by Caela Carter
“I wish I could,” Adam says.
“Then tell me,” I say.
Adam stands still like that, with his hands on my shoulders and his mouth hanging open. It’s like he wants to say something but my mom locked away all of his words.
I don’t know how long the silent staring lasts. It feels like years. Finally Julia’s dad says, “Well, I did make pizza, but also it’s twenty-five-cent wings night at Corby’s.” They both laugh, as if that’s funny somehow.
“Go ahead,” Julia’s mom says. “Have fun. Go Pirates.”
“Alma,” Adam says. He stands up straighter on the stairs. He holds out his arms. “Come here, kiddo.”
I lean forward, just slightly. I leave some space between our shoulders. I don’t come close enough for him to hug me.
I want him to hug me. I don’t want to want him to hug me.
“It’s good to see you,” he says. But it sounds sad. Like seeing me actually messed up his day.
He pats me on the head.
Then he’s gone. I stare at the closed door a little too long.
My heart is still broken. Shattered. Bits of it are spreading and poking all over my body: my fingers and knees and rib cage.
I shake myself, as if that can put the pieces back together, and then go and join not-my-family for the rest of dinner.
“Alma,” Julia’s mom says when I sit next to her. She puts her hand on mine. “Are you all right?”
I shake her off. “I’m fine!” I say. It’s loud and rude. I don’t mean to be loud and rude. Julia deserves a fun and regular and polite best friend. Somehow she got stuck with me.
“So, sixth grade,” Julia’s mom says, ignoring my rudeness. “Last year before middle school!”
Julia and I nod.
“I want to see honor roll report cards all four quarters this year!” She acts like she’s talking to me too, but I’ve never shown Julia’s mom my report card.
Sometimes when I sit at this table, I want to explode. I’m so angry. It’s so unfair.
“Who’s your sixth grade teacher, Alma?”
I shrug.
“She still won’t open her letter!” Julia says. “But I know it’ll be OK. I know she got Mr. Hendricks.”
Julia’s mom tilts her head at me. Her blue eyes seem to stare through mine, to the back of my brain, like she can read the thoughts being traded on my synapses. “You know Julia will still be your best friend even if you have a new teacher, right?”
“Of course,” I say. But it doesn’t matter because she can see my invisible shrug.
Six
Why Do Good Things Happen to Bad People?
A FEW HOURS LATER WE’RE IN Julia’s room sitting cross-legged in our pajamas on the lime-green bedspread with the closed envelope between us. The giraffes on her wall watch us.
“Do you want to know what my parents said about Uncle Adam and your mom?” Julia asks.
I raise my eyebrows. “Your parents talked about it?” I say.
“Well, I asked,” Julia says.
Acid sloshes in my stomach. Julia knows more about my family than I do.
“They said that your mom and Adam used to love each other romantically, like they used to be in love. But then they realized they fell out of love. And that sometimes that happens. And that it’s sad. But they still love each other as friends.”
“Oh,” I say. Because that’s no information at all. That’s the kind of thing grown-ups tell you to make it sound like they’re answering your questions, but when you really think about it you realize it’s all words and no answers.
“And they also said it’s not your fault,” Julia says. “But that you may be a little more sad more often than usual. Because you miss Adam.”
I’m itchy again, and I don’t know what to say, so I change the subject.
“What does that say?” I ask, pointing to Julia’s closed bedroom door. She’s hung a new poster there in the past few days. It’s a scene of a Korean city with something in Korean written above it.
“I don’t know,” Julia says, faster and louder than she usually talks. “I don’t read Korean. How would I know Korean?”
“Oh,” I say. She won’t look at me. I said the wrong thing somehow. “Let’s open the school letter,” I say finally.
“OK!” Julia says in her regular voice. Then she pauses. “No matter what this says, you’ll meet me at the swing set as soon as recess starts Monday, right?” Julia asks.
“Right,” I say.
