Missing Pieces Read online

  “Thursday,” my mother said.

  “Are you sure?” Aunt Zis said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And what about Aaron?”

  “What about him?” I said.

  Aaron is my mother’s boyfriend. Big nose, pockmarked skin, and faded sweater vests covered with pipe ashes. Fifty-something. When I first met him I hated the way he mumbled around his pipe, and I kept wanting to shout at him, “Straighten those shoulders!”

  “What’s Aaron’s last name?” Aunt Zis said. She sounded sort of tense.

  “Kinnetz,” I said. “Aaron Kinnetz.”

  “Jessie.” My mother looked over her shoulder and let the car steer itself. A miracle we ever get anywhere safely. “I didn’t realize Meadow’s mother and I had so much in common,” she said.

  “You don’t, Ma. What are you talking about?” Besides everything else, the Cowans skied in Switzerland and had a boat tied up at the marina.

  “Kate Cowan’s back in school,” my mother said. “Working for a degree, too. We’re a couple of middle-aged book crammers with kids. Of course, she’s going for a master’s and I’m still getting credits for freshman year. And she’s got three little ones to care for, not counting Meadow. I only have you.”

  “And three jobs,” I said. “Don’t forget that little fact, Ma. Mrs. Cowan doesn’t even have one job. She doesn’t even clean her own house. You know what she does when they have a party—picks up the phone and hires people to do everything.”

  “Don’t tell me any more!” my mother said. “Jessie, when you marry, marry a rich man.”

  “Maribeth!” Aunt Zis said. “I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”

  “She can love a rich man as well as a poor man.”

  “She doesn’t have to get married at all.”

  “Did I say that she did? All I said was …”

  I leaned forward and put a hand on each of their shoulders—my aunt’s light as a twig, my mother’s thick with warm flesh—and sniffed the mingled familiar smells of them, tobacco, lemon shampoo, rose water cologne. Words floated into my mind. Just this way … just this way … Not four, I thought. Three. Not a square, a triangle. The three of us—joined, linked, solid. Three sides, not four.

  FOUR

  Love-Hate Relationship

  “I found a Kitty on the way home yesterday,” I said to Meadow. “Real little thing, all by itself in the weeds near an empty lot.”

  “Oh, poor thing!” Meadow said. “What’d you do?” We were in the back of her mother’s van, on the way to the club the Cowans belonged to. We were going to meet Diane and play racquet-ball.

  “I took him home, fed him. Egg and milk. Good, right? I wanted to keep him, I was already thinking about naming him. Oh, man, you should have seen my mother’s face when she came home from work and heard that. I had to get on the phone and call the ASPCA right away to find out where to bring him.”

  “Why doesn’t she like cats?” Meadow’s eyebrows were two blond, outraged peaks. The Cowans had three longhair cats, uncountable numbers of gerbils and white mice, and two German shepherds. “I thought everyone loved cats.”

  “Well, that’s a stupid thought.”

  “Jessie, I knew you were going to say that!”

  “And I knew you were going to say that.”

  Meadow and I have been friends so long we’re either in perfect harmony or else we argue like a grouchy old married couple. Love-hate relationship. We know everything about each other—I could probably predict what brand of cereal she’s going to eat tomorrow morning—and we talk about everything. Well, nearly everything.

  I never talk about James Wells, not to anyone, not even Meadow. Years ago, I noticed how people’s faces changed when they heard I didn’t have a father, or, rather, that I did, but that I didn’t know anything about him, not even where he was. Sometimes, the faces opened up like a bucket waiting for scraps to be thrown in. A father who deserted his child … And sometimes the faces seemed to slide away, almost melt, as if the eyes and ears didn’t want to see and hear something so ugly.

  “If we kept that kitten we would have had to take it to the vet,” I said, defending my mother. “Which costs a lot of money, as you should know. But probably it doesn’t matter to you.” I unzipped Meadow’s sports bag to check that she’d remembered to bring a racket for me. “Besides, Ma’s in one of her poverty moods.”

  “What moods?”

