Girl Unmoored

  “Dad,” my voice was squeezed so high it came out my ears. “I need to see him before it’s too late. Like Mom.”

  Finally, he listened. He put the phone back on the hook and started walking to the door. “Let’s go.”

  And we were already down the porch stairs and halfway to the car by the time the screen door slammed behind us.

  48

  Di te incolumem custodiant.

  May the gods guard your safety.

  My dad’s face stayed tight the whole time we drove. The only noise came from the windshield wipers: the steady swish and then the fast squeaky pull to get them moving again.

  We found a place to park right in front of Scent Appeal. The street was practically empty and so wet that I couldn’t make it onto the sidewalk without stepping into a greasy puddle first. “I’m coming in with you,” my dad said shutting his door, drops of rain plopping onto his shirt. I was going to say no, he didn’t need to, but changed my mind when I saw his face.

  He was looking at the picture frame I was carrying. “Is that—?” I heard him say. But I slipped it into my backpack and hurried up to the door, which was unlocked just like yesterday.

  Inside the lights were off and all my vases were scattered around.

  “Would they be up there?” my dad asked behind me.

  I nodded, and he started up the stairs first.

  I prayed there wouldn’t be anything contagious-looking in their apartment, even a cup. My dad took the stairs two at a time and stopped at the top to wait for me, making himself a wall so I could go in first.

  The living room was empty and dark and so was their bedroom.

  “Looks like they’re gone,” my dad said.

  We were too late. Again. I grabbed onto the wall.

  Until I heard, “You’re here.”

  I spun around so fast my backpack hit my dad’s elbow. I looked at him to say sorry, but he held up his hand and nodded, It’s okay. Then Mike walked toward us, out of the dark bedroom, his hair hanging loose all around him.

  “Hi, Mr. Bramhall,” he said, holding his hand out, but then pulling it back in again quickly and slipping it into his pocket.

  But my dad said, “Hi, Mike,” and held his hand out there until Mike took it. And then when they stood like that, shaking hands for longer than normal, you could see they were the exact same height.

  When they dropped their hands, they turned to me.

  “Thanks for letting Apron come over, it means a lot to her,” my dad said.

  “No,” Mike said. “Thank you. It means a lot to Chad.”

  Mike smiled at me when he said that, and I smiled back.

  “How’s he doing?” my dad asked, his face ironed down into a worry now.

  “Well, he’s not in as much pain.”

  My dad nodded. “So what time are you thinking, then?”

  Mike blinked at my dad. “Tonight,” he answered, putting both hands in his pockets this time. “Definitely sometime tonight.”

  “To pick Apron up, I mean,” my dad said quickly. “What time should I pick Apron up? An hour?”

  “Yuh.” Mike pulled his hands out of his pocket, his face flush. “Sounds good.”

  My dad turned to go down the stairs, but stopped at the top. For a second, I thought he might ask me if I wanted him to stay. But instead he said, “Can I bring you boys anything when I get back?”

  “No. Thank you, Mr. Bramhall. We’re all set,” Mike answered.

  So my dad waved once and disappeared.

  Mike stood up straighter and looked at me. His blueberry eyes were cloudy. “Okay. You ready, kiddo?”

  I nodded and slid off my backpack. Mike took my raincoat and hung it over a kitchen chair, and then I picked up my backpack again and followed him into the bedroom.

  49

  Anima vagula

  Little soul flitting away

  At first it looked like the bed was empty. But Mike walked up to it and pulled out a hand. “Hey,” he said.

  The sheets moved slightly.

  “Apron’s here.”

  The sheets moved faster.

  “Calm down,” Mike said. “She’s not going anywhere.”

  A head slid up against the bed board, and there was Chad, looking awful, his cheeks glued on the wrong way and his black splotches looking blacker. I turned my eyes away, into Mike. And then he knew too, that I wished I hadn’t come.

  “It’s okay,” he mouthed, shaking his head. “He can’t see you.”

