When You Go Away

by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

  "My real name's Brittany. Can you believe that? Like I'm going to go around with that kind of name? So I changed it last year. Well, like in December. No one calls me it though."

  "I'll call you Simone." Carly understood the need to change, knowing that if she really wanted to, she'd have to start with the past two years or even more, imagining a new life to fill in her story. But you couldn't just change a life like you could change a name. All that had happened and was happening would be with her like the color of her eyes and hair, different from the rest of her families', but all her own.

  "You will? That is like so cool. And I mean it. I won't say a thing about you know, your sister and mom and all that. It's like our secret."

  "Our secret," Carly repeated. Simone grabbed a chip from the bag, and Carly smiled, picked up her sandwich that Maritza had made for her, glad to have someone to share her secret with at last.

  

  That night, Carly turned sleepless on her sheet, listening to the sounds of a late spring storm against her window, the push of new leaves hitting the glass, twirling and twisting before falling to the ground. Carly tried not to think about Maxie, continuously curling and curling in the dog house, trying to find a warm spot. Sighing, she silently promised Maxie that she'd wake up early and let her out of the pen, sneak her in the laundry room and give her some of Maritza's fluffy scrambled eggs.

  Brooke's nurse walked up and down the hall every twenty minutes or so, stretching her legs, and someone was on the phone, probably Grandma, the constant lull of her voice rising through the floorboards. Finally, around twelve, Jed and Buster still on their last round-up, Carly got out of bed and put on the soft slippers her grandmother had bought her, not wanting her to "run around like a savage in bare feet."

  Quietly opening her door, she peeked out into the hall. Ryan's door was shut, no radio or computer games seeping into the hall. Carly walked to the stairway, and held onto the banister, sliding down the slick wood, her slippers shif, shiffing as she moved. On the second floor, she followed the sound of her grandmother's voice, and then stood next to the bedroom door, her ear against the cool wallpapered wall.

  "But, Graham,” her grandmother said. "But, Graham."

  In the pause, Eustace, who had followed Carly down, twisted and twirled around her ankles, purring and licking her bare skin.

  "You can't just do that. This is not about you, Graham . . . . Well, I know. But the children? Brooke? . . . . I am not the one to call them . . . No. No. Someone has to face this with some rigor. . . . Fine. You do that, and let me know immediately what they say. You can't let this go on one more second. . . Of course I will! What did I tell you? What have I always told you?"

  Carly felt an ache in her lungs and breathed in deeply. Maybe her heart had stopped as well, her whole body trying to decipher the mystery of her grandmother's conversation. What was her father doing? Who did he have to call? Eustace purred, his orange fur muted, his two long front teeth slick and gleaming with moonlight.

  "I know what is happening." Maritza glided past Carly and leaned against the wall, smoothing her plain cotton robe against her sides. "I have seen everything, todas cosas."

  "What? What are you talking about?" Carly's heart was pounding now, Maritza having appeared like a ghost in the long dark hallway.

  "He will not come back. He is staying away from now on."

  Carly looked down at the cat. Even though she had seen her father at breakfast and dinner every day for going on two weeks, his shirts ironed and hanging in the laundry room, he hadn't really been here. He had been on the phone with the lawyers or his wife Blair, talking and talking about his plans for them in Phoenix, but he'd never really looked at her. Sometimes, she would stare at him and blink, trying to bring him into focus, wondering if the next time she opened her eyes, he would have disappeared altogether. Her mother, whom she saw only once a week and who was miles away, was more home than he had been.

  "How do you know that?" Carly asked.

  "Ay, well, I listen. I hear him one night in Brooke's room, talking to her while the nurse, she downstairs. He say, 'I can't do this to you,' and 'You will be better off, Mí'ja.' Verdad, he not say Mí'ja, but he mean it. He want her to be happy, I could tell, and that mean he will not be here. It mean he will not drag her to that desert he lives in."

  "What will happen to us?" Carly whispered. They moved down the hall toward the stairs, and then her grandmother's light flickered off, and the hall was a tunnel with no end, Maritza's eyes the only light.

