by Ruth Lehrer
“Hey,” said Cork, “we were already late anyway, weren’t we, Norm?”
He punched Worm in the arm, but not hard like Grandpa would have. He punched him in a playful way, like he knew there was plenty of Worm and he could just mush a little piece. Worm punched him back. I figured it was a guy version of the hug-kiss thing Molly and Duck-Duck did. Used to do.
I couldn’t finish my McMuffin, so Cork ate what was left. I watched as he tossed back the rest of my chocolate milk too.
“You pulled us out of the car,” I said to him suddenly.
He looked at me, surprised. “You remember that?”
“Kind of,” I said. “Not really.” I picked up a McMuffin crumb with my finger, mashing it until it stuck, and put it in my mouth. “What did she look like?”
He didn’t answer me right away, but he didn’t say, Who? Chrissy? He knew.
“She was always beautiful, that girl,” he said. “She was beautiful that day too.” He didn’t say anything else. I could tell he was trying to be nice to me. Then he just stood up and went and bought three cookies for later.
Back in the Ford Explorer, Worm asked his father to turn the radio on, and then there was music and a guy singing about losing his girl and his cows.
“Is it true you’re going to skip a grade next year?” Worm asked.
I looked at him. “Who told you that?”
“Kids. You know,” he said, not looking at me exactly.
“I’m not skipping a grade,” I said. “I’m just going to the hard classes.”
“Huh,” he said. “Not me. I’m too dumb. You know that.” He shrugged like he didn’t care.
“I could teach you,” I said. “It’s like law. All it takes is a little logic and concentration.”
“Huh,” he said again, but it sounded like he might be saying, Yes, I’d like that.
We stayed on the highway for a while. Then Worm’s father got off the highway and drove on smaller town roads. I had no idea where we were. I didn’t know where he had agreed to meet Patricia. I felt like a lost package.
Finally we pulled up to a small store with a gas pump in front. We were on the top of a hill. The wind was blowing, and it was drizzling. It almost felt like we were near the ocean, even though I knew that was impossible. There was only one little red car at the store. It was Patricia’s rental car. She was leaning against it, waiting for us.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Where on earth did you go? We were so worried.” I’d never seen Patricia look so disorganized.
Patricia put out her arms and hugged me so hard we both almost fell over. It was funny, or it would have been funny if I weren’t so screwed up.
Then she gave Cork a hug too, which surprised me a lot. It seemed to surprise him too, because he turned a little pink. They started talking about bus stations and police reports and Amber Alerts. I leaned against the front of Patricia’s rental car. It was warm.
“Norm and I should get going,” said Cork finally. “Are you ladies going to be okay?”
“We are,” said Patricia. “Thanks again.”
“Don’t mention it,” he said.
“See you later,” said Worm.
“Bye,” I replied, thinking of the yellow egg-star in his eyes, but I didn’t look up. Then I was alone with Patricia.
“Where were you going?” she asked. “We were worried sick.”
“Molly would have gotten worse if I stayed,” I said. “It was better to leave. She doesn’t want me.”
“That’s not true,” said Patricia.
“She didn’t even come to get me. She sent you.”
Patricia folded her arms like she was suddenly mad. At first she was just upset. Now she looked like she wanted to smack me.
“My sister was up in the wee hours of the morning and found you were gone — nowhere in the house. She checked Chrissy’s computer and found all your searches for bus schedules and left immediately, driving all the way to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. Does that sound like someone who doesn’t want you?” Patty didn’t have blue eyes. She had brown eyes, but they had the same squinty, mean power that Molly’s did.
The stones rose up in my throat again.
“But it’s all my fault,” I said. It came out in a whisper. “Duck-Duck wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for me.”
And then we both cried, up there on top of the windy hill.
“It feels like that,” said Patricia, “but it really isn’t true. None of this was your fault. Don’t you disappear on Molly too,” she said. “You’re the only one who really understands.”
