Just Like a Musical

by Veen, Milena

  I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “There was nothing you could have done. You must know that,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault or your parents’ fault. Life is just cruel.”

  His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed.

  “And when you told me you had that heart disease…”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my heart,” I said quietly. “Actually, it’s better now than ever before. Just don’t believe whatever my mom tells you about that. Otherwise we’ll end up with you chasing me with a bowl of hot soup.”

  We arrived to Guthrie at noon. It looked Romanesque and deserted.

  “This is how I imagine France,” Joshua said.

  I had Sarah’s address written on a piece of paper and in my cell phone, too. We found her house easily. But when I tried to move my hand and open the gate, I felt something terribly hard tumbling in my stomach.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, grabbing Joshua’s elbow.

  “Of course you can. I’ll go with you.”

  “Why don’t you ring the bell?” I took my chances.

  “You know you have to do this yourself,” he said, holding my shoulder.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I had to try, though,” I laughed.

  Then I started pulling out foolish excuses from my terrified mind. Maybe Sarah isn’t home. Maybe she isn’t home and she won’t be back until Monday. Maybe she’s sleeping. Maybe she was abducted by aliens. Yeah, I know, freaking out every time you’re supposed to talk to unknown people is such a drag.

  I felt the blackout coming.

  “I need some more time,” I said. “Let’s go for a short walk, and then I’ll do it, I promise.”

  It took me more than two hours of walking around Guthrie to calm down and pluck up my courage.

  “Okay, let’s go,” I said, glancing at the street clock.

  But when we got to Sara’s house, I decided it was lunch time and that we couldn’t interrupt her until at least 5 p.m. Joshua, on the other hand, was determined.

  “We have crossed 1400 miles, we’ve been thrown out of cars, threatened, trapped in the desert, attacked… and now you can’t ring the bell?”

  I clenched my fists, opened the gate, and six steps later, we were standing on Sarah’s front porch.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A girl about my age opened the door.

  “Can I help you?” she said. I recognized her voice. It was the same girl who was filing her nails or peeling an apple when I called. She had a round face, pink fingernails, and a haircut like Louise Brooks. She was kind of cute.

  “Hi, I’m Ruby. I’m looking for Sarah Chase,” I said.

  “You mean Cogger?” she asked, scratching her thigh. “Chase is my great-grandfather’s last name.”

  “Yes, I mean Cogger… I guess,” I answered, baffled to the bone.

  “And what do you need her for?” she said.

  “I need to talk to her. It’s personal.”

  “And who are you?” she said, pointing her chin toward Joshua.

  “I’m her friend.”

  “My aunt’s friend?” she laughed.

  “No,” he said, not allowing her to confuse him. “Of course not. I’m Ruby’s friend, Joshua.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Melody.” She smiled and nodded. “Aunt Sarah!” she shouted. “Some people are here, they want to talk to you!”

  When Sarah came running down the stairs with a smile on her young, smooth face, I felt like I was in The Twilight Zone.

  “Good day, kids,” she said, stepping out. “Are you selling cookies?”

  “Good day,” Joshua said. His voice was different. Could it be that he was nervous, too? He, who had spent two hours talking about the needlessness of my anxiety?

  “No, Mrs. Cogger, we’re not selling anything,” I answered in a shivering voice.

  For a second or two, we all stood silent.

  “I’m not even sure you’re the person we’re looking for,” I muttered, staring at her face. I was prepared to see a woman in her sixties with wrinkles or at least some decent bags under her eyes, but this Sarah wasn’t older than thirty-five.

  “I was expecting someone a little older than you,” I said.

  She raised her eyebrows, giving me a puzzled look.

  “I’m very sorry if what I’m going to say will upset you in any way,” I started talking and looked at Joshua.

