Zigzag

  But now I realize you haven’t really left me behind, because this summer has been full of new experiences for me, too. I’m not learning a new language or meeting foreign students like you are, but I am learning other things: why people choose to live the places they do, how mountains look when you’re driving right through them, what kind of salve to put on a rope burn, how Indian pottery is made, and how to talk to a ten-year-old who’s ready to explode. This trip hasn’t always been easy, and it certainly hasn’t always been fun, but it’s always been amazing.

  We’re in Santa Fe, New Mexico, now, and we’ll be here for a while. This is the end of the journey . . . at least for now. Our car ran off the road and flipped over about an hour from here. Dory was the only one who really got hurt, and she’ll be okay—she has some broken bones. The van was pretty busted up and we’re waiting for it to be fixed. Dory and the kids will have to fly home when she gets out of the hospital. Franny is coming out here to help me drive the car back to Iowa, and then Mom and I will take it up to Chicago.

  I know that all sounds like terrible luck, and in a way it is. But I’m beginning to see that there’s often a good side to bad luck. We’re staying with a family who owns a motel here and they’ve been wonderful to us. Savannah, who’s twenty, has shown us all around the city and taken us to the San Ildefonso Indian Pueblo where she has friends. I love the west. I’m thinking that, if Mom says we can afford it, or if I can get some scholarship money, I’d like to go to school out here. As long as we won’t be together anyway, there’s no reason for me to stay in Iowa.

  I guess pretty soon you’ll be leaving Rome and starting to travel around Italy. I know how much fun that will be. I mean, now I really know it, and I understand why you had to go on this trip. I’m glad you did—if you’d stayed in Thunder Lake, I would have too, and I never would have seen New Mexico!

  Okay, I admit I’m jealous of Gabriella. But by next year I’ll probably be jealous of somebody else. There are going to be so many changes in our lives the next few years, but I think most of them will be good ones.

  I know you will have changed by the time you get back to Iowa, and I hope you’ll still love me. I still love you, Chris, but I think I’ve changed, too.

  From Santa Fe to Rome, all my love,

  Robin

  I folded the letter and addressed the envelope before I looked over at Marsh. His head was bobbing and falling toward the side of the bathtub. Surely he’d be willing to get into bed now. After all, the tub couldn’t be very comfortable.

  “Marsh,” I whispered. “Let’s go to bed.”

  His head jerked up. “No. I’m not tired.” He batted his droopy lids.

  “You’re asleep already. Come on!”

  I tried to take his hand to help him out, but he pulled away. “No! I don’t want to go to sleep!”

  I sat down on the edge of the tub. Something more was going on than just his usual argumentativeness. “Why not?”

  Suddenly, tears began to stream down his face. “I don’t want to, Robin—don’t make me! I’ll have bad dreams again! I know I will! Don’t make me go to sleep!”

  He let me take his hand then, and I pulled him up to sit beside me on the tub. He was so overtired and upset he leaned his head against my shoulder and sobbed. “I hate the dreams! I hate them!” I let him cry until he shuddered and fell heavily against me, already more asleep than awake.

  “Would it help to tell me about the dreams?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head. “Don’t want to talk about them.”

  “Okay. But you should lie down now—in my bed if you want. You don’t have to go to sleep, but if you do, I don’t think you’ll have the dreams tonight.”

  “How do you know?” He looked up at me, his face soggy and pleading, as if he hoped I might really have the inside scoop on his nighttime brain waves.

  “I don’t know for sure. But if you do, I’ll be right there and I’ll wake you up.”

  He continued to cry a little, but he was too exhausted to fight it anymore. I put my arm around his shoulders and led him back to the bedroom. He crawled between the sheets, snuffled for about thirty seconds, and before I’d even fluffed my pillow, he was fast asleep.

  We were all thankful to wake up and realize it was morning and the night had passed without interruption. Savannah dropped us at the hospital before she drove down to Madrid for the day, and Iris ducked into the bathroom again as soon as we got inside. Since she’d only had a piece of dry toast for breakfast I couldn’t imagine what she hoped to bring up. I had to talk to Dory about this.

