The Things We Keep (13 page)

As I weave my way to the manager's office, it occurs to me that it could be bad news. A death? An accident? One of the nephews? By the time Eric hands me the talking end of the phone, I'm fluttery in the chest. I hold it next to my ear, but it takes me a few seconds to remember to say something. “Um … hello?”

There's a deep throaty-noise, and then … “Anna?”

“Dad?”

There's a pause. “Anna, it's Jack.”

I feel a flash of humiliation. “I know. That's what I said.”

I fight the urge to slap myself in the head.
Dad? Seriously?
Did I think after a twenty-year absence, he'd just call up and say hi?

“How you doing?” he asks.

“What is it, Jack?” I sound snappy, I know, but after my embarrassing slip, I just want to get off the phone. “Did something happen?”

“No, it's about tomorrow. I have to take Brayden to Little League, so Helen is going to pick you up. Okay?”

I have no idea what he's talking about, but the pause goes on and on, so I figure he's waiting for me to say something. So I say, “Okay.”

“I'm really looking forward to seeing you.”

“Yep,” I say. “Me, too.”

I glance at the doorway. The manager is waiting there. I want to tell him he doesn't have to wait, that I'll be able to find my way back to my room, but I'm not so sure I will. Probably best that he waits right where he is.

I stand for a moment longer, and then I realize the phone is beeping into my ear. Jack must have hung up. The manager is still in the doorway, and I don't want him to know that Jack hung up on me, so I say loudly, “All right—bye, Jack.” Then I put the talking end of the phone on its cradle and follow Eric back to my room.

*   *   *

At Rosalind House, people fall asleep a lot, but never in their beds. During the day, while sitting in armchairs, they drop like flies. One minute they're chatting away, and the next,
zzzzzz.
Dreamland. But at night, when a comfy bed is at the offering,
wham.
Wide awake. In this, as with so many things these days, I sympathize with the oldies. I'm tired a lot, and all day I look forward to a nice, restful sleep. But the moment I slip between the sheets, my lids are on stalks.

Tonight when I can't sleep, I get out of bed and walk into the hallway. Blondie is there.

“You okay?” I ask her. There's a room at the end of the corridor designated for the nurse on night shift, and usually by this time of night, she is in it.

She laughs. “I was about to ask you the same thing. Couldn't sleep?” Blondie sounds happy and cheery, as usual.

“Thought I'd walk around a bit,” I say. “That okay?”

“Fine by me.” She holds up her thick-cup by the handle. “Want a hot chocolate? I'm making one for myself.”

I tell her no thanks and she heads for the kitchen. I go in the opposite direction. Rosalind House is a beautiful building, but by the light of only a couple of floor lamps, anything can look creepy, especially when you are alone. In the dark, I feel agitated. What am I supposed to do? Turning on the TV isn't an option, as the residents are light sleepers and I'd rather be captured by gremlins than wake up Baldy. He's grumpy enough on eight hours' sleep. So my choices are to stand here in the dark … or to walk.

My legs feel tingly, so I walk. A few times up and down the staircase. I vaguely remember Dr. Brain telling me exercise was good for Alzheimer's. For some reason, this makes me laugh. What a diligent student I am!

After a minute or so, I stop walking. I'm tired now. It often happens this way—wide awake one minute, and the next, weariness hits like a train. I turn to head back to my room, then pause. Am I upstairs or downstairs? I glance around. I'm on a flat area of carpet. Right ahead is a corridor with doors leading off it on either side. I must be downstairs.

I turn to face the stairs, but instead of rising up before me, they fall away, like a hole. I look around again. Corridor, doors, giant hole. I must be at the … Nope. I can't work it out.

I pace a little, staying well clear of the hole. I'm sleepy and I just want to go to bed. It's like I'm in a box. A fucking box. Like that spooky room in
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,
the one with only one door that no one can find. What if
I
can't find it? What if I'm stuck in this box forever?

“Damn.” I kick the wall. “Stupid. Fucking. Stairs.”