I thought about that while we were driving home. Patricia might have known Duck-Duck longer than I had, but she hadn’t ever lived at Cherry Road with her. She hadn’t eaten lunch with her every day. Maybe Patricia was right. Maybe Molly needed me around because there wasn’t anyone else who knew Duck-Duck the way she did. I had a headache from crying so much.
I thought about Molly finding my computer searches for New York bus schedules. Duck-Duck had been right. You had to be really careful about leaving electronic fingerprints. They were like muffin crumbs that someone else could follow. In a way, though, that was good.
“We’re almost home,” said Patricia.
But before we got home, we stopped at the mall and went shopping. Patricia bought me a new backpack, a swimsuit, and a funny hat for the summer.
“You’re going to have fun again,” she said, “even though it might be hard to believe, and even though it doesn’t feel like it right now.” She stopped and bought a pair of sandals to go with the hat. “I want you to be ready for good things.”
Then we went to the uptown diner for lunch and had sliced turkey with gravy and mashed potatoes. For dessert, we split a piece of chocolate-coconut-cream pie. It made me cry again, but Patricia said good food sometimes does that. We packed a piece to bring home to Molly.
When we drove up to Cherry Road, it looked different, even though I’d only been gone a day. Everything was brighter and clearer. The grass was green with teeny pink flowers scattered through the lawn. The sky was warm blue. I realized I had stopped looking at stuff like that since the accident.
“Are you okay?” said Patricia.
“I am now,” I said.
It was dark when Molly finally got home. I was asleep on the couch. I woke up when she leaned over me, and then she hugged me and kissed me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” Her breath was warm on my ear.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, because I hadn’t quite woken up. “Me too.”
When I woke in the morning, the house was still. I listened for Duck-Duck’s sleep breathing. Then I remembered, and I got a sudden pang in my chest where I’d been holding my breath. I wondered if that was what a heart attack felt like, and if I was going to keep having heart attacks like this every morning for forever.
Then I remembered Molly coming to me late the night before. I remembered her saying I’m sorry. But now that I was awake, I wasn’t totally sure what Molly was sorry for. Not stopping me? Not noticing I had a plan? Maybe that was it, because she had always noticed everything, and then she lost her voice and her mind and started crying all day. I wished I had said I understood. Instead I decided to make her French toast for breakfast.
There was me, Molly, and Patricia. I figured I’d make everyone three slices, since once you ate one, you wanted another, and what if Molly was really hungry after the long drive she had to take because of me?
I sliced nine pieces of bread, and broke egg after egg into a big blue bowl. I couldn’t find the whisk, so I used a fork, sticky yellow clinging to the ends as I lifted and spun.
I poured milk into the eggs and whisked it again and again. It made me a little dizzy, watching it swirl around and around, like the river as it took Keely the first time.
I put in sugar and real nutmeg, and then melted butter in a hot pan. Was that what it was like to become ashes — liquid gold disappearing in a pan? I burn
ed my finger a little because I forgot to use the pot holder. Could Keely feel heat anymore? What about cold?
I laid the bread in the egg, and it became an edible sponge. Piece after piece sucked up egg and milk. Piece after piece hit the pan and sizzled.
I watched and I flipped. I flipped and I watched. I’d made a stack the size of my head by the time Molly came downstairs.
She turned the fire off under my pan, and then she sat down and pulled me onto her lap. I was thirteen, but it was like I was six right then. She hugged me against her chest. “Promise you won’t do that again?” she said. “I’m sorry I left you for a little while.”
Like Keely, I thought, and my throat closed up.
“I’m still here,” she said, as if she could hear me thinking.
It made me feel warm inside, having a mother cuddle me almost like I was little, or pretty like Duck-Duck, even though I knew I wasn’t.
“The French toast is getting cold,” I told her.
“Wouldn’t want that,” said Molly. “Should I wake up Patty? Where’s the maple syrup?” And with a little squeeze, she let me slide off her lap. She was acting bouncy, but her face was a bit gray and her lips had lost color. Like pink with a bit of dust.
