The Moment Keeper (7 page)

“Trick or treat,” the girls say.

“What do we have here?” the lady says.

“I’m a cat,” Olivia says. “See?” And she turns in a circle to show her long black tail.

“And I’m a cheerleader,” Emma says. She shakes her blue and white pom-poms.

“You’re a very pretty cat,” the lady says, “and you’re a very pretty cheerleader.” She puts a chocolate bar in each of their plastic Halloween bags.

Olivia’s dad waits on the sidewalk as the eight-year-olds go from house to house. Olivia’s neighborhood is the type of neighborhood I would have loved to have gone trick or treating in when I was her age. She gets full-size candy bars at nearly every house. One couple even fires up the grill and gives away hot dogs and orange drinks to kids and parents.

In the apartment complex where Grandma and I lived, most people gave out lollipops or Smarties. Chocolate was a real treat. And when you got it, it was the miniature candy bars, never the full-size ones.

Olivia and Emma skip up the sidewalk to the next house. As they approach the porch they see three older boys standing in front of a bench with a big black plastic cauldron filled with giant Reese’s peanut butter cups. One boy is dressed as a pirate, one as a ninja and the other is wearing a scary mask that looks as if it got caught in a meat slicer. With its cuts and gashes and blood, it’s the scariest mask Olivia and Emma have ever seen.

Olivia sees the sign taped to the candy bowl. It says: Take one, please.

“Look at all that candy,” Scary Mask says. “We could take it all. They’d never know.”

Olivia and Emma look at each other. Olivia swallows hard. “No, that’s wrong.”

Scary Mask turns around. “Says who?”

Olivia steps forward a little bit more and looks Scary Mask straight in the eye holes. “Says me.”

“You’re gonna let some girl tell you what to do?” Pirate Boy says.

Scary Mask doesn’t say anything and Olivia hasn’t stopped staring him down.

“Everything all right, Lib?” Tom calls from the sidewalk.

The boys look toward Tom and then back at Olivia and Emma.

“Just take one for now,” Scary Mask says. “We can come back for the rest later.”

The boys grab one giant peanut butter cup and race to the next house.

“I could never be as brave as you,” Emma tells Olivia.

“Yes, you could,” Olivia says. “Daddy says to stand up for what’s right, even if that means
you’re standing alone. Taking all the candy wouldn’t have been right.”

Emma’s right. Olivia is brave for an eight-year-old. It isn’t the first moment I’ve captured where she’s flexed her tiny muscles against a much bigger kid. There was the time an older girl butted in line at the golden carousel at the amusement park and Olivia made her go to the end of the line. And the time Kevin from gym class called Olivia’s friend Elf Ears because he had big ears that stuck straight out. Olivia told Kevin that at least Ryan would grow into his ears but that he would be stuck with his big mouth forever. Kevin didn’t like that too much, but no matter what comeback he had, Olivia always had a better one. Olivia was quick on her feet and always a champion for the underdog.

When I was Olivia’s age, I was more like Emma, quiet and a bit reserved. Definitely a follower. I might have wanted to stand up for what I thought was right or to defend myself, but I never had the courage to actually do it. There was this kid, Jeremy the Jerk, who teased me about my webbed toes. The two toes beside my big toe on each foot were connected. I was born this way. Grandma used to tell me it made me special. I never bothered to have them separated, even though Grandma said that if I wanted to she’d save up to have it done. But Jeremy the Jerk, who noticed them one day at the apartment pool, called me Duckie every chance he got.

“What’s wrong with your toes?” asked Jeremy, who was behind me in line for the diving board.

I curled my toes and turned my head. “Nothing.”

“I saw them. They’re stuck together. Like a duck’s.”

The boys behind him laughed, which egged Jeremy on and he turned up the teasing a notch.

“Quack! Quack! Quack!” he shouted, flapping his arms as if they were wings.

My face got pizza-oven hot and it wasn’t from the scorching sun. Tears pooled in my eyes and I tried to be brave and hold them back but I couldn’t. I decided that I didn’t want to go off the diving board anymore. Instead, I found Grandma and stayed on my beach towel – legs crossed Indian-style so I could hide my feet – until she was ready to go home.

I became good at hiding things I didn’t want other people to know. It’s one of the reasons no one knew I was pregnant – not even Grandma. Course, by then she was so sick it took all of her energy to get through the day.

