"What about the kids?” Peri said quickly. “Do I get to see them before I go? Do I get to see Brooke?
Fran turned to her, and Peri ducked her head again, knowing this woman could rightly spit on her if she wanted. How could she, a mother who'd left the very children she now wanted to see, ask for anything? "Later,” Fran said. “Not for a day or two at least. And, of course, they'll come to you and be supervised the entire time."
"Of course," Peri said. She deserved nothing more, maybe not even that.
Peri had another roommate, a woman who swore under her breath as she moved around the cell. Her name was Sophia, and she jangled as she talked, her hands and jaw like musical instruments that needed constant strumming. "Got any cigarettes?"
"I don't smoke."
"You will," Sophia said, walking into the great room, where other woman sat at tables reading or playing cards. Peri watched her move from group to group, never sitting down, touching her hair and shoulders, finally getting a cigarette from a woman who was reading the Contra Costs Times. The woman put her pack down on the table, and slid it toward Peri's roommate, then looked up at Peri, and shrugged.
"Mackenzie. Visitor."
Peri almost flinched at the guard’s announcement, and stared at the cigarette woman, who cocked her head toward the area of the door. Peri smoothed her hair with nervous hands, stood up, and walked into the great room, nodding slightly at the woman, but she'd already pulled the paper up and hidden her face. A guard stood in front of the open door, looking at the other women as Peri approached.
"Mackenzie?"
"Yeah."
"Follow me." Peri did as she was told, her head down. Outside of the room, she was visible to other eyes. Guards and staff walked past her, knowing what she had done. Here she was, the woman who left her kids and went crazy. Peri kept moving, but all she wanted was back in her cell and her bed, needing to hide under the blanket as she had for months, the world a fuzzy noise beyond her.
The guard didn’t stop, and Peri stared at the guard’s thick rubber soled boot heels, up and down, up and down, until she was in a room, where her father sat at a table. She glanced at the guard, assuming there'd been a mistake. Peri had expected the traditional scene from movies, visitors sitting on one side of a Plexiglas screen, prisoners on the other, all conversation held through black phones. But this? This was almost normal, even though the guard stood right outside the door watching them.
Her father stood up gingerly, as if he had a tennis injury, but as she walked closer to the table, she saw that he was nervous, his hands shaking slightly, his face pale. "Peri? How are you, honey?" He held a hand out and then let it fall to his thigh before she'd had a chance to decide what to do about his offering, the hand she'd ignored for a long time.
"I'm okay. I've talked with Fran and a doctor and my lawyer."
"Ah. That Preston fellow."
"Right." Peri was still stunned by the amount he’d talked, his ideas and papers flowing the entire half-hour. She'd wanted to like him--really, she wanted to feel he would save her--but she found herself nodding, staring at his perfectly white teeth, his cleft chin, the blunt ends of his long fingers. He'd answered his own rhetorical questions, patted her on the shoulder, and left, promising her, "This won't be as bad as you think."
"So. Are you feeling--do you feel better?"
"Did Noel tell you what the doctors said?"
Her father nodded, and she saw the new pink bald spot on the top of his head, freckled from countless hours of sunny tennis. How old was he now? Sixty-five? Maybe less. For all the years since the divorce, she'd only followed her mother's birthday, and once she died, Peri had forgotten that too, grateful there was one less thing to remember.
"I'm okay. I just went crazy,” she told him plainly, as if she were reporting any old news.
“You’re sick, Peri. Not crazy.” He nodded as he talked, his hands clasped together and resting on the table.
She looked down at her own hands, thin, the skin dry. “Whatever it is, I think I've been like this for a long time. But it wasn't until . . . ."
"The divorce. Graham."
"Yes," she sighed, rubbing her forehead. "I couldn't hold it together. Every time I thought I had one thing fixed, I'd find something else was wrong."
Her father reached a hand across the table. "Oh, honey. I know there's been some bad blood between us, but you had to know you could call me. You could have gotten me on the horn anytime, and I'd have been there in a second."
