Not That I Care (3 page)

Ned’s eyes were narrow as they left, like they always got when Mom and Dad started fighting. He can’t handle tension. I followed him into Mom and Dad’s room where he turned on a movie with lots of punching.

I jumped on Ned to tackle him, get him to play with me, and my tooth fell out. We found it on his shirt.

He was in sixth grade and very cool at that point. I was jumping around like I’d just won a trip to Disney World. “Finally! My tooth! Yes!”

Without looking away from the guys beating each other up on the TV, Ned asked, “So what? You don’t believe in the tooth fairy, do you?”

I stopped jumping and looked down at the tooth between my finger and thumb. I remember not wanting to answer. Even in second grade I had this idea I shouldn’t make a fool of myself.

“The tooth fairy is just Mom and Dad, you know,” he said.

“It is not.”

“Trust me,” he said and turned up the volume.

“Roxanne is friends with her.”

“Roxanne is a liar,” he said. “It’s Mom.”

That really bugged me. “It IS NOT! It’s the tooth-freaking-fairy!” Ned and all his buddies used to put freaking in the middle of where it didn’t belong all the time back then, and it sounded really tough and grown up to me.

I guess it didn’t sound so tough to Ned, because he fell off the bed, laughing. “The tooth-freaking-fairy! I love it!”

“You shut up!” I yelled. I stood there stomping my feet, searching for any power to hold over him other than the obvious little-sister weapon. I had nothing, so out it came: “Shut up or I’m telling!”

“Tell,” Ned answered.

“I will.” I touched my tongue to the soft metallic-tasting space where the tooth used to be. Ned clicked off the TV. “Or don’t tell. Don’t tell them you lost your tooth at all. Just put it under your pillow and see if the tooth fairy really does show up.”

“She will.” I inspected the tooth. It looked weird and not very toothlike, with the roots showing there between my fingers. “Roxanne knows her.”

“Right. Tell you what. If the tooth fairy does come,” Ned said, “I’ll match what she gives you.”

“Fine,” I said, close to tears, because the truth was, I had my doubts. Why would a fairy be willing to pay for such an ugly thing? And what was she planning to do with it, after? Roxanne had said something about jewelry, but it didn’t make much sense. You could just use beads and not spend every night sneaking into kids’ bedrooms.

“Let me see it,” my brother asked. He held out his hand. I placed the small, slightly bloody tooth softly inside.

“Psych!” he yelled and closed his fingers around the tooth. He lifted his fist above his head. I jumped, but Ned was already close to six feet. He ran around to the other side of my parents’ bed.

I chased him, screaming, “Give it back! It’s mine!”

“Not anymore!”

He ran out of their room. I followed him. He ran through the kitchen to the basement door, which he slammed shut behind him. I grabbed a metal spatula off the counter, flung the door open, and screamed, “Get up here!”

I was afraid of the basement, and my brother knew it. There was no light switch at the top of the stairs. You had to go down into the darkness and hold your arm up, wandering around without seeing, hoping the string hanging somewhere in the middle would brush your hand. My parents were always saying they should get a switch put in, but they never did.

No answer from Ned.

“Get up here!” I screeched. “Now!” I stomped as hard as I could on the top step, but the only effect was pain wavering up through my leg. I was holding the spatula up in the air like a weapon, although I had no idea if he could see me. I felt fierce; I wanted to kill him. It was
my
tooth, my first shot at getting something under my pillow from the tooth fairy. He was stealing from me. “Now!” I repeated with as much authority as I could muster.

When there was no response, I flung the spatula down into the darkness and slammed the door shut.

I heard a whimper, or thought I did, but I was scared he was just teasing me. I touched the doorknob, trying to decide what to do, whether or not to open it. I let go, then grabbed it again, and felt it turn in my palm.

The door opened. When I saw my brother, I fell back into the stove. There was blood pouring down into his eyes and he was crying, my big, tough hulk of a brother. I could see his forehead pulling apart from itself and shut my eyes tight against seeing his brains.

“Call 911!” he screamed, wiping blood out of his eyes.

Instead I opened the back door and ran away.

I was too scared to run far, so I just ran to my cherry tree and sat on the far side of it. My father found me out there later while Ned and Mom were at the hospital getting Ned’s head sewn up.