“Were those boys giving you trouble, Libby?” Tom asks the girls as they join him at the end of the block before going on to the next street.

“They were going to take all of the candy but Libby stopped them,” Emma says.

“Did you know the boys?”

“The one sounded familiar, but he was hiding behind that scary mask so I’m not sure,” Olivia says. “But if I hear his voice again, without the mask, I’ll remember.”

Matt was like Scary Mask. I was terrified of him and what he could do if he wanted. After he agreed to let Grandma adopt me, I wasn’t as afraid.

“Matt, you smell like rotten garbage and look just as bad,” Grandma said one night when Matt stopped by while on one of his binges.

“Give me some money, old woman, and don’t worry about the smell.”

“I’m not giving you another dime. I’ve given you enough.”

I heard the yelling and scrambled out of bed and stood behind Grandma, clutching her robe.

Matt looks at me. “What about her? You gonna give her all your money?”

“I’ll make a deal with you, Matt. You give me Sarah. Sign those papers I gave you a while back and I’ll write you a check.”

“How much?”

“As much as I can afford. Maybe a thousand.”

“You really want her that bad?”

“Yes,” Grandma said. “I think Sarah would be better with me.”

He sliced the air with his hand. “You can have her.”

He looked at me. “That what you want?”

I nodded. It was the only time he had asked me what I wanted.

Matt turned and staggered to the door. “I’ll sign those damn papers as soon as I get home. A thousand sounds good.”

Chapter 13

Olivia walks into her bedroom and tosses her ballet bag on her bed. I see Oscar is dead before she does. I know the blue betta fish sleeps a lot, but he’s definitely not sleeping now. Olivia walks over to feed him.

“You sleep too much, Oscar,” she says.

She taps her finger on the side of the glass fish bowl but Oscar doesn’t respond. She picks up the bowl and jiggles it. Still, no movement.

“Mom,” Olivia yells. “Something’s wrong with Oscar.”

Elizabeth walks in carrying a basket of laundry. “Maybe he’s sleeping.”

“He won’t wake up when I tap the bowl, and he usually always wakes up when I tap.”

Elizabeth sets the wash basket down and walks over and taps on the bowl, too. She picks up the bowl to get a closer look. “I’m sorry, Libby. But I think Oscar’s dead.”

Olivia’s eyes turn glassy and her lips tremble as she tries to be a big girl and keep her eight-year-old self from crying. But she loses the battle and bursts into tears. “I killed him. It’s my fault. I’m a bad fish mommy.”

Elizabeth wraps her arms around the heaving Olivia. “It’s not your fault Oscar died, Libby. Fish don’t live forever.”

“Maybe I didn’t change his water enough or feed him enough.”

“It wasn’t either of those things. You couldn’t have been a better fish mommy. Fish get old and die. Just like people. It’s a part of the circle of life.”

“Will you and Daddy die?”

Elizabeth nods. “But hopefully not for a very long time.”

At eight, it’s Olivia’s first experience with death, and I know that the realization of not having her parents forever has hit her like an unexpected summer storm. She never saw the darkness that lurked behind that beautiful robin-egg sky. Just naturally took for granted that her parents would always be with her.

The first dead thing I ever saw was Matt. I had just turned thirteen.

I’ll never forget the morning Grandma got the call. I was still in bed and she flew into my room as if the apartment were on fire.

“Sarah,” Grandma said, shaking my shoulder. “You gotta get up. We gotta get to the hospital. Your dad’s been in an accident.”

Grandma rushed to her room to get dressed and I tumbled out of bed and threw on some sweats and a T-shirt.

By the time we got to the hospital, it was too late. Matt was dead. The police said he had been riding his motorcycle without a helmet and turned left in front of a truck. The trucker tried to swerve to miss Matt, but he couldn’t swerve fast enough. Matt slammed into the truck so hard that his bike slid under it.

Grandma cried. I didn’t shed one tear.

A nice lady at the hospital escorted Grandma and me to a quiet room at the end of a long hallway. It contained a blue vinyl sofa and a couple of matching chairs. She asked if Grandma needed anything or wanted her to stay until the doctor arrived, but Grandma told her to go but that she’d appreciate a box of tissues. The woman returned almost immediately and placed the tissues on the wooden coffee table.

I sat beside Grandma on the couch, resting my head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arm around me and pulled me close, kissing the top of my head.

