The Thing About Leftovers (3 page)

I barely cried
at Aunt Liz's house that afternoon—we're talking one tear, maybe two, max, slipped from my eyes as I sat at her kitchen table spilling my guts—and very little else.

“The principal, Mrs. Warsaw (
sniff
), hates me,” I told Aunt Liz. “I mean, she
really
hates me. She hates me so hard and so much that I'm pretty sure even if I jumped in front of bus or something to save her life, she'd still hate me.”

Aunt Liz gave me a sympathetic little smile and said, “I'm sure she doesn't hate you, Fizzy.”

“She sicced the guidance counselor on me. I think.”

“
Oh,
” Aunt Liz said. “What did the guidance counselor say?”

“Just that I could talk to her.”

“Doesn't sound very attack dog–like.”

I shrugged. “She was nice, I guess—nosy, but nice.”

“So you talked to her?”

“Not exactly—mostly I just explained to her about manners.”

“Manners?” Aunt Liz repeated.

“Yeah, you know, how you're not supposed to talk about private family stuff outside the family, or whine and complain about things, or get all emotional and scream and cry and snot all over yourself—because it's not polite.”

Aunt Liz laughed.

“I don't think Mrs. Sloan—the guidance counselor—is from Lush Valley.”

Aunt Liz laughed again, but her face was serious when she said, “Fizzy, sometimes it's very helpful to discuss family and feelings. Believe me, people do it every day.”

“Yeah . . . in places like California. I watch TV, too.”

Aunt Liz smiled and shook her head.

“And, anyway, I have you to talk to.”

Aunt Liz reached across the table, covered my hand with hers, and said, “You do. Always. Please remember that, Fizzy. But if you ever want to talk things over with your guidance counselor, I think that's okay, too.”

“Well, I don't. So I can't be late to school anymore.”

Aunt Liz took her hand back and thought about this. “You know, you could walk to school in the mornings just like you walk home in the afternoons—it's the same distance no matter what the time of day.”

Why hadn't I thought of that?

“I bet that would help your mom, too.”

Right again.

For a minute I just sat there wondering why I hadn't walked both ways from the beginning. I guessed riding with Mom in the mornings was a habit that had followed us from our old house, our old life. Mom used to drop me off at my old school in the mornings—I rode the bus home with my friends—but she hadn't worked back then, and my school hadn't been anywhere close to home. Things had changed.

Then I thought about how walkers are much cooler than car-riders—nobody looks cool being dropped off at school by their parents. I mean, car-riders might as well arrive caged or leashed for all the choice they have in the matter. But walkers? They could leave the house and go anywhere. Walkers
decide
to come to school. Plus, nobody knows for sure if walkers even
have
parents—parents are very uncool—and if they do, well, nobody has to
see
them. Yeah, I definitely wanted to be a walker, I decided.
Tick, tick, tick,
whispered the old wall clock. I looked at it: four o'clock.

I shot up out of my chair. “Oh! I have to go home and pack! It's Dad's weekend!”

“Right—just let me get the recipes,” Aunt Liz said, jumping up and rushing to the island, which was littered with cookbooks and cards and pens and highlighters.

“Recipes?”

“Yes, I've been looking through my recipes and I found a few I thought you might be interested in—for the contest.”

The cook-off. I'd almost forgotten! “Thanks,” I said, jamming my hands into my gloves.

“Now, what you should do is try these out and then if you like them, you can play with them,” Aunt Liz said. “Try adding different ingredients—more of this, less of that—you know.”

I nodded. I love playing with recipes.

Aunt Liz handed me three index cards with recipes written on them in her lovely, loopy handwriting.

I hugged her.

She kissed the top of my head and said, “Those are just desserts. I'm still looking for other things to fit the other categories.”

“Thanks, Aunt Liz.”

• • •

I always forget something when I pack for my dad's house. No matter how long I take doing it or how hard I try to remember everything, I always forget something. Lots of times, I've forgotten my toothbrush, but luckily Dad's a dentist, so he has plenty of those. Once, I forgot my tights. Last time, I'd forgotten my church shoes. Of course, Dad and Suzanne still made me go to church, wearing sneakers with my Sunday dress— humiliating! So I made myself a packing list, and number one on that list read
church shoes
.

I saw Dad's car pull to the curb through my bedroom window. I stuffed my list, along with Aunt Liz's recipe cards, into the front pocket of my suitcase and zipped all the zippers. Then I lugged my suitcase down the stairs, grabbed my coat, and locked the front door on my way out.

