Chapter Twenty-One

  After the service, with soggy feet and a tearstained face, I wander aimlessly. I’m numb and feeling everything acutely at the same time, as I retrace all the steps Even and I ever took.

  I find myself on Birch Road. My toes are frozen. The driveway is empty. I slip as I go too fast up the ice-encrusted stairs to Even’s apartment. I knock and knock on the door, calling out his name. Little white clouds of desperate hope accompany every “Even? Are you there? Are you home?”

  I jiggle the handle. It turns. I push the sticky door open. When I cross the threshold, dirty dishes litter the messy kitchen. I run my hand along the counter, realizing Even hasn’t been here to clean up. Even’s gone. I turn the water to warm, keeping my hand under it until I’m satisfied with the temperature and my fingers thaw. I clean every dish, spoon, bowl, and pot. I sponge down the counter and sweep.

  I tidy up the living room, stopping at a dusty family photo. There’s young Nash and a woman who must be Tansy, Even’s mother. Her hair is the same color as Even’s and a little wild. When I wipe away the dust with my sleeve, I realize the photo of the baby, Even, was stuck behind the glass to make the picture whole; to look like a family with a baby. Tansy never held her babies, Even or his twin. I set it down. Tears trickle from my eye.

  I save Even’s room for last. When I enter, his distinct smell makes my knees weak. I sink to the bed and rest my head on his pillow. I cry into it until it’s damp and the grays of winter dusk prompt me to reach my hand over to the night table to turn on the lamp. My hand brushes against a book. Even’s journal. I clutch it to my chest.

  When I flip through the pages, his great adventure, his dream to bring his mother’s ashes to the sea, floods my thoughts. Then I recall his tempestuous relationship with his father and don’t imagine he would take kindly to me pilfering through his late son’s room.

  Just as I am about to turn off the light, I notice a wooden box on Even’s dresser. Pressed into the top, in what looks like opalescent seashell, is the name “Tansy Anderson” and her birthdate and the date she died. I take Even’s pillowcase and the journal. I descend the icy stairs carefully. Just as I’m about to head down the driveway and walk home, I have a better idea. I go to the shed and back Even’s motorcycle down the ramp. I straddle it, start it up, and rumble back home.

  When I pull up next to the Honda, my stomach sinks. I have nowhere to hide the Harley. Skunk will see it if I park it in the driveway and will probably vandalize it. Nonetheless, I turn it off and sit there to think. The familiar curve of the cool metal and sturdy handlebars reminds me how perfectly Even and I fit on it together.

  I spot my reflection in the windows of the garage door, which is brimming with old junk. I open up the bay. I rearrange some boxes, an old plastic swimming pool, and some other stuff. It’ll fit in, and then I’ll conceal it again. I go about this endeavor, praying that Skunk won’t appear or, if he’s already home that he won’t hear me. When I’m done, the only sound that greets me is Mama’s holler.

  I bring her dinner and another bottle of cough medicine. She asks why I look so wet. I don’t dare tell her it’s sweat. A car drives by in the slush.

  “Sprayed by a puddle,” I lie, asking God to forgive me.

  “Stupid. Why didn’t you get out of the way? Always in the way, Sugar. I remember when you were a little girl, you were always underfoot—”

  I don’t stay to hear the rest.

  When I return to my room, I check my email on my phone and see the therapist has written me back with an encouraging note and her availability. I reply, confirming an appointment for Monday. Then I dive under the covers and crack the first page of Even’s journal.

  For a moment, I hesitate. Is this intruding on his privacy? Would he want me to read this? Then a slip of paper falls out. When I flip it over, I realize it’s a photo of the two of us, not the collage I gave him for Christmas, but another; it looks like one he snapped one night when we went out for pizza and took turns playing our favorite songs on the jukebox. He must have printed it out. I begin reading his mother’s entries, and just when I reach the end, I doze off.

  I wake in the morning, and the journal is open, resting on my chest. I mark the page where I left off, the break between Tansy’s writing and Even’s, with the photo of the two of us.

