“Who was that?” asked Mags.
“Uh, just a guy I met at the parade last weekend.”
“Just a guy, huh? Do all reenactors look like that?”
I sent her a disgusted look. I knew she wasn’t dead, but I really didn’t care to hear comments like that coming from her mouth.
“So do you want to go to the next one?”
“The next one what?”
“The next reenactment. Where is it at?”
“Down south. Madisonville in a couple of weeks.”
“You might think about going. It could be...interesting.” She gave a knock on the counter and a wink at me. “Come on back, I want to show you something.” Grabbing my hand, she led me back down the aisle into a small back room.
“Is this what you have been working so hard on back here?”
“Yep, what do you think?” The room was, clean, immaculate even. You could still tell it was part of an antique store, but things were in order, arranged in different areas so that people would find what they wanted easy. I had to hand it to Mags. She at least learned to keep a tidy place in all her years of travel.
“I’m impressed.”
She gleamed. “Don’t you just love it? And I want to do this to the whole store, just make it where everything has a place. No more customers asking if we have something and not being able to find it. This is what the store should look like everywhere.”
I nodded. “Well, Mr. Lambert is going to like it a lot.”
“I hope so, sweetie.” She paused, looking over her work once again. “You know, he’s been talking about selling the place. He doesn’t think he can keep it up anymore, with his health and all.”
“Doesn’t think? Mags, it’s a mess out there.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking about it and I’d really like to buy it from him if he offers. It’s just...”
“Just what?”
“It’s just, I don’t have the money right now,” she gave me a look and I immediately knew where she was headed. “Hope, you don’t have to buy the whole thing, just front enough money for a good down payment.”
“Is that why you brought me down here?” It was a mean accusation, but the thought of her talking me into leaving from New York just to get some money to buy a crummy old antique shop was gnawing away inside of me.
“Of course not, Hope. I love you just like your parents did. But this can be ours. We can make this our home and stop running around.”
“I have never ran anywhere before coming down here. I’m not like you. I was home and it was great before all this happened. I had a great family, a great school, and a great future. And I lost it all that night. It was torn away from me in a blink of an eye!” I was yelling, at her, at myself—I wasn’t sure—but I was yelling. “I didn’t want to go anywhere, I just couldn’t live in that house anymore, but this place is just as bad!”
Mags’ mouth dropped at my rudeness, but she wasn’t about to interrupt me.
“Now I’m stuck in a school that is run by a psycho cheerleader and her trainees that are doing their best to make my life even worse, my only friend is the teacher’s kid that no one wants to hang out with, anyway, and now my aunt is asking me for money because she made a lot of bad decisions in her own life. You weren’t even there! You weren’t even there to put them in the ground!”
My breath was short with chirps of weeping caught between each one. I knew I was being hurtful to her, but it just came out of me, and I shook my head as tears streamed down my face. “All I want is to have my life back, but I can’t. Some drunk took it from me, took everything from me!” The emotional pain was exploding, worse than any cry I had had late at night or in the morning. Was this meltdown rock bottom? Weeping so uncontrollably that my heart felt as though it was going to break through my chest cavity? I didn’t even feel it when I fell to my knees, buckling under the strain of my life. God, why couldn’t I have just been in that death car, smiling and happy one minute with my family, at rest in a pine box the next? God, couldn’t you have done that for me, at least?
Mags’ arms wrapped around me from behind, holding me there as each snivel brought another convulsion through my body. It was all she could do. Maybe she had been waiting for it ever since I arrived; maybe she had held a few drunken ex-husbands after one of their binges. Whatever it was, she at least was able to calm me down, not even leaving when we heard the bell ring on the front door. It felt like forever before I was able to gather myself, immediately apologizing to her for what I said.