  “Poor. Poverty. Hello? She’s feeling like we don’t have any money to spare. Lots of bills and not enough bucks to go around.”

  I was momentarily furious, as if Meadow had forced the words out of me, as if it were a shameful thing not to have money or multiple cats, or all the things she had. Okay, include a father. I fingered the buckle in my jacket pocket, tracing out the pattern of initials, the long, loopy J, the rounded W. “Look what I have,” I said suddenly, bringing it out.

  Meadow examined it. “Cool. Your initials, too. Where’d you get it?”

  “Oh, in the house,” I said vaguely. I already regretted showing it to her. I took it back and zipped it into the pocket on my sleeve.

  “Bus!” Meadow’s little sister, Scout, suddenly yelled. She was up front in her car seat.

  “Train! Plane!” Meadow’s two little brothers yelled back. They had taken over the middle of the van.

  “How many Cowans do you think are in the phone book?” I asked Meadow.

  “How would I know?”

  “I know how many Wellses are in the phone book. One hundred and sixty-three.”

  Meadow stared at me. “So what?”

  “Nothing. It’s an interesting fact. Don’t you like interesting facts?”

  “Not the way you do, Jessie. I don’t read phone books.”

  It was true—sometimes at home I opened the phone book and flipped through it, looking at the rows of tiny names. Eventually I’d get to the back of the book, to the Ws, and then to the Wellses. The first time I’d seen our name there in bold letters, WELLS, at the top of the long column, I’d been about six years old. I’d shouted, “Ma, Ma, come quick! Here’s our name in the phone book!”

  I looked out the van window. It was snowing again, thick wet flakes that stuck to everything like heavenly glue. “It’s not even good powder,” Meadow complained.

  We were going through a poor section of town, and I saw someone sleeping in a doorway, a lump under a raggedy blanket. I shouldn’t have looked. My heart speeded up. What if my mother got sick, what if she couldn’t work, what if we didn’t have money, couldn’t pay our bills, lost our house …

  “Med, what would I do if something happened to my mother?”

  “Like what?”

  “What if she got sick? What if she had an accident? What if she died?”

  “That’s morbid. Why do you think about things like that?”

  “My mother had melanoma, you know that. Cancer of the skin, when I was four years old. Besides, I can’t help my thoughts.”

  “Yes, you can. You don’t have to think about depressing things. Discipline your mind.”

  “Thank you, I’ll whip it nightly and send it to bed without supper.”

  “Anyway, you can always come live with me.”

  “Really?” I didn’t want her to say it just to be nice. “Do you mean it?”

  “Yes!”

  “What about your parents?”

  “They wouldn’t even notice another kid.”

  “I’d have to go skiing if I was part of your family.”

  “No problem. We’d teach you.”

  Meadow thinks if I only tried harder I could do all the things she does. When we met in kindergarten, she could already do the best cartwheels, somersaults, and leaps in the whole class. She also spoke the least of anyone and was the shyest person. Never, no matter how hard I tried, could I manage a cartwheel, but I always knew how to talk. My big talent. I became Meadow’s voice. I was the one who carried her messages to the world. “Mrs. Lesesne, Meadow wants to be blackbo
ard monitor.… No, Nicky! Meadow doesn’t want to share her milk with you.… Mrs. Lesesne, Meadow needs a pencil.…”

  “Is Diane going to be on time?” Meadow put her foot up on the seat and relaced her sneakers. Whenever she said Diane’s name, there was a tiny edge to her voice.

  Diane and I met last summer, at an acting class at the Y, downtown. When the teacher called for improv teams, we stood up at the same moment, as if we’d planned it. And we started talking and have never stopped.

  “Didn’t you say she was always late for things, Jessie? I don’t like to waste court time. It really irritates me.”

  I zipped and unzipped my sleeve pocket. Why did I keep trying to push Meadow and Diane together? I knew. It was that thing of wanting the friends you loved to love the friends you loved.

  “There he is,” Meadow said, “the guy I told you about.” We had just walked into the clubhouse, and she was looking at the blond kid with muscles behind the counter. He was wearing a tight white T-shirt with cut-off arms. “Jack Kettle,” she whispered.

