When You Go Away

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  "Grandchildren! Well. That’s a surprise. But is that any way to come out of a house?"

  "What's it to you?" Ryan asked loudly. "We're going on a walk, if it's legal."

  The witch woman stopped talking, letting her arm with the hedger fall, and Carly gave her the smile she offered teachers when someone else threw erasers or passed notes or hurled spit wads at Johnny Bowman, the retarded kid.

  "The retarded kid," she said to herself. She'd always hoped Brooke would go to school like the rest of the kids, but she'd be propped in the corner like Johnny, spinning in a wheelchair like a wind-up toy. No one ever talked to Johnny, mean boys making fun of his strangely squashed head and dead eye and throwing whatever they had on hand at him. How could that be good for Johnny or eventually Brooke? Why would her mother or anyone want that?

  "Come on." Ryan pulled her arm, and they started walking fast, faster, and finally running down the street.

  They'd found a 7-Eleven and now sat on the steps of the First Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, sipping slurpies and watching cars drive up the street that led to their grandfather's house. Carly had picked cherry, as she always did, and Ryan had too, his mouth a circle of red. He still looked the same, she thought, not turning completely into a man yet. Sure, he had some strange, wispy whiskers, his arms were tight with muscles, and his voice cracked into deepness sometimes, especially when he was mad. Which was most of the time lately. And his bones were longer and sharper. But he was still the brother she'd always known, and it felt good to sip the drinks, occasionally brushing his arm, listening to his breath, slow and steady. She was glad they were in Oakland because at home or in Walnut Creek, she wouldn't have been cool enough to hang with, the stupid sister who always acted like a kid.

  "Ahh," Ryan said, rubbing his forehead. "Cold headache."

  "I hate that." Carly was careful, sipping slowly, warming it in her mouth with her tongue before swallowing.

  He put down his cup and leaned back against the rail. "You know, Dad tried to tell me about it once."

  "What?"

  "Mom. What was going on with her?"

  "With Mom? What do you mean?" Carly looked into the red swirl of her drink, shaking her cup to mix it up.

  "He said she'd been depressed since Brooke was born. That she like didn't pay attention to anything but Brooke to keep her mind from how sad she was."

  "Mom was just fine until he left. Everything was fine until then." Carly shook her head and then sipped down the last of her drink. "I don't remember that."

  "Me either. But that's what he said."

  "When?"

  "Right before he left. He didn't want me to think he was just, you know, leaving." Ryan stood up, walked to a garbage can, tossed his cup in, and then held his hand out for Carly's. She gave it to him and then let her hands fall on her knees.

  "I remember all the doctors and Leon and the phone calls. Mom always came to our stuff. Your games and my . . ." Carly paused. She couldn't remember what she had done in that life before the divorce and the move. For a year, her whole life had been Brooke, worry, her mother, or homework. She closed her eyes and pulled at the past, remembering there had been parties with Kiana and Ashley and roller skating in San Ramon and art classes at the community center. Once there had been Brownies and birthdays at Chuck e Cheese and the Monte Veda Theatre. A whole lifetime ago there had been pottery and gymnastics and drama. "Oh, you know, the art show and all that," she said finally.

  "Maybe. But he wasn't happy. He told me. It wasn't really about Brooke as much as it was about Mom. He told me he loved us."

  “He never told me that.”

  “That’s what he said,” Ryan said, shaking his head. “This is so whack.”

  “Mom said he didn’t send the alimony. If he loved us so much, how could he let all of it happen?”

  Ryan rubbed at his mouth with his hand, licking his lips and rubbing some more. He looked down the street, as if some really hot girls were going to appear and find him with a clown mouth. “Do we really know he didn’t send the money? I mean, Mom wasn’t like totally normal or anything. Maybe she forgot to deposit the checks or told him we didn’t need anything.”