  “I heard that,” Chad said in the same grumpy voice he used to have, when his eyes were real.

  “Hi,” I said. I didn’t recognize my own voice.

  “Get over here, Apron. I’ve been waiting for you.” Just saying that much got him out of breath. I looked at Mike. He nodded once and then we traded places.

  “What’s the difference between a woman from Maine and a moose?” Chad asked slowly, his eyes turned exactly the right way into mine, but not moving at all.

  “I don’t know,” I said, but barely. It was hard to talk. “What?”

  “About ten pounds,” he tried to laugh but coughed. His teeth looked too big for his face now. He tapped the mattress with his finger. “That’s the best one yet. Don’t forget it, promise?”

  I looked at Mike to see if it was okay to smile, to see if he was smiling too, like the old days when we told jokes and made bouquets and danced together.

  “Don’t look at him,” Chad said reaching for my arm but missing it. “He won’t remember it. He’ll be bereft.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  Then no one said anything and Chad’s breath got longer right away.

  “So,” Mike said, a little too brightly. “Can I get you anything, Apron?’

  “No, thank you.”

  “All right, well, I’m going to go down and wait for Toby. You can sit, Apron, if you’d like.”

  When I looked at Mike, I thought he would be nodding to the bed, but he was looking at one of their kitchen chairs against the wall.

  “Okay,” I said turning to get it, sliding it closer to Chad.

  “Hey, Mikey,” Chad called out in the loudest voice he had left.

  “Yeah?” Mike stopped and turned around.

  “You and me. Later.” He patted the bed and winked.

  Mike grinned and shook his head, then walked out the door. I stood for a moment, wondering if Chad had forgotten I was there.

  But he hadn’t because he said, “Apron, sit down, already.”

  I slid my backpack off and sat. Chad looked pinker all of sudden, like we might be wrong and he would be good as new by tomorrow. But then he coughed so hard it sounded like things were breaking inside of him. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He nodded like it hurt. “Fine.”

  I looked out the door for Mike, but he was gone. So I leaned down into my backpack and unzipped it. The noise made Chad’s eyes move fast.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “A picture of my mom,” I said, opening his ice-cold hand and putting the frame in it gently.

  “But Apron,” Chad said. “I can’t see.”

  “I know. But it’s not for now. It’s for when you get there, so you can find her.”

  Chad tapped his finger on my mom’s cheek. “Does she look like you?”

  I thought about it hard enough for Chad to take in another long breath. “A little bit,” I said.

  “Not quite as pretty?”

  “Well,” I said. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”

  Chad raised his eyebrows. “I’ll find her, Apron. I promise. If you promise me something, too.”

  I nodded, but then remembered he couldn’t see me. “What?”

  “Don’t stay sad. Remember our poem. What it means. Promise?”

  “Chad,” I said. “Does Mike have it, too?”

  He moved his finger over my mom’s chin. “We don’t know. He doesn’t want to find out yet.” His voice cracked.

  My eyes stung ha
rd and fast. And Chad knew it. He tried to smile again.

  “Hey, can I tell your mom the Woman from Maine joke? It wouldn’t offend her, would it?”

  “You can tell her,” I said, forcing my throat to work. “She’s going to love that one.”

  “Apron,” Chad said, sounding a little nervous. “I’ve been wondering. Do you think you and me would have been friends, if, you know, we were in seventh grade together?”

  I thought about it for a second. I thought about Rennie and Jenny Pratt making fun of Chad, his swishy way of walking down the halls, and Johnny Berman and Sherman Howl writing faggot on the top of his desk and picking him last for dodge ball. And I thought about how, if I ignored them all and decided to be friends with Chad anyway, he would have been my only one.

  “Yes,” I nodded. “We’d be friends.”

  “Yup,” Chad said smiling as far as his cracked lips would let him. “That’s what I think, too.”

