What She Left Behind (14 page)

“The score? Why would I know the score? I saw the touchdown. Isn’t that all that matters?”

He sighs and pats me on the shoulder. “I’m afraid you have a ways to go. Hey, would you mind taking this to Lauren?” He hands me a box of popcorn.

“Sure, but where’s yours?”

“I’ll get another one.” He turns and heads back toward the concession stand.

After ten “excuse mes” I’m back to my spot on the cold metal bleachers. I hand Lauren the popcorn. “It’s from Jay.”

“If you see him again, tell him it’s not going to work,” she says.

“What’s not going to work?”

“Jay thinks if he’s extra nice to me I won’t tell Mom and Dad that he was out an hour past his curfew last night.”

“You’re really going to rat him out?”

“Of course not,” she says. “I just want to see him squirm.”

“I’ve missed it, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“Watching you two pretend to fight.”

Lauren puts her arm around me and gives me a squeeze. “We’ve missed you, too.”

At halftime we’re tied. Normally I would leave with my mom as soon as the band was done playing the halftime show. She usually comes for the first half so she can watch me play. Neither of us is ever interested in the end of the game. But today I kind of want to see how it turns out. Or rather, I want to see if Alex makes another touchdown. I also wonder if he’s going to get any sort of break. One where he takes off that stupid helmet so I can see him a little clearer. So I stay for a few minutes. My dad and I haven’t actually discussed when he’s coming to pick me up. I figure I’ll call him when the game is over. Or maybe I won’t have to call him at all. Maybe I’ll just get a ride home with Alex. A few butterflies float around in my stomach.

Twenty-one to twenty-four. We’re behind. Alex runs with the ball. The next thing I know, half the other team piles on top of him. My phone vibrates. I freeze.
Mom!
It’s just past halftime—we can leave like we always do, only this time we won’t go home.

I pull the phone out of my pocket. Dad.

“Hello?” I try to sound happy to talk to him.

“Where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting in this goddamned parking lot for twenty minutes. How long does it take to put a clarinet away?” I know Lauren is trying not to listen but my dad’s shouting makes it impossible for her not to. Her eyes get real big.

“Sorry. I’ll be right there.”

“Your dad?” Lauren says after I hang up.

“Yeah.”

“How come your mom’s not here?”

“She’s out of town on business.”

“Oh. Your dad sounded pissed. You want me to go with you?”

“No, I’ll be okay.” I stand and give a little wave good-bye as though it’s no big deal.

Lauren isn’t buying it. “Look, you can call him back and tell him Jay and I’ll bring you home after the game.”

“Really, don’t worry.” That would only make him more pissed.

I hurry to the truck. As soon as I slam the door shut, my dad takes off, tires squealing. I fumble with my seat belt.

“What were you doing?”

“I, uh, I was watching the game.”

My dad makes a rolling stop at the stop sign and takes a right out of the parking lot. He floors it. Dad is driving so fast, it makes
driving with Alex seem like riding the kiddie train at the zoo. Each time we hit a pothole I’m sure we’ll careen out of control, flip through the air, and land upside down with a smack.

“Watching the game? Did you think I was just sitting around waiting to pick you up? I have stuff to do!”

My lips are frozen. I can’t say a word.

“Well?” His voice roars and his furious eyes lock with mine.

“Sorry,” I say quietly, looking down.

“What? I can’t hear you.” The right wheels of the truck dip down into the shoulder. Dad whips the truck back onto the road. The back of the truck rocks side to side.

This is it. We’re going to die. I clench my eyes shut. “Sorry!” I shout.

He slows down for a moment and regains some semblance of control over the truck. “Sorry isn’t good enough,” he seethes. He stomps back down on the accelerator. “I shouldn’t have to wait for you. Ever! Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” I say loudly, tears springing to my eyes.
Please, God, just let me get out of here.
There’s a section in my
Worst-Case Scenario
book about escaping a moving car. I think about opening the door and rolling into the field. I want to be anywhere but here with him, but I know it isn’t that simple. If I survive, Dad will drag me right back into the truck. Then he’ll be more pissed and drive even faster.

He shakes out a cigarette from the pack on the bench seat and lights it. Then he opens the window two inches. The air whips in like a tornado, but the truck fills with his cigarette stink. I want to cough. Vomit. Rip the cigarette from his fingers and smash it
against the window. Instead, I sit there and take it. Like I always do.

As if yelling about my lateness had been a mere preamble, Dad switches subjects. “There are consequences when you don’t do your chores!” he says. “Matt didn’t stack the wood in the basement so he didn’t get to go to the Homecoming dance. End of story. He knew he would be punished. He knew it! Didn’t he?”

“Yes,” I manage to say. “Of course he did.”

“I did him a favor. That girl isn’t good enough for him.”

Let’s see. She was smart, popular, and sweet.
“No she isn’t.”

When we finally get home I feel as if I’ve been in the truck for hours, though it has only been minutes. Dad pulls up to the front door and stops.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get out!”

My hands tremble as I feel for the door handle. I jump out. I’ve barely shut the door when the truck roars back down the driveway, kicking up clouds of dust. Collapsing into a pile on the driveway, I curl up in a little ball.
I want to go home. I want to go home.
But of course I
am
home. Only, home is never going to be the same again.

T
here are nights you’re excited about something, so as soon as your head hits the pillow it’s, like,
wham!
You’re wide-awake and you can’t stop thinking. When you’re afraid, it can go both ways. Every night since my mom left, I’ve stayed awake thinking and worrying. About Mom. About Dad. About Matt. About me.

