When You Go Away

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  Peri sat up. "He doesn’t want Brooke. He doesn't want what's in her best interest. He'll put her in a home because he can't stand looking at her."

  "Could you?" Preston asked. "Isn't that why you left?"

  "Preston! Seriously!" Noel said loudly.

  "Noel, I know this is hard. But we've got to get real here. That's what the prosecutor will ask. That's what the judge will know."

  Peri looked at her hands, thin and white and ringless. These hands could belong to anyone, she thought, but they belong to me, a mother who left.

  "She was sick. Mental illness is just that. An illness." Noel slammed his hand on the table and pushed back in his chair, crossing his legs. “And doesn’t anyone want to know how CCS could have allowed this to happen? What about Brooke’s nursing case manager?”

  Preston shook his head. “Look, dragging an underfunded state agency into this right now isn’t going to help us. Plain and simple, parents have the final responsibility for their children.”

  “But should they be?” Noel asked. “Totally? Always?”

  "Not always. We could take that tack," Preston said softly, nodding. "But right now the court is looking to put the children in the home that will be in their best interests. Think of those words: best interest. And they won't want to separate them. We've got that in our favor. But right now, Peri, you don't have a home that can support them. Graham does, and he can swear up and down he's going to keep Brooke with him and later, move her into a facility. I can argue that even with Graham, Brooke is a child in need of protection or services. But let's stop speculating. The arraignment is today. With luck, you are going to be out of jail by this evening. You'll stay with your dad, go to the doctor, get well. The investigation will go on, and I'll keep on it. After today, nothing is going to happen fast, that's for sure."

  "Will I see them again?” Peri asked. “Can I see them? Can I visit Brooke?"

  Preston’s eyes were steady and kind. He was a man like any other, not a slick person with all the answers, who understood complaints and petitions and statutes, simply a man who answered her brother's phone call. Said yes. Took the case.

  "We'll have a custody hearing soon to establish visitation. It will probably be supervised, but yes, you will see them again. We'll get you to the hospital to see Brooke. But you have to be patient. The court was very lenient with you. They could have had you arrested and then extradited. You walked yourself in here without a police officer."

  "I know."

  "So your depression and the situation with your family took months, years, to happen. It's not going to be patched up in a manner of weeks. Now that the court is in charge, it's going to take time to fix. You need to go home and get better. See the doctor. Take your meds. Visit your kids."

  She nodded and folded her arms, listening to Preston and Noel talk more about doctor and detective reports, supervised visits, judicial actions. All she could do was hold this moment to her like a blanket, clutch it as it slipped away. There wasn't any use looking at tomorrow or the next day or month or year, since everything that happened to her and her children would be decided by other people. Oh, I was so stupid, she thought. I made some horrible decisions, even though I thought they were good ones at the time.

  Preston was right. She hadn't wanted to see Brooke anymore. She deserved nothing, not even to get out of this jail and go home to live with her father. She deserved what Brooke had, a twisted body, bedsores, pneumonia. If some judge could order that, then the world would be set to biblical rights, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  "Peri!" Preston said.

  "What?"

  "Time to go. Remember. Be patient."

  The guard led her away from Noel and Preston, her county clothes hanging on her like guilt. She would never be able to forget Preston's words, not one, even if she tried.

  

  She sat in her father's Corvair, clutching a white paper bag full of medicine in her hands. She wished she had a hair elastic, but then her hair was already such a mess, no amount of wind was going to matter. And the air felt good on her body, pushing away Sophia's cigarette smoke that still smothered her like a body sock. Even in the jeans she'd worn to Phoenix and the blouse Noel had bought for her there, she felt almost new. Almost free. As if when the judge set the bail at thirty thousand and hit the gavel, she'd been released.

