Girl Out of Water Page 9

  “Morning,” he says.

  I nod and swallow a bite of my cavity-certified cereal. “Morning.”

  He pulls a carton of eggs and shredded cheese from the fridge. Even though it’s already nine, he’s still wearing pajama pants. “Want an omelet?” he asks.

  I stare at my giant bowl of cereal. Then I think about the frosted brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts I ate before it. Then I shrug my shoulders. “Sure.”

  He starts heating a pan. “Don’t you have work?” I ask. Most days he leaves for his job before I’m even awake.

  “Not today. There was a delay in supplies because of delay in payment because of delay in someone signing off on paperwork. Gotta love working for bureaucrats.”

  “Wait a second,” I say. “You don’t have work today.”

  “Correct.”

  “Which means you’re free.”

  “Correct.”

  “Which means you can watch the kids.”

  Extraordinarily long pause. Like a Rocky Horror antici…pation pause. Dad looks at me. “Well, I was thinking we could all go visit Jacks.”

  “As in all five of us?”

  “Yes…”

  I sigh. It’s not that I don’t love my cousins. I do. I really do. Especially Emery, who I’ve established a nightly routine of popcorn and Netflix with. I still can’t believe she’s never watched The Office. I’m just not used to being responsible for three kids almost twenty-four hours a day. When my cousins visit us in Santa Cruz, Aunt Jackie is around to take care of them, and I pitch in. I’m not the sole caretaker. Keeping the boys from destroying the house on a sugar rampage all by myself takes up more energy than a full day’s surf in hostile waves.

  Since Dad doesn’t have work today, I want to take advantage and grasp a little responsibility relief. “How about this,” I say. “I go to the hospital to hang with Aunt Jackie, and you take the kids to the pool or whatever.”

  I glance at the omelets. Dad is sprinkling on the cheese. “More cheddar, please. No, like more, more. Like personal cow more. Thank you. Now does that sound like a deal? Me, aunt. You, kids. Me, hospital. You, pool.”

  “I don’t know…” Dad says, drawing out the words like it’ll help him make a decision. “Jacks probably wants to see them…”

  “So come after. After they’ve exhausted themselves swimming, they won’t have energy to wreak havoc on innocent hospital patients. We’ll avoid a Destiny’s Child repeat. Come on. Please, please, please?”

  “Getting in some swimming does sound nice…”

  “Yes!” I hop off the stool, rush forward, and give Dad a hug from behind. “Thank you! Love you!”

  “Careful! Melting cheese here! And love you too.”

  • • •

  When Dad drops me off at the hospital, I feel like a little kid getting dropped off for a playdate or camp. For years now, I’ve walked everywhere or gotten rides from friends, so being dropped off in a minivan by Dad feels like I’ve taken a time machine and am seven years old all over again.

  And yet, as the van pulls away, I’m relieved. This is the first time in a week that I’ve been completely alone. Sure, I’ve had a room to myself every night, but is privacy really privacy when at any moment Parker and Nash can bang on the door, wanting to know if it’s bad they accidentally cracked the box that makes the Internet be the Internet? This is the first time in days I don’t have to be responsible for anyone. I’m here to spend time with Aunt Jackie, but she has doctors and nurses to look after her. I’m just visiting. I’m not responsible for Aunt Jackie.

  I take a deep breath. The air is warm as always, but clouds cover the sun, and a light breeze whips through my hair. I sit down on a wooden bench near the hospital entrance, close my eyes, and try to replace the sounds of the hospital with the sounds of the beach. Not a car rushing to the emergency entrance but a Jet Ski slicing through the spray. Not sneakers thumping down the concrete but flip-flops smacking along the sand. Not pigeons cooing but seagulls crying.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  I crack open my eyes. No ocean, just an elderly man wearing a fleece jacket, despite the heat. “Yes?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  I glance at my phone and tell him, “Just past eleven.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” The man smiles at me before leaving.

