“I need you, I need you, I won’t let you go.”
Mr. Angry Bear was there too. He wouldn’t stay sleeping no matter how well we behaved.
Dad looked at the time and rubbed his head. “We should probably get you something to eat,” he said.
“I want Thai food,” I said. “Or Chinese dumplings.”
“I don’t think they have that around here.”
“Well, they should.”
We passed a McDonald’s drive-through and Dad turned the car around to go back.
“That’s more junk,” I said. “You told me you were going to look after me properly.”
Dad called out our order and at the next window he reached out an arm and picked up our dinner. “Why don’t you come up in front?” he said.
“I’m staying here,” I said. I opened the wrapping and stared at the cheeseburger. I ate half of my burger first, and then the fries, and then the other half of the burger.
Dad turned around in his seat to face me.
“We eat our burgers the same way,” Dad said. “I never noticed before.”
“Oh. Yeah,” I said.
I wiped my mouth with the napkin and sipped my milkshake. It was too sweet and too cold. Outside the car, I could hear the alligators in the swamps gnashing their teeth. Hungry, hungry, hungry, just waiting to pounce and take you under.
Someone parked next to our car and Dad turned his back and hunched over. I chewed the last bite of my cheeseburger until I had sucked out all the juice from the meat. The lump sat in my mouth a long time before I forced it down.
When we finished, Dad scrunched up all the wrappers and put them into the brown paper bag.
“Do it,” Clemesta said. “Do it now.”
I looked at Dad.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I said.
“Badly?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh,” he said. “All right. Hang on.” He put the baseball cap back on my head and pulled the front low over my face. “I’ll wait right here in the car,” he said.
The restaurant was empty inside. I walked up to the counter. I took off the cap and held it in my hands.
“Can I use the restroom, please?” I said.
The man in the McDonald’s uniform was reading a giant book called BIOCHEMISTRY, which didn’t look very interesting. He peered down at me. His eyes seemed kind, and also tired.
“Toilets are only for customers,” he said. His teeth were very white and straight.
“We are customers,” I said. “We just got our dinner from the drive-through. Dad and me,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said. “Through there.”
“Thank you,” I said. I smiled at him with all my teeth and I looked at him and I waited for him to look at me VERY CAREFULLY but instead he went back to reading his book. The badge on his shirt said DARRYL 2ND ASSISTANT MANAGER.
I went ON PURPOSE into the women’s restroom and washed my hands with the soap and looked at my face in the mirror. Even with the boy hair I still looked like me if you just paid some attention.
My skin felt like it was slicked with honey. I splashed water on my face and wiped my cheeks with the brown paper towels.
You are brave, I told myself in the mirror. You are brave and you can do it.
I went back out. The man behind the counter looked at me and I looked back at him. I took a deep breath and gathered up all my brave.
“My name is Dolly Rust,” I said. “Dolly Rust. The police are looking for me. And I need to go home.”
The man put aside his book and leaned over the counter. “Dolly Rust,” he said.
I turned and ran back out to Dad. I slammed the door and pulled on my seat belt. Dad started the car just as the McDonald’s man came outside talking into his phone and walking toward us very quickly.
We drove into the dark night. The roads were pitch black and there weren’t any streetlights to show us the way.
“I did it,” I whispered into Clemesta’s ear and she nodded.
“Good girl,” she said. “Brave girl.”
It was cold in the back and everything in me felt hollow. I shivered and held my legs in my arms to try and warm them up. I couldn’t see anything out the window, and all I could hear was the tires racing against the road. Clemesta and I squeezed hands.
Inside my shorts I felt for my tooth and held it in my fingers. Then I opened the window and dropped it into the road.
“What was that?” Dad said.
“My tooth,” I said.
“It fell out?”
“Yeah.”
“Shouldn’t you keep it for the tooth fairy?”
I shut the window. “The tooth fairy is a lie,” I said.
Everything is a lie.
Saturday
In my dream, I was driving the blue Ford. My hands were on the wheel but the car wasn’t stuck, it was moving. It was going too fast and I was very scared. I looked behind me to find Dad, and he was there, running behind the car and pushing it. He was trying to make it go faster and faster, and I cried, “Please stop!” but he wouldn’t.
In the morning, we weren’t driving anymore. The car was parked on a patch of dirt in the middle of nothing. There was no one around, no cars and no people. Just dry grass and tall trees and a swampy-looking river in front of us. I sat up and pushed Hank’s jacket off me. Dad must have covered me in the night.
I could see him out the front, sitting on the hood of the car. He was watching the sun come up over the water, which looked very still and glassy. The air outside smelled sweet and strange, like fruit that’s too ripe and a little bit poisonous.
I checked on Clemesta. She was breathing softly and still fast asleep. I kissed the top of her head and climbed out of the car. My legs were stiff again. I hoped it was from being curled up all night in the back of a car and not from scurvy.
SORRY, LEGS, I said. They hadn’t had a chance to dance or exercise or play for a long time. It was one whole week since we left home. Actually it felt like a thousand years. A thousand bad years of tears and plagues and very bad things. Everything felt upside-down but not like in the fun picture where you have to spot what’s wrong. This was another kind of upside-down and I didn’t like any of the pictures. I wouldn’t even look at them.