  "So," her dad said, his voice carried up and out of the car. He had one hand on the steering wheel, the other resting in his lap. With his Ray Bans and his baseball cap, her father could be driving her to high school, college orientation, both of them transported back fifteen, twenty years, except for the fact that she was here next to him, all grown up, arraigned on felony child endangerment charges, penal code 273 a. In her cell, there had been words to describe her condition--psychotic, depressed, abuser--but not until today in the court room did she know there was a number for her mistakes. If there was a number for what she’d done, it was real, on-paper real, punishable. Peri could still see the look in the judge's eye as he read the charge aloud.

  "So," her dad said again, "how do you feel?" Peri breathed in and was about to answer him, but then they were in the Caldecott Tunnel, the car noise a drum against her ears. She looked into her lap where she held the drugs tight. These were her sanity now. She couldn't let these get away, or she might jump in a car, drive down to Phoenix, break another window or worse.

  Her father pulled into his driveway but didn't open the garage door. He shut off the engine and got out of the car, hurrying over to her side to let her out. She tried to smile, but her body felt full of jitters. All she wanted was to go inside and fall asleep, let the sleepy side effects of the drugs take over and get her out of here, for now.

  "You haven't been here in a long time. I thought I'd show you the work I've done in the yard."

  "Okay," Peri said, holding the bag, letting her father hold her arm as they walked the lawn. The sun was too bright, the flowers too loud, but she nodded through his discussion of the foul oxalis weeds and evil crab grass, managed to "Ohh" over the Boston Ivy climbing the south wall of the house, the snow ball shrub on the white picket fence. Now he had a white picket fence? Wasn't this what she gave her Barbies in her imaginary play, a white picket fence and a lawn for croquet games and picnics? Did he really think everything could be perfect and controlled--a weed, a lawn, a fence? He'd never worked at controlling or managing her or Noel once he left. Or even when he'd been there. Yards were so much easier to handle than children, and as she looked around, she could see her father’s care in every plant and stepping stone and fence slat, all his loved poured here. Peri bit her lip, trying to not feel the ache of tears under her ribs.

  When she was a child, he'd been like a special, late night movie that she was lucky to catch, and then the show was shut down forever. How come he developed into a homebody now, when it was too late? Too late.

  "Oh, Mr. Randall?"

  Her father sighed and then turned to the corner of the yard where a blonde woman in a white gardening apron stood, holding a basket full of daisies. "Yes, Mrs. Trimble?"

  "This wouldn't be your daughter, would it?"

  Mrs. Trimble smiled at her. Peri's body loosened, and she pulled away from her father, answering for herself. "Yes. Hi. I’m Peri Mackenzie."

  "I'm Louise Trimble. I brought these for you." She raised the basket, and Peri walked over to her, clutching her crumpled bag of medicine to her chest.

  "I've met your children, you know. Very confident children."

  Peri held out her hands and took up the daises, yellow with long green stems and dark black eyes. "Lovely."

  "My yard has gone wild with this heat. So unusual for this time of year. But look at the bounty!" Louise smiled and patted Peri's arm. "You're lucky to have such a wonderful father."

  Peri looked back at her dad, who was kicking at an imaginary dandelion in the lawn. "Oh."

  "He took care of those kids of yours. I heard a lot of laughter."

  "O
h. Well. Thanks for the flowers."

  Louise smiled, and Peri looked into her eyes, light brown and full of green, the perfect eyes for a gardener. "Good luck to you," Louise said, lifting a gloved hand and disappeared into the deep green of rhododendron bushes. Peri turned to her father, who shrugged.

  "Don't ask me."

  She started to smile, but then remembered that this was what he'd always been good at: charming women, all women, secretaries, schoolmates' mothers, colleagues. She could still feel the flush of embarrassment when she’d watched him talk to her very best friend Tina's mother at sixth grade open house. One hand on her sleeve, his earnest nod, his lips turning up in a smile. Tina had said, "Look. Your dad is talking to my mom!" And Peri had known what this meant to Tina and her divorced mom. Her father's moving in toward Tina’s mom as if with interest, his jaunty hand on his suited hip, was a promise that both Tina and her mother would now expect to be fulfilled. She didn't blame them for it either. She wanted the same thing. But he wouldn't keep the promise. He’d forget Tina's mother's name on the ride home and turn to Peri asking "Who?"

