Please, Please, Please (11 page)

“Don’t run,” Mom said automatically. I slowed down and walked up the steps.

I heard Mom grab her keys, I don’t know where from. “CJ! I only have a minute!”

I was standing at the top of the stairs not knowing what to do. If I did nothing, I was afraid she’d look around again, find the phone, and Aunt Betsy would tell. I had to think fast. Only one thing occurred to me as a possible stalling tactic—I had to throw myself down the steps.

Paul and I used to do it all the time, just roll down the steps—pretending we were stuntmen. I was smaller then, though, and I hadn’t spent so much time learning to be careful not to hurt myself. The past few years I’ve learned to hold onto banisters, avoid loose steps, not jump across puddles. I take the long way around. I never run; you could twist an ankle and be out for weeks. If you’re going to dance, you have to protect your body.

I stood up at the top of the stairs and imagined heaving myself down, headfirst. I tried to, then grabbed the banister before I fell.
If I twist an ankle
, I told myself,
I’ll get out of dance!
Of course, no way she’ll let me go apple picking or play soccer if I’m hobbling around on crutches anyway. Oh, what to do? I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think fast.
Don’t think
, I told myself,
just fall
. I counted to three and tried again, but my body wouldn’t let me.

“CJ! Did you find it?”

I was left with only the most desperate tactic in the world—the be stupid stall. “Find what?”

“The phone! Oh! Here it is!”

I ran down the stairs. “Don’t run,” Mom mumbled, setting the phone on the charger. “We don’t need you getting hurt, with
Nutcracker
auditions coming up.”

“Sorry.”

Mom pulled her glasses out of her pocketbook, stuck them on top of her head, and gave a kiss to Paul, who pulled away, looking at Zoe.

I heard myself ask, “You’re not calling Aunt Betsy?”

“I’m late. If she calls, tell her I just had to run out for a while and I’ll try to get her before dinner, OK?”

“OK.”

She kissed my forehead and then Zoe’s. Zoe looked a little surprised. She said, “Thanks!”

Mom backed through the door, thanking Zoe for the cookies and for taking such good care of Paul.

Zoe waved her hand like it was nothing, and the three of us watched out the window as Mom sprinted to her car.

Zoe turned to me and said, “Close call.”

“What?” Paul asked.

Zoe and I looked at each other and started to laugh. “Hey, Paul?” Zoe asked. “Want to have a catch?”

“Yeah,” he said.

I ate another cookie and prayed for the people my mom was with to have a lot, lot of questions.

sixteen

I
could tell Dad had stopped paying attention. He was still alternating saying
uh-huh and shaking his head when Mom paused, but like a half-second too late. Paul and I looked at each other. We knew Dad was in for it.

“So the whole deal is going to fall through,” Mom said, spearing a piece of chicken savagely with her fork.

Dad shook his head. He was staring past her, toward the sprinkler over in his vegetable garden. I was a little more relaxed than I’d been so far in the weekend because my family has a Family Night rule for Sunday nights—no phone calls after five. I was safe for the night.

“I mean,” Mom continued with her mouth full. “I can’t believe I spent the entire day there. I think a lien on the house is something you ought to mention to the real estate agent at some point, don’t you think?”

This time Dad forgot to say uh-huh, so Mom looked at me and Paul. We both nodded seriously, as if we had any clue what she was saying. But we both know when Mom starts talking with her mouth full, you just shut up and agree.

“Unbelievable! So now after all this work, I mean, how many people did I march through that house? How many times can I possibly point out the fabulous possibilities of that cruddy waterlogged basement?”

“Mmm,” Dad said, helping himself to more peas.

Mom opened her mouth and touched her side upper teeth with her tongue, staring at Dad.

“Uh-oh,” I whispered to Paul. He smiled a little at me. He loves when I pay attention to him, which I should, more. Zoe had, and he’s practically ready to hang posters of her in his room.

“So then I bought a pig,” Mom said. “And painted the kitchen purple. Don’t you agree?”

“Definitely,” Dad said, nodding and turning to look at her. When he saw the look on her face, he knew he was caught. “What?” he asked innocently.