Chapter Seven
The rest of the weekend was empty. Although Mags accepted my apology, I could tell I had hurt her. Dad had never questioned her choices in life and loved his sister more than she ever knew. It wasn’t my place as his daughter, her niece, to take my pain out on her. She had been gracious enough to take me in, to get me away from the pain, at least by distance. For that alone I should’ve been grateful.
School wasn’t much better. Another chaotic cold front had blasted through the plains and landed in North Texas. When students entered the high school that Monday morning, they were dressed as though there were four-foot snow banks outside. I wasn’t a tough person at all and I realized that getting down to freezing temperatures would bring a chill to anyone’s spine, but Texans were not used to it. Many of the students looked like they were about to cross the glaciers of the North Pole by dogsled, with their hoods pulled over their heads tight, their hands stuffed deep into the warm pockets of their coats or hoodies.
The day dragged on, going through the mundane to the monotonous. I think the cold even affected Mr. Peet, as even he wasn’t as lively in the classroom. The Industrial Revolution brought up more entrepreneurs. Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller were the great builders of the time, making more money than even Bill Gates today, if you took in the rate of inflation.
“Alright people, I’ve used the word railroad about a billion times today. With that in mind, what do you think was the main cause for the economic collapse of 1893?”
“The railroad?” A girl answered it more like a question.
“Very good, Miss Bennett. Now, for extra points. If anyone watches the news, what do you think has caused the economic collapse of today?”
“There was an economic collapse today?” asked a boy from across the room.
“Well, not today today, but yes. We are in a major slump economically. The ‘Great Recession’ as I have heard it been called. So what caused it?” No one said a word. I rolled my eyes. Apparently, as a teenager, I was supposed to be oblivious to the world as well, thank you Facebook, but I actually watched the news from time to time. Brian Williams was straight-laced, but he was a good reporter. I raised my hand and Mr. Peet nodded at me.
“The housing market.”
“And what about the housing market?”
“The greedy banks sold a bunch of houses to a lot of people who either couldn’t afford them or paid more than what they were worth.”
“Thank you, Miss Kilpatrick. You see, people, history kind of repeats itself. We bought heavily into railroads and collapsed. We bought heavily into stocks and collapsed. Now we buy heavily into real estate and...”
“Collapsed,” the rest of the class said together just as the bell was ringing.
“Good. Y’all have a good day. Don’t do anything I would do like read a book or something. And Miss Kilpatrick, an extra two points for you for the test in a couple of weeks.” I nodded but said nothing. With this and the ten I had received by going to the Stock Show Parade, I already had a twelve on my first test, not too bad to start out with. I headed out the door and on my way to lunch.
“Well, long time no see,” smiled Lizzy, already sitting with her chicken stir-fry and okra. “Did you have a good weekend?”
“Boring. My aunt made me go to her work with her on Saturday, and on Sunday I just sat around. You?”
“Homework and then I went out to see my mom.”
“Oh. That sounds like fun.”<
br />
Lizzy shrugged. “If you call going out to the cemetery fun, then I guess so.”
“What?” I asked, shocked. How was I supposed to know she was dead? I mean, I’d never heard her or Mr. Peet speak about a mother or wife. God, why do I open my mouth sometimes? Lizzy must have read my face.
“Don’t worry, Hope. She died when I was two years old.” Still, I sat there like I had offended myself, what with the “That sounds like fun” comment.
“I just didn’t mean to insult you.”
“You didn’t. I mostly just go for dad’s sake. He likes to go at least once a month and visit her gravesite. I just figured it brought back a few memories of her and all for him. I know he’s not the type, at least as long as I have known him, but I think it’s kind of romantic in way.”
Romantic? Visiting a dead wife’s gravesite is romantic? Change the subject, quick!
“Do you remember much about her?”
“Mmm, mostly what dad has told me, but I remember being rocked by her. We would always read a story before I went to bed. They let me pick it out. Dad said I never let him rock me; it always had to be her. He said he was too lumpy, whatever that means.” I smiled, but took a deep gulp, going back to my stir-fry. So Lizzy had known loss, even if she couldn’t recall much of it. My heart began to beat harder in my chest and I could feel the room getting warm all around me, the voices of the other students dying away as it did.
