If Only (11 page)

Pam

It's after school and I'm at Carol's place, helping her bake chocolate brownies. One of the hairdressers at Silver Scissors is quitting work and getting married, and they're throwing her a going-away party tomorrow.

I tell Carol everything, about giving Stacey her skirt back and the money for the blouse, about the note on my desk that said
nice hair
, about Stacey's horrible cartoon and what Danny did.

Carol stops stirring until I point out that batter is dripping from the end of the spoon onto the floor.

“Good for Danny!” Carol says. “This Stacey creature sounds absolutely vicious!”

“I can't believe I wanted to be her friend,” I say. “What's the matter with me?”

“It's called being a teenager,” Carol says. “The good thing is, you'll outgrow it.”

Carol gives me the brownie bowl to lick, and I attack it with a spatula. “So how was school
today
?” Carol says. “I'm almost afraid to ask!”

“Okay, most of the time,” I say. “I've got Billie and another new friend called Celia, and Celia has a friend called Daphne, and she hung around with us today too.”

“Excellent,” Carol says.

The front doorbell rings, and Prince leaps up from his spot under the table and lunges into the hallway, barking his head off. Carol wipes her hands on her apron and says, “Who could that be?”

I hope it's not someone coming to visit. Carol heads to the door and I hear her say, “Hi, Matt,” and then I hear a man's voice. He's saying something about mail being mixed up.

Carol stays and talks to him for a few minutes. I have
to pee, and when I cross the hall to the bathroom, I glimpse a man leaning against the doorjamb, wearing a baseball cap and faded jeans.

“My neighbor, Matt,” Carol says when I get back to the kitchen. “The mailman stuck a letter for me in his slot. He also wanted to know if I can hear his music through the wall. Now that's considerate. I could have asked him in for a brownie…”

I'm glad she didn't. I don't want to share my time with Carol with anyone else. I'm guessing she knows that.

Carol pops the pan of brownies into the oven. “Now tell me again what you said to Stacey. When she asked you to have lunch with her.”

I grin at Carol. “
I've got other plans!
”

Carol waves the knife in the air and shouts, “Touché!”

That's why I like Carol so much. She gets it.

Dad and Danny are arguing about the
TV
when I get back. Dad bought some new rabbit ears, but they don't make any difference. When you turn the
TV
on, there's just a bunch of snow.

“We need a new
TV
,” Danny says. He's slumped in an armchair. Dad is on the couch with the newspaper.

“You'll live,” Dad says tightly.

I'm standing there holding three still-warm brownies wrapped in a napkin, unsure what to do. Dad glances at me wearily. “You're back.”

“I've got brownies,” I say.

“The problem is,” Danny says, “there's nothing to do around here.”

“Drop it, Danny,” Dad says.

“This is a crummy place to live.”

Dad puts his newspaper down and stares at Danny. I hold my breath.

“I want to move back to the farm,” Danny says.

Dad leaps up, his face white. Danny flinches. But Dad walks past him, past me. He stops in the doorway and turns around.

“Grow up, Danny,” he says. He speaks slowly, his voice vibrating with anger. “You're not going back to the farm. Ever. Can you get that through your head? Pop is putting it up for sale.”

Danny

They've never smoked a joint before.

They've never smoked
anything
.

They're in the
Jolly Roger
, sitting cross-legged in a circle. Danny, Hugh, Pam and Billie. Hugh has placed the joint, almost reverently, in the middle of the floor.

The tree fort was Pam's idea. It's Thursday, after school. Dad has gone to the dockyard to talk to his boss about starting work again. Then he's going over to see Pop and take him out for supper. He won't be back until eight.

Hugh has brought a lighter. He says he knows what to do—he watched Harmony and Meadow smoking in the bus.

Danny wants to get this over with. He's not even sure why he agreed to come. If Dad catches them, they'll be grounded forever.

They all stare at the joint.

“Well, are you going to light it?” Danny says finally.

“In a minute, in a minute,” Hugh says. And then he confesses, “I'm not sure which end to light.”

Billie picks up the joint. One end is partly open, and one end is tapered. She points to the tapered end. “Light it here,” she says.

“How do you know that?” Pam says.

“My highly developed brain,” Billie says. She passes the joint to Hugh. He looks around at everyone.

“Well, do it,” Danny says.

Hugh flicks the lighter. The flame wavers and then is steady. He holds it up to the joint. The end starts to glow.

“Got it,” Hugh says. He puts the lighter on the floor. He's holding the joint between two extended fingers, as if he thinks it might burn him. He looks triumphantly at everyone.

“Now you gotta
smoke
it,” Danny says.

“Jeez, Danny. Patience.” Hugh holds the joint to his lips. He sucks in his cheeks. Pam and Billie giggle, and Hugh gives them a wounded look. “Just breathe in,” Billie coaches with a grin.

