Taking Terri Mueller (8 page)

TEN

As they walked along the path, Nancy let herself lean a little against Phil. Leif, perched on Phil's shoulders, looked down at her, his face bathed in dappled light. “Hi, there,” she said, squeezing her son's hand. What a shame Terri wasn't with them, that she was back at the picnic table feeling bad. Nancy, herself, felt so good she wanted everyone else to feel just as good.

“What's with Terri?” she said. “Case of adolescent sulks?” Oh, thank god, she was through that part of her life! Thank god she was past the misery of her marriage. Thank
god
she had met Phil and that he was the kind of man he was—wholeheartedly devoted to his child. “It's so unlike Terri to sulk,” she went on. “Even if you did have a disagreement.”

“Well . . . she's been this way all morning.” Phil held Leif's ankles firmly. His voice was mild enough, but he had rarely, if ever, felt so annoyed—no, angry—with his daughter. Underneath the anger, a thread of fear moved, crawled into his gut.

“If you'd tell me what happened,” Nancy said, “I'm sure I could help you two straighten it out.”

“I don't think so,” Phil said. What a mess that Terri had gotten into the box. Stupid of him to have hung onto the divorce certificate. He had wiped out the past with Kathryn, erased the slate clean, but kept that paper. Why? Some primitive fear of destroying documents? He mused over this idea. There were a lot of things people did that were inexplicable. Himself included. He was an emotional, feeling person, depended on his instincts. In the long run, it was best, but sometimes it got you into a fix.

Never mind that. The question was—now what? From Terri he'd never expected anything like breaking into the box. She was such a straightforward kid. Not a sneaky bone in her body. It was overhearing that conversation he'd had with Vivian . . . it had gotten her all fevered up. Why couldn't Vivian give up playing big sister-mother to him? If only she hadn't started in on him . . .

Someday, when Terri was older, he'd tell her everything—when she could understand and appreciate what he'd done. Sometimes he imagined the telling and how she would react. Other times, he thought that he would never tell, he couldn't, it was something he'd have to keep secret for the rest of his life.

On his shoulders, Leif said, “Phil! You hurt my ankles. I'll pull your hair!”

“Sorry, sport.” He loosened his grip.

Nancy put her arm through his, and he held it tight to his side. She was taller than he was, and he liked that. He liked so much about her—her spirit and her enthusiasm for life. She had had a rough time, but she hadn't been soured.
Since he met her, he'd been allowing himself dreams . . . old, good dreams of a big family . . . the four of them . . . more kids . . . maybe a big old house he'd fix up . . . and laughter . . . lots of laughter . . .

Was Terri jealous of Nancy? She'd had his attention, love, devotion exclusively for so long, and he was crazy about her, had been since she was a wee baby he could hold in the palm of his hand. But lately she was different . . . not so open, not so sweet . . . Maybe he ought to talk to somebody about it, he thought with a rush of emotion, a start of tears to his eyes . . . talk about how he and Terri had been alone for so long and how much he loved her, and how carefully he had brought her up. He was so proud of her. They had been through a lot together. He had managed, no problems they couldn't handle . . . even the girl stuff. She knew she could talk to him, and she did talk to him. Her frankness and sweetness had stunned him. He was constantly amazed by his daughter.

Now the question was how to do things the best way, so no one was hurt, not Terri, and not Nancy, either . . .

As if she'd read his mind, Nancy said, “Everything seems so important when you're that age.”

He looked at her. If he told her . . . did he dare? She'd understand . . . he was sure of that. Still . . . better not. “She got into some papers of mine, that's what it's all about,” he said. How could something so insubstantial as a piece of paper make a difference between him and Terri? He had given up everything for her, more than she would ever know. And if he had to, he would do it again, too, in a
moment, like
that
.

As they rounded the bend in the path he saw Terri still sitting at the picnic table. “Hiii!” Nancy called, waving.

“Hi,” Terri said, but she didn't wave. Her throat tightened. Nancy, Leif, and her father looked perfect together.

Nancy sat down next to her and put her arm around Terri. “Your dad tells me you got into some papers of his. I'm sure there was a good reason, but if you don't speak, how can Phil know?”

Some
papers!
Terri wanted Nancy to take her arm away. She wanted to knock the glass of Cold Duck out of her father's hand. She wanted to shout at him. Why did you tell Nancy only
that?
Only part of the truth?

All the bad things that had ever happened to her—leaving so many friends, bringing the waxed paper to school, her mother being dead—all the important things and the silly things crowded into her mind. She felt tears coming.
No.
She jumped up and walked away from her father, Leif, and Nancy.

She walked past a bunch of kids playing softball. A girl in grey sweat pants ran after a boy, trying to tag him out. Terri cut through the park. She heard Nancy calling her, and kept walking. In the parking lot she thought about sitting in the truck, or maybe going into the camper and lying down, but she kept going, out of the lot and up the road.

