When You Go Away

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  "Okay!"

  "Tay!"

  "Want to watch cartoons?"

  "Tay! Na! Na!"

  "Have some patience. Keep a steady strain," Carly said, repeating the phrase her mother used when things were terrible but had to be done anyway, like math tests and Brooke’s diapers and dentist appointments. It never really helped, but Carly always imagined her mother knew how bad it was. She saw what was important.

  Carly searched for the remote on the bedside table. Brooke loved to watch Rugrats and Hey Arnold! on Nickelodeon. Carly flipped through the channels.

  "Da!"

  The bright colored kids flashed on the screen. "There you go, Brookey." Carly yanked up the rail on the hospital bed, making sure it was truly closed. Once last week before her mom left, Carly hadn't checked, and she'd come back to find Brooke on the floor, writhing in an effort to pull herself back up, her mother asleep in the bed just five feet away. So now she checked once, twice, sometimes three times, worried that Brooke could break all her bones. Worried that she’d have to call someone for help.

  Carly sighed, picked up the measuring cup, the wash bowl, and the wash cloth, and walked out of the room, the sounds of the cartoons behind her.

  

  Back when they were still at their house, Brooke would have had visitors every day. Some days, it was the physical therapist Leon Magnoli, who put her on the floor, rolled her around on these big rubber balls he brought, Brooke on top squealing.

  For a while, Carly imagined that all kids like Brooke had a Leon, but once when she’d gone with her mother and Brooke to the clinic for Brooke’s appointment, the nurse had sighed, running her hands through her hair.

  “God, you are so lucky to have a private therapist. We are in a major therapist shortage. I can’t even begin to tell you about the backlog. It’s a nightmare. I’m dealing with about 500 kids right now.”

  “He’s the best,” her mother said. “I won’t trust Brooke with anyone else.”

  Leon looked like so much fun, Carly had once wished she could play with him. He would rub Brooke’s feet, stretch her legs and arms, spin her on the mat. He called her "My little Kumquat." Carly's mother gave him a check when he left, and he always said, "I should pay you." Carly noticed that he took it anyway, but she was glad. He always made Brooke laugh.

  Then there was Mrs. Morgan who came to teach Brooke to talk, Brooke sounding out vowels, "AAAA.EEEEEEE. IIIIIII. OOOOO. UUUUU," even though she seemed to make only one long strange sound, "AHHHEIOU." Later, the teacher Susie Glickman came to the house because Brooke was too sick to go to kindergarten even for three hours a day; after all, as their mother said, Brooke was an “Individual with Exceptional Needs.”

  Susie seemed to think Brooke was exceptional, bragging about how fast Brooke was learning to sound out words. “In months, this girl will be reading!” she had said.

  There were also the nurses her mother hired to baby-sit, so she could walk for an hour on the treadmill at Oakmont Athletic club or go shopping at Nordstrom with her friends or get a haircut at Anthony's. While Carly often answered the door, leading whoever it was up to Brooke’s room, Ryan never talked to anyone because he was so busy. Once Leon asked her mother, "Are you sure you have a son? He looks more like a shadow to me." Back then, Ryan was gone for normal reasons then, like baseball or soccer, not like now when he was just gone.

  It wasn't until fifth and sixth grade, when her parents were fighting every night and then her dad left, that things changed. There were things that happened behind her parents' door--yells and harsh whispers and sometimes heavy things falling to the ground. Sometimes, Carly wanted to leave, walking down the street with her backpack and her friend's phone numbers.

  She knew that the divorce had made her mother so sad she'd stopped getting up in the morning unless it was to feed Brooke, and now since the move to the apartment, Carly could feel her own anger at her father flutter like the gas fireplace at Sam’s house, able to rage at a moment's notice.

  In the days and weeks after he left, Carly would pick up the scribbled notes on the kitchen counter, reading her mother’s pretty cursive: “Call Social Security office” and “Check out bills re decreased energy rates.” There were lists of phone numbers and names of places, Department of Rehabilitation, Parent Training and Info Center, Children’s Special Heath Services.

