Fault Lines (6 page)

“Let’s go watch TV,” she said, and that was weird too. She barely ever was allowed to watch anything.

“What about your mom?” I asked. She just shook her head and walked upstairs.

Justine flicked on the TV and flipped around the channels. I sat next to her, a little freaked out seeing Mr. Hammond’s shoes and coat by the front door.

Finally, her mom’s weak voice came from the bedroom. “Justine? Is that you?”

“Yes, Mom.” She kept flipping channels.

“Come here,” her mom said. “Is someone with you?”

Justine rolled her eyes and dropped the remote. I followed her to her mom’s room.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw Justine’s mom lying in a raggedy bed with crumpled clothes all over the floor and the shades drawn to block the sun. Her hair – normally perfectly hair-sprayed – stuck every-which-way. I could see her pajamas where the bed covers weren’t pulled up. She looked like she’d never been up.

“Oh, Dani’s here,” Mrs. Hammond said in a scratchy voice I barely recognized. “You two make sure you eat.”

“OK,” Justine said, and she turned to leave.

I didn’t know what to say. Mrs. Hammond rolled over, so I followed Justine out.

“Is she sick?”

Justine shook her head. “Do you want something to eat?”

“No, I already ate. Do you?”

“I’m not hungry.”

So we just watched TV for a couple hours till it was time for me to go home for dinner. Mrs. Hammond still hadn’t come out of her bedroom, and I realized in my gut – sinking with each passing minute – that her strange behavior was not new to Justine. I’d never seen her mom act any way but loving and over-protective, but Justine acted like her lying in bed all day was normal.

I asked if she wanted to eat at my house, but she didn’t feel like it. “What will you have for dinner?” I said.

“I’ll find something.”

It had been a long weekend. We’d seen her father’s casket lowered into a hole six feet down, and his death became horribly real. He would never again be sitting in his chair reading the newspaper, or taking a nap snoring on the couch, or asking us about school, or coming to my door at dusk, still in his clothes from work, and walking Justine down the empty street.

I watched Justine stare at the TV before letting myself out the front door and hopping over the shrubs to cut across her front yard. She needed to eat, but I couldn’t make her. Still I ached for her. I wanted to help. I’d felt my own pain on a smaller scale – the “For Sale” sign in front of my yard, my parents either fighting or silent, Mike turning bad and linking up with the mean kids – and I wished our sadness could bring us together. But it didn’t. All we would have needed to do was talk, share, cry – rely on each other. But we didn’t. We retreated into ourselves, and the longer we stayed there, the harder it was to return.

Every new, gloomy event in our lives took us further away, like zooming out of a picture in Google Earth – our vision of each other shrinking with each click of the minus button.

Little did I know as I walked down the street, my view was about to shrivel down to nothing.

then

I didn’t see the other stink bomb coming

As soon as I walked in the door at home, I knew something was up. Bobby sat on the couch looking worried, and Dad stood in front of him with the phone.

“Dani, I’m glad you’re home, because I just called Justine’s house,” Dad said. “Please sit down. Your mother is getting Mike upstairs.”

“What’s going on?”

“Just, please, have a seat.” He frowned and scratched his arm roughly back and forth like he’d had way too much caffeine. “We’re having a meeting.”

Our last family meeting – also the first – had been when my dad lost his job in April. Dad had sat on the couch between me and Bobby, not speaking but with his arm around me and one hand on Bobby’s knee. Mom talked, saying things would be hard, saying, “Dani, you want a new bike. Mike, a drum set. I know you want a game system, Bobby. But we don’t have money for extras right now.”

I felt scared at that meeting. I wanted to say, “I don’t need a bike. I don’t need anything extra.” But instead I just sat there like everyone else.

I felt scared again as Mom came downstairs with Mike scowling behind her. Bobby and me were on the couch, and Mike sat in the chair. Dad stayed standing.

“Your dad and I need to talk with you about some very big changes we need to make,” Mom said. As she and Dad scanned their eyes across us three kids, his suddenly looked flat and dead. Hers burned with too much energy.

