The Way Back to Happiness (2 page)

S
ilence plucked at Bev’s nerves. Mile after mile of silence.

How many times during the school year did she dream impossible dreams of perfect quiet and tranquility? Now here she sat, stuck in a rental van with a mute fourteen-year-old for an entire day, and she yearned for conversation, idle chatter, or even whining. An occasional grunt would have been enough. A wail of grief and pain. Anything.

Without a word, the six hours from St. Louis to Little Rock had stretched like an eternity. Trouble was, there was no peace and quiet inside Bev’s head. She couldn’t shut off her mind, or stop the memories. Especially the one from two days ago, looking at Diana for the last time at the funeral home, still and serene in death as she’d never been in life. The truck driver, the very last person to see her alive, had said that she’d shot right out in front of him, a human cannonball to her last breath. He hadn’t even had time to put his foot to the brake pedal.

It was so wrong. Such a waste. All such a waste.

The road ahead of her blurred, and Bev shook tears out of her eyes. Thank heaven for sunglasses. She sniffed and leaned into the steering wheel.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to listen to music?” she asked Alabama. The girl had nixed listening to the radio at the beginning of the trip. “I just want to think,” she’d said. Thinking had seemed okay hours ago, before Bev had realized that her own thoughts would bubble up from the ooze of regrets and anguish stewing inside her mind.

Hunched against the passenger window, Alabama slowly turned her head and lifted a brow. Bev guessed that meant no radio.

What was going through her head? And how could she possibly stay so dry-eyed? Bev had tried a hundred times in the past week to reach out to Alabama, to offer her a shoulder to cry on, but she evidently wasn’t a touchy-feely girl. At least, not with her. She wasn’t communicative at all. Every time Bev tried to talk to her, more often than not Alabama would wander off into some corner to listen to her Sony Walkman.

When Bev had picked her up at camp, Alabama’s aloofness hadn’t surprised her. They were practically strangers, the girl was wounded, and Bev had barely been functioning herself. She still felt shaky. They needed time to get used to each other. By “time,” she’d presumed a few days. But the more days that passed in St. Louis, the more Alabama shut her out. Bev was starting to wonder if it was personal . . . but how could it be? She was here to help, ready to open her heart and home. Anyway, disliking someone required knowing them, and Alabama didn’t know her at all.

But when someone sat like a lump in the passenger seat for six hours, unresponsive, it was hard not to take it personally.

“
I’d
like to listen to something.” Bracing her left arm against the steering wheel to keep the van steady, Bev reached over and fiddled with the radio knobs. Finding a station acceptable to both of them posed a challenge. One tidbit Alabama had divulged over the past week was that she detested country music, which ruled out half of what blared from the dashboard speakers as Bev roamed across the dial. She finally found a soft rock station doing a two-for-Tuesday afternoon, which seemed perfect until the DJ followed “Feelin’ Groovy” with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Even at the best of times, that song reduced Bev to a puddle. And this was not the best of times.

One chorus in, she was rooting in her pocket for a tissue. A truck stop loomed ahead and she peeled off at the exit.

At the change in direction, Alabama straightened and braced herself as if for a crash. “What are you doing?”

Words, at last.

“We need to stop.”

“You filled up an hour ago.”

“My eyes are tired.” Bev sniffled. She doubted she was fooling anyone. “I need to rest, maybe drink some coffee. Driving in this sun is no picnic.”

“We have to get to Dallas today,” Alabama insisted, refusing to move even after they were parked and Bev was halfway out the driver’s-side door.

“We’ll get there, but I need a break.” When Alabama didn’t move, she added, “You can’t stay in the van—you’ll broil. Come in and have a cold drink.”

On a sigh, Alabama climbed out and assumed a posture of rigid forbearance. Once inside, however, her demeanor relaxed and she cruised an aisle, managing to scoop up gum, packets of Skittles, a large bag of chips, and a can of cream soda in the time it took Bev to pour a cup of coffee. Bev paid for it all and gestured with her head to an unoccupied Formica-topped table by the window.