  "That one,” Maritza said, nodding toward Grandma’s door. “She's a meticona. How you say? A pain-in-the-ass. But she take care of you. Verdad, Mí'ja. She drive me crazy every day, but inside, she a strong woman. And she love you all. Maybe not like your grandfather. That Carl. I like him, but she take good care of you. Look at your sister already! Now, you sleep. Go to bed."

  Maritza touched her arm, and then swished away, the air around Carly full of lavender. She walked up the stairs, her feet cold on the wood, Maritza's words still in her ear.

  The day she first woke up back at the Monte Veda house to find her father gone, his shirts and razor and aftershave packed up and resting in some other room, in some other house, far away from her and her family, she'd searched the house for clues, not wanting to upset her mother, even then. All morning, she’d pulled back pillows and dug through sweaters, needing a note, a receipt, a phone number, but by afternoon, she still had nothing. As she'd sat on the back deck, the wood wet from a nighttime rain, she finally found what she was looking for, a huge empty spot in the middle of her chest that pulsed and burned, the true sign of his absence.

  Reaching her room, she went in and closed her bedroom door after Eustace slinked by, turning to see the cowboys of her father's childhood ride on without him. She didn't have to search for anything this time. He was gone, and nothing inside her hurt one single bit. Maybe he'd never been there at all.

  

  Carly and her mother were on their knees reading a page from the old copy of the Sunset Western Garden book her grandfather left in the garage for emergency information, flipping through pages for directions on how far apart to space Mexican sage. Grandpa Carl had dug up another spot, ripping sod away from the fence, and the mean old witch from next door, Mrs. Trimble (who supposedly was a really a nice lady), had given them twelve sage seedlings. "Plant them in the sun and won't you have a surprise! The purple blossoms are just wonderful!" she’d said, handing them over the fence. "I see Mr. Randall even changed the sprinkler head for you. That's something in itself."

  After a few minutes without finding the exact directions, her mother closed the book and smiled. "We'll just have to guess. Not too close together. But not too far apart, either."

  Carly nodded, and they set the plants in the soft dirt, not saying much, the air clean from the rain two days ago. They'd come to Grandpa's after her mother had visited Brooke at Grandma MacKenzie's house. Fran was now in the living room with her grandfather drinking coffee. Ryan was playing a computer game, the muffled sound of guns and blasts and helicopter battles slipping out his window.

  "So how is your new school?" her mother asked.

  "It's okay. I have a friend."

  "You do? That's wonderful." Carly looked at her mother, hearing something in her voice, a lurch over tears. She wondered why a friend would make her mother sad. Did she think that meant Carly didn't need her?

  "I just met her. I mean, I barely know her. Her name is Simone. Not really Simone. Brittany. But she wants everyone to call her Simone."

  Her mother laughed and looked at her. If she had been crying, they weren't sad tears. Not at all. "She sounds interesting."

  "She is. I had to look up all these like totally old writers that she's read. Grandma had the books in her library. Simone's really smart."

  Her mother took off her gloves and sat back, crossing her legs at her ankles, closing her eyes and looking up at the sun. For a second with her new haircut and pale ski
n, she looked like a teenager, not a mom at all. Carly sat back in the same way, her mother's shoulder against hers, her skin sun warm and soft.

  "So I went to court yesterday."

  "I know. Grandma told us."

  "Did she tell you what happened?"

  "Sort of. She said she'd let you tell us the whole thing."

  Her mother opened her eyes. "She did?"

  Carly nodded. "Yeah."

  "Well, listen." Her mother sat up, and took Carly's hand. "I pleaded guilty to a charge of neglect. And the judge said that I didn't have to go back to jail."

  Carly nodded. She'd asked her grandmother the first thing, made her tell the most important parts because she didn't want to think of that terrible place again, her mother's stringy hair and empty eyes, the long corridor she had to run down. "That's good. I hate that place."

  "But I have to do other things. I have to stay with Grandpa like I'm doing now. And I have to go to my doctor and take classes and meet with Fran."