“It’s been hard finding a time to have this meeting, especially since Mr. Hammond died, but we couldn’t wait any longer,” she said. “We didn’t want you wondering what was happening, or hearing it anywhere else.”

Big silent pause.

“We’re getting a divorce.”

Just like that. Quick as Mr. Hammond slamming dead face-first into his desktop. In one instant, my life was destroyed.

Mike said – under his breath but loud enough for everyone to hear – “I knew it.” But I hadn’t known it. Even though half the kids at school have divorced parents, I never imagined it could happen to me.

The meeting went on, but I couldn’t hear. Only that word, divorce, echoed – the crack of a gunshot. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t make a sound.

I’d seen what it meant when other families split up: the kids shifting from house to house but always feeling stuck in the middle. Disconnected. Now I was being shoved into that space.

It was sort of like this gloomy game me and Justine used to play in middle school where we’d ask each other impossible-to-answer questions. Questions with only terrible choices, like, “Would you rather die by drowning or burning in a fire?” Or, “Would you rather kiss an ugly boy who’s clean, or a cute one with god-awful body odor and bad breath?”

The obvious answer to any of the questions was “Neither,” but that wasn’t an option. We had to choose and explain, as in, “I’d rather drown, because burning hurts too much and drowning would be faster once you sucked your lungs full of water.”

Sitting there, the question for me could have been: “Would you rather have your parents divorce angrily today or die tomorrow still loving each other?” Neither one is a good choice. I got both.

My parents were splitting in two, and everything I knew was dying.

It reminds me of this time two friends of mine were twirling a jump rope for me during recess at elementary school. I was jumping, having fun, saying some little rhyme, but then I caught my heel on the rope and flipped backwards, my feet in the air, and smacked the back of my skull on the blacktop. I flailed around on my elbows with my head bobbing – eyes open but my vision blacked out.

Sitting there on the couch was like that. Suddenly all I could see was darkness.

now

my dad’s coming – a little late

I haven’t seen Dad since I got busted Friday night. I’m sure that’s why he’s picking me up from school today. When your parents break up, you get double the punishment for getting in trouble.

He must have spent the whole weekend thinking up serious consequences for Creeper’s shattered window, because the office secretary didn’t tell me he was coming until ten minutes before school got out.

His car sits idling at the end of a long line behind the buses while I wait in a crowd on the sidewalk in front of the school. I imagine Justine in our bus seat, alone, waiting for Mrs. Storm to pull away. It’s only been a couple days since she wrote me that note, but I don’t think she’s ever going to speak to me again. Rightfully so, I guess. Finally the bus engines rev. They leave, and the cars move forward.

Dad stares out the windshield as I get in and slam the door. We don’t say hello. He looks over his shoulder and cuts left around the car stopped in front of us. He makes a quick right out of the parking lot and a quick left into the curving roads and empty softball fields and playgrounds of Sharp Park.

Then we veer onto the crunchy gravel shoulder of the road. I put my hands on the dashboard, unsure if Dad’s in control of the car. The car rolls to a stop, and Dad drops his head on the steering wheel.

“Dad?”

He slides the gear shifter into park and leans back on the neck rest. “Dani.”

Is he having a heart attack?

He stares at the ceiling for a minute before straightening in his seat and looking out the windshield, like he’s trying to pull it together and go forward. But we’re still not moving from the side of the road. “I’ve decided not to punish you for the vandalism,” he announces. “Your punishment is my lack of trust. My disappointment. Your job is to rebuild that trust and to rebuild my belief in you.”

He sounds like he memorized those lines, but still I’m thinking he can’t be for real. I want a punishment I can do and get over with. Disappointment, lost trust? Rebuilding his belief? I have to give him credit. That might be the cruelest punishment ever thought up. It just might last forever.

He turns his head to look at me, but his attention gets drawn out the window, to someplace distant. He brightens a little bit, in a pained sort of way. “Your mother and I were married, right over there, in that courtyard by the museum,” he says, like the image is appearing before him right now. “The minister stood in front of the gazebo.”

