“The adventure is fun.”
“It’s not an adventure, it’s only driving through America.”
“I bet the fun is coming. Have some patience, you impatient impossible impolite horse.”
Patience is a good word to know. It’s also a very important trick to have. I need lots to help Mom with being an actress and sometimes I run out and she gets mad. First I need it for all our trips to Manhattan, because that’s where she goes to audition for new shows and acting jobs.
Last year she won a part in a TV commercial for diapers. She plays the Mom’s hands and she has to unfasten the diaper and hold it up to show how it doesn’t spill even when it’s very full of baby pee which was actually just blue water for the commercial. Up until last year Mom used to take me to castings to try and see if I could be a CHILD STAR. But the ladies behind the desk always sighed with disappointment at me being all wrong and said “NEXT PLEASE.” Now we only go for Mom’s famous-making roles.
Dad doesn’t like Mom being an actress because he thinks it’s a waste of time and there’s no money in it and she does nothing but bring home bills and she should get a real job and give up her RIDICULOUS DREAMS ALREADY. That’s why our trips have to be another secret for the secret-secret box. But nowadays they are a DOUBLE SECRET because of YOU KNOW WHO.
I need patience for other stuff too, like watching the episode from when Mom was a star. She plays it ALL THE TIME and she doesn’t like it if I don’t pay all my attention. On the show, she had to pretend to be a girl called Sally who was a kindergarten teacher in love with the principal, Mr. Hughes. They didn’t get to kiss ever because Sally had to move away and go teach kids in Korea and then Mom wasn’t on the show anymore.
Mom says she had to stop being an actress because she moved from Los Angeles to Florida to be with Dad after he met her and said, “I LOVE YOU AND MARRY ME.” Dad was visiting Los Angeles for work and Mom was being a part-time waitress while she waited to get famous. He thought she was the most beautiful of every woman he had ever laid eyes on before in his whole life and he told her that and she was very happy to hear it and he was very handsome in his suit and he invited her back to his fancy hotel and they fell HEAD OVER HEELS into fairy-tale love and that’s the story and happily ever after is how it ends.
Mom does have another job that she does on the side of being famous and that needs patience too. It’s called JEWELRY MAKER and she makes beautiful necklaces and bracelets with special stones and crystals that can do magic things like HEAL and FIND LOVE and BRING PEACE and CHANNEL ENERGY. She makes the jewelry and writes little cards to explain their powers and then she sells them to a shop in Brooklyn. A lot of afternoons I have to help her sort the stones with my fingers because they are smaller than hers. I don’t like doing it because I would rather play other games that I like better like BALLET STAR or ANIMAL SAFARI PATROL GUARD, but those are for days when Mom is BEST MOM and looking at me with LOVE-HEART EYES that will do anything to make me happy.
Mom says the jewelry-making is silly and only something to do until she is famous again. That’s why she doesn’t spend much time on it and some days she rolls her eyes when she gets a new order and says, “Some people are so goddamn gullible.”
Before the jewelry-making, Mom made greeting cards, and then before that she sold that magic Herbalife powder for making you skinny and rich, and before that I was too little to remember so I don’t know.
A bunch of other stuff needs patience, too, like the time Mom took off all her clothes and stood naked in the hallway in only her underwear, and made me take the camera and snap pictures of her from every single angle so she could see all the parts of her that were ugly. That way she would know what to work on even harder, until she’s perfect all over.
It took a long time, and I had to take all the ones of her legs a second time because the shadows of me got in the way.
I touched my wobbly tooth. When it wiggled my stomach wobbled. I let my tongue roll onto the leather of the seats. They tasted smooth and a little smoky. Clemesta was watching out the window and practicing her patience.
“Good girl,” I said. “You will get a gold star when we get home.”
“Dolly, I don’t think we’re going back.”
“Clemesta, of course we are. Home is where we belong.”
I put her at my feet where it was shaded from the sun. “Have a nap. Sleep off your weary and your troubles.”
