There was a loud voice from the other room and then someone came crashing into the kitchen yelling, “NO SON OF MINE!” It was an old man and he grabbed Dad by the collar of his shirt and pulled him right up off his feet.
I made myself very small and hid under the table. Dad held up his hands.
“I know,” he said, “I know. I’m sorry, I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know. I’m just here to make it right. Please. Please.”
The grandma was trying to get the old man who was the granddad but not Pop to sit down. His eyes were bulging out of his skull.
“Frank,” she said, “please. There’s a girl. There’s a child.”
He looked at me under the table and I looked back at him. He didn’t have Dad’s brown eyes and they weren’t crying, they were SPITTING MAD. He had red cheeks and white hair and he was very tall with long and thin bones, like a scarecrow. He sank into a chair and I watched his chest puff in and out like he had just done a hundred jumping jacks. The spit in the corner of his mouth puffed in and out too, a little white balloon that couldn’t ever float.
No one said anything for a million hours. The grandma and granddad and Dad just sat and stared and forgot all about me under the table until Dad patted me and told me to come out.
The grandma stood up and scooped coffee into the coffee machine. She poured a glass of juice from a carton and set it down in front of me. It was the berry kind, my first-worst flavor.
“Thank you,” I said anyway, to show her that I had good manners. Mom would like that.
“How old are you, Dolly?” she said.
“I’m seven and two months and three weeks.”
She smiled a sad smile and shook her head. She poured the coffee into three mugs. All of them had cat pictures on them.
“Why are you here?” the granddad said. “All these years—a goddamn grandbaby we don’t even know about—and you come back now. Now, like this.”
Dad swallowed. “I stayed away so you wouldn’t have to look at me.”
The granddad slammed his mug on the table and the coffee spilled out.
“Look at you?” he said. “You think it was better losing two sons instead of one?” His voice snapped and cracked and spit. I guess he had an angry bear inside him too.
The grandma took his hand and squeezed it.
“Please, Frank,” she said. “We all made terrible mistakes, didn’t we?”
Everyone went quiet again. The kitchen clock’s hands went around three times. No one wiped up the spill.
“What is it you plan to do, son?” the grandma said. Her eyes were wide and worried.
Dad swallowed. “I thought about running,” he said. “Me and Doll. We were heading to Mexico. But she got sick one night, real sick.” He looked at me and shook his head. “I realized I couldn’t do it to her. Make her pay for my mistakes. Make her suffer.” His words choked and he wiped his eyes.
The grandma was watching him and holding her breath.
“I’m turning myself in,” he said. “That’s what I’m doing.”
The grandma let out a deep sigh. She nodded. “You want us to look after her. That’s why you brought her here.”
Dad nodded.
“Anna hasn’t got anyone left?”
“No,” he said.
The grandma sipped her coffee from her cat mug. The cat tried to say hello to me but I ignored it. “I’m Verena,” the cat said.
“I don’t care,” I told her. “Not one bit.”
The granddad stared down at the table. His nostrils flared, and the gray hairs inside peeked out.
I looked around the kitchen. The walls were orange. There were oranges in the fruit bowl. Oranges in Orange. Orange is a word you can’t ever rhyme because nothing rhymes with orange no matter how hard you try.
Probably that was another BAD OMEN.
“You were gone a long time, Joseph,” the granddad said. “You damn near broke your mother’s heart.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I know.”
The noise made us all jump. It grew louder and louder, like screams in the air.
“It’s going to be okay,” Dad said. “It’s all going to be fine.” He tried to look at me but I turned away.
I peered out the window and saw the flashing blue lights. Three police cars screeched to a stop on the curb outside and the officers jumped out.
“You’ll be fine, Dolly,” Dad said. “Everything will be fine.” His voice was pretending to be calm but the rest of him wasn’t.
The doorbell rang and a man called out his name.
The granddad and grandma looked at each other with frightened faces and then they turned to Dad.