  "Oh."

  "And I can't live with you. Not for a year at least. The judge will decide. He'll look at all my records, and talk to my doctor and Fran, and make sure I went to all my classes. He'll also want to talk to you and Ryan. Maybe Brooke if she keeps doing as well. Did you see her sitting up today?"

  Carly nodded, feeling her leg bones against the lawn, everything in her so heavy. A year. A year in Phoenix with her dad and the wife who never wanted to talk or visit. "Yeah. I saw her. Leon comes over all the time."

  Her mother hadn't met face-to-face with Leon, but Carly had heard him talking about her with Maritza, saying, "I don't know if I can forgive the woman. Look what's happened to Brooke!" He didn't even know the worst, the way it had been in the apartment, the smell, the red patches on Brooke’s skin--bedsores--the terrible way she'd looked at Carly in the morning. If he'd seen that, he'd think this Brooke was a miracle, rounder, happier, saying, "Car e, Car e" instead of "Ka." He didn't know anything.

  "So you might have to go live with your dad for a while."

  "I know."

  "Are you . . . how do you feel about that?"

  She didn't want to go to live with her dad; everything she knew was here, even if it made her mad, like her grandmother keeping Maxie out at night when all the dog wanted was to sleep on the rug in the laundry room. But that wasn't anything. She knew that now. "I want to stay here."

  "With Grandma?"

  "Yeah."

  Her mother breathed in deeply, pushing her short hair off her forehead. "Well, that's another court case. Not the one I just had. We have some time to work on it, you know? And if all of you are doing well there, it might just happen."

  "But he's our dad!" Carly said too loudly, feeling her words fill up the front yard. "Who's going to keep us away from him?"

  "I don't know," her mom said. "But I'm going to try. I promise. I know I don't have much credibility these days, but I’m going to do my best."

  All along, that's what her mother had been doing, even when she was in the bed, silent, unmoving. She hadn't died or hurt herself or them. She'd even run away because she was scared something worse was going to happen. And because her brain was sick, she couldn't imagine what that would mean for Carly or Ryan or Brooke. The last thing she'd thought of was not hurting her children. Carly looked at her mother and then closed her eyes again, her whole body alive in the spring air, feeling summer and the rest of her life just on the edge of the sky.

  TWENTY-ONE

  "Peri? Peri? It's me."

  Peri sat up in bed, her heart pounding, the phone pressed hard against her face. The kids, she thought. What's wrong with the kids, figuring in her half-awake mind that Graham knew something, had to have bad news, just like he always did. Brooke, she thought. Oh my God. Brooke.

  "What is it? What now?"

  "I need to talk. I wanted to talk with you the other day at your dad's."

  She turned on the light and looked at the clock. Twelve-thirty. "I pleaded guilty if that's what you wanted to know. I can't have the kids for a year, so you won. You got it all. You get them, and I don’t."

  He didn't say a thing, the silence behind him like a sad ghost. Her dad had told her Graham had gone home, back to that great stucco house, the door that must be fixed by now, the gate keeping everyone out, the wife who screamed and called the police. She saved my life, Peri thought now, touching the smoothed-out but still red scar on her arm. Graham's wife saved my life.

  "I don't want them."

  "You don't want them?"

  "I can't have them. I . . . don't know how to live with them anymore. I only knew how to live with them when you were there."

  Peri felt the old balloon of rage in her chest grow, and this time, it found voice. "You don't want the children? How could you not want them?" she said before wanting the words back, the ones that might convince him she was right. Why did she care so much about his words, when it meant that the children would stay here, in Piedmont or Oakland, by her? How could he not want the best thing they'd ever done together? Breathing sadness out into her room, she knew she was hearing Graham's words as Carly and Ryan would hear them, words from a father they'd loved for years before things went wrong. She saw their eyes, blue and brown, their hurt during these weeks when she'd not been able to be the mother she knew they needed, and she wanted to find the trowel and do what she'd held back from doing that day in the garden. "They are beautiful!"

