Words and Their Meanings (10 page)

Daily Verse:

What I feel is not in the human vocabulary.

23

I
needed two consecutive rounds of coffin yoga this morning, my eyes burning more from exhaustion than the no-blinking rule. I only got three hours of sleep because of a back and forth text-a-thon with Mateo, filled with stupid questions like “If you could be any animal what would it be?” Me: armadillo, him: chameleon. Which isn't even an animal. I curled up with my cell phone when the battery died, and when I plugged my phone in this morning, a new text from Mateo popped up. It said, “I'm still here.”

I have to get back into balance. The yoga didn't do much. The pressure I use pushing ink into skin as I write my daily verse isn't helping either.

I'm still fogged between night and morning when the phone rings. I check the caller ID two seconds too late, after I've already hit “talk” on the portable phone.

“Hey, honey.”

“Don't ‘honey' me, Dad.” I keep my voice cool.

“Anna.” He says it firm, like he gets to still be the parent. “I know you are angry with me, but—”

“But nothing, Jack.”

“Don't call me that.”

“I won't call you anything if I have my way.” I slam the receiver back into its cradle.

“Who was that?” Mom asks, coming in from the backyard.

“It was a sales call,” I say with a shrug. “Nothing we want to buy. I'm going to the park with Nat, okay—”

The phone starts to ring again, and I grab it before the call even registers.

“Hell-o?”

“Is that a way to answer the phone?” Gramps scolds. “You sound like a prison inmate.”

“Oh, hey, Gramps. Sorry. Thought you were going to be someone else.”

“Well, I'm not. Are we still on for lunch today?”

I swear under my breath. Mom swats a hand in my direction. I have to work early, and I found a perfect timeline for Sarah Sallenton. She updated her status last night saying she'd be playing with her dog at the park from 12 to 1 p.m. today, if anyone wants to join her. It's already noon. If I go with Gramps, I'll never catch her in time.

“Uh, actually Gramps, I sorta double-booked. Do you care if we go tomorrow instead?”

“Is ‘double-booked' code for going back to bed all day?”

“Nope,” I say, aware my mother is leaning in the doorway, pretending to dig dirt from her nails. “It means I made plans. Plans involving leaving the house and hanging out in a park. With people.”

“Well in that case,” he says, his voice bright, “tomorrow works great. I haven't been fishing in two days, so I think I'll head on out to the river instead.”

“See you tomorrow.”

–––––

The park proves status updates can't always be trusted. The Internet isn't able to predict when someone named Sarah might change her mind on how the hours between 12 and 1 p.m. might be spent. I don't feel like going home, so I pull into Nat's driveway and honk twice. Our horn code for “want to get sushi?”

The huge oak tree next to Nat's window blocks her from view, but after my second round of beeps, I hear her yell down, “Fine! But you're buying!”

During lunch, Mom calls six times. I ignore her. I'm not in the mood to check in.

One hour and several yaki-nori rolls later, I drop Nat back home with plans to meet her at work by 3:30 p.m. We have to drive separately since she's going to Alex's cousin's bar mitzvah later.

When I pull onto my street, the first thing I notice is our garage door. It's open, but Mom's car is gone. Mom's kind of a freak about locking the house since Dad's not around. She won't admit it, but I know she sometimes sleeps with the phone already dialed to 911 at night. I wonder if Dad's been here. He still has a garage door opener. And a key. I wish Mom would take both away, and I make a mental note to tell her this.

I don't have to step all the way inside the front door to understand something is wrong. There's nothing but silence. The heavy kind I know too well.

A note with handwriting worse than Bea's is taped to the end of the banister.

“Gone to hospital. Bea next door with Mrs. G. Gramps is there.”

Gramps is where? Mrs. G's? The hospital?

I pick up the phone and dial, taking my time to punch each of the seven digits.

“Mrs. G? It's Anna—”

“Oh, honey, God. So much has happened to your poor family, to you girls. Are you okay?”

At this point, it seems the answer is a definite no. I bite the corner of my lip because I refuse to say it.

“Your Gramps, honey, he fell into the—”

“Go ahead and send Bea over here, please.” I don't want to hear any more.

Two minutes later, Bea bursts in like a stray dodging a dog catcher.

“Gramps is gonna die,” she sobs through a fountain of snot and saliva. I know it's true because even in the worst of situations, my sister does not ever choose to acknowledge heart hurts.

