Chapter Three
“How was your meeting?” Lynda asked as she maneuvered her car through the late-night traffic.
“Pretty good,” Carrie answered, without looking over at her.
“Are you hungry? We could stop at McDonald’s. Or how about the Donut Shop?”
“We had punch and cookies at the meeting.”
An awkward silence fell. Carrie sat still, torn between feeling sorry for her stepmother, yet resenting her too. Maybe if Lynda hadn’t come along so soon after her parent’s divorce, they might have gotten back together. Carrie glanced at Lynda. She was a petite woman, younger than her mother, pretty in a natural outdoorsy way, with curly brown hair and brown eyes.
At first Carrie had tried to dislike her, but she honestly couldn’t. Lynda chauffeured her on weekends, bought her gifts for “no reason,” and sometimes slipped Carrie money for clothes. Carrie wondered if Lynda ever regretted taking on her father’s two kids—especially a kid with cancer. Occasionally she asked Carrie questions about her disease, but mostly she didn’t pry.
“Bobby wanted to come with me, but I talked him into waiting at home on the sofa. I’m sure he’ll be asleep when we get there, but wake him up. He really wants to see you tonight,” Lynda said, breaking the silence.
“When’s Mom getting him?”
“She’s supposed to pick him up tomorrow after Little League practice.”
“Um—I have to meet someone at the library tomorrow. Could you drop me off when you take Bobby to practice?”
“Of course. Will you need a ride home?”
“I’m not sure. Can I call you? I’m supposed to meet with a guy from the support group to plan the games for the Memorial Day picnic. It may take most of tomorrow.” Carrie hoped so. She’d rather spend the day with Keith than hang around her dad and stepmom all day. “Don’t worry about me if you want to do something. I can catch the bus home.”
“Your father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I’m not a kid,” Carrie said defensively, and later at the house, after she’d hugged her dad and kissed a sleepy Bobby good night, her father told her the same thing. “I don’t want you riding city buses,” he said, his face a scowl.
“I do it all the time.”
“When? You live less than six blocks from school.”
“I took the bus just the other day to get my bloodwork done at the lab.”
“What!” her father’s fist hammered the kitchen table. “Your mother put you on a bus to go to the clinic? That’s a forty-five-minute ride through a bad section of town. What’s the matter with her? Couldn’t she leave her precious job long enough to take you for your bloodwork?”
Nervously Carrie shuffled her feet under the table. She should have known better than to have mentioned it. Her parents had never agreed on how to raise their kids and had fought about it often. “Dad, it’s no big deal—”
“That woman is irresponsible.”
“She’s busy with her job.” Carrie wanted to defend her mother.
“ ‘Busy.’ She was always busy with everything except what’s important.”
Lynda interrupted. “Stan, it’s history, and it’s late. I’m sure Carrie would like to go to bed.”
Carrie flashed her a grateful look. “Sure,” her father said gruffly. Carrie stood and started past him. He reached out and put his arm around her waist, and the gesture of affection surprised her. “I just worry about you, that’s all, and I like having you here. I miss you, baby.”
“I miss you too, Daddy.” She hugged him back and then hurried up the stairs to her room. The house was new and smelled of fresh paint, and it wasn’t at all like the house where she’d grown up and now lived with her mother. Suddenly she missed her house and wished that her parents were still living there together, despite the arguing. One thing was for sure in Carrie’s mind. Loving families were only to be found on TV shows, not in real life. She was never going to fall in love. Never.
* * *
The next morning Carrie had Lynda drop her at the library early, where she waited on the steps for Keith. The day was mild and bright with sunshine, and the air smelled of May flowers. She was watching the fluffy clouds float past, wondering if they might taste like cotton candy, when Keith bounded up the steps.
“Hope it’s this nice for our picnic,” he said.
“We could look in the Farmer’s Almanac and see what they forecast.”
“Do you learn everything from books?” he joked. “Some things are better learned firsthand, I think.”
She blushed. “Not everything,” she said. “I—I just like books, that’s all. Reading’s fun.”
“Books are all right. But give me real life anytime. And the great outdoors,” he added.
“I like being outside.”
“Do you like to camp?”
“Do you?”
“Man, my family camps all the time. We have this cabin in the Carolina mountains near a lake, and we go there for a month every summer.”
“I thought camping was done in tents.”
“You’ve never seen this cabin. When we first bought it, we had to pump drinking water and build a fire for the wood stove so that Mom could cook and light oil lamps at night.”
“Hunt your own game too, Daniel Boone?”
Keith laughed. “Are you saying I’m boring you?”
He could read the phone book to her, and she wouldn’t be bored. “No, I just can’t imagine being without electricity and—” Her eyes grew wide. “What about bathrooms?”
“There was an outhouse out back,” he said with a grin.
She couldn’t imagine such a thing. “How many in your family?”
“Six.”
“Your mother cooked on a wood stove for seven people?”
“We have electricity now and running water. But there’s still plenty to do, so we all pitch in. My sister Holly’s fourteen, and she and Dad and I do the heavy stuff. My other sisters, April and Gwen—they’re eleven and eight—are born campers, and even Jake, who’s five, helps out.”