  He was fighting with the winking, and his hands were trying to grab his ear. That made the whole thing even harder. The corner of my left eye caught Sarah’s right hand. It was reaching for the door handle.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Mrs. Wheeler, your… your…” That was it. My voice was just vanquished by the expression on her face. I was opening my dry mouth without a sound. Add a piano tune, and there you go – you’re watching a scene from a silent movie. I mean, even Louise Brooks was there.

  “I’m very sorry. You both seem so nice, but I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  Her hand grabbed the door handle. I snatched at my inner clapperboard. I needed to cut that scene and re-shoot it quickly, before she disappeared behind the door.

  “Mrs. Cogger, we came all the way from California to talk to you,” I said more calmly.

  “She could have come herself at least, instead sending you two. Goodbye, children,” she said and closed the door.

  I panicked. I didn’t travel more than a thousand miles to be brushed off this way. My hand nervously pressed the doorbell.

  “Mrs. Cogger, please open up!” Joshua shouted.

  I didn’t really expect her to open the door, but she did.

  “Come on in, kids,” she said. “You must be hungry.”

  And there we were in Sarah’s tastefully decorated hallway, in her life, and finally in her dining room with sage green walls and a mahogany table.

  “But aren’t you too young to be Mrs. Wheeler’s daughter?” I asked carefully.

  “Daughter?” Her eyes widened. “I’m not her daughter. I’m her granddaughter, if that’s the right word. Your Mrs. Wheeler is my mother’s birth mother.”

  Will this episode of The Twilight Zone ever come to an end?

  “But her name was Sarah, too, right?” Joshua said.

  “Yes, Sarah was her name. My mother died giving birth to me, and my grandparents named me after her.”

  This is how you feel when reality slaps you in the face with its heavy, red-hot hand: first you lose your breath, then your heart starts skipping beats, then you become aware of the numbness of your limbs, and finally, when you think that you’re about to faint, the sounds fade away and the picture gets blurry.

  “She’s dead,” I heard my strangely distorted voice say.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water,” Sarah said. “You look pale.”

  “She’s dead,” I repeated. “I never thought that she would be dead.”

  “I guess I should have told you that when you called,” said she, “but I guess I was just taken aback.”

  Melody opened the dining room door and peaked inside. She was the opposite of her aunt – her body was strong and her voice was cheerful and rang like a bell. I wanted to say something nice about Mrs. Wheeler, but I was too discouraged by the earlier determination in Sarah’s voice.

  “So what are you two to her?” Sarah asked.

  I looked at her, raising my eyebrows.

  “To Eleanor Wheeler,” she said.

  It was strange to hear Mrs. Wheeler’s name coming from the mouth of her granddaughter who she didn’t even know existed. I stole a glance at Melody. She didn’t seem so joyful anymore.

  “She’s my friend,” I said, staring at the corner of a mahogany table. Then I raised my chin and looked Sarah in the eye.

  “She’s my best friend. And she’s dying.”

  A dark shadow crossed Sarah’s face. She looked just like Mrs. Wheeler when she was talking about her daughter that Saturday evening that now seemed so far away.

  “
I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “She must be very important to you.”

  “She is,” I said. “But this wasn’t her idea. She doesn’t even know that I’m here.”

  “Maybe you would come with us and meet your mother’s birth mother?” Joshua took a chance. Saying these words, he winked at Sarah.

  “No, I don’t think so” she said, sighing silently, ignoring Joshua’s winking.

  Melody brought the food to the table. I forced myself to eat potato salad and roast beef. It tasted like paper.

  “You’ll have children of your own one day,” Sarah said.

  That’s exactly what my mother says when I complain about her behavior: “You’ll have children of your own.” But I’m not actually sure about that – having kids and all. What if they come to this world with some awful disease and spend their childhoods in hospital halls like me? Or what if I turn into a person who freaks out about not wearing tights or eating too much chocolate? Well, I know the latter is hardly possible, but still…

  “Then you’ll understand,” she added, her full lips stretching into a little smile. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not her giving my mother away that makes me angry. It’s her decision not to be involved in our lives at all.”