  We both nodded in quiet smiles. Then Chad closed his eyes and folded his arms around my mom’s picture. I looked out the door, but didn’t see Mike, and didn’t know if Chad was supposed to be alone now. So I reached down into my backpack again and pulled out The Little Town on the Prairie and started reading to him quietly, while his breathing turned long and smooth, and my mom floated up and down on top of him.

  Laura Ingalls Wilder should have been in class with us, too. With friends like us, she never would have had to put up with Nelly Olsens or Jenny Pratts. With friends like us, she never would have had to feel bad about wearing her same dress every single day of her life. “Hey, Chad,” I said. “I bet Laura would have been friends with us, too. Don’t you?” I grinned and lifted my eyes off the page to look at him.

  He didn’t answer me though. And my mom wasn’t moving up and down anymore, either.

  The book fell when I stood.

  I shivered, but my throat closed so tight I couldn’t scream for Mike. Chad was completely still. I tried not to blink in case I missed the flash or the bell or whatever it was that tells you a person is really dead. But nothing happened. Just more and more nothing.

  “Chad,” I whispered. “Chad,” I said again. “Is it scary?”

  His face stayed the same, not smiling but not sad, either. Just thinking. Maybe even about being in seventh grade with me.

  Footsteps came up the stairs. “Mike,” I yelled. Except it came out in a croak.

  I waved at Chad and walked out the door.

  The kitchen was empty and so was the living room. Blood dropped out of my head so fast I had to squeeze my eyes closed. When I opened them again, Mike popped up from behind the kitchen counter, a new paper towel roll in his hands.

  “Hey,” he said. “Toby’s still not here. Did the phone ring at all?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Apron?”

  I didn’t answer again. And then I didn’t have to.

  Mike’s arms fell to his side and the paper towels landed with a soft thud. I walked around the counter and straight into his white T-shirt. Then we stood like that, him holding my red head, and me listening to the part of his chest where his heart used to be.

  Chad’s quiet look was still there. I watched Mike’s fingers carefully circle around Chad’s mouth and chin and then move back up to Chad’s forehead and start down his cheeks all over again.

  “I’m sorry it was me in here.”

  Mike nodded and didn’t say anything.

  But then he looked at me. “Maybe they want it that way,” he said, his voice crackling. “So we can’t stop them.” And I thought about it. Maybe they did.

  “He really loved you, Apron,” Mike said, and now there were strings of wetness in his mouth.

  He took his hand off of Chad. Then he flashed his broken blueberry eyes at me and said, “I’m going to lie down with him for a minute, okay? Will you be all right out there by yourself ?”

  I nodded. I bent down and picked up my book and my backpack. I looked down at Chad one more time and saw in between his hands my mom’s face peeking out, smiling. Maybe she was laughing at the moose joke right now, the two of them sitting together, late for nothing. I gave them both a small wave and shut the door behind me.

  In the living room, I sat on the couch and stared at the picture of Mike and Chad in the sailboat together, laughing so hard you could tell they were going to have to come up for air sometime soon.

  And a little later, when my dad climbed the stairs, he stood in the doorway for a second, then looked past me to the bedroom door, still closed. I started to stand, but he walked over to me first and sat down.

  “Chad’s dead,” I said, my eyes burning all over again.

  My dad didn’t say anything. He just sighed and wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in close. He smelled different than Mike and my head sank deeper into his chest. Then we rocked back and forth a little, and he started singing It’s okay, it’s okay over and over—the way my mom did, but a little off-key. I didn’t even know he knew that song.

  50

  In Hoc Salut.

  In Him is Salvation.

  For three days in a row I stayed in my room, mostly reading Books Seven and Eight, all about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s happy golden years, which after all that scalping and starving she deserved. Mike called me the day after Chad died to tell me he was going to be cremated. He also told me there was a going-away party next week, for both of them. Mike was moving back to St. Pete.

