Drenched in Light (22 page)

Setting the paper on the nightstand, I slipped beneath the comforter, turned off the light, and closed my eyes. I lay thinking of Dell’s life, of her need to know who she was and where she came from. I understood the desire for answers and the fear of them. Respect for my dad wasn’t the only reason I’d never asked why my mom was an unwed mother when my parents met. The truth was that I was afraid of the answer, afraid it might change who I was. Redefine me in some way I couldn’t predict.

It was easier not to ask.

Yet those unsaid things were a haunting presence that pervaded my life, a shadow so dark that when I drifted into it, no light followed me. Filmy and thick like tar, it held me in place. Each time I broke free, pieces clung to my feet as I walked away, so that there was always a trail into the past.

If Dell’s questions were never answered, if she carried them hidden for as many years as I had, would she eventually find herself where I was now? Twenty-seven years old, lost, having starved herself almost to death because she was afraid she wasn’t worthy of real love?

The possibilities swam through my thoughts as I drifted into sleep. I hoped my dreams would take me to the river, where I would dance, but instead, I found myself on Division Street, where the taco stands were lined with cars—dark ones with tinted windows, their drivers shrouded in mystery. At the cleaner’s, the parking lot was filled with white dresses on faceless mannequins, their wedding veils floating softly on the breeze. Among the maze of bridal finery, Jumpkids dancers followed Mrs. Mindia in a swaying line, like village children enraptured by the pied piper. As they passed, Mim gave them roses and Granmae dropped tiny angels on their shoulders. The air was filled with miniature celestial beings, their light so bright it pushed back the shadow of Division Street. . . .

 

I awoke to the feel of something warm and wet bathing my eyelashes, my cheeks, my forehead. It tickled the inside of my nose, and I jerked off the pillow, sneezing.

I smelled liver and onions.

“Joujou!” I croaked, shuddering.
Eskimo-kissed by a dog. Yuck.
Glancing at the clock, I realized I didn’t have to be up for another hour yet. The house was still quiet. Mom and Dad weren’t even out of bed.

Bounding onto the pillow, Joujou wagged her tail and yipped.

“Go wake up Mom,” I urged, and she growled playfully.

From somewhere down the hall, Mom’s sleepy voice called, “Jooooujoooou?” and then a little more cheerfully, “Joujou? Sweetiepoo?”

Joujou cocked an ear toward the endearment, but remained on my pillow, wagging her tail expectantly.

“She’s in here,” I called down the hall. “I think she needs to go out. I’ll take her.”

“Ohhh-kaaay,” Mom’s drowsy reply drifted back.

Scooping up Joujou, I headed downstairs, put her out on the patio, and proceeded to search for the old waffle iron. For a change, I could be the one to start breakfast.

While Joujou raced around and around in her doggie dream house, I created waffles, which no one in our house had done in years. By the time Mom came down, I’d stacked several on the breakfast table and consumed two myself—dry, no butter, no syrup. Much less fattening that way.

Mom eyed me skeptically when I told her I’d already eaten and I’d better be heading upstairs to get ready for school, since I had to go by the cleaner’s this morning. “Are you sure you’ve had enough to eat?” she questioned.

“Yes, I did.” No matter what, I was not going to get in a tiff with her this morning. My days of adding stress to Mom’s life were over. Period. “One thing about cooking waffles—you get plenty of time to nibble.”

“Well, there’s—” She was about to point out that there was plenty left, but Dad came into the kitchen and gave her a stern head shake.

“Go ahead, sugar,” he said benevolently. “We don’t want to make you late.”

As I left the room, I could hear them arguing. About me, and about food. Again.

When I came back downstairs, I rushed past the kitchen on purpose.

“Thank you for cooking breakfast, sweetheart,” Mom called after me.

“You’re welcome.” I was putting my things in the car when I remembered that I needed a double sack lunch for today’s tutoring session with Dell.

Mom glanced up as I hurried back in the door. “I need a sack lunch,” I explained. “With tutoring, I don’t get any time to go the cafeteria.”