“If you're so smart, you try,” Hugh says.

He passes the joint to Billie. She promptly puts it to her mouth and inhales. “There,” she says smugly. “Easy.”

“Do you feel anything?” Hugh says.

“Not yet, moron,” Danny says. “You gotta smoke it for a while.”

“What makes you a pro?” Hugh mutters.

There's no point to this if it's going to make them argue, thinks Danny. Pam goes next, and Danny is shocked at how hard she inhales. She sputters and then collapses in fits of coughing.

Billie wraps her in a hug and keeps saying, “Are you all right?”

It's Danny's turn next—he takes it slow, holding the smoke in his mouth and then blowing it out.

Back to Hugh, who still looks like a fish, and then Billie.

When it's Pam's turn again, she shakes her head and gives it to Danny.

Danny tries something different this time, inhaling cautiously.

A few more passes around the circle, and then Pam says she'll try again.

“You don't have to,” Billie says.

“I want to be part of this,” Pam says.

She stares at the joint for a second and then holds it to her lips and breathes in. Billie squeezes her hand. “I did it,” Pam whispers.

Danny again—he has the hang of it now. He draws the smoke deep into his lungs.

A smoky haze is filling the tree house. Can you get high just breathing smoke in the air? Danny wonders.

“Oh man,” Hugh says when it's his turn. “I'm seeing all kinds of colors.”

He's faking. Danny can tell. Hugh's not even inhaling, just puffing on the end of the joint like he and Pam used to do with candy cigarettes when they were pretending to be Pop.

“For real,” Hugh says.

“Right,” Danny says.

The joint is burning down.

Danny's limbs feel loose. He didn't want to be here, and now he doesn't want it to end.

He hears someone say, “I'm seriously thinking of running away with the hippies,” and then he realizes that it's him.

“You can't,” Hugh says. “Dad kicked them out. They left this morning.”

Danny leans back against the wall of the tree house and closes his eyes.

Too bad.

Danny is pretty sure the hippies have the answer to life.

And they probably have an endless supply of pot.

He could've smoked himself to oblivion.

Pam

Carol doesn't approve of smoking marijuana. Not. At. All.

She doesn't go on and on like most adults, but she's pretty definite.

“Fifteen is way too young,” she says.

I actually know everything Carol tells me. When we were still living on the farm and starting high school, Dad gave me and Danny the drugs-alcohol-smoking talk. Not that Dad can talk. Anyway, I have no plans to smoke dope again.

Carol has phoned me to say goodbye because she's going on a spur-of-the-moment trip to Toronto tomorrow to see her mom.

“She fell and sprained her ankle,” Carol says. “Not too serious, but she needs a bit of help. I'll probably be gone just over a week.”

“Can't one of her friends in Toronto help her?” I sound like a six-year-old, but I don't want Carol to go.

“She's my mom,” Carol says.

“Who's going to look after Prince?”

“He's going to a kennel. He knows because he saw my suitcase, and he's very depressed, but he'll be fine.” There's a pause and then Carol says, “You'll be fine too. I'll want a full report when I get back.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say.

I've made it
to Friday. And it's going okay. All morning
, no one says anything mean. I guess they've gotten used to my hair. Or they've lost interest. Or maybe it's because I've got my group of friends now, and they're protecting me. I smile when I think of that. My guards. Billie, Celia and Daphne.

And Danny. I don't see him much at school, but I'm glad he's here.

Stacey passed me in the hallway between classes. I think she's bleached her hair or something, because it looks blonder than before. She was wearing this tight white miniskirt and a silky red blouse, and she looked good. Well…great, actually. My heart sped up, and I pretended I didn't see her.

At lunchtime, I go to the end of the hallway near the home ec room, where Billie and Celia and Daphne and I have staked out a spot. Celia and Billie are already there, leaning against the wall. I slide down beside them and unwrap my bologna sandwich.

“Cheezies?” Celia says, passing around a bag.

Billie tells us about a trip she and her mom are taking tomorrow to Victoria. They're staying overnight at a fancy hotel called The Empress. She's excited and I try to be glad for her, but I feel like I'm being deserted. First Carol, and now Billie.

“Here comes Daphne,” Celia says.

Daphne is tall, with long red hair and freckles. She's practically flying down the hallway. She doesn't say hi or anything. She just bursts out, “Did you hear what happened?”

“What?” we all say.

“It's Stacey. She was in the lineup at the cafeteria. There was blood on the back of her skirt. Everyone saw it.”

“Oh my god,” Celia says. “Like…period blood?”

“I guess so,” Daphne says. “Her pad must have leaked or something.”

“Oh my god,” Celia says again.

I stop eating. I can't even picture this. Stacey?

“She was wearing a
white
skirt,” Daphne says. “I didn't see her, but that's what someone said.”

“It's true,” I say. “I saw her.”