I climbed out.
“Good morning,” Dad said.
I looked out at the water, and then back to the empty field behind us.
“Where are we?”
“Orange, Texas,” Dad said.
I frowned. “Another state away from home. Did we sleep here?”
Dad shook his head. “I drove most of the night. Got lost some of the way.”
“You’re always lost.”
Dad looked very tired. His beard was already stubbly on his skin and his borrowed clothes from Hank were crumpled. He had a bottle of water in his hands. He took a sip and wiped his mouth. “Look at that sun coming up,” he said. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
I glanced at the sky with its pinky pale light. Nothing looked beautiful to me. It all just looked wrong.
“Why are you paying so much attention to the sun all of a sudden?”
Dad’s eyes were far away, looking into the water but really trying to look all the way back in time. Probably he didn’t like the picture of now either.
“I want to remember it,” he said.
My stomach rock pulled at my sides as it sank and twisted. “Why do you need to remember it? It isn’t going anywhere.”
Dad patted the hood with his hand. “Come sit here with me a minute.”
He held out his arm to help pull me up. The car hood felt warm under my skin. Dad took a deep breath. He made a fist and squeezed it inside his other hand. The knuckles cracked. I thought of Travis back at the National Park. LOVE and FEAR. LOVE and FEAR. Maybe they weren’t opposites. Maybe they were actually the same thing written in different letters.
I poked my tongue into the place where my tooth had lived. There and not there, there and not the
re.
“Dolly,” Dad said, “I need to tell you something.”
I looked at his sad brown eyes. They were so big it looked like they wanted to burst. I didn’t want him to say anything. I didn’t want him to tell me why he was sad and saying goodbye to the sun.
“Dolly,” he said. He took my hand. “I did a very bad thing.”
I shook my head. I took back my hand and sat on it.
“Doll, listen. I—”
“No,” I said. “Stop.”
“Dolly.”
“Stop, Dad. Zip it up and throw the key in the water.”
“Doll. I need to say it.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do, sweetheart. Dolly, I hurt Mom. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t ever want to hurt her, but I did.”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
“Dolly, I did.” His voice cracked and his face scrunched up and his eyes spilled tears. “I hurt her really badly, Dolly.”
“SHUT UP!” I yelled. “Shut up!”
Everything in my whole head was spinning too fast and my stomach rock was so heavy inside me that I could hardly breathe.
“Dolly,” Dad said. “I need you to understand. I didn’t mean it. It was an accident. I was so scared. Mom was leaving, she was going to take you away. For good. I’d never see you. You’d be…I was so mad. I always get too mad and this time I couldn’t stop myself.”
He dropped his head into his hands and he sobbed like a big fat baby. His whole body shook and wobbled. He was disgusting, and I wanted to punch him and throw up on him at the same time.
“Take me home right now,” I said. “Just take me home to Mom.”
Dad looked at me with his wet eyes and shook his head.
“But, Dolly,” he gulped. “I can’t.”
“You can!” I yelled.
“Doll, Mom is dead.”
I looked at his face, smeared with red and tears and snot and sad.
“DON’T SAY THAT!” I yelled. “It isn’t true.”
“It is, Dolly.”
“NO! No, it isn’t!” I screamed with all the air in my lungs and Dad was crying and I shoved him so hard that he fell off the car and onto the grass. He lay there in a crumpled heap and I stood over him crying and shaking and breaking apart.
He pulled himself up and tried to come toward me but I pushed him away.
“I’m sorry, Dolly. I’m so sorry. It was an accident, it wasn’t supposed to—”
“WHY?” I yelled. “Why did you hurt her?”
Dad looked up to the sky and let out another sob. “I just snapped,” he said. “When I heard about the man she was seeing, all those secret trips to Manhattan. The divorce. When I heard she was planning to take you to LA to be with him, and—”
“Stew,” I cried. “She’s dead because of him?” I wiped both hands across my face to try and clear up the mess. I tried to stop shuddering, too, but I couldn’t. I looked at Dad. He had turned white and still like a ghost.
“Stew?” he said. He shook his head.
“Yes!” I cried.
“Stew Ronson?”
“YES!” My lungs burned with all the hate I had for YOU KNOW WHO, whose name cut my throat in slices and made it bleed.
“Stew,” Dad said. “Oh, Jesus. Stew.” He stumbled back against the car and retched yellow water onto the dead Texas grass.
I pinched my nail into the skin until it was popped open and stinging.
“There wasn’t any best place you were taking me,” I said. “The best place was home and you killed it.”
Dad nodded. He had his hand over his mouth like he didn’t want to let any more sound out. His tears were still falling and his eyes were shut.
“What’s going to happen to us now?” I said.
Dad shuddered out a long breath and then he swallowed. “I’m taking you to your grandparents. My mom and dad.”
“But they’re DEAD,” I said. “They’re dead.”
