Once Was Lost (20 page)

We’re past the highway construction now, and moving at full speed, the cars separating. I roll my window down and stick my hand out to test the air. “It’s cooler here.”

“Higher elevation.” He reaches to turn down the fan and rolls down his window, too, filling the car with the faint scent of the pines that grow thicker up here. “Why all the questions about Erin? Don’t you like her?”

“I don’t
not
like her.” Or at least I didn’t used to. “She brought us dinner. Twice.”

“That’s nice. That’s totally Erin.”

“She’s a good cook.”

“True.”

“She’d make a good wife for someone.”

Nick laughs. “Are you trying to set her up with someone or something?”

“No.” I lean toward the window, letting the air blow on my face. “She just seems like she wants to be married. And guys like her. So why isn’t she?”

“Don’t ask me. Isn’t she only like twenty-five?”

“Twenty-six.” The truck crests a hill and the sign for our exit comes into view. “Seven more miles,” I say.

We ride three or four of those miles in silence, then Nick asks, “Can I tell you something personal? No one knows, so you have to keep it secret.”

“Okay.” I put all the stuff about Erin and my dad out of my head so I can really listen.

“Dorrie broke up with me. She made me promise not to tell, and then when we both go away to separate colleges we’re just going to kind of tell people we wanted to focus on school.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure if I should say I’m sorry, or what. “I saw you guys at the vigil. You looked really… together.”

“Yeah, well.” He glances at me. “When I called you? That was right after she texted me to say she couldn’t handle it anymore.”

It makes me see his phone call in a whole different light.

“Like, the media attention on my family is too much, it’s all kind of depressing when she’s supposed to be starting an exciting time of her life at college.”

“That’s…” I don’t know how someone could break up with Nick. Especially with a text message.

“I don’t blame her. I’d probably break up with me, too, if I were her.” He doesn’t seem too upset, but then, I don’t know that much about guys and how they think. “I know it’s hard to sit around with my devastated parents and a bunch of tragedy groupies, watching the news and dodging the media.”

“Tragedy groupies?”

“Yeah, you know. People who suddenly turn up in your life when something goes wrong, because they want to say that they were there, and because their lives are boring until something shitty happens to someone else and they can have a piece of it.” He has a little bit of a smile on his face, but also sounds angry in a way I’ve never heard before. “Anyway,” he says, “you ready to see your mom?”

“I think the turn is up here,” I say after we exit, and he slows at a turnoff onto an unpaved road. We bump over red dirt and rocks until we see the sign for New Beginnings. What looks like a big old farmhouse sits at the end of the road. “It’s smaller than I remember from the day we brought her,” I say as Nick pulls into the gravel lot.

He takes in the wraparound porch, and the pen full of goats grazing near the gardens. “This is rehab?”

“Yeah.” Now that we’re here I have no idea what I’m going to do, or say. I stare out the window. “How mad would you be right now if I changed my mind and wanted to go home?”

“Not mad at all.”

“Let me think for a minute.”

“No problem.” Nick turns off the engine and we sit there and watch the goats, mostly brown and speckled plus one little baby black one. Through the open windows we can hear the sounds of cicadas and sparrows and cars going by on the highway.

“You should see the gardens,” I say suddenly, opening the door to get out.

“Okay.”

I lead him past the goats and around the side of the farmhouse. “That’s the vegetable garden,” I say, pointing, “where the residents grow their own food. It’s like part of therapy. The brochure they gave us that first day says that healthy activity and being outdoors are important for them. And over here”—I walk him around to the other end—“this is the xeriscaping. Have you heard of that?”

“No.”

“It’s a special kind of gardening where you only plant stuff that doesn’t need extra watering, stuff that can just live on whatever water is naturally there.”

He surveys the garden. “Looks like a bunch of rocks.”

“There’s lavender, there. Juniper. Cactus.”

“I see,” he says, nodding. “Plus a bunch of rocks.”

“Well, yeah.” I let myself laugh a little bit. “The rocks help cover the soil and keep moisture in. I’m trying to do something like this in our yard at home so that when my mom comes back, it will be…” I stop and stare at the perfectly landscaped garden, and compare it to our yard, which is currently covered by an ugly black tarp. “Well, it won’t be like this.” But we can work on it together, I think, realizing that’s what I really want. I don’t want to do it alone, I don’t want to do it with Vanessa and Daniel. I want to do it with Mom.