  I nod and smile back, but now my oceanside illusion is ruined. I stand and head toward the hospital entrance. As I walk, I watch the old man in front of me, dragging a rolling oxygen tank along with him.

  Ocean air is good for the lungs, I want to tell him. May I suggest moving to the beach?

  • • •

  Aunt Jackie is sitting up and reading when I enter the room. Her black-framed glasses remind me of Lincoln’s glasses, which make me think of his face…and his lips.

  Aunt Jackie looks up. “Anise!”

  “Hi! Book any good?”

  She grins. “Terrible, but I love it.” Her voice is smooth today. Perhaps they lowered her painkiller dosage. She slips off her glasses and cocks her head to the side. “Are you trying to copy me?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “That collection of bruises you’ve got could rival mine.”

  “Oh, right.” I’ve gotten pretty banged up from a few days of learning to skateboard.

  “Just don’t let my kids start thinking injuries are cool, okay?” Aunt Jackie says.

  “Promise,” I say. I’ve told the boys if they skate without helmets I’ll personally give them brain injuries, but I should probably also lead by example.

  I settle into one of the armchairs. “Huh,” Aunt Jackie says, staring at me in a way that makes me think they didn’t lower her painkiller dosage after all.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, you just look a lot like your mom when she was your age.”

  “Oh.” The mom topic startles me. It’s an unspoken rule in the family only to bring her up if she demands to be brought up—basically whenever she appears in town or leaves again. We discuss the logistics of my mom, not my mom herself.

  “I think it’s the sunburn and the scratches,” Aunt Jackie continues. “And the messy hair. You know, the whole bedraggled look.”

  “The what look?”

  “Bedraggled, disheveled. You know, the ‘I’ve been out all night and don’t have time to shower before class’ look. She was a true wild child. And after our mom passed away, she stopped even pretending to act like a good kid.”

  Aunt Jackie shifts under the crisp hospital sheets, tilting toward me. Her eyes are animated but trained past me, like she’s watching a movie projected on the far wall. “She’d leave the house one day looking all put together and return the next at the crack of dawn with bruises from going dumpster diving for found art or racing motorcycles she wasn’t licensed to drive. Oh gosh, and one time—when your grandfather was out of town—she jumped off the roof into the pool. It was filled then, of course, but still, it was about the most reckless thing she could do.”

  Aunt Jackie reaches for the water on her nightstand and sips from the plastic straw before glancing back at me with that nostalgic-drugged look again. “She was your age, you know.”

  The question pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. “My age when?”

  “When she ran off. Two years after your grandmother passed away. Your grandmother was born and raised here, and she always talked about finally seeing the world after we graduated from high school, but then she got cancer, and…

  “Your mom was terrified to end up like her, to live and die in the same place without seeing the world. That fear and grief just built up. So she left. I was Emery’s age at the time and devastated. And when she didn’t come back, I got angry. One night, a couple months after she left, while your grandfather was sleeping, I ripped up papers and pictures, threw her books in the pool
, destroyed all of her stuff. When she finally came back to visit, two years later with a GED and a boyfriend from Mississippi, there wasn’t even a T-shirt of hers left for her to sleep in.”

  “Oh.” I shift uncomfortably in the chair. Dad always tells me it’s not my fault my mom leaves, but he’s never gone into detail about her childhood. I never knew Aunt Jackie’s anger is why there’s no evidence of her at the house. I always assumed that, like in our home, she’s a ghost, leaving nothing behind but an unsettled atmosphere.

  I try to imagine what my mom’s room would’ve looked like when she was seventeen, but I draw a blank. I can’t conjure her favorite band, let alone her favorite color. One of the strongest memories I have of her is a faint musky scent because she prefers men’s deodorant.

  I don’t know how to respond. Talking about my mom, spending time thinking about her, makes me uncomfortable. Why should I spend time on someone who never spends any time on me?

  I scramble for diversion. “Do you want a snack? I can grab us something from the cafeteria.”

  Aunt Jackie doesn’t respond, and for a moment I’m scared she won’t leave the topic alone. Then she smiles, one of those smiles that make you feel sad not happy. “That sounds good, Anise. Chocolate pudding if they have it.”

