The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky (15 page)

“Auggie!” Chuck shouts. As he stares at me, standing there with my suitcase, he begins to look like the kind of uptight preacher who would get after me for anything—not like someone who ran off with my mom, with the half-baked notion of changing the world.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. I know I haven't quite crossed over the city limits yet, but I feel a little like we're at the absolute end of the universe.

“Irma Jean came looking for me. She told me she gave you bus fare, but she got so worried, she asked me to come track you down. I've been driving to every single bus stop I could think of trying to find you.” He's so relieved, he's actually panting. “Irma Jean wouldn't tell me what you were doing. Get in the car, Auggie. Tell me what this is about.”

“You can't stop me,” I tell him. “I'm going to get my mom. You know her better than anyone around here, except for maybe Gus. You told me yourself how brave she is.”

“You think your mother's going to fix this mess?” he asks. His face softens, darkens when he repeats, “Your mother.”

“
She's
in California, so I'm going to California. She stood up to some dumb old snake, and she can stand up to that committee.”

“This has gone too far,” he mutters. “Come on. You want to see her? I'll take you to see her.”

He slips the suitcase from my hand and puts me in his car. We drive down a narrow dirt street, snaking sideways so that the city limits sign remains behind us, but we don't ever leave town. We sort of straddle the line, one set of tires in Willow Grove, the other set outside, as we go farther and farther down the road.

“Chuck?” I ask, my blood speeding like a race car though my ears. “Where—where is she? Have you always known?”

By the time he finally stops, the whole world is trying to get dark. Kind of like the earth is so tired, her eyes are drooping shut.

“She was going to come back,” Chuck says. He cuts the engine, but his headlights still wash over an old wrought-iron gate.

“Chuck?” I croak again, my heart throbbing like a finger that's been smashed in a door. “Chuck?” This can't be right. It can't. Because he didn't stop at a house. We're at the opposite of a house. We're at a cemetery. Mom can't be here. She can't.

“She was going to come back,” he repeats, opening his car door and stepping outside.

“Back?” I repeat, stepping out, too. The wind's picked up a little, and it starts pulling my braids around and pushing Chuck's black coat back from his sides.

“We left together,” he says, eyes on the sky as he takes a couple of steps toward the gate.

“Off to change the world,” I say, my voice thick with fear. For some reason—maybe because I'm ready to leave this place—I drag my suitcase out with me. Its weight tugs so hard against my body that it feels like a rock dragging me underwater.

“No, we'd come back from that adventure. Not that it was really that much of an adventure. This trip—when we left for California—this was later. You had just been born.”

“You were with her when I was born?” My voice cracks as I ask, “Are you—are—”

Chuck looks at me with shock. I figure he can see my hope floating around inside me, the same way you can see minnows swirling just under the surface of a lake. “I'm not your dad, Auggie.”

“Then who—who—Gus would never say—who—”

“Don't think Gus ever really knew what to tell you, Auggie. Your dad was somebody who passed through town and then left, quick as he came. Even your mom never really said much about him. People used to think it was me. Maybe they still think it's me. I wish I was, Aug. More than anything. But I'm not.

“Having you, it changed her,” Chuck says. “She wanted so much to be better. For you. After she had you, she was prettier than ever. More mature looking, I guess. She had started to get decent work close to home—modeling work—like that billboard she did for the dress shop. And she thought if she went to California, she'd get even more work. Better-paying work. Doing something big. As a real model. We all agreed that she should go.

“You were a baby, though, so she hesitated. Even though she wanted to go so badly. It was so obvious. Her mouth practically watered over the idea of California. As brave as she was, she wasn't sure, because of you.

“We'd already had so many adventures together, I thought, ‘Why not one more?' So I said I'd go with her. All the way to California. Made it to the coast because this time we did have a plan: I'd get some crummy job, support us so she could spend all her time chasing her dream. We couldn't take you, though, because we wouldn't have time, not for a little baby. So we left you with Gus. He said he'd take care of you. And I'd take care of your mom. Just until she got started. When she had her own steady work, her own money, she'd come back for you.”

“She gave me Gus's name because she needed to dump me,” I challenge. “She needed to make sure Gus would take me.”

