Dad was lying on top of the bed with his eyes closed. I thought he’d fallen asleep already but then I saw that his eyes were watery, with little streams running down his cheeks. I bit my lip.
Probably that was how he looked the whole year that he was in bed after the HARD LUCK of his company going BANG and Joshua dying. Mom said he was like that every day, with the door closed and the curtains pulled shut and he might have stayed like that forever if she hadn’t told him about the BEST SURPRISE. Me being born is what cured him from sadness and made everything better and that means I am the most ESSENTIAL thing he needs and also his LIFESAVER. When you save someone’s life even once, you are responsible for them for their whole life, and that’s why I have to try extra-hard to be Dad’s best girl.
I crept over to the Walmart bags and fished out my new pajamas. Dad opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped his face with his hands. His eyes were red.
“Let me go take that shower,” he said.
“What’s wrong with him?” Clemesta said.
“He’s fine.”
Clemesta brushed my hair with the new brush and made it beautiful.
“I think maybe it’s the bad thing,” she said.
“I don’t remember anything bad,” I said. “So THEREFORE and ERGO it can’t be important.”
Clemesta sighed and I picked up the booklet about Jesus. It said he would forgive you if you REPENTED but you could also send $12 for extra-quick forgiveness.
“Do we have twelve dollars?” Clemesta asked.
“Maybe back home. But we don’t need any forgiveness.”
Clemesta frowned. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we do.”
Dad was still in the shower. I could hear the water running. I lay down on the bed nearest the window and climbed under Darlene’s handmade quilt. The sheets smelled like rose perfume and outside the window I could see the pale silver moon.
I wondered if Mom was seeing the same moon wherever she was. “Probably she’s starting to miss us now. I bet she wishes she was here instead of on her girl weekend with Rita.”
Clemesta blinked her wide worried eyes and shook her head. “I don’t think she’s with Rita, Dolly. I think she’s somewhere else.”
Monday
Dad was already dressed and ready to go when he woke me up from my dreams. He rubbed my cheek with the back of his rough hand and I opened my eyes. For a tiny moment I forgot where we were and whose bed I was sleeping in.
“It’s Darlene’s house,” Clemesta reminded me. “The Red Carriage Inn.”
“Morning, Dolly,” Dad said. I wiped my eyes.
“Are we going home now?”
Dad shook his head. “We still have that surprise to get to.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “We have a long drive.”
I groaned. “But I don’t like all the driving.”
Dad zipped up his bag and slipped some bills in his back pocket. “Yeah,” he said. “But driving is the only way to get to where we’re going.”
“Why couldn’t we fly? Like in an airplane or a helicopter or a hot air balloon?”
Dad picked at something in his teeth. Probably jerky hiding there since last night. “Yeah. Flying would have been quicker,” he said. “But…I couldn’t find your passport. Mom must have hidden it somewhere new. Or something.”
I had a memory of Mom giving YOU KNOW WHO a pile of papers in a folder but I shook my head hard from side to side to shake it loose.
I slipped on my new flamingo dress along with my new very white pointy shoes. In the bathroom, I splashed my face clean and brushed my teeth twice to show Gerry Germ that I meant business.
“Good job,” Clemesta said. “Dental hygiene is of very essential importance.” She brushed her mane but her teeth can’t get cavities so she just licks them clean.
We went downstairs and Darlene came over to me clucking like a chicken. “Don’t you look a picture,” she said.
“It’s from the shopping spree,” I told her. “Dad left all our other stuff at home.”
Darlene had prepared a pot of coffee for Dad and a glass of orange juice for me. She said we could choose anything we wanted from her breakfast cupboard, which had all kinds of food inside it, like boxes of cereal and Pop-Tarts and waffles and cream cakes in plastic wrap. She had baked a fresh batch of snickerdoodles which she colored with red food dye to make them pink. I chose Cheerios and a snickerdoodle but Dad wasn’t hungry. He drank a second mug of coffee and then number three, even though he already looked full of JUMPY JITTERS and probably didn’t need any more coffee bolts to wake him up. Darlene was talking to him about the weather and he was scrolling through the news on his phone.
Jolene was sitting on the sofa in the other room watching a TV show.
“No one can come to the Father, but through the Son,” the man said.
His name was Jewish Jesus but his hair was cut short and he didn’t have a beard and he was wearing a suit and tie like the one Dad wears to work every day.
“I don’t think that’s Jesus,” I said.
Jolene didn’t say anything, her eyes just stayed on the screen, staring at the picture. Dorie was on her lap wearing a very stinky diaper. She was sucking on a plastic bottle of soda and getting spit everywhere.
“Lord, Jolene,” Darlene yelled. “Will you change her already?” She rolled her eyes. “She’s going to sit there all day,” she said.
Dad set his mug on the counter. He picked up our Walmart bags and threw his duffel over his shoulder. His hair was still wet from the shower and the bald part was peeking through. “We’ll head off now,” he said.
Darlene walked us to the door. “You enjoy the rest of your trip,” she said. She crouched over and pinched my cheeks with her long pink nails. “Bless you, sweetheart.”