The back door of the farmhouse opens and a bunch of people come out, and the way everyone looks at us I feel like we’ve been caught stealing or something. Fortunately, Margaret is there and recognizes me. She comes over. “Sam? It’s not a visiting day, I’m sorry.”

I’d forgotten about the visiting days and non-visiting days. I’m partly relieved because I could just say, okay, thank you, bye, and be on my way back… where? Home? Where possibly my father is in the very act of… I don’t know what?

“Can I see my mom for just a minute?”

The residents who have come out to work in the garden are all looking at me like I’m an imposter, someone who has violated their peace and quiet away from their families and anyone else who might actually need something from them.

Margaret relents. “I’ll ask her. Come around the front and I’ll let you into the waiting area.”

She goes in through the back, and Nick and I walk around to the front, past the goats again, who glance up and are the only witnesses to the fact that Nick takes my hand for the last few steps up to the door, and then says, “It’s going to be okay,” before letting go. The crackle isn’t as intense as it was in the truck yesterday, but it’s there.

Margaret opens the door and leads us to the waiting area. Nick sits on a small sofa that has room enough for me, too, but I choose a wooden chair.

“I’ll be right back,” Margaret says.

When she’s gone, I tell Nick, “I don’t even know what I’m going to say to her. If she comes out.”

“She will.”

I keep my eyes on the coffee table, with its careful array of magazines and pamphlets and a box of tissues in the middle of it all. “There’s this support group for families of the residents,” I say. “But it’s on Saturday mornings and my dad always has too much to do to get ready for Sunday.”

Nick’s not buying it. “That’s kind of a crappy excuse.”

Margaret comes back in alone. Nick stands, but I don’t move. “She’ll be out in a sec,” Margaret says. “She wanted to fix her hair.” A phone rings out in the hall. “Excuse me.”

Nick comes over to me, kneels down, touches my knee. “You want me to stay? Or wait in the truck? Or what?”

I don’t have time to answer, because my mom walks in. “Sammy? What are you doing here?”

She looks so good. Better than she did at brunch on Sunday, better than she’s looked at home for a long time. I don’t mean physically. Physically she’s always pretty, put together. I mean now she’s calm. Soft. Like she’s comfortable here. And I know I can’t tell her anything about my dad and Erin, not unless I know for sure and even then, maybe not. Not when she’s just getting steady.

“Hey, Mrs. Taylor,” Nick says, getting up. I stand, too.

“Hello, Nick. I’m so sorry about Jody.”

And she comes over and hugs him.

She pats his back. She murmurs things that I can’t hear. She’s warm and dignified and beautiful in ways I’d forgotten she could be. When Nick pulls away he’s got tears in his eyes.

Mom wasn’t like this on Sunday with my dad there. I want her at home, and I want her at home like this, but now I don’t know if she can be home and be like this at the same time.

Nick looks at me. “I’ll be hanging with the goats.”

When he’s gone, Mom comes over and puts her arms around me and I’m already crying when I say, “I just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi,” she says, squeezing tight. Then she holds me out to inspect me, like we haven’t seen each other in a year, like we didn’t just see each other two days ago. She studies my face. “You look so grown-up.”

I wipe tears away, feeling not so grown-up. More like a baby.

“Does your father know you’re here?”

I shake my head. Her eyes shift to the door. “I didn’t know you were such good friends with Nick Shaw.”

“Only recently.”

“Sit down.” She sits on the sofa and pats it. I sit next to her. “I have a group meeting in a few minutes, and I have to go to it.”

I picture her in a room full of other residents, talking about the things that make them want to drink, things like their families, maybe. “Do you like the meetings?” I ask.

“Sometimes.”

“You like the people?”

“Some of them.” She brushes a piece of hair out of my eyes. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

I nod, because if I talk I’ll cry again, and I don’t want her to be stressed by me and worry that if she comes home it’s going to be like this, me crying and not being all right. I want to say, “I miss you,” but those are the words that will make me cry hardest.

“Sammy,” she says, “I know.” And she pulls me close. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” She kisses my head. “I’ve put a real wrench in things. It’s not fair. I know.”

