Get Happy (17 page)

“You’re shivering,” he said. “You’re freezing.” He took off his raincoat and put it around my shoulders. The flannel on the inside was warm, and it smelled the way Fin’s house always smelled — like gingerbread.

His phone buzzed, and he answered. “Yeah … She’s here … she’s okay.… No, we’re just sitting here for a minute.… Call your mom, okay? I’m going to call Minerva’s mom.”

It was Fin. I thought about how he didn’t get the part in the play that he wanted, how I wasn’t there for him. I pressed the bruise on my leg to see if I could make it hurt, and glued my eyes back on that cigarette butt while Mr. O’Connor called my mom.

“Pat, she’s here at Central Station.… Yeah … she’s fine.… I can bring her.… Okay … sure … yeah … yeah … Okay,
see you in a few minutes.” He slipped his phone back into his pocket. “She’s not far from here. She said to wait.”

Mr. O’Connor sat with me on the platform as two trains came and went and as the rain pounded on the station roof; and then my mom came flying up the stairs in her navy blue raincoat, her face colorless, her eyes red. She hugged me and thanked Fin’s dad, and we walked down the stairs to the cars.

I tried to give Mr. O’Connor his raincoat back, but he wouldn’t take it.

“Bring it next time you come over, darlin’,” he said, and I could feel the kindness of his eyes on my face, but I couldn’t look at him.

After we got on the road, my mom didn’t say a word. I don’t know if she was trying to decide what to ask, or what to say, or if she was trying to pretend that nothing had happened. I looked out the window and pressed the bruise on my leg until we arrived home.

Fin’s mom and brothers were gone by the time we got there. Mrs. O’Connor had left a note along with a pot of soup and a salad. I thought I would have killed
for food, but I couldn’t eat. All my mom said was, “You should get out of those wet clothes, Minerva.”

I was about to head up to my room, when the knock came.

My mom looked out the security peephole in the door and started saying words I didn’t even know she knew.

The knock came again. My dad’s voice: “I know you’re there, Pat. Open the door.”

The room felt charged, like a hurricane was about to hit.

“I will call the police,” my mom said.

“Go ahead. We need to have this out,” he said.

My mom threw her raincoat back on and rushed out, quickly closing the door behind her. The silence lasted only a second.

“You are not coming inside this house, Keanu.”

I walked over to listen.

“Fine. You want to have it out here? Fine — ”

“Lower your voice — ”

“She inherited all your rage, didn’t she? This is my first time seeing her since I left, and this is what I get? I did not deserve this,” he yelled.

She screamed: “You left.”

“I was right to leave and you know it. We had nothing in common. It was a fling. A mistake. I was young and you threw yourself at me, and I’ve been paying for it — ”

“Oh. It was all my fault? You are so — You’re just out for yourself, Keanu. You always were. You can’t expect Minerva to forgive you.”

“Has she at least heard my side of the story? I wanted her in my life. You’re the one who refused.”

“What was I supposed to do, Keanu? Put her on a plane to California every other weekend?”

“We could have worked something out if you had tried.”

“If
I
had tried? I did what I had to do to protect her. The last thing she needed in her life was an absentee father.”

“I didn’t want to be one. You forced that issue.”

“I forced the issue? You moved two thousand miles away!”

“I was offered a job, a career. You weren’t even working! What was I supposed to do?”

“If you really wanted to be a father to Minerva, you
wouldn’t have taken that job in California. You would have stayed.”

“I might have done that if you were a reasonable person to deal with. You didn’t want me in her life even when I was here.”

“That is not true. You put your career above everything. I wanted her to have one solid home, not to be torn between two. You were too busy to even think about her.”

“I sent her a gift every birthday and I never — ”

“What was that supposed to prove? That you love her?”

“What did you tell her about me? Did you tell her that I abandoned you? Is that your story?”

“You did abandon us. You moved away. Leave, Keanu. If you don’t, I am calling the police.”

“Oh, I’m so sick of this, Pat! You’re always the victim! I never missed a payment. I asked you to share custody — ”

“Go away! This is my house, Keanu. You have no right to — ”

“I paid for this house, Pat. She is my daughter, and I have the right — ”

“Stop it,” my mom hissed. “I made a life for Minerva here. I gave her love and stability. I took her to the doctor when she got sick. I drove her to school every day and packed her lunch and protected her from — ”

“From what? From me? What did you tell her about me?”

“What was I supposed to tell her? How do you explain that to a child?”

“People do it all the time. You were jealous, Pat. You didn’t want Minerva to be part of my life because that would have eaten you alive.”

“I did it for
her.
She was better off not knowing. She was better off without you. She didn’t need to grow up having to visit a father who puts his own needs ahead of hers. If you had really wanted her in your life, you would have tried a lot harder than a gift or two every year.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take parenting advice from you. I obviously could have done a better job raising her than you did.”

I stood perfectly still at the door, listening to their voices rage and to the pounding of the rain on the roof, and a cold calm came over me. I walked into the kitchen
and around the corner to a little dead-end part of the town house: the utility closet.

A hot water heater was on the left; on the right were an electrical box and floor-to-ceiling storage shelves filled with big, neatly labeled tubs. Three on each shelf. Twelve in all.
HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS. CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. VALENTINE’S DECORATIONS. EASTER DECORATIONS. GLASSWARE. HARDWARE. LIGHTBULBS
 … I started at one end and opened each lid.