“JOSEPH RUST,” the police officer said again.
Dad stood up and the grandma and granddad stood too.
“You’ll take good care of her,” Dad said. “I know you will. Maybe even… take her back to New York so it won’t be so…” He was looking at the grandma with PLEASE in his eyes and he was nodding his head like he wanted her to nod back.
“Please,” he said and she nodded and he grabbed her and hugged her. Then he turned to the granddad. The old man made a face and groaned. He grabbed Dad in his arms and sobbed hot and angry tears onto his neck.
We walked to the front door all together and opened it up. There were a lot of police officers standing on the lawn. Their guns were pointed at us. They were there to take Dad away. Bad guys go to prison. And Dad was bad.
“Joseph Rust. Joseph Rust.”
He lifted his hands up in the air.
“Come on out, sir,” the officer said.
Dad started walking slowly and I followed, right in front of him. The grandma tried to pull me back toward her but I pushed her hands away.
“Darlin’, can you stay on the porch?” the officer said.
I ignored him and stayed in front of Dad.
“Doll,” Dad said. “Move away.”
I didn’t. I tied my arms around his leg so I could hold on tight.
“Let go now, Doll,” Dad said, but I just held on. Tighter and tighter, forever and ever, because when Dad was gone, everything would be gone. Our whole entire family and everyone inside it, Mom and Dad and me, and our house and our neighborhood and every single thing that used to be home. When Dad was gone, home would be vanished forever, because it can’t exist if the people you love most in the world aren’t there. Then it’s nowhere and you are nothing and the only thing you’ll ever be is lost and broken.
“Please, darlin’,” the officer said. “We just wanna talk to your daddy.”
I squeezed Dad harder. Some of it angry, some of it afraid, some of it desperate. I was very strong, stronger than I ever knew. Dad tried to shift me away with his leg. I clamped on tighter, like a koala on a eucalyptus tree.
“Dolly. Please.”
I WILL NEVER LET GO. I WILL HOLD ON FOREVER. I said that in my head-voice so loud it echoed.
“Sir, sir, step away from her please,” the policeman said.
Everyone still had their guns pointed at us. BANG BANG and we would be dead. Dead like Mom and all together in heaven. Maybe that would be nice. Better than being alone.
I kept pulling at Dad, harder and harder. I turned my whole body and gripped him around his middle.
“Doll,” Dad said. “Please.”
He wobbled and I pulled and he sank down to his knees. We were face-to-face and eye to eye and I heard an officer say, “Give her a minute.”
Dad blinked his eyes. “I’m so sorry, Dolly.”
I looked at his face, his stupid face with his red crying eyes that were also kind love-heart eyes, but really just Dad eyes that I had seen almost every day of my whole entire life. I took my hand and I scratched his skin with my nails, clawing at him like I was a very mad cat.
“I hate you,” I cried.
Dad didn’t pull away.
“I know, Doll,” he said. “I know you do.”
I sniffed my tears and traced a finger over the blood that had burst u
p under the scratch marks. Maybe it would be a forever-scar on his face, to make him remember me every day. I put my hand on Dad’s warm cheek and then I put my head on his shoulders. I closed my eyes.
“I don’t hate you,” I whispered.
“I know that too,” Dad said.
I held my arms around his neck and I held and held and squeezed and squeezed, with all my might I hugged myself to him and smelled his smell and felt the warm of his skin and the boom-boom that is a human pulse and the thing that tells you someone is still alive and not yet gone from your world.
Dad whispered something into my ear and I whispered something back.
“I LOVE YOU. I love you even though you are bad. I will always love you because you are mine.”
We held on tight and forever and the whole world vanished except for us.
“You have to go now,” Dad said. “They need to take me away.”
I shook my head.
“Please,” Dad said. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
He stroked my face with his hand. He looked out at the officers all around us and at the grandma crying softly on the porch. The police radios crackled and one of the officers whispered something into it that I couldn’t hear.