Mom slammed down her silverware, grabbed the bowl of peas, and marched off into the house.

“Did she say something about a pig?” Dad asked me and Paul.

We nodded.

“Oh, no.” Dad slapped himself on the forehead. “I just, the vegetables, the sprinklers were . . .” His mustache bounced up and down as he talked, so only his bottom teeth showed.

“Mmm-hmm,” I said.

“Don’t you start, too.”

Mom stomped back out to the deck and grabbed our plates. Paul, the slowest eater in America, hadn’t finished his rice or chicken, but he didn’t say anything. He just grabbed his drumstick as his plate was moving away from him and scrunched down in his chair to nibble on it.

“As if I . . . forget it,” Mom grumbled and stormed back inside.

“Dad?” I asked, picking up his plate gently. “It’s just one dance class, and this is the only trip . . .”

“Oh, no,” Dad said, taking his plate away from me. “I’m already in enough trouble. You talk to your mother.”

Dad followed Mom in and closed the sliding door. I looked glumly at Paul, about to explain to him about soccer and dance and the apple-picking trip, because, well, Zoe gets help with her problems from her four older sisters. Even though he’s only eight, I was thinking maybe he could be a friend to me. “I really want to go on this trip,” I told him. “I hate ballet.”

“So do I.”

“You do?”

“Nobody pays any attention to me. Except Zoe. I wish you’d quit.”

“I’m trying,” I whispered. “Don’t say anything.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on,” he said. “Want to have a catch?”

“No,” I said, picking up the glasses. It’s stupid to think a younger brother could understand.

I closed the sliding door with my foot while Paul complained, “Won’t anybody have a catch with me? I’ve been waiting all day! I wish Zoe were my sister.”

“Everything is not about you, Paul,” I yelled back. He didn’t answer, so then I felt bad. He had been waiting all day. “I’ll play with you later, OK?”

By the time I got to the kitchen door, Mom was slamming plates into the sink. “Wait around all day for you,” she was saying, narrowing her eyes at my father. I pressed myself against the living room wall so she wouldn’t see me. “And what do you do, golf? All day? How important is that? Paul’s been holding that football since ten this morning. So we can’t go apple picking, even though it’s so important to her, so I tell them I can fill in for work, and then when I try to tell you the biggest deal this month is falling apart, you, what were you staring at anyway?”

“The sprinkler,” Dad muttered.

“The sprinkler?” Mom was even more furious. “The sprinkler?”

“It looked stuck,” Dad said.

“The sprinkler. Unbelievable. At least have the intelligence to lie!”

“You want me to lie?” Dad asked. I waited to hear the answer.

“Some huge thing at work?” Mom suggested. “Or how about, you were feeling guilty about ruining your whole family’s weekend? The sprinkler?”

“I didn’t want to overwater,” Dad said. I peeked around the corner. He was standing behind Mom, putting his arms around her waist while she squeezed soap into the sink. She elbowed him. “Ow!” he said, and she cracked a little smile.

When he pushed her out of the way to take over washing the dishes, I knew it was safe to go in. I placed the glasses carefully on the counter next to Mom, who was sitting up there like we’re not allowed to.

“Mom?”

She looked at me like,
Now what?
I started thinking,
Well, maybe just forget it
. My throat was a little scratchy anyway, maybe I should just stay home sick tomorrow, miss the trip, miss dance class, miss everything in my whole life. But no—you have to be practically dying in my family. She sent Paul to school with chicken pox as soon as they crusted last year. Besides, what about soccer? At some point, she was going to have to be told all this stuff, and the perfect opportunity kept not coming.

“What, CJ?”

Paul wandered in from outside and left the sliding door open.

“I was thinking about the apple-picking trip,” I said slowly.

Mom looked up at the corner of the ceiling like that was the only spot in the world that understood what she goes through. “You made a commitment, CJ!”

I felt my jaw jut out over my front teeth. “But,” I whispered. “I just, I thought, it’s the only time . . .”

“CJ, I’m not arguing with you,” she said, jumping down off the counter and stalking through the kitchen and living room. “Besides, you already made the arrangements for in-school study.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” I yelled. “Don’t you even trust me?”

“Of course I do.”