“We’ll still be best friends even with different teachers, right?”
“Right,” I say.
“Promise?” Julia asks.
“Promise,” I say.
It feels good for her to make me promise when I want to make her promise the same thing.
It’s not like she’s leaving you, I tell myself. It’s not like Adam. It’s not even like Mom.
I have a hard time believing it. It feels like once I read this letter I’ll lose Julia and her mom and dad too. She’ll find a new best friend. A normal girl. I’ll be left with no one except my dead father.
“Here we go.” She sighs. “Open it.”
She closes her eyes and crosses her fingers over her heart. “Mr. Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks,” she mumbles.
I slip a finger under the edge of the envelope and wiggle it until the glue loosens. I pull the paper out and unfold it.
Julia keeps whispering, “Mr. Hendricks. Mr. Hendricks.”
I open the paper and scan it quickly. “Oh!” Then my jaw drops.
“What?” Julia says, dropping her fingers and opening her eyes. “What!” she says again.
I turn the paper around so she can read it.
“Mr. Hendricks!” she squeals. “Mr. Hendricks!”
She springs off the floor and throws her arms around me, tackling me into the white carpet on her bedroom floor.
“Three years in a row!” she cries.
I’m still stunned speechless. I don’t deserve good news like this, I don’t think. But here it is. In my hands.
Through her closed bedroom door, we hear the front door open and shut. Her dad is home. The baseball game must be over.
For a second I wonder if Adam is with Julia’s dad. I imagine them both hugging us over our good news. Two different dads for two different girls.
Except Adam isn’t my dad.
Julia runs to her bedroom door, flings it open, and screams down the hall, “We’re in the same class!”
“All right!” her dad’s voice echoes back. He’s alone.
That night as I lie in my sleeping bag on Julia’s floor for the millionth time this summer, I can’t stop thinking about Adam. About how he acted like my dad. About how he cooked me breakfast and signed me up for soccer clinics and came to them and cheered louder than the other dads. About how after a while I stopped thinking about how he wasn’t my real dad.
About his Bold Idea and how it disappeared.
“Alma,” Adam had said. It was April of fifth grade. We were at the diner at the end of our block having burgers and milkshakes. Adam was letting me take sips of his chocolate malt even though I had a cookies-n-cream one all to myself.
“Alma . . . Alma . . .” He’d said my name over and over again. Almost like he was nervous.
I looked at my milkshake and smoothed my frizzy hair over the arm of my glasses, trying to make him more comfortable by not looking in his eyes.
My mom was shifting around in the seat next to me. I could feel her heart beating more quickly. Either she didn’t know what he was trying to say, or she didn’t like it.
“Alma,” he said a final time before pushing on. “I want to ask you something. It’s a big, important question. In fact, it’s a rather bold idea. And I want you to know that whatever answer you give is fine.”
“Adam,” Mom had said. “You don’t have to—”
He’d looked at her. His blue eyes had never looked so serious. “Mercy, I do,” he’d said. “I do have to
.”
He’d looked back at me. “Alma,” he’d said. “Here it is. I love you more than I ever knew I could love a kid. I love you more than I love myself.”
My mouth dropped open. I guess I already knew Adam loved me. He showed me all the time by taking my picture and coaching my soccer team and signing me up for the community choir and picking me up from Julia’s house. But him saying it like that, it felt different. It felt solid.
I didn’t know how to answer. I couldn’t say anything so solid. “I . . . me . . . me too,” I’d stumbled.
“You just listen, OK, sweetie?” he’d said. “You’re going to need a few days to think about what I’m going to ask you anyway.”
“OK,” I’d said.
“So Alma, here’s my bold idea: I’d like to be your father. Your second father. I’d never erase the man who made you, but . . . Well, there’s a thing called stepparent adoption. And I think you deserve a father who is here now. Who can do things for you. And . . . I love you like you’re my own. You are mine. I could never love a kid more. So . . . I’d like to adopt you.”
