Prettiest Doll (11 page)

“No. Now.”

I couldn't face getting into the whole thing when I could barely stay awake. “She was making me sing. For pageants. And I'm a terrible singer.”

I knew if I said it was something about pageants, he would stop pestering me.

He shook his head. “Those damn freak shows.” Then he was silent. I knew he was thinking bad thoughts about Mama.

“Have you read all those?” I asked, looking at the bookshelves, trying to get his mind off how awful Mama was.

“Yep. I love to read. I've got three or four books going on my bedside table. Those,” he said, nodding at the bookcase, “well, some are from college. And high school, even. I never get rid of a book. I like knowing they're around.”

“You and Daddy were different,” I said.

“In some ways. Russell wasn't much of a reader.”

“He liked football and playing pool and NASCAR.” It was nice talking about Daddy to someone who knew.

“And doing cannonballs in the pool at the Trout Hollow Lodge at Lake Taneycomo. And sneaking out in the middle of the night to go ice fishing for bluegill at the pond on the Tesslers' farm. Jake Tessler didn't like for us kids to be fooling around on the ice, but Russell and Joe Steigler and Prescott Crowley and I got in and out before dawn. Usually caught enough for breakfast for all of us.”

“I didn't know you liked to fish.”

“I didn't. But Russell let me tag along. Did I ever tell you about the time he punched Prescott in the face?”

“I can't remember.”

“For saying I ran like a girl. I thought he broke Prescott's nose, but he didn't. No one's ever looked after me like that. Not before or since.”

We didn't say anything for a while, just stayed quiet in our own thoughts.

“So I gotta look after you, Liv, the way your daddy looked after me. You see that, right?”

“I'm okay.”

“This isn't like you, honey. Sneaking away, scaring your mom.”

“Maybe it
is
me. Not doing everything she says, for once. Doing what I have to, no matter who doesn't like it.”

He looked at me a long time. “Your mama ever tell you you're a lot like your dad?”

“She says I look like her if she were thin.”

“Well, you're a lot like both of them, then.” He arranged the quilt around my shoulders so I was covered. “Three days, Jammie.”

“I know.”

“That boy? He's all right?” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said. “Really.”

“Well, sleep tight,” he said, leaning forward and kissing my forehead. Then he said, “We're going to talk some more tomorrow. You hear me?”

I nodded, then closed my eyes and smiled at the dry scratchiness of his funny little beard. “Do you play chess?” I asked.

“I love chess,” he said.

“Me, too,” I said, my eyes still closed. I heard the click of the bedside lamp as Uncle Bread turned it off. I was going to ask if my daddy had liked chess, too, but before the words had arranged themselves in my mouth, I was asleep.

I woke up smelling coffee and hearing the clatter of breakfast making. As I threw on my clothes, I noticed for the first time the window over the bed behind drawn white wooden blinds. I peeked through them and looked down onto the courtyard below. The sky was as gray as the twiggy trees. A woman was walking from the building out to the sidewalk. She was wearing a long quilted coat and a scarf wrapped over her chin and mouth.

“You gonna be warm enough in that?” Uncle Bread asked as I entered the kitchen. He was standing at the kitchen sink and eating granola.

I looked down at myself. “This isn't warm enough?”

“You need more than one sweatshirt. Just one and you'll feel like all you're wearing is a T-shirt.”

“It's fine in Missouri in November.”

“Missouri isn't Chicago.” Uncle Bread rinsed out his bowl and put it upside down on the drain board. “Wear two. You can borrow one of mine. They're in my closet.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking,
No way in hell am I wearing two sweatshirts.
It would make me look thick and bunchy in the middle.

He was putting on a black leather jacket that had been draped over a kitchen chair. “Listen, Liv. I don't like the idea of you running around in a strange city. But I can't skip school. My kids are trying out for the fourth grade play. They need me.”

I felt my face flush with anger. I thought,
Those kids see you every day!