She walked for a long time and every time a car came up behind her she'd think it was her father out looking
for her. She walked into Maysville, a small town with a railroad running through the middle of it, and a bunch of bars and little stores going down a hill. Ahead, she saw a stone quarry. Where the earth had been blasted it was a grey tumble of rocks with nothing at all growing.

As she walked, she looked at everything. Nearly every house she passed she wished she could be inside and be invisible, and see the people and what they put in their houses, and the things they did, and how they talked to each other. She noticed a brick house painted yellow. A sign out front said FOR SALE . . . OPEN HOUSE. It had a side porch with white shining pillars and bunches of purple mums growing against the cellar windows. People were going in and out.

A man and a woman got out of a car and walked up the path. Terri walked behind them, and they all went inside together. A woman wearing a fur coat and orange-framed glasses greeted them. “Please sign in. Look around. I'll answer any questions.” Terri walked behind the couple through the house, looking into every room, imagining the perfect family who had lived in these perfect rooms.

She got home late. The truck was parked in the lot, and there were lights on in the apartment. The stairs smelled good, the fresh, sharp smell of clean linoleum. Even before she got to the top step the door opened. “I
thought
I heard something,” Nancy said, “It's her, Phil. It's
Terri.
” She stood aside to let Terri in.

Her father took her arm, not gently. “Where were you?” She felt the shock of his yelling at her. “We've been
worried
sick
.”

“You didn't have to worry.” She tried to walk past him.

He held her. “What do you mean, I didn't have to worry? I can't believe this. My daughter disappears for four hours and then says I don't have to worry!”

“I can take care of myself,” Terri said, stiffening her nose against the treacherous tears.

“Don't be stupid, please. That is not you talking. When have you ever gone away for four hours?” His eyes were bright, his voice shaking. “I think you owe Nancy an apology. Nancy and me, because we've both been out of our minds.”

“Apologize?” Terri said. “You should apologize to me, Daddy. You didn't tell me the truth.
Why didn't you tell me the truth?
” The sound of her voice was strange in her ears. She sounded far away, creaking, like an old gate. She thought someone was crying. In a moment she realized it was herself. She was crying . . . that creaking crying sound was her. And her father was crying, too.

ELEVEN

In Terri's mind what happened that Sunday evening in their house with her father was never entirely clear. That is, the sequence of events was unclear—it was like being in an accident and, afterward, remembering only the sight of the other car coming straight for you—the moment of impact forever a blank.

And, afterward, too, there was that curious numbness that comes with an accident. A lack of feeling, a lack of connection, all the nerve endings frozen, so that the little shocks you expect as you remember the accident don't come. They hit the frozen nerves and are stopped dead. Then you go through the day after the accident, smiling and talking and thinking,
I'm normal. I'm unaffected.
Only later, much later, do you find the bruises, and discover that you ache everywhere.

Overnight, the weather changed. The morning sky was low, full of heavy grey clouds. Wet black leaves fell from the trees. As Terri walked into school she noticed with a feeling of surprise that everything was the way it always was. The halls were crowded. Boys were sitting on the trophy case near the gym. Couples holding hands and patting each
other lined the second-floor landing near the window. How could everything be exactly as it was before when, for her, nothing would ever be the same again?

First they had cried. Don't ever do that to me again, he said. You have to tell me, she said. Tell me the truth . . .

Leif was playing with pots and pans, hanging them together.

You and my mother were divorced. Is that right? That's what the paper said.

He nodded. Yes.

A divorce? Nancy said. She still had the baseball cap on her head. A divorce? Phil . . . I thought . . . I don't understand . . .

It's a very hard thing to talk about, he said. If Terri hadn't found the divorce decree . . .

She walked to her locker, carrying with her, like something tangible, that curious numbness, that detachment. She saw little details with extraordinary clarity. A sharp- nosed girl wearing a fluffy white fur hat with earflaps. A boy with slicked-back blond hair, each hair lying separate and distinct on his head. And the smells of the school—Lysol, oregano (pizza for lunch again), and cigarette smoke—came to her in parallel waves, so that she smelled them all at once, and yet individually.

He wiped his eyes. Terri, can't you take me on faith? All these years . . . let it drop now, Terri . . . Pleading. You found something . . . you opened a can of worms . . .

Divorce? Nancy said.

He walked up and down the room, clasping his crossed arms. Yes. Kathryn and I were divorced. Yes. A rumpled, sleepy
look on his face. Yes. Now you know. Okay? Is that it?

Divorce? Nancy said.

He didn't look at her. He looked at Terri. All right? Now you have the truth.

But . . . but . . . there's more, she said.

More?

