Eleven and Holding (14 page)

J
ack and Mom were out back when I got home, test-driving Jack's new wading pool. When I stuck my head out, he was squealing with all the baby boy gusto he had and splashing most of the pool's water out onto the grass and flower beds.

Mom looked up and smiled at me. “Guess I won't have to water today. Who would have thought a wading pool could become a workingwoman's convenience? I can lounge, entertain my baby, and water my yard!”

Mom rattles on like this when she's nervous. Guess she was worried about the Big Talk we needed to have. I'd left the house early on purpose this morning. I'd been avoiding her big-time.

She motioned back toward the house. “There's some curried chicken sandwiches in the fridge. Grab
one and come on out, Mace.”

I went inside and then got my hat and my sunglasses. Covered my nose in zinc. Gee, maybe now she wouldn't even recognize me. As much as it was time for us to talk, I still didn't want to.

I knew we had to. But that didn't change how I felt.

The telephone answering machine light was flashing “2” when I walked by. Since I didn't have a cell phone yet, the old-fashioned answering machine keeps my mom's messages for me while she is working.

The first message was from me, calling from Ginger's to say I'd be home in a little bit. I hated how young I sounded on answering machines. I erased it and then pushed playback again.

Elise, it's Dr. Eckstein again. Just checking to see how you're all doing. Hope Macy is okay. Gum is really worried about her. Will you give me a call back? I'd like to talk about setting up the meeting we discussed last night. Thanks!

I opened the fridge and studied the shelves. I ate a small triangle of sandwich, standing in the fridge's air-conditioned sanctuary. I grabbed a sandwich for Mom, a root beer for me, and headed out.

Jack went crazy when he saw me come back. He slapped his big round baby belly and chortled. He lay
down and then kicked his legs furiously underneath him, showing me all his best swimming moves.

“Wow! That's great, Jack!” I said, wishing my sunglasses came with windshield wipers.

Mom and I watched his pretty hilarious antics for a while, until his little teeth started chattering. I hauled him out and then wrapped him up papoose-like in a terry towel. Pulled him on top of me. Like a human shield.

I didn't talk for a while still. Mom was giving me plenty of wide-open space. She'd probably learned this technique in her probation officer training. If you want to get a kid to come out of the bushes, you must be very, very quiet. After a while they'll get so nervous they'll start talking and give themselves away. Normally, I like to blow up her psychological theories about kids, but I was too tired.

“Turns out Mr. McDougall wasn't lost after all,” I said.

“No?” she said, putting her magazine down.

“Nope,” I said, hugging Jack closer. “He died. Last spring.”

Mom turned in her chaise longue to look at me.

I tried to sort it all out as I talked. “I guess Ginger knew that somewhere in her head, but her heart wouldn't let her really know it. So, she kept
pretending he was alive if only she could find him.” I chewed the end of my thumb. “That doesn't make her crazy, does it?”

Mom popped the top of her sunscreen and then squeezed some into her hand. Leaned over toward me and covered Jack's ears and nose. “Sometimes when we're not ready to hear something painful, we have to keep ourselves very busy not hearing it. It can look crazy, but it's not. It's just coping. We all do that differently.”

Jack snorted under the towel. I kissed his wet spiky hair.

“Mom,” I asked, my voice almost failing me. “Why did you really sell Nana's to Chuck?”

She pulled her knees up to her chest. I could tell she was measuring out how much she was going to say.

“Mom, just tell me. I'm going to be twelve in two days. I want to hear the whole truth.” That last part wasn't so much true. I didn't really want to hear the whole truth, but I knew in my gut I needed to.

She gave me a long look, and I could see myself reflected in her sunglasses. “Before Nana died,” she explained, “she put me in charge of all her finances.”

“How come you? Why not Dad?” I braced myself for the answer.

Mom was quiet a moment. I knew she was trying
to find just the right words. She took a swig of her bottled water and then went on. “Nana knew Dad had some . . . problems.” She looked over at me. “We all knew that, honey.”

