Outside Beauty

  “Come along, young lady. Your father’s on his way.”

  “My bike’s around back.”

  “All right, I’m going to trust you because there’s nowhere else to go. There’s a bus that comes through at four a.m. bound for St. Louis, but I got a feeling you don’t know anybody in St. Louis. Go get your bike and come over to the clinic.”

  I walked around back to pick up the bike, then walked with the doctor to the clinic, where I sat in a plastic seat not unlike the seats in the bowling alley near Larry’s home. “Now I’m going to go in back,” the doctor said. He left me alone. I didn’t run away because he was right—I didn’t know anybody in St. Louis.

  “I wasn’t trying to run away,” I called out. “I was going to catch the bus and take care of some business downstate and then come back.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Someone drove up honking, and I assumed it was Jiro. But a young woman got out. The doctor entered the waiting area. “Grand Central Station here tonight,” he said. He waited while the woman came in and showed him some marks on her chest.

  “I fell on some umbrellas,” she said.

  “Mmm-hmm,” he said, with neither doubt nor belief. He looked at me and smiled slightly, then went in back with the woman while saying, “I haven’t seen this much activity since I was in Vietnam.”

  I wondered what kind of punishment running away would deserve in Jiro’s eyes. I took a big breath and thought about what I should say to him. But I couldn’t think of anything. Then I thought I would just explain how Maddie’s letters made me think I should go get her, but he wouldn’t understand because he didn’t really know Maddie. And I thought about how I needed to figure out what to do about her. Now I was back to thinking, Rats! But when Jiro’s big old car pulled up, I stood up with the bicycle and followed my father, neither of us saying a word. I guess people talked less in Arkansas than in Chicago. But I knew he would have something to say.

  The bicycle stuck out of the back trunk, but Jiro managed to fit it in there well enough that it wouldn’t fall out. I opened up the passenger door and sat down, wondering what Jiro would do to punish me. He’d probably never punished someone before.

  Jiro got in and started the drive back to his house. I stared out the window.

  “Something’s glowing out there by the river,” I said, finally breaking a long silence between us.

  “Earthworm mucus,” he said gruffly.

  “Oh!” He was angry. I said, “The clinic was busy. A man shot himself in the foot. He was trying to shoot a snake. And a woman fell on some umbrellas and had little round marks all over her chest.”

  “I never ask for you to be here,” he said sharply. “I didn’t want any more than you did.”

  I was surprised how much that stung. “I wasn’t running away from you. It’s just that, I mean, I’m responsible for Maddie. My mother told me so when Maddie was born. Marilyn takes care of Lakey, and I take care of Maddie. It’s always been that way.” I bit back tears. “She’s my favorite sister, and I promised her I would come.”

  “Too young to make promise like that.”

  “I had no choice,” I said, but he didn’t reply.

  He pulled up to his tiny house and we walked inside.

  “Good night,” I said when we reached the hallway to the bedrooms. “I wasn’t trying to cause trouble.”

  “Good night.” He said this last with fatigue, but also gently.

  Before I went to sleep, I sat at the window and watched the trees sway in the wind and the goat sleep, and I thought I saw a small glowing patch way down below near the river. I couldn’t imagine why earthworms would need to secrete glowing mucus. Could earthworms even see?

  I got in bed. I wondered if Maddie was lying awake. Today she was a great sleeper, but as a baby she’d been a problem sleeper. That’s how I’d come to take care of her so much. My mother needed to get her sleep, and I filled the void. Mom and I were like double-mothers of Maddie. I remembered staying up for hours with her to stop her crying and try to put her to sleep. I would carry her until my strength gave out, and sometimes I slept on the floor beside her crib, in case she needed me.

  Had it only been a year ago that I’d been rushing across the country with my sisters on the way to Larry’s? Now I was nearly fourteen. Last year I’d only been worried about Mr. Bronson’s custody lawsuit. Now Maddie was living with him. How could things change so much in just one year? How could the whole world go from right side up to upside down?