No one ever did that to me before and I liked it. I took the blessing and put it in the pocket in my heart. That’s where lovely things go, like love and cuddles and giggles and kindness. The pocket is very big and it never gets too full.
Dorie screeched from the other room and Darlene went to get her.
“Goodbye,” I said to the dogs. They all stood up straight and saluted me with their paws like soldiers.
In the daylight, Darlene’s house looked different. The walls were crumbling around the back, and the yard was covered in dead brown grass. All the flowers were dead too. I kicked my sneakers into the gravel drive so they could crunch the stones crunch, crunch, like they were munching up a delicious breakfast. I crunched again and I almost kicked a baby bird lying near the wheel of Dad’s Jeep.
I crouched down to look at her.
“She’s dead,” I said.
Dad peered down. “I think it probably fell from the tree.”
I reached out my hand so I could give the baby bird special farewell blessings like FLY AWAY TO HEAVEN PRECIOUS CREATURE OF NATURE AND WONDER but Dad yelled, “Jesus, Dolly, don’t!”
“What?” I said.
“It’s full of diseases,” he said. “Don’t you know not to touch dead animals?”
“I only wanted to send her to heaven,” I said very softly.
I climbed into the Jeep and held my arms tight against me to make myself a cage that you couldn’t get inside. My throat felt lumpy as I watched Dad. He climbed in and shut the door with a loud bang.
“You don’t have to get so mad,” I said.
“What?”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to do anything bad.”
Dad stared ahead. I pinched my nails into the squishy skin under my thumb. It’s a good trick for making you hurt in a place that isn’t your heart.
Dad sighed. He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I just…it’s been a rough…”
A girl wheeled a stroller toward Darlene’s house. Maybe she was Jolene’s friend, coming to visit. She looked fifteen too. She wore a lot of makeup around her eyes and her legs were like two very long poles.
&
nbsp; “It’s fine,” I said. “You didn’t mean it either.”
“No. I never want to yell at you.” His hands were holding the wheel, squeezing.
Clemesta nudged me. “Hey,” she said. “It’s Monday.”
My eyes popped. “I’m missing school today,” I said.
Dad rubbed his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “I already called Miss Ellis to tell her you won’t be in class.”
“When did you call?”
“Earlier. You were still asleep.”
“Is she mad?”
“Not at all,” Dad said. “She’s happy you’re on an adventure.” He took his phone out of his jeans. “That reminds me,” he said. “I should call the office too.”
He got out of the car again and shut the door. I bit my fingernail and SO WHAT about bad habits that Mom doesn’t think are LADYLIKE.
“Are you nervous?” Clemesta said.
“No, it’s just a little tiny snack.”
Clemesta narrowed her eyes at me.
“Yeah, Ahmed,” I heard Dad say, “I guess it’s a bad flu.”
Ahmed is the Junior Manager at VALUE MOTORS and a very nice man who always lets me choose a bar of candy from the special candy drawer in the office. Ahmed comes from Pakistan which is very, very far away and his wife still lives there with his four children. He is trying hard to earn enough money to bring them all to America which is their dream but so far he hasn’t seen them in TWO WHOLE YEARS. Being away from home is the first-worst thing in the world so I feel VERY SORRY for him and I am always extra-friendly when I see him so he is cheered up for a while before being sad again.
I couldn’t understand why Dad was telling Ahmed that he had the flu, because he wasn’t sniffling or coughing or throwing up.
“He does look a little clammy though,” I said. “Like he isn’t one hundred percent perfectly healthy.”
Clemesta shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
I watched Dad walk around the car, kicking at the tires.
“And Ahmed?” he said. “No one’s called looking for me or anything, have they?” He tapped the roof of the car with his hand. “No, no reason,” he said. “It’s nothing. Just…just someone from the bank. I thought he might call.”
He said goodbye and climbed back in the car.
“You don’t have the flu,” I said. He nodded.
“Yeah. But I want to go on our adventure. I had to say it so I wouldn’t be stuck at work all day.”
Clemesta frowned.
“He shouldn’t be telling lies,” she said.
“White lies,” I told her. “They’re different.”
We left the town of Clifton Forge and we didn’t find any fires. The main road just had a bunch of empty stores with nothing to buy inside them. They looked full of dust and probably rats. There was nowhere to go to the movies, no bookstore or toy store or cupcake store or anything fun like that.
A lot of the houses had their windows shut up with cardboard so you couldn’t even see into them. It made me think of our house, which Mom keeps very tidy and lovely, even though she hates it. She has a book beside her bed that says a clean house is like a clean mind, and she wants one of those badly. I thought of her waking me up in the morning for school, creeping into my bedroom on tiptoes and then giving me a hundred soft kisses so it feels like angels are batting their wings against my cheek.
“Good morning, Dolly Delicious,” she says. That’s one nice thing she does.
I looked over at Clemesta.
“Maybe I’m starting to miss her now,” I said. “But just a tiny bit. I’m still mad at her. More mad than missing.”
Clemesta nodded. “But remember what I told you last night? I don’t think she’s on a girls’ weekend. I think we should call her.”
I shrugged. My new white shoes were biting my toes like real teeth that were sharp and mean and hungry. “Not right now,” I said.