“She wanted to tell Gus she was sorry for all those wild times,” Chuck corrects me. “She wanted to show him that she loved him. Gus taking care of you was supposed to be temporary.”

“Gus never told me this.”

“He wanted to,” Chuck says, taking a step toward the cemetery gate.

No, no, this can't be right.
No
, I think.
No
.

“She got work. Like we all thought she would. In California. Things were going so well. She had enough money to find a real nice place of her own. She wanted me to stay in California, quit my crummy job, and take care of you. Said she'd pay me to look after you.”

I keep staring, my throat dry and my chest heaving as though all the air in the world isn't enough.

“She would have come back,” Chuck says, still edging closer to the gate.

“Why—why didn't she?” I ask, but I know. Because of where we are. I already know.

“She got this job—catalog work—and she had to fly out for the shoot. Once the shoot was finished, she was going to come get you. Bring you out to California. I was busy moving her things into her new place. Setting up a room for you. But the plane—a private plane—they loaded it with too much stuff for the shoot. It was too heavy. The plane—just—it crashed.”

I'm shaking. The suitcase slips from my fingers, hits the ground, pops open.

“But you had a plan,” I say dumbly, snatching at anything I can to try to make this story untrue.

“We had a plan,” Chuck agrees. “Not like the time we set out to change the world. It was a good plan. It was working. Her plan got snatched out from under her.

“I brought her ashes back,” Chuck says. “Gus was so torn up, he couldn't deal with a big funeral. Could hardly deal with losing her right when she'd really started to get herself together. It was too much. So we scattered her ashes here. The two of us. On the line between leaving and not leaving. Because that was kind of where she lived, you know? Between wanting to go and wanting to come back to you. She didn't give you up, Aug.”

“Why would Gus let me believe she was still alive?”

“Because you—when you were real little, you'd point to your mom's billboard, and Gus would say, ‘That's your mom.' And it would happen more and more: you pointing to your mom, and Gus saying, ‘That's her, shining up there like a star in the sky.'”

“Shining,” I repeat.

“His tale started growing,” Chuck goes on, “taking on a life of its own. Anytime somebody would hint at the truth of where your mom was, he'd pull them aside and tell them, ‘Not yet. She doesn't know yet.' After a while, you know, it was like we needed to believe she was still alive, just like you did. Everybody in Serendipity Place. And me, too.

“The story was for us, Auggie, as much as it was for you. When any of us talked about her like she was still alive, then our bright shining star hadn't fallen. We needed her to be real. We needed to think that somebody from the old neighborhood really was out there shining like a star.”

A lonely tear trails down my cheek.

“My life changed the day I helped Gus scatter her ashes,” Chuck admits. “Maybe, I thought, I could help other people who were straddling some line. Help them make a decision that would change the course of their lives. That was the day I decided to walk inside Hopewell. The day I decided to become a minister.”

“But I write to her,” I continue to protest. “I send her things. She sends me things back. That's proof that she's still alive. I don't care what you say.”

“You need proof?” Chuck asks. His voice is soft, but his words are something you'd say to a person who'd accused you of lying.

Not lying,
I want to tell Chuck.
Just mistaken. You've made a huge mistake. About all of it. She can't be gone. Not now.

“Gus has your proof,” Chuck says. He scoops my spilled clothes into my suitcase and tosses my things back into his car. Chuck pulls a cell phone from his pocket and calls Gus. He tells him we're on our way. He tells him I need to see the closet.

“The front hall closet?” I ask. “The closet Gus keeps locked?”

Chuck eyes me sideways, and we retrace the path I took across town. The longer the quiet drive stretches on, the tighter my skin feels.

When we get to my house, Gus races to Chuck's car and throws open the door, relief washing down his face like a waterfall.

“Is it true?” I ask him.

“True?” he asks, looking past me, at Chuck.

“It was time, Gus,” Chuck tells him.

“The closet,” I say, pushing past Gus and heading up the walk. “Unlock the closet, Gus!”

He shakes his head, but the look he gives me is one of utter defeat. He walks inside; I feel like the whole world is beating a million different drums, all to the exact same beat. And the key is in his hand. And he's opening the closet door. And everything inside is tumbling onto the hall floor. Envelopes fall like snowflakes. A few brown paper packages fall, too. I reach down, touch the edge of an envelope. It says, “Mom,” in my writing. Every letter I've ever written. Every present I ever tried to send.