I hear footsteps.
Blondie!
She'll save me. I turn and, before I can stop myself, gasp. There's someone at the bottom of the hole, and it's not Blondie. I feel a twinge of fear or excitement or something.

“What are you d … doing?” Young Guy asks.

“Just walking,” I say. For some reason, I'm too proud to tell him I'm lost. “I've got a dead leg.”

“Wanna see s-s-omething?” He points beyond me. “Up there.”

Before I can answer, he's dropped to his hands and knees and is crawling up the stairs. Must be to do with the depth perception—ten points for creativity. At the top, he rises to his feet and grins at me.

I try to grin back, but it sticks halfway.

He's wearing a white V-neck and thin, navy-blue sweatpants—so thin, I can make out the shape of his legs (muscular) underneath. He makes sweatpants look pretty good. He gives me a one-eye blink and walks past me toward the front of the house.

“Come on,” he says. “Walk copy me.”

I'm getting used to his funny use of words, even starting to find it charming. He doesn't seem embarrassed by any of it: the crawling, the stuttering, the muddled language. The way he owns it; it's inspiring. And dead sexy.

He takes me to another set of stairs and crawls up. I follow on two feet. Then, at the end of the corridor, he opens a door. My heart is thundering.
What are we doing? Where is he taking me?

“A-a-after you,” he says.

“No thanks.” My voice trembles a little. “After you.”

He goes in and touches a thing on the wall, and the room lights up. It's a big room, like the parlor, but empty, apart from a few irregular-shaped mounds covered in white sheets. At one end of the room is a huge floor-to-ceiling window.

“Wow,” I say. “How did you know this was here?”

“When it's n-nighttime and there's no one around, you … find all many … things.”

Young Guy does a lap of the room, past a lamp and a fireplace that is covered with newspaper. He stops just inches in front of me. My breath catches. Considering I've known Young Guy only a short time, I've been up close to him quite a lot. Enough that the slope of his cheeks and the faint smatter of stubble on his face are comforting.

Comforting yet, at the same time, terrifying.

I become aware that the silence has gone on awhile, so I open my mouth to fill it. But he shakes his head.

“Just…” he says, “don't talk.…”

His arms find my waist and pull me closer. And he presses his mouth to mine.

His lips are soft and warm. And suddenly, it feels like I'm floating. Young Guy tastes like peppermint; smells like it. I breathe him in. And then, as fast as it started, the kiss is over.

“Wow,” I say.

He smiles shyly, then drifts over to one sheet-covered mound and flicks off the sheet. Underneath is an old-fashioned record player.

“You like Nat King Cole?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, but my voice is hoarse. Did that just happen?

“G-good. Because that's a-a-all there is.”

He slides the record out of the cover, parks it on the dial, and lowers the pointy bit. In the next breath, Nat King Cole's rich baritone notes fill the room. Young Guy and I stare at each other, expressionless.

“This is a joke, right?” I say as the swell of tension gives way to laughter. “‘Unforgettable'?”

“No,” he says, even though he's laughing now, too. “I've listened to this record before, but I don't remember hearing this song.”

“You … don't”—A wave of hysteria hits. Now I'm laughing so hard, I can barely get the word out
—“remember?”

That sets him off, which sets me off again. Which sets him off again. And for the next few minutes, he and I are just two young people. Laughing. Kissing. And listening to Nat King Cole.

 

13

When Jack and I were in third grade, he brought me for show and tell. (Well, he didn't
bring
me, because I was already there, but he did tug me out of my seat and drag me to the front of the room.)

“This is my sister, Anna,” he told the class, which of course, they already knew. He hadn't done me the courtesy of forewarning me of this sideshow, and judging by the way Mrs. Ramsey's eyes shrank into her head, he hadn't done her the honor either. Anyone else but Jack—the teacher's pet—might have gotten into trouble for not preparing, but Jack, even at nine, was smooth as a silk tie. “And for show and tell today, I'd like to tell you about her.”

It was, when I think of it now, classic Jack. I was the tough one; he was the sensitive one—the perfect yin to my yang.

