Where We Belong (21 page)

The story of my life in two sentences:

I need time to sort all this out.

I’m not going to get it.

It was one of those patterns that just kept cropping up. Every time it showed its ugly face, it won. I never had any more power over it than I’d had the time before.

My mom took Sophie to the public restrooms at the campground when we went back to get our stuff.

I didn’t get my big idea right away. At first, I just stood there, leaning on our car. Like I had time to kill, and I didn’t even know what to do with it.

I wasn’t thinking much, but I remember being glad we really could afford a motel for the night. I’d never been particularly grateful for stuff as simple as a bed and a roof, but I swore to myself in that moment that I always would be again. Then I wondered if that was really possible, or if I’d just get used to it right away and forget.

Next thing I knew, I was rushing for the storage tent. And I knew what I was after, too. But I swear, I didn’t form it as a series of thoughts in my head first. It just sort of created itself.

I ducked inside and found the box with the sheets.

My heart thrummed as I stuck my hand around and under different sheets, and then I bumped the jewelry box. I closed my eyes and breathed for a second. But only a second. I got worried about how long my mom would be gone, and if she’d come looking for me and catch me doing this.

I was going to take the whole box, but then I decided against it. Because, if I did, she would just think she’d lost it in the packing. She’d just wait forever for it to turn up. But if she found the box, and it was empty…

I stuck my hand into the wooden box, blind. I grabbed the wallet and the watch and the ring all in one hand, all on one grab. I pulled them out and stuck them in my jacket pocket.

I leaned out of the storage tent and looked for my mom, but they weren’t on their way back yet.

So I finished the job.

I stashed my dad’s things away in my trunk.

I looked in one more time before I locked it up. Counted all the things I wasn’t ready to deal with. The note from Nellie.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
. The truth about my dad. I took the hundred-dollar bill out of my jeans pocket. My mom had a job, so she could take care of us. I could keep my little nest egg.

I threw the money into the trunk and slammed the lid and locked it.

I wasn’t stealing my dad’s stuff. Just to be clear. Those things rightfully belonged to my mom. And I would give them back to her. Just as soon as she noticed they were gone. Just as soon as she looked me in the eye and told me she knew I had them, because nobody else would or could have taken them.

Then she could tell me why they were there. She’d have to. I wouldn’t even need to ask. The very fact of my knowing we had them was a question all in itself.

Yeah, I know it’s not as good as being able to just open your damn mouth. But I just couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. So I set the question up to ask itself. Pathetic, in hindsight. But that’s how I played it at the time.

The weeks we lived in the motel were quiet and sort of a blur. I guess because every day during that part of my life was just like every other one. There’s only one time that stood out. And even it wasn’t much of anything. I’m not telling it because it’s a big deal. Just because I remember it.

One day, I was hanging out at Paul’s, and I saw a deck of cards lying out on the coffee table. Hard to imagine why, because there was nobody around for him to play cards with. Solitaire was the only answer that made any sense.

He was off in the kitchen making us each a sandwich.

The bad thing about the motel was that it used up just about every cent my mom made. So she brought home food from the restaurant, enough for one meal a day. And I usually ate another meal at Paul’s and saved some for my sister. The good news was that it was less than a mile from Paul’s house. So I could walk over anytime, so long as my mom was home to take care of Sophie. I didn’t always have her waiting for me out in the car.

I walked over to Paul’s a lot. It was a small motel room. Even for one person. For three, it was torture.

I hadn’t seen a pack of cards for a really long time.

It was weird to see them there, and a hard feeling to describe. Like an old friend you had a fight with and don’t see anymore. And then suddenly, there she is, and you think, “What’s
she
doing here?” Like being mad but kind of hurt, too. And maybe not wanting to admit it.

I stared at them for what seemed like a long time.

Then I slipped them out of the box and started building.

Just a basic house at first, but pretty soon, I decided to give it three levels.

Then I got really into it and sort of lost track of my surroundings, like I’d always used to.

Then I was almost out of cards, and I didn’t want to stop. I mean, I
really
didn’t want to stop. It was like it had gotten under my skin again, into my blood, and I needed more decks of cards. And I needed them fast.

