The Blurry Years

by Eleanor Kriseman

“Let’s go swimming,” she said. She tossed a pillow at my face. She got like that sometimes. “We’ve been cooped up in the car all day.” Neither of us had packed a swimsuit. Underwear showed the same amount of body, but it felt different to be in my underwear where anybody could see me. My mom was in her underwear too, but her bra was black and shiny so you couldn’t really tell.

  Some nights after my mom came home from Daryl’s, she would bang into the furniture on purpose or clang the pots together in the kitchen until the noise woke me. She’d pretend it had been an accident. “Now that you’re awake, want to walk down to the pool with me?” she’d say. The pool was shaped like a giant kidney bean and sheltered by the different buildings of the apartment complex. It was crowded in the evenings, but when it was really late it would be just the two of us. I would perch on the ladder at the deep end of the bean while my mom swam in restless, sloppy circles in front of me, telling me about Daryl and Marcus and everything I’d missed out on that night.

  But at the motel pool in Missouri she was sober and quiet. We were floating in the middle of the pool with our stomachs to the sky, our limbs slowly sinking into the water. “I think you’ll like Oregon,” she said, and backstroked until her head was floating next to mine, our bodies facing in opposite directions. “It’s a good place to grow up. You’ll need a real jacket. We’ll get you one. Grandma June might have some old ones of mine too.” My legs started getting heavy, I kicked a couple times to keep them on the surface of the water. “Does it snow there?” If she answered yes, I would ask more questions.

  “Not in Eugene,” she said. “Maybe once or twice when I was growing up.” I closed my eyes and tried to make myself believe that I was back in the kidney bean. The pool water lapped against the filter, flapping it open, then shut, then open again.

  In the room, I showered under such hot water that it left me flushed for hours. My skin was wrinkled and puckered from the pool. My mom washed our clothes in the bathtub and dried them with the hair dryer and in the morning when I put them on they were stiff and smelled of shampoo, but they were clean. At the free breakfast I had bacon and pancakes and used as much syrup as I wanted, and she didn’t say anything. Before leaving the dining room, she tossed my backpack under the booth and filled it with whatever would fit. Anything that might stay good for a couple days. Croissants, muffins, packets of jelly, tiny boxes of cereal, waxy green apples and bananas. We didn’t go hungry, but I missed certain things. I missed standing next to my mom at the stove, listening to the sizzle of the ground beef hitting the pan, sneaking a lick of the seasoning before she poured out the rest of the packet. I missed the heavy plates with the painted flowers on the rim that I used to trace with my fork between bites. I missed drinking milk in the mornings. But I didn’t tell her any of that.

  Both of us were in good moods. We’d had dinner at a Dairy Queen in a little town in Nebraska called Grand Island, and that name was still cracking us up because it was the most hick town we’d ever seen and there was no body of water for miles. Grand Island. It was the first time I’d seen her laugh in a while and I was trying to think of more jokes, to keep her laughing. We were going fast on a back road that the man at Dairy Queen had told us would lead to the interstate, belting out our favorite Carly Simon song. Jesse, I’ll always cutfresh flowers for you. She was almost screaming it. Jesse, I will make the wine cold for you. I was tapping out the beat with my feet on the dashboard. I will put on cologne, I will wait by the phone for you. Something about that song made me feel so hopeful, even though it was about Carly Simon going back to someone who didn’t treat her like he should. But she sounded triumphant, and I could sense it: Everything was going to work out. Jesse was going to be a better boyfriend this time around. We would make it to Oregon. Happiness fizzed and bubbled up inside me.

  We didn’t even see anything; just felt a thump under the wheels that made us bounce against the seatbelts. Carly Simon kept singing. We hadn’t passed another car in miles, but my mom still looked in the rearview mirror before pulling over. She got out of the car, telling me to stay put, but after a minute I went to find her. She was standing over the body of a small animal, staring down, her arms crossed over her body like she was cold. She didn’t notice me until I was standing next to her. “Just a rabbit,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  I squatted down. Its body was splayed open, fur wet with blood and its insides were leaking out onto the pavement. Its face was untouched though, and its mouth hung open slightly. Its ears looked soft. I bit my lip. “Can we bury it?”