I counted three churches and a sign for a gun club. Gun rhymes with fun but they aren’t. The churches here didn’t look like the ones back home, with colorful windows and beautiful towers and bells for ringing when the bride gets confetti thrown over her head. Most of them were just boring old trailers or flat white houses with a fat cross stuck on the roof. We never go to church, except on Christmas to hear the carols or if we get invited to weddings, like when Rita married Terence. When they stopped being married, Rita got a pet dog instead. The dog is a very adorable pug and his name is George Clooney and he farts all day long and in the winter he wears a pink fur coat because Rita says he is gay just like all the best men in her life. I love George Clooney and whenever I see him, he faints with happiness and I have to tickle him back to life.
The biggest truck I ever saw came creeping past.
“I bet that’s a truck full of Skittles to feed the cows,” I said. “I saw that once on TV. The farmers buy up all the Skittles that come out in the funny colors that people don’t want to eat, and they give them to their lucky cows for breakfast.”
That was an interesting fact but Dad didn’t say so.
“Maybe you should throw something at his head, so he pays attention,” Clemesta said. She was awake from her nap.
I sighed. “Let’s just invent a new game.”
We called it DEAD ANIMAL SIGHTINGS and you had to shout out DEAD ANIMAL whenever you saw one squashed on the side of the road, and you also had to guess what it was when it wasn’t dead, like RACCOON or DOG. Lucky for us, there were a MILLION dead animals. Sometimes they were squashed flat and all you could see was blood and red guts and it was impossible to say what kind of animal they had been when they were alive. Other times you could still see their faces and the color of their fur and then it was easier to call out DEAD POSSUM or DEAD SQUIRREL or DEAD DEER.
“Dad!” I said. “Play.”
“Mm,” he said.
“But try.”
“Not now, Dolly.”
Clemesta looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“It’s because he’s distracted with driving and focusing,” I said. “He can’t do all that and play games at the same time.”
She shook her head. “No. I think I remember what it is. And it’s something bad.”
I turned my head all the way away from her.
“Dolly.”
“I can’t chat right now, Clemesta,” I said. “I’m too busy focusing on the road. Look, we just missed that dead thing and we didn’t even get to figure out what she was.”
Clemesta made a face. “I don’t think I can play anymore. Those dead animals are making me nauseous.”
We passed a very tall tree, called Mr. Majestic Oak. He had good long branches for climbing and building tree houses. I wished Dad would hurry up and build mine like he promised. Maybe he would do it when we got back home. Maybe he would be full up with energy and fun and happiness after the adventure. He would be like the man in the TV commercial who has a before picture of him looking sad and then an after picture of him looking OVER THE MOON. Or he’d be like Ezra’s dad, who is always laughing and throwing him over his shoulders and who always stays after class to see what Ezra did that day. Ezra is browny-skinned and lovely and probably one day we will be boyfriend and girlfriend but we are too young for that RIGHT EXACTLY NOW.
“Why don’t you climb to the top of my tree and live here a while?” Mr. Majestic Oak said as we passed. “You’ll be away from everyone except good-natured squirrels.”
“I wish I could,” I called.
&
nbsp; Mr. Majestic Oak waved his arm. “Too bad,” he said. He was sad to say goodbye.
“Mom was fed up with wishing Dad was different too,” Clemesta said. “That’s why she was meeting YOU KNOW WHO in hotel rooms and bars in Manhattan. Because he’s the opposite.”
“Hush,” I said. “I WILL NOT think about that man. If I do I get FLAMING and FURIOUS inside like I am burning with fire.”
“I know,” Clemesta said, “but it’s true. ‘You deserve so much better, Anna.’ That’s what he said. Then he said, ‘You don’t have to stay and suffer. You don’t need to waste the best years of your life.’ Do you remember?”
I took my fingernail and pressed it into my mosquito bite. I held it there until I popped the skin and the watery stuff oozed out. It was the mosquito poison, which is very dangerous in your body. If you don’t squeeze it all out you’ll get sweaty and die from MALARIA.
I poked my finger into my stomach. It was hard and stiff and a little sore.