When I opened the seventh tub, the one labeled
ELECTRICAL CORDS
, the strength rushed out of my knees. It was filled with gifts, each one wrapped in birthday paper. Gift after gift after gift after gift — different sizes, shapes, and colors, some with ribbons and bows, some plain — each one with an unopened card tucked under a ribbon or taped to the gift wrap, with
To Minerva
on the front.

The eighth tub, labeled
HEATING FILTERS
, was filled from bottom to top with more presents.

I sat on the concrete floor, the colors swimming before my eyes. I lifted out a package and opened the card.

Stretched out in the narrow white box was a pretty silver bracelet with eight charms, each one enameled with a little splash of color: a blue sailboat, an orange fish, a green hula girl, a red Hawaiian shirt, a pink seashell, and a small brown ukulele. A tiny uke.

I took the bracelet out of the box and laid it across my wrist. It was too small, which meant that it would have probably fit perfectly then. I imagined my eight-year-old self putting it on, marveling at each charm. Balancing it on my wrist, I turned the little uke right side up so the color showed. The four tiny strings, painted white against the brown, were perfectly straight and parallel.

A part of me wanted to cry, a part of me wanted to scream, a part of me wanted to tear open every gift, and a part of me wanted to run away. I reached way down into the tub and pulled one out from the bottom.

Inside the box, cradled in blue tissue paper, was a stuffed animal — a baby beluga whale — brand-new, snow-white, pillow soft, with a tiny adoption certificate and official-looking gold seal attached to the bright red tag. I wound the gold knob in the middle of the whale’s belly and let it go. The tinkling high notes of “Baby Beluga” filled the room, familiar, even though I hadn’t heard the song for years.

The gifts, just the sight of them, were starting to make me feel dizzy, as if each one had the power to pull me down a drain hole in time and space.

“Minerva!” My mom’s voice flared in the distance. She called for me again, and it lit a fuse of anger inside me. I pictured her all those years, getting those packages in the mail and depositing them into these tubs, deliberately hiding them from me, writing out the false labels,
ELECTRICAL CORDS
and
HEATING FILTERS
, so I wouldn’t find them. The anger grew hotter at the sound of her footsteps going up the stairs, her voice in my bedroom, her steps coming down again.

“Minerva.” She appeared in the doorway, wet from the rain, her hair plastered down on the sides of her face. She looked at the two open tubs, at the gift wrap and the whale, with disbelief and horror.

I rose to my feet, my skin prickling with cold but my blood on fire. “Why didn’t you just throw them out?”

She stood there, mascara streaked, speechless.

I erupted. I picked up the full tub and threw it against the wall. The gifts scattered, and she jumped back. I flew at her, my face in her face, my voice burning: “I hate you. I hate him. I hate you both.”

I walked past her, stopped in the kitchen, opened the pantry drawer, and got a box of garbage bags.

“Minerva, let me explain …”

I slammed the drawer shut, took the bags to my room, and closed and locked the door.

First things first. Text to Aunt Joan:
Your sister is a pathological liar.

Next, I pulled out a garbage bag and shook it open. If you could have seen me at that moment, you would have been worried because I wasn’t screaming or crying or collapsing onto the floor, which is what you might expect. My anger was there, still red-hot, like embers smoldering under a burned log, but I was focused on a task that suddenly needed to be done. I stuffed the bedspread and matching sheets — pink flowers — into the bag.

I got another bag and walked over to my dresser. I opened a jewelry box that my mother had given me and took out the earrings I had bought at the Goodwill and the ones Fin gave me, and set them aside. I dumped the rest of the jewelry in the garbage bag and then threw the jewelry box in, too. I saved the uke book Fin gave me for my birthday, and the stone Hayes gave me on the beach. Everything else on the top of my dresser went into the trash. I opened each drawer, set aside only the clothes I had bought for myself, and dumped
the rest. Two bags full. I opened a chest at the foot of my bed, full of old snow pants and bulky wool sweaters. Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. I got another bag and walked over to my closet. I saved my Goodwill dresses and threw in everything else, hangers and all. Five bags full, including the snowflake sweater that I had brought home from school back in late January. Happy birthday to me.

I was sweating and shivering at the same time, but I didn’t stop. I found a hoodie I had borrowed from Fin and put it on. More bags. In went the vase with the pastel silk flowers and those weird Easter eggs on sticks that my mom had put out after St. Patrick’s Day was over, the decorative pillows that were scratchy, the faux antique reading lamp that was hard to turn off and on, the framed tree drawing I did in the second grade and never liked, the stained-glass rabbit with the cutesy smile, hanging on my window.

When I tied up the last bag and opened the door, my mom was sitting on the stairs. She looked up, her eyes puffy and red. I dragged two garbage bags past her down the stairs and left them on the sidewalk in front
of our town house in the pouring rain. Then I came back for more. One after another and then another. My mom didn’t try to stop me; she just sat there like a zombie. When I had put all the bags outside, I went back into my room and locked my door. I desperately wanted to go into her room and get my winter quilt from Aunt Joan, which was stored under her bed, but I didn’t want to see her again, so I put on a dry T-shirt and jeans, curled up on my bed, and tried to get warm.

I heard my mom’s cell phone ring. She didn’t answer.

In the middle of the night, I woke up sweating but cold. I went to the bathroom and found my mom sleeping on the floor outside my door. The bathroom door was open, a soft orange light coming from the night-light. She sat up, Indian style, and I was struck by how physically small she looked.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I walked around her and went to the bathroom and got a handful of towels. Back in my room, I closed the door and wrapped myself up in them.

Are you okay? Yeah … sure. Not a worry in the world.

22