“I’m still not great,” she said. “You know that, right? I haven’t been able to go to work yet.” She rubbed her head. “I haven’t even been able to make a single phone call. Patty did all that.”
I wondered which was harder, waking up to no daughter or waking up to no mother.
“I think if you eat the French toast, your face might at least stop being gray,” I said, even though it was a little rude.
“It’s good you didn’t move to New York City,” she said. She had big dark circles under her eyes.
“What do you mean?” I started divvying up toasts onto three plates.
“I would have starved to death,” she said, and she made me come back over to her by tugging my hair just a little and then a little more. “My green-eyed girl.” She gave me a squinty look, like she used to give Duck-Duck. Then she almost smiled, and she stood up to go wake Aunt Patty.
I put the butter and the maple syrup on the table and thought about how the heart-attack spot in my chest now felt achy but also gushy from Molly’s hugs. I tried not to cry into the orange juice as I poured three glasses.
Aunt Patty went home to California at the beginning of July. She still called every evening and asked what we were having for dinner. Sometimes I heard Molly call her in the middle of the night. We sent her boxes of cookies wrapped in tinfoil and ribbon. She said she would visit us again at the end of the summer to take me shopping for school clothes.
Sometimes I’d be thinking about silly things, like what kind of shoes Aunt Patty would buy me. Then I’d remember that I had no mother and that I had no Duck-Duck, that I was alive, and that I had Molly. Why were they gone and not me? If Duck-Duck hadn’t gotten in on the right side of the car, hadn’t pushed me over to the left so she wouldn’t get her shoes dirty, I would have been the right passenger. It made my brain feel like scrambled eggs, going back and forth between what happened and what should have happened.
Where was the logic in any of this? Why her, not me? Why Keely, not Molly? Why us and not some totally different family in a different city? One morning when Molly was in the shower, I opened up her purse and looked at all her belongings. I wasn’t sure what I’d find there. I didn’t take anything, like I might have before. I just looked. All her change was loose at the bottom of the bag. No wonder she was always complaining she couldn’t find her pennies. She had a few of Duck-Duck’s hair ties at the bottom too, a red one, a blue one, and a yellow one. I took out the yellow one and snapped it a few times. It hurt just a little when it cracked back on my finger. Why? Why? it snapped.
Molly also had a packet of gum and a really good Swiss Army knife with two blades, a pair of scissors, and a screwdriver. She had a little box of tissues, a bottle of aspirin, and her hospital ID.
And then, inside her wallet, hidden in a pocket, I found a picture of Duck-Duck. It was from long ago, when she was a little girl. Her blond hair hung in curls, and she had on a fairy-princess tiara. Maybe she was five. The picture was creased, as if Molly had been trying to hide it and not look at it, but kept taking it out and looking at it anyway. I put it back in Molly’s wallet and closed her purse.
When I couldn’t find a reason why, I got angry.
First I was angry at Keely. I didn’t want to tell Molly, but she caught me hacking up the marigolds behind the house, and instead of getting mad that her yellow flowers were now confetti, she raised her eyebrows.
“So?” she said. Just like that. I knew if I lied and said something stupid like I hated yellow flowers, she would know right away that I was lying.
“If Keely weren’t dead already,” I said, “I would divorce her. Maybe she wasn’t really my mother anyway. She was so screwed up, maybe she went to the store one day and brought home the wrong baby. Anyone who doesn’t like mango couldn’t be related to me.” That’s how it came out, but really I was thinking, My life is just starting, and Keely’s is already over. Every time I felt good or lucky for just a second, I felt an instant pang of guilt for even thinking it.
But Keely had left me, and she had done it on purpose. I would be an orphan, a real orphan, for the rest of my life. It seemed like an incredibly long time to be motherless. But if Grandpa and Mary Esther had never had Keely, Duck-Duck would still be alive. I ground my teeth and pulled out another marigold.