Alabama dug in her heels again. “We need to get going.”

“Just a few minutes to stretch our legs.”

“How can we stretch our legs sitting at a table?”

“It’s bound to be more comfortable than sitting in the van.”

It wasn’t, actually. The slippery bench seat was as uncomfortable as the cargo van, which they could see from their vantage point by the window.

The remains of Diana’s entire life were squeezed into that small vehicle. The idea of packing up her little sister’s apartment had been daunting—but on arriving in St. Louis last week, Bev discovered that Diana had acquired very little in her life that was worth keeping. Despite the heat beaming through the plate-glass window, Bev shuddered, remembering her sister’s apartment, with its peeling plaster and kitchen walls sporting grease like a topcoat of paint. She’d found mouse droppings in a closet. Diana hadn’t even bothered to buy frames for the beds—simply left the mattresses and box springs on the floors. No doubt she thought it was bohemian. Bev called it primitive.

Poor Alabama. She was probably one step away from being one of those feral children you hear about who are rescued from basements of abusive parents. Kids chained to radiators and such like. Small wonder she didn’t want to talk.

Across the table, her niece ripped the end off her Skittles package and upended it into the maw of her upturned mouth.

Taking care of a fourteen-year-old was nothing she’d planned for. It would be a pinch. The logistics of the two of them living in her little house were going to require some working out, and there hadn’t been any time to prepare. The spare bedroom was her craft room and was crammed with supplies. Alabama would have to sleep on the couch the first few nights, which wasn’t exactly an ideal way to welcome her. It might get them off on the wrong foot.

Maybe
she
could sleep on the couch, and Alabama could take her room. That would be better.

Except that she was so tired. All week, she’d longed for her little house—a grease-and-mouse-dropping-free sanctuary. On Diana’s mattress, which was saggy from age and had the scent of a tart, chemical perfume clinging to it, Bev had spent nights alternately tossing and weeping. Having the mattress on the floor messed with her center of gravity, made her feel disoriented, pressed down, disturbed at being in Diana’s world again. Diana’s screwed-up world, which Bev had known nothing about and in her ignorance had sometimes actually envied Diana for.

Oh, she’d envied Diana for a lot of things, all their lives. Envied, and sometimes even thought she hated her for. Thinking back on it, the ugliness of her own character made her ashamed. And now there was no one to apologize to.

All she could do was try to pick up the pieces. That included Alabama, who was all alone in a way that Bev could barely fathom. If she herself felt grief, and regret, and fear for the future, that was nothing compared to the devastation Alabama must be suffering. That had to explain her unresponsiveness. She was still in shock, numb.

The immensity of all that sorrow, that gaping loss, frightened her.

She took a deep, reassuring breath. She could do this. Alabama belonged with her.

“You’ll like New Sparta,” Bev said. “We have an excellent school system—though of course, I’m biased.” She chuckled, then stopped when Alabama didn’t react. “Also a library, a movie house, a public pool . . .” What else was there? The roller rink had recently burned down, but most New Spartans agreed that was just as well. It had always attracted a bad element on weekends. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else to mention. Alabama didn’t strike her as the type to be over the moon about the new and improved Food-Save.

“Is there anything in particular you like to do?” Bev asked.

Alabama shrugged, busy with the enormous wad of Skittles in her mouth. Did she know anything about the food groups and proper nutrition? She’d hardly eaten a thing since Bev had arrived in St. Louis—apart from bowls of cold cereal and a little of the pizza Bev had bought one night.

“New Sparta has several restaurants,” she continued. “And a new Walmart . . .”

Alabama laboriously gulped down what was left of the wad of candy. She pushed out of the booth and stood. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“To make a phone call.”

“You’re calling someone?”

“That’s the idea,” Alabama deadpanned. She slouched toward the pay phone across the store, near the restrooms.

Who was she calling? Could she possibly have a friend on the outskirts of Little Rock, Arkansas? Diana had moved around a lot, but Bev couldn’t remember if Arkansas had been one of the places she and Alabama had lived.