“It's her own fault,” Celia says. “She deserves this.”

“No, she doesn't,” Billie says. “No one deserves this.”

I stare at Billie. Where did that come from? Billie hates Stacey, just like me.

Billie shrugs. “I think she's a jerk, but that doesn't mean we should all gang up on her.”

I crumple up the waxed paper from my sandwich. I really don't know what I think. But there's one thing I'm sure of. I'm so grateful my best friend is Billie.

“Stacey's gone home,” Daphne says. “She was crying.”

We munch on Cheezies until our lips and fingers turn orange. Nobody says anything.

Then Celia says what we're all thinking. “Stacey's finished.”

Danny

The last two periods on Friday are supposed to be double
PE,
but the teacher is away sick, so Mr. Allen sends Danny's class to the library instead. Danny walks out the front door of the school and no one notices.

He's going to visit Pop. Pop loves the farm as much as he does. Danny can't believe he wants to sell it. He lay awake most of the night. Now he needs to find out if it's true.

The buses are easier this time. Danny gets off at a better stop than he did before and jogs the last few blocks to Shady Haven. There's a social hour going on in the lounge; a man is playing the piano, and the old people are gathered around in wheelchairs and with walkers, singing in warbly voices. Danny scans the room. No Pop.

A woman in a yellow smock comes in, carrying a tray with plates of cookies. “Your grandfather's in his room,” she says. She smiles at Danny. “I recognize you from last time. He's been pretty exhausted the last few days, but he'll be glad to see you.”

This place would make anyone exhausted, Danny thinks. He felt the life being sucked out of him the moment he came inside. He needs to talk to Dad about getting Pop out of here.

Danny takes the elevator up to the third floor and walks down the hallway to Pop's door. It's closed.

Danny knocks softly. He waits a second or two and then calls out, “Pop?” No answer. Danny cracks the door open and peers inside. Pop's chair by the window is empty.

For a second, Danny thinks Pop isn't there. Then he hears ragged breathing that sounds like someone is making a big effort to suck in air, and he spots him in the bed. Pop makes hardly any bump at all under the rumpled orange bedspread. It's as if he's cut out of a sheet of paper. Except for his grizzled, gray head, you wouldn't know he was there.

When did Pop get so thin? His eyes are shut and his mouth is open, his lips chapped and cracked. He's eighty years old, but Danny thinks he looks closer to a hundred today.

Danny doesn't want to wake him. He gazes around. This is what Pop looks at every day: brown curtains, brown rug, beige walls. Someone, Dad maybe, has hung up a few framed photographs on the walls. Danny walks over and looks at them. There's a picture of him and Pam, one of Nana, a graduation picture of Dad's brother, Uncle George, and one of their last dog, Jack the Fourth or Fifth.

There are two black-and-white photographs, side by side in matching gold frames, of a boy and a girl—Dad and his younger sister, Janice, when they were teenagers. Danny has seen these pictures many times before, in the living room at the farm. They're the kind of photographs you get taken in a studio, with no real background. Dad looks serious in his picture, but Janice is smiling self-consciously. She has wavy hair to her shoulders, and she's wearing a white blouse with lace.

Danny knows what happened to Janice. She was killed when she was sixteen, crossing a busy street. A car ran a red light. Dad told him and Pam about it when they were driving across Canada. Until then, Danny had never heard of Janice, which was weird because she would have been his aunt. Dad said Nana and Pop wouldn't want to talk about it.

Pop grunts and then is quiet, and Danny thinks that he has stopped breathing. But then he starts up again.
Gasp, wheeze, gasp, wheeze.

Danny sits in Pop's chair. He'll wait a little while and then go if Pop doesn't wake up.

There's a shoebox with no lid on the table beside Danny. He looks inside. It's full of pieces of newspaper, neatly folded. He takes out the piece on top and opens it up. A headline blares out at him:

WHERE IS JANICE SANDERS?

The newspaper is dated February 23, 1946. There's a photograph of Janice underneath the headline, the same one that's in the gold frame on the wall. Danny starts to read, absorbing the details but not really believing them.

At the time of the article, Janice had been missing for three days. She was last seen at a party at a friend's house. She had left the party at eleven o'clock to walk home. She hadn't been seen since.

There's more about a massive police search, but Danny is having trouble taking it in. He's confused. Dad said that Janice was hit by a car on a crosswalk. He reaches in the box and takes out another newspaper article. This time, the headline slams into his stomach like someone has punched him.

MISSING GIRL'S STRANGLED BODY FOUND

“Nana hated me keeping those newspaper articles,” a raspy voice says. Danny looks up, his heart thudding. Pop has woken up and is watching him, his eyes piercing in his whiskered face. “I don't know why I did. It wasn't going to bring her back. I'm thinking I should burn them.”

