Big fat tears ran down Birdie’s cheeks. But Murphy felt like she was glowing. She could run a marathon. She bounced on her feet, smiling bigger than ever. She could feel her freckles like stars. She was, in a word, defiant.
Standing in the familiar dorm hall, Birdie finally released her from her grip. Murphy watched her, sniffling, disappear into her room and close the door. And then Murphy stood, watching the doorknob, the threat of something not-defiant nibbling at her. Finally she moved down the hall.
But she stopped at Leeda’s door. She stood there for a moment, her heart beating in every part of her, and then she knocked softly. “Leeda?”
Nothing.
She steeled herself and knocked again gently. “Leeda?”
Nothing.
Murphy sank against the door, her head against the wood. Her curls hung down like curtains on either side of her face. “Bye, Lee,” she said, tears creeping out. She stood up and held her head back until they’d crept back in. And then she walked away.
Leeda was lying awake when she heard Murphy knock. She had been awake all night, staring at the blinds on the window, running her fingers along the ridges in the wall, turning from her stomach to her back to her side. When she’d seen the sun start to rise, she was sure she’d missed her chance to say good-bye. And then there had been the knock. And Leeda had held her breath, as if Murphy would hear her breathing and decide to barge in.
Now she could hear her making her way downstairs and then the sound of the door opening and closing. For a few minutes afterward, she didn’t feel anything. Only that her heart had just sort of flown away, hovered somewhere, and hid.
It wasn’t until the sun reached over the trees into the sky, the gray turning soft yellow, that Leeda’s heart made it back inside her, and then it nearly knocked her over with how much she missed Murphy. She missed a million things about her. Her freckles and her jokes and her bouncy feet and her sarcasm and her sharpness. She remembered the first time she’d seen Murphy swim—the crazy fearlessness when she’d jumped off a tree into Smoaky Lake under the moon.
Leeda knew it would take a while to figure out all the things that she’d miss.
Forty-five
Birdie got up about an hour after she’d gone to bed, slogging into the house to make eggs. She kept glancing at the clock, counting the minutes until Murphy’s bus would leave.
After breakfast, she and Poopie played War, staring at each other as if they were both thinking the same thing. Finally Birdie couldn’t take it anymore. She laid down her cards and stepped outside. She walked to the barn and stared at the defunct items she’d put around the bat cave. She let out a sigh and busied herself picking up the bowls and the faux bat. She kicked the rotten fruit aside. Sometimes you had to call a spade a spade. Sometimes you just had to let it go.
She dumped it all in the trash can in the barn and then walked the rest of the way down the long gravel driveway.
She dawdled like that by the road for twenty minutes, kicking pebbles around, back and forth, back and forth. When she saw one that was pure white, like marble, she put it in her pocket. No reason why. No reason why she felt she needed to stand by the road. No reason why the pebble.
She heard an engine roaring off to her left. Rex’s orange truck turned the corner and then, inexplicably, sped past and disappeared. A moment later, Birdie heard a horrible screech of wheels. In another split second, she was off running.
She could smell the burning rubber before she could see the truck. It had ended up parked completely perpendicular to the road. When Birdie saw Rex climb out of the driver’s side a moment later, she nearly fell over with relief. She ran to catch up with him where he stood, his hands on his waist, looking down. Birdie threw her hands to her mouth when she saw what he was looking at.
Birdie walked up beside Rex and they both stared down at it together. Methuselah, dead at last. With the roots on one end and the limbs on the other, the tree looked like the world’s largest baby rattle. Birdie looked at Rex, then at the tree again, then at Rex. He reached out for her wrist and lifted it so he could see her watch, then laid her hand back at her side.
Suddenly something dawned on her. “Were you going after Murphy?”
Rex looked like he didn’t quite know.
Birdie stared at the tree. “It would have been the wrong thing,” she finally said.
“Yeah,” Rex agreed. “I knew that.”
Birdie didn’t know what else to say. She squatted beside Methuselah and laid a hand on top of her as if she might feel a pulse.