  “Why would she do that? She was the one who had to drive Brooke everywhere. She’s the one who had to stay! So Dad wasn’t happy. Big damn deal!” The same feeling she'd had in her stomach earlier came back, twisting the red drink around in her body. She knew that if she'd decided to quit the seventh or eighth or whatever grade because she wasn't happy, no one would have let her. They’d have made her stay and listen to Señora Ortiz go on and on about tomatillos and gazpacho. When she got sick of Ryan and his teasing and hit him in the arm, her mother made them apologize to each other. Once, Kiana had tried to drop her like a disease, but by the afternoon, she was sending Carly notes that read, "I'm soooo sorry. U are my best friend." People couldn't just leave when they weren't happy. Otherwise, no one would stay anywhere.

  "I hate Dad,” Carly said. “I don't care what he told you. I hate him for leaving. I hate him for what he did to Brooke." Carly leaned against her knees and began to cry, seeing Brooke's body and the scary red spots, the peg in her stomach, the plug at her throat, the way her mother looked surprised each morning as if she hadn’t expected to find herself still in the apartment, Carly sleeping next to her, Brooke moaning in the bed on the other side of the room.

  Ryan moved closer and put his arm around Carly’s shoulder. She tucked her head against his chest, smelling his Old Spice deodorant and the fuzz of his flannel shirt, one that hadn't made it to the laundry room yesterday. Pedestrians walked past them, their voices lowering when they saw Ryan and Carly huddled on the stairs, and all she could think was, He's touching me and doesn't care who sees, not even if it’s girls. She cried some more, feeling the pain in her stomach lighten and lift and disappear

  Carly was wiping her eyes, laughing at something Ryan said, when the Corvair pulled up, and their grandfather leaned out the passenger's side window. "There you are."

  He opened the door and sat back up. Ryan and Carly stood up and got into the car, and Ryan closed the heavy door, Carly in the back seat this time, looking at her grandfather's eyes in the rear-view mirror. He wasn't mad or he was pretending not to be.

  "You two got me in a load of trouble," he said, starting down the street away from his house. Carly bit her lip. Did Fran find out they’d escaped through the window? Did this mean they had to go back to Grandma MacKenzie's or worse, a home or something?

  "That witch Mrs. Trimble told me all about the kids pouring out of the house and talking rudely to her. I had to listen to her for about ten minutes before I could get out of there. Next time, go out Carly's window, okay?"

  Ryan smiled and said, "I'm sorry. About that and, you know."

  "Don't worry about it. Maybe later, I'll make you paint the fence. The whole Tom Sawyer routine. But we're okay."

  Ryan nodded and looked back at Carly, who sat forward holding onto the front seat. "Where are we going?"

  "That's the interesting part. I thought we'd grab some tacos and then head back out to the hospital to see Brooke again. Fran will be there, and she wants to talk with you two about school."

  "If we can go to school out here?"

  "Yeah. To see if we can get that all started. We really have to wait until your dad gets here. But we can start talking. There's something else."

  "What?" Carly asked.

  "They want you to talk with a doctor. You know, a psychiatrist."

  "Now they think we're whacked out? We're the crazy ones?" Ryan said. "They probably think all of this is our fault."

  "No, no, no. That's not it at all. They want to know how the divorce and your mother leaving affected you."

  "Um, duh!" Ryan said. "Like it takes a doctor to do that?"

  "You're right. It's been darn obvious. But it needs to be official. Then the doctors will talk with the social worker and then maybe a judge."

  Carly sat back, her words hiding in
her throat. She didn't want to talk to another stranger about her parents or Brooke. Telling Rosie had been hard enough. It would take her whole life to forget the way Rosie had nodded, telling her it was okay to keep talking, holding Carly’s hand between her own. No matter what Carly said, even when she mentioned the fever and the sores and then her mother driving away, Rosie didn't flinch or gasp. Because she was a nurse, she'd been able to see what was wrong with Brooke and their whole family, even during the days Carly walked around like everything was normal.

  Carly didn't want another person to think her life was weird or her mother crazy. All morning at the hospital, she’d seen nurses whispering and giving her sad looks, the same looks she herself might have given a litter of abandoned kittens in a woodpile. Poor little girl. Poor little loser.

  When she looked up, her grandpa was gazing back at her, his brown eyes crinkled at the corners. "Carly, trust me. Everything will be all right. It might take awhile, but everything is going to be fine."