  After church, as I linger, enjoying the familiar smell of extinguished candles and letting the Holy Spirit bring me to my knees to pray, I think about Tansy. She wrote about becoming a mother and her hopes and dreams. I felt her love for her family in her words, stretching through time, her legacy for her son. I kneel and bring my hands together. I think about Granddad and Boo. Sometimes when I pray, I get the sense that God has opened up the lines for me to talk directly to them.

  In my prayers, I confess that I’ve hidden a motorcycle in the garage and promise Boo that I will get back to my sewing. I tell them about Mama and Skunk and how I’m afraid I’m failing them, but as soon as these thoughts cross my mind, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that I’m failing myself more than anyone. I slide back on the pew and sit there, just thinking, until the setting sun illuminates Jesus’s feet in the stained-glass window.

  The next day, after school, I take the Honda to Juliana Collins’s office up in Keene. It’s inside a house painted salmon-pink with green trim, almost a Victorian, but not quite. When I enter the office, the smell of lemon and sage greets me. I know this only because Boo loved the combination. Juliana’s head peeks out from a closet, and she lifts a smile on her lips when she sees me.

  “Hi, Mercy. It’s nice to meet you,” she says as she puts down a folder and extends her hand. She shakes mine with a firm grip. She is old enough to be my mother, but her legs look strong, sturdy, as does her jaw. Her hair is short, but not poufy like many women prefer when they reach a certain age. She moves efficiently, and her voice has deliberateness to it.

  “Since I’ve already read your backstory in the email and learned a bit about you from Rebecca—I mean, Ms. Barrows—I think the best thing to do would be to jump right in, with both feet, and get things sorted out. What do you think?”

  We spend the next two hours with equal floor time, as she asks questions and I answer. Like a tangled piece of yarn, we unravel my story into one long strand of events, thoughts, actions, and consequences, so that I can see them all clearly stretched before me. Then she helps me spool it all back up again, neatly, in a way that makes sense.

  When I leave, I have that same lightness as I did after that first night with Ms. Barrows. Along with it, I have a sense of what could be, more so than I did when I just poured out my heartache to the school counselor.

  Juliana commends me for walking to school and back, and not at all in an insulting way. She recommends I keep at it, and suggests that I take a walk when I’m feeling stress or anger instead of reaching for a sweet. She seems hopeful and not at all judgmental about my body or situation but sees the relationship between the two. More than anything, she urges me to prioritize my health, both physical and mental. This sounds a lot like permission to take care of myself—not everyone else, including Mama and Skunk. She tells me something revolutionary: I’m worth it.

  When I get home, Mama says, “You seem cheerful.”

  I don’t want to tell her what I’ve been up to, but then I have a flash of inspiration. “Mama, I’m getting help.”

  “What do you mean?” She eyes me suspiciously. “You haven’t been taking drugs, have you?”

  “No Mama, with my eating habits and my, um, situation.”

  Her eyes alight with flame. “What, this ain’t good enough for you? You have some kind of problem? After all I’ve done for you, this is the thanks I get, you telling me you’ve got problems. No, Sugar, I’m the one’s got problems, namely you and your brother.” She carries on as I back out of the room, knowing now that I don’t have to listen to this and seeing very clearly how she simply won’t listen to me.

  I heat a dinner from the freezer and retreat to my room. I rub the heart-shaped seashell between my fingers and then open Even’s journal again, starting where I left off. Almost as if in answer to his mother’s entries, Even outlines his trip west with passages of his own. I imagine him there beside me, just as he was when he first revealed the journal that day on the beach. I almost feel his warmth radiating. I close the journal and cry over loss—over my loss of him but also over his lost opportunity to take his epic trip and be free.

  Over the next month, I go to school, manage to keep up with my work amidst tear-filled afternoons, which only abate when I visit Juliana on Mondays and Wednesdays. She helps me work on rebuilding my self-image and confidence. I can’t help but superimpose this against the backdrop of heartache, but Juliana is so earnest in her belief in me that I don’t tell her how much I hurt for Even.