My eyes had gone wide. My heart had sparked little fireworks that rushed all over my bloodstream. I was pretty sure I was happy but it was a different sort of feeling than I’d ever had before so I couldn’t exactly tell.
My mom’s heart was beating too fast next to me. I could feel her head going back and forth in a “no” motion. Like she knew what I’d say.
But I didn’t think too much about my mom. Instead, I pictured the JFC headstone. I pictured Jorge Francisco Costa. In my imagination, I asked his permission.
“Alma,” he’d say. “I’ll always be your father. But you deserve a dad. An alive dad. A dad who can make you blueberry pancakes and take you to piano lessons.”
I opened my eyes and looked right into Adam’s. He was right. Except for my mother, I’d never been so sure that anyone loved me. His eyes practically had firework-hearts dancing out of them, sailing to meet the fireworks spinning all over my bloodstream.
“I think—” I started.
But Mom interrupted me. “You heard Adam,” she said. “And he’s right. You should take a day or two. Take the weekend. Give your answer on Monday.”
But by Monday the question was gone. And by June, so was Adam.
The sun is starting to sink by the time Julia’s mom drops me off in front of my house the next day. It’s a good reminder that fall is coming. And then winter. My mom will put me back on a schedule. She’ll go back to checking my homework. She’ll go back to timing how long I practice the piano every day. She’s been strict about school since I was in kindergarten. I never knew I could miss the strictness.
“Hello!” I call when I walk in the door. I quickly shove my Target bags in the hall closet. Julia’s mom took us shopping earlier in the day, so I bought all my school supplies: binders and pens and highlighters and note cards. I’m excited to get to my room and write on all the little binder tabs and put all my pens and pencils into my pencil case and put batteries in my new calculator. Last year Mom stood over me and made me do these things when there were still weeks left of summer. This year she hasn’t said a word about school.
“Hello!” I say again. I know my mom is home. She works from home. She relaxes at home. She does big mysterious projects at home. She’s never not home unless she’s dropping me off somewhere.
I walk through the entrance hall to the living room. Mom is sitting on the little off-white couch, surrounded by papers. There’s a notebook spread on the glass coffee table in front of her and a calendar to her left. There are printed papers in piles all over the couch and table and even the floor. Mom presses her cell phone to her ear and holds up a finger to tell me to hold on a second. Her hair hangs long over the phone.
But I’m not looking at her. I’m looking at the empty space in front of her where the rust-colored armchair used to be. It was just there yesterday. Now it’s gone. There are scratch marks on the hardwood where the four legs used to sit. The floor it used to cover is a little pale and even more dusty than the rest of the room. It was my favorite chair.
“I’ll have to call you back,” Mom says. “My daughter just got home.”
She hangs up.
“That was Nanny and PopPop,” she says to me.
I turn to look at her. I don’t even bother to point out that she just lied. She wouldn’t call me “my daughter” to Nanny and PopPop. Plus, they would have asked to talk to me.
“Where’s the chair?” I ask.
This is probably a Bad Question. I ask it anyway.
Mom starts shuffling papers.
“Which chair?” she says.
Things have been disappearing all summer. First it was the TVs and Mom said that was because we needed fewer screens around here and I still had my tablet and my laptop so I didn’t worry too much about that. Then it was the oriental carpet in the living room, which Mom said was Adam’s and that he came to get it. And I didn’t worry too much about that either even though no one ever officially told me that the divorce was final and Adam had moved out and wasn’t coming back.
Then it was the rug in my room. Mom said she met someone at work who really needed a rug.
Then it was the dining room table and chairs. I stopped asking.
Then it was my floor lamp. The painting of Lisbon that usually hangs in the front hallway. The living room floor lamp. The slow cooker in the kitchen. The bigger couch in the living room.
Then almost everything that had been hanging on the walls.