“Are you going to come home?” I ask, pulling away.

And she looks at me. And I know that the answer is no, or at least, not yet.

I turn away. She hands me a tissue from the box on the table.

“Why not?”

“Because,” she says slowly, carefully. “I still have a lot of work to do. And I still need support.”

“We’ll support you,” I say. “Me and Dad.”

She shakes her head. “Your dad’s not ready, either.”

I want to ask her what that means, assure her that at least
I’m
ready, I think, but Margaret leans into the room. “Time for group, Laura.”

“I have to go,” Mom says to me. “I know you’re angry—”

“I’m not.”

Then she laughs a little bit. “Well, you should be. I am. And I’m learning not to be afraid anymore of being angry. I want you to know it’s okay for you, too. You don’t always have to be pleasant and say yes and not do things that might upset others.” She holds the box of tissues out to me. “That includes me.”

I take one, and blow my nose, wanting to tell her again that I’m not angry with her. But maybe that’s not totally true.

“And,” she adds, because she knows me, “you’re allowed to be angry with your father.”

Somehow I’m not having a problem with that, I think.

“He’s only human,” she finishes. “We all are.”

“I know.”

Then she hugs me again, kisses me, promises she’ll call later in the week. She says good-bye. She walks out.

“How was it?” Nick, sitting on the ground by the goat pen, looks up at me, shielding his eyes from the sun. One of the big billies ambles to the fence and sticks his nose between the wooden slats. I scratch his head.

“I don’t know.”

Nick gets up and stands beside me, propping a sandaled foot onto the fence. “How come you had to suddenly see her, anyway?”

I give the goat’s head a couple more scratches and withdraw my hand. I’m thinking of the way my dad’s shoulders sank last night when Erin said she couldn’t stay for Scrabble. His car in the drive when he was supposed to be in another town. Her purse on the counter. My mom not being ready to come home. Us all being only human.

“I don’t know,” I say again, and turn back for the truck. “It was stupid.”

“Let’s get food. We can talk about it if you want, or not. Either way, I’m starving.”

“Okay.” We walk to the truck and I resist the temptation to look back at the farmhouse. In my imagination, my mom is standing on the porch, waving at me, wishing me luck.

Nick opens the passenger door for me and offers his hand as I climb in. “There’s a cool little taco stand off the highway near here, I think,” he says. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah. Good.” I get my phone out of my pocket. The fact that Dad hasn’t called or anything means he still hasn’t realized I’m not with Vanessa and Daniel. He could still be in his meeting, or still be… I call him while Nick backs out, the tires crunching on gravel.

My dad answers. “Sam?” He sounds pretty much normal.

“Hi.”

“Everything okay? You ready for me to come pick you up?”

“No,” I say. So he doesn’t know yet that I’m not where I’m supposed to be. And doesn’t seem to know that I know that he was not where
he
was supposed to be, when he was supposed to be there. “Are you still in Lawrence Springs?” I ask.

“Just headed home.”

“In your car?”

He laughs. “Yes. Who else’s car would I be in?”

“I don’t know.” I look out the window. Nick and I are back out on the dirt road that led us to New Beginnings. “Maybe you got a ride with someone or carpooled to save gas.”

“Not today.”

My heart pounds. “What did they say when you asked about help for my tuition?”

Nick glances at me.

Dad pauses. “Well, no answers just yet. I put it out there, you know, and I’ll follow up in a couple of days.”

I fight hard not to let him hear the tears that I know are coming, as I give him one more chance to tell the truth. “You’re on your way home now? From Lawrence Springs?”

Another pause. “Are you sure everything is all right, Sam?”

My stomach hurts, so much. “Fine. I’m at Vanessa’s just watching a movie so you can come get me whenever you want.” I slide my phone shut and turn it off.

“You’re at Vanessa’s watching a movie?” Nick asks.

I don’t say anything.

We’re on the highway now. My window is down, and the truck radio is off, so all we hear is the wind and the distant sound of sirens. Fire trucks headed to a brushfire, maybe, or police rushing to another semi rollover at that unexpected curve at the pass, or a motorcycle down and someone’s body all over the road. More tragedy, more destruction.