I looked away.

“And,” she continued, “Nana knew Aunt Liv wouldn't be able to handle it, either. Aunt Liv will do anything your dad tells her to do. Neither of them was ready for the responsibility of running the café.”

“But when she put you in charge, did she know you were going to sell it?”

Mom nodded. “Nana had been talking to Chuck about buying it before she'd even gotten sick. She knew him from the Chamber of Commerce, and she really liked him, Macy. She was tired and wanted to retire. I think she would have gone ahead and sold it to Chuck then, except your dad convinced her to keep it. He told her he could get out of the service on a medical discharge and run it for her. He promised her that he could handle it.”

“But he couldn't?”

“No, and it just broke her heart. We all wanted it to work. But if anything, being out of the service made things worse for your dad. Nana was pretty sick by then, and on top of everything else with him, it was just eating him up. He couldn't cope with losing her.”

My mind was busy chewing on the “on top of everything else with him.” I thought about the things about my dad that I loved the most. How funny he was, how he loved to do things on the spur of the moment—things that just always seemed to make my mom mad at him. Things that always made Twee get very quiet and kind of bristly around him.

“Aunt Liv and I ended up running the show. Your dad would disappear from work for hours; sometimes he'd be gone overnight. I finally convinced him to go to get some help at the VA. This is his third try. But it's the longest he's ever made it.”

“Did Nana know what was going on?”

“She'd always known he had a drinking problem. She said watching Gum was like watching Grandpa all over again.” Mom slid down to the end of her chaise and stuck her feet in Jack's little pool.

“A couple of weeks before she died, she asked me to sell the shop to Chuck.” She turned and looked back at me. “It was what Nana wanted, Macy.”

“But Dad said you were the one—”

“I know what he said. That's part of the crazy thinking that goes with being an alcoholic. Because he can't bear to look at what he has done to us, he has to blame someone else. And in this family, I'm it.”

My brain wrestled this idea to the mat. I'd blamed
her for so long that the idea that everything wasn't her fault felt as strange as a foreign language to me. The tricky part was once it stopped being her fault, whose fault was it?

My mind didn't want to go there.

“How long has he been this way?” I asked.

“He's been drinking for as long as I've known him. But it got worse, so much worse, after his first tour in Iraq. Remember when I talked to you about traumatic brain injury?”

I rubbed at the zinc on my nose. “Kind of. You said it was something that happened to the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who had been around a lot of blasts.”

“Right, and part of what Project Evenstar does is evaluate injuries to the brain and how they might be affecting someone's behavior. Some of your dad's issues may be related to that. But regardless, he has got to stop drinking. No treatment will help him until he does that.”

Things came crashing down on me then, like Nana's front window when Ginger smashed into it. I stood still in all the pieces of broken glass at my feet.

“Why didn't you tell me, Mom? Why didn't you tell me Nana wanted you to sell the shop?”

“I did,” she said, putting her hand on my leg. “You just weren't ready to believe it.”

I pulled Jack's warm little body closer to me. Laid my face against his head while I tried to sort out my life from the fragments. “You never told me this stuff about Dad.”

She turned in her chaise so she was facing me. “I've been composing the conversation in my mind for such a long time.” She shook her head. “Your dad begged me not to. He promised he would tell you from the other side—once he got past the addiction. We're just . . . not there yet. Dr. Eckstein is helping me with some of this. About the ways that I've protected your dad over the years by covering for him. I just didn't want him ever to stop being your hero, Macy. A girl needs a hero.”

“Are you going to leave him?” I whispered, my voice tight as a violin string.

She gave my hand a squeeze. “We're not there yet, either.”

I
was upstairs playing a new game with Jack called Hide the Big Sister. It's just like Hide the Baby, but in this version I had to hide and Jack gets to look. Except he'd only look under his little bed for me, so to be nice, I kept hiding behind it. I sure will be glad when his brain grows a little bigger.