  I would have to think of something new. Maddie was going to be really upset when I didn’t show up like I said I would. I could feel the wrinkles forming between my eyebrows. My mother said that area was one of the first to go. That’s because people frowned too much. But who wouldn’t frown? It was up to me to get Maddie away from Mr. Bronson. I wanted her to write me a real letter, not a letter written with her father lurking behind her. I wanted her to laugh and play and drive me crazy. That was my Maddie—not Mr. Bronson’s Madeline.

  I had a mysterious feeling that all four of us sisters were awake at that moment. “Hi, Maddie,” I said out loud. “Hang in there. We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

  chapter thirteen

  I KNEW MADDIE WOULD HAVE waited for me for hours. Jiro left late for work, but the second he did, I pounced on the phone. Mr. Bronson answered. When I asked to speak to my sister, I heard him say, “It’s Shelby.” Then I heard her say, “I don’t want to talk to her.” He said to me, “She doesn’t want to talk to you, Shelby.”

  “Can I please talk to her?”

  “Shelby, she doesn’t want to talk to you. I can’t force her.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, tell her to call me.” I hung up. Darn it! If I could just explain to her what had happened, she wouldn’t be mad at me anymore.

  I called Maddie three times a day for the next week, and nobody ever picked up. It was as if Mr. and Mrs. Bronson knew it was me on the line.

  The next chain letter I got was started by Maddie, then went to Marilyn, then to me. But she’d written Dear Marilyn and Lakey in big letters across the top. My name wasn’t there. She must have been really, really mad. Marilyn sent me the letter anyway. So I went outside to sit with my goat. I brought out paper and a pencil to write my portion of the letter. The goat pushed under my hand. I was not giving him my paper. But then I realized he wanted to be petted. He was awfully cute. Jiro said he was a pygmy goat. I petted him by massaging his head. He’d never let me pet him before. Every time I stopped, he would push under my hand again. Then in the middle of me petting him, he grabbed my paper and ran off.

  I wondered whether I could find someplace near Chicago to stable him. I thought about how excited Maddie would be if, when we all came home, I had the goat with me! She wouldn’t stay angry then. Jiro said some goats were domesticated but that it was really hard to house-train them. In a few minutes the goat returned without the paper. He lay down on top of one of my feet.

  Then I started to wonder whether the Bronsons read all of Maddie’s incoming mail. I bet they did. That made it hard to write to her. I finally came up with this:

  Dear Marilyn, Lakey, and Maddie,

  You Know Who, don’t be mad at me. I can explain everything.

  Anyway, right now my goat is sitting on my foot. He really likes me. I like him too, although he’s very demanding. Also, he ate Jiro’s straw broom. Now it’s just a stick. Jiro and I bought some goat food, and every day I feed some to my goat. I’m going to name him Goat.

  Love,

  Shelby

  That’s all I could think of to write without getting Maddie in trouble. This way she could deny that she was the one who was mad at me.

  Then the next time I called her, Mr. Bronson picked up.

  “Shelby, I was just thinking about you.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say.

  “Madeline’s at her piano class.”

  “But she doesn’t like piano class. She hated it when our mot
her made us take piano.”

  “That’s news to me,” Mr. Bronson replied. “Before I go, let me just say that I have a level of expertise on running away. I did it twice myself before I realized it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Okay, well. Bye.”

  “Good-bye,” he said cheerfully.

  Then that night I got a call from Mr. Bronson. He said a neighbor had seen Maddie climbing out a window and had run to stop her. She admitted she was running away and planned to live in Jiro’s garage. He wanted to know whether I knew why Maddie was running away or whether she’d said anything to me about it. I said no, and later Marilyn called me and said Mr. Bronson had called her as well. I wrote to Maddie right away:

  Dear Maddie,

  It’s dangerous for you to run away. You’re really lucky that neighbor caught you. Mom is getting better, and pretty soon we’ll all be back in Chicago. Just wait and see—it won’t be long!