“Yeah.” I’ve heard the story a million times, how another couple stole their wedding spot at the park at the last minute, even though Mom and Dad had a paper copy of their reservation. They had to move the whole ceremony within a few hours.

“Your mom wanted to call the police when she got there in the morning to decorate and those other people were already there. Then we talked, and it was like, ‘No. I’ll marry you anywhere. I’ll marry you in a parking lot.’ We were so sure. And the new spot we found turned out to be so perfect, even better than the one we had reserved.”

The car’s still running. Dad’s not talking, and I have no idea what to say.

He turns and puts his knee on the seat between us. He reaches his hand to my leg but then jerks it back to cover his eyes. He makes a sucking sound, like someone coming up for air after being underwater too long.

He’s crying. Dad. Crying.

I want to touch him, but my body is stone.

He buries his face in both hands. Five sobs out, one breath in. Five sobs out, one breath in. The longer it goes on, the harder it becomes for me to speak or even think, and the more I want out.

This is the moment I’m supposed to feel something. I should hug him, or at least tear up in a show of sympathy. But I can’t. I haven’t felt anything but mad in so long I’m not sure if I remember how. I never did cry about the divorce – not the day they told us about it, or any day since. I’m not saying I don’t want to. The thing is… I. Can’t. Cry.

He breaks the silence with a whisper. “I’m sorry, Dani. So sorry.” He wipes his puffy eyes with his fingertips.

Now I feel some emotion. Irritation. Annoyance. Anger.

He’s sorry? For what? For crying in front of me – or something bigger? Because I want to know: Does he feel bad, like he should, for leaving too easy?

I wondered that same question the night Dad moved out of our house. The night I finally turned to the dark side for good. The night I found out Mike had traveled way farther down that dark path than I ever knew.

then

I was unleashed

After the family meeting, I turned into a sleepwalking zombie same as Justine.

I caught the bus, changed classes at the bell, went to drama club. My legs walked places, but I stopped paying attention in class or doing homework. Instead I stewed about where we’d move, about living with Mom, about not seeing Dad, about losing Barney.

And Creeper. I replayed every minute of him making my parents fight. I thought about the dog poop so much, I could practically smell it.

So when tryouts for the play happened on Friday, I wasn’t prepared.

We had read through
A Thousand Cranes
during lunch meetings, but I didn’t care. I had signed up to audition for the Grandmother part, but I didn’t know why. I hadn’t practiced.

We met after school in the auditorium, which didn’t have the folding metal chairs set up for an audience. We each had to grab our own chair from the stacks along the walls when we came in.

Mrs. Luna was clearing old junk off the stage as people dropped their jackets and backpacks by the door and moved their chairs into groups of the same old cliques around the room. I ended up with Kailyn Whitehead next to me as always.

“What part are you going for?” she asked excitedly.

“The grandmother, and if you don’t mind, I haven’t practiced, so I need to just read and not talk.”

“I decided to go for Mrs. Watanabe, because it only had one line, and I was thinking how I’ve never been in a play before, and I might get really nervous with people watching me. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

I wanted to tell her to go away. But she was smiling, so I said, “That’s a great idea. Now, excuse me, but I need to read.” I opened my script and hunched over it hoping she’d get the message.

After a few minutes, Mrs. Luna was ready to start. She explained that she would call people off the signup sheet in groups to read a scene together.

“Those of you who don’t get speaking parts can still participate,” she said. “You can help make costumes and build sets, and during the show, you can work backstage with the curtains, lighting and sets.”

I wanted to walk out when my name got called to read with Kailyn, Taylor, and a boy named Ricky York. Instead my legs walked up to the stage.

Ricky York was small with pale skin and slept-on hair. He was fairly new to our school, and we’d never had a class together, so I barely knew him, but he seemed crazy nervous. Every minute, he pushed his plastic glasses up his nose, either by poking the frame with one finger or by scrunching his nose like a rabbit.

Both Ricky and Kailyn were reading the parts of spirits of people killed by the atomic bomb. Of course, Taylor was going for the lead role – Sadako, the girl who is carried away to the spirit world by her grandmother, me.