  Savannah’s brother Cesar was scheduled to pick us up at noon, but by ten thirty the kids were bored sitting around the hospital room. I saw my opportunity.

  “Why don’t you guys go down and look around the gift shop?” I suggested, knowing they could never resist the idea of shopping. I’d had Dory’s purse since the accident and had taken a twenty-dollar bill out this morning for just this purpose. I wiggled it in front of their faces.

  “That’s all you’re giving us?” Marsh said.

  Iris grabbed it. “It’ll do.”

  “That’s ten for each of you,” I reminded her.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said, walking out the door.

  “Let me hold on to it,” Marsh said, following her.

  “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

  They squabbled all the way down the hall to the elevator, and then they were gone. Dory was staring at one of those dumb judge shows on the TV that hung from the ceiling. “Can we turn this off a minute?” I said. “I really need to talk to you about Iris.”

  She clicked it off and looked up at me with an expectant frown. “What’s she doing now? Tormenting her brother again?”

  “Well, sure, that. They both torment each other, but that’s not what I’m worried about. Dory, I think Iris is bulimic.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Bulimic? No, Iris is just . . .”

  “Dory, I know she’s bulimic. I hear her throwing up meals almost every day. Earlier in the trip I even saw her doing it.” Dory’s face went slack and she pulled the sheet up higher on her chest. For a minute I thought she was going to pull it up right over her head. “She knows I know about it. She begged me not to tell you. For a while I thought she was over it, but since the accident, it’s gotten worse again. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Why? Why would she do something like that? Iris is a smart girl—she knows better.”

  “I talked to Mom about it last night. She thought it might have something to do with Uncle Allen’s death.”

  “But she’s taken it better than any of us. She’s so strong—she’s gotten me through this. It’s Marsh I’m worried about, with his nightmares and those drawings . . .”

  “I think Marsh is actually okay, Dory. I mean, I’ve been thinking about it. He’s been upset, but I think the drawings and even the nightmares are the way he’s getting the fear out. He can talk about Allen’s death and feel sad about it. All Iris can do is make nasty comments.”

  Dory looked at me skeptically. “You think I’m worried about the wrong child?”

  “I do, yeah.”

  Dory sighed and shifted her weight so she could look out the window. “Well, Robin, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I do think I know my children a little better than you do.”

  What could I say to that? Only this: “Dory, she throws up her meals. That I know for sure.”

  Dory’s good arm came up to shield her face. I thought she was just rubbing her forehead, but then I saw the tears cascading down her cheeks. “Oh, God, I don’t know what to do for them! Most of the time I’m so upset I feel like throwing up my own dinner. How can I help them, Robin? We’re all screwed up!”

  I handed her a tissue and sat gently on the side of the bed. “I don’t know what to do either. But I think you need to stop pretending Marsh’s nightmares are the only problem. I think you should start talking to one another instead of telling me everything.”

&n
bsp; Dory nodded. “You’re right, you’re right.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll let the kids come by themselves, okay? Maybe you can figure out how to talk about things.”

  “Okay.” She took my hand in her good one. “Robin, you’ve been a buffer for us this summer—you’ve kept us from rubbing each other raw. I hardly know how we’ll get along without you. I imagine you’ll be glad to see the last of us, though.”

  I leaned over and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. “I wouldn’t trade this trip for anything, Dory.”

  The kids returned a few minutes later, giggling in an oddly conspiratorial way for the two of them. They had their hands behind their backs and their mouths stuffed with gum.

  “All we got was gum,” Marshall said, barely able to speak around the wad in his cheek.

  “You bought twenty dollars worth of gum?” I said, incredulous.

  “Well, we got some other stuff, too, didn’t we, Marsh?” Iris said, smiling at her brother. Dory and I were speechless in the face of the two of them acting so good-natured.

  “Don’t you wanna know what we got?” Marsh asked.

