Eleven and Holding (13 page)

“
M
e too,” Switch chimed in. “I take the Fifth.”

“Denied,” Mom said. She tapped her pen on the thick case file in front of her. “Then I get a call that one of my runaways has been picked up in Los Robles and is raising bloody Cain with the cops. He's yelling about a girl named Macy who is stranded at Boomtown Records.”

I had to smile. Switch had been worried about me. How about that?

“Ah,” Chuck said.

“Yes, ah,” Mom said. “I was on my way downtown to rescue this mysterious stranded girl named Macy, but Terrance told me
you
were on your way.”

I could tell we were going to have a long, hard
talk on the way home about what I'd really been up to all day.

Switch cleared his throat and shredded a nearby napkin, like a nervous chipmunk. “If I refuse to go into any more foster homes, will they just keep me locked up till I'm eighteen? I'd just as soon be here than with some messed-up foster family. Really, I don't mind. The food's decent. The staff is pretty nice if you stick to their rules. I can live with that.”

Mom closed the files in front of her and then looked at her watch. “We'll revisit that tomorrow, Terrance. This has been quite a day.”

“Does Dana still work here?” Switch asked. He turned to me. “I've done time here before, and Dana is a really cool counselor. She tells some seriously grisly ghost stories at night.” He glanced quickly at my mom. “I mean,
after
we finish our team-building circle and trust falls at night.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Mom said, “I'll bet.”

She gave him a small smile, and I could see that underneath all the mad, she really liked Switch. “Yep, Dana's here. She was asking about you. I'll call her to come process you and take you back to your bunk.”

Next, she looked over at me. “One of us needs to call Twee. She's been worried sick about you all day.”

I jumped out of my seat, like a rocket launched. “I'll call her, please?”

She handed me her cell phone and a stern look. “Three minutes. Just the facts. Oh, and tell her we'll be home around eleven. She should put Jack to bed now, if she hasn't already. I called her mom and cleared it with her so that Twee could stay late.”

I went into the hall and ducked into the girls' restroom for some privacy. Then I dialed the number. “Twee! It's me!” I said when she picked up, her voice breathless.

“MACY! Where have you been? Everybody's looking— Oh man, you are in such trouble with your mother!”

“I know—”

“I told her!! I am so-so-so sorry! But she used that probation officer thing on me, and I just caved. She said something about me being an ‘accessory after the fact'—”

“Twee, its o
kay
! I'm with my mom. We're coming home. She said to put Jack to bed.”

“What happened?” she yelled into the phone.

An older girl with a lot of tattoos and very stiff hair came into the restroom. I turned away and covered my mouth, so she couldn't hear me. “Twee,” I blurted in a rush. “Look, I lied about today. And I'm
sorry. I hated lying to you.”

“You didn't go with Switch after all?” she asked, sounding relieved. “Where the heck have you been all day?”

“Well, I did go with Switch, but not to Raging Falls. I had him take me to Los Robles.”

I could hear her suck in her breath, even all these miles away. “Did you find him?” she asked breathlessly.

I buried my teeth in my thumbnail. “No,” I said. I looked up in the bathroom mirror, took my thumb away from my mouth. “Least not— Well, no . . . he wasn't really there.”

Which was true. The dad I knew, my personal superhero, my life coconspirator—he was gone. What was left in his place was not anyone I recognized.

In the end Chuck convinced my mom to leave her government car at juvenile hall, and he drove the two of us home. Said he'd feel better if she just took it easy for a while.

Mom looked like she might argue with him, but then just went along. Maybe she wasn't looking forward to being alone with me, either.

Chuck was, it turned out, pretty thoughtful. Maybe he'd always been, but when you're looking for someone to be a giant creep no matter what, it's hard
to notice when they do something uncreepy.

And he wasn't trying to get my mom to fall in love with him. Chuck had a broken heart. He was just trying to get by. Like I was. Like Ginger was.

My mom sat in the front seat of Chuck's car and pulled her big clip out of her hair. That was her sign for going off duty. Then she reached behind the seat, searching for my hand.

I gave it to her, and we just both held on for a while.

Chuck put on some soft music, and they talked a long time about Switch. About how a kid like him could end up so much worse if he didn't get a real chance at a stable home. But my ears were too tired to pay attention. I fell asleep—almost a coma, really—and slept a very long time.