Isn't there? She knew there was. She saw that in the way he looked at her. In the way he didn't look at her. In the way he went to the window, turned his back on her. The silence was long. Nancy broke it.

More? Nancy said. Is there more, Phil?

Yes. His voice was muffled. Terri felt a wave of hard pity in her chest. Her heart beat in slow, heavy strokes. She thought her heart beat like the strokes of an old clock.

I don't want to tell you, he said. I don't want to tell you. It's up to you, Terri. It's up to Terri. We can stop this right now. We can just forget it . . . go back to the way things were . . .

She had come dutifully to school. She went dutifully to each class, her feet taking her automatically. She sat in her seat; she opened her notebook; she took out her Bic pen. Perhaps she even wrote down things that made sense. She copied assignments. She looked seriously at her teachers, and listened to other kids talking. Once someone made a joke and everyone laughed. She laughed, too.

The whole morning passed in this way: sharp moments of sight and sound, then a blurred rush of time. In her head the voices of last night whispered sharply. Outside, it was raining. The windows were streaked, the lights on. Inside, the school was crowded, warm, steamy; it was like a cave.
She saw them all, students and teachers, strange beasts rushing from den to den, huddling together. In the hall she liked being jostled. If someone pushed her she would welcome it—hands pushing her, shoving her forward, because her feet moved so slowly, stumblingly.

In English Mr. Higgens gave one of his surprise quizzes. He roamed the aisles, his fierce popping eyes keeping everyone in line. No cheating in his class! “Terri—” Mr. Higgens was standing over her, gazing at her nearly blank test paper. “Do you plan to finish?” She nodded. “Terrific. You have eight minutes.”

She bent over the paper . . . The bell rang. She had written nothing, been unaware of the time passing. She put the paper on Mr. Higgens' desk. He glanced at it. “Wait a minute, Terri.” The room emptied. “Well, what is it?” he said. “What's going on with you? You're a pretty girl. Do you expect to be passed on your looks? Eh? Eh?”

She shook her head.

“Were you thinking about English? Or were you thinking about your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“
No?
I get up here every day and try to teach you kids some respect for the English language. Do you realize you're going to be handicapped in life unless you learn what I've got to teach you? Handicapped!” He took her test paper and hurled it to the floor.

She didn't want to cry.

Mr. Higgens leaped out of his seat, his face working. “What are you crying for? You silly girl!” He patted her head
vigorously. “Don't you know by now I only mean a quarter of what I say?”

His face swam in front of her, those big popping eyes . . . Was he feeling sorry for her? He didn't know. How could he? No one knew but her and her father and Nancy.

“Good lord, girl! Here, have a tissue.” He dumped a box of tissues in front of her, then flung himself back into his chair. “You kids will make a nervous wreck of me yet.”

He said it seriously, as if he was the World's Calmest Person, being driven over the edge by his students. Laughter tore at her throat.

“Terri—” His eyes popped. “If you need someone to talk to, I'm here.”

“Thank you,” she said. She wanted to say more, wanted to tell him he was kind and she liked him. “Can I have a pass to my next class?”

He wrote it out. “See you tomorrow. I hope we're both in better shape.”

In the hall she saw Shaundra. “Hi!” Shaundra caught her arm. She was wearing high-waisted jeans with black and orange suspenders. “Where you going?”

“Class. I was just talking to Mr. Higgens.” Amazing that she sounded so normal.

“Meet me after school. I gotta rush now, library pass.”

The afternoon went by in fits and starts. Voices had an odd hollow quality. And words—words fit together in a recognizable way, but the sense was hard to catch. Sometimes, lost in her thoughts, she heard nothing.

Her father sighed, sighed again and again, as if he had
trouble getting enough air. And, later, he cried again. And, later, she said to Nancy, No! Leave him alone! But that was later, and by then they had talked for hours, and she was tired, so tired . . .

Could she talk to Shaundra about it? Maybe she would never tell anyone. She caught a glimpse of herself in a window. A tall girl with a braid down her back, wearing jeans, a blue Ivy shirt, a gold chain, a short white sweater with just the bottom button done up. She didn't look different, or strange. Could anyone tell?

Shaundra was waiting for her near the front doors. It was raining, thick grey sheets of rain. “Whose house should we go to?” Shaundra put her books over her head.

“Yours.” They walked through puddles. Soggy leaves filled the gutters.

Well, what happened after the divorce, Phil? Nancy said. Did you get custody of Terri?

No, I didn't get anything.

Her mother had custody? And then, after the car accident, you—

There was no car accident.

There was no car accident?

There was no car accident.

No car accident . . . no car accident . . . no car accident . . . no car accident . . .

“My mother told me to take an umbrella,” Shaundra said. “She said it was going to rain. I hate it when my mother is right.”

