Out of the Box (9 page)

And no matter how much I want to honor Alison's memory by donating money to the soup kitchen, I can't use the money in the bandoneón case for that, knowing how much Facundo has lost and that I'm holding back one of the few gifts his parents can give him now.

A tap on my shoulder makes me jump.

“I wondered if I'd find you here,” Jeanette tugs on the straps of her loaded backpack. “I finished sooner than expected. How are you doing?”

“Uh, fine,” I say, closing the window and logging out before she can see what I've been reading. I grab my own backpack and stand up.

“I can wait a bit, if you like,” she says, appraising my empty bag. I haven't even looked for books yet, but I don't feel like it now anyway. How can I think about reading when my own aunt is trying to pull my family apart?

I clasp my hands together to stop them from shaking. “It's okay. I've still got a few books at home to read. Mostly I wanted to check my email.” I meet her eyes. “I got a message from Mom.”

“Oh?”

We walk to the main exit in silence. Outside, she asks what the email said.

“She thinks I'm angry at her because we never actually finish a conversation these days.” I kick a stone in my path. Hard. “She probably assumes I've asked you to take the phone away every evening.”

Jeanette sighs. “Look, Ellie, I've told your mother exactly what I've told you: that I think she needs professional help, and that I think you need some space. I asked her to stop telling you all her problems and suggested she look for a psychologist.”

I feel like shoving her against the wall and demanding that she use her brain. “If you're so worried about her, why make everything worse by making her think I'm mad at her?”

“Hold on there,” she says, stopping to face me. “I didn't
make
her think anything. After you and I discussed the whole mental-health thing, I told her what we had talked about and requested that she not rely on you for emotional support. From there, she jumped to her own conclusions.”

“Of course she did,” I say. “She probably thinks
I'm
the one who decided she's crazy and that I don't want anything to do with her.” It sounds illogical when it comes out of my mouth, but I know my mother.

“If she thinks that, then it's not because I haven't explained.” Jeanette bites her lip and is silent for a second. “You know, you could have refused to give me the phone. I wouldn't have forced you to give it to me.”

Fire surges into my cheeks, and I glare at her. How dare she make it sound like I'm the one who wants to abandon my parents?

She meets my eyes. “I'm worried about you, Ellie. I think you need a break, and I'm trying to provide that for you. You seem to have blossomed this summer—making friends with Sarah, learning to play the bandoneón, getting to know Victoria on your own. I don't want you to backtrack when you go home.”

“What do
you
know about how things work in my family?”

She stares at me in shocked silence. Until this moment “my family” has always included her. I know my words cut deep, but she's brought it on herself.

She's asking me to pick favorites, and she should know that's a dangerous game to play.

F
OURTEEN

“D
ad, it's me.”
“Hi, honey.” Dad hates talking on the phone, so we haven't spoken at all since I left home. But I still expected him to sound happier to hear from me. Maybe I've caught him in the middle of something. Maybe he and Mom are working out the details of their divorce. “How's Victoria?”

I describe my adventures with Sarah and meeting Michael and Steve. I do not mention that Sarah has been talking about Michael and Steve almost nonstop since. She sees them as her “in” at Vic Middle. I tell myself it's ridiculous to feel left out when of course they'll be more useful to her than I ever could be.

“That's great, Ellie,” my father says.

“How are
you
doing, Dad?” I ask. “Mom says she's worried about you.”

“Oh, I'm okay,” he says. “Pretty busy with work.”

That's always his first answer. It takes several minutes of talking to get to the deeper issues. “Your mother's never home,” he says finally, “and when she does get home, she expects me to drop everything and pay attention to her, no matter what I'm doing. It gets old after a while.”

“She says she's concerned about you pulling back into yourself.”

“Yeah,” he admits, “I can see that, but it's a two-way street, you know? She's got to meet me halfway, and not only on her terms.”

“Mm.” This is exactly what I suspected. Mom never tries to see anything from anyone else's point of view. It's her way or the highway. “Do you know when she'll be back tonight?”

His choking laughter sounds totally unlike him. “Hard to say. She's mostly been calling you from work these days.”

“Oh. Well, tell her I'll be waiting for her call.”

“Ellie, it's so good to hear your voice.”

You'd think we hadn't spoken in a year. “You too, Mom. Sorry I worried you.” I hold my breath until I can tell if she wants an apology, or if it'll make her angry.

“I've missed you,” she whispers, like she always does when she's about to cry. “I just—”

“It's okay, Mom,” I say. “I'm not mad. I never was.

It's just that—” Damn. How do I explain without making Jeanette look so bad that Mom comes to drag me back? I'm pissed off at my aunt, but not so much that I want to go home. “Jeanette was telling me you were having a hard time and thought you might need some time to think. Without having to worry about me, I mean. That's why she kept taking the phone,” I lie.

“And you went along with that?” she asks. “How do you think I've felt this week, sitting here, wondering what I've done to offend you?”