Dear Mr. Jimenez,

The Sixth Thing About Me: this one is sort of secret, so please don't tell anyone. I'll be on the soccer team at Kit Carson (that's not the secret), but I really don't want to play soccer. I don't even like it! I love basketball best, and the Kit Carson Cougars could really use me. I watched some of the games last year, and your team is pretty awful. My dad wants me to play soccer, though. It's his favorite sport. I don't want to hurt his feelings. If you have kids, make sure you find out what
they
like to play best. And even if your kids are better than you at a sport, you should be encouraging and help them play the sport they like.

Yours very sincerely,

Macy L. Hollinquest

PS Last year I also missed learning about Roman numerals during that week I was sick. If I ever go to Italy, I will be in
big
trouble trying to tell time and paying for pizza.

I
ran my hand lightly over the new big window outside Nana's coffee shop. Chuck hadn't had time yet to have a new sign painter come. The glass was still blank.

Caffeine Nana's wasn't open yet. It was still early. Mom had given me permission to leave the house for just one important errand. Then I had to come straight back home. I could see Chuck sitting in one of the booths, working on some papers. He was sitting at my favorite booth—the one that got the best morning sun. He saw me and waved, and then came to the door and unlocked it. He gave me a big smile.

“Can I ask you something—” I started.

“Hey, can I ask you a favor—” His words ran over mine.

We laughed, kinda nervous, both standing in
this new place together—the one where we talk like regular people and I am not giving him the stink eye.

“You go,” he said.

“Can I, um, come in?” I asked.

He didn't make a big deal about it like he could have. Didn't mention that I'd never been in since he'd bought the place. He just stepped aside and said softly, “Of course.”

I breathed in the air that was so familiar. I could almost smell Nana's perfume mixed in with the grill and the leather booths. This early in the day, it was so quiet inside, so cool, with the overhead fan humming its rhythm. I felt almost like I was walking into a holy kind of place—like I was in the presence of what Father Dan at Aunt Liv's church called “things unseen.” And they were good things.

So much of me lived in this space, so much of Nana,
I thought. It was still hers, and nothing Chuck could do would ever change that. Besides, he wasn't the one who had taken my nana.

I turned and looked back at him. “It looks good in here.”

“It does now,” he said, with a nice smile. I never had noticed how handsome he was before, really. I went over and perched on one of the old stools. Gave myself a slow spin while I collected my thoughts.

Chuck sank down into a booth and waited.

“I want to go see Ginger this morning,” I said. “I'd like to apologize and stuff.”

He looked at me, a question in his eyes.

“You know, for giving her a worry about me and Switch. And—and—” I stammered. “And a part of me wants to try to talk to her about Mr. McDougall. But I'm not sure. I just hate for her to keep driving those flyers around and waiting and waiting for him to come home.”

“I know,” he said. “Well, whatever you decide, I'm sure she'd be glad to see you, Macy. She's grown very fond of you and Twee.”

“I'm fond of her, too,” I said, realizing just then how very true that was. I paused and then asked, “Would you go with me to see her, Chuck?”

He looked surprised but went right past that. “Sure! I can drive us over, as soon as the morning shift gets here. While we're waiting, will you help me with something?” He pointed to the pile of papers on the table.

I walked over and looked. It was a bunch of sketches of the front window's glass.

“I'm getting these ready for the painter,” he explained. “I want it to look just like it did before. Can you help?”

I leaned down on my elbows and studied it.

He went on. “I've got most of it here,” he mumbled, “but I don't think it's right. How'd it go? ‘Good coffee, good times, good God—'”

I picked up the pencil and crossed out “God.” “It's ‘good
Lord
,' Chuck, not ‘good God.' Nana was very particular about not using God's formal name here.”

“Right, right. Got it. Okay, it's ‘Good coffee, good times, good Lord'—” He paused and rubbed his forehead, his pencil stuck on its point.

I wrote it out for him and then stared at it. Wondered how I'd missed it for so long. It had been staring at me all those Saturdays I'd been camped out front. A shiver ran straight up my tailbone to my neck. It felt like those “things unseen” were standing very close.

“‘Come on in,'” I read, my voice a whisper.

They were my nana's words. I wished I had been listening to them all along.

T
he sound of a shrieking alarm met us as we pulled into Ginger's driveway. I quickly reached for the door handle, ready to launch.

“Stay here!” Chuck ordered me as he quickly shut off the car and raced toward the front door.

I hurried after him, but he didn't notice. I could smell the smoke coming from Ginger's house, even from the front yard. Chuck grabbed the front doorknob and shoved himself in. The sound of the alarm—maybe even more than one—was earsplitting.

“GINGER!” Chuck yelled as he ran toward the kitchen. The smoke seemed thickest in there. I ran in after him, but I could see she wasn't in there. Smoke was streaming from the oven door and even coming up from under the burners. Chuck grabbed a dish
towel to cover his mouth and nose and then tried to turn the oven off. He drew his hand back quickly and cursed. He took the towel from his face and wrapped it around his hand and tried again to turn it off.