The homesick feeling stabbed at me as I walked past the bank of mailboxes, all of which were small and required a key. The mailbox at my old house—Dad's house—was huge, and I used to shove all kinds of things in it when I was too busy playing with my friends outside to make a trip inside: empty water bottles; books; sidewalk chalk; sweaters; shoes, shoes, and more shoes. (I'm not allowed to go outside without shoes on, but . . . well, my feet like to be free.) It used to be a running joke at our house that one just never knew what they might find in the mailbox: Lost your car keys? Check the mailbox. Out of
Scotch tape? Maybe some will turn up in the mailbox later. But my new mailbox only holds mail. And mailboxes aren't fun or funny to anybody anymore, least of all me.

“Did you remember your church shoes?” Dad asked as soon as I was in the car—he must've been as humiliated by my Sunday sneakers as I was.

Note to self: Church shoes are important to Dad, too,
I thought. “Yes, sir,” I said, buckling my seat belt and settling in for the half-hour ride.

Dad nodded his approval. “How was school?”

“Fine,” I lied.

The car was pretty quiet after that. I looked out the window, watching skeletal trees whiz by and noticing how dull and gray winter really is, once Christmas is over.

Dad announced, “Suzanne and I have to attend a business dinner tonight—I'm thinking of taking on a partner—but we shouldn't be gone more than two hours.”

I turned from the window. “Okay.”

“Mrs. Johnson, next door, will be home all night if you need anything, but we won't be gone long.”

“Okay,” I said again, and went back to my window, watching the houses grow smaller and closer together as we left Lush Valley behind. Windows glowed with warm yellow light. Smoke wafted up out of chimneys. Dogs barked from fenced-in backyards. I could almost smell dinner on the stove in those houses and hear the evening news on TV.
Normal neighborhoods with normal people—families,
I thought, and just the word
families
made me sick with longing.

My dad's new wife,
Suzanne, was sitting on the couch watching TV when we came into the house. She muted the sound and sat up straight when she saw us.

“Hi, Fizzy,” Suzanne said, smiling.

“Hi,” I said to my shoes.

“I thought maybe we'd order a pizza for you before we leave. Would you like that?” Suzanne asked.

I shrugged.

Dad and Suzanne exchanged a look.

“Go put your things away,” Dad ordered.

Here's another thing I hate: Every other Friday, I have to pack
and
unpack, because Dad won't let me live out of my suitcase. (Sometimes I wonder if he likes to pretend I still live here on the weekends, and if he misses me the rest of the time.) Then, every other Sunday, I have to pack and unpack again, because Mom won't let me live out of my suitcase either. This means I am either packing or unpacking about a hundred times a year. Since I'm only twelve, I have six and a half more years of this, so I'll be packing or unpacking six hundred and fifty more times—yes, I did some math voluntarily, and as much as I hate math, it's still better than packing or unpacking. I'm sick of packing.

I'm so sick of packing that if someone offered me a week on the beach, all I'd be able to think about is the packing and unpacking. No, thank you. My idea of a vacation these days is staying in one place and leaving all my stuff exactly where it is.

As usual, a pang of sadness hit me as soon as I walked into my room, which was the same as always—same rug, same furniture, same peppermint-pink-and-white-striped wallpaper Mom had chosen when I was a baby—except that there was an empty, abandoned feeling in here now. You could tell that a happy little girl had lived here once, but you could also tell that she was long gone. And she really was.

• • •

I was sitting on my bed looking over the recipes Aunt Liz had given me when Dad and Suzanne came into my room. I slid the recipe cards under my thigh to hide them.

“Pizza's on the kitchen table,” Dad said.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, without looking up at either of them.

“The phone number of the restaurant where we'll be is on the refrigerator.”

I nodded.

Suzanne spoke up. “Fizzy, I'd love to help you with the
Southern Living
contest. Maybe we could do some cooking together tomorrow.”

Aunt Liz had told my secret! My mouth fell open as I searched Suzanne for the meaning of this betrayal. But I was instantly blinded by beauty: Suzanne's shiny blond hair was pulled up, and she had on dangly earrings with red stones that matched the color of her red velvet dress perfectly.

I'd wear dangly earrings on my cooking show, too, I decided then—to match my rings.

Dad cleared his throat and gave me a look like,
Suzanne asked you a question. Answer her.
He wore a suit and tie, and his black hair was combed straight back, still wet from the shower. As it dried, it would go its own way, I knew, forming loose waves that would curl around his ears and forehead.

“Thanks anyway, Suzanne,” I said, “but I'd rather do it on my own.”

Suzanne pressed her red lips together so that her mouth formed a straight, lipless line.