  “What?” I asked dropping onto the floor, forgetting about the lemonade I was sneaking upstairs. Everyone was always leaving Maine. Vacationland was on all Maine license plates, even ours.

  “What about Scent Appeal, and everything?”

  “I need to go home.” His voice was deeper now. “To see my parents before—”

  But he stopped right there.

  “Before what?” I asked, picking up an old piece of cereal and rolling it around in my fingers. I felt meanness covering me like a warm blanket. Mike still had me and his other friends and even Mrs. Weller to think of.

  “Before it’s too late for me, Apron. To get to know them again.”

  I dropped my forehead into my knees. We pay a big price for it, Reverend Hunter said. And I was almost out of money.

  “So do you want to come?”

  “What?” I picked my head up. My eyes started darting around. “I mean, yeah. Sure. I’ll have to ask my dad, though.” I tried not to sound too excited, but there was plenty of summer left for me to go on a trip and Florida wasn’t that far and M certainly wouldn’t miss me.

  “I hope he’ll come, too. Tell him the party will just be a few hours.”

  Mustard squeezed into my stomach. There I was again: a road to nowhere.

  I threw the crusty piece of cereal back under the counter. “I’ll tell my dad, but he’s not going anywhere. Not until M comes back.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “What? What’s going on?”

  I told him that we hadn’t seen her since the night before Chad died. That my dad had even figured out where Suzanna’s house was, but she wasn’t there and neither was Suzanna. And even though Nurse Silvia had no idea where they were, she knew Suzanna took the long weekend off because she looked it up in the nurse schedule.

  “Oh, man,” Mike said. “How’s your dad doing?”

  “Not really talking,” I said. But I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t either.

  “I’m sorry, Apron. Tell him thanks for the food, though. I just finished ordering it, right before I called.”

  “What food?”

  “Portland Bagels,” Mike said. “He had a very generous gift certificate sent over with a note that said to use it for Chad’s reception. He’s obviously been through this before. It’s really thoughtful of him, Apron.”

  I felt my heart blink on for the first time since Chad died.

  “I’ll see you Monday?” Mike asked.

  I told him yes and we hung up.

&nbs
p; Then I picked up that old piece of cereal and threw it into the trash.

  On Saturday morning, after my dad drove off to search for M—Maybe she’s wandering around Shop & Save, Apron—I biked to St. James Church.

  When I got there, I left my bike in the rack and walked past the Mary with her baby and his chipped toe. I stood at the huge front doors, trying to hear if anyone was dying or getting married in there. But it was quiet.

  Inside it smelled like the same old soggy hope that it always did. Mike and Chad’s decorations were long gone. But the Jesus on the rug was right there, his hands and feet bleeding.

  I walked down the aisle, stopped at the third row and slid in. Then I looked up at Jesus. Anywhere you went, he had his eyes on you. I put my hands together and bent my forehead into them and asked for things. “Please, God,” I said. “Please have Chad find my mom. Please have Mike not feel so bad. Please save those baby seals.” But I couldn’t make myself ask for the last thing.

  So I dropped my hands and sat back. Jesus and I just stared at each other. Apron, he said finally. It’s time.

  I looked away, but then clapped my hands together, leaned forward, and dropped my head into them again. “And please have my dad find M.”

  When I sat back, I heard a door open. From up at the altar, Reverend Hunter said, “Apron. Is that you?”

  I nodded. There was no hiding behind this hair, even if it was shorter now.

  He started walking down the stairs toward me. “I was pleased to hear everything turned out all right with your grandmother.”

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “And you got home with those boys?” he asked, stopping at my pew.

  I shrugged. “Chad died.”

  “Oh dear,” Reverend Hunter said. And the bees came. I tried to stop the stinging, but there were too many of them.

  “May I?” he asked sliding in next to me. I scooted down, letting those drips fall, not even trying to wipe them away. Reverend Hunter clasped his hands in his lap. He smelled like Dunkin’ Donuts.