He saw me then, and yelled, “OUT! Now!”

But I had to find Ginger. I raced through the rest of the house looking for her. She wasn't in the bedroom or bathroom and study. I ran to the backyard and then doubled back when I remembered her darkroom. She wasn't there, either. She wasn't anywhere to be found.

I hurried back toward the kitchen and found Chuck standing on the counter, trying to turn off the smoke alarm. He had all the doors propped open now, and the smoke was being sucked into a fan over the stove.

There was a very charred-looking cake pan sitting out with a half-burned dish towel next to it.

“SHE'S NOT HERE ANYWHERE!” I shouted over the shrill din.

Chuck gave the alarm a final yank, and the sound shut off. We both groaned in relief as the world went quiet. He eased himself back down and leaned up against the cupboard. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I'm not sure,” he sighed, shaking his head. “Looks
like she left a dish towel in the oven with whatever she was cooking. It caught on fire.”

I looked around the kitchen then, and noticed what a mess it was. The last time I had been here it had been spotless. Today, it looked like raccoons had come over and made breakfast. There were dirty dishes out everywhere and a couple of broken eggs on the floor. The refrigerator door was open. I moved toward it slowly and closed it, stepping around the egg mess.

“She's having an off day,” Chuck said, surveying the mess with me. “I'm just glad we got here when we did. Did you check the darkroom for her?”

“I looked everywhere. Promise. She's not here.”

“She probably went out for a walk. She did that one day a few months ago, after she'd started running water for a bath. By the time she'd gotten back, the place was flooded. Her next-door neighbor called me when he saw the water coming out the front door. He must be out today, or he would have come over when the smoke alarm went off.”

“She doesn't seem like someone who would do stuff like this.”

“I know. On her good days she could probably run the Senate. But then, some days she isn't fully with us. She gets confused and loses track of what she's
doing. She was having one of those kind of days when Mr. McDougall died. I think that's part of why she can't seem to understand that he is really gone.”

“Maybe she shouldn't be living by herself. She could have burned the house down!”

He sighed and rubbed the top of his head. “Well, probably would have just smoked the place out pretty bad. But I do worry when she is having one of her bad days what might happen. I've talked to her about selling this place and moving in with me. Or even moving into some kind of active retirement community where she could have some level of supervision. But she won't hear of it. She is as stubborn as Phillip was. That man could have driven the pope to drink.”

“Hellooo? Who's there?”

We both turned to see Ginger enter the house. She came into the kitchen looking confused. She glanced from me to Chuck, then from Chuck to me. “Oh dear, was something burning?” She headed toward the stove. “Have you two been cooking?”

“We came by, and your smoke alarm was going off,” I blurted. “That's why we barged in.”

“That dang thing is always going off,” she said. “I'm going to have it removed!”

She looked over at the counter. “Were you two baking a cake? You've burned the tar out of it.” She
reached for it, and Chuck grabbed her hands.

“It's very hot!” he said. “Let it cool down.”

She looked at the charred dish towel on the counter, and Chuck followed her gaze.

“Ginger,” he said softly and gently. “You were making a cake earlier—”

“Nooo,” she said, shaking her head. “I was out walking.”

“Right, but before you went for a walk, you were making a cake, and when you put it in the oven, you seem to have left a dish towel in the oven too.”

She put her fingers on her lips. Her whole hand was trembling.

“It's okay, Ginger,” I said, putting my arm around her waist. “When my brother was first born, my mom once put a dirty diaper in the fridge instead of the trash.”

She looked at me then like she was surprised to see me. “Macy! Would you like some sweet tea? It is hotter than blazes out there.”

“Why don't you let me get it?” Chuck said. “You two go sit down, and I'll bring it to you. Macy wanted to have a chat with you, anyway.”

“Oh! Well, that would be lovely. Let's do go sit in the living room. I'm beat out from this weather.”

“Uh, if you're tired, I could talk to you another
time,” I said. I wasn't sure she would understand what I had to say about Mr. McDougall. She hadn't even remembered she was baking a cake.

“Nonsense,” she said. “You're the nicest thing that has happened to me all day. I can nap any time.”

Once the three of us were settled in her living room behind ice-cold glasses of tea, I couldn't find a place to start. I'd woken up that morning almost desperate to talk to her—to show her what was right in front of her. But now I felt like I was looking out over some kind of ledge. If I started talking, would I fall?