  She didn’t write me back, and Mr. Bronson repeatedly told me she was at a piano class, French class, crafts class, or tumbling class. Every day I checked for a return letter from her, but it never came.

  For some reason the only thing that made me feel better was my goat. Sometimes he plopped down in my lap, licking my toes, his butt facing me. And whenever I wore a hat, he would take it from me. He’d just grab the hat and run off. I guess that was a goat’s idea of humor. One day while I was out back talking to Goat, Jiro came home from work early. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet. He usually got home from work around six. He looked at me, his jaw slack.

  “Your mother sick,” he said. “Have staph infection. We need to fly to Chicago.”

  “She has a what? What’s that? I thought she was getting better. Who did you talk to?”

  “Mack call me at work.”

  “Are you sure you heard right?”

  “Yes, sure, yes. I ask him three times. Blood infected. Shelby, your mother . . . your mother might die from infection. We have to go.”

  “Die? You mean die like she’ll be dead?”

  He didn’t answer as he seemed to be trying to understand what I said. “Yes,” he replied after a moment.

  We just stood there looking at each other. I couldn’t believe he’d heard right, so I rushed inside to call Marilyn. Nobody answered her phone. I called Larry, but his wife answered. It felt kind of weird to talk to her, but I had no choice. “Ashley, my dad says my mom has a staph infection. Is Larry there?”

  “No, Larry just left with Lakey for the airport,” Ashley said.

  “Jiro says . . . Jiro says that my mother may die, but . . . well . . . Is that what Larry told you?”

  “Well . . . Larry said that they can’t seem to contain the infection. I’m so sorry.”

  “Well, okay, I’m sorry to bother you.” I put the phone down, stunned.

  It seemed I’d now been thrown into the parallel universe where people could die. I rushed outside to hug my goat. That made me feel a little better. Jiro ran out after me. “We need to leave. You pack now.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” I said to Goat. I turned to Jiro. “I’m going to leave him extra food. What exactly is a staph infection, anyway?”

  “No, Goat will eat all food at once if you give. Staph infection is bacteriological, uh, I not really understand it myself. Never been in hospital. But your mother have it bad.”

  “Are my sisters all going to Chicago? I have to leave the goat something because he’s used to getting food now.”

  “Yes, your sisters will be there. No can give goat extra food,” he said firmly.

  Ever since my mother’s accident, it seemed like events were happening faster than I could catch up with them. I threw a few jeans and tank tops into my backpack, and I was ready to go. Jiro called out, “We need to leave now. Plane from Oklahoma.”

  As Jiro sped to the airport, it all caught up with me. My mother might die. I finally started crying. Jiro looked at me. “What happened?” he said.

  “My mother might die! We have to hurry.”

  “We make flight on time, don’t worry.”

  The more I tried to stop crying, the harder I cried. Tears seemed to leak out of my nose. Even my neck grew wet with tears. My mother always said my sisters cried with their eyes and I cried with my nose. My mother. Could. Die. I blew tears and snot out of my nose and onto my face. I didn’t even know where you went when you died. We hadn’t faced much death in our lives. Where would my mother go? Would she try to talk to us? Half of what my head was filled with came from my mother. She taught us new things every day, like how to keep wrinkles from forming at the corners of our mouths, how to let a boy know you were interested without speaking, and how to smile without squishing your eyes. Even someone who thought she was a bad mother had to admit that my sisters and I were coming out fine. That was my mother’s doing. Nobody could deny that we were proof that my mother was a good mother. And even if she wasn’t a good mother, which she was, she’d created us since the moment we were born. As everything caught up with me, it was like I was suddenly in a tornado. And all the whirling air around me was my mother. Then I reached a moment of silence when I was in the middle of the tornado. I stopped crying and felt perfectly calm. Then I reached the other side of the tornado and started crying again.

  “Good to cry,” Jiro said, but I hardly heard him.