“Can I ask you how she died?”
“It was cancer,” she said nonchalantly. “She was already at stage three when they found it, and even a decade ago the medicine and therapy wasn’t near as good as it is today. Hope, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just sorry for your loss.” Why was this happening, right now? We weren’t even talking about my life, my loss. How could I be so self-centered? Pull yourself together, Hope.
“I guess I would’ve been more of a wreck than I am now if it would’ve happened later, when I got a chance to know her better. Dad said she was a lovely wife and a wonderful mother. His loss was a lot more than mine. I was just two. He knew her since high school. They got married in their freshman year of college. It’s strange thinking of him as someone in love.” She paused as if I needed clarification. “Well, I know he loves me and all, like a father should, but I don’t think he has ever been out on a date since he lost her. That’s thirteen years.”
“She must’ve been a very special woman.”
Lizzy smiled. “I think he feels that he was the special one to catch her.” She looked down and continued to eat.
The whole conversation made me sad. Why couldn’t I, who had gone through such a traumatic experience, discerned that Lizzy, too, had seen grief? Or worse yet, why couldn’t I have read it in Mr. Peet’s sarcastic don’t-give-a-crap attitude? He had already seen how horrible this cruel world could be on someone and had survived. But it had probably changed him. I imagined him as a nice young man, a good student through high school and college, starting his little family when the weight of the world came crashing down on him. It had to have made him who he was today, the bitter, mordant man that found his only joy in breaking away from his life and portraying the life of some long dead soldier from one-hundred-and-fifty years ago. Jeez, was this going to be me? Would I ever find happiness in this world again or just try to escape into, oh crap, escape into my classics, where I already knew the story was going to end in some happy way? Where was my freaking Tom Sawyer?
“Lizzy.”
“Yes.”
“You know the pamphlets that Jody made up about me?”
“Yes.”
“They were true.”
“What?”
“They were true in a sense that my family is dead. My mom, my dad, my brother, they all died in a car accident back home, back in New York.” Why was I saying this? Why now? She didn’t need my pain in her life. She didn’t want to hear my sad story while chewing on some overcooked stir-fry. “Mags is my aunt, my dad’s sister. She brought me down here. She is the only family I have left, but we don’t even like each other.” I could feel the tears pooling in my eyes and start running down my face. “She just wants me for my parents’ money. She wants to buy some old antique store with it until she finds the next piece of scum to get hitched to. And I would give it all to her if I could just get my family back.”
I lifted up my tray and slammed it back down against the table, stood up, and stormed out of the door. It was hitting me, all of it, again. Jeez, I had lost it with Mags over the weekend and now I was losing it with the only friend I had in the world. Why did she have to bring up her dead mother?
I ran down the corridors of the building, probably catching the attention of every class that was going on. Surely some teacher or assistant principal would stop me in the hallway and send me back to ISS. Maybe it would be Jody, the little harlot’s mother? Then I could really tell her what I thought of her daughter, of Texas, of my whole messed up life. But no one did. I could’ve run right out the front door and not have been impeded. Instead I found a closet, a janitor’s closet full of mops and buckets and chemical sprays and ducked inside. The punched-in-the-gut feeling came back, and I bent over to have my sob fest. My breath was gone and I gasped for air as if I was drowning. Finally, I hit my knees and held my face in my hands.
It had been just about a month since their deaths and I wasn’t much better off than I was while being held by those police officers who came with the news, but that seemed like only yesterday. In a way, time was moving fast, bringing me to Texas, confronting my first bully, even parading me through the downtown streets of Ft. Worth in a way-too-short in the collar hoop skirt. But contrary to that, time had moved so slowly in dealing with the pain of it all. Even in Texas, things reminded me of my family. It wasn’t the scenery or the lifestyle down here; it was what people said and how they were. Inadvertently, Lizzy had cut right through my heart today and didn’t mean to. Mags did it just by being my dad’s sister. Even the Civil War soldiers reminded me of death. Wasn’t there like a half-million of them that never made it home to their loved ones? And my life was coming apart from the loss of three.