When our dog, Danny, died, Bea found him all stiff in the backyard. Joe ran out and scooped his beagle up, but Bea just pointed to the swarming flies and said, “Did you know flies puke and eat it every time they land?” When her best friend, Georgia, moved (weirdly) to Georgia, she stood in the driveway watching their car go. Her only comment? How car exhaust smells like rotten Easter eggs. And when my parents told us they were going from legally separated to officially divorced three months ago, she honed in on the china cabinet and asked where dust comes from, and how it decides where it wants to settle.

“He didn't breathe for like, twenty million minutes or something!” she wails, tearing away from and back into my arms over and over again. “Was underwater! He was in his, his, his fishing boat, you know, the one that always looks like it might sink, and something happened and he, he fell in the river … and … and … ”

I clutch my sister tighter and tighter and tighter. I shake my head hard, as if that can push back my own hysterics. Air won't reach deeper than my throat. It's dry and every breath burns and chokes me. We sway back and forth, not talking. Acid keeps rising up from my stomach, a rolling burn that comes from the kind of crying Bea's doing. It's different than sweaty toddler tantrums or the sobs of bitchy girls who don't get their way. It's raw and lost and frightening, and it reminds me of broken promises and the moment when you start seeing the world for what it really is.

New Daily Verse:

It's just pure pain … not a bad thing.

24

G
ramps.

I close my eyes.

“Are you going to start the car?” Bea asks. She's sitting in the front seat, which may be against the law. It definitely breaks one of our mother's cardinal rules of safety.

Gramps.

The new words on my arm are shaky. The letters aren't quite straight. I didn't have to look up a quote. I know this one by heart. I need this reminder. I need to carry it with me. To physically see it and feel it and—

“Anna, are you gonna start the car?”

I turn the key.

When
I told Bea we were leaving, she didn't ask any questions. Instead, she tucked her feet inside the bunny slippers that are a half size too small now, and got in the car. While we drive, she folds herself into an accordion position, legs and knees tucked against arms, tucked against stomach. Her eyes are squeezed shut. I can see her fingers popping. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Again and again and again.

Gramps.

He's our rock. He's the only person who didn't sink when the lines and anchors of our family were severed in the last year. He's the one who taught us kids how to fold origami, how to deliver words inside airplanes and stars and jumping frogs. He's the one who knows what to say to my mom. When Dad left, she abandoned any pretend ability she had to still be the glue for our family. We're all broken eggshells, but he knows how to step light. He keeps us from being crushed into flecks too tiny to see.

He knows to say things like, “We all hope to lose loved ones the same way we are supposed to lose our children: slowly, in small pieces, as time goes by. But no matter how it happens, no matter when we have to let go, we aren't ever ready. To feel all of that, it's okay.”

Gramps.

Drive. Breathe. Put on turn signal. Stop at stop sign. Drive. Breathe.

Gramps.

He doesn't get to die. He doesn't get to leave. He doesn't get to become another reason people look at us, then look away, because our level of suck is toxic. Becau
se we are the people who make others whisper thanks for their own tedious lives.

We pull into the hospital as an ambulance blasts by, lights and sirens still going strong after parking outside the Emergency Room.

“Don't, Bea,” I groan as she shimmies out of the passenger-side door and slides immediately to the ground. By the time I get over to her side, only an errant bunny ear peeks out from under the car. I drop down to my hands and knees. Little chunks of gravel dig into my palms.

“Bea, it's okay. I'm going to set you up in a family waiting room. Remember those? They're smaller and have toys and beanbags and giant stuffed animal pillows. You were okay here, when”—deep breath—“Joe was sick.”

The bunny ear disappears.

“I already know where you are,” I say, reaching my hand out and tugging on her heel. “Besides, who knows what is under there. Parking lots are disgusting.”

“Two wads of gum. One pink and one blue. The blue one still has a smell, like raspberry maybe.” My sister's voice is matter-of-fact. “Oh, and I think there's a dead one of those crawly insects with a million legs next to my ear, but I can't turn my head enough to check. I don't wanna come out.”

A handful of people walk through the parking lot. One woman starts coming our way. She only sees me slumped against the car. I watch as she stops short, acts like she's digging something out of her purse, and makes a sharp turn in the opposite direction.

Under the car, Bea is quiet.

A few years ago, I used to beg to put Bea to bed at night, because she loved to listen to me recite my poems. She loved this one poem about the moon best, because she liked the sound it made against her ear. When Mrs. Risson was still my favorite teacher—and not just Mom's frequent let's-talk-about-how-messed-up-Anna-is lunch date—she made me listen to recordings of writers reading their work. My whole sophomore year was a lesson in listening. In picking up ways to make words become music.