“You OK?” Grandma asked.

“Yeah. Are you?”

“I just wish I could have helped your dad.”

“You tried,” I said.

“Maybe I should have tried harder.”

She sniffed. “I found the Cheerio.”

I sat up and looked at Grandma. “What are you talking about? What Cheerio?”

Grandma stared at the wall, as if she was trying to remember every detail of the story she wanted to share. “You were little. Just a baby, sitting in your high chair eating Cheerios one morning. Matt walked in and you said ‘Da. Da. Da.’ And you picked up a Cheerio and offered it to him. He didn’t think I was watching. But I was. He took the Cheerio and put it in his pocket. After I kicked him out, I found the Cheerio in his nightstand drawer, along with a photo of your mother.”

The door opened and the doctor walked in. She had brown hair tied back in a knot. She wore a white coat and a stethoscope circled her narrow neck. “I’m sorry. Your son’s internal injuries were substantial.”

“Anything worth saving for someone else?” Grandma asked.

The doctor nodded.

“Then make sure you take anything out that can help someone else. Maybe they’ll appreciate them. Take care of them. God knows Matt never did.”

Even through her black glasses, I saw the doctor’s eyebrows jump. “Uh. OK. We can do that. Would you like to see him?”

Grandma looked at me. I shook my head no. Grandma looked at the doctor. “Can she wait here?”

“Sure,” the doctor said. “Follow me.”

Grandma left and I sank back into the vinyl couch. I felt a little guilty because I didn’t cry and wasn’t sad that Matt was dead. I figured that as far as he was concerned, the only good thing about me was that he got a thousand bucks to spend on cheap vodka. In the end, I was nothing more than one of his poker chips that he cashed in when he was hard up for cash for booze. But I did wonder about the Cheerio. He didn’t seem like a Cheerio-keeping kind of
guy.

It seemed like it took forever until Grandma came back. When she did, she didn’t say much and I didn’t ask anything. I figured that if and when Grandma wanted to talk about it she would.

The last time I saw Matt he was lying in a cold silver coffin wearing the white shirt and black pants Grandma bought at the Goodwill store the day after he died. He looked old. I wondered what parts of his body they took out of him and if those who had received the parts knew they came from a drunken bastard.

There were just the flowers that Grandma bought for on top of the casket. Grandma placed a wedding photo of Matt and my mom beside him in the casket. A few of Grandma’s friends came, but that was it.

I kept thinking Matt would wake up. I didn’t want him to wake up. I felt horrible thinking that, but it meant I didn’t have to worry that he might change his mind and want me back. I didn’t have one good memory of Matt. Not one. There was no life to celebrate and remember, only joy that the drunken bastard was gone for good.

“Can we bury him in the backyard?” Olivia asks Elizabeth.

“Sure. Let me see if I can find a box.”

Elizabeth returns with a white jewelry box. “We can put him in here.”

Elizabeth scoops out Oscar and places him on top of the cotton lining. Olivia’s hand trembles as she puts on the lid.

“Will he go to Heaven?” asks Olivia, sniffling.

Elizabeth nods. “Of course he will. So don’t be sad. He’s in heaven having a great time with all of his other fish friends.”

“And people, too, right?”

“And people, too.”

I thought that when Matt died, he probably went straight to Hell and that my mom was probably sad that he wasn’t good enough to make it into Heaven.

We buried Matt beside my mom in the old, overgrown Lutheran cemetery on the edge of town. I had come to this cemetery many times with Grandma to place flowers on my mom’s grave. There was no stone on her grave until a few years ago. Grandma had an envelope that she saved money in over the years to pay for a grave marker. It wasn’t anything fancy. A few flowers etched in a small gray granite marker, but it was at least something.

My mom didn’t have any life insurance, so Grandma worked out a deal with the undertaker. There was a little insurance on Matt, enough to pay for the casket and some other things. But Grandma skipped the obituary in the paper. She thought it was one cost she could eliminate.
Maybe she figured the news story about the crash was enough to tell people he was dead. And, besides, most of the obituaries were filled with flowery stuff about how great the person was. There wasn’t anything even remotely great about Matt.

Olivia helps Elizabeth dig a hole beside the towering snowball bush in the corner of the yard. The shrub, with its big white snowball-like flower clusters, has always been Olivia’s favorite plant.