  She nodded, wanting to believe him more than anything.

  "Ka!" Brooke kicked her legs, turning her face to Carly, who sat down on the chair by the hospital bed. She took her sister's hand and pressed it against her cheek. Brooke's skin was cool now, pale. Without thinking about the nurse standing behind her, she pulled up the sheet to look at the red spots covered with gauzy bandages. Brooke kicked again.

  "Dar i Ma?"

  "Grandpa already told you, silly. She went to visit Dad. But she'll be back in two day-" Carly bit the last word at the end, wishing she hadn't given Brooke a time frame. She didn't know exactly when their mother was flying in with Uncle Noel, and she certainly didn't know if they'd be able to see Brooke right away. She'd listened to Grandpa Carl on the phone, heard the words extradited, incarcerated, hospitalized, halfway house. Carly wasn't sure how they applied to what their mother had done, but none of them meant she was going to move back into the apartment and take care of them.

  "Na!"

  "No. Not now."

  "Ka, Ka. Na! T?

  Carly brought a hand to Brooke's hair. Someone had washed it. Each strand was a gleaming wand of red. "Don't please me, Miss Nice. I promise she'll be here soon."

  "Pay," Brooke said, holding out her hand.

  "You ready to play? Fine." Carly took her hand and held up a finger. "This is the Mommy finger. Oh, and this is the Daddy finger. Where's the Brooke finger?"

  "De!" Brooke squealed and held up her other hand, her index finger pointed.

  "Oh. I forgot. Brookey is special. She's got a whole hand to herself."

  "Mo."

  "This is the Carly finger, and this smelly, farty finger is who?"

  "Ra!" Brooke's head went back with laughter, and Carly heard feet clack on the tile behind her.

  "Carly?"

  She turned, and Fran was standing next to the nurse, a notepad in her hand. Behind her, she saw Ryan and Grandpa Carl. "Yeah?"

  "Can we talk for a little bit? Ryan and your grandpa will come in with Brooke."

  "Okay." She kissed Brooke's hand and put it down on the bed.

  "Naaaa," Brooke wailed. "Ka!"

  "Shhh. Grandpa and Ryan are here. You heard that. Don't be a bad girl."

  "T?"

  "Don’t 'please' me, you. Here they are."

  Grandpa Carl patted Carly's shoulder as she left the room. Ryan walked by her, his eyes on the floor. "What?" she asked.

  "Don't ask," he said, flicking her a look, his eyes red and watery

  "Tell me what it is." she whispered.

  "You'll find out."

  NINE

  The whispers were like bugs at her ears, and Peri tried to open her eyes, but her lids were too dense and thick to move, so she listened, tasting the air, which had changed, become lighter than before, less chemical, the smells Clorox and cotton and clean tile floors.

  "So why is she still asleep?" It was her brother, Noel.

  A voice she had not heard before answered. "When she got here, she was psychotic. So she was given Haldol injections."

  "Haldol?"

  "An anti-psychotic."

  “Is that what she is now?” Noel asked. “Psychotic?”

  “We think it was an episode. A component of her depression, which may be situational or chronic. We don’t know that yet.”

  "Oh. But physically?"

  "She lost a lot of blood. She nicked an artery when she broke the glass. We also gave her some pain medication."

  "Shit." She heard footsteps, and the creaking of a chair accepting a body. Peri wanted to wave, but she could feel the restraints on her arms and her legs, her body as paralyzed as her voice.

  "We'll have to keep her for at least three days before you can take her back. Hospital policy. And the police need to talk with her."

  "What do you think?"

  There was a silence, the sound of the chair releasing the sitter, and more footsteps, Noel and the new voice walking back into the hallway, whispers she couldn't hear, and she slid once more into sleep.

  "How are you doing?"

  Testing her lids, which were lighter now, Peri pulled them open, her eyes no longer sore. She looked up into Noel's face. He was smiling, but he looked worried, as he had since a child, permanent creases on his forehead and one between his eyes. "I'm okay."

  "Do you know what happened?"