GOD’S LOVE IS RELENTLESS.
“What does relentless mean?”
“It means it won’t ever stop,” Dad said.
“That’s good, right?”
“For love, yes,” Dad said. “It’s good if love is relentless.”
I wished he would say MY LOVE FOR YOU IS RELENTLESS, but instead he said a curse word under his breath.
“What happened?”
“I took the wrong exit. I probably need to get myself a map.”
“Your phone had a map,” I said. “But you threw that into the trees.”
At the next gas station, Dad pulled up the car. “Want to come inside?”
“It’s only another gas station,” I said. “They all look the exact and exactly the same.”
“Yeah,” Dad said. “But you can stretch your legs.”
I looked at my legs. “These need real stretching, not just gas-station stretching.” I sighed. “I guess I’ll just go pee.”
Dad was already walking ahead. He rubbed his head which looked like it was hurting him. Probably he was stressed from planning the adventure and looking after me the whole time alone. Usually that’s Mom’s job and not his.
I ran to catch up and my flamingos went flying.
The man in the store was sitting behind glass so you couldn’t touch him. You had to hand the money through a small hole.
“Why is he in a cage?” I said.
“To stop him getting robbed, I guess.”
“Or shot dead. But actually someone could break that glass if they had a glass-blaster torch or a destroyer flame or something.”
“Mm,” Dad said. He flipped through all the different newspapers on the rack. Most of them had the same face on the cover.
“Hello, Mr. President,” I said. I stuck out my tongue.
Dad asked the man behind the counter for a map.
“I’m going to pee,” I said. Dad nodded. “Don’t forget to watch out,” I reminded him.
I found the door to the restroom and went inside. The floor was wet and the toilet seat was covered in someone else’s pee. I pulled toilet paper from the roll and made a cover for the seat, which is a smart trick that Mom taught me. I tried to hold my breath against the bad smells.
When I came out, Dad was over at the ATM getting some more money. He had a map and two Red Bulls in his hand.
“Pick out some snacks for the road, if you like,” he told me.
I walked down the aisle looking at candy bars and cookies. None of those would help me fight scurvy, which is another thing I learned about from Miss Ellis. She told the class how the sailors in the olden days got sick and died, and all because they weren’t eating enough fruit, which gives you vitamin C. That’s why you have to have your FIVE A DAY and make sure to get all your vitamins, but Dad kept forgetting about all that important stuff. I bet no one around here ever eats GREEN SMOOTHIES for breakfast which is what Mom has every day after her exercising. Sometimes I have one too, so she can be proud of me for trying to stay healthy and pretty. They taste disgusting but I like the part where Mom smiles at me and says, “That’s my good girl.” Everyone likes a good girl but sometimes it’s hard to always be her and I give up trying.
I set a Twix and a pack of Twizzlers on the counter. Dad picked out something called a Moon Pie, and I took one too. When the man behind the counter spoke, I saw that he had teeth made from gold. I bet that was why he was behind the glass.
As we were leaving, another man walked inside with a dog on a leash. He bumped Dad and Dad said WATCH IT ASSHOLE even though it looked like it was just an accident.
“You say that with a kid right by you?” the man said. “Who’s the asshole?” He shook his head.
“That was a pit bull the man had,” I told Dad. “They are very good SAVAGER DOGS. They can kill bad guys if you tell them to. Lucky he didn’t set him on you. Like this,” I said, and I showed him my SNARLING teeth.
Dad pulled the tab of his Red Bull and finished it before we got back to the car. On the ground, I spotted a postcard. I bent to pick it up because it wasn’t a dead animal with hundreds of diseases, it was only paper.
The picture on the front was a pile of silver coins and it said INVEST WISELY.
“What’s that?” Dad said.
“It’s a secret message for me,” I said. “I can’t tell you about it.” I held the postcard against my chest to hide the picture.
Dad hopped in the car. I opened up the bag of Twizzlers with my teeth while he read his map, folding it and unfolding it across the passenger seat until he could find what he was looking for.