  At first, it seemed that life would go on as it had, but then the answering machine would blink with seven, ten, fourteen messages, calls her mother didn’t return. Then her mother couldn’t pay for Leon anymore, a therapist at the clinic taking over Brooke’s care. But when her mother decided Brooke shouldn’t go back to the clinic because it was crowded and dirty and far away, no one called to check on Brooke, as if she never existed at all.

  Why did a divorce mean all this? Why did everything else have to change just because her parents weren't married anymore? Dad still loved them, didn't he? Or maybe he didn't because he didn't call that often at first, and then even less, and not once did he ask her or Ryan to visit him. Sometimes, she wanted to ask her mother these questions, but her mom cried about how Brooke’s teacher, Suzie Glickman, moved to another school district, how nothing was easy any more, the letters from the school district piling up on the counter. She cried because she had to carry Brooke out to the car because they didn't have a wheelchair yet. But that must have gotten too hard because after a while, Mom didn’t take Brooke anywhere, her sister’s body softer and weaker every day.

  But by the end of seventh grade, Mom decided that they had to sell the house and move. “We need to get out of here. A fresh start. A place where I can think.” Her mother packed and cried, Brooke in her room almost all day long, no visits from anyone, Ryan stayed out later and later with his friends, and Carly watched it all. A For Sale sign went up, the real estate agents constantly walked through the house, even during dinner, and her mother ran around with Windex to clean the front door windows every time someone called. "Curb appeal,” the agent had said, her mother nodding and biting her lips.

  Carly thought if she could just tell her dad what was going on with Brooke, he'd let them stay in their old house. If she could tell him about how she secretly opened letters from the school, the ones that asked why Brooke was not signed up for the new school year. If she could show him the way Brooke’s head flopped to the side now. But when she asked her mom if she could call him, her mother leaned her head on her arms and cried for an hour. And once when Carly found his phone number and wrote it on a gum wrapper, she looked up to see her mother weeping on the couch, where she'd been sitting all day. If she called her father, something bad would happen to her mom, something worse than what had already happened, so she folded up the wrapper carefully and put it in her jeans pocket. She forgot about it, and later, she found it twisted and ripped from the washer, her father's number only thin pencil scratchings.

  Then they moved, a family from Toronto buying their house, telling her mother they were going to "completely renovate." That meant that Carly's room was probably gone. After they'd been in the Walnut Creek apartment for a month, she asked her mom if they could drive by the house and go and visit Maxie. Her mother shook her head.

  "What's the point? It's all gone now."

  Carly had called her friends Kiana and Ashley a few times from a pay phone, but after a while, she realized they just wanted to talk about the boys at school and what everyone was wearing and the dance on Friday. They didn’t care about Carly and her new school where she knew no one. She couldn't believe that next year she'd have to enroll at a high school where she didn't have one single friend. It had taken her from kindergarten to eighth grade to make friends in Monte Veda, and she bet she'd never have friends like Kiana or Ashley for the rest of her life.

  After the call to her friends, Carly again wished she could phone her dad in Phoenix. She was pretty sure he didn't have their new address, and that meant he couldn't send the checks that bought the formula that Brooke had to have. Even if he did leave t
hem and forgot to send the money like her mom said he did, she knew he'd want Brooke to eat. To live. He should have found them. He should have looked. But since the wrapper incident, Carly hadn't had the chance to get the number again, and if her mother found out she'd called, she would cry even more and not get out of bed, where she stayed most of the time now. Since the move, she hadn’t bothered to do much more than enroll her and Ryan in school. Carly wondered if her Grandmother Mackenzie was worried about them, and if she was, why hadn't she searched them out? There had to be ways to find people who disappeared, and if it weren't for the fact that she imagined her mother would fall asleep and forget about Brooke, Carly would have taken BART to Oakland to find her grandmother, transferring onto a bus at the Rockridge station and staying on until something looked familiar. Or what about her Grandpa Carl? Even if her mother was angry with him, so angry she wouldn't even talk to him at holidays, he cared about them. When Carly asked her why she'd suddenly decided he must never step foot in her house again, her mother replied, "He's like all of them. They just leave."