The rocking chair that was in Mom and Adam’s room.
Now my favorite chair.
Our living room looks ridiculous now: one small couch and one small coffee table, shoved into the corner of a huge space. It opens right into the dining room, which has nothing in it but the piano. It looks like we just moved in and haven’t had time to get settled.
“I loved that chair,” I say.
Mom shakes her head and stands, papers falling all around her. She walks over and hugs me.
I let her, even though I don’t want to. I let her, even though I wanted to hug Adam yesterday and I didn’t let him.
“It had to go,” she says. “It was older than you are.”
“I’m only twelve,” I say. Twelve isn’t old if you’re a chair.
But her hug is working. I reach up and hug her back. I sink into the soft folds of her. I say “I’m only twelve” again. But this time I mean it differently. Twelve is still young enough to miss your mom when you’ve spent most of the summer at your best friend’s house for no real reason.
Mom pulls back, looks at me, and smiles. It feels good. It feels good to be someone’s real daughter instead of promising a woman who will never see my report card that I’m going to try for the honor roll.
Or talking to a ghost who loves me.
“Don’t question me,” she says. “I can’t explain every detail. I don’t have time.” She glances back toward whatever she’s been working on.
I pull the envelope from my pocket where I’ve been storing it. She will like this envelope. It has answers instead of questions. “Guess what?” I say. “I got Mr. Hendricks!”
“Hmm?” Mom says, but she’s already turning back to her piles of paper on the coffee table.
“The same teacher as Julia!”
Mom bends down to look at something. “Well, that would be nice, huh?” she mumbles.
But she’s gone. Already texting someone with one hand while pointing to her calendar with the other.
She didn’t hear me. My head hurts. “Is there dinner?” I ask.
It’s 6:05. For my entire life, dinner has been at 6:00 p.m. sharp.
“Mmmm,” Mom says. “Frozen pizza in the freezer. Hungry?” But she doesn’t look up.
“It’s OK,” I mumble. “I can do it.”
“Thanks,” she says.
It is the last night of summer, the night before school. Last year this night, I was the same. I was full of Bad Questio
ns. I was missing my dead dad even though Mom wanted me to forget all about him.
Still, Mom paid attention to me. She wrote my name on all my binders and checked my backpack three times to be sure I had packed it correctly. Adam brought home my favorite burgers from the diner and we all sat together while he told us about all the pranks he had pulled on his own fifth-grade teacher.
It’s the last night of summer. This year I warm up frozen pizza for myself, go into my own room, lay out my outfit, and put myself to bed.
I wait in my bed with my lights on. I lie on my side and watch the red numbers on the digital clock on my nightstand.
9:55
9:59
10:00
10:02
10:15
For the first time ever, my mom does not come and tell me to turn my lights out.
I fall asleep with them on.
Seven
Who Is Alma McArthur?
I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE of the night and my light is still on. I turn over and check my clock.
2:09
My mom really never came. Maybe she’s mad at me. Maybe she found the pile of scrap paper with my questions written on them in the corner of my underwear drawer. Maybe that’s why she’s been making me spend so much time with Julia.
I lie still on my bed and listen for something. Anything. Any sound to show that I’m not completely alone in my loneliness.
It takes a few minutes to figure out what I’m listening for.
Adam.
He used to get up to watch European soccer games in the middle of the night. It drove my mom crazy. She liked everyone to have a bedtime, even Adam. But he used to say it wasn’t the same unless he watched the games in real time.
I’d hear him cheering or cursing and I’d tiptoe out of my bed and find him and his laptop in the burgundy chair in the living room. He’d smile when he saw me. He’d pour me a glass of milk and scoot over in the chair to make room for me. The chair was so big there was plenty of room for both of us if we sat the right way. I’d watch with him for a few minutes.
I never knew what was going on in the game. Without my glasses it just looked like a bunch of colors moving over a green screen. I was too tired to try to make it make sense.