We passed by railway tracks that were grown over with weeds and trash. One of the old cars was sitting right in the middle, like it was meant to be going somewhere but instead the world stopped and it stayed there forever, rusty and broken. Probably a family of raccoons lived inside. They ate berries and grew vegetables to sell at the weekly farmers market.
“Someone should fix that train,” I said. “So people can use it again.”
“Mm,” Dad said.
We drove a stretch of the way being silent again, and I watched the trees and the fields out the window. Once we were away from the town, the sun was high and shining and the sky was big. Everything felt fresh, like you’d never run out of sky or air or mountains or trees or places to have picnics. And America was so enormous, like probably you could fit the whole world inside and everyone would still get a yard and a tree for building a tree house.
I was already getting bored with the driving.
I tried singing the “Adventure” song but I forgot the words and I was not in the mood to make up new ones. The mosquito bite on my leg from Darlene’s house itched and I dabbed spit on it, which is a magic trick to make it stop.
Dad’s phone on the seat next to him started to ring.
“Fuck,” he said. Then he hit his forehead and said IDIOT and both of those are bad words.
Clemesta made eyes at me.
“Who’s an idiot?” I said. The phone kept ringing but Dad didn’t answer. “Is that Mom calling?”
“It’s not Mom,” Dad said.
“Who’s the idiot?”
“Me. I forgot to do something.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer. He drove a little further and pulled up at an empty picnic spot. There were a few wooden tables with lots of trash lying around, like empty soda cans and McDonald’s wrappers and someone’s backpack with a sweater lying in the dirt. Dad hopped out of the car and scratched around for something in the trunk.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Just…never mind.”
He sat back down in front and used a screwdriver to break into part of the dashboard. He grunted and pulled out a small black box which he looked at for a second before he hurled it into the trees like it was a football.
“Dad!” I said. “What was that?”
“It’s the—it’s a part of the car we don’t need.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
“It’s just, it takes too much fuel. It’s bad for the environment.”
“Oh. Then that’s good you’re throwing it away.”
Dad chewed his lip.
“He’s a climate change warrior like us,” I said. Miss Ellis told us all about caring for the planet and looking after nature and the animals and recycling and not using plastic straws and not burning lots of coal.
Clemesta frowned. “I don’t like this,” she said.
“Well, I like it a lot. Dad cares about our very precious Miss Planet Earth.”
“I think it’s something else,” Clemesta said.
“Oh, you little worrywart. You are always worrying. Like that time you said ‘Do not climb all the way to the top of the tree or you’ll get stuck up there forever,’ and I did it anyway and I didn’t get stuck. That’s just one example,” I told her. “I have lots of other ones in my head.”
I pointed to her mouth. “Now turn that frown upside down.”
She snapped at my hand with her teeth.
Dad stood at the car door but he didn’t get in. I could smell the grass and also the new smell of the morning before the day melts it away. I watched Dad.
I knocked on the window. “Let’s go.”
“Just a second,” he said. He reached into his pocket and took out his phone.
He tapped on it with his finger and looked at the screen, and then he reached back his arm and threw it into the same trees where the black fuel-eating box was lying.
My mouth fell TO THE FLOOR.
“Dad!” I yelled. “Are you crazy?”
“I think he might be,” Cl
emesta said.
Dad climbed back in the car and shut the door. “That phone was broken,” he said. “Piece of junk.”
“But you just used it to call Ahmed.”
“Yeah, but it hardly worked. So. Better to get another one.”
“You could have gotten it fixed at that repair shop next to the pizza place.”
I watched him. He did that thing with his jaw again. CLICK CRACK. I folded my arms.
“You shouldn’t have thrown it away,” I said. “I could have played games while you spent all day DRIVING. It’s so boring back here, like I could literally die from boring. And I wanted to call Mom. She needs to hear my voice. Dad!”
He rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, sweetheart. We can find a pay phone.”
“When?”
“Later.”
I groaned. “Where are we even going for this dumb adventure? It’s so far.”
“It will be—you’ll like it once we’re there.”
“Aren’t you excited anymore?”
“I am.”
“You don’t look it. You look the opposite of excited. Like when we used to go and visit Pop in the old people’s home.”
Dad laughed. “Yeah, those weren’t the most fun trips, were they?”
I shook my head. “Except when the nurses gave me Jell-O. That was nice. Jell-O, Jell-O-O-O.”
I wobbled like Jell-O and then I went back to being a girl. My thighs kept wobbling and I squeezed them together.
Dad started the car. I pulled my dress over my knees. The flamingos stretched and their necks got even longer. I showed Clemesta.
“See? It’s a magic growing trick. I just invented it right now.”
“No wonder everyone tells you you’re advanced.”
“I know.” I did it three more times and then the birds got worried about their necks being forever broken and asked me to please stop.
“I guess we’ll have to play the SIGNS game again.”
Clemesta sighed. “It’s not THRILLING FUN.”
“Yeah, but it’s all we have right now.”
“Look,” Clemesta said. “That attraction board is blank. There isn’t even one single fun thing to do here.”
All the Lost Things Page 8