  “Yes, show me,” Dory said.

  Simultaneously they both brought their arms from behind their backs and thrust their purchases at their mother. Marsh held out a box of chocolate-covered cherries and Iris a vase of tiny red roses. “We bought stuff for you!” Marsh announced proudly.

  “Oh, my God!” Dory took the candy and put it in her lap, then grabbed the flowers. She kept looking from the gifts to her children as if she couldn’t believe the two had any connection. “You bought things for me?”

  “There wasn’t much good stuff down there,” Iris confessed. “But we decided on the way down that you deserved presents more than we did.”

  Dory put her good arm out to her children and they allowed her to pull them into an awkward hug. “My angels!” she said, exaggerating the case just a bit.

  Cesar was waiting for us when we came down the hospital steps at noon. I’d talked to him at breakfast a few times, but he was usually late for something and in a hurry. Today, though, he seemed calm as he sat behind the wheel reading Guitar magazine.

  “Hey,” he said when we crawled into the car. “How’s your mother doing? Or your aunt or whatever.”

  “My aunt, their mother. She’s better. She can get out in a few more days,” I told him.

  “You leaving then?”

  “Well, I guess they are,” I said, motioning to the backseat. “I have to wait for the car to be fixed and for my friend Franny to fly out here so we can drive it back to the Midwest.”

  “Just you two girls? Can I come too? I’ll fix your flat tires.” I knew he was teasing, but I made a face at him anyway.

  “I think we two girls can manage it on our own.”

  He smiled. “You’re lucky. I’d like to drive across the country. See something different than New Mexico every day.”

  “I think you’re lucky to live here. This is my favorite of all the states we’ve been through,” I told him. “I love Santa Fe.”

  “It’s okay,” Marsh said. “But my favorite was Wyoming, on the ranch.”

  “Me, too,” Iris agreed, confirming the weird partnership they’d entered into in the hospital gift shop. “That reminds me, Marsh says you have two horses. Do you think I could ride one sometime?”

  Cesar shrugged. “That depends on Tony—he’s the horse whisperer.”

  “He is?”

  “He thinks so. How old are you?”

  Iris paused before answering and I turned around to stare at her. “Thirteen,” she admitted.

  “That’s in your favor. Tony’s fourteen. He’ll probably let you ride.”

  “How old are you?” Iris asked him.

  “Seventeen,” he said.

  “Same age as Robin! Too bad she already has a boyfriend.”

  Cesar looked over at me and grinned. “Oh, yeah? That is too bad.”

  I turned to look out the window, but not before my evil cousin spied my face. “Oh, look, we made her blush,” she said.

  Why is it so difficult not to feel mortified when your face betrays you like that? From Iris betrayal is no surprise, but you should be able to trust your own body. Thank God, Cesar didn’t say anything. Although, when I finally looked over at him, he was still grinning.

  To turn the conversation away from myself, I started telling him about the rodeo at the Lazy River Ranch. Iris and Marsh were happy to embellish my stories with their own, and that took us all the way back to the Black Mesa Motel without any more embarrassing incidents.

  As we parked behind the Bolton-Packer residence, Cesar said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention—there’s a surprise waiting for you inside.”

  “For me?” I said.

  “Yeah. It came right before I left to pick you up. Check with Sukey—she had it last I knew.”

  “What is it?”

  “Probably a letter from what’s-his-name,” Marsh said.

  I shook my head. “Mom would have said if she’d sent one on.”

  “I think it’s bigger than a letter,” Cesar said. “Go in and see!”

  We all piled out of the car and ran into the house. There, sitting at the kitchen table with Sukey was my dad, with less hair than I remembered and a little blond boy perched on his lap. Across from him sat Allison, who I’d only seen once before, when she was six months pregnant.

  I stopped just inside the door and stared. Marsh and Iris stopped and stared, too, even though they had no idea who these people were.

  “Robin! There you are!” Dad stood up holding David in his arms, patted my shoulder, and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed the air next to his left ear and felt his stubble rake my jaw. The two of us were never very comfortable with hello and good-bye.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” I said.