Forty-six
“You sure I can’t stay and wait for the bus with you, sweetie?”
“Yeah, Mom.” Murphy was curled up against the car door, peeping at her mom sideways.
The Pontiac pulled into the parking lot behind the bus stop. Jodee popped the trunk, and they both got out. Murphy hoisted her backpack over one shoulder. Her mom dragged her suitcase onto the pavement by the handle and then held it out to Murphy. Her hands were trembling. “I want to get on that bus with you.”
“I know. I want you to too.” Murphy had never thought she would want that. But she did. She felt like she needed her mom like she never had. Which was ironic. For obvious reasons. Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone and all that. She wished that at some time, they had tried harder to find a way for her mom to save up so that she could come with her and help her make her dorm room feel like home.
Jodee reached out and squeezed Murphy tight, engulfing her in the smell of powdery perfume. She pulled back and smiled. “I know you can do this.”
Murphy tried to look sure and nodded. “I know.” She didn’t know, really. She only hoped she knew.
“You call me if you need anything.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be up to visit as soon as I can save up.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you too.”
Jodee hurriedly got into the car and pulled away, her hand resting on her chin agitatedly. Before Murphy knew it, the Pontiac had disappeared around the corner, and she had officially said good-bye to the last person she knew.
Murphy wheeled her suitcase to the bus stop and dumped her backpack on the bench. She stared at the entrance to the parking lot. Waiting for something. Not for the bus. Something else.
The minutes ticked by, and Murphy listened to the sound of the cars, the buses, the trucks along the highway. She rubbed her sleepy eyes even though she felt wide awake. She stared at where the road turned in from town.
A familiar sound made her turn again in the other direction. She could hear the bus as it lurched from the exit beyond the trees. Amazingly, she finally knew what the New York bus, specifically, sounded like. And then it materialized slowly from around the corner. It lurched to a stop and the doors hissed open. Two people climbed off, but Murphy was too preoccupied to judge them.
A hatch opened on the bottom. Murphy hauled her luggage into her arms and tucked it underneath, the way she’d seen others do. Then she walked up toward the front.
Murphy’s heart had begun to pound so hard it felt like it would pop. Just as she arrived at the doors, she heard the sound of a car pulling in. She turned, elated, sure it was him, coming to beg her to stay. Right then, she couldn’t say for sure, but it felt like she would have. But the car, she saw immediately, wasn’t Rex’s. It came to a slow stop, and the two people who’d just climbed out made their way over.
Murphy gave one more look to the empty road behind her. She turned back and stared at the black rubbery stairs.
Something wild and liberated took over her. A smile took over her lips.
She stepped on.
That morning, Judge Miller Abbott passed Jodee McGowen driving into town. Thinking of his recurring dream, he turned around at the Big Boy drive-through and drove straight to Smoaky Lake for the first time in seventeen years. There he touched the tree where he had carved her initials, marking the one night they had spen
t together down by the lake.
As he fingered the creases in the wood, he felt the hole in his heart as wide and as deep as the morning she had bounced away from him, on to the next adventure and the next boy. The hole throbbed for a moment and then it quickly moved into the shadows—somewhere deep, and hidden, and almost forgotten.
That night, the dreams stopped coming for good.
Forty-seven
Leeda pulled her graduation gown out of her closet and held it up to the light. She had been awake since Murphy had left, and now she felt groggy and dizzy. She hadn’t decided whether she’d actually go to the ceremony that evening or not. She had thought that maybe staring at her gown long enough would give her the answer. But it only gave her the urge to clean her closet.
Birdie lay on her bed, watching her mournfully. As Leeda pulled a shoe box off the top shelf, a bunch of papers fluttered out, swishing through the air and landing all over the floor. There had to be at least twenty slips of paper.
Slowly, tiredly, Leeda crouched down and picked one up. They were all IOUs from Murphy. IOU your green sweater. IOU your suede coat. Leeda frowned, irritated. She hadn’t even noticed so much was missing.