  She stared past him at the window, the air behind is so pale, so clear. How could she not know what happened when so much had? Each of her losses and pains seemed to piggyback on the one before it, her father, Brooke, her husband, her mother. How could she forget when the load had knocked her down?

  "Yes. How are they? Are they okay?"

  Noel nodded and then shrugged. "Carly and Ryan are at Dad's."

  Anger bloomed in her mouth, words forming on her tongue, but she bit them back behind her molars. How could she be mad at her father now after what she herself had done? She was no better than he was. Like father, like daughter, both failures as parents.

  "Brooke?"

  "She’s in the hospital. I don't know all the details because I had to leave to come here, but she's being taken care of."

  Peri needed her hands on her face, but the cloth held her down. She couldn't bear to look at Noel, let him see her as she was, a mother who'd left her disabled daughter at home with her 13- and 15-year-old siblings to care for her. Knowing Ryan these days, it was more than likely that Carly did it all, fed and bathed and comforted Brooke, just as Peri had taught her. Because there was no other way to hide, she closed her eyes, trying to keep in the tears that slid nonetheless down her face, hot and true.

  "Why didn't you call me? Why didn't you let us know where you were?" Noel was crying, too, but she still couldn't face him. "Periwinkle, please tell me."

  His old name for her was ridiculous here, in the loony bin. She didn't deserve a nickname, she didn't deserve her children. As she lay in her bed listening to her parents scream at each other, when she was seven and found all her father's drawers empty, no socks, no underwear, no ties, as the doctors looked at her across the desk, saying palsy and dystrophy, Peri figured she deserved only half a family—or else, why would her father have left? Now, she deserved whatever the police would do to her in Phoenix and what they would do to her at home. Graham had been right to leave her, to hide in his house as she banged on the front door. She was nothing if not bad, nothing if not a horrible mother. He had known her better than anyone, after all.

  Sitting at another doctor's desk, in another uncomfortable chair, Peri tucked her hair behind her ears and licked her lips, not knowing what to say. What could she say? She did it all, didn't she? Running away, deserting her kids, breaking into Graham's house when he wasn't even there. His wife hadn't been lying; Noel had told her that Graham had been out of the country for a week. What else, then, did this doctor want from her that he couldn't read in that report?

  She pulled her hospital robe around her and wished she could just go back to her Haldol haze, but they said she did
n't need as much now. They said she was better. Her stitched up arm throbbed.

  "So how long before you left your apartment had you been feeling depressed?"

  Peri looked up, her eyes filling. Could give him the true answer, the answer that would make her even worse than before. "Since--since my youngest daughter was born."

  "Have you sought counseling before" He adjusted his glasses and pinched his nose as if holding in a sneeze.

  "Yes."

  “For what? How you felt about your daughter?”

  She rubbed her legs, so glad to have her hands free. What hadn’t she seen a counselor for? In college, she had stumbled into the health center after a panic attack before a test, and ended up talking about her father and the divorce. After Brooke was born, she sat in support groups, listening to parents talk about wheelchairs, mainstreaming in public schools, disappointment, fears for the future, anger at God for allowing children to be born so disabled. Peri found herself revealing the tension with Graham, her frustration, the darkness of long, sleepless nights. But after Graham left, there wasn’t time for groups, and then there wasn’t energy. There was no one to whom she could describe the way Brooke looked at her as she walked into the bedroom, her eyes as wide as they could get, glistening, her arms held up as if Peri could solve her problems. As if Peri could do anything.

  “Yes. My marriage. But I haven’t been for a while.”

  "Medications?"

  "Some Xanax now and then. To relax. That's what the doctor said."

  The doctor wrote on his pad. He hadn't given her his name; or maybe, she didn't remember what it was, the Haldol still gripping her head. She must still be inhabiting that other body that drove her to Phoenix because no one had let her do anything—phone calls, showers, clothes--the nurse saying, "You'll talk to the doctor. Then we can see.” Noel had promised he'd call and find out about Brooke, a lawyer, her crime, and she sighed, sinking deeper into the chair. She was glad he was doing it. That someone else was doing everything.