His hand was warm, as it always had been. When she was a little girl, she loved it when he picked her up by her wrists and put her on his shoe tops, dancing from the hall into the kitchen, where her mother was making dinner. She used to watch him do the crossword puzzle, asking her mother, "What's a 'lustrous fabric'?" or "What’s another word for ripen? Three letters." She'd share his bowl of pretzel sticks and take tiny sips from his martini, begging for the olive with its red pimento middle. Her mother and Noel faded into the background, and it was just her father, his smile, his hands rubbing her hair, handing her a pretzel.
"I know. I should have done a lot of things,” Peri said.
“You’re better.” He nodded again, hopeful.
“I am. I'm on tons of drugs, at least for a while. Dad?"
"What?"
"It wasn't me. It wasn't me at all."
"Honey," he said, moving closer, holding her arm, then shoulder, pulling her head to his shoulder. "I know it wasn't you. It wasn't you at all. You're a good mother. You love those kids. You were at the end of your rope, that's all."
"I left them. I thought I was going to explode. I left them at home. I left Brooke in her bed and she got sick," she wailed, pushing her face against him. "I did it all wrong."
He scooted his chair even closer, and she felt his breath, full of something he wasn't saying. "Don't. Don't say that about yourself. You did your best. You thought you were going to hurt them, so you left. That’s brave. Very brave. Now . . . we just have to--we have to wait."
"What do you mean?"
"Shhh… Shhh…." he whispered, holding her tight, patting her with his hands, the same hands from all those years ago, the ones she waited a whole workday for. "You didn't mean it. You're better now. You'll get even better. We all make mistakes. Shhh . . ."
"Oh, Dad. I’m so sorry. I'm so sorry," she said, not knowing what she was apologizing for. "But it doesn’t matter. They'll take them from me. I don't deserve them. I don’t deserve anything. I never have."
"Don't say that. No, No. Don't say that at all. It's not over. I'm taking care of it, my brave girl," he said, and Peri closed her eyes, wanting to believe the promise of his words, choosing to ignore the fear in his voice.
FOURTEEN
Saturday afternoon, Carly climbed the oak tree in her grandmother's backyard, pulling up on the very branch her father supposedly fell off of when he was little, breaking his arm. Maybe she would fall, too, and then all the attention could be on her. And then maybe they'd take her to the hospital, and she could see Brooke. Otherwise, no one would offer to take her today, and Brooke would be lonely all by herself. Maybe Grandpa Carl or Uncle Noel had gone. Her mother couldn't because she was in jail now. Carly wouldn't be able to see her until tomorrow, and that was only a half-hour visit in some room with her Grandmother Mackenzie there and guards.
Ryan had disappeared, barely finishing his Corn Chex and not even looking at their father, who'd left the house before Ryan did to talk with lawyers. Carly leaned down on the thick branch, hugging it with her thighs, letting the bark dig into her cheek. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the smell of the tree, the dirt and rain and moss that grew like fuzz on the undersides of the branches. When she was at Grandpa Carl's, at least people had paid attention to her. The Fran had asked her a lot of questions and so had the doctor who'd asked her all about her family. Grandpa and Rosie had made sure to visit Brooke. Now it was like her dad had taken over the show, forgetting that she was
the one who had made the hard decisions. She'd taken care of Brooke. She'd gone to get Rosie.
Carly sat up and pushed back, finding the trunk with her feet, gripping with her Keds as she climbed down the tree. Rosie would know how to get her out of this mess. She'd find out about Brooke and her mother. And after the last two months of not knowing where anyone was, Carly had made sure to write Rosie's, her grandfather's, and her uncle's phone numbers down in her Britney Spears notepad. She'd never be lost again.
"What's going on there?" Rosie asked on the phone.
Carly looked around Grandfather MacKenzie's old study, the phone an ancient black thing from the 60's. It even had holes where you put in your fingers and dialed the numbers, just like a baby toy. Somewhere in the house, her grandmother was talking with Maritza about dinner, her impatient heels clacking on the wood floors as she ordered everyone around.
"Ryan took off,” Carly said. “I don't know where he went. No one cares. My dad is like talking to lawyers. He thinks I'm going to go down and live with him in Arizona."
