Bigger than a Bread Box (9 page)

“Rebecca?” she whispered. “You still awake?”

“Yeah,” I said. I turned to look at her as she walked over. “I’m sorry I forgot your birthday.”

She sat down on the edge of my bed. “Oh, that’s fine. But thank you, Rebecca, for saying that. I’m glad you’re … adjusting. I’ve … missed you.”

I turned away from her. “Know what?” I said. “Dad’s
looking for a job. He told me so. He might go back to teaching. And he cleaned the house.”

“That’s nice, dear,” she said to my back, but she didn’t sound like she meant it. Or maybe she didn’t sound like she believed me. “I need to call your father. We should talk. I’ll call him tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, still facing away.

That should have made me happy, but it didn’t. Mom didn’t sound very excited to call Dad, so I added, “It’ll be nice, once we’re home. Won’t it? Once things are better? And we can go back to normal?”

She took a minute before she said, “I hope so. Maybe. We’ll see.”

I didn’t say anything else. I closed my eyes hard, and she kissed the back of my head. There was nothing more I wanted to say. I turned over and breathed into my pillow, until it felt all warm and smothery.

I didn’t move, so finally she left, closing the door carefully behind her with a click.

C
HAPTER 9

A
fter that, things started to feel almost normal, as long as I didn’t think too much about the fact that I was in a strange place and my dad wasn’t there and I was pretty much all alone. At home I wasn’t exactly
talking
to my mom, but I wasn’t
not
talking to her anymore either. She started working at a hospital downtown, but she said it was a really rough place to work and it wore her out. Since she was just filling in for other people, she mostly got lousy shifts. She was working late at night and sleeping a lot during the day, and I could see she wasn’t happy. It made me feel a little better about everything. That’s mean, I know, but sometimes the truth just is. The sooner she got sick of Atlanta, the sooner we’d go home.

I walked to school in the mornings. During lunch and in the hallways, I hung out with Hannah and her friends and tried not to mess up being Becky. I almost never
raised my hand in class, but my teachers were good, and the classes were interesting. Really, it was fun, like I was playing a game. I felt like I was keeping a secret all the time. I tried to think of it as a magical vacation. Sooner or later, I’d go home.

I paid attention to what the other kids wore, and thanks to the bread box, I got some new clothes for myself. That was always fun, the wishing! Things I didn’t think Mom would notice. Better jeans. New tennis shoes. An expensive hoodie like some of the other girls had, but in gray like my old ratty one so it would blend in. Nothing too fancy. Nothing that called attention to itself. I also managed a few small things I wanted, like a cool silver watch. Little things. Each time I wished and then something appeared in the box, I got a shiver down my spine. It never got old.

It took me a while to think of it, but eventually I realized that the best way to use the bread box was to wish for things I could give away. Of course, Mom and Gran couldn’t notice the things I didn’t keep. So I wished for fancy chocolates, which I took to school and handed out in the cafeteria. I wished for handmade beaded hair ties that Hannah said she liked. Soon everyone had a pair. My pockets were always full of gum. I always had an extra pen handy. When someone borrowed my lip gloss in the bathroom, I was able to say, “Oh, here. You can have it. I have a bunch of them!” It was nice, sharing. It was nice
when people said thank you. I always had lunch money to spare when people needed to borrow. I was rich for the first time in my life, and I liked it. Other than that, I tried to stay quiet. Mysterious.

A few times, Hannah invited a bunch of us to her big, shiny house. Girls
and
boys, which made me nervous, so I talked even less than usual. We watched movies on her enormous flat screen and ordered pizza with fancy toppings, and I tried to disappear into the huge pillows on the velvety brown sofa. I never invited anyone back to Gran’s. There was too much I didn’t want anyone to know.

Mostly, each day after school, I’d walk home. Then I’d get a snack and do my homework right away at the kitchen table. Lew always climbed up beside me to scribble with crayons. He said he was doing his homework too. He had to get up on his knees to reach the table. When we were done, we’d watch TV together in the living room. He’d curl up with his blanket, and we’d stare at the baby shows I secretly still liked to watch. Sometimes he’d fall asleep against my arm—a warm bundle. He made snuffling noises when he breathed.

Once in a while, Gran met me at school as a surprise, with Lew in his stroller. Those days we’d get cocoa or something on the way home. We’d stop at the playground, and he’d play with other little kids while Gran and I watched from the swings.

If it wasn’t normal, I had to admit it was okay. Gran
was nice and school was pretty fun, and Lew was cuddlier than usual. I liked walking everywhere, and I liked the coffee shops near the house, and the playgrounds. If we had been visiting for any other reason, it would have been great.

And if Dad had been there.

Sometimes, when Mom wasn’t at work or sleeping, she went out in the car, wearing high heels and a skirt, which wasn’t usual for her. I was
not
about to ask her where she went. She was living her life and I was living mine. She didn’t seem to care what I wanted or thought. Maybe she just went for walks in her high heels, and maybe she saw old friends from when she was a kid in Atlanta. Maybe she wandered around Target aimlessly in the evening, eating chips from an open bag she hadn’t paid for yet. That was something she did that drove me nuts. Still, she was usually home to make dinner. Gran said Mom was getting herself together, “taking some space.” I couldn’t tell from the way she said it whether Gran thought that was okay or not.