Dad’s eyes kept racing back and forth from me to everyone standing around us. He must have been hurting because his face was twisted. He kissed me and held me and put both hands on my wet cheeks.
“Go, Dolly,” he said.
I shook my head. Dad looked at me with PLEASE EYES and then his face changed like he remembered something.
“Where is Clemesta?” he said.
“Clemesta.” I tried to think. “I guess she’s still in the car.”
Dad nodded. “Then you should go and get her,” he said. He wiped his sweating forehead with his hand. “She’ll be scared all alone.”
I imagined Clemesta sitting in the back, watching the police with their guns and wondering where I’d gone. I bit down on my lip. I’m here, I said with telepathic powers, but I wasn’t sure if that worked anymore. She had gotten so weak.
“The thing is,” Dad said, “the police will take the car away. And she’ll be stuck inside. You won’t get her back for a long, long time.”
He was looking at me without letting go of my eyes.
“Please,” he nodded. “Go get her. Go now.”
I turned away and ran as fast as I could.
Everything was very noisy and then everything was very quiet.
They took Dad away in one of the police cars and some other officers arrived to look at Hank’s car and walk around the house and shake their heads. BRAVE BRAVE BRAVE went my heart as it pounded but it was sick of being brave.
The grandma took my hand and told me to go inside the house with her. She poured me another glass of juice even though I hadn’t finished the first one.
“Grandma,” she said. “You can call me Grandma if you like.”
Then she shook her head. “Or Joy, if you prefer. That’s my name.”
I watched her sad eyes. Clemesta was in my arms.
“We’ll be okay,” she said. Her voice was so weak I could barely hear her.
I saw Dad’s duffel bag on the floor by the kitchen table. I didn’t remember him bringing it inside the house, but I pointed to it anyway.
“There’s lots of money in there,” I whispered to Joy.
She frowned. “Did he steal it?”
I shook my head.
She took the bag and slipped it inside the broom closet. Then she sat down at the table.
The granddad wouldn’t come back inside the house. He just stood out on the front porch with his arms folded. One of the policemen knew his name. I heard him say, “I’m sorry, Frank. You never think this stuff happens to you.”
Frank didn’t say anything. He just nodded his head and stood on his porch.
Another officer came into the kitchen, along with a woman with long hair who looked like an ordinary person and not like the police because she wasn’t wearing a uniform.
“Joy, this is Sandra Woods. She’s with Child Services.”
“Hello, Dolly,” she said. She was carrying a clipboard and a pen. “I’ll be going along with you to the station today.”
Joy stood up. “Now is that necessary, after all she’s been through already—can’t she just stay with her—”
“Ma’am,” the officer said, “I’m afraid that’s our protocol.”
“It’s okay, Joy,” I said. “I still have a little brave left inside me.”
Sandra drove me to the station in her car. I think Joy came along too, maybe still in her slippers. Clemesta stayed with me the whole time.
At the station, Sandra led me into a room with a small table and some dolls and a pile of paper with crayons and colored pencils and stickers. The room had a big glass window, but you couldn’t see what was on the other side.
Sandra sat down and pulled up a chair for me.
The door opened, and another woman came in. She was very tall and she said her name was Detective Marshall.
“Well, hello there,” she said. “You must be the very brave Dolly I’ve heard so much about.”
I looked away.
Sandra had her clipboard open and her pen in her hands. She was chewing gum that smelled like peppermint.
“You had a lot happen to you this week, Dolly,” Detective Marshall said. “You think you could tell us about it?”
I looked at her. I zipped shut my mouth.
She pointed to my hair. “Did your dad do that?”
“I asked him to.”
Sandra wrote something with her pen, and looked at Detective Marshall that way grown-ups do, when they want to say a lot with their eyes but not their mouths.
“Dolly,” she said, “can you tell us what you remember about the day before you left home? Did Mom and Dad have a big fight?”
I stared at them. FUCK OFF, I wanted to say but maybe they could put you in jail for that.