“What’s wrong?” Birdie sat up. Leeda held up one of the IOUs.
“Murphy.”
Leeda flipped through the IOUs and sighed. Her favorite sweater. Her favorite jeans. They didn’t even fit Murphy right.
“What?” Birdie asked.
“Just all this stuff she borrowed that she didn’t bother to return.” Leeda could feel her blood boiling. The more she thought, the more she was so mad at Murphy for so many things.
“I’m sure she just forgot,” Birdie offered.
Leeda shot her a look, then pointedly counted up all her IOUs. “You don’t just forget eighteen times.”
Birdie was quiet for a long time, but Leeda didn’t notice. She pulled everything from the closet, folding. Dressy in one pile, casual in another, underwear in a third.
“You sound so bitter.”
Leeda didn’t look at Birdie; she just kept folding.
“You know who you sound like?” Birdie went on.
“Who?” Leeda asked.
“You sound like your mom.”
Leeda looked at Birdie. Then she shoved her piles into her suitcase. “Screw you, Birdie.”
She got her purse and walked out of the room, dropping her keys three times before she got them into the door of her car.
It occurred to her once she was driving that she had nowhere to drive to.
Leeda let herself into Breezy Buds and stood in the white tile foyer. “Hello?” When nobody answered, she went into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a plastic container of food, digging into it with a fork. When she was finished eating, she went upstairs to her room and read her mail, then sorted through her drawers, pulling out some spring clothes and laying them on the bed.
“Leeda.”
Leeda whipped around. Her mom stood in the doorway.
“Hey. I’m just…getting some things.” Leeda hadn’t seen her mom since the hospital. Lucretia wasn’t wearing any makeup. She looked a lot older without it.
“Graduation’s tonight.”
“Yup.” Leeda went back to packing, pretending her mom wasn’t there. Finally she couldn’t ignore her anymore. “I wish you would stop looking at me like that.”
Lucretia continued to hover. At last she floated in and sat on the far corner of Leeda’s bed, holding herself erect.
Lucretia glanced down at her hands. “I always had the best hands. Now look at them.” She held them up, but Leeda didn’t look. “I never believed I’d have hands like this.”
“I really don’t care.” Leeda truly didn’t. She and her mother didn’t need each other or even want to be near each other. They didn’t have to pretend.
Lucretia studied her and then looked toward Leeda’s shelf.
“What did you do with the Barbie?”
“I threw it into a ditch.”
Lucretia’s mouth tilted at one corner in an ironic smile. “That’s appropriate, I guess,” she said. When Leeda didn’t bite, she went on. “It wasn’t really mine, you know. It actually belonged to a friend of mine.” Lucretia had a tone in her voice that was undone. She looked undone.
“You should Google her,” Leeda said.
“Carolina. Everybody liked her everywhere we went. It didn’t matter—post office, store, whatever—she was a pet.” Lucretia laughed. “I don’t know why she was friends with me.
“We used to meet at the orchard. We’d both show up with these plastic cases full of Barbies. I had tons more than she did, but I always made her let me use her favorite one.” Lucretia shook her head. “I loved it best because she did, I guess. She never wanted to give it to me, but she always did.”
“Sounds about right.” Leeda zipped her suitcase and put it on the floor.
“Leeda. I’m trying…I want to tell you…” Lucretia shook her head. “I was this…” She paused. “Monster, I guess. I thought that if it wasn’t done my way, I’d be invisible. Or maybe it was that I didn’t want people to get too close to me. Maybe I wanted to scare them off; I don’t know. I had all these rough edges that Carolina didn’t have. I always felt…I don’t know…like a jar of tacks.” She went on, “When I got older, I tried to be better. But I didn’t even think I wanted to be a mom. I didn’t think I’d be any good at it.”
Leeda stood impassive, watching the confusion cross her mother’s face. She cleared her throat. “Carolina and I were playing one day on the rocks and I dropped the Barbie down the crevice. It was an accident. And it just disappeared. We got the longest sticks we could find, but we couldn’t dig it out. Couldn’t even see it. And she never yelled at me or anything. She just sort of drifted away afterward. Not that it was just the Barbie. I think it was the final straw. I mean, how long can you be friends with someone like that? I’d call her and she wouldn’t call back, that kind of thing.
