Tell Me Something Real (16 page)

“You're scandalous,” I say.

“You only wish you were.”

She must have read the pain on my face.

“You didn't see the mail?”

I shake my head.

“Kitchen table.”

A postcard rests atop a precarious stack of bills, growing taller by the day. My fingers smudge the glossy photo of a sandpiper, with long, slender legs and beak. I trace the script at the bottom, the Sandpiper Inn's name and address.

Hey Vanessa,

We're getting ready to leave for Seattle. My mom bought some camping gear and we'll stop in the Redwoods on the way. I promise I'll call as soon as we're home. I think about you all the time and I'm sorry I'm not there. I don't know what to say about your mom. My mom says I need to give you time. Everything is so out of
control and surreal. We're going back to the clinic one last time to pick up some stuff, and I can't imagine being there without you. My mom doesn't want me to call right now. I promise I will when I can.

Love,

Caleb

Adrienne allows me to read it twice before speaking. “Bossy Barb is just getting in the way. I knew he would never leave you like that.”

I scan the card again. “I really thought he had. He doesn't say anything about coming back. I don't know when I'll see him again.” I look up. “What if he doesn't come back?”

“He said he'll call. Waiting sucks, but you're going to have to. Want to go to the beach with us?” She wears a batik dress that Mom gave her just a few weeks ago and fingers one of the many tassels adorning the hem. She hasn't seen Zach since Dad told us about Mom, and I know an afternoon at the beach will bring Adrienne as much comfort as Caleb would bring me.

“That's okay. I'll stay here and get stuff ready for dinner. Dad's picking up Marie?”

She nods and before I can respond, she grabs me in a tight hug. A sudden movement, surprising in its certainty. “I'll be back by dinner. I'll clean up. Don't worry about the dishes.”

I hug her back. “They're just dishes. Go. It's fine. Really.”

“Thanks,” she whispers.

Right before she leaves the room, she turns around and gives me a leveling look. I swear she knows I'm losing my mind, going on dream-induced wild goose chases.

“He's not gone forever. You know that, right? You'll see him again.”

I look at the overflowing trash can and overturned cereal box before finally meeting her eyes.

“We thought we'd see Mom again too.”

There's no comforting Marie, so after dinner, Adrienne and I take her to the only place we can think of: church. Dad is gone again, taking care of Mom, he says. But when I ask him questions, when I push for details about the hospice, he's vague and preoccupied.

We walk into the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception and take a seat in the back pew. Marie pulls out her pocket book of saints and flips through the dog-eared pages, pausing to read the ones with turned corners, her new favorites: Joan of Arc, Saint Ursula, Saint Barbara, and Saint Catherine. Young, innocent girls. Pure in the faith that pain was the cost of truth. I notice that Marie doesn't look at the sculpted Jesus hanging on the enormous wooden cross, but she does cross herself on multiple occasions. She pulls a saint card from the book, the Blessed Virgin Mary named in gilded script, and flips it over to
pray the rosary. In her other hand, she fingers the beads.

I wish something would bring me the same peace.

Adrienne rests against me as Marie immerses herself in makeshift worship. She prays so hard that I expect her to speak in tongues.

I appreciate the sanctuary's quiet darkness in my own way, not stirred by the idea of anything holy, but accepting the fact that I may never get to say good-bye. I won't sit next to Mom, holding her hand, when she dies. I didn't realize it before, but that's what I expected—to be together until the very end.

The votive candles flicker, each one aflame in memory and prayer. I can't bring myself to light one for Mom. Not now. Not until I know she is truly gone.

All of the shock from visiting the hospice shakes loose. It's still there, but I don't wear it like a second skin. I trade it in for determination.

I need to know what happened at the clinic and what drove Barb and Caleb from the house. I don't need time. I don't need space. I need answers, and if I can't get them from Mom, I'll get them from Barb. There is more to the story, more than Mom vanishing so suddenly, and Barb was the one who talked to the doctors. Maybe they haven't left yet. Maybe I'll catch them before they head north.

The bus is full, but I squeeze on, my backpack padding me like a football player. I'm surrounded by accents:
the familiar Spanish and Vietnamese, the less-familiar Mandarin, and something Eastern European, a language I can't identify. Flanked by bodies, I keep my eyes on the floor to ease my sudden case of claustrophobia. Two stops past downtown, the crowd thins out and I slide into an empty seat and try to stop shaking.

The man sitting next to me shifts his heavy body. I glance his way and note his old age, something Mom will never reach. He clutches several sheer plastic grocery bags filled with fruit and non-perishables. He mutters to himself in what I guess is Russian or Czech, a Cold War dialect, a language from an action movie. I try not to stare at his thick facial features, his bushy sideburns and eyebrows that blend together like a lion's mane.