  Mrs. Trimble’s eager greeting proved that nothing had changed at all.

  Her dad had made up the bed in the same room Carly had slept in, and Peri wished he hadn't changed the sheets, wanting to bend down and smell her girl, breathe in what Carly had denied her during their visit. She ran her hand over the bedspread, and then stood up and walked down the hall to the study where Ryan had slept. But no, the hideaway bed had been converted back to a sofa, pillows fluffed, blankets folded and put away in the closet. If she wanted her children, she had to behave. She had to get well. Or sneak out of the house and hike to Garnet's late at night, peer into windows, slip through open doors. But that was the exact behavior that had gotten her here, back with her father, lost to her own life.

  In the kitchen, her father was just hanging up the phone. "Guess what? I've been able to arrange a visit with Brooke. Day after tomorrow. Of course, Fran will be with you in the room, but you’ll get to see Brooke. And Fran is going to work on setting up another visit with Ryan and Carly. It will probably have to be at her office, though. Or on some neutral ground."

  Peri sat down, jittery again. "Thanks."

  "And tomorrow, you start your visits with the doctor. The psychiatrist. Once a day, really."

  "Okay."

  He sat down at the table with her, and put a hand on her arm. "Keep that steady strain. Or as a buddy of mine up at the tennis courts says, 'One day at a time.' He's usually talking about winning tennis games, but it's a good point. Let's just do one day at a time."

  Peri pulled her arm back and stared at him. "What do you think I've been doing for five years?"

  "What?"

  "With Brooke. One day at a time. That's all I could see, and then I couldn't even see the day. A minute was too much to look at."

  "Oh, sweetie. I'm so sorry."

  "Are you? Why didn't you try to find me earlier? Why did you have to wait until Noel called? He told me how it all happened."

  Her father stood up and walked to the refrigerator, opening the door, yellow light illuminating his wrinkles. There, she thought. He looks his age. He took out a carton of orange juice and poured them each a glass, bringing them back to the table.

  "I think about that all the time now. I don't know. I guess I was scared. You were so angry with me. After Graham left, it was like you brought out all that old stuff and lay it on the table."

  "You're still the same." Peri shook her head, her hair in front of her eyes.

  "What do you mean?"

  “It’s not old stuff.”

  Carl raised his eyebrows and gripped his glass. “It was thirty-one years ago, Peri.”

  "You’re still scared to talk about it. You never talked about it."

  Her father held his glass, spinning the juice in circle waves. He nodded but didn't say anything.

  "Why weren’t you around more?" she asked, looking at him now.

  "I told you. You were so angry with me."

  "No. No. I mean before. I mean when you left Mom."

  "Oh, Peri. Like I said, that's water long under the bridge."

  "Not to me. Not to me it isn't. It's right now. All of this. It's all the same thing."

  Her father glanced up, the color drained from his face. "You're not blaming me for--for this, are you?"

  "For the first part. For what you did to Mom. But I'm just like you. I learned how to leave." She folded her arms on the table and brought her head down, her cheek resting on her hand. Close your eyes, she thought. Close them and it will all disappear. But she didn't close them, listening instead to her father running his hands through his hair, tapping his feet on the floor, sliding the glass back and forth on the table.

  "Maybe you did," he said finally.

  Peri leaned her head against her palm, watching him. "Why did you go? What did she do that was so wrong? What did we do?"

  "You did nothing. Your mother didn't really either. We were just married too fast, too young, too early. I didn't know--I didn't know the difference between love and, well, lust. The next thing I knew we were married and then you came along, and I had a job and then another kid. There was my life, all charted out forever. Your mom could see I felt that way, and she fought back, and I decided I didn't need any of it. So I sacrificed you and Noel for myself. I did. I did." He placed his hands on the tabletop, fingers spread wide. "I've regretted leaving you two since, but I haven't regretted leaving that life. And I can't apologize because I wouldn't mean it, Peri. I didn't want that life."

  "You didn't want us."