“Actually I’m very good at reading maps,” I said. “I can help be the NAVIGATOR MAN. That’s the person who tells you where to go so you don’t get lost. We can be a team,” I said. “We can pretend that we’re sailors on a ship but it’s really a road. That doesn’t matter though, it’s only pretend so you can make up whatever you like.”
“Maybe later,” Dad said.
“When later?”
Dad held the map up close to his face and squinted.
“Do you need glasses too?” I said. “Miss Ellis says I do the squinting thing with my eyes when I look at the board.”
“Mm,” Dad said.
“Will you take me for that eyes exam when we get back home, the one where you have to read the letters of the alphabet but they’re all mixed up so you can’t cheat?”
Dad nodded. “Yeah, sweetheart. We’ll do that.”
He pulled out of the gas station and then we were BACK ON THE ROAD.
Roads, roads, roads, we are always on the road.
Driving, driving, driving, I’m so bored I might explode.
I sang the song again, but louder so Dad could hear it. He turned the radio on and listened to the newspeople talk about the student who took a gun to college to shoot eight of his classmates till they were dead and the world’s tallest building that you can see from outer space.
“Is asshole a curse word?” I said.
Dad nodded.
I held up my hand and made the sign with my finger that Savannah had taught me. “Is this a curse word?”
Dad looked up and smiled. “No, the other finger.”
“This one?”
Dad shook his head. “The middle one. But don’t do it. It’s rude.”
I put my hand under the seat and practiced.
Then I showed Clemesta the secret message postcard. “It means there is treasure waiting for me. Probably at the end of the adventure.”
“Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?”
“Exactly.”
She nodded. “I guess our secret-secret box is like a treasure chest. Because secrets can be like treasures.”
“Only if they’re good ones,” I said.
“I guess. Do you remember what we put in there last?”
I shook my head.
“Can you try? I think it’s important.”
“Okay, but later. Right now I’m busy.”
“Doing what?”
>
“Being on the adventure. And I have to help with the navigating.”
I pressed the button to open the window and the wind came in and made a big noise. That reminded me of the stuck windows in the Chambersburg Comfort Lodge and I told Dad.
“Isn’t it dumb? Because windows are for opening!”
“Yeah,” Dad said. “Normally. But in hotels, I think they have to do it like that.”
“Why?”
“I think so people don’t fall out of the window, or, or—”
“Or jump,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“It’s called committee suicide.”
“Committing suicide, yeah.”
“Like Uncle Joshua.”
Dad didn’t say anything.
I wasn’t meant to hear the GRIZZLY BEAR DETAILS about how Uncle Joshua died but one day I overheard Mom talking to Rita and she said, “He went up to the eighteenth floor of the apartment complex they were building and he jumped right out the window. Joe had to identify him by his appendix scar.”
Dad did the fist-making with his hands on the steering wheel.
“Sorry,” I said. I bit my cheek between my teeth.
Dad swallowed. “I just don’t like thinking about that.”
“Because it makes you sad.”
“Yeah.”
“Dad’s always sad,” Clemesta said.
YOU’RE DEPRESSED, JOSEPH is what Mom yells when she CANNOT TAKE IT ANYMORE. I can spell DEPRESSED but I forget sometimes what it means exactly. Probably that you miss your friends and your old job, because Dad got very sad that day two Christmases ago when we bumped into his old work friend from Florida called Pete.
We were in Manhattan for the very special treat of seeing the holiday lights at Rockefeller Center. We were having lots of fun and Mom and Dad were holding hands and sneaking secret smooching kisses and I was holding Mom’s other hand and it was dark out but the lights were sparkling and we were about to go ice skating but then Pete said JOSEPH RUST! and we had to stop to talk to him. They shook hands and he asked Dad lots of questions and it was very boring so I didn’t listen to everything but then I heard Pete say “Jesus, VALUE MOTORS?” and then he said he could HOOK DAD UP and why didn’t he ever turn up for that interview he set up for him because he was a shoo-in for the job?
All the Lost Things Page 9