Every night I’d call my dad, but I had to use Gran’s phone, since the phone I’d gotten from the bread box worked for only a few days, even after I wished for a charger. I tried again with a second phone, but I guess you can’t wish for an account with Sprint or AT&T or anything. I guess the bread box couldn’t arrange that for me, which was too bad.

About half the time when I called, Dad was home. I was curious about what he was doing the nights he was out, but I didn’t ask him any more than I asked Mom. Dad told you what he wanted you to know. Usually he’d just ask what I was studying in school. He never said anything else about the teaching job, and we didn’t talk about Mom. I didn’t tell him nice things about Atlanta, because I didn’t want him to feel sad. There wasn’t a whole lot to chat about, but it was always good to hear his voice.

I did call Mary Kate a few times too, but it was weird. One time she said I sounded funny and asked if I was okay, and I didn’t know how to answer her. I really wasn’t okay, but at the same time, I
was
okay. I didn’t know how to explain that. She was so far away, and it’s hard to tell someone about something they can’t even begin to imagine. Even when they’re supposed to be your best friend.

Mary Kate was at home, in
our
home. She was seeing
my
dad. She was sitting at the same desk in the same school in the same city as always. And I … wasn’t. So I could say “I’m lonely” or “It’s fun here,” but she wouldn’t know what I meant, not really … especially when both statements felt completely true and totally inadequate. I didn’t understand it myself, and I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me. It was too hard. I stopped returning her calls.

Mostly from then on I got email forwards from her on the computer in Gran’s office, about cute kittens and
bad luck. I couldn’t help thinking they were dumb, though thinking that made me feel bad. She was still my best friend, after all. Occasionally she would send a picture of my house from her phone with a text that read “Miss ya!” or “See ya soon!” or something else like that. In one picture I could see my dad on the porch, sweeping. After that I stopped looking at the pictures. It was like I put Mary Kate in a box and set her on a shelf in my head or something.

In fact, it was a little like everything was a box. Gran’s house was a box, school was a box, Dad was a box, Mom was a box, and the magic was a box. None of them seemed to know each other or to be part of each other anymore. My life was all in these little boxes, and I’d open one up and then close it again. Mary Kate’s box felt smaller, like it had gotten shoved behind the other, bigger boxes. She was far away, something I didn’t
have
to deal with, so I decided not to.

For sure I was homesick, but when things got really bad, I would go in my room and shut the door and wish. For books and lip gloss, but most often for food. Food made me feel better. I couldn’t see the harbor, or the gulls, or my dad. But if I wanted to, I could
taste
home. Utz crab chips and Berger Cookies. Butterscotch Krimpets. Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. When I felt sad and bored and alone, I’d just pig out on junk food. I stashed the wrappers under my bed and waited to get fat.

C
HAPTER 10

T
hen one afternoon—a few days after Thanksgiving, which we ate at a restaurant because Mom had had a late shift the night before and Gran said she didn’t like touching dead birds—I came home from school to find Lew asleep on the couch, Mom gone, and Gran out in the backyard, digging in a dead flower bed. I could see her through the kitchen window. The house was cold.

So I turned on the TV in my room, patted the bread box gently, and made a wish. I’d gotten in the habit of patting the box each time I made a wish. It felt like a way of saying please, and maybe also thank you.

“I wish for some gravy fries from Jimmy’s Diner,” I said.

Instantly the room filled with a thick, comforting smell. Gravy fries are exactly what they sound like—French fries drowned in gravy, and they are, without a doubt, the best comfort food of all time, except for maybe macaroni
and cheese. Sometimes when it was rainy and chilly, Dad and I went out on special gravy-fry dates. The fries need to be crispy enough not to get soggy, and the gravy has to be good, homemade stuff. You sprinkle a little pepper on them and yum! I never even knew that gravy fries were a Baltimore thing until I got to Atlanta, but you definitely can’t get them in Georgia, not even in places that sell both fries
and
gravy. People just stare at you like you’re nuts if you ask for them.

There I was, sitting in my room on the rug with a hot china bowl warming my lap, watching TV and licking brown gravy from my fingers, when Gran knocked on the door and shouted, “What
are
you eating in there? It smells incredible!”

I looked down at the white china bowl and then over at the plastic salt and pepper shakers beside it. I stared at the metal fork. It was all so obviously from a diner, and there was no diner nearby. I hadn’t even thought to wish for takeout so I could pretend to have gotten it somewhere near school. There was simply no way I could explain how I happened to have a china bowl of hot fries and a metal fork from a diner. I hadn’t thought of how the fries would smell! I didn’t have any idea what to do, so I pushed it all under the bed as the door opened, nearly sloshing gravy on the rug. Then I turned around and looked up at her.

“Rebecca?” Gran’s face appeared around the edge of the door. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m not eating anything. Just watching TV.” I licked the salty corner of my mouth.

Gran eyed me suspiciously. “That so?” I nodded.

“Nice TV,” she said.

“Um … thanks,” I said. I figured the less I said, the less likely I was to screw up.

“You’re welcome,” she said back.

Then, I guess because Gran is the best grandmother in the universe, she turned and left. I knew I hadn’t fooled her, but she decided to leave me be, which gave me a little time to gobble the fries up as fast as I could. Then I didn’t know what to do with the sticky china bowl. It seemed gross to leave it under the bed. Wrappers were bad enough, but gravy would mean roaches. I knew
that
from the time Mary Kate and I accidentally left half an egg roll under the couch back home.