“Mom,” I say, “I didn't mean to worry you. I know you're really busy, and—”

“You think I'm too busy to care about you?” Her voice is shrill. “When have I
ever
not been there for you? And as for too busy to care, well, I could say the same thing about you, young lady.”

I hate it when she does that. I take a deep breath and put on my calmest voice. “I'm not blaming you, Mom. I know things are very stressful for you at work and at home and everything. I don't want to make things worse.”

“So you hide your feelings from me?” She's shouting now. “You think that solves the problem? How would you feel if I treated you that way?”

Now is not the time to point out that I wish she
would
keep her feelings from me a bit more. All at once, I realize Jeanette was right about one thing at least: I could have hung on to the phone all those times, but I didn't.

“What? You're not even going to answer me now?”

“Yes,” I blurt, “I'm still here. I'm trying to figure out how to help.”

“You don't always have to fix everything, you know,” she says. “Sometimes it would help if you just listened.”

I don't tell her that I've been trying to do that. What's the point when it's obviously not enough?

F
IFTEEN

F
rank, dressed in an orange Hawaiian shirt and jeans, is sitting on his patio reading a book when I arrive. “Welcome, welcome!” he calls.

I grin and wave. The first time I came here, I never would have imagined feeling so at home in this strange, crowded space, but right now this is the only place I feel relaxed and happy. Frank is always thrilled with my progress, and he talks to me like I'm an equal, the way Jeanette talks to me when she's not trying to save me from my parents.

I have to say, though, that Jeanette didn't stay condescending for long. She's stopped asking for the phone when I'm talking to my mom, and we don't discuss my home life anymore. As for Mom, I've tried to smooth things out between us, but I think she still wonders if I secretly hate her.

“I think I've almost got the song nailed,” I tell Frank. “I mean, I know it's probably not very tough, but when you first showed it to me, I thought I could never do it.”

“Of course you can!” he says, getting up from his wooden lawn chair. “Come on. Let's get this show on the road.”

We settle around the canoe, and I'm about to open my case when he says, “Hey, before I forget, I went to the address you found in the envelope.”

“You did?”

“No news, I'm afraid,” he says. “The people there just moved in a few years ago, and the family before that was only there for a few years too. No one in the neighborhood seems to have been there for more than a few years.”

“You asked other people in the neighborhood too?”

“Of course,” Frank says. “That's what a good sleuth has got to do, right?”

I nod. “I've done a bit of sleuthing too.” I tell him what I've learned about Andrés and Caterina's son, Facundo García.

Frank goes very still. “So now what?”

I shrug. “I wanted to look up the son on the Internet, but I ran out of time at the library on Saturday, and I haven't been back since.” I don't add that Jeanette seems to be keeping me away from the library—and email—whenever she can. She stops short of forbidding me to go on my own or with Sarah, at least. After our conversation about Mom's message, Jeanette and I were silent for a long time, but it's impossible to stay mad at Jeanette for long. By suppertime, we were teasing each other and laughing again, and before going to bed, she came to my room to apologize for meddling. We've been spending all our time together ever since, hiking, cherry-picking or going to the lake for a swim. This morning I had thoughts of going to the library, but she invented some desperate need to find a set of electric massaging slippers that she knew were in the basement somewhere, and she made lunch so late that I had to rush to my lesson.

What she doesn't know is that I'm not interested in emailing Mom anyway. Our last few conversations have left me completely exhausted, and afterward I go to bed only to stare at the ceiling. At about midnight the night after my fight with Jeanette, I pulled out the book on mental health and started reading. The common warning signs of mental illness looked uncomfortably familiar: sleeplessness, changes in appetite, extreme highs and lows, irritability, negative thoughts, excessive worries and anxieties.

And then I found this:

Researchers believe that, in most cases, genetics
and environmental factors, such as stress, play a
role in mental illness. The sooner one recognizes
the warning signs, the better. It's never too early or
too late to seek professional help.

I slammed the book shut, shoved it under my bed, snapped off the light and smacked my head down on my pillow. No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, though, sleep wouldn't come.

And my thoughts wouldn't go away.

Nothing I've done has been enough. Listening to my parents' problems. Thinking up ways to make their lives easier. Getting good grades. Trying to be the perfect daughter. What difference has it made? They're still miserable.

Part of me knows Jeanette's right about Mom's mental health, and I'm starting to feel like an idiot for not seeing it before. All my talk of supporting my family, and I didn't even know my own mother was sick. The next day we had another shift at the soup kitchen, and that freaked me out even more. If Mom can develop mental-health issues without me even noticing or being able to help, how far is she from turning into Diane, who hears God's voice, or George, who is convinced that we spit in his sandwich before handing it to him? How will I know when she's at the breaking point?

“Do you want to search here?” Frank asks. “After the lesson, I mean. I've got a computer.”

For a moment I don't know what he's talking about, and then I remember that we'd been talking about Facundo García, the guy who had no idea who his real parents were. I nod, and Frank smiles.