“I thought you ran away,” Dad said, his back against the bark, like mine.

“I did,” I told him.

“Oh, Maggie,” he said, laughing.

“What?”

“You’re just like your old man, you know that?” He took me inside and gave me ice cream.

After everyone was asleep that night, I went down to the basement in my nightgown. I took about an hour getting down the dark steps, gripping the banister tight, telling myself if there are no fairies, then certainly there are no monsters, nothing to be scared of in the dark.
No such thing
, I said to myself before each step.
No such thing
. When there were no more stairs, I felt relieved, until I realized there was also no more banister to hold. I was adrift in the middle of the darkness, and in my imagination there were now pools of my brother’s blood on the floor waiting to drown me in revenge for what I’d done. Only the fact that I wanted that first lost tooth so bad kept me going, hand raised, feet shuffling. I gasped when the string tickled my palm.

I closed my eyes and pulled the string, then got down on my knees on the cold concrete floor to search for my tooth. I found it pretty quickly and ran up the stairs. I was wasting a lot of money, leaving the light on, but at that point I was like, too bad; no way was I making the trip up in the dark. I ran to my room, placed the tooth under my pillow, and lay there in the bed with a pounding heart waiting for the tooth fairy. When I woke up, of course, the tooth was still there under my pillow. I hadn’t really believed in her so much anyway.

Only babies believe in magic and fairies and stuff
, I told myself, and put my tooth into a little white box because nobody would want it. Even my own body had no use for it anymore. When Mom noticed it was missing a few days later, she asked, “Why didn’t you put it under your pillow, Morgan? For the tooth fairy!”

“Come on, Mom,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m too old for stuff like that.”

“You’re seven.”

I shrugged. “I don’t even know what I did with it.”

She looked really disappointed, walking away from me with slumped shoulders into the kitchen.

The next weekend, when Dad’s friends came over to watch soccer on TV, he’d told them all how I’d split my brother’s head open and run away. “Way to handle pressure, Maggie!” he said. “Yeah, when the going gets tough, run away and hide—that’s my girl!”

My mother frowned and said, “Eddie.”

“Don’t be such a party pooper,” he told her. Then he scooped me up into his lap to watch the game with him and his buddies.

five

I
put the tooth in my Sack to show
that part of me, the part that knows there’s no such thing as magic. I was born a realist, not all sentimental like CJ, with her pink room and a flowered scrunchie on her bun. It’s amazing she and I stayed friends as long as we did, come to think of it. We’re so different.

She knows about what I did to Ned, though, so if I get up there and pull out this spatula, I know she’ll cover her mouth and open her eyes wide like she did when I told her about it. She wanted to hear every detail, even the blood part. It made me feel tough, telling her about it; not ashamed, like I was some violent jerk, but tough and strong, the way Roxanne had seemed to me. When CJ and I played together, I got to make up the rules.

Well, that’s over with, I guess, and who cares, because it’s not like we play anymore. We’re a little beyond that, or at least I am. If I get called and take out this spatula, she might think I’m gross. She might have changed her mind about me. I could say I’m into cooking or something, I guess.

CJ hasn’t budged. It’s beyond me how somebody can sit that straight and that still. Doesn’t her behind start to itch, so bony on the hard chair?

Mrs. Shepard makes a clicking noise with her tongue, or maybe it’s the pointy toe of her shoe tapping on the cold tile floor. I don’t know. I don’t want to look at her and give her an idea to call on me. I need time to come up with a bunch of lies about what my things symbolize.

“Louis Hochstetter,” Mrs. Shepard calls.

Thank you. The boy can talk, which gives me a few seconds to think. Lou stands up abruptly behind me, jolting his chair into Zoe Grandon’s desk. I would normally turn around and smile at Zoe about Lou’s clumsiness, but not today. Zoe is my enemy, now.

Instead I take the opportunity to jiggle stuff around in my bag. The spatula CJ would recognize, and the ballet slipper, oh, dread, I can’t let her see that. This can’t be happening. The branch she might get or not, I don’t know. I can’t make a fool of myself in front of her and everybody; what am I going to say? I should’ve walked out with Roxanne. Oh, please, somebody help me.