Mom was downstairs vacuuming like her life depended on it, with the Dixie Chicks blasting in the background. She asked me to take Jack upstairs for a while so she could get some chores done. We hadn't talked much since the day before, but things felt better between us. Not perfect, but better. She said I was still on house arrest, but I had a feeling she was softening.

After finding his big sister three times in a row,
Jack won a storytime. I dragged him up onto the rocking chair by his bedroom window. He'd picked his very jelly-stained favorite,
Harold and the Purple Crayon.

I was crazy about that book when I was little. Funny, now it's Jack's favorite. It's a story about a kid who draws all these great adventures with a purple crayon. I always loved that not only could he draw great stories, but when he got in a bind, he could draw himself right out of trouble, too. I used to carry a purple crayon around with me in my pocket, just in case. Sure could have used one this past week. But then, I guess everything worked out okay; just not how I had planned.

I hadn't planned on finding my dad in a rehab center. I hadn't planned that I'd have to look at all the ways he'd made Mom's life so hard the last few years. And I'd helped him in all of that. I'd blamed Mom for ruining everything in our family when all she was trying to do was take care of us. I sure had a lot to sort out. I was lucky to have Twee to help me with that. Mom would be, too.

I kissed Jack's sweaty little forehead. No wonder Mom was so crazy about him. He'd been the only person in our family who didn't blame her for everything.

Jack and I were lost in Harold's adventure when a familiar
rumm-rumm
rumbling came down our street, getting louder by the second.

Jack was mad for anything with a motor. He kicked his legs to get down. I picked him up and carried him to the window.

“Grrrrooom! Grr-grrrr-grrrooom!” he rumbled, spanking the glass.

Chuck, who was riding Ginger's motorcycle, came to a neat stop in our driveway. He turned, smiling to his sidecar passenger. Twee ripped off an enormous pair of riding goggles, and a helmet, and grinned back at him. She didn't tell me she was coming over, and certainly not with
him.
Except he wasn't
him
anymore; he was just him. A pretty decent guy after all.

Then I noticed Aunt Liv's red convertible across the street, parked crookedly, with one wheel up on the sidewalk. And she'd left her trunk open. I shook my head and smiled. At least some things stayed the same in Constant.

I gave Jack a diaper change, and then he rode downstairs on my back, pausing on the landing. I stopped and stared. Mom, Aunt Liv, Chuck, Twee, and
Switch
were all assembled in the living room, each looking very pleased at the confused expression on my face.

“SURPRISE!” they all shouted together, and then threw a load of confetti and streamers at me. It scared the daylights out of poor Jack, who screamed like they were hurling live snakes. He buried his head into me, and his body shook with big sobs. I held him close and stumbled down the rest of the steps, stunned.

A giant banner hung on the living-room wall that read: “Happy Last Day of Eleven, Macy!”

Mom hurried over, took Jack from me, and kissed me on the cheek. “I know you don't want to have your twelfth birthday until your dad is here, but the last day of being eleven is something to celebrate too!” She laughed at the look on my face.

“But I'm grounded and everything . . . ,” I mumbled.

“You certainly are, young lady! You're not going anywhere. That's why the party stays here.”

Twee danced around me while Mom and Aunt Liv took turns patting, kissing, and shushing Jack. “Your mom is letting me sleep over, Macy! We've got tons of movies to watch and Chuck brought some of those insane chocolate mint mousse pies he sells. I know you love German chocolate the best, but—”

“Chocolate mint sounds—sounds great,” I said, still feeling pretty blown away.

Aunt Liv scooped me into a big squeeze, lifting me off the floor, and then plopped me down. She eyeballed
me. “I could just wring your skinny little neck for the scare you gave us the other day.” She pecked me on the lips instead and then whispered into my ear. “We're all gonna be okay, sugar—promise!”

Switch cruised over wearing a giant Caffeine Nana's T-shirt that nearly hung to his knees. “Happy almost-birthday, kid,” he said, grinning.

“So, you're
out
?” I asked stupidly, stating the obvious.