“We'll see you later,” Dad said, in a gruff voice that let me know he was
not
happy with the answer I'd given Suzanne. Then he turned and walked swiftly out of my room, taking the warm scents of soap and toothpaste with him.

I didn't care if Dad was mad, I told myself. I didn't care, and no matter what happened, I wasn't going to let Suzanne help me with the
Southern Living
Cook-Off. My dad could scream and yell and turn me over his knee, but I still wouldn't let her help me. No way. It wasn't because Suzanne's a terrible cook. She isn't. She's a terrific cook. Truthfully, she's terrific at everything she does.

Apparently, being beautiful and stylish and smart has never been enough for Suzanne. No, Suzanne has to be
perfect
. She's a lifelong straight-A student—from kindergarten all the way through college. I'll bet Suzanne never made a single B. Not one!
And
she'd been a cheerleader. As far as I could see, she'd never made any mistakes. She'd never even had a cavity!
Suzanne probably never had so much as an unkind thought about anyone—at least not until she met me. How in the world could I be expected to like a person like that?
How?

Because meanwhile I was the weird-looking kid who was always late to school, where I made lots of mistakes, quite a few Bs—mostly in math—and stunk at kickball. I already had three fillings in my mouth and I was only twelve! And I had mean thoughts sometimes. So, see, I really
needed
to win the
Southern Living
Cook-Off and Suzanne didn't. She just didn't.

That's when I realized Suzanne proved Aunt Liz wrong. “Everybody who's anybody was nobody back when they were in school,” Aunt Liz always said. But Suzanne had been
somebody
her whole life. She'd been somebody in school and she was somebody now. It didn't seem fair.

Somehow, thinking about all of this made me feel homesick again, even though I
was
home—home didn't feel homey anymore.

Mrs. Warsaw popped into my head then, and I was betting Suzanne had never seen the inside of a principal's office—or a guidance counselor's office—in her whole life! This made me feel even worse, when I really wanted to feel better.

That's why I had to cook. I
had
to do it, to feel better.

I carried my recipes downstairs to the pantry and searched the shelves for the ingredients listed on the cards. We had all the ingredients for peach pound cake. Already, I felt a little better.

I'd just put my peach pound cake into the oven and was about to set the timer when the phone rang.

I answered and Mom said, “Oh, Fizzy, I hope your dad and Suzanne won't mind—I couldn't wait to tell you!”

“If I had a cell phone, you wouldn't have to worry about that,” I pointed out.

“Fizzy, I've already told you: We can't always get everything we want in life and—”

“The sooner I accept that, the better off I'll be,” I finished for her.

“I'm so glad you understand,” Mom said cheerfully.

“Well, anyway, Dad and Suzanne aren't here,” I said.

Silence.

“Mom?”

“What do you mean, they're not there?” Mom asked, sounding much less happy than she had when I answered.

“They went out to dinner,” I said.

“Without you? Fizzy, the whole point of your dad's weekend is for him to spend time with you.”

Dad and Suzanne almost never went anywhere without me when I visited, so this wasn't a big deal to me. Obviously, Mom felt differently. I was tempted to ask her if she was supposed to spend every second with me when I was at her house, but I knew that'd make her mad, so I didn't.

Instead, I said, “It's a business dinner and they'll be right back.”

“All right, all right—never mind that,” Mom said, working herself up to sounding breathlessly happy again. “The reason I called is . . . are you ready for this, Fizzy? Are you ready?”

I gulped. “Yes, ma'am.”

“Keene and I are getting married!”

I felt like my alarm clock had just gone off.

“Fizzy?”

“Um . . . yeah . . . that's great, Mom,” I said, holding my stomach.

“I know! I'm so excited! Well, that's all I wanted to tell you. I have other calls to make, so . . .”

I think I said okay before I hung up. But even if I didn't, I doubted Mom had noticed.

I ran upstairs to my room, threw myself down on the bed, and let the tears come—in multiples. I gave in to them completely and sobbed. And that's how I forgot about the cake in the oven.

First, the smoke detectors went off and, great gravy, were they loud! They were a hundred times louder—and shriller—than Genghis. If that wasn't bad enough, the smoke detectors then activated something in the security system so the burglar alarm went off, too!

I ran down the stairs with my hands clamped over my ears—to keep my throbby eardrums from becoming
explodey
eardrums.

A sickly-sweet-smelling smoke filled the kitchen and drifted out to meet me at the bottom of the steps. I gagged and coughed, but before I could think what to do, the security company was calling, so the phone was ringing, and our neighbor Mrs. Johnson was banging on the front door with all her might.