I'm confused, Phil. If there was no car accident . . . Nancy sat on the edge of the couch. For the first time Terri noticed how
lumpy it was and that pieces of stuffing were coming out of the arms. She hated that couch. Until that moment she didn't know she hated it.

“Did Higgens give your class a quiz today?”

“Yes.”

“Us, too! How'd you do?”

“I don't know. Not good.”

“Oh, I bet you did fine. You're so smart.
I
probably flunked!”

Then how did Kathryn die, Phil?

She didn't die.

She didn't—you mean—Is she alive?

Yes. As far as I know.

Terri's mother is alive? Where is she? Where is Terri's mother, Phil?

Oh, god, can we stop this? Can we stop this interrogation? Terri—I did it for you. They were going to take you away.

Did what, Phil? You did what?

Must I? he said. Must I tell you?

“You know what I just thought of,” Saundra said.

“What?”

“You know! What we did on Friday.”

“Friday?”

“Terri! Stop teasing me! The box. Your father's box.”

He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. The lines around his mouth were drawn deep, yet there was a curious half smile on his lips. Terri recognized that smile—the crocodile smile, the smile that you can't control. The smile that doesn't belong on your face, bu
t
there it is. She had felt that smile coming over her once
when a boy in her fifth grade class fell down and hit his head against the metal leg of a chair. He bled. Looking at him, white on the floor, before she understood it was terrible, or maybe just as she understood, she smiled. She had put her hand to her mouth to hide that awful smile.

“Did you tell your father?” Shaundra said. “Did you tell him about the box? What you did?”

Terri blinked, her heart jumped—a sign of life in the cold.
Friday
when she broke open the box? Only Friday? It seemed so long ago. Much, much longer than two days ago. Much, much longer than the day before the day before yesterday.

Must I? he said. He appealed to her. Terri—she felt small and weak. She leaned against the wall. Terri, we can just forget it . . . just let it drop . . . We're happy . . . It's up to you, he said. You say the word, Terri. You tell me, Okay, Daddy, you ‘ve gone far enough. You say it, Terri.

“I told him,” she said.

“You did! Did you mention me?” Shaundra clutched Terri's arm. “You have so much nerve.” She shuddered dramatically. Her bunny fur jacket was slick with rain. “You said you would, but I didn't think you really would!”

She had wanted to say, Yes, Daddy, yes, let's go back to where we were . . . before Aunt Vivian came . . . before I heard you talking . . . before I opened the box . . . back . . . back . . . it was safe back there . . . safe . . .

She said, I want to know, Daddy. I want to know it all.

“Well, what happened? Was he furious? What about the other thing—you know, the divorce, and—Are you still
mad at me for saying he lied to you?”

“But he did,” Terri said. Her voice sounded small, choked.

“Oh, Terri—
why?
”

“Please, Shaundra—I don't want to talk about it right now.”

“I understand.” Shaundra squeezed her arm consolingly.

I was left with nothing, he said. No home. No wife. No child. Kathryn was going to get married again. Clem. Clem Bradshaw. And Terri began to call him Daddy Clem.

“Oh, this rain,” Shaundra said. “I'm soaked. Well, semi-soaked, pretty soon I'll be totally soaked. I wish we had a ride. We should hitch a ride. You want to hitch a ride? Would you dare?”

“All right,” Terri said.

“You would do it?”

“Why not?” Terri felt again that blankness, that nothingness. She was wet and chilled, and all that was trivial.

Maybe, he said, Terri wouldn't have forgotten me altogether, but it would never have been the same. He'd be with her all the time, this other guy, this man—Clem—He'd be there when she had something to tell . . . he'd be there when she was sick, he'd be there, all the time . . .

“Oh, you wouldn't hitch. You're just saying that. What if somebody picked us up?”

“That's the point, isn't it?” Terri stepped into the road and stuck out her thumb.

“Terri, you nut!”

A car passed. “You're the one who wanted to do it.”

“I've never hitched a ride! Have you?”

“No.” Terri kept her thumb up. The driver of another car looked at her, but didn't slow down. Her heart seemed to race along with the car, speeding, speeding. She felt calm, reckless, strangely adrift.

Then it turned out they were going to move out of the country. He lined up a job teaching in a school in Italy. In Milan. The American School in Milan. One day when I came for Terri, I saw a letter addressed to him. He and Kathryn must have been talking about it, and he left the letter. I saw the return address. The American School, Via Bezzola, Milano. I never forgot that. Via Bezzola. That's when it became real to me, and I knew I couldn't let them, couldn't let her . . .

Shaundra pulled at Terri's arm. “Come on! You're weird today. You're supposed to have sense, of the two of us.”

“One more car.” She walked backward, thumb out. It didn't matter. It didn't matter. Nothing was what it seemed. Strangely, just then she remembered Sally the Mouse and Mustafa riding off in their Mousemobile.