  “Well, gee, kiddo, you came three quarters of the way—we couldn’t very well let you turn around and go home again without even seeing you. Besides, David was anxious to meet his big sister.”

  Allison had come over to me by that time, too. She put her arm around my waist lightly. “As soon as we told him his sister was coming to visit him, he couldn’t talk about anything else!” she said. “We didn’t want to disappoint him.”

  David stared at me, his eyes big as walnuts. He didn’t act like he couldn’t stop talking about me.

  “Hi, David. I’m glad to finally meet you. I’m Robin.”

  He burrowed into his father’s shoulder and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

  “He’s a little shy,” Allison explained. “He’ll warm up when he gets to know you better.”

  “We can only stay one night, I’m afraid,” Dad said. “It’s hard for me to take off work in the middle of the week like this, but I told them it was a family emergency. I was afraid you might be gone by the weekend.”

  “I’m so glad you came,” I said, noticing how comfortable David was leaning into my father’s chest, obviously a familiar spot for him. A little stab of jealously poked me, but I pushed it aside.

  “And you must be Dory’s children,” he said.

  “Iris and Marshall. This is my dad, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “I’m glad to meet you,” Dad said.

  They looked at him suspiciously.

  “I was so sorry to hear you lost your father last year. That must have been very difficult for you.”

  Still they stared. I was half afraid Iris would say, “We didn’t lose him—he died!” But maybe that’s just what I was thinking. I’m the one who lost my father.

  Finally Marsh said, “Did we ever meet you before?”

  “No, but I used to know your mother.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, a long time ago.”

  Dad looked uncomfortable, but Allison stepped forward and bent over at the waist to speak to Iris and Marsh, even though she was the same height as Iris and only a few inches taller than Marshall. “I thought we could all go out for di
nner later. How would that be? Any place you want to go.”

  “Could we go someplace they have French fries?” Marsh asked. “We haven’t had any in ages.”

  Iris rolled her eyes but remained silent.

  Dad laughed. “I’m sure we could find someplace like that. David likes French fries, too, don’t you, Davy?”

  At last the little boy grinned, a beautiful smile that scrunched up his eyes and dimpled his cheeks. “I wike Fench fwies.” God, this child was my brother.

  It was a strange day. Dad, Allison, David, and I walked downtown to get lunch. Sukey offered to fix something for all of us, but Dad said that wasn’t necessary. When we left Iris and Marsh were sitting at the table spreading peanut butter on crackers and giving me the evil eye. Cesar, who was pouring their milk, winked at me and didn’t spill a drop. I had already decided not to think about whether or not he was cute. He probably was, but I had too much else on my mind already.

  “David, do you want to hold your sister’s hand?” Dad asked the poor kid on our way into town. David looked at me nervously and shook his head.

  “He doesn’t even know me yet, Dad. Give him a chance.”

  The boy looked up at me from his post, glued to my father’s leg, and said, “My daddy.” The first words my brother spoke to me and they were full of sibling rivalry already. Dear God, would we become Iris and Marshall?

  “Remember what we talked about, Davy?” Allison said. “Daddy has two children. He’s your daddy, but he’s Robin’s daddy, too.”

  “And I love you both,” he said, looking meaningfully at first David, then me. We’d only walked three blocks and already I was exhausted by the level of emotion this reunion entailed. If David had asked me right then to relinquish my share of Jerry Daley so he could have full ownership, I would have agreed to it. It would have been simpler for everybody.

  Because Davy really needed a nap after lunch, we all sat through an awful cartoon movie. The toddler conked out after ten minutes while the rest of us stared at a screen full of talking cockroaches for another hour and a half. If they knew the kid would fall asleep anyway, why couldn’t we have gone to something decent? I didn’t even get to watch him sleep—which would have been a chance to look at him as much as I wanted to without freaking him out—because Allison was seated between me and Dad, whose lap was obviously David’s personal futon.