• • •

The fire department arrived just after Mrs. Johnson, who reminded me a little of Mrs. Warsaw with her tight, disapproving looks. Then Dad and Suzanne pulled into the driveway behind a big red fire truck with flashing lights.

It was just a little smoke. I mean, it's not like the kitchen was
on fire
. Nothing was on fire.
Nothing!
Still, to listen to my dad—after he learned that everything was okay—you would've thought I'd burned his house to the ground. He paced back and forth in the living room, pulling at his collar and necktie with two fingers, and called me things like “thoughtless” and “immature” and “irresponsible.”

That's how I knew I'd embarrassed him. Dad wouldn't have been anywhere near this mad if Suzanne hadn't been here. He might've even laughed, but he didn't. Naturally, I took this to mean that Suzanne had no sense of humor, so she didn't allow Dad to have one either.

This made me really mad at Suzanne—Dad used to have a great sense of humor!—so I gave her squinty looks while I listened to Dad rant and rave: “Do you have any idea what happens when the bell sounds at a fire house? Grown men stop what they're doing and
run
—you put everybody to a lot of trouble, Fizzy. And furthermore . . .”

That's when I noticed that Suzanne was getting fat. Okay, well, maybe not
fat
-fat, but she definitely had a little potbelly where there used to be a perfectly flat stomach. I would've enjoyed this imperfection a lot more if Dad hadn't been yelling at me.

Dad stopped pacing. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, giving him my full attention. Dad's ears and face and neck were a deep pink, which only confirmed what I already knew: I'd embarrassed him. He was ashamed. Of
me
. Knowing that made me feel just awful.

Dad continued, “You
will
clean up that kitchen.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Honestly, Fizzy, I've never seen such a mess in all my life!”

Since Dad seemed to be waiting for an answer, I offered the only one I could think of: “Aunt Liz says that a messy kitchen is a happy kitchen.”

Dad's eyes bugged out of his head and the vein is his forehead bulged. “Then our kitchen is delirious. But I'm not. So go clean it up.”

“Yes, sir.”

I still felt so shaky and upset while I cleaned the kitchen that I put the mixer paddles and mixing bowl right into the sink and rinsed them—instead of scraping the remaining cake batter off with a spoon and eating it first—and
that
is seriously upset.

• • •

Later that night, I was lying in bed crying—just a little—into my pillow when my door opened and light from the hallway spilled into my room.

I went still, squeezed my eyes shut, and pretended to be sleeping.

I felt the mattress sink as someone sat down on the edge of my bed. Suzanne's voice said, “Growing up is hard, Fizzy.”

I didn't move a muscle.

“Did I ever tell you that my mother made most of my clothes when I was growing up?”

I gave up pretending—I obviously wasn't fooling anybody—and said, “No, ma'am.”

“Well, she did, and they were nice clothes. But there was nothing I wanted more than a ready-to-wear dress from the big department store downtown,” Suzanne said. “My mother said those dresses were too expensive.”

Is this about my clothes? Because . . . whatever,
I thought, but I didn't say it. (I knew I couldn't get away with any attitude—or anything else—that night because, according to Dad, I'd almost burned the house down. Yeah, right. Did I mention that nothing was on fire? There was
no fire
.)

Suzanne continued, “Finally, for my thirteenth birthday, my parents bought me a department store dress. The first time I wore it, I spilled grape juice all down the front. I tried to clean it but I just made it worse. The stain was so bad, I thought surely it would take an entire box of soap to get it out. So, I put the dress into the washing machine, along with an entire box of laundry detergent.”

“What happened?” I whispered.

“A big mess is what happened and my mother was furious. She was mad about the dress, which was ruined. She was mad that I'd wasted a whole box of laundry detergent. She was mad that I'd used her washing machine. And she was
really
mad that I'd done all this behind her back. She called me a sneak and said there was nothing worse than a sneak in her book.”

“I didn't
sneak
to use the oven,” I said, trying to defend myself. “I thought I was
allowed
to use the oven—I'm allowed at . . . my other house.”

“That's not the point.”

Then what is?
I thought.

As if she could read my mind, Suzanne said, “Part of growing up is making mistakes and learning from them. You made a mistake tonight and it won't be the last. You're going to make lots of mistakes, Fizzy, and some of them are going to be painful, but it's not the end of the world.”

“You made
other
mistakes?” I blurted.

“Yes,” Suzanne said, and I could hear her smiling.

In a supreme moment of weakness, I heard myself say, “Could you help me make another peach pound cake tomorrow?”