  If he were so awful, though, why did her mom name her after him?

  Anyway, if Carly wanted Grandpa Carl’s or her Uncle Noel' numbers, she'd have to get them the same sneaky way she'd gotten her father's that one time. Then she'd have to call at a pay phone on her way home from school because it wasn't like she could borrow Kiana's or Ashley's cell phone any more. The whole thing was so much trouble, and she couldn't help but wonder why no one had come looking for them. Maybe the lawyers had told everyone to leave them be, had made it clear the Mackenzies were supposed to be alone. That she was supposed to be alone with Brooke, no Dad, no Maxie, no Mom, barely any Ryan. That's why her mother had disappeared two days ago after she and Ryan went to school, not leaving a note, not even feeding Brooke before she left.

  

  Before she went to the laundry room, Carly sorted the dirty clothes. She'd watched her mother do it often, and certainly the laundry soap commercials on TV had taught her about separating whites and darks. Most of Brooke's clothes were white, so Carly decided to do a white load first, digging around for her underwear and t-shirts, and then finding a huge tangled white pile in Ryan's room. She didn't want to look at his underwear, something disgusting and knotted about the twists of cotton. She closed her eyes and grabbed at the clothes, throwing them in the basket. He owed her for this. He'd never do her laundry, not brave enough to touch her underwear and bras. He probably only wanted to touch other girls' underwear or at least bras now that he was fifteen. Carly imagined that’s what he and Quinn talked about on the way to school. Quinn was a sophomore with his license. Carly was sure Ryan did drugs or at least smoked cigarettes, and she wondered if she should look through Ryan's room. But who would she tell if she found anything? Who was the person to call about this? What person could make it all better? And if she called someone, her mother would be in trouble. She just had to hold on until her mother came back and fixed everything.

  All the machines were full and churning in the laundry room. But the minute she gave up, leaving with her basket, someone would empty a washer, and then someone else would fill it up, so she waited, leaning against the cold metal folding counter. She had the baby monitor in her pocket, and every now and then, she heard Brooke turn, an arm banging against the metal guardrail. Once, Brooke said, "Ma!" and Carly swallowed down hard, feeling sick as she blinked against the soapy air.

  Finally, Mrs. Candelero from downstairs came in, leaning against the counter with her, both of them listening to the spinning machines.

  "So you home today or what?"

  "Like duh!" she wished she could say, but she wanted the machine more, so she smiled and nodded.

  "Your mother sick I hear.”

  Carly looked over at her, trying to control her forehead, feeling it pull into the fear that framed her face. "Um."

  "I saw your brother this morning getting into a car with that kid. You know, the one down the hall from me? I asked after your baby sister and mother, and he said she was fine but your mother was sick. 'I saw her yesterday morning,’ I tell him, and he all but ignores me and gets in the car."

  “You saw her yesterday morning? When?” Carly grabbed the edge of a washer and bit her lip.

  “Yeah. She seemed fine then. Maybe sort of in a hurry. She didn’t wave or anything.”

  “What time?” Carly asked, feeling her joints crack as she pressed hard on the machine.

  Mrs. Candelero put one hand on her hip and brushed back her hair with another, pausing as she thought. “Morning. I was coming home from my shift at the hospital.”

  “Oh.” Morning. The end of a shift. Brooke had been in her room alone what? Maybe four hours. Five. Carly closed her eyes and tried to swallow.

  “So your sister has what? You don’t mind me asking. I’m a nurse.”

  “MD and CP.” Carly was ready for the litany, the explanation, a degenerative disease and a stable, chronic condition. Yes, both. At once. The same time.

  But Mrs. Candelero didn’t ask a question, nodding, finally saying, “That’s unusual. But it happens. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen just about everything.”

  One machine stopped, and Mrs. Candelero opened it, pulling out her grown-up son's work coveralls and her nurse uniforms and shoving them in a dryer. Carly stared at the white dress, thinking she could ask Mrs. Candelero about Brooke's 99.1 fever and the red patches on her hips and the new one she found on her thigh. Mrs. Candelero was a real pain, but her hands looked like they could hold a syringe and find the reason for a fever in seconds.