  She saw him swallow. "Maybe so. Maybe so. But I do now. I want you now. I want the kids."

  Outside, four small birds chattered and fought over rungs on a birdfeeder, and Peri watched them peck each other and then rearrange themselves. There was some perfect order they were trying to find, and they battled for it, a bird squawking periodically over something lost. A car drove by too fast, and they flickered away, the feeder rocking back and forth, empty.

  She'd always known that what her father said was true, but the air felt smoother now that he'd admitted it. The hate she'd built up since Graham had left settled, stopped rising, still visible and deep but calm. "I know you want us, the kids and me. I'm glad. Thanks."

  He almost jerked at her words but then leaned forward and touched her softly, moving a warm hand down her arm and grabbing her hand. "If I can make it up, I will. But for us, it's like with this trial. One day at a time, like Ramon says. Stupid, but the way it is. Just like it was with Brooke."

  Peri nodded and her father stood up and took a casserole dish out of the fridge. "Lookie here. I've made us dinner. Believe it or not, it's your mother's old Frito and chili bean casserole."

  Peri stared at him, smiled, and then laughed, the sound punching her solar plexus. The hum of anxiety in her chest thinned and disappeared, turning to relief and space, this one minute clear and wide open.

  SIXTEEN

  On the way to visit Brooke at the hospital Wednesday morning, Peri didn't say a word. Carl kept his eyes on the road, his thighs tense, sighing deeply as the moments passed and Peri made no sound. What would he do if she were having a relapse into her depression or whatever it had been? Carl didn’t have much experience with tending to kids, much less a depressed adult, and he wished he’d made an appointment for himself with Dr. Kolakowski to ask. When Peri and Noel were little, Janice took care of all their ailments, colds and flu and whatnot. There had to be a protocol of some sort for depression, a way of talking to a person who was falling into that dark pit. As he drove, he sneaked peeks at her, expecting his daughter to laugh weirdly or pull at her hair, but she was only silent, her arms crossed over her body, her eyes on the freeway ahead of them.

  In the hospital parking lot, he shut off the engine and turned his body toward her, his jeans sliding easily on the new leather, and hooked his arm over the seat back. "Sweetie, are you ready for this? You don't have to do i
t right now."

  Peri closed her eyes. "I have to do it now. I should have done it before. I should have always done it. I can't leave her alone one more day in that place."

  "She's doing great. Rosie's been there to see her as often as possible. Garnet even called to tell me how well she's doing."

  "Has Graham seen her?" Peri's eyes widened.

  Carl shook his head. "No. No he hasn't."

  "Who's Rosie again?"

  "Rosie? Your neighbor--oh, well, she's the one I told you about. The woman who found the kids. Who called the ambulance?"

  Peri shook her head and sighed, running one hand through her hair, which was still damp from her shower. "Oh yeah. The one who saved my kids. From me. She must be something."

  "She's a nurse. She really likes the kids, too."

  Peri almost smiled. "Yeah. Likes the kids."

  Carl looked at her tentatively, expecting her to rehash the conversation they'd had a couple of days ago about why he left Janice. Peri thought he was some sort of woman magnet, and maybe he was in a superficial way, a first date kind of way, all sort of gals jostling around him. But after awhile, the crowd would thin and then disappear altogether. He was alone, wasn't he? He was trying to rustle up a date at the bridge center, for Christ's sake. Carl didn't have what it took to keep anyone. The only woman who stayed with him was Mrs. Trimble, Louise, but that was because she lived next door. But if she had a mobile home, who knew?

  "Come on, let's go see Brooke. She's going to be flat out thrilled to see you." He opened his door and swung a leg out.

  "Dad?"

  "What?" he said, looking at Peri hunched up in the corner of the seat.

  "Oh, nothing. Let's go."

  "Good girl." Carl reached out a hand and squeezed her softly, holding on until she pushed on the handle and opened the door.

  Two doctors and Fran met them by the nurses' station. He hoped Peri didn't notice how the doctors eyed her, judgment in their expressions, but Fran moved toward her and took her hand.