Chuck came up behind him, put one hand on his shoulder. “Just on loan,” he clarified. “His probation officer was kind enough to give him a day pass. Your aunt Liv picked him up, and I'm taking him back later tonight.”

“Just for the record,I am a lot safer driver than Mustang Sally over there,” Switch said, jutting his chin toward Aunt Liv. “I wasn't sure I was going to see
my
next birthday, let alone yours this afternoon. I thought maybe your mom wanted me off her caseload!”

“She really likes you, Switch,” I said. “I can tell. You wouldn't be here if she didn't.”

His cheeks colored a bit, and he shrugged.

Aunt Liv threw some flirty looks at Chuck and then herded me into the kitchen, where an eye-boggling mountain of food, snacks, and desserts were assembled. Twee, Switch, and I packed our plates to
capacity and carried them out to the living room. The grown-ups stayed in the kitchen, probably talking about the kitchen tile or the salsa recipe. Whatever weird things adults talk about.

“Man, I am so glad to see you, Twee!” I said, easing down next to her on the floor. “I have been dying to talk to you. I'm sorry I couldn't call you. I am grounded from everything.”

She nudged me with her shoulder. “S'kay. Your mom called me. She didn't want me to think you were sore at me, or something. We'll catch up on everything later. It can wait.” She gave me one of her famous full split-tooth smiles. I knew then she'd forgive me and she'd understand about everything. I sighed a deep sigh and took a big juicy bite of taco.

Switch sat on the floor and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He set his plate on his skateboard, which apparently could also be used as a dining-room table, if needed.

“How's the pizza, Tweetie?” he asked.

“TWEE!” we both screamed at him.

He tossed his head and gave us the official Switch the Slayer smile. He lowered his voice a little, his fork poised in midair. “So, Chuck told us about Mr. McDougall already being dead and all.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It's so sad.”

“I still don't get it,” Twee said. “Chuck said Ginger was there when Mr. McDougall died, and she saw everything. . . .”

“It's complicated,” I said. “I don't quite get it myself. It's like when kids still pretend to believe in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, even when they know deep down that it's not true anymore. Her mind went to the pretend place. She pretended that Mr. McDougall was lost. Looking for him gave her something she could hope for each day when she woke up.”

“So, she's not, like, crazy, is she?” Switch asked.

“No!” I said, shaking my head. “Mom says kids and older people are really lucky that they remember how to pretend.”

“I used to pretend that my family wasn't poor,” Switch said. “I told the kids at school the reason we didn't have a lot of food or any new clothes was because we were saving all our money to go live at Disneyland for a year.”

“When I was in first grade,” Twee confessed, “I used to pretend Mr. Hoang at the market was my real dad. I pretended so hard that I started to really believe it!”

“I remember that,” I said. “You were always staring at him.”

Jack toddled into the room just then, leading Aunt
Liv by the hand. She sat down on the ottoman near us. Deciding she looked like good lap material, Jack climbed aboard. She clasped her arms around him and buried her nose in his hair. “I swear one of these days I am going to kidnap this child. He smells like heaven.”

I guffawed. “Yeah, but that's the good-smelling end of him. You should smell—”

Twee elbowed me. “Macy! We're trying to eat here!”

“Twee!” Aunt Liv exclaimed. “That reminds me. Any news from the hospital yet?”

“Not yet!” she said, and turned to me. “I didn't get a chance to tell you. Dad took Mom over to the hospital this morning. The babies are almost here— I can't wait!”

“You are going to be the world's best ever big sister, Twee,” I said.

“Omigosh, did I tell you we get to name them? My parents couldn't agree on what to call them, so they decided to let us kids pick. Dad put all the names in a box, and once the twins get here, they are going to draw the winner.” She gave a shiver of excitement and crossed all her fingers. “I hope they pick mine!”

“What did you choose, Twee?” Aunt Liv asked, gently unfurling Jack's fist from one of her dangly earrings.