Popping out of her chair, Mom went to the pantry. “That cafeteria food isn’t good for you anyway.” She started pulling things from the shelves, while I took out the jelly, thinking I’d make sandwiches.

Mom had much grander ideas. “I have some canned chicken salad and cracker kits, some Vienna sausages, Cup-a-Soups, chips, SpaghettiOs. . . .”

“A couple of peanut-butter-and jelly sandwiches ought to do it.” Why in the world did Mom have SpaghettiOs in the pantry? Sometimes, I wondered if she had ever truly faced the fact that there were no longer kids in the house.

“Oh, let me.” Snatching the bread from the bread box, Mom inched Dad’s newspaper out of the way and set slices on the breakfast table. “I have some deli turkey right there in the meat drawer. Can you pull it out? It’s just wonderful. Honey smoked, from the natural-foods market. No phosphates. I think it tastes better.”

Taking a two sodas and a couple of pudding cups from the fridge, I stood back and let Mom create sandwiches that were fully loaded works of art. As she bagged them up, she glanced at me, smiling. “I haven’t made a school lunch in years. This is just like the old days.”

I didn’t point out that in the old days, Grandma Rice made my school lunches and saw me off in the mornings. Instead, I kissed Mom on the cheek, grabbed the lunch sack, and headed off to school feeling good. On the way, I called Bett to tell her about Mim’s roses and discuss the issue of wedding flowers. Bett was afraid that if we used a florist all the way across town, Mom would have a nervous breakdown. When I thought about it, I had to agree. In the cold light of reality the idea seemed slightly insane.

Still, I felt a twinge of guilt. Judging from Mim’s faded clothes and old tennis shoes, she could use the money. It probably wasn’t easy selling flowers in that neighborhood. Maybe I’d ask her about making some bouquets for the rehearsal night. That way, the bouquets weren’t very good, or Mim failed to come through, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. “Her roses really are amazingly beautiful, but you’re right: It’s probably too risky to have her do the wedding flowers. What if I ask her about some practice bouquets? I know normally on rehearsal night, people use bouquets of ribbons from the bridal shower, but since we don’t have time for a shower, real flowers at the rehearsal might be a nice touch. Just something simple. What do you think?”

“That sounds good,” Bett agreed, then her call waiting beeped, and we said good-bye as I pulled into the parking lot of the cleaner’s.

When I went inside, Mim wasn’t there, so I left a note for her with Granmae, inquiring about the cost of some small bouquets and perhaps a table arrangement or two for the rehearsal dinner. When Granmae handed me the estimate for the dress restoration, I wished I had looked at that first. Dad was going to have a coronary. Maybe I would make Granmae’s flowers my special treat for Bett, and pay for them myself.

Granmae tapped the bill with her fingertip. “Now, I done told ya it would be high. But our work is guaranteed, one hundred percent. That dress’ll leave here lookin’ like it just come off the runway, and I’ll even put an angel on the shoulder of it for free.”

I smiled at that idea. “All right then.” I hoped Dad didn’t flip when he saw the cost. “And you’re sure you can have it done in time?”

Granmae eyed me with the shrewd look of an experienced business-woman. “Yes, sugar pie. It’ll be ready.” Leaning across the counter, her heavy bosom resting on the wood, she picked a scrap of lint off the shoulder of my pantsuit, and winked at me. “You got one too many on there today. Sometimes, they like to congregate, but then they ain’t focused on their job.”

I realized she was doing the angel-on-the-shoulder thing, so I played along. “Oh, well, maybe someone else can use that one.”

“Maybe so.” Narrowing her eyes, she set the extra angel atop an old card catalog drawer filled with yellowed invoices. “I’ll pass it on to Mim. She’ll give it to someone.”

“Tell her I said hello,” I added, then headed for the door. “Thanks for the shoulder-angel crowd control.”

“My pleasure.” As the door fell shut, I could hear her chuckling.