  April sweeps out March, and drizzle and downpours replace sleet. Spring is in the air. On afternoons when the sun manages to show itself, I smell the earth thawing. Salt and sand border the streets where the slush has dried up. A sliver of hope knocks on the door of my heart as I take my evening walk. As I set out, I notice Natty Gimbal’s forsythia bush is keen to bloom. Little golden buds dot the slender branches. I remember a poem by Robert Frost.

  Tears come to my eyes. I’m stricken with the paradox of beauty and impermanence. I held on to Even so briefly. Gold. Now he’s gone. Forever. Everywhere I walk, something reminds me of him, but if I take those memories away, there are others: darker memories of belittling, bullying, and when Mama was still on her feet, public humiliation. Now I just carry the shame on my own, but it haunts the streets and shops, and crawls insidiously through every inch of the town.

  It’s nearly dark when I round a corner close to the convenience store. Hooting and loud music issue from a car as it approaches from behind. It speeds by. I dismiss the antics as townies, hot with spring fever. When I get home, though, the same car that sped by sits beside the Honda in the driveway. I hesitate, wondering if I should go in, but I need to make sure Mama’s settled in for the night. Juliana urged me to hire a nurse, because Mama’s state-subsidized health care would cover it, but when I mentioned it, especially about getting her cough looked at, Mama raised hell.

  I slip in the door and tend to Mama. Like a ghost, I keep close to the wall as I make my way to the stairs. I slip past Skunk and his friends in the living room, watching some stupid movie. Relieved, I close the door to my bedroom. I take out my sewing, intent on finishing the details on a couple of the dresses I’ve nearly completed before starting a new one. I lose myself in the rhythm of my needle: in, pull, up, in, pull, up.

  I continue my biweekly visits with Juliana. I’ve made progress, and all my crying washed away more pounds. As Juliana helps me construct a positive image of myself, it’s like a tightly closed bud inside of me softens, hinting at blooming.

  My middle-sized pants hang loose around my waist. I can practically see my goal body shape in my future. I still crave sugar, or maybe it’s Even. He’s never far from my thoughts. When I get the urge to stuff myself with cinnamon buns and pie, I think of what he’d want from me, what I’d want to offer him: a healthy girl, ready to ride to the Pacific. Although that won’t be happening now, I still dream about it. He and Juliana have taught me strength and courage.

  At school, I receive nearly as many nasty comments about losing weight as I did about being heavier. Brandon now calls me “Jenny Craig” and offers me jellybeans and chocolates. Another kid, one of Hillary’s friends, says Mama’s eating all my food. The girls default to accusations of anorexia and bulimia, when they’re the ones in the bathroom during or after lunch period.

  May brings Fat Henry home, also looking slimmer. He comments on my weight loss, saying I look healthier.

  “I have something exciting to tell you and Mama and, well, Skunk, too,” he says.

  The rumor is Skunk dropped out of school, so it’s doubtful he cares about much, least of all any news Henry has. Henry’s eyes twinkle. He follows me to Mama’s room. Something smells foul, but we both act polite and try to ignore it.

  “Mama, I have something to tell you,” Henry says, practically bouncing.

  She flicks her lighter. After she takes a drag of her cigarette, smoke pours from her nose. “Well, you better tell me quick; you look like you might disappear. If you’re still with that girlfriend of yours, tell her she better start cooking right or else you’re going to straight-up vanish.”

  Henry’s eyebrows furrow. “Mama, actually it is about Stacy and me,” he says.

  “I don’t know if I like that girl. She’s that Brittany’s cousin? The one that got herself knocked up?”

  I start to interrupt that nearly everyone in town is somehow related to Brittany, but button up, wanting to let Henry share his news.

  “See, Sugar here, she wants to be skinny like Brittany. Don’t you, Sugar? For a while I thought you was trying to starve me or keep me from all the food and eat it yourself, but now I know you ain’t doing that. You and Fat Henry here, I hardly know you anymore.”