“For the boy, Max. It's always been my favorite
boy name. And for the girl . . . ,” she said, her cheeks getting a little pink.

“M-A-C-Y!” Switch spelled around a mouthful of taco.

She stared at him. “How did you know that?”

He rolled his eyes. “Total no-brainer.”

“Really?” I grinned. “You put my name in?”

Twee put her arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “Of course I did. You're my best friend in the whole world. And don't you think ‘Max' and ‘Macy' sound so cute together?”

Switch got to his feet. “If you two are going to get all smoochy, I'm going for seconds. These are some serious vittles here.”

We all watched him leave the room, and then Twee sighed. “I wish he didn't have to go back to jail after your party. It's not like any of this is his fault.”

“I know; he's had it pretty tough. But at least juvie feels better to him than being in a foster home.”

“I'm superglad your mom is his PO,” Twee said. “I know she'll look out for him.” She took a long swig of pink lemonade and then came up for air. “Hey! Maybe he could just come live with you guys. Your mom could be his foster parent!”

I choked on the nearly whole piece of pizza I was folding into my mouth.

Aunt Liv gave me some gentle pats on the back. “Easy there, girl. It wouldn't be the worst fate in the world. He's awfully cute! Don't you think he's cute, Macy?”

“And he could do all the chores you hate,” Twee added. “He could mow the lawn and wash the car and—”

“And maybe watch this little fella,” Aunt Liv said, lifting Jack's shirt to give him a big noisy raspberry on his stomach.

I tried to imagine having Switch around all the time. Well, he would certainly make an
interesting
older brother. Things wouldn't be boring, for sure.

Chuck came back into the room just then with Mom. He jingled his keys and smiled at me. “I hate that I have to leave, but I don't have anyone to cover the late-afternoon shift.”

“That's okay!” I said. “I'm glad you came.” I could hardly believe how glad I was, in fact.

“I have something for you before I go,” he said. He raised his hand, as if he expected my protest. “Don't worry! It's not a birthday present.” He reached deep into the big pocket in the side of his cargo pants and pulled out a package about the size of a small book. It was wrapped in brown paper, with an aqua-colored ribbon tied around it.

“Go ahead and open it, Macy,” Mom said.

I always felt so shy opening gifts and cards in front of people, but I had to admit I was excited to see what it might be. My hands shook a bit as I tore the paper off. It was a photo of Nana's front window in a pretty silver frame.

“Oh! It's all repainted!” I gave Chuck a big smile.

Twee nudged me. “Look what it says, Macy.”

“I know what it says,” I told her. “I helped Chuck with it.”

Twee took her finger and touched the photo. “Macy,
look
.”

I caught my breath when my eyes finally saw it. I looked up at Chuck and then over at Mom. Then back at Chuck. “You changed it back,” I said, my voice full of wonder.

The window read simply, at last, and once again, “Nana's.”

“Honest?” I said, hardy able to believe it. “You're changing it for good?”

“Yes, I am,” he said, and laughed when I lunged for him and wrapped my arms around his waist. I buried my head in his side a minute, afraid I might start bawling in front of everyone.

He gave me a squeeze and patted me on the back.
“I figured I'd never be able to get you girls to work there if I didn't change the name back to what it was.”

“You're giving us jobs?” Twee asked, nearly shouting with excitement.

“Well, just Saturday mornings for now, if it's okay with your folks. But I'm going to need an assistant manager someday. Maybe even two if business picks up like I hope it will.”

“It will,” I said. “I bet you get a lot of Nana's old regulars back.” I looked down at the photo again and traced my finger over the letters. “Thank you for this.”

“Thank Ginger when you see her,” he said. “She came and took the photo for you.”

“How is she? Doing any better?” Aunt Liv asked.

He nodded. “We had a really good talk yesterday. I think she realized after the oven incident that she needs some help at home. She is not thrilled about it, but at least she didn't throw me out on the porch last night. That's progress.”

“She let you use her wheels,” Switch said. “She can't be too mad at you.”