  "Here it is. Grab it before it's gone."

  "Yeah."

  "It's not going to get any emptier, sweetie." Mrs. Candelero smiled, and Carly put her soap in and then the clothes.

  "You need some bleach? You definitely need some bleach for those baby things."

  "Oh. Yeah. Thanks." Carly stepped back as Mrs. Candelero poured a half cup into the special container on the side of the rim. Leaning over the open washer, Carly thought of how her house used to smell after the cleaning service had come, the bathroom so clean her mother swore, "We'll eat in there tonight," threatening to set the silverware on the toilet.

  "That should do it."

  "Thanks, Mrs. Candelero."

  "Call me Rosie. Everyone calls me Rosie. I don't know where you got this Mrs. Candelero thingy."

  "Okay. That's what our mom tells us--" She stopped, hoping Mrs. Candelero, Rosie, wouldn't pick up the mom conversation again. "Rosie's a nice name."

  "It always worked for me. Well, I'll be back. Got to go pay that old fart Ted the rent. Worst day of the month, if you ask me."

  As Rosie left the room, Carly nodded as if she’d known this all along, just like everyone. Rent. Would her mother have paid it before she left? What about the other bills? The P.G. and E? The water? The first few hours after Carly came home from school to find her mother gone and Brooke wet and crying in her room, she'd torn through the house for clues, a note, her purse with a phone number. But everything was gone--her address book, her wallet, her palm pilot that she didn't use any more. She couldn't even find the bills, so she hoped her mother had paid them or at least taken them with her. That was it, Carly thought, breathing in sharply. She'd pay them from wherever she'd gone. Or she'd be home soon. Very soon. Soon enough to pay the rent and find out why Brooke had a fever. Soon enough to buy more formula.

  Another one of Rosie's machines stopped, the room banging silent, and Carly carefully pulled out the wet clothes, bras, underwear, shirts, Rosie's son's socks and boxers and put them in a dryer. Before she closed the round glass door, she stared at the pile, seeing a life in the clothes she'd never thought about, the personal, private things all glopped together, showing they were a family. Her own loads might be mixed, but they weren't together. Brooke was never a part of anything because she was sick, Ryan tried to forget them every single day, and she? She was alone now that her mom and dad were gone. It didn't matter whose underwear was nex
t to hers.

  Carly closed the dryer door and loaded the washer with the darks, Ryan's shirts and jeans, her pants and tops. Carly slipped the quarters in their slots, one, two, three, four, listening to them clack in place, ignoring the sounds coming from the monitor in her basket, her sister's cries, her whine for "Ma, Ma, Ma."

  Carly pressed the quarters in with the heel of her hand, liking the hard feel on her skin, the definite, cold sound of the coins sliding into the machine. Putting her arms on either side of the washer lid, she bent down and pressed her cheek on the top and closed her eyes, wishing the whir could scramble her thoughts so that she would forget about rent and bills and Brooke. Especially Brooke.

  TWO

  The baby was crying. The baby always cried; she hadn't stopped once, not since she was born, not for five long years. Within her body, Peri carried the silence she craved until it grew so big she knew she was going to explode. She could feel it pressing against her ribs like a white balloon, pushing out everything else that was in her, air, voice, tears. For days, she'd forced herself to be still, scared that any movement would crack open what she wanted tucked safe under her ribs. She'd closed her eyes, repeating the old phrase from sixth-grade sleepovers under her breath, "As light as a feather, as stiff as a board." It was a chant they'd used while pretending to levitate each other, the words turning flesh to air. And even though she’d heard herself talk to Ryan and Carly, she hadn’t been paying attention to them. Even under the bed covers, she had heard the cries and felt the way she moved inside her body. She was in the space that was pushing and pushing against bone to get out. It didn't matter if she was feeding the baby or sitting on the edge of the bed staring at her--she was focusing on that part of herself that wanted to explode; she could see glass shattering, body parts, blood, Brooke in the air, flying as she could never walk, Carly covering her eyes, screaming, Ryan in the corner staring at her, his mouth open.