“Anna can write her name in Chinese,” he started.

He looked so comfortable, standing at the front of the room. The only time I'd stood at the front was when I was getting in trouble. This was different. Thirty pairs of eyes watched me as Jack offered me a piece of chalk and stood there, grinning, until I wrote my name on the blackboard in Chinese.

“Anna has broken three bones,” he said when I was finished. “She didn't even cry when she broke her wrist, so Mom didn't take her to the doctor for three days!”

The class oohed at this, and I grinned and said, “Yes, it's true,” and “No, it didn't hurt so bad.”

“Anna ran into the haunted house on Nicholson Street and knocked on the door when no one else was brave enough.”

Mrs. Ramsey's eyes almost disappeared. I shrugged noncommittally.

“Anna can ride a bike without holding the handles.”

This wasn't actually that hard, but Jack had always been easily impressed.

“Anna can do lots of things that I can't do,” he finished up. “I'm really lucky to have such a cool twin.”

Jack shifted to put his arm around me, which was weird, but I allowed it. He could be such a cornball sometimes.

“Jack's brought up an important point, class,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “We're all special in our own unique ways. Even Jack and Anna, who are twins, have lots of differences. Anna, why don't you tell us something special about Jack? Something he can do that you can't?”

Jack was still right beside me, holding me like I was some kind of trophy. At nine, the idea of “uncoolness” was already starting to hover around the edges of my consciousness, but Jack just looked so proud, I thought he might cry.

Mrs. Ramsey was looking at me, waiting for an answer, so I said: “Jack is really good at math,” and we took our seats again. But later, when I thought about it, I wished I'd said something different. I wished I'd said,
Jack knows how to make you feel like the most important person in the room.

*   *   *

After I've lived in the big house with all the old people for two months, I'm allowed a “home visit.” Everyone talks about the home visit in
tra-la-la
voices, as though it's some kind of prize—a conjugal visit for a prisoner who's been behaving himself. It makes me think of
The Bachelor.
Toward the end of each series, the final four girls are invited to take the Bachelor back to their homes to meet their families, let him see them in their home environment. When the girls find out they've made the final four, they squeal and cheer.
We're getting a home visit! Woop-Woop!
To me, it always seemed shortsighted. After all, odds are there won't be a second visit. Three of the girls are about to be booted off the show. The fairy-tale ending is unlikely at best. And for me, it's even less likely.

I'm in the parlor when the woman comes in, tossing her bouncy hair. She's wearing jeans and a pink cardigan and large hoop earrings, and she's smiling at me. I'm starting to wonder if she's simple when it dawns on me: It's Helen. After a long night of kissing and dancing (nothing else) in the upstairs room with Young Guy, my brain isn't all here.

“Anna!”

Helen and I don't normally hug (as I recall), but as she comes at me with open arms, I feel it would be rude to point that out. I also decide it'd be rude to ask why the hell Jack—the blood relative, the family member—isn't here to pick me up. But I ask anyway.

“Jack and the boys are at Brayden's Little League game.” Helen pulls back slowly and frowns, like she's suddenly noticed I've grown a third nostril. “Remember? Jack called yesterday to tell you. They'll be home when we get there.”

“Oh, right,” I say. No need to point out that Jack had forgotten.

When we arrive, as promised, they're there. They've even erected a banner:
WELCOME HOME ANNA.
My first thought is … but I'm not home. I'm here for my “home visit.”

The worst thing about my home visit is that no one stops talking. Everyone gathers around me, catapulting questions so fast, I can barely figure out who said what. By the time I
do
figure it out, and look at the person so I can respond, either they've moved on or they're giving each other what I now call the “third-nostril look.” Like I'm the one who is nuts.

I'm much happier when we progress to the “watching” stage of the visit: “Watch me bounce on the trampoline, Anna.” “Watch me sit on Hank's face and fart, Anna.” “Watch how far I can kick this ball … all the way into the neighbor's yard!” This part, I like. I can just sit on my deck chair, clapping and waving. And I can hear myself think again.