By the time I reach the stop, the bus has emptied of most of its passengers. I wander down the sidewalk, looking up, searching for the Sandpiper Inn. The lobby is just as I imagined. Beach art and a giant mermaid mural. I drop my backpack and smile at the man, his face like weathered driftwood, standing behind the counter like he's never been anyplace else.

I ask for Barb, spelling D-U-N-N-E.

He runs his finger back and forth across the page, touching each name as though they are written in braille. “Here she is. Checked out yesterday. See?”

He flips around the registry and I recognize her handwriting immediately, only instead of recipes and grocery lists, she wrote their address.

My mind skips back to Caleb's pictures, the house I remember from his Polaroids. Dove gray paint. Giant porch. A magical-sounding neighborhood: Queen Anne. “Do you have a phone number?”

He flips the page. “Afraid not. I was going to mail this, but do you think you can return it when you see them again?”

He places a book in my hand, a well-loved paperback. Jack Kerouac's collected poems. I hug it to my chest. “Yes,” I say. “Thanks for your help.”

This time, I ignore the others on the bus, too caught up in his notes. In the margin of “Bowery Blues,” he wrote,
Vanessa gets it.

He filled every page with me, the skateboard, and the beach. I look out the bus window, shielding my face from the other passengers, wanting to keep my tears to myself.

In the back of the book, just below Kerouac's brief biography, Caleb's handwriting fills the page, his penmanship much smaller, like he was writing a secret.

VANESSA BY JACK KEROUAC

“We agreed to love each other madly.”
—On the Road

“Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it.

‘I love, love' she said, closing her eyes. . . . Our stories were
told, we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that.”
—On the Road

“ ‘It'll take you eternities to get rid of me,' she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I'll never get rid of her—I wanta be chased till eternity till I catch her.”
—Big Sur

The ink bled through the paper, which was thin and cheap, barely stronger than newsprint. I read the quotations again, stopping at the words “love” and “eternity” before turning the page. The title sears like a branding iron, deep and burning, words that never can heal.

IRIS BY JACK KEROUAC

“You have absolutely no regard for anybody but yourself and your damned kicks.”
—On the Road

“. . . with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.”
—On the Road

“. . . there was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.”
—On the Road

My eyes scan the lines, taking in each horrible phrase. How could he think these things about Mom?

I feel cold, the same chill as when I saw Mom get an IV, and overwhelmed with a combination of confusion and surprise and sadness and fury. My heart fills with a sense of deep betrayal, only I don't know the source: Mom or Caleb?

I can't bring myself to read the pages again. I slam the book shut.

Still, I clutch it in my hands, unable to tuck it away, unable to let it go.

I expect to walk into an empty house. Adrienne took Marie to her final summer game. Soccer camp turned out to be a bust with Marie, listless from grief, oblivious to competition. She didn't care about the ball, a shock to the coach, given Marie's status as a star goalie. She spent practices and games with her hand in her pocket, worrying her hidden rosary, tiny stainless-steel beads. She couldn't bring herself to care about the ball, which whizzed past her, caught in the billowing net. Her coach reassigned her to defense, where she could do little damage to the score.

Dad stands in the doorway, jingling his keys, his nervous habit. He seems both surprised and relieved when he sees me. I didn't think it was possible, but his eyes look more bloodshot than mine.

“She's dead,” I say, a question masked as a statement.

He closes his eyes for a moment as though he's in pain or trying to remember something.

“Dad?”

His eyes pop open, and for the first time since I walked through the door, I feel like he's really looking at me. I watch as he takes in my face.

He shakes his head back and forth, slowly, like a shark. “No, kiddo. She's not. I haven't eaten all day. How about you?”

“Not really. Just cereal.”

“Come on. You won't need that.” He points to my backpack.

“I want to bring it.” I'm not sure I'll show him the book, but I can't imagine leaving it unattended.

We drive to the boardwalk, parking as the sun slips into the water. When I join him on the sidewalk, he points to the enormous moon filling the sky. It's gorgeous, but my eyes return to him. Moments like this sustained me when I was little. Dad would take me aside and point out something as though he and I were the only people on Earth who could see it. A lunar eclipse. A procession of tall ships sailing the bay. The hummingbird that occasionally visits our mimosa tree. But tonight as I stand next to him, all I see are the other people strolling past. I wonder who else is suffering a loss. It used to be so easy thinking that I was the only one hurting. Now I realize how we all carry pain, how our lives can be turned inside out in an instant—a diagnosis, a break-up, a death.