Missing Pieces Read online

  I saw more. I saw the way he stood on the porch step, ready to leap off, leap away. Get away. And I saw the way his smile was saying I’m leaving … see you around.… And then there were his eyes.

  I couldn’t see his eyes. He hadn’t looked into the camera. No matter how I turned the photo, I could never get those eyes to meet mine.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Monkey Bars

  “You guys stay nearby,” I called to Rudy and Kim, the kids I was baby-sitting. Meadow and Diane had come with me to the playground, and we were all sitting on top of a picnic table.

  Kim turned and waved. “We’re going on the monkey bars.” She was five and Rudy was four. They were best friends.

  “Don’t get out of my sight,” I warned. “Either of you. Hear me?”

  “They’re practically under your nose, Jessie,” Meadow said. “Leave them alone. You’re a nervous wreck with them.”

  “I was only supposed to baby-sit Rudy,” I said, talking fast. I was nervous. “When I got over to Professor Berman’s house, Kim was there, too.” I glanced at the kids again, then unzipped my knapsack and took out the bus schedule I’d picked up in the station.

  “What’s that?” Meadow said.

  “Look, see the name of this town?” I pointed. “This is where James Wells grew up. Myrtle. I went there last Sunday. I went up by bus.”

  Meadow’s hair was in two long braids, and her face stood out sharply between them. She looked at me as if she knew what I was leading up to. “You went alone?”

  “No.” I was sweating. I lifted my shirt and fanned my belly. “Med, there’s something … something I’ve been wanting to tell you. Sort of a confession.” I wished I hadn’t used that word. “I went to Myrtle with Jack Kettle.”

  She looked at me in a stupefied way. “That doesn’t make sense. You don’t even know him.”

  “He was on the Save-the-County Walk.”

  “That was weeks ago,” she said. “You’ve known him all this time and never said a word to me?”

  “I meant to, Med. I was going to. He was on my team, we were together the whole day, then he called me once or twice, and we talked. You know.” I was chattering. “You were right, Meadow, he is nice.”

  “Don’t tell me that! Not now! I always thought if I could trust anyone in the world, it was you,” she said.

  “You can!”

  “Oh no, oh no!”

  “Meadow, I’m upset about this, too.”

  “Shut up, don’t you dare say that to me! Why did you to go to Mirrle with him?”

  “Myrtle,” I said. “I wanted to see where my father grew up, and Jack had called—” I coughed hard. “So, anyway, we met downtown and he just sort of ended up going with me.”

  “Just sort of? You’re lying, Jessie. I know your face. I know you. Look at her, Diane, her face is all red and slimy-looking.”

  “Come on, you two, don’t fight,” Diane said. “Talk about it, you don’t have to fight.”

  “What else, Jessie?” Meadow said. She had a little knife face. “There’s more, isn’t there?”

  I pulled at a weed that had grown up through the picnic table. “No,” I said, and then suddenly—I don’t know why I did it—I said, “He kissed me.”

  Meadow leaped off the table as if she’d been burned. “You’re not a friend,” she shouted. “You are dirt!” She ran over to the monkey bars and swung herself off the ground. I sat still, pulling at the weeds. “Go talk to her,” Diane said.

  I brushed myself off and went over to Meadow.

  “Go away,” she said, swinging her feet toward my face. “Get away from me. I’ll bite you!”

  “Med, I swear I would never have let it happen on purpose. I wouldn’t hurt you like that—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” She dropped down from the monkey bars and walked away.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A Storm

  I waited for my mother to mention the picture. I waited for an explosion, I waited for her to do something in her dramatic fashion—tear the picture off the mirror, scatter the pieces over the floor. I imagined her carrying on about my disloyalty, and my coming right back at her, That was mine! You have no right to destroy what’s mine.

  Satisfying. But even more satisfying was imagining saying coolly, as if I were a guide at a museum pointing out the facts, I’m clarifying my thoughts about James Wells and about myself, and us. The photograph is an essential clue to my life. I’m not just your daughter, I’m the daughter of both of you. I am him in some ways, and you in some ways, but most of all I am myself. And although this may surprise you, that means I don’t always want what you want.

  These words thrilled me, and I waited for the moment when I could say them to her. But we weren’t talking. We weren’t even screaming at each other. That would have been normal, friendly, even.

  One evening, out of the blue, she said, “I suppose you’re going through a teenage identity crisis.”

  “What?”

  She stuck a dry cigarette in her mouth. “That’s what Aaron says. He says it’s hard being a teenager.”

  “I don’t want you talking about me to other people.”

  “Aaron’s not other people.”

  “Just don’t talk about me, even to Aaron. And I’m not a teenager, I’m a person. And another thing—I’m not having a crisis, you are.”

  The cigarette wobbled on her lip. “You’ve changed, you’re doing things … you’re obsessed. Don’t think I’m not aware, I haven’t given up being your mother. I know what’s going on. Where did the picture come from? Did it come from him?”

  “What him? You mean James Wells?” I laughed and went downstairs. It was getting dark outside. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I turned on lights.

  My mother followed me, turning them off. “Who gave you the picture?” she said.