  “You want to talk to him?”

  “No!” She rushed me away, down the stairs, to the locker room. “That was Jack Kettle,” she said again.

  “Who?” Diane said. She was waiting for us, all ready to play in powder-blue sweats, her long black hair pulled up in a ponytail.

  “Diane’s on time!” I said. “How are you, baby doll?”

  “On time and on a diet.” She sucked in her cheeks.

  “Dieting again. You are an idiot.” I scrubbed her head.

  “What’s a Jack Kettle, Meadow?” she asked.

  “For most of us, Diane,” I said, “it’s that blond bimbo guy with the overgrown muscles at the counter. But for Meadow—”

  “Jessie,” Meadow said warningly.

  “—he’s a big crush.”

  “Is that like an Orange Crush?” Diane said.

  “Meadow has had some very cool crushes, Diane. Am I right, Med? But, this time, I don’t think she’s picked a winner.” I hung my jacket in the locker. “Jack Kettle hasn’t got a single active brain cell to go with all those muscles. These guys who are obsessed with working out and going on the machines—”

  “How do you know he’s obsessed with working out?” Meadow said. “How do you know he goes on the machines? How do you know anything about him, Jessie? You never even saw him before today.”

  “Meadow, do I have to be dropped in the ocean to know it’s wet? Do I have to burn my hand to know fire is hot?”

  Shut up, I told myself, as I often did. And as I often did, I didn’t. “Do I really have to see Jack Kettle in the flesh lifting weights to know where he got those puffy muscles?”

  Meadow looked pained, or maybe just furious. She walked out of the locker room, slapping her racket against her leg.

  “Well, let’s get on the court, so Meadow can beat us up,” I said. Now I felt guilty for going on about Jack Kettle just to amuse Diane.

  “Is she a good player?” Diane said.

  “You’ll see.”

  We had the court for an hour and played three games of cutthroat. Meadow, playing against Diane and me, won the first game, 21–10. The second game, Diane made seven points. It was supposed to be her against me and Meadow, but Meadow might as well have been alone on the court. She went for every shot.

  “That was certainly a relaxing game,” I said, when we took a water break. “I should have brought my blankey and taken a nap. Did I make contact with even one ball?”

  The last game, I played against Meadow and Diane. I started with confidence—after all, I wasn’t a bad bad player, but Meadow killed my first shot against the front wall, and I didn’t get the service back for twelve points. The final score was 21–3. Do I have to say who got three and who got twenty-one?

  “I noticed your forehand is improving, Jessie,” Meadow said, when we were in the showers. “Your big weakness is your backhand. You should really practice your swing at home.”

  Is there anything worse than being given advice you didn’t ask for? Actually, yes. Being given advice you didn’t ask for by the person who’s just beaten you. Badly.

  “You don’t keep your eye on the ball,” Meadow lectured. “That’s one of the most important things in any ball game.”

  “Everlasting gratitude for the arcane information,” I said, grabbing my towel.

  “Oh, she’s mad,” Meadow said. “She’s mad about losing.”

  “Hey, I am not. I love losing. It’s so much fun.”

  “Whenever Jessie’s mad, Diane,” Meadow said, “she uses words no one understands. Arcane. Sounds dirty.”

  I turned on the hair dryer. “Relax, sweetie, it only means secret.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Meadow said.

  “Sure you do.”

  We were sneering at each other, but suddenly Meadow grabbed me and mashed our noses together so hard I grunted. “Pig! Pig! Pig!” she said.

  Now I was supposed to say, “Oink oink oink.” In grade school this had been—don’t ask me why—our make-up-the-fight routine.

  “Pig pig pig,” Meadow repeated.

  “Oink oink oink,” I said finally. I was mortified that Diane was watching this. But the truth was, as soon as I said it, I felt much better.