“I'll be fine,” I said. The sound of my voice made him look up, but just as he was about to say something, Danny came in. I thought what a relief it must be for him, not having to wash his hair in a public bathroom sink.

“I was thinking maybe Olivia and I could go to the aquarium,” he said. “I could get us there. I'm pretty good at reading maps.”

“The Shedd? Well.” Uncle Bread reached for a slim leather briefcase on the table. He looked uncertain.

“I got myself here, didn't I?” I said.

We looked at each other for a long time, neither of us blinking. I made myself not back down.

Finally he said, “You'll call me if you need me?”

“Yes. I will.”

“You promise?”

I
promise.

“Because it's a big city, Liv. It's not like Luthers Bridge. Things can happen.”

Things can happen in Luthers Bridge,
I thought but didn't say.

“What are you teaching today?” I asked, so I wouldn't ruin everything by sassing him, making him mad.

“Tsunamis and hurricanes.”

“Don't you have to live near the ocean to worry about hurricanes?”

“It's good to know what they
are
no matter where you live.” He zipped up his briefcase. “You ever been in a hurricane, Danny?”

“A couple times,” he said. “But I live in an apartment. It just looked like a lot of rain.”

“Can I make toast?” I asked.

“Yes. Hey, guys, I'm late. Here's a spare key, and here's a map. The Shedd's right here. Not far,” he said, pointing. He was hurrying around, worried about being late. I thought about all the Dale Hickey teachers eating breakfast in the morning, getting ready to leave for work. I realized I'd never thought about that before. I sort of assumed that they just disappeared when school was over and magically showed up again at eight fifteen the next day.

I followed him out. He stopped at the front door. “Be back by five,” he said. I knew he wasn't kidding around.

“It's a big city, Jammie,” he said again. “You be careful.”

“I know. I will.”

“You got my number?” he asked.

“Yes.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him everything—what was weighing on my heart—but he was hurrying and I thought,
Not now.

“Okay, then.” He checked his watch and stepped out into the hall. “See you tonight.”

The door closed and I heard his key turning in the lock. And a little part of me felt hard and sealed shut, like it was me he was locking up.

 

“So the aquarium?” I asked Danny a few minutes later as we cleaned up our toast plates.

“Yeah. Sure.” He scooted crumbs off the table into his cupped hand. “Only there's one other thing I have to do first.”

“What?”

“There's something I want to see.”

“Is it near the aquarium?”

“I have to check the map,” he said.

While he studied the map, I realized it was pissing me off, the way Danny was figuring stuff out alone, like I wasn't even there. “You could tell me, you know,” I said. “Maybe I could help you find it.”

“It's just a house,” he said, squinting at the map, not looking up.

“ Whose house?”

“Just a house! Jeez. Quit being such a frickin' pest.”

“Listen, Danny. I'm not going to let you haul me all over Chicago like some five-year-old in a stroller.”

We were looking at each other. In my head, I could hear the cartoon sound of someone slamming on the brakes, skidding to a stop.

“My dad's house,” he said.

 

Out on the street, I finally knew I was in a strange place. I smelled coffee in Styrofoam cups and bus fumes and people hurrying. There was no silence. Birds sat in the empty trees along the sidewalk, but I couldn't hear them like at home. In summer these trees along the sidewalk would be thickly green and the air sweet and humid. I wondered if the birds sang then.

Uncle Bread was right about the cold. Fortunately, I'd brought mittens. Danny held the map in his bare hands, looking at it hard, as though it held a secret. He didn't even notice the woman with four little boys dressed alike in gray pants and blue parkas, or the old lady wearing an ankle-length gray wool coat and smudged pink Converse sneakers. People walked as though they really wanted to get where they were going.

On West Belmont, we passed Pedicute Nails and a public library and the House of Hookah Lounge. Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church made me homesick for New Faith Gospel. More bars, a hair salon, and a place where people did your taxes. We stopped at a Dunkin' Donuts: a cruller for me, a chocolate glazed for Danny. “For the train,” he said, paying before I could get out my money.