  “Not James Wells.”

  “Who?”

  “Dennis gave it to me.”

  “Dennis?”

  “My cousin Dennis.” I stood at the sink and looked out at the darkening sky. “Did you ever see that picture of James Wells before? You had other pictures, didn’t you? Did it make a big pile when you threw them out? You did, didn’t you, throw out everything of James Wells’s? You cleaned him out of the house, so I wouldn’t have anything.” My throat tightened, but I kept my voice even. “You missed one thing.” I took his buckle out of my jeans, where I’d taken to carrying it.

  She examined it for a moment, then shrugged and gave it back to me.

  “He was good-looking,” I said. “I can see why you—”

  “His looks were not why anything,” she interrupted. “I fell in love. I thought he was good, and smart, too. That was what I wanted, a good father for my child, someone smart enough not to take a boat out in a storm without wearing a life jacket.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” I said. “For his life. He had a tough time in life.”

  “So do a lot of us, Jessie, but that doesn’t mean we run out on people.”

  “Well, I can’t hate him,” I said. “I just can’t!”

  She tore lettuce into the colander. “Do you honestly think I wanted you to hate him? If I wanted that, I could have made damn sure of it.”

  “Maybe you didn’t want me to hate him,” I said in a moment, “but you didn’t want him to be real to me, either.”

  “Now what does that mean?”

  “That means all the phony stories you told me.” I opened ajar of tomato sauce and dumped it in a pot. “His BMW, his leather jacket, his—”

  “All right, all right,” she said.

  “—and all the things you didn’t tell me, like his horrible life and his horrible parents.”

  “Jessie, what do you want me to say? Everything’s a problem for you these days. Yes, I knew about his parents. No, I didn’t want to tell you.” She sliced carrots with hard strokes. “One, I don’t think it’s any excuse for the way he acted. And two, I don’t happen to think a parent has to tell a chi
ld every bad thing in the world. We’ve talked about this before.”

  “I’m not a child. When are you going to understand? I deserve the truth, whatever it is. It’s my life, too. Why can’t you understand that?” I turned away, so I wouldn’t cry.

  Suddenly the storm came. There was thunder over the house. The windows rattled. “I better go check on Zis,” my mother said. My aunt hated storms. They frightened her.

  “Yes,” I managed to say. “Good idea.”

  She started out, then said, “I do understand. I’m trying to, anyway, Jessie.”

  I stayed in the kitchen, getting things ready for supper. After the storm passed, we all sat down to eat.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Scared to Death

  My mother came in from work, stuck her head in the door of my room, and said, “Jessie, you want to listen to something?”

  “What?” I was at my desk, doing homework. I put my finger in my book and waited. Things were still pretty stiff between us.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “I’m having trouble believing it myself.” Then I thought I heard her say, “James Wells.” She went into a spasm of coughing and couldn’t speak for a minute.

  “Yeah, Ma, just keep smoking,” I said.

  Her face was red. Still coughing, she said, “I saw him. He’s here.”

  I was calm and thought, She doesn’t mean it. This only happens in movies. The Big Scene. Lots of soppy music, long-lost dad walks in the door. Get out the tissues.

  “He came into the diner for dinner,” my mother said. She was still standing in the doorway. “He sat down in a booth, picked up a menu, just like any customer. He was on Victoria’s station, I had the one in back. I thought, It’s not him, my eyes are playing a trick on me. I went over to Victoria and said, ‘See that guy? I think it might be my ex.’ She said, ‘What do you mean, you think, don’t you know your own ex?’ I said, ‘It’s been a while, Victoria.’ She said, ‘You want me to dump his dinner in his lap?’”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I wasn’t going to do anything. I didn’t want to talk to him. But then—” She shrugged and leaned a little deeper into the room. “I thought you’d want me to say hello to him, at least.”

  I looked up. “Is that what you really thought?”

  She nodded. “I got in his face and said, ‘Hello, James.’ Oh, man, did he do a double take.”

  “He was really surprised?”

  “Putting it mildly.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said, ‘Maribeth? Is that you, Maribeth!’ He just kept looking at me like he didn’t recognize me. Okay, I’ve put on weight, but not that much! I can’t say the same for him. He hasn’t gained an ounce. The bastard looks as good as ever.”

  “Why was he there? In the diner? Did he know you worked there?”

  “How would he know? It’s just one of those weird things.”

  “But what’s he doing here?” My hands got cold, and my jaw began to ache. Did he come back to see me? The question shot through my mind like a fire.

  “He says he’s working for a computer company as a roving troubleshooter. This is part of his territory.”

  “How long is he going to be here?”

  “Ha, same thing I asked him, hoping he’d say he was leaving tomorrow.” She made a face. “Going to be here a month, six weeks, he has a lot of work at that new plant on Tecumseh Road. Imagine him, a computer expert—how’d that happen? Last time I looked he was using a pick and shovel.”

  “Really?”

  She shrugged. “No, I’m exaggerating. He always had good hands. He could run any machine in the world.”

  I held my jaw. “Has he been here before?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is … it scared me, seeing him.”