I was perched on the edge of a chair across from Ginger and Chuck, who were sitting on her big couch. They both looked at me as if I might be delivering the Gettysburg Address.

“I—I, well, I wanted to tell you I am really sorry about your motorcycle.”

She looked at me blankly.

Oh, geez, had she forgotten that, too? I looked to Chuck for help. I didn't know if I should continue.

Chuck nodded encouragement and then put his hand on Ginger's knee. “Switch took your bike and drove Macy to Los Robles.”

“Oh, of course!” she said. “It was very gallant of you kids to try to find Mr. McDougall. Though I'm
sure you've given your mother a whole head of gray hair over this. I had no idea you two would expand the search area to Los Robles.”

I wiped the palms of my hands on my shorts. The back of my neck was starting to sweat. “We didn't take your bike to go look for Mr. McDougall, Ginger. Switch lied to you about that.” And I'd lied to Twee and my mom. It was the biggest day of lies I've ever lived.

She pulled on her ring finger and looked confused. “Oh?”

“Switch took me to Los Robles so I could try to find my dad.” Even saying the word “dad” gave my guts a painful twist. I swallowed hard. “He hadn't come home in a long time. I really needed to find him.”

“Find him? Macy, is he missing too?” Ginger asked.

I blew out a gusty breath. I think I'd been holding it for a very long time. Months, maybe. “I thought he was.” I lifted my shoulders and then let them drop. “But he wasn't missing after all. He just— Well, he just wasn't where I wanted to find him.”

Ginger folded her napkin around her iced tea while she sorted through that and then looked up at me. “I didn't realize— I'm sorry. That must be very hard.”

Chuck reached over and gave me one of those big-man pats on my knee.

I looked down at my feet. I had on two completely different socks today. How had that happened?

Ginger glanced at Chuck and then back at me. I could tell she was completely lost. But I couldn't stop now that I'd started this.

I clamped my front teeth down on my bottom lip. Hard. The air around me grew thick and close. A trickle of sweat snaked its way down my back.

I hung my head. My nose began to drip. I gave it an embarrassed swipe with my napkin. I squeezed my eyeballs tight a moment, trying to hold off tears. “I'd made up this whole story in my head about why he wasn't coming back home. Turns out I was all wrong.”

A hundred pictures flashed through my mind, like a slide show on turbo speed. And in every one, I was the one running around, trying to get everyone together for the perfect family picture. But someone was always missing. Dad was away or Nana was sick or my mom was off mad—or having a baby, or studying, or worrying about money.

“I'm not even used to my nana being dead yet, but if I lose my dad too—” Almost without sound, I said, “It's too much.”

I looked up at Ginger and saw that her eyes had begun to water. And I knew in that instant that this was why I wanted to come today. She knew what it meant to go through “too much.” And she knew what it was like to swap the truth for a hope that was doomed from the start.

Ginger stiffened back against her chair, took a deep breath. She tried—she did—to keep it all in, but her face crumpled anyway, and she covered her eyes. I felt her giant sadness arrive, like I had when I first met her. It hovered over her.

I looked at Ginger, swiping tears off my face. “Sorry— I just miss— I miss them both so much,” I said, my voice heaving.

I went over and knelt down in front of her. I could smell the rich soil from the garden on her clothes.

The two of us just stayed there awhile. I could feel Nana, Phillip, and Mr. McDougall right there with the three of us. There was such aching sweetness in that. That we'd never see them again, never be able to hug them or talk to them—that was the most god-awful hurt.

After a while I reached in my pocket and handed Mr. McDougall's collar to Ginger.

“This was under the pillow of the sidecar.”

“Oh!” she said, cupping it in her hand and then
bringing it to her chest. She tried to straighten out her face before she continued. She cleared her throat. “I didn't realize he didn't have his collar on. I suppose that will make it even more difficult for him to be found.” She rubbed her thumb over the tag, just as I had when I'd found it.

“Ginger, you—” Chuck started.

“Don't—” she snapped.

“I was just going to say that I'm sorry,” he said. “I know how hard all this has been for you.”

I gave him a grateful look. Ginger's hope was her life preserver. She deserved to have that for as long as she needed it.

Chuck blew his nose in that funny, noisy way that men do. My dad sounded just like that. I caught my breath until the pain passed.

I handed Ginger a napkin, and she wiped her face. She'd been carrying so much for so long.

A face came to me then: my mother's. I imagined what it must have been like for her to hold all that she had by herself for so many months, maybe years. And then have a daughter who blamed her for most of it.

“Ginger, can I use your phone a minute?” I took a deep, steadying breath. “I need to call home.”