Even with Jason, the stunning, yet sad display of a man, it was like looking into a mirror, seeing my own pain grimacing in his face. What was hurting him so? It was more than his leg, although the limp was bad enough that it had to have caused some pain. But there was something deeper than that, past the physical pain that was tearing him apart. I just had to find out what. From his looks alone, he should’ve had the world at his fingertips, not spending the weekends playing Civil War army man. What had damaged him that I couldn’t see?
Mrs. Appleton would have my head if I came in late again. What was my excuse? That I had a nervous breakdown as Lizzy and I discussed our dead family members? For that reason alone, I decided to stay in the closet until the bell rang again and it was time to go to computer technology. If I stayed any longer, I was sure the fumes of the cleaning chemicals were going to do me in anyway.
Regaining control, I did my best to make myself look at least presentable for the next class, not that it mattered, anyway. The teacher mostly sat behind her desk, monitoring our use of the computer through her own. “Stop looking at Facebook” or “Stop playing games” was what we usually heard from her from time to time. She was gracious enough to send our daily assignment by student email, which was much more technology-oriented than just writing it on the white board, and another reason she didn’t have to stand up and do any real teaching. My guess was that she was trying to tackle the 32,000 games of free cell before teacher’s retirement set in.
Anyway, I learned early on what happened to your work saved on the computer if you were an enemy of the Secundas, so I kept my work on a flash drive. Plugging it in, I continued on my project: create a power point of at least ten slides of something you really loved. Was it wrong that I chose my family? I introduced them with the picture of us, the same one that haunted me every morning when I woke up. B
ut on the computer screen it was different, like we were still together, like if I turned around they would be there on the couch watching a movie or discussing their day. Yes, we actually discussed our day like some 1950s children. They weren’t just in a little frame next to me as I lay down to go to sleep; they had been blown up and were alive, smiling at me and I at them. The slideshow went on, starting with my dad and his work, my mom and how they fell in love, Tyler and all of his amazing accomplishments, then me. I was the end of the line, the last of our little family.
We were back in the old gym for P.E., but when I got there, Jody and the gang were absent. Good was my first thought. Did I care what happened to them? Not really. As long as they were away from me, I couldn’t complain. Needless to say, that the class went by quickly without any so-called accidents, giving me some more time to reflect upon my life and if I really wanted to stay down here in the Lone Star State. There wasn’t much to miss if I decided to move home. Lizzy and I would remain friends on Facebook, Jody would definitely be happy, and Mags—what about Mags? She would probably have mixed feelings about it all. On the positive side she wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. On the negative, she would think she was missing out on her antique store money. Maybe I should leave and then send her a check for a down payment with a note saying, “Here is your money. Now go to heck, Aunt Mags.” Childish and mean, yes, but definitely funny.
Was there much use in staying, though? I would probably miss seeing Lizzy. Facebook was great for every other teenager that just stared blankly at a computer waiting for someone to request being their friend, but not me. Mr. Peet’s class would certainly be something not to miss out on. Was it the reenacting that helped him bring history to life in the classroom? I mean, the word was right in there: acting. Or maybe it was the death of his wife that caused him to act the fool and have fun, knowing that life was short and you might as well live it up when given the opportunity. Maybe that’s what I should’ve been doing? My parents’ life was short, and my brother’s life was even shorter. Wasn’t it my job now, the only one in the family, to live life for them? Mr. Peet still had Lizzy to think about, at least for the next few years until she went off to college. But me, I had no one and there was no way I was going to look after Mags and her antique store.
Finding Hope in Texas Page 13