Dad shook his head. “They aren’t,” he said. “I told you they were because I didn’t have them in my life anymore and I thought it would be easier that way. If you thought they were gone.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I know it’s a lot to take in. But after Joshua died, I never went home again. I didn’t speak to them or see them. They blamed me for what happened. They were right. They were right to hate me. And I didn’t want to cause them any more pain.”
He clicked his jaw. “Sometimes I think all I do is cause people pain.”
“YOU DO!” I yelled. “That’s exactly what you do.” I looked at him and set him on fire with my eyes and my angry.
He wiped his face. “I brought you here so you’d be safe. So you’d be with them and you’d be looked after.”
I went frozen.
“And where will you be?”
Dad turned away.
We drove in silence. Dad wasn’t wearing the disguise anymore. He was back to looking like Dad.
Clemesta squeezed my hand in hers, but she didn’t say a word.
We pulled up outside an ordinary-looking brick house. The yard had a big tree standing in the middle of it and a red pickup parked out to the side.
“I’m sorry,” Clemesta said. “I tried to warn you, Dolly.”
She was very weak. Her magical powers were almost gone. I kissed her chopped-off mane. “You’ll get strong again soon,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I won’t.”
My heart broke into even more pieces.
Dad turned to look at me. “You wait in the car for now,” he said. “I’ll come back and get you in a minute.”
He got out and left the car door open so I would have some air. It was already too hot. Too everything. He smoothed back his hair with his hands and rang the doorbell.
I cradled Clemesta in my lap, and we watched the front door as it opened.
An old woman poked her head out. She was wearing a yellow nightgown and slippers on her feet and in my head I said HELLO, GRANDMA and in my stomach the rock sank and the butterflies threw up. “I’m one-half orphan now,” I said, and Clemesta wiped a tear from her cheek.
“Yes?” the old woman said. She peered at Dad and then she clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Dear Lord,” she said. “Is that you, Joseph?”
Dad nodded. “Hello, Mama.” He sounded like a little boy suddenly instead of a dad, and he hung his head.
The grandma let out a moan and slapped him WHACK across his cheek. Dad didn’t move.
“Joseph, Joseph, Joseph,” she said, and then she didn’t say anything else. She just stood and stared and shook her head and held herself against the door until Dad stepped closer. He put his arms around her and she collapsed into them like her legs were made of Jell-O.
She was sobbing.
I felt a great big lump in my throat and I told it to BUG OFF.
Clemesta sniffed. “It’s so sad,” she said.
“Everything is sad,” I said. “The whole world is sad and everyone is crying.”
I looked at the grandma who was still sobbing and holding Dad and shaking her head. She was old but not ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD like the grandmas in Pop’s nursing home, maybe only ninety or eighty-five. I thought about her looking after me instead of Mom and that made me HATE her, which wasn’t kind but SO WHAT because Kindness Week was over and it had been the worst week of my whole entire life.
The grandma pulled away to look at Dad and touch his face and feel his hair and rub his arms.
“Son, son,” she said. “Whatever did you do? It’s all over the news. They’ve been watching the house. Sheriff Carter came by yesterday. Is it true? Is it true what they’re saying?”
Dad stepped back and wiped his eyes. “I messed up,” he said. “I made a mess of everything.”
The grandma shook her head. “Oh, Joseph,” she said. “My dear, sweet boy.”
I shook my head. SILLY GRANDMA. He wasn’t any one of those things.
Dad looked ba
ck at the car. “I want you to meet someone,” he said.
He walked over to me and peered inside the window. “Dolly, would you like to come and meet your grandma?”
I did not AT ALL want to meet her or get out of the car but I knew that the question wasn’t really a question and I didn’t have any choice. I set Clemesta down and stepped out. The grandma had come over and she was standing on the lawn, watching me carefully.
“Mama, this is Dolly,” Dad said.
She crouched down to look at me. Her eyes were teary and red and her skin up close was crinkly in places like an old tissue. Her eyes were the same color as Dad’s with just the same amount of sad living inside them. I didn’t know you could get someone else’s sad from them, but I guess it’s like hair or dance talent.
“Dolly,” she said. “I’m so very pleased to meet you.”
I stared at her face. I wished I could make her disappear. I wished we could all disappear, back in time to before everything bad happened, when the whole world was perfect and no one was sad or mad or gone forever.
“She’s beautiful, Joseph,” the grandma said.
Dad put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Best thing I ever did.”
The grandma smiled and her watery eyes watered some more. She wiped them with her sleeve. “Goddamn it, Joseph,” she said. “You goddamn fool.”
They didn’t say anything for a while. We all just stood and stared at the grass, with the sticky Orange air sitting on our skin.
A car passed by and the grandma looked out at the street.
“Come on,” she said. “We best get you two inside.”
She led us into the kitchen but she didn’t sit down. “Your father,” she said to Dad. “I’ll go and get him, but…”
She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again.
“Well,” she said. “You’ll always be our son, won’t you?”
Dad and I sat down at the kitchen table, which wasn’t made of wood like the one at home, but hard plastic with scratches all over it. We didn’t look at each other and I moved my hand away so he couldn’t touch it.
All the Lost Things Page 21