We walked slowly past a video store, an army surplus, and a pharmacy, munching our doughnuts wrapped in paper napkins instead of saving them for later. Now the sidewalk was full of people walking the same direction, hurrying past us. A woman in khaki pants and heavy black boots knocked the rest of Danny's doughnut out of his hand as she accidentally bumped against him. I pulled off a piece of my cruller. “Here,” I said, handing it to him.

We only had to wait about ten minutes before the train pulled up on the elevated tracks. We were headed north, away from the city, so there were plenty of seats. We found two in the front of a car. “How far are we going?” I asked, trying to see the city out of the scratched, sooty windows.

“Evanston. It's the first city after Chicago,” Danny said. “We have to switch trains.”

We rode the Red Line until Howard, which was the last station. I was worried that it would be complicated to switch trains. How many trains were there, anyway? How would we know which was the right one? Danny seemed to know, though. We rode a few minutes more. I was feeling sick from the doughnut and the closed-in air when the train chugged slowly to a stop. “We're here,” Danny said. The second we stepped out of the car, I felt better.

Evanston was still a city, but different. Some of the sidewalks were made of soft, worn-out bricks. We saw lots of college kids, not so many old people, and no one in pink Converse Sneakers. “Now where?” I asked.

Danny looked again at the map. “This way,” he said. “Toward the lake.”

Now we were on a street thick with trees and lawns and houses that looked like castles. Mansions, Mama would have said. I wished I could have called her and told her. I would have said, “You wouldn't believe it.” The kinds of houses you see in magazines or on TV. It was like elephants in the wild or Disneyland: something I knew was real but figured I'd never see. Three-story houses, all different from each other. Some of brick, with white shutters; some with stained-glass windows and towers and wraparound covered porches with matching furniture. One had huge bunny rabbits made of ivy in pots on either side of the front door.

“Your dad lives here?” I asked and it came out a

“I guess,” he said.

We kept walking. No cars on the lawns or even on the driveways or parked at the curb. And no leaves on the sidewalk, although lots of the trees were bare. I wondered if leaves were like litter here. Everything was quiet, especially after Chicago. The only sound was of the soles of our shoes on the pavement. Nothing else, not even a dog barking. Were you allowed to have dogs here? At home, dogs barked all the time.

Finally Danny stopped and nodded at the house across the street. “That's it,” he said.

It was enormous: made of gray stone, each window flanked by black shutters. A circular driveway curved around a perfect lawn so green it looked painted on. I wondered how they watered it; I looked for hoses and couldn't see any. I noticed, though, a red bike with training wheels leaning against the porch wall. It was out of place, the only thing that didn't go.

“You gonna knock?” I asked.

He was quiet a long time.

“No,” he finally said.

We stood there for a while, him staring.

“Maybe we should go,” I said. “Maybe they don't like you just standing around in this town.”

“Okay,” he said, but he stayed still for a minute longer, his eyes glassy, making me think of one of Mama's mule deer.

 

We decided to go to Navy Pier because I was hungry again and an ad at the train station said there were rides. We got pretzels at Auntie Anne's and walked to the east end of the pier. We sat under the flags—slapping in the wind like sheets on a clothesline—and looked out at Lake Michigan, which wasn't anything like Lake Taney-como or Table Rock Lake. Lake Michigan was like an ocean. You couldn't even see across to the other shore.

“How long has it been since you've seen your daddy?” I asked, pulling off my mittens so I could hold my pretzel.

“Eleven years,” Danny said. “He and my mom fought a lot. It was better that he left. Better for her. She didn't cry so much.”

“My parents would have gotten divorced if my daddy hadn't died on the 475,” I said. “Everyone gets divorced, practically.”

“Yeah.” Danny swallowed the last bite of his pretzel. “It's just ... I don't get leaving. I get not wanting to be married anymore. I get not wanting to fight. I even get moving out. But leaving, really
leaving.
I don't know,” he said, looking out across the silvery water.

“
You
left,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, after a minute. “But if I could have gotten an apartment across town, I would have.”