“Yeah,” said Molly. “I’m pissed too.”
Pissed meant something light: some little annoyance. Someone killing your daughter? That was way beyond pissed. It made me mad at Molly for not saying the right words, the bad words, even when it was totally necessary.
“ ‘Pissed’?” I said. “Keely’s a fucking murderer, and you say you’re pissed?”
Molly didn’t yell at me for saying fucking. Her face crunched in a little. I could see shiny tears at the back of her eyes.
“Shit,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
She hiccupped. “Like hell you didn’t,” she said, and we both laughed.
“I’ll practice,” she said. “Maybe I need a cursing teacher.”
“No problem,” I said. “At your service.”
It was funny and all, but then later that afternoon, I was angry again. This time I was angry at Duck-Duck.
“She was like a comet,” Patricia had said at the funeral.
Yes, I thought now. Fast and fabulous, so life down here on earth would make more sense. But then it just made me mad. She wasn’t a comet. She was like one of those stupid butterflies teachers always talked about: pretty, with wings, got hit by a truck. Gone.
Why couldn’t she have been just a little more boring or a little less pretty? Maybe she would still be with me and Molly, telling us how to be logical. Why did she leave us here all by ourselves?
I ran back outside and cried into the torn-up marigolds. Then I crawled under the picnic table. I don’t know why. It felt like a safe fort. It felt safe until I looked at the bottom side of the table. There was gang graffiti written in the hand of a very young Duck-Duck. GRRS, it said on the underside of one board. The Great Duk-Duk Farina conquers the world, it said under another board. It was really dumb, but I cried again.
I never used to cry. Now it seemed like I cried all the time.
Molly found me under the picnic table. She sat down on the grass and looked in, as if I were a monkey in a zoo.
“We should decide what we want to do,” said Molly. “What should we tell the Department?”
I knew she meant the long-term thing. Long-term sounded like a prison word, which sounded too much like Grandpa.
“Can I adopt you?” I said. “I think I’d rather do that than just be long-term.”
“Adopt me? I would like that,” she said.
Molly’s hair had grown out a little. The blond spikes lay flat on her head now,
and her face was thinner. I could see new wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and on her forehead. I reached over the picnic-table seat, through the monkey cage, and touched her ear. I thought of the first time I saw Duck-Duck, with her little pink ears and her bubble earrings of blue water.
“At Duck-Duck’s funeral people kept saying I’ll feel better eventually, like I’d forget her or something,” I said. I thought of all the murmuring people. Had they forgotten Duck-Duck already?
“You never forget that kind of love,” said Molly. She put her hand out, to draw me out from under the picnic table.
I took her hand, but I stayed in my spot underneath the table. What kind of love was it? I didn’t know if Molly knew about the kisses or not. Maybe Duck-Duck told her, but I didn’t think so.
I thought of Duck-Duck sitting up on the cemetery stone wall with the sun in her hair. Even if I got as old as Molly, how could I ever forget that?
“Who did you love like that?” I asked. I finally climbed out from under the table, and we sat on the bench. The wood was warm under my legs.
Molly laughed. It was almost the way she used to laugh. “Clarissa, in eighth grade. She was a terrific softball player.” She smiled the best she could.
I wondered if Molly had wanted to kiss Clarissa.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“I think she joined the air force and then got married to some pilot and had twenty children,” said Molly.
“Twenty? Really?”
“No, not really. Probably just two.”
When Molly laughed, she looked like Duck-Duck.
“Two’s a lot,” I said.
“At the time, that’s what I thought,” said Molly. “Now I think it sounds like a perfect number.”
I didn’t say anything else, because now she only had one.
We didn’t talk for a little while. It was kind of nice that we could sit together and not need to keep talking to know we were still having a conversation.
“Do you forgive me?” I said.
“Forgive you for what?”
“For Duck-Duck.”
Molly twisted around to face me. Her eyes were blue, but the parts that were supposed to be white were red from crying.