“What can a five-year-old do?”
“He gathers kindling for firewood and sorts the laundry.”
“Do you beat it on rocks in the lake on wash day?”
His green eyes sparkled with mischief. “Actually we pile it in the van and drive it down the mountain to the laundromat.” He leaned closer. “And while we’re in town, we take in one of them newfangled picture shows.”
“You’re teasing me.” She grinned good-naturedly. “So, are you going up there this summer?”
His smile faded. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“On how my cancer’s doing.”
Reality, Carrie thought. “You have Hodgkin’s, don’t you?”
“Yeah, since I was nine. I responded really good to the initial treatments, and things were fine until I was thirteen and it flared up again. I had more treatments and was given a clean slate. Then a couple of months ago, I started feeling dragged out, tired all the time. Dr. Fineman said I was anemic, and he’s been treating me for it.”
“But it isn’t a relapse?”
“No. I feel better now, and that’s good, because I was worthless on the pitcher’s mound until they got my red blood count up.”
“Martin’s baseball team is hot this year.”
His eyes lit up once more. “We’re smokin’! In fact, some colleges are scouting me already.”
“Is that what you want to do? Play baseball?”
“Why not? Do you know the kind of money those guys make?”
“Lots.”
“What do you want to be?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “A librarian?”
“I want to rule the world,” she said sweetly. “And if I do, I might let you have your own baseball team.”
“Why thanks, Carrie. I’m touched.” They laughed together. “Maybe we’d better get started on this picnic project,” he said.
They entered the library, where she fel
t at home. She quickly found books full of game ideas and made a list.
“Here’s something they play in India with live snakes,” Keith whispered.
She stared at the page. “That’s disgusting.”
“All right, how about this one from Fiji? All we need are a couple of coconuts.”
“Will you be serious,” she said, without meaning it. She scanned the list. “Besides, I think we have enough.”
“Don’t you think we’ll have to get together again before the big day?”
Her heart began to pound, and her mouth went dry. “If you like.”
His eyes bore into hers. “I like,” he said. She felt her cheeks grow scarlet, but if he noticed, he didn’t say anything. “So let’s blow this joint. We’ve been sitting here for an hour, and I’m getting claustrophobic. I need to be outside,” he said.
On the way to the door, Carrie stopped and pulled the Farmer’s Almanac from the shelf. “It says here that Memorial Day will be sunny and dry.”
“You believe everything you read in books?”
“Do you have to experience something before you believe it?” she countered.
They stepped into the warm sunshine. He told her, “I like being in control of my life. That’s why I like being a pitcher instead of a catcher, or an outfielder. A pitcher controls the game by the way he throws the ball.”
Carrie’s problem was that she had no control over her life. She got cancer with no warning. Her parents divorced without asking her permission. She had two houses, but no real home. But Keith had cancer too, and he’d had no choice about it either. “Sometimes we don’t get to decide what happens to us,” she said after they’d settled beneath a tree.
“All the more reason to control the things we can,” he told her. “I’m still planning to go to college and play ball—cancer or not.”
“But what if it comes back?”
“I’ll make it through somehow. And my family will be there for me.”
He made his family sound like superhumans, like seven people who actually wanted to be together. He’d probably made them up. “Will they be at the picnic?”
“You bet. We do everything together.” His inflection had said, What family doesn’t?
She asked, “Your sisters too?”
“They’re pretty neat—for girls.”
“I’ll tell them you said so.”
His expression grew serious. “I have a great family, Carrie. We stick together, but our parents have always urged us to think for ourselves and to make our own decisions.”
She couldn’t imagine such a thing. Her parents had fought about everything, and so she’d learned to make decisions by default. A horn honked, and Carrie looked up to see Lynda waving her toward the car.
“Who’s that?” Keith asked.
“My stepmom,” she said with much embarrassment. With all the talk about ideal families, what would he think about hers?
Keith followed her to the car, where she leaned down to see Bobby’s dusty, tearstained face. “What’s wrong?” Carrie cried.
“Mom forgot me!” Bobby blurted.
Lynda said, “Now Bobby, I’m sure your mother will have a good explanation.” She said to Carrie, “His coach called me from the field. Evidently your mother never showed. I’m sorry to bother you, but he’s pretty upset, and he wanted to see you. Do you know why she didn’t make it?”
Carrie felt her cheeks burning, not only from anger over seeing Bobby so distressed, but at having Keith hearing the whole incident. “No,” she said miserably.
“Will you come home, Carrie?” Bobby asked.
“I’d better go,” she told Keith, barely able to look him in the face.
He opened the door, and she slid inside. Keith asked Bobby, “You coming to our picnic?” Bobby shrugged. “If you do, maybe you could show me your fastball.”
Carrie looked at him gratefully. “I’ll call you,” he said. She was so engrossed in soothing her brother that she was almost back to her father’s house before it dawned on her that Keith Gardner—the most popular sophomore boy at Martin High—had actually promised to call.