  “She felt too unworthy to be a part of your life… I mean, your mother’s life,” I said, fighting both with myself and Sarah to justify Mrs. Wheeler’s reasons.

  “She was a selfish coward,” Sarah said bitterly, her smile disappearing from her face.

  Those were harsh words. I wasn’t willing to listen to such accusations against my friend, not even from her own biological granddaughter. I felt Joshua’s foot slightly skimming mine under the table.

  “I think we should get going,” I said.

  “Oh, please stay,” Sarah said in a mellower voice.

  She jumped off her chair.

  “I’m going to make us some tea. Melody will take you to the living room.”

  What did this woman want? First she shut the door in our faces, then she fed us, then she said awful things about Mrs. Wheeler, and now she wanted us to stay for a cup of tea. I wanted to tell her that I only drank tea with Mrs. Wheeler, but I realized it would be a very inappropriate and rude thing to say.

  “C’mon in,” Melody said as her chubby stomach swayed under her pink T-shirt.

  Sarah’s living room was light and spacious with a brick fireplace and glass shelves. The wall to my left was covered in family photos. I tried to recognize Sarah’s face in a black-and-white one.

  “This is Aunt Sarah,” Melody said, pressing her finger against a light-haired little girl with a big grin on her face. “And these are grandma and grandpa here.”

  “Family isn’t about blood, my dear,” said Sarah, opening the door and entering the room with a china platter in her hands. “It’s about bonds. I bet Eleanor is more a family to you than she ever was to me. And I think that my mother was thankful to her for what she did. She was thankful for being given to such wonderful and caring parents.”

  I wanted to ask her how she knew what her mother felt when she never met her, but I restrained myself. Joshua was silent, too. I could see he was fighting with his own family demons.

  “I’m adopted, too,” Melody said suddenly.

  I didn’t know what to say. The gravity of the situation was beyond the ability of a seventeen-year-old girl to respond to suitably, even if she was a seventeen-year-old girl with a scar on her chest, divorced parents, and a boyfriend who had recently lost his little sister. It was too much – abandonment, regret, adoption, love, sickness, death – I couldn’t take anymore. So I said nothing.

  “I have two sons, you know. They’re in summer camp now,” Sarah said. “So Melody’s come to keep me company during the summer.”

  “Moron!” Joshua screamed.

  I caught Melody’s pursed lips out of the corner of my eye.

  “I’m really sorry, it’s not… it’s…” he stuttered, awakening from his bleak daydream.

  “It’s okay. You have Tourette’s syndrome – I noticed already,” Sarah said.

  I poured the tea down my throat.

  “We really have to go now,” I said, gently pulling Joshua’s elbow. “I think our bus is about to depart.”

  That was a lie, of course, but to listen to Sarah’s stories about her idyllic family while Mrs. Wheeler was lying in that cold hospital room was torture, and staying in her home any longer would have only caused me more pain.

  “I’ll give you my phone number… in case you change your mind,” I said knowing that wasn’t going to happen.

  “No need for that, really,” she said and gently pushed me toward the door. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “Good bye, Mrs. Cogger. Bye, Melody,” Joshua said.

  I scribbled my phone number on the piece of paper and slipped it in their mailbox. Just in case. Without any hope that my phone would ring, though.

  “Let’s go home” Joshua said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Here’s the game you can play if you ever find yourself at a bus station in Guthrie, Oklahoma with a guy who has Tourette’s syndrome and a broken nose right after your seventy-eight-year-old friend’s granddaughter blows you off right to where you came from. It goes like this: the guy picks a person and you make up the story of a person’s life. If he likes the story, it’s your turn to pick a new person. If not, you have to tell another story. It’s all about being honest, really, because he can say he doesn’t like your story even if he does, just to skip his turn.

  “Okay, the woman in the rose blouse,” Joshua said.