  FIVE

  The D Zone

  When I woke up, I saw my breath puffing into the air. I always sleep with the window open, so my bedroom is usually cool, but this morning it was freezing. I danced around on the cold floor, pulling on my jeans and a sweater. My fingers were actually stiff with cold. I ran down the hall; the whole house was like an ice cave. My mother’s windows were silvered over with frost flowers. “Ma.” I shook her through the tangle of blankets. “Get up.”

  She groaned. “Do I have to?”

  “There’s no heat in the house. It’s dead cold. It’s the North Pole. Did you hear me? Up, Maribeth.”

  My mother came out of bed like a bear and went charging down the stairs. “Are you crazy, Ma?” I said. “Put on socks!”

  “My feet are always hot.”

  In the cellar, she thumped on pipes with a wrench and peered at gauges. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” she said, and went back out to the kitchen.

  Aunt Zis appeared. She was in her nightgown. “What’s all the noise?” She sneezed four or five times.

  “Zis, get back in bed,” my mother said, picking up the phone to call the gas company.

  “No heat, Aunt Zis.” I got a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “We’ve got a child in this house!” my mother yelled into the phone. “And an elder citizen! What do you mean, shutting off our gas?” She listened. Then she said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

  “Okay what?” I asked when she hung up.

  “Okay, nothing. This woman claims the bill hasn’t been paid. She said they sent us a warning. Damn, I need some coffee.”

  But there was no gas to heat water. “What a way to start the day,” my mother moaned. “All right, I want the numbers on the checks. Zis—”

  Aunt Zis had already opened the drawer where we kept bills, receipts, and lottery tickets, all our financial stuff. She was the one who took care of the checkbook. She handed it to me. “You look, Jessie, my fingers are too stiff.”

  The last check to the gas company was over four months ago.

  My mother picked out envelopes from the mess in the drawer. “The gas bills,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” Aunt Zis said. “I pay the bills.” Her hands were shaking.

  “Oh, shoot, look at this,” my mother said. She had a postcard. “It’s the warning to pay. Didn’t we have the money, Zis?”

  My aunt held her hand to her mouth. “I think someone came … from the company.… He came to the door. I was going to tell you—”

  “I better call and see what I have to do to get us some heat,” my mother said.

  I walked upstairs with my aunt. “I don’t know how that happened. I never used to forget an
ything,” she said. “I always had a wonderful memory.”

  “You still do. You have a great memory.”

  It wasn’t true. For a while now, she’d been forgetting lots of little things, like what she went to the store to buy. And big things, like her doctor appointments. She never used to be like that. Maybe that was why we hadn’t taken it too seriously.

  She got back in bed and I covered her with an extra blanket. “Don’t worry about that stupid bill.” I stroked her head. “Who cares if we’re cold for a few hours? It doesn’t matter.”

  She clutched the covers to her chin, went deeper into the blankets, disappeared under them, until all I could see were her anguished eyes and a tiny bit of dry fluffy hair.

  “Kids,” Mr. Novak said, “this will be a joint social studies-language arts project for me and Mrs. Scher, connecting the events of the twentieth century with the lives of real people. The subject is family and history. Your family. Maybe you think your family doesn’t have anything to do with history, but we don’t agree.”

  He stroked his soft blond beard. “Most of the history you learn in school is the history of great leaders and great events—wars, disasters, discoveries. But there’s something else—there’re the people who live through these events. Dig into your family history, their memories and stories.”

  The wind was blowing hard outside, rattling the windows. Cold air crept around my legs. I was having trouble concentrating. I wished I’d stayed home with Aunt Zis.

  “It’s up to you how you do this project,” Mr. Novak said. “It could be a linear history of your family. It could be the story of how your family got to this country. Maybe you’ll focus on a particular person in your family, such as someone who went through the Depression or the Korean War.”

  “Huh?” Bob Doolan said from across the room.

  “You’re going to find out stuff you never knew when you start asking questions and looking into things. This should be a lot of fun for you people.”

  Someone whispered, someone else yawned, someone’s knees whammed into a desk. The usual sounds.

  “Mrs. Scher and I want something unique from each of you. No going to the dictionary and copying out a definition of family. That’s going to get you nowhere fast.”