  Mom shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I should get it off the road, anyway.”

  She dragged it by the ears over to the shoulder so no other car would hit it, and we kneeled next to each other in the dirt beside the tar and started digging. It was so quiet I could hear the scraping of our fingertips breaking the earth.

  “I screwed up,” she said.

  I looked back at the rabbit. The trail of blood from where she’d dragged it gleamed, dark on the asphalt. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said. “It just ran out in front of the car.”

  “Not that,” she said, digging harder. “I mean, shit, I screwed that up too, but I meant with everything else.” The hole was already plenty big enough.

  “Like what?” I said. She never talked like this. She unearthed a small stone and turned it over and over in her hand.

  “With Daryl,” she said. “I messed up pretty bad with Daryl.” I wondered what she meant, but I didn’t want to interrupt. “With you. I think you’re the best thing I ever did and I fucked things up for you—” She laughed and wiped her nose with the back of her arm, and I saw she’d started to cry. “And now we’re digging a grave together,” she said, laughing harder.

  I didn’t know why it was funny but I wanted her to think I understood so I started laughing too, and she kept laughing and pulled me close and soon I really was laughing just because it felt good. We sat there a long time, in the dark, just laughing.

  06

  “God, Callie, it feels like I never left,” my mom said, gliding through an empty intersection on a street called Royal Avenue. We had never been to Oregon together, and Grandma June had never come to Florida. Back when she knew our address, she used to send me books at Christmas. She used to call every month. She told me she had my picture on her bedside table. But then my mom started asking her for money every time and she stopped calling.

  She called one more time after that; I think when she figured my mom wouldn’t be home. “You ever need anything, Callie, you call me, okay?” she said. I nodded, but realized she couldn’t see me. “Write this number down, baby,” she said. I scribbled it on the cardboard from a six-pack with a marker from my pencil case.

  I wanted to call her a few times after that but I forgot to take the piece of cardboard into my room and it got thrown out. I remembered the phone number written on the cardboard just before dawn and ran downstairs in my pajamas, tripping down the stairs in my flip-flops. I would have dug through the dumpster for it but the garbage truck was already on its way out of the parking lot. I walked up to the top floor and watched the sun rise between the buildings, and then I went downstairs in case my mom wandered into the living room and saw the empty pull-out couch.

  Grandma June wasn’t someone I thought I’d ever talk to again, much less meet. I definitely didn’t think she’d want us staying with her. But I hoped that even if she didn’t want to see my mom, she’d change her mind if I were there. I wanted to stop driving, even if where we stopped wasn’t home. I wanted my world to narrow to one point again, to stay the same in front of my eyes, wanted the landscape to stop blurring as we sped by life instead of living it. We were in limbo. Anywhere with even one familiar thing, one room with a solid floor under my feet, would have felt—if not like home—like someplace I could get used to.

  My mom slowed, and made a right down a street that looked nothing like any street in Florida that I’d ever seen. Most of the houses here had small white picke
t fences around the front yards, and the trees were wide and leafy, no tall palms in sight. “This is it, baby girl,” she said, and turned the radio down. She pulled into the driveway of a house the color of a sunburn and parked. “Huh. Her car’s not here,” she said. She paused. “She’s probably at Albertsons. We’ll just wait on the porch. Oh, she’s going to be so happy to see you, Callie,” she said again, but she didn’t look like she believed herself.

  There was a swing on the front porch, and we swung lazily back and forth while we waited, taking turns propelling ourselves backward with our feet. A silver car pulled into the driveway, and my mom stood up, leaving my side of the swing rocking back and forth. “You stay here,” she said. She walked down the front steps, slowly, like she didn’t want to make any trouble. A man got out of the driver’s seat.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “can I help you?”

  She nodded. “Sorry,” she said. “I used to live here. Is this still June Willard’s place?”

  She was trying to act casual but I saw her hands shaking. The man saw me, and his face softened a bit. “You her daughter?” he said. “Sure, I could see the resemblance.”