Chapter Four
“I told you! That piece of junk that passes for a car broke down, and I was stranded!” Faye Blake yelled.
“And there wasn’t a phone anywhere around?” Stan Blake yelled back.
“And who was I supposed to call? The Little League dugout? There’s no phone at the field, and you know it.”
“You could have called Lynda.”
“Well, as it turned out, Bobby’s coach called her, so what’s the problem?”
Carrie was holding her breath while her parents stood in the kitchen of her mother’s house screaming at one another. Couldn’t these two ever talk to each other? Why did every encounter end up in a yelling match?
“The problem is, the kid was scared to death! What’s he supposed to think when his own mother forgets him?”
“I explained things to Bobby, and he understands. You’re the one who won’t leave it alone, Stan.”
Carrie went out onto the front porch and sat on the stoop. She’d heard enough. More than enough. She was positive that even though her parents were divorced, they’d never stop hating each other. She pressed her face against her drawn-up knees and sighed. Finally she heard the back door slam and her father’s car drive away. Minutes later her mother came and sat next to her on the stoop.
“You understand, don’t you, Carrie?” she asked.
“Yes, Mom.”
“I would never have ‘forgotten’ Bobby.”
“I know, Mom.” Truthfully she didn’t know. Her mom was a stranger to her since she’d started her “new” life.
“Stan wants you to live with him and Lynda, you know.”
Carrie jerked her head up. “What?”
Her mother turned her head, but not before Carrie saw moisture brimming in her eyes. “He thinks I’m incompetent.”
“That’s not true!” Carrie felt her stomach knotting.
“He says he’s worried that I can’t take care of you properly.”
“You are taking care of me, Mom.”
“You know that I work hard to give us a good life.”
Carrie twisted her hands. “Dad works hard too.”
“He has no idea what it’s like trying to get back into the work force and still be a real mother. Before I had you kids, I had such a wonderful job. Now I’m starting from scratch. Bobby must hate me.”
“No he doesn’t. He’s just confused, that’s all.”
“Lynda is good to him, isn’t she?”
Carrie nodded. She wanted to say that Lynda was a nice woman, but she wasn’t sure her mother wanted to hear it. “You’ve got me,” she said.
“You won’t leave me, will you, Carrie?” Carrie wasn’t sure what she meant.
“I live with you, Mom. I won’t leave.”
“Larry says that I should start thinking about myself and what I want because you kids will be growing up and starting your own lives someday.”
The mention of Larry bothered Carrie. She wasn’t nuts about the guy, but he did make her mother happy. “What do you want, Mom?”
Mrs. Blake closed her eyes and leaned against the sagging porch railing. “I want to succeed in my job. I want to travel and dress pretty and be with exciting people.”
Carrie wondered where she fit into such a scenario. Especially if she got sick again. “Well, I don’t know about dressing pretty,” she said, attempting to lighten the mood. “But there’ll be plenty of exciting people and travel to an exotic park by the river for the support group’s Memorial Day picnic. We’ll have fun.”
Her mother touched Carrie’s shoulder. “I—uh—I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, dear.”
“What about it? You are coming, aren’t you? Dad won’t be there, and Bobby and I want you to take us.”
“There’s a convention in Orlando, Florida, and Larry thinks it’s a good opportunity for both of us to go.
Sort of a working vacation, you know.”
Carrie felt dismayed. “But I thought the picnic was something we could do as a family.”
“Honey, put yourself in my place. This is a wonderful chance for me to impress my boss. I may not get it again. Tell me you understand.”
Carrie felt a salty sting in her eyes, so she turned her head. “It’s not important,” she finally said. “It’s just a stupid picnic and nothing but warm food and a bunch of dumb games.”
Her mother put her arm around Carrie’s shoulders. “Thanks for understanding. Larry and I’ll bring you and Bobby some souvenirs from Disney World. All right?”
Carrie only nodded, because she couldn’t trust her voice. Her mother went inside to start dinner, and Carrie wrapped her arms around herself and watched until the sun set and the stars began to come out.
Keith spoke to her whenever she passed him in the halls at school. It made her feel wonderful and impressed her friends too. “A fringe benefit from having cancer,” she told one friend, who made a face and said, “No thanks.”
He asked to take her home after the next support-group meeting. “We can stop for a hamburger if you want.” She wanted to more than anything, but she was sure her father wouldn’t let her. She called from an auditorium pay phone and broached the subject with Lynda. “Do you want to go?” Lynda asked.
“A whole bunch,” she admitted.
“Then go. I’ll handle your father.”
Carrie was momentarily speechless. “You’d do that for me?”
“Just be home by eleven. And have fun,” Lynda told her.
Carrie went with Keith to his car, hardly believing her good fortune. He opened the door as she asked, “What kind of a car is this?”
“A fifty-seven Chevy. My dad’s a car buff, and we restored this one together. It’s neat, huh?”
She ran her palm over the dashboard. “It’s different from the new ones.”
“Next to baseball it’s my one true love.”
“Besides gym what class do you like best?” Carrie asked.
“Promise you won’t laugh?”