“You don’t act it,” I mumbled, down to the kitchen floor.

Mom slapped her legs. “CJ, don’t make me feel like I’m forcing you into this.”

“Sorry.”

She slammed the sliding glass door shut and stepped back over Paul, who was sprawled across the living room floor, watching a very loud football game. “You know how we feel about breaking commitments, CJ,” Mom said as she came toward me. “If you’d grown up on a farm, you’d know there’s no such thing as you don’t feel like it. The cows need to be milked every day, no matter what.” She looked me right in the eyes, and I realized she’s not so much taller than I am anymore.

“I know,” I said, pushing my arch by pressing the top of my foot against the wood of the kitchen floor. “But, Dad?”

Dad lifted his wet hands out of the sink, like he was surrendering. “Uh-uh,” he said. “I was listening. I was paying attention. I agreed with Mom. The cows need to be milked every day, and so do you.”

I stared down at my bare feet, covered in calluses, my long, narrow feet pointing away from each other, in perfect second position without my even thinking about it. My turn-out has definitely been improving, maybe as good as Morgan’s now, if not better. Leaving the kitchen, I glanced up at the cow-shaped kitchen clock. Thirteen hours.

seventeen

S
he told me how proud she is of
me as she kissed me good night and said, “It’s really hard sometimes, huh?”

I nodded and rolled over, away from my mother, to face the wall. She caressed my hair back from my forehead like I love. How can she be so understanding and still not understand me?
Rain
, I prayed.
If it rains tomorrow, they’ll have to cancel the trip, and I won’t have to deal with this until the next day, for soccer practice
.

She leaned over to kiss my forehead, then pulled up my quilt and walked across my room. I flipped to watch her. My old stuffed animals were all lined up on the top shelf in a neat row the way she likes, except History. He had slumped over onto Curious George. She picked up History and fluffed him, then sat him up in a cute pose with his front paws between his back ones.

“I love you,” she said, flipping off my light. She closed my door just the right amount.

I stared at History and prayed for rain. A few minutes went by. I whispered “I love you” because I got scared maybe it would be bad luck not to; I say it every night. I could hear Mom’s and Dad’s voices downstairs but not their words, and when they laughed, I felt like they were laughing at me. It’s not funny! I wanted to yell. I got angrier and angrier. Minutes ticked by on my clock. I looked up at History. He was still sitting there in his cute pose with his front paws between his back ones. I used to carry him around all the time. Mom named him Doggie, but I said no, his name is History.

Well, that’s the story my parents tell, anyway. They thought that was so cute, they even called my grandma Nelly, which Mom never does, to tell her. I remember vaguely being on the phone telling her, “My new dog’s name is History,” or maybe I only remember the story. My parents like to tell the same story over and over again, like how my mom grew up on a dairy farm, doing thick-booted chores in poop and milk drippings before dawn, fantasizing, while she mucked, of escaping to dance like a swan in the spotlight at Lincoln Center and then three days after her seventeenth birthday, instead of buying a dozen eggs and a jar of apple butter, she kept walking and used her grocery money plus what she’d hoarded over the years for a bus ticket. It’s sort of like praying—you just say the words again and again and it’s this thing you do.
God bless Mommy and Daddy and Paul and me
, so if you add
Please make it rain
, the “please make it rain” part is the only part that feels like asking for something—the rest is just what you say as you close your eyes.

I don’t even know what’s true and what’s just the words. I kind of doubt a two-and-a-half-year-old would come up with the name History for her stuffed animal, especially me, who had such trouble talking anyway. In fact, they said I hardly talked at all before I was three—the quietest, sweetest little girl ever, goes that story. So no way did I come up with that name myself.

I sat up and punched my pillow, totally furious that they’ve deceived me all these years. How can I learn to be honest in a family like this? Mom even told Dad tonight that he should lie. What are they trying to teach us?

I looked up at History in his cute pose. It felt like he’s not even mine, like he’s a spy in my room, and I don’t even know what I would really want to call him. I stomped over to my shelves even though I wasn’t supposed to be out of my bed and shoved him over. He slumped onto Curious George again.

I got back in bed and squeezed my eyes shut.