  “You got it,” she said, laughing like this was her plan all along, like she knew what we were doing. “Can I ask you—do you know where she is now?”

  The man’s eyes widened, like he understood something he hadn’t before. “I thought you were here to see the house, what we’ve done with it,” he said. “I didn’t realize—” he stopped. “You don’t know,” he said, then again, almost to himself. “You don’t know.”

  I ran my hand up and down the iron banister, swiveling one foot on the staircase, looking down at my feet. “I don’t know what?” my mom said.

  “Shit,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m the one telling you this. Your mother passed away shortly after we bought the house.”

  I stopped swiveling. My mom sat down on the steps just underneath me, didn’t say a word.

  The man ran inside and came back with a cold glass of water. He sat down next to her. “Drink this,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” She nodded.

  I wondered if she was thinking about the motel room we’d stayed in last night, how we’d eaten gas station croissants for all three meals yesterday because they were selling twenty-five-cent two-packs when we’d stopped to fill up the tank with another five dollars, how we’d had to convince the man at the checkout counter that the AC in our room was broken so we’d get a discount. I was wondering where we’d sleep tonight. I didn’t want to sleep in the car anymore. I was tired of driving, tired of leaning back the seats and turning off the ignition to say goodnight. I was angry with my mom for driving us all the way here because she’d had a fight with Daryl and she thought her mom could make it all better. I was angry that Grandma June was gone, even angrier than sad. It was harder to feel sad about someone you’d never met than it was to be angrier at someone who was the reason you’d never met in the first place.

  My mom started to cry, sitting there on the porch, and I felt guilty. “Would you mind if I used your telephone?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Come on in.”

  The houses got smaller and closer together and the yards got browner and the sidewalks got bumpier until we pulled up outside of a white brick bungalow that my mom almost drove right by. “Two thirty… three?” she said. “That’s it! All right. Just for a couple of days, or a week. I’ll find a job. We’ll go somewhere else.” She knocked on the door.

  A woman in a pink silk robe and slippers opened the door. “Jeanie!” she cried. “It’s been ages… goodness, look at us! Look at her.” She pointed to me. “My god, she’s going to be a beauty,” she said. “Give her a year or two, you’ll be fighting those boys back.”

  My mom shook her head, but she was smiling. “Starr, you’re just the same.”

  “Well, come on in!” Starr said. “I’ve got some lemonade, and something to put in the lemonade for the grown-ups, and I’ve just made a loaf of banana bread. You caught me on one of my days off—I’m not always wearing my pajamas at two in the afternoon. Let’s catch up, Jeanie,” she said, and hugged my mom again. “Oh, and Russ’ll be home later tonight. That’s my boyfriend. He’s a cop. So don’t you worry, you’ll be safe with us.”

  They sat at the kitchen table. My mom asked me to pour lemonade for everyone, and Starr handed me a bottle of vodka for their glasses—“Just a touch more, honey,” she said to me, without even looking at how much I’d poured already. I studied their faces.

  My mom looked tired, and her hair was greasy from the halfhearted rinses we’d done in gas station bathrooms. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and the circles under her eyes were so deep and purple they looked like someone had drawn them on in crayon. But she was still beautiful, even without trying. Starr was someone who tried. At first it worked, but when she was sitting next to someone like my mom, I could see straight through it. Starr’s hair was silvery blond and carefully teased, but the dark roots were just beginning to show. Her cheeks glowed with bronzer, and her eyelids were a shimmery brown. Up close, her mascara was clumped, and her eyelashes were stuck together. Her lips were a pale pink, but they were chapped and slightly smaller than her lip liner made them out to be. Starr was the kind of woman who was truly beautiful when you were squinting, when you let your eyes blur a bit, when you were far away. My mom was the kind of woman who was truly beautiful when you got up close, when you studied her carefully. She held up under my gaze; Starr dissolved.