I was so caught up in the feeling that I didn’t realize Paul was standing over me with two sandwiches on plates. I could smell the smoked turkey, and I hadn’t had any breakfast. But still, all I wanted was more cards. More risky drops.

“Wow,” he said. “You’re good at that.”

“I haven’t done it for years.”

“Must be something like riding a bicycle.”

“This is nothing. I used to build ranches with a ranch house and a barn and sheds and corrals…”

“Why?”

“Just to kill the time, I guess.” I dropped the last card, and the whole thing held. But there was nowhere left to go with it. “My dad had just died, and I guess I was needing something to be compulsive about.”

“Sorry. I think that sounded rude. I just always wondered why people do things like that. You know. Things that…”

Rigby trotted in, her tail going. Paul and I both saw it about to happen. But he still had a plate in each hand, and I didn’t dare reach across the card house. Even the wind of a sudden movement could bring it crashing down.

“Rigby, no!” he said.

She froze in place, her wind-producing nose not two feet from my construction project, and looked up at his face with what I swear was the most wounded look. I guess she wasn’t used to being yelled at. Since she never did a damn thing wrong.

“Good girl,” Paul said. “Stay.”

She did.

But she didn’t sit. Because nobody told her to. She stood there swinging that massive tail, and on about the fourth swing, it worked up just enough of a wind.

I saw a card in the second story collapse, and then there was that moment. That frozen split second of time. It’s so short, you could convince yourself you imagined it, but I’d decided a long time ago to go the other way and convince myself I hadn’t.

Cards fluttered everywhere, some off onto the hardwood floor.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. Don’t make her feel bad. It was coming down sooner or later, anyway. They all do.”

I scooped up the cards on the table, then went after the ones that had landed farther away.

“I think that’s what I was about to say a minute ago,” Paul said. “But I’m not sure, because it wasn’t a very clear thought. But I think I’ve always wondered about things like card houses and sand castles. And ice sculptures. So much time to put into something that’s destined to undo itself.”

I sat down on the couch and counted the cards out really fast. Fifty-one.

I got down on my hands and knees and fished the last one out from under the couch. The Queen of Hearts. That felt meaningful, but I was probably being dumb.

“Here’s how I look at it, though,” I said, sliding the deck back into the box. “I figure that’s true of everything. You get born, you build all this stuff. Buy houses and cars and save money. Then you die, and it’s all right back down to the ground again.”

“Not always. What about if you build a bridge? That stays up.”

“Maybe for a while after you die. But not forever. Sooner or later, they’ll decide it’s unsafe, and they’ll tear it down and build a newer one. Build a real house; eventually, it comes down. May take hundreds of years, but it’ll go back to the ground again. Card houses are just faster is all.”

He sat down on the couch and set our sandwiches on the coffee table. I took a huge bite of mine. My stomach was so empty that it turned a little when the food hit it. But it was a good sandwich. It was always hard to save half for Sophie, because I was always hungry for all of it and more. But I always did.

“That’s a depressing theory,” he said.

“Not really. I mean, not in my head. In my head, it’s just the opposite. Some people never do anything, because they’re so afraid it’ll get undone again. They get overwhelmed by the fact that nothing lasts. Then there are the brave people who do all kinds of stuff, anyway. Even though none of it is forever. I want to be one of those people. That’s why I build card houses. Or why I used to. Before Sophie came along. Or maybe it was partly because it was the very last thing I did with my dad before he got killed. But that’s only part of it. The other part of it was what I said before.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes. I finished my half of the sandwich in only about three more bites. It was good while it lasted.

Like everything, I guess.

Then he said, “You sure you’re not a forty-year-old midget?”

“Believe me. There are parts of me that are completely fourteen.”

“They don’t show.”

“Good,” I said. “Then it’s still working.”

I saw that deck of cards on his coffee table maybe ten more times that year. But I never opened the box again.

For reasons I can’t explain after the fact, I expected a little hoopla.

It was my first day of summer vacation. After one full school year in the new place. Which, frankly, was a lot harder than in the old place. Because it was a tiny school. I thrived on huge schools. There was no way to get lost in a high school with a grand total of 300 students in all four grade levels.

It’s pretty unavoidable, at close range, that they’d find me a bit weird for their taste.