Rosie sighed and dropped something, a spoon on the counter or a fork in a sink. Carly could almost smell the kitchen she'd been in once, a dark red meat sauce bubbling on the range. "When do you get to see your Mom?"
"Not until tomorrow. For like a half-hour. Then we have to talk with Fran again. That is if we can find Ryan. And no one is talking about Brooke."
"Listen, she's okay. I'll sneak in today to check on her. I know your Uncle Noel and Grandpa Carl are working really hard on all this. You shouldn't be worrying about it."
"But I'm the one who cared in the first place."
"That's true. But now the so-called adults are taking over. It's what always happens. No one cares and then too many people care, and probably the wrong ones at that. But let me tell you this, no one is going to let anything else bad happen to Brooke."
"Can you come get me? Can I come stay with you?" Carly said, forcing out the ridiculous words. More than anything, she wanted a warm smell and a warm person, and if she were with Rosie, she'd be closer to her apartment and what was left of her mother.
"Listen, if it were up to me, I'd come get you in a heartbeat. No lie there, sweetie. But I'm only an older woman with no real connection to you. Not that I don't care, don't get me wrong. I really do."
Carly nodded, realizing it was true. Maybe they hadn't known Rosie more than a week, but she did care about them. She liked them, even Grandpa Carl. Carly could tell. She'd even been nice to Grandma Mackenzie. "I know. But I hate it here. I hate my dad. I don't hate my grandmother, but she's acting totally weird now. Like she knows more than anyone else."
"Too many people with too much to lose, Carly. In a way, your Grandma lost your dad when he moved to Arizona. And with him not home and your mom getting sick, she lost you three kids, too. She’s fighting for you the same way your Grandpa is.”
Carly had never imagined her grandmother needing anything other than order and quiet. “You think so?”
“Sure do. Everyone is digging their trenches. But it can't go on forever."
When she was little, forever seemed exactly that; time went on and on and on. Summers used to stretch out in long hot waves of time. But when she suddenly had to wake up to an alarm during the fall of her seventh grade year, time was cut in pieces, measurable chunks in periods, semesters, months. Forever became a dream. Now she wanted someone to tell her, "This will all be settled in exactly two months and one day" or something like that. No one--not even Rosie--seemed to know anything. "Okay."
"Don't give up. I'll call your grandpa and find out the latest. Try to give me a ring tomorrow. I have to work during the day, but I'll be home in the evening. And then you can tell me what it was like to see your mom. Just remember that it's going to be weird. She's in a jail. Don't let the setting scare you. She's still your mom."
"I know," she said, but she wasn't sure if she really meant it. A mom didn't leave. A mom didn't leave a child like Brooke. "Bye, Rosie. Thanks."
"Bye, sweetie."
As she hung up, she looked out the window at the tree, and there was Ryan, sitting on the same branch she'd clung to earlier, smoking a cigarette, not caring who saw. But no one except Carly did see, and she watched him until he'd finished and smashed the butt on the branch, flicking it toward the house and then lighting another one.
After a ton of phone calls that Carly pretended not to listen to, and a huge miracle, Grandpa Carl ended up picking both Ryan and her up on Sunday afternoon. Grandma Mackenzie had combed her hair like she was six again, but because Carly knew Grandpa was coming, she let her, even tolerating the purple barrette Grandma clipped in her hair.
Ryan combed his own hair, parting it the way he used to a couple of years before, and they both sat in the living room by the picture window, waiting, their father pacing in the entry way.
"I don't like this, Mom. I don't see why we can't take them. I don't think they should see her the way she is. You know--strung out."
"Graham, we've already gone over this. And not here." She pulled him into the kitchen, and Carly listened not to the words but to the inflections, waiting to see who would get mad first and if the anger would change anything. She tried not to breathe, hoping the moments would pass, and then as if in her imagination, the Corvair rumbled and hummed up the hill. Grandpa tapped out a honk, once, twice, and before Grandma Mackenzie or her father could do any more than say goodbye, they were out the front door.