But last night was different. Last night I piled the covers over my head like I was in a cave and did a high-speed rewind to last week when everything was normal—or sort of—and hit pause. I slept and slept and didn’t get up to go to the bathroom even when I really had to because I knew if I let my bare feet touch the bathroom floor my dream world would be gone.

“What the hell are you still doing in bed?” Dad’s voice rips me out of the dream.

I look at my clock. Seven.

“Half the day is gone already.”
Translation: Get up and clean the house.

I go to the laundry room and try not to think about the smell of frying bacon that would be wafting through the house if my mom were here. Or of my mom’s perfectly made-up face—her violet eye shadow and apple-blossom blush. My dad insists she wear makeup even if it’s Saturday and she isn’t going to leave the house.

I grab my cleaning supplies: spray for the counters, powder for the sink, blue liquid for the toilet, glass cleaner for the mirrors, two dishcloths, two towels, and a paper towel roll. Still in my pajamas, I spray the mirror in my bathroom and wipe it clean with paper towel. I think about how when Matt and I used to share this bathroom it was so much harder to clean the mirror, because he would manage to get tiny chunks of food on the mirror while he was flossing. I always had to chip them off. It annoyed the heck out of me. I miss them now. As I spray the counter, I try to imagine what my mom is doing.

By now she must have found a new town for us. It has to be a place that has more than one traffic light. Maybe it even has a Starbucks. She’s probably staying in some crappy hotel while she looks for our apartment. Maybe she’s sitting at one of those little hotel room tables, paging through the want ads, circling leads, calling them.

I sprinkle the white powder into the bathtub and turn on the faucet. As I slosh the cloth around, I try to calculate how long it will be until my mom comes back for me. A day to drive there (wherever
“there” is), maybe two or three days to find a job, a couple of days to find an apartment, and another day to drive back. So I tell myself Tuesday. If my mom has gone off to do all of those things, she should be back by Tuesday. I’ll repack my bag this weekend so I’ll be ready. And the reason she hasn’t called? If I don’t know anything, there’s no way my dad can pry it out of me.

Why didn’t she take me with her in the first place? That’s the question that keeps a constant ball of fear in my stomach. Every reason I think of, in the end, just doesn’t make sense.

The hardware store is open Saturdays, so at eight thirty Dad leaves for work and I finally have the house to myself. I put the cleaning supplies away, eat breakfast, and go to sit in the doorway of the dining room, in the crackpot hope that I’ll feel some sort of vibe from my brother that will tell me where my mom is.

The dining room is where Matt chose to die. It’s been painted, but sometimes I see a speck of something dark and I wonder,
Is that him?

Most of the time, we don’t go in the dining room. We eat in the kitchen, even though it’s a little crowded. After Matt died, I thought that we should get some of those seventies-style beads to hang in the doorway so we wouldn’t have to look in. But that would have been too tempting. I’d have probably walked through them to hear the clink of the beads. And then I’d have been sorry. No, we should have just bricked-up the place.

Where is she, Matt?

There is no vibe, no answer. Maybe the dead really are just dead.

I think about the card I found stuffed in my mom’s shoe—the
one that had a heart followed by the name Brian. Is it possible that my mom’s having an affair? It would be hard for her to keep that kind of secret from me. She has a hard enough time keeping my birthday and Christmas gifts a secret, which is one of the reasons she never shops for them more than one week in advance. But since the florist card is the only lead I have, I decide to call my mom’s used-to-be best friend. Like me, she ditched her when we buried Matt.

“Hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” I say.

A long, shrill, toddler shriek prevents her from answering.

“Connor, give that back to your brother! Now! I said, now! Sorry, Sara. Gosh, it’s good to hear from you. How’s your mom?”

I take in a deep breath and spin my latest web of lies. “Great. She’s great. I’m planning this surprise party for her, and I wondered if you knew her friend Brian? Because I wanted to invite him.”

“What a neat idea—let me know if you need any help. Now, let’s see—Brian … Brian. You mean, Brian Paterson?”

“Does she know another Brian?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“I guess he’s the one, then. Would you happen to have his address?”

“Hold on, I’ll have to look.” Glass shatters in the background. “Connor! Get over here this instant!” There’s a loud thump. I think she dropped the phone.

“Hello, Grandma? I broke a glass,” a little voice says into the phone.

“Hi. This isn’t your grandma.”

“I’m three.”

I think about saying “I can tell,” but I settle for “That’s nice.”

“Connor, give me the phone.”

“Bye.”

“Sorry about that. I’ve got the address. Seven-twenty-two Willow. In Fulton. I don’t have the zip, though. Sorry.”

“No, that’s not a problem. I can always look it up. Thanks.”

A few pleasantries later, we hang up, and I start to call Zach. Then I remember he’s at work.
Crap.
Who can I call? Lauren. I know I should call Lauren. Except that her parents always give her the third degree when she tries to borrow the car. Where she’s going. What she’s doing. I could just lie to her so she won’t have to do the lying. But I talk myself out of it.
Alex. Alex won’t ask questions. He doesn’t have to ask his parents to borrow the car.
And none of that matters anyhow, because you can talk yourself into anything if you really want to, and I really want to see Alex.

I dial his cell.

“What page are you on?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“Stephen King.
Misery.
I loaned it to you. Of course you’re reading it now, so we can talk about the end soon. I’m dying here.”

“Can you come take me to Fulton?”

“This wouldn’t be your way of proposing we make out in the back of my car?”

“No.” But I imagine his lips touching mine anyhow.

“I’m guessing we’re not going to a party.”