  Then another horrible thought struck me. My sisters were in that tornado with me! If my mother died, I would lose them as well. We’d all have to stay with our fathers! Then I thought of how vulnerable my mother was. I’d never thought that before. But really, beneath her confidence, she was just as delicate as anyone else. I didn’t care what anybody said, I didn’t care what Bronson’s custody papers said. My mother was a good mother because we had all been happy together. I started wailing.

  “Don’t lose mind,” Jiro said suddenly. “Cry but don’t lose mind.”

  I felt like I could lose my mind. Then the tornado passed, and I was exhausted. It was like every ounce of liquid had come out of me. I couldn’t breathe through my nose at all. I felt older somehow, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what had changed in me that made me feel older. Maybe I would know later.

  Jiro was talking. I heard him saying, “Healthy as a horse. She won’t die.”

  “Do you promise?” I demanded.

  “Yes. I promise.”

  And I believed that somehow he knew my mother couldn’t die. That calmed me a bit, but my gut still ached. I felt the worst for Maddie. I couldn’t even imagine what kind of turmoil she’d been going through and was going through now. That thought made me feel older because I could see Maddie emerging from all this older, more formed. I ached so much for my Maddie that I started crying all over again. I didn’t want to lose her to Mr. Bronson.

  I started to think that my mother could die after all. And I thought I had to remember every little thing going on now, because later I would want to know how it all felt. Every precious moment when she was alive was better than a million moments when she was dead. Who wanted a long life if you were sad? I had a lot of deep thoughts, if I say so myself.

  The car followed the curving highway through the Ozarks. The hills were intensely green, and occasionally, we’d see a lake beneath us.

  Jiro said, “Some people call Ozarks mountains, but Ozarks are plateau that was carved by water. So we not driving through mountains, but over valleys.”

  I set that aside in my brain as one of the details I might want to remember someday. And suddenly I wanted to know how Jiro met my mother; I wanted to know more about my mother.

  “Do you still like my mom?” I asked him.

  I could see his eyes go wide for a moment. Then it took him another moment to say, “I never know her well. Many people never know her well.”

  I chewed on that without saying more. “I don’t even know how you two met.”

  “In Las Vegas airport, Japanese sightseeing tour. We all see your mother at same time and staring at her. She pic
k me out for some reason.”

  “So I was, you know, uh . . .”

  “You conceived in Las Vegas. We got married, then got annulment. Then we both go home.”

  I just gazed out the window; I didn’t know how to respond.

  I loved being engulfed in the Ozarks, with no people or cars before or behind us. I felt like I was in a circle of peace. And then the Ozarks ended and we weren’t alone anymore, weren’t at peace. As we left the Ozarks, we were back in civilization and I was going to Chicago in case my mother died.

  My mother was a strong woman. I had never seen her express fear. And that was what she would want from me too. I had to be strong for myself and for my younger sisters. Maybe that was part of how I’d changed. I felt more responsibility now. It was up to me to win Maddie back and make her happy again. Mr. Bronson was slapping her down, and I had to make sure she wasn’t permanently harmed. That’s what I had to do. That’s what my mom would do.

  “What thinking?” Jiro said.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. I had the most trivial thought. I thought I wanted to know why he dressed the way he did, but asking would seem rude, so I didn’t ask.

  Later I stared out the plane window. I was all mixed up. Right there on the plane everything felt calm and normal. But the second I left this plane, I would be back in the real world. I started sobbing again. Jiro didn’t speak, just let me sob and sob. I blurted out to a stewardess, “My mother was in a car accident!” The stewardess said she was sorry and, as if it would make me feel better, brought me some more peanuts.

  Walking down the ramp after our arrival, Jiro said, “Never meet Lakey or Marilyn father.”

  Mack and Marilyn met us at the gate. I thought I’d be excited to see Marilyn, and I was excited, but more than that, I was relieved. All that time I was yearning to be with my sisters, and now, finally, it was going to happen, but it was all because our mother might die. I ran toward Marilyn and we hugged and laid our foreheads on each other’s. Mack said, “What is this? Some kind of mind meld?”