  “I’m not scared of anything,” I said. I don’t know why I said it.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not as brave as you, I guess.” Her face got blotchy. “Seeing him sitting there—it was awful. I wanted to kill him. It scared me to death.”

  “What are you so scared of? Think I’m going to run off with him?”

  She rubbed her eyes, which were dark, tired. “Are you?”

  “Not this time.”

  She leaned farther into the room, as if she were going to fall in. “Don’t say that. Don’t be flip with me on this subject.”

  I got up and shut off my desk lamp. “It’s all right, Ma,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Twenty Questions

  Why didn’t James Wells ask about me?

  Does he remember me?

  Is he going to come to our house?

  Does he want to see me?

  Will he go to the diner again?

  Will he ask my mother about me this time?

  Should I go there in case he shows up?

  Where’s he staying?

  How long is he going to be around here?

  What if I meet him somewhere?

  Will I recognize him?

  Will he recognize me?

  What if he doesn’t believe who I am?

  Should I carry his picture with me to prove it?

  What will I say to him?

  Should I just start talking?

  What should I call him?

  What will I tell him about myself?

  What would he want to know?

  Would he want to know anything?

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Phone Number

  On the Bureau, like artifacts, I laid out the photo of James Wells, the brass buckle, and a slip of paper with a phone number. I rearranged them, so the photo was in the middle. And then again: photo facedown, buckle on top of photo, paper with phone number on top of that. It was James Wells’s phone number.

  I had gotten it from Dennis. I’d called to ask if he knew that James Wells was in the city. He said yes, Jimmy had called to say hello to him, and he was staying in a motel on Erie Boulevard. “I have the phone number if you want it.”

  I did. But then I just left it there, on my bureau. I think I was still hoping for something.

  One morning, after my mother was gone and before I went to school, I called the number. He answered right away. “Hello. Wells here.”

  I was sitting on the stairs, with the phone in my lap. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. I sat there, transfixed.

  “Hello?” He had a quick, deep voice. “Is this Mercer? Hey, guy! I’m not in the mood for games this morning.”

  I opened my mouth to say something—I had no idea what—and then I hung up. “Oh god, oh god,” I mumbled.

  “What’s the matter?” Aunt Zis said. She came down the stairs, holding an armful of laundry.

  “Nothing.” I went into the bathroom and washed my face. I should have had a tape recorder. I could have gotten his voice. Another artifact.

  I kept splashing my face with cold water.

  There was one other thing I had to do that day. I talked to Meadow. “What’s the story?” I said in her ear, while the gym teacher tried to get us all to march in a line out of the gym to the playing field. “Still hate me? Still ready to throw our friendship down the drain?”

  She stamped her feet up and down. Left, right, left, right … “I’m not the one who did it, Jessie.”

  “You’re right, you’re right, it’s me. Okay, what do you want me to do? Want me to give Jack up? Is that what you want?”

  “Oh, you don’t like him anymore?”

  “No, I do. I like him a lot. But I love you,” I said furiously to her back. Why did I have to choose? I didn’t want to give him up. I didn’t even know if I had the guts to do it. But … Meadow was like family. I loved her that way. I couldn’t walk out on her, I couldn’t just turn my back on her.

  We marched past the teacher, who was holding the door open. “Backs straight, people, backs straight,” he chanted.

  Meadow pushed her hair behind her ears. “Wait a second—do you really want to
give him up?”

  “No!”

  “Then why did you ask me that?” She sounded mad again.

  I took in a deep breath. “Because I would.”

  “For me?”

  Was I crazy? “Yes. I would do it for you.”

  There was silence for a moment, then she reached behind her for my hand. “I’ll see you in the cafeteria,” she said. “Okay? Our usual table.”

  “She fell asleep on the couch?” my mother said.

  I nodded, glancing over at Aunt Zis. “She was watching TV.”

  “I should get her up to her own bed. What are you doing up so late, anyway?” She straightened the afghan I’d thrown over Aunt Zis, then sat down across from me at the table. “I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

  “I’ll make it. Lemon?”

  “And lots of it.”

  I brought her the tea and glanced at my watch. “I called James Wells,” I said. “Dennis gave me his number.”

  “You talked to him? What was that like?”

  “I just called. I listened to his voice. And then I hung up.”

  “You did what?” She laughed.

  “Wait. Don’t say anything else.” I showed her my watch. “In ten seconds, I’ll be fifteen years old.”

  She put down her cup. “I forgot. I can’t believe it.”

  “Seven … six … five …” I let my hand fall slowly, like the balloon on New Year’s. “Four … three … two … one.… Boom. I’m officially fifteen.”

  “Congratulations. What do you want for your birthday? Give me a hint. I’ll get you something nice.”

  “Not clothes or anything. Nothing, really.” Why even say it? I wanted Aunt Zis to be smart and strong again. I wanted to know what was going to happen to me. I wanted to know the same thing I’d always wanted to know—why James Wells had left me.

  “Make a wish,” she said. “If you could have one great thing, what would it be?”

  “You going to get it for me?”

  “Depends how much it costs.”

  “Oh, it can’t be that great, right?” I needled. “What I want is free. I wish to see into the future.”