  "I know. I know they are. But it's too late. I waited too long to remember how to be their father. And Brooke."

  "Too much work, right? Like always. You couldn't hire someone like your mother does? I saw that house of yours. You could give them everything."

  "Not everything."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I couldn't give them you."

  She stopped talking, staring at the wall, the yellow reading light casting her shadow against it, a shape she was used to seeing, the lump of her body under the covers. But now she felt charged, her anger at Graham, her sorrow for her children, beating alive all her nerves, even those the drugs tried to tamp down. And when his words repeated in her head, his acknowledgment that she was good for her kids, the tears came.

  "I know you didn't mean it. You were sick, Peri. And I can't . . . I can't live near you and see what I did. I know I did it. I tried to pretend, and it was easy to for a long time. But when I saw the kids and they kept telling me they didn't want to be with me, I realized how I screwed up. And it started years ago. I let you be the main parent, especially with Brooke. And you were a good mom, Peri. All those years. I'm sorry. I really am. I know it doesn’t mean anything now, but I am so sorry."

  The silence behind him filled with the echo of his sorrow, his tears against her ear. He'd cried in her arms in joy at a baby, with anger at his mother's harsh criticism, in frustration at yet another diagnosis for Brooke. There were times in her marriage he’d turned to her. These were moments she'd mentally put in snow domes, shaking them now and again to relive the moments he'd needed her. And now, even though they were no longer married, this was one of them, a time she'd think about over and over again, shaking her mind to remember his apology, his gift of their children, watching the snow fall over the moment when he gave them back to her.

  "I've withdrawn my petition. My mother is filing for custody on Monday. I made her promise that she won’t fight you when you’re able to petition for custody again. And I won't let her change her mind."

  Peri’s father quietly opened her door, and she waved, letting him know everything was all right, and he closed it softly. "What about support?" she asked Graham.

  "Everything is fixed. I've made the payment to make up for everything from before, when I didn't pay. You’re getting the wheelchair and the van. I have to special order both and Brooke will have to be fitted for her chair. There's a great place in Berkeley. But it won't be long."

  Peri felt her body relax and shift, her pulse slow and rest. There were so many words lined up on her tongue, b
ut did they matter now? Even if she kept pounding him with sentences, she would still be here, at her father's house, her brain chemistry righting herself, her arm healing, her children safe and sleeping at Garnet's. If she told him again and again what a terrible father he'd been, they would still be divorced. He'd still be living in the stucco house in the desert with another woman. He still wouldn't love her anymore.

  "Okay," she said finally. "I'll tell my lawyer tomorrow. You know there is a chance the guardian ad litem might not think Garnet's is the best place for them.”

  "I know. But that's not likely. They are all together. Near you. Near your dad and Noel. With my mom, their grandmother. At least in this, I think we'll be okay. They like being there, Peri. It’s safe. It’s solid. It’s known."

  She nodded, hearing Ryan skating off to his lesson at the park, Carly tell her about a friend at school, Brooke giggling with Leon. “You’re right.”

  “So, I’ll—“he began.

  "Do you love them?" she blurted out, remembering their tiny packaged bodies, the swaddled infants the nurses had passed to Graham who had cooed and held them to his chest. If she searched through all the photos in storage, she'd find him, his arms on Ryan's and Carly's accepting shoulders, his laughter at birthday parties, his serious Christmas-card face, all their bodies pressed together. There were only a few photos of him with Brooke, and then none at all, as if he’d been trying to erase himself from their lives, as if those other photos had never been taken at all.

  "Of course. Oh, God, Peri. I do."

  "But not enough to keep them."

  "Maybe I love them too much to keep them. Maybe I know I'm not good enough," he said, and then they were silent together, holding each other in space, listening to what wasn't said as they had done so many nights in the last years of their marriage.

  "Noel. It's me. Nothing's wrong." Peri heard fumbling in the background, a clock falling to the floor? A book? The scratch of Noel’s whiskers against the receiver, the rustle of blankets.