  “Let me see,” I answered, leaning forward so I could see her better. “The woman in the rose blouse used to be a local beauty. When she was only twenty-one, she married a wealthy lawyer and gave him five red-cheeked children, who took away all her beauty and charm. Gone were the days when her neighbors used to greet her with, ‘You’re fresh as a rose, Rose!’ Rose is forty-three now, but looks like she’s fifty-four. She works in a shopping mall, lingerie department. Watching all the fresh, young girls with smooth skin and flat bellies makes her sigh over the past. If only she had married Martin instead of Dean… he would have loved her more, she would have loved him more. Rose loves to watch reality shows and eat popcorn with peanut butter and chocolate. She also loves green nail polish and golden shoes.”

  “Quite impressive!” Joshua said.

  “Did you expect something more benevolent? I’m not that nice anymore.”

  “Oh, have you ever been?” he laughed. “Okay, your turn to choose.”

  I looked around. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon; there were few people on the street. My choice fell on a newspaper seller who was standing at the corner.

  “Good choice,” Joshua said. “Frank – his name has to be Frank because he is frank – is a clone town outlaw. He never agreed to play their game.”

  “Whose game?” I asked impatiently.

  “No interruptions, please,” he said, putting his finger on my lips. “As I said, he never agreed to be the player in their game. He realized when he was very young that there was a vicious machinery that ruled the world. It consisted of politics, advertising, and vanity. Frank was sick of watching people getting eaten by that big, vicious machinery. He felt disgusted at their inconsistency and weakness. He decided to get a job as a newspaper seller and feed them with lies every day, because we all know newspapers are made of lies.”

  “What’s frank about that?” I asked.

  “Well, he’s frank to himself,” Joshua said.

  “It’s an awful, awful story!” I shouted.

  “It’s true, go there and ask him if you don’t believe me,” he laughed.

  The bus finally arrived. James sent us enough money so we didn’t need to hitchhike back home. We actually wanted to because paying bus tickets with someone else’s money seemed like cheating, but it was already Saturday afternoon and Joshua had to show up at work Monday morning.

  Farewell, Guthrie, I
don’t think we’ll meet again!

  “You can take the window seat if you like,” Joshua said.

  I don’t understand people who sleep on buses. It’s so good to watch the world passing by your shoulders. I thought about Mrs. Wheeler. My mother called me while we were waiting for the bus. She said Mrs. Wheeler’s state was unchanged; she was still weak and didn’t talk at all. Maybe that’s what I should have told Sarah – that her grandmother was dying all alone in a vast hospital room, thin and helpless, unable to talk or move. Maybe I should have used those very words. Maybe that would have melted her frozen heart. For a moment, I was angry with myself for taking this trip instead of being beside my friend when she probably needed me. But the other part of my brain was telling me that this was something that I had to do. Joshua’s throat clearing startled me out of my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  A woman who was sitting in front of us turned around and looked at us through the space between the seats.

  “Everything all right?” she asked. “Do you want some water?”

  “No, everything is fine, thank you,” we both answered at the same time.

  I slid back into the crimson red bus seat. The smell of gasoline and sweat tickled my nostrils. How many people had rested their bodies in this very same seat before me, thinking about lost friends, or long gone lovers, or things they wanted to do but never had? And then it came to me – a thought so clear that I was surprised I hadn’t realized it before: freedom is not some place outside you, hidden at the end of the winding road where magical things happen and where people all of a sudden become wise and fulfilled. You don’t have to travel three thousand miles to find it. It has nothing to do with walls or restrictions. Freedom lies inside you. Like some delicate fruit that waits for you to pick it. You have to open yourself to the world and nurture it until it’s ripe. It can take a long time because it’s a rare and fragile fruit. But if you don’t open your eyes and your soul really, really wide like that child who sees snow for the first time in their life, it will never get ripe.

  “Are you sad?” Joshua asked, waggling his foot.