  Henry looks dismal. “Mama, I came here to tell you some good news. Why do you have to be like that?”

  “Be like what? The way I am ain’t never been a problem for you before? What? Has that Stacy girl taken my place? You don’t love your Mama no more?”

  “Mama, I don’t think it’s that. Just give him a chance to tell you,” I say, trying to make it easier for him. I’m still used to Mama’s spite, but perhaps Henry has forgotten how to arm himself.

  “Shut up, Sugar. You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Stupid fathead. I’ve always said you were just a pain in my ass. Why don’t you make yourself useful and get me some soda,” she says.

  I bow my head. “Sure, Mama.” I go to the kitchen. Moments later, she’s shouting, and Henry thunders from the room, red-faced.

  “Sugar—Mercy. I want to call you Mercy. That’s your name. Or Bella—and remind you you’re beautiful. She’s a nasty woman, and don’t you believe for a minute anything she says to you.” Henry’s eyes shine with tears. I’ve never seen him like this. “I came here today to tell you all that I’m getting married. I love Stacy and she loves me. What that woman does isn’t anything that could be called love,” he says, pointing to the wall that separates the hall and Mama’s room.

  “She’s never loved us, and having been away from her, I see so clearly how messed up she is. She just doesn’t want any of us—you, me, or Skunk—to be any better off than she is. I bet she wants you to end up in bed next to her, followed by Skunk and then me. Lying there in misery, letting this house and the weight of unhappiness crush us to death. Just don’t forget that you’re a good person. Don’t let her make you believe otherwise.” He lowers his shoulders, and his breathing becomes even again.

  “I’m sorry, Henry. That didn’t go as planned. I try to help her, but—”

  “It’s not your responsibility.”

  “I’m all she’s got—”

  Henry shakes his head. He takes my upper arms in his hands. “You are not her mother. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say she isn’t yours either. It’s not your job to take care of her. You’re just barely still a kid. Be free.” He pulls me into a hug.

  Juliana says that I am my responsibility; his comments echo this.

  “I don’t think I’ll be coming back here. If you ever want to leave, you always have a place to stay with me,” he says, and exits.

  I watch him walk down the path and get into his car. He pauses before he starts it up. I don’t dare go back to Mama’s room until she cools off.

  At midmonth, as I take my evening walk on the dirt-bike trail, I remember Even honing his riding skills on it before he fixed up his motorcycle. I remember that sunny day when we searched for his wallet. I am lost in Even-land when a dirt bike comes toward me. I jump out of the way. The rider doesn’t stop, but I see his dark eyes. Caleb. A few others follow in his dust. At the next break in the woods, I get off the path and hurry onto a main street. I walk until it’s nearly dark and the mosquitos nibble at me.

  When I get home, Skunk, Caleb, and some of their friends are on the back deck, drinking beer and taking shots with a BB gun at the empty cans. I slide upstairs unnoticed and go to my room to finish my homework.

  After I’ve finished my Spanish and history, I look at my phone, click to Even’s photo, and then turn off my light, holding his image in my mind as I drift off to sleep. After a time, I feel breath close to my face. The covers suddenly whoosh up and cold meets my arms and legs. Someone slides in next to me.

  “Hey, Shoog,” a voice slurs.

  “Huh? What? Please don’t call me that,” I say, confused, but very quickly I am wide-awake. I shimmy to the other side of the bed. The guy grabs my arm in a tight grip. Futz.

  “Now come on. I know you’re lonely now that your boyfriend’s dead.”

  Heat rises to my face. “Caleb? Let go of me.”

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

  My courage puddles toward the floor. But I force a deep breath and remain firm.

  “Sugar, I’m going to fuck your brains out,” he says.

  I taste bile in my mouth. “No. Back off.”

  He pulls me toward him. The sickly smell of stale beer fills my nose.

  “Yeah. I think you want me. I saw you on the trail. Were you looking for me?” He grabs for my pants. I feel ill. I scramble to my feet, wriggling away. “Now that you’ve lost all that weight, I want to bang you even more. Come on, Shoog.”