My hand touches the cold, smooth medal. She won’t recognize this. I never told her about this; she doesn’t even know it exists. I clasp it in my hand, under my desk, as Lou Hochstetter scuffs by.
Saint Christopher, protect us
.

six

T
he day my father announced he
was leaving was the Saturday after Fourth of July, three-and-a-little years ago. It had been sort of a rough year because Ned was being totally impossible, fighting at school and getting suspended, cursing at my mother, and threatening everybody who looked at him funny. Mom dragged him from one psychiatrist to another and read a hundred books on how to cope with him. She tried everything from putting us all on a macrobiotic diet to praising Ned every time he took a breath:
I appreciate that you didn’t use very many curses in that sentence, Ned!

Dad and I played catch in the backyard a lot that year. We didn’t like to be in the middle of all that tension. He also started being a daily communicant, going to Mass every morning at seven. I heard Mom proudly telling a friend of hers on the phone that my father was able to handle things so well, able to turn to God and be a calming presence for the family.

I turned to God, too, wanting to be holy like my father. He wouldn’t let me go to Mass with him every day, but on Sundays I would pray to Saint Christopher with all my might.
Saint Christopher, protect us
, I would say, my hands gripping each other tight as I knelt beside my father in the pew.
Saint Christopher, protect us
, because I had read that on my father’s medal, the one he put on every morning as soon as he came out of the shower. I’d sneak in while he was showering to touch it. Down on my knees, I’d run my fingers over the raised saint’s face on the front like getting my morning blessing:
Saint Christopher, protect us
. Then I’d quickly run back to my room so nobody would catch me being so corny.

That Fourth of July had been pretty disastrous, I guess, though at the time it had felt just sort of normal for us. We’d all gone to the fireworks at the high school, and Ned wanted to spread the blanket on the parking lot side because it would be louder there, and Mom was like,
No, let’s go on the grass where it’s more comfortable and not as loud
. Well, it turned into this huge thing, the two of them pulling the blanket like tug-of-war, when Dad yelled, “Who cares? Why do you two have to fight about everything?” Everybody turned around and looked at us. I was standing behind Dad’s leg. He stands with his legs spread far apart and his feet turned out.

“Eddie,” Mom stage-whispered.

“Oh, please,” he said and walked away from them, mumbling, “I’m so sick of being the bad guy.”

I ran after him. He stopped and knelt down to look me in the face. “Go back to Mom,” he said.

“I want to go with you.”

He smiled his winningest smile at me, I remember it. “I’ll kiss you when you’re sleeping. Go back to Mom now.” He turned me and gave me a little shove on my back. A firework exploded over my head, startling me. I ran back to where Mom and Ned had been. They weren’t there. I wandered around all through the show until I found them during the grand finale on the blanket in the parking lot.

The next Saturday, Mom stood alone in the kitchen while Dad had a talk with me and Ned. He told us this whole story of how the past few weeks he’d been driving around from construction-site inspection to construction-site inspection, as he’d always done, but realizing he didn’t know who he was. “I can’t recognize myself,” were his words. “I don’t know who I am.”

“You’re just Dad,” I reminded him. “You’re Eddie Miller.”

I thought maybe he was losing his memory or his mind. I hoped Mom was in the kitchen calling a doctor. Ned sat beside me on the couch with his arms crossed and no expression on his broad, stony face.

“No, Maggie,” Dad said. “I mean, I’m having some problems, inside myself. I’m having a problem with God. It’s hard to explain, or understand. But what I think I have to do is get away for a while.”

I shook my head. “Where?”

“What I’ve always dreamed of being is a movie actor.”

“Really?” I asked.

“When I was a kid, my father lost his job and next thing, he’s dragging the lot of us across the world—I’d never been outside County Cork before. Right? I was just a kid, sixteen years old, when I got here, knowing nothing and nobody. Your mother taught me to play cards and chew gum and next thing I knew I was a father myself, with a wife and a couple of kids and my summer construction job is suddenly my career, and it just feels, I’m choking. I honestly feel like I’m suffocating. So I have to go. I have to, Maggie, before I just, until I, well, I have to go find myself. I can’t be a very good father, can I be, if I don’t know who I am?”