  “Will do.”

  As I leave for the cafeteria, I can’t help but think of my mom as a teenager, wild hair framing her pale face, visiting the grandmother I never met, perhaps already beginning to plan her escape. I glance back at Aunt Jackie’s room, and my heart squeezes as I realize something: I wasn’t the only twelve-year-old girl abandoned by someone I love.

  • • •

  Aunt Jackie and I spend the rest of the afternoon together. We eat chocolate pudding. She reads me excerpts from her paperback romance that put even the cheesiest bits of my Detective Dana novels to shame. I go back to the cafeteria to get us more chocolate pudding. She tells me all of the hospital staff gossip, both of us breaking into hysterical giggles as the nurse we were just talking about comes in to take her vitals. By the time Dad and the kids arrive, Aunt Jackie is nodding off to sleep, and I’m picking through her romance novel, texting Tess the best excerpts, including my personal favorite, Rafael’s scepter pierced her guarded honeycomb. Messaging back and forth constantly almost makes it feel like I’m back home. But then a blast of recirculated air hits me instead of the ocean breeze.

  “Hey,” Dad whispers from the doorway with Emery. Parker and Nash slip into the room. “She sleeping?”

  I nod, then turn to Parker and Nash and put a finger to my lips. It looks like the pool really did exhaust them because they collapse quietly into the extra armchairs by the bed. I stand and gesture for Emery to take my chair. She smiles at me and joins her brothers. I walk over to Dad at the doorway. “You guys have fun?” I ask him, keeping my voice soft.

  He runs a hand through his graying hair. “You know what’s more exhausting than building a city hall?”

  “What?”

  “Toting three kids to the pool and the mall.”

  I gasp. “The mall? You hate the mall. You must have made Emery happy.”

  “Emery? More like Parker and Nash. Those boys spent two hours in the Discovery store. Emery and I had to pry them away with the promise of cinnamon sugar pretzels.”

  Oh god. Cinnamon sugar pretzels. The bakery next to Tess’s family restaurant makes the most delicious ones but only during the holidays. I swear I eat three a day all through December. “Did you…”

  Dad pulls a crumpled wax paper bag from one of the shopping bags at his feet and grins. “I did. Because I am—”

  “—The best father ever. Thank you, thank you.” Despite eating chocolate pudding all afternoon and a ton of sugar this morning, I open the bag and tear off the still-warm dough, popping the piece into my mouth. “And thank you for taking them today,” I mumble while chewing.

  “Happy to do it,” Dad responds. “How was hanging with Jacks?”

  “Pretty good. I forgot how much I missed her, you know?” When they visit us in Santa Cruz, the trips are always so relaxed. Aunt Jackie and I have spent countless hours sitting by the surf, sipping Arnold Palmers, and inventing increasingly absurd backstories for all the tourists walking by. When I was younger, I used to beg Dad to let them come live with us. I wanted my aunt and cousins to be around all the time, a big, loud family like the ones on TV. He had to explain that they had their own home. And soon enough, Eric and Tess and my other friends and their parents became that big, loud family anyway. It was only late at night, when it was just Dad and me that I still felt a little alone. Sometimes I’d slip one of my mom’s postcards out of my nightstand and run my fingers along it like a magic lamp, wishing, “Come home, come home, come home.”

  I imagine her finding the note I left in Santa Cruz. I wonder if she’ll care that her sister is hurt, if it will even register for her to care. I can’t believe she up and left her sister and dad for two years without a word, yet of course I can believe it because she does the exact same thing to me. No wonder Aunt Jackie ruined all of her stuff. It’s probably healthier than stashing keepsakes in a nightstand.

  “I do know,” Dad says. “I’ve missed Jacks and the kids too. It’d be nice if we lived closer and could see them more often.”

  “You mean if they lived closer,” I correct.

  “Yes, of course.” Dad shifts on his feet. “Oh, I almost forgot. I got you something else.”