“You bought me all those gifts, didn't you?” I ask Gus, squatting down onto my knees. “Those presents on Christmas and for my birthday. They're all from you.”

I put my head in my hands, my tears tumbling down my cheeks as quickly and sloppily as my letters had tumbled from the closet.

Gus wipes his eyes and speaks softly. “I didn't mean—I just—you were stuck with me. An old man. 'Cause even your grandmother was gone at that point. It was a joy to me. It was like getting a second chance—getting another little girl, a little sister to my first. But I thought I needed to give you something else, Auggie.”

I shake my head. A couple of tears drip down onto a brown paper package. “You didn't,” I say, edging myself closer to him. “I just always wondered why she wouldn't come home. I don't need anything else other than you,” I say, hugging him so tight that his whiskers turn to sandpaper on my cheek.

“What are we going to do now?” I wonder out loud. I finally pull my arms away from Gus's neck. “I don't have a single plan—not even a bad one. I really thought Mom would help us.”

“But, Auggie,” Gus says, “you just said yourself that you didn't need anything else other than what we've got here.”

“This whole time, Auggie,” Chuck insists, “You've been staring down that committee. Making everyone in Serendipity Place keep going, keep working on their houses. Wanting the committee to see this neighborhood in a new way. Seems to me, you've been telling that committee something, too, same as your mom told that old snake.”

Gus wants to toss out the items that have fallen from the closet onto the hall floor. “Don't know why I kept them all this time, anyway,” he mutters. “Guess maybe part of me was hoping that somehow, you'd break into the closet. Find all those things and know. Now—”

But I stop him. “No way, Gus,” I say. “I've got the perfect idea.”

When we're done, Gus drives us back out to the cemetery—the one on the city limits. We carry our latest creation to the borderline—the line between staying and going. Because Gus has already gotten permission, the two of us pierce the ground right where Chuck says he and Gus spread Mom's ashes. We plant a sign, made out of the metal from the trinket boxes and the compacts and the backs of mirrors and the earrings and all the other little presents I thought I'd sent Mom.

Our sign looks like a simple stake close to the ground but turns into a bunch of stars we've cut out and welded together—dark, pot metal stars. The star at the top, though, is a bright, shiny silver.
Brighter than any star in the sky or the ones on the silver screen.
Right in the middle, Gus has welded a section with Mom's name, along with her birthday and her last day—the two dates that say “Once upon a time,” and “The end.”

It feels so strange, finding Mom and losing her all at once. My whole life, the idea of Mom deciding to come back has given me something to always look forward to. It makes me feel a little off balance now that I don't have it.

“She'd be real proud of that, Auggie,” Gus says as he stares at the marker we've made for her. I can tell, from the way he squeezes my hand, that he's proud of it, too.

We're standing there looking at it when the Widow Hollis slowly inches her way into the cemetery, carrying a bouquet of flowers and one of those green plastic vases that can be put in the ground. She's headed toward her husband's old grave, I figure. But first, she comes to join us.

“What a beautiful sculpture,” she says.

My face brightens as her word screeches into my brain.

“What did you call it?” I ask.

“A sculpture,” the widow answers, like it's no big deal. “Just like all the other sculptures at your house.”

“Wait,” I say. “Sculptures?”

“Sure,” she says with a shrug. “That's what everyone calls them.”

“Everyone who?”

“Everyone in Serendipity Place. What have
you
been calling them?”

“Company,” I admit. “I never thought of them as sculptures.”

“Well, they are,” she insists. “Sculptures.”

I think about what a funny word that is to use for my company—they almost look like stick figures, some of them, especially the first few. And “stick figures” makes me think of kids' drawings. And that makes me think of Ms. Dillbeck's front hall. And a smiling T. Walker wandering through the maze of our figures way back at Thanksgiving.

With no warning, a new plan comes screeching right into my brain and
honks
. My entire body tingles.

“Little Sister,” Gus says. “That's about the biggest smile you've ever worn.”

“You bet it is,” I say. “Because I just figured out how to stare down our snake for
good
.”