A poem of my own will make Bea come out, I'm sure of it. I'm desperate enough to try, so I clear my throat. Crack my knuckles, one finger at a time.

Moon was the first word I learned.

Hitched to a fencepost,

luminous hole in

infinite night,

The bunny slippers reappear. I pause. So does Bea.

your hand in mine

secrets of a mother, daughter

pass between us, puckered kiss

of sound—

Legs, torso, shoulders. She twists back into view, resting against my lap for the final verse.

a single syllable. Moon.

“Okay,” she says, resolved. I give her a hug. This one isn't so tight. I'm trying to say it will be okay, without having to use any more words. Without having to lie.

We walk through the hospital's revolving door. I know we need to keep the forward momentum going, but the smell of sick people hits and we both misstep.

“I don't want to,” Bea whispers, her clipped fingernails digging into my skin. I drag her over to the Emergency Room waiting area. We slide into pale peach plastic seats.

“We'll take our time,” I say. She leans against me. The whole of her weight shifts onto my side.

“I'm going to make a phone call.” I announce this to myself as much as to my sister. She nods and closes her eyes.

I can't talk to Nat right now. I'm not ready. I wait a second, and then push hard against his number.

“Hey, wild child,” he answers after two rings.

“Hi.”

“Are you okay?”

The way he asks, like he knows something must be wrong, it kind of breaks me. All of a sudden I'm vomiting sentence fragments. And tears.

I'm crying. For the first time in a year.

I let it all spill. The things he didn't know about me, the things that made him different, for not knowin
g. I purge and purge and purge, even if it will ruin everything. Even though I need to hang up and find my mom and need to not let Bea see me falling apart and lock this shell of a girl I am up tighter than ever. But I don't want to stop. I tell him about Gramps, his paper hobbies, his bushy eyebrows, his ability to forgive my dad. Saying his name is razor against wrist.

Words and sobs tumble, slam, flood out of me. I almost tell him what I did. I almost tell him why Joe's death is my fault. But I hold that one secret inside. I bury it deeper than ever.

Surge after surge of pain grips me. There's no order to how much awful can happen, I cry. No rules about how many people you can lose or how many ways you can be torn apart. Nobody gets piled with so much unless it's a soap opera or melodrama. If I'd only gone to lunch…I say this too, over and over and over and over again until the words become threadbare and I go back to saying we all stop existing and none of it matters and maybe that's great because what I really want, what I really need, is to have it stop, to stop for five minutes—

He silences me with a hush. Not the mean kind. More like his voice is making his body reach through the connection, holding me close.

Mateo keeps hushing. My sobs slow to sharp gasps. I suck in and exhale, suck in and exhale until I can find a rhythm.

Then I whisper goodbye and he whispers back, “I'm still here.”

The chair next to me is empty. My sister is gone again.

The front desk lady meets my panicked expression with a matched look of pity and flicks her super-long red fingernail toward the gift shop.

–––––

A half hour later, Bea and I sit in the smaller family waiting room on floor five. The Intensive Care Unit is located one floor below the crazy people unit. We've been in this room; it hasn't changed. Kleenex boxes on almost every chair, it reeks like funeral home, old-lady perfume, bleach, and invisible, already-sobbed tears. I turn on the television and hand the remote to Bea, who is clinging to her new teddy bear. Her new $25, five-inch-tall, plastic-eyed bear. Gift shops are such a rip-off.

“I'm going to go find Mom, okay?”

“That sounds funny,” Bea mumbles through a mouth full of $4.99 Kit Kat. Rip-off.

“What are you talking about?”

“It sounds like Mom's playing hide-and-seek.”

“You'd know,” I mutter, walking out of the room.

I don't have to look long. One corner later, I almost run into my father. His back is turned to me. Mom is behind him, facing the hallway wall. She leans into it, forehead touching the cream-colored paint. Her blonde hair is only half held back; clumps of loose curls stick out every which way.

I want to back up and grab my sister and drive home. The way my dad bends toward her, the way their hands almost touch; it's too private, like conversations falling silent whenever one of us kids walked into the room after Joe died. Or maybe like walking in on the thing you don't ever want to catch your parents doing. So raw and close. I blush at their unspoken communication, the knowing that comes with being together for twenty-two years.

It's also the first time my mother looks old.