“Do you know I must have gone back to that spot about a million times looking for that stupid doll? I brought a flashlight, clothes hangers twisted into long hooks. I was caught up with the idea that if I could dig the Barbie out of the muck, it would be this big, dramatic apology. The look on her face when I could hand it to her. Here it is. I’m sorry for being this…person.”
“But you never found it.”
Lucretia shook her head.
“Mom, what are you saying?”
She stood up. “Well, I guess I’m talking about your parade.”
“Your parade,” Leeda shot back.
“It was just how much it seemed to mean to you. The kind of mom you needed to be there. It’s not me.” Leeda squinted at her, and Lucretia rubbed her fingers over her fingernails just like Leeda always did. “You’re not the only person who thinks I’m horrible. That’s my point, I guess. Some people just…put up with it. You never have. You’ve always looked so…crushed. Like you expected something else. That’s the big difference between you and Danay. I think she figured out a long time ago the way I am. She never needed me the way you do.”
Lucretia took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “The truth is, Leeda, I’m not the best mom. Not nearly. Maybe I’m somewhere near the bottom rung.” She shrugged, almost casually. Her face kept that open, undone, slack look for a moment longer and then settled into one more controlled. “I’m sorry. I really am.” She looked like she wanted to say something more. But she made a helpless gesture with her hands instead and then turned and walked off down the hall.
Leeda stood, unsure what to do. She wanted to throw something. More than anything, she felt like she’d come up against a brick wall.
When Leeda moved past the living room a few minutes later, her mom was on the phone, sounding like she always did. Like nothing ever changed or ever would. Leeda stepped out onto the sunlit patio and closed the door behind her, then stepped back against it, startled. Birdie was sitting on the stairs.
L
eeda sank on the step beside her. They both dangled their hair toward their feet and felt the sun on their necks. “I got this from Mexico.” Birdie handed her an envelope, slightly crumpled.
Leeda thought it would be something from Enrico, but when she pulled open the flap and looked inside, all that was there was a photo. “Raeka sent a copy for you.” Leeda studied it. The scene had been smudged in a place where the sun was blotting the subjects, but still you could tell who was who—Isabel and Raeka, dark dripping arms around each other. Murphy, with one of Raeka’s hands resting on her wild hair that hung like wet oodles of noodles. Birdie with Murphy’s hand on her knee, smiling in a pained but hopeful kind of way. And Leeda, sitting next to them, with her arms around herself, straight and aloof. Like her own special, superior island.
Leeda hung the photo between her knees, defeated.
Finally she asked, “Why do you keep loving me, Birdie?”
Birdie looked at her like she was really thinking about it. “I love you because you’re Leeda. I just…I don’t know, I guess it’s too late to not love you. So I just accept you.”
Leeda tried to harness what she wanted to say. It was hard to put it into words. “I can’t even imagine what kind of person you see when you look at me. I mean, I can’t think of who it is you think you’re accepting.”
Birdie put her hand on Leeda’s and crushed her fingers in her brave Birdie way. “Just you, Leeda. I just love you whoever you are.”
Forty-eight
When Leeda got back to the dorm, she flopped onto her bed, unable to move another inch. Her clock stared the time at her accusingly, but she lay still, gazing at the ceiling. She kept thinking she should get up and get moving if she was going to make the ceremony, but she couldn’t even move her fingers.
Then she realized what she really needed to do. It was the perfect moment for it. She sat up and opened the window wide. And then she rolled over toward her purse, grabbed the pack of cigarettes she’d bought so long ago and hadn’t opened yet. She unwrapped the cellophane and pulled one out, lighting it from a pack of matches on the dresser she used to light candles. Lying there, she took a puff and winced. It was disgusting. She didn’t hear the flapping until she’d taken her second puff.