  My mom drank half her glass of lemonade in one long swallow. Neither of them said anything, but I felt like I should let them be alone. I didn’t know what to say about Grandma June and I didn’t want to listen to my mom talk anymore. I left the kitchen and wandered the dim, carpeted hallways of Starr’s house. The car keys were on the front table, and I went out to the car and grabbed both of our suitcases, carrying them in one at a time. You’re welcome, I thought, and then felt guilty. My grandma was dead. It was okay if my mom sat in the kitchen, drinking with Starr while the day faded.

  I curled up on the couch with Bridge to Terabithia. It was obvious that something awful was going to happen, but I couldn’t stop reading. And I was right. The rope snapped, Leslie drowned; their world shattered just like that. I didn’t want to read about death, not while my mom was talking about it in the kitchen. It wasn’t supposed to happen to kids, and you weren’t supposed to find out about it from strangers. You weren’t supposed to swing across a river on a rope you’d used a hundred times before and have it snap off in your hands, mid-swing. You weren’t supposed to drive across the country and find out your grandmother was dead and somebody else was living in her house. You couldn’t count on anything. Not even in books. I was exhausted. I covered my face with the book, open to the middle, and fell asleep.

  I woke to someone shaking me on my shoulder. I opened my eyes and there was a cop standing in front of me. Half-asleep still, I thought I was in trouble until he smiled and I realized it must be Russ, Starr’s boyfriend. “You’re Callie, I’m guessing,” he said. “Starr told me you and your mom were stopping by for a little while.” I sat up, dry-mouthed and bleary-eyed. It was black outside.

  Starr and my mom were still sitting where they’d been hours before and laughing loudly at things I couldn’t overhear. Russ went in to say hello, and motioned for me to follow him when he came back out. He grabbed both suitcases, one in each hand, and walked me to the first door on the left. “Bed’s made, bathroom’s just down the hall,” he said. “Towels are in the hall closet. Starr acts like she’s got this place under control but now you know who’s really running the show.” He winked at me, as if we were in on a joke together.

  Too tired to shower, I just changed into fresh underwear and Daryl’s old shirt and climbed underneath the heavy pink duvet. From the hallway, I heard Starr slur a goodnight. She padded off to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway, and my mom came in. “God, it’s good to see her,” she said, s
itting on the bed and kicking off her strappy sandals. She climbed underneath the covers with me and hugged me close. “We’ve got each other, Cal,” she said. She traced my hairline with her finger. “I’ll never disappear like your grandma. No matter how old I am, you’ll always know where I am. I’ll always help you out whenever you need it.” I nodded. She squeezed me extra hard, and then got out of bed again.

  I thought she was just going to the bathroom, because she left the door ajar. But she didn’t come back in; instead, she joined Russ in the living room, just outside our door.

  The television was on, soft enough that I couldn’t tell what show it was. “Sorry to bother you,” she said. “Can’t sleep. Not sure why. I’m dead broke, I’ve been driving for days, I just found out my mother’s dead—I should be sleeping like a baby.” She let out a harsh laugh. I sat up, scooted to the edge of the bed.

  Russ mumbled something that I couldn’t hear. “I’m no good at stuff like this,” he said, more clearly, after a minute. “Starr tells me I always say the wrong thing.”

  “You don’t need to say anything at all,” my mom said. I wondered how close they were sitting.

  I slept half into the next day. I didn’t realize how tired I’d been. Starr’s house was boring, but it was better than being in the car all day. My mom left early in the morning to buy a newspaper to look for jobs in the classifieds. She was gone when I woke up. I don’t know what she did all day, but she didn’t get home until after dark. She didn’t look happy.

  I had this awful feeling one night after the first few days that maybe she wasn’t even looking for a job so I looked through her purse while she was in the shower. I don’t know what I was expecting to find but all I saw were the classifieds, folded up, with circles around job postings, mostly waitress positions, some secretaries wanted—some were crossed out, some with “call back next week” scrawled on the side. I felt better knowing she wasn’t lying, but I was worried. How long were we going to stay here if she couldn’t find a job? Did this mean we were going to just live in Eugene now? I wanted plans, promises, something concrete. But those were just a few things on the long list of things she couldn’t give me.