She hoped Alabama wasn’t phoning a boy. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of a boyfriend. Until a week ago, she’d still been thinking of Alabama as the four-year-old she’d been the last time she’d seen her, not as a young woman. Post-puberty, anything could happen. By Alabama’s age or thereabouts, Diana had already been sneaking out her bedroom window at night. Maybe that was why Alabama was being so quiet about everything. Maybe, aside from grief, she was stunned at being pulled away from some Romeo—some pimply Jason or Randy. Sudden separations were hard for young people to endure.

Visions of being plunged into an
Endless Love
–type scenario gave her pause.

On the other hand . . . Screaming fights. Adolescent anguish. House on fire.

She jumped up, grabbed her purse, and headed back to the pay phone. As she barreled down an aisle flanked by motor oil on one side and Dolly Madison Zingers on the other, she nearly crashed into Alabama coming from the opposite direction.

“What are you doing?” Alabama asked her, going on tiptoe to peer over the shelves at their table. “Did you leave all my stuff sitting there?”

“Were you calling a boy?”

“What?”
Alabama snorted out a confused laugh. “No! I called Gladdie. She wants to talk to you.”

Bev’s brain scrambled to catch up. “You called Mama?”

“Uh-huh. You’d better hurry. She’s waiting on the line, and it’s a collect call.”

Bev dashed to the phone, the receiver of which was still swinging from its metal cord. “Mama?”

“For Pete’s sake, Bev,” her mother said by way of greeting, using her Gladys-Putterman-at-the-end-of-patience voice. She tended to be more clipped on the phone than in person anyway, due to her dread of long-distance charges. “Do you have to be so inflexible?”

Inflexible?
Bev went rigid. Who was the one who’d hopped on the first plane and spent a week on a smelly mattress on a floor, arranging a funeral and Goodwill pickups and a rental van? Exhaustion made her defensive, until the sane part of her brain—growing ever tinier—piped up,
Of course I did those things. What else could I have done?

“What are you talking about?” she asked her mother.

“Alabama doesn’t want to go to New Sparta,” Gladys said.

“Does she have anywhere else to go?”

“Here.”

Bev took a moment to try to process this. Her mother lived in a retirement home. The Villas was nice—she had her own one-bedroom apartment with a kitchenette, and her situation still gave her the option of taking her meals in a communal dining room and participating in group activities with the other residents. Plus, there was a nursing facility attached to The Villas, which was one of the features that had drawn them to the place when Gladys was looking to relocate after her knee replacement. That health center had proved a godsend weeks ago, when Gladys came down with pneumonia. After getting out of the hospital, she’d been transferred to the health center. That’s where she’d been when the call about Diana had come.

“Mama, Alabama cannot live in an”—she almost called the place an old folks’ home—“at The Villas. It’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s fourteen. I don’t remember all the papers you signed when you moved in, but I’m pretty sure they have regulations about guests. And probably age restrictions, too.”

“Fiddle-faddle. She’s not a guest, she’s my granddaughter.”

“I know, but—”

“It’s what she wants.”

“But she has to go to school.”

“It’s still summer.”

“And come the end of August, then what?”

“There are schools in Dallas.”

“But it’s crazy!” Bev blurted out.

Silence crackled over the line before her mother declared, “You’re as intractable as Alabama said.”

Bev’s hand squeezed the plastic of the receiver so hard her birthstone ring bit into her finger. “How could Alabama say I’m anything? She doesn’t talk to me. She didn’t utter a word for three hundred miles!”

“I’m beginning to see why.”

Bev flushed, opened her mouth to defend herself, and then shut it.

Fine. Let Alabama be Gladys’s problem.

Why should she care about any of this? She’d done her duty, why take on more? Fostering a fourteen-year-old was going to disrupt her life, and maybe destroy one or several of the dreams she still clung to. Even if her dream job didn’t pan out, she could imagine what Derek would say when she told him she was now the guardian of her crazy sister’s teenager. The man was already skittish about settling down.