Danny can't speak. He wants to know—but he doesn't. He stares at Pop, horrified.

Pop sighs. “She was my only daughter. My angel, my princess. And Nana was never the same afterward. Never.”

He licks his dry lips. “And as for Mitch, your dad—it pretty near destroyed him. He blamed himself.”

Pop's moved
to his chair now, wrapped in his plaid housecoat, and Danny's on the bed. Pop sent Danny down to the kitchen for a coffee and Danny brought one for himself as well, with lots of sugar and milk in
it. Danny isn't a coffee drinker, but there's something comforting about holding the steaming mug.

Danny takes a sip. It burns his tongue and tastes terrible. On his way back from the kitchen, he has been deciding on the best words to use. But now he just blurts it out. “Why was it Dad's fault?”

“It wasn't,” Pop says instantly. “And a boy shouldn't have something that big to carry. But you couldn't tell Mitch that.”

Danny swallows. “What exactly happened?”

“Janice was sixteen,” Pop says. “Mitch, seventeen. They were as close as you and Pam. Had a lot of the same friends.”

He pauses. He has the past and the present firmly in their places today. He just has to sort through the details. “It's hard to talk about,” he admits to Danny.

“You don't have to,” Danny says.

Pop peers at Danny. “Nana said we shouldn't tell you. Said it would be too upsetting. But you want to know what happened? Of course you want to know. It's your family. Just give me a minute.”

A minute stretches into five. Pop's eyes are closed. His coffee grows cold. Danny thinks this is too hard on Pop. He should go. Then Pop opens his eyes and starts talking.

“There was a party. You know that yellow house down the road from the farm? Where the Neilsons live? Well, that's where the party was. A family called MacDonald lived there then. They had a son, Joe. He was Mitch's best friend. They were going to graduate together, then work for a year or two before going to college.”

Pop pauses, squeezing his hands together. “It was a big party, but Joe said his parents were going to be chaperoning. It was only a five-minute walk if you cut through the fields to Joe's house, but I let Mitch take my car. It was the middle of February and cold out.”

Pop's voice wavers a little. “There was snow expected that night, and it came. By morning everything was white.”

Danny feels like his stomach has been turned inside out. He's dreading what Pop is going to say next.

“It turned out Joe's parents weren't there. Everyone was drinking. There was too much beer. Janice didn't like it. She wanted to go home, but your dad was having too good a time. He wanted to stay.”

Pop's memories break into jagged fragments. “Janice asked your dad to drive her…he wouldn't…she took the shortcut through the fields…it was cold, so cold…snow…we searched for three days. Everyone searched. The police, all the neighbors.”

Pop is gray. Danny thinks he should tell him to stop. It's enough. But Pop keeps talking, and Danny listens with horror to each word.

“There was too much booze.” Pop's voice is bitter. “No one offered to walk with Janice. And Joe's parents were away. They'd never have let Janice walk by herself. Never. And we'd never have let Mitch and Janice go to the party in the first place if we'd known there were no adults. We were tough with our kids; we didn't let them run around wild.”

Danny thinks of Dad's strict curfews, how he and Pam have to tell him where they're going all the time, how Dad's bedroom light is always on when they get home.

“Mitch went out with every search party. He didn't sleep for days. He was there when they found her…in a drainage ditch. He left right after her funeral, hitchhiked to Ontario and never looked back. He couldn't stand to be around anything that reminded him. He had one more year of high school left, and he would've got his diploma. He threw that away. It broke Nana's heart all over again. It was like she lost both her children. And poor George, the one left behind, he was only twelve. He idolized Mitch.”

Danny has never met Uncle George. He lives in Kentucky. He and Dad talk on the phone at Christmas, and Uncle George is always the one to call. Nothing the rest of the year. A family splintered. Danny feels a sudden panic. Will that happen to him and Pam?

Pop sighs. “They caught the guy. A drifter from the States. It helped a little, I guess. He went to jail for life, but he was killed in prison after a couple of years.”

At first Danny can't speak.

Why did no one tell him and Pam the truth? A family secret, hidden in an old shoebox.

Danny has been so careful to build an invisible wall around himself to keep everything out. Now the wall crumbles. He doesn't want secrets from Pop. He tells Pop about Pam. It all spills out of him: the knife and hugging the tree and how Pam is afraid now and Dad is drinking more than ever.

He's drained when he's finished. Wiped. At first he doesn't even realize that he's crying. He rubs the tears away fiercely. Sniffs in the snot that is leaking from his nose.

“I should have saved Pam,” he whispers.

“Now wait a minute,” Pop says. Danny hears a hint of the old Pop, before Shady Haven. “You listen to what I'm gonna tell you. You can't be a hero every day. Life doesn't work that way. You can't do it. No one can. That's something you and your dad gotta learn.”

His eyes lock into Danny's. “That just wasn't your day to be a hero.”