Clemesta pulled at my arm. “Dolly, we really need to tell them the truth.”
I shook my head.
“Dolly,” she said. She kicked me in the belly with her hoof. “We have to.”
“Stop!” I yelled. “Stop making me remember!”
I picked her up and threw her off my lap as hard as I could. She crashed into the wall and landed in a heap with her legs up in the air. Maybe she was dead too.
I left her there.
Sandra looked at Clemesta on the floor but she didn’t say anything or run to call an ambulance. Detective Marshall wrote a note on her pad.
“Dolly, do you know who Stewart Ronson is?”
I bit down hard on my lip.
“He alerted the police a few days ago. He was worried when he couldn’t reach your mom all week. He said you were headed out to Los Angeles. She was meant to be at a casting for his new show. Isn’t that right?”
“He was Mom’s boyfriend,” I said. “He wanted to steal us away from Dad forever.”
Detective Marshall and Sandra looked at each other. Their eyebrows lifted at the same time, and then Sandra shook her head.
“He wasn’t your mom’s boyfriend, Dolly. He’s married to a man, sweetheart. His husband’s name is Paul. Maybe you met him too?”
Everything froze dead and I turned into a statue. I couldn’t find my breath or my heart. I bit down harder on my lip but I still didn’t feel anything.
I looked at Clemesta lying crumpled on the floor. I wanted her to say something, but she just lay there.
“Dolly,” Sandra said. “We’d like you to tell us what you remember.”
I shut my eyes. I wanted everything to disappear but it was all there and it wouldn’t go away. Mom taking me aside in the afternoon and saying TOMORROW’S THE DAY. We were going to Los Angeles and YOU KNOW WHO was going to help us get settled in. I would be starting a new school with no friends and no Miss Ellis and no Dad and no house in Astoria and no anything that was my real and best life. It was all going to b
e brand-new, with Mom and stupid YOU KNOW WHO, who loved her and wanted her to be SHINING HAPPY again.
I knew about Mom’s TOP SECRET PLAN for three whole weeks and I had kept my LIPS SEALED and only written the secret on a small piece of paper and slipped it into my secret-secret box for safekeeping. I did not want to leave but Mom kept saying, “I’m doing this for you, Dolly,” and “I’m scared of what will happen if we stay.” She promised I would get used to everything that was new and in the end it would all work out and one day I would understand and I would forgive her.
Mom was packed with a secret suitcase in the back of her closet and I was meant to get packed too but I couldn’t fit everything in the bag she had given me and I REFUSED to leave it all behind.
“You’ll get new things,” Mom said. “We’ll have all new everything.”
I didn’t want all new anything.
I was very good at secrets but I was very, very mad.
I didn’t finish packing. Instead, when Dad walked through the door, I said, “I have something I want to show you.”
I opened the secret-secret box and unfolded all the secrets for Dad to read. I thought they were all one hundred percent true. I thought letting them out would fix everything and make it go back to before, when Dad was Mom’s life raft and she was his shining light, and I was their whole world and YOU KNOW WHO was gone forever from our lives.
I could hear them yelling and screaming and shouting and I was very scared.
“What affair?” Mom was shouting. “Joseph, you need help.”
The yelling was really really loud and they were really really mad and Mom was crying and Dad was banging his fists against the wall and it felt like the whole entire house was shaking and probably going to fall down with noise and angriness and tears, so I left the hurricane storm shelter and crept by their bedroom to say “PLEASE STOP.” As I got to the bedroom door, I saw Dad’s angry bear hands grabbing Mom around her neck and I shut my eyes as tightly as I could and did my best vanishing trick. I went to the FOREST OF MAGICAL FAIRIES and they fed me pollen ice cream and petal juice and they sang lullabies to take away the scared. Everything was lovely and peaceful in the forest and then everything inside the bedroom went very quiet so I said goodbye to the fairies and opened my eyes.
All the Lost Things Page 22