Across the street, the two men were sitting in their dark pickup again. They watched me as I exited the cleaner’s and walked to my car. Unlocking my door quickly, I got in and left Division Street behind, trying not to think about who the men were, why they were watching me, or whether any of the cars doing business at the taco stands belonged to Harrington students.

Cameron wasn’t in one of the cars, at least not this morning. As I pulled into the faculty parking lot, his father was dropping him off at the front door. He trudged slowly up the steps, bent against the cold, and sat down on the railing, waiting for the doors to open. He looked far less jubilant than he had yesterday, arriving in the back of a high schooler’s car.

“Ms. C?” he said, hopping off the railing and following me to the door.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry about yesterday.” Holding open the door, he followed me in. I wondered if the apology was genuine, or merely an attempt at buttering me up so that I would let him come inside. The first bell hadn’t sounded yet, and students weren’t allowed in the building. Cameron focused on his feet, so that I couldn’t see his expression. “I was in kind of a . . . crazy mood.”

The apology sounded contrite enough, but who could tell? I knew this routine—the one where you screwed up, almost let yourself be found out, then tried to cover it up by playing the perfect kid for a while, so no further questions would be asked. Every time someone got close to the truth of my eating disorder, I made sure I was good until the heat was off.

“Well, Cameron, yesterday was inappropriate in a number of ways,” I replied flatly. “And I tend to wonder why a kid like you would act that way.”

Shaking off the chill, he sagged in his oversize jacket, fiddling with the zipper. “It was just a bad day, you know? Things aren’t so great at home.”

I nodded. I could relate to problems at home with parents. “Anything I can do?”

He shook his head, still studying the floor.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

Another quick head shake. “Nah. Just some days, I don’t want to be here, you know?”

Looking at his sad, slouched-over body, I understood more than I could possibly admit to a student. I could relate to not wanting to be here, there, or anywhere. To wish you could just disappear from your life altogether.

What was going in his family? It could be anything from serious problems to simple growing pains. “Cameron, you don’t have to talk to me, but I’m here anytime you decide to. What you’re going to find, sooner or later, is that no matter how many ways you try to avoid it, you keep coming back to the same place. And until you deal with the problem, whatever it is, you always will.”

The last part was a direct quote from Sister Margaret. The farther out of recovery I got, the more I was finding that she was right about almost everything.

Cameron only shrugged, glancing back toward the door like he thought it might be easier to sit outside.

“You might as well stay in,” I said, resigned to the fact that he wasn’t ready to talk to me or anyone else about his problems. Not today, anyway. “I’ll find something for you to do. No sense sitting out in the cold.”

If Granmae’s angel was still with me this morning, I willed it to flit over to Cameron’s shoulder. Right now, he looked like he needed it more than I did.

S
ince Cameron wasn’t in the mood to talk, I gave him a hall pass so that he could get his saxophone and practice in one of the rehearsal rooms until school was officially open. After he was gone, I called the state coordinator with some grant-related questions, and discovered that the application was due a week earlier than Mr. Stafford had told me. Leafing through the booklet, I found an amended time line, still sealed in the envelope, tucked in the back of the book. It confirmed that the due date in the booklet was incorrect. I called Mr. Stafford, and suddenly he remembered having heard something about a change in the due date last semester, before Mrs. Kazinski left. He assumed she’d made a note of it in the book. . . .

I panicked.

As I was hanging up the phone, spiraling downward into grant-writing despair, Mrs. Morris came by to start an argument about my giving Cameron a hall pass, when he wasn’t supposed to be in the building yet. She’d intercepted him in the hall, and when she’d tried to send him back outside
“where he belonged”,
he had produced the hall pass from me. Since it
wasn’t proper
to contradict another staff member
in the presence of a student,
she had
let it go,
but, she wanted to be certain I knew that allowing students in the building before seven-thirty was
against policy,
and it
shouldn’t happen again
. She added numerous other backhanded insults, including the fact that having so recently been a student here myself, I should have firm grasp on the rules.