drip, drip, drip.

  She studied every detail, having memorized what belonged and what didn’t and assuring herself that everything was as it should be. The longer she walked around the courtyard, the more victorious she felt. She’d left her condo in the middle of the night. That was progress!

  She was almost back to her own patio when she heard something behind her, a rustle that didn’t coincide with the wind. She froze at the same time she internally screamed at herself to run. Instead, she turned and looked behind her.

  Be strong, she told herself. Know what you’re up against instead of reacting to nameless fear.

  The slightest possibility that someone might be out there with her was too easy a seed to plant—a seed that would then grow all night long until it was the Venus flytrap Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors and gobble her up. She was determined to make it through the night without panicking.

  An avocado tree with tall winding branches stood a few feet off the path and seemed to be the location of the mystery sound. Sadie had harvested several avocados over the last few months and knew the tree well, which helped give her the courage to approach it. Her eyes traveled upward as she neared the trunk, and she was all but convinced the noise had been nothing but a bird when she noticed the outline of a shoe. No, a flip-flop—a small red rubber slippah. Again she was prompted to run, and yet she recognized the flip-flop even though her anxiety prompted her to think it belonged to someone far more sinister.

  “Charlie?” she asked quietly.

  Nothing moved, and she took a step closer to the tree. When she was below the branches, she could make out the shape of his silhouette as he stared down at her. It was creepy, seeing him outlined against the tree and the stars beyond the leaves, but she didn’t feel panic setting in. Maybe it was a lingering effect of the medication.

  “What are you doing here?” Sadie snapped, her fear translating into anger even though she knew this boy had no idea what his unexpected appearance had cost her. He just stared at her, not saying a word in his defense. Sadie reminded herself that he was a little boy who’d lost his mother.

  She was careful to soften her tone before she continued. “It’s the middle of the night, Charlie. Surely someone is missing you.”

  He didn’t answer again, and Sadie let out a breath, realizing with amazement that her lingering fear went with it. This boy posed no threat to her, and he must be uncomfortable up there. As her eyes adjusted, she could see he’d taken one of the renters’ beach towels and put it between himself and the branch he was sitting on.

  “Should I call the police?” she asked.

  He shook his head quickly, his eyes wide. His reaction left no doubt that Sadie should call the police, and yet . . . this boy pulled at her heart. What if he didn’t have anywhere to go? What if he really was on his own?

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  He hesitated but after a moment, nodded.

  “I have some chicken and rice, and I made brownies,” she said. “They’re just a mix, so it’s nothing special, but I really shouldn’t eat the whole pan myself. Do you think you could help me?”

  He didn’t speak or nod or anything, but he did start climbing down from the tree. Sadie felt something unfamiliar in her chest, a kind of peace or comfort. Charlie dropped to the ground a few feet away from her, still regarding her carefully and clutching the towel.

  “Go put that back where you found it,” Sadie said. He did as she said, taking the time to smooth out the towel on the back of a chair by the pool. He knew how to take care of things. When he headed back toward her, she turned to the condo, allowing him to follow her. It wasn’t until she opened the door for him and smiled as he passed her that she realized what this new feeling was. And it wasn’t really new at all, just forgotten. It had been a very long time since Sadie had given much of anything to anyone else. The anxiety she’d been living with had wrapped itself around her so tightly that there’d been no room left for reaching out to anyone else. The fear was still there, pressing agains
t her chest as she shut and locked the sliding glass door—one, two, three—but maybe the stranglehold was a little less than it had been. Maybe reaching out to help someone else was some kind of cure for her own disease.

  “Have a seat,” she said, feeling the forgotten role of hostess fall over her shoulders like a superhero cape. “Let’s get some real food in you before we serve up the brownies.”

  Chapter 6

  Sadie slid a plate of the remaining shoyu chicken and rice in front of Charlie before sitting down opposite him at the table. He didn’t thank her with words, but the fervor with which he ate clearly communicated his appreciation and hunger. Sadie wished she could take credit—it was always rewarding to see someone enjoy something she’d made herself—but she had no ownership in anything placed before him tonight.