Grandpa had put the top down, and Carly sat in the back seat. After a couple of windy miles, her Grandma-ed hair flipped up and out of the barrette, the smooth spring air pushing at her face. Grandpa Carl had the radio on the same oldies channel, and when she closed her eyes, it was three, four, five years ago, and he was taking her to Tilden Park to ride the little trains or to the merry-go-round. Ryan was with them, talking about soccer, and Brooke was home in Monte Veda, Leon giving her a workout on the big rubber ball. Her mother and father were drinking coffee at the kitchen table, and nothing at all was wrong anywhere.
They were silent the whole way to the jail--all of them pretending to listen to the Hotel California song. When they finally arrived, Carly's body was full of swirling wind and air, her head buzzing as she slid out of the back and closed the door. The parking lot was almost deserted, and downtown Martinez was quiet except for a few cars and people on bicycles swooshing by. Right now, she guessed that no one thought she was a girl going to see her mother in jail. Maybe they thought she was a girl going shopping with her grandfather and brother, a typical Sunday thing to do. Or maybe it all showed, the terrible things that had happened in the past year like writing on her back, the words spelled out in glitter pen on her shirt: I'm a girl whose mother went crazy. I'm a girl whose parents don't care.
"Come on, guys. Here we go," Grandpa Carl said, and he did know the way because he'd come here yesterday. He knew what to expect because he’d seen her already. When they first got in the car, he told them both, "She's better. She really is. She’ll be more like the Mom you remember."
Carly and Ryan followed behind Grandpa, letting him lead the way past security devices and guards. Carly closed her eyes as a woman guard whisked a wand over her body, thinking of the cartoons and comedies she'd watched where an enormous file or gun was hidden in a cake. Did they really think she would do that? Did they really think she would try to get her mother in more trouble after all of this? Carly wanted to catch the woman's eyes to tell her it was better her mother was in jail than wandering the streets or driving to another state in the Honda, but the guard was all business, and soon Carly was waiting for another guard to finish with Grandpa Carl.
After doors opened and shut behind them once, twice, they were in a room with a door on the other side and windows in a row. There were empty tables and chairs pulled away from them, evidence that another visiting family had just left.
Carly pressed her hands flat against the new jeans Grandma Mackenzie had bought her at Macy’s. She wondered what
it would be like to have two strange people in her family, Brooke and now her mom. She'd gotten used to having Brooke, knowing that some girls wouldn't want to be her friend, as if what Brooke had was contagious. Her friends would be grossed out by the way Brooke's body twisted and by the strange way she had to be fed, so Carly didn't talk about her, and no one ever asked to see Brooke. Once, even before the divorce, she'd found her mother crying, the telephone in her hands. When her mother had seen Carly, she'd stood up, wiped her eyes, and hung up the phone, saying only, "When it comes down to it, Carly, some people aren't really friends." Carly expected the looks strangers gave them as they took Brooke places, especially after her father left and her mother had to carry her into appointments. She saw the "Poor family" and the "What's wrong with the kid?" in their eyes, Worse was "How disgusting" and "They should keep her inside" when her mother took Brooke to the swimming pool or the movies.
But now her mother was strange in her own way, locked up in this concrete building, guards at every door and window, everyone stern and focused, knowing that they kept good people safe from the bad. The newspapers had gotten hold of the story because Grandma Mackenzie had grabbed the Metro section before Carly could look at it, saying, "Maritza, take this to the recycling."
Carly sighed, and then looked up. What happened next was like a movie, her eyes the camera, her body somewhere behind it. Her mother walked down the hall beyond the row of windows, step by step coming closer to the door. In front of her was a woman guard, who wouldn’t know that this was the very first time Carly or Ryan had seen their mother since she'd run away. If she did, maybe the guard would be whispering to her mother, telling her the right things to say and do, which would make Carly feel better, like there was a plan to all of this. What do you say to your mom after she abandoned you? Carly wondered. How could she ever say she understood?
The heavy door opened and closed with a whish of air, the sound of the lock a metal echo that seemed to rattle the empty tables and chairs. The guard stood just outside the door, looking in but probably not really seeing anything, probably thinking about her real life.
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