  “A cinnamon sugar pretzel and something else? Watch out or I might turn into one of those spoiled Willy Wonka kids.”

  “Think of it as a thank you for being there for your cousins,” he says and then reaches for the largest of the shopping bags by his feet.

  Parker and Nash nudge each other, and Emery half glances over from the screen of her phone. I hesitate, then open the bag and find two things inside: a skateboard and a helmet. The presents are unlike Dad’s usual gifts—Mr. Zog’s Wax, a new wet suit, a gift card to the Shak. People identify who you are and buy you presents accordingly. What do these presents say about me, about how much I’ve changed since leaving home?

  “You like them?” Dads asks.

  “Yeah, do you like them?” Nash asks loudly. Parker shushes him. Nash swats him. Emery shushes them both. Aunt Jackie stays sleeping.

  I nod a couple times but don’t say anything because the skateboard and helmet are white and teal, which are the colors of my surfboard. My throat gets all tight.

  “You like the colors?” Dad asks. “They’re your favorites, right?”

  This is sweet. This is thoughtful. This is Dad saying, I’m sorry your summer isn’t turning out like you planned, but I hope this makes it better. So I cough, trying to loosen my throat, and say, “Awesome. Thank you. Really, thanks.”

  Dad has always been one to take words at face value, so he hugs me and smiles. “Glad you like them.”

  And I do like them. Well, part of me likes them.

  But a different part of me feels like I’m looking at gifts that belong to a different girl.

  • • •

  “I don’t need help packing,” Emery says. I’m sitting on her bed as she pulls out a duffel bag and stares into her closet.

  “I know,” I say. “Just thought I’d keep you company since I won’t see you over the weekend.”

  Emery’s friend has a lake house, and as we were leaving the hospital this evening, she texted Emery to invite her up for a few days. Emery jumped at the chance, even as Dad was muttering something about it being rather last minute. “Okay, thanks I guess. But you know, you are here all summer.” She looks up from inspecting a pair of shorts and smiles. “You’ll survive a few days without me.”

  Thanks for the reminder. I still have fifty-seven days left in Nebraska. Not that I’m counting. “So who else is going?” I ask as Emery places the shorts on the extra bed and pulls out two blue
summer dresses that look exactly the same and holds each one up to the mirror, switching them back and forth.

  It’s amazing how Emery and I can spend hours talking and watching TV and laughing yet basically have no shared interests. She’s all music and clothes. And I’m all surfing and…surfing. But maybe that’s part of what family is—loving people you have nothing in common with.

  “You don’t know them. People I hang out with at the park. From school and stuff.”

  “All girls?”

  “Yes, Mom.” She says it teasingly with a grin, but the word unsettles me. Maybe because of my conversation with Aunt Jackie. I knew my mom left home young, but I never got many details. Looking around Emery’s room now, crowded with her own things, I wonder if…

  “Hey, Emery?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Do you know…um, was this your mom’s room when she was a kid?”

  She doesn’t seem to notice the tension in my voice as she keeps sorting clothes. “Nope, oldest kid gets the biggest room. It was your mom’s. Do you like this top?”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” I say, but I’m not looking at the top. I’m looking at the closet’s door frame and wondering if the notches in it were made to mark my mom’s height, wondering what color the room was painted when she lived here, wondering how her furniture was arranged.

  Emery continues, “Yeah, so the trip is all girls because Charlie’s dad doesn’t want any boys there. He’s, like, super uptight. Are you allowed to have boys sleep over?”

  Boys? Sleeping over? Emery now has my full attention. “Um, not really,” I say, having a flash of this one night Eric stayed over until four in the morning watching movies while Dad was fast asleep. Eric was dating someone then, so he was just my best friend Eric. But now, looking back, I remember my flushed skin as we wrestled for the remote on the couch, my racing heart when we decided to share a blanket because both of us were too wiped from the wrestling to get up and grab a second one. I guess I liked him before I knew I liked him. And now because of almost two thousand miles of separation, I’m losing my chance to explore those feelings.