Taking Terri Mueller Read online

  On Denver Street they found a second-floor apartment, not as nice as the place with the long windows, but it was mid-August already, time to settle down, and it would certainly do very well. The phone company promised service in two weeks; Barkley and Terri did their usual explorations, locating the nearest market and gas station, and all the little shops and stores. Phil, who had a new job trussing roofs, said, “Terri, are you going to need clothes for school?” He peeled off bills from the rubber-banded roll he kept in his back pocket.

  Terri yawned. “Maybe I’ll do some shopping today.”

  “You better go back to bed first,” her father said. “No use you getting up so early.”

  Terri poked at her boiled egg. If she didn’t see her father at breakfast, it would be hours before she got to really talk to anyone. “Hi’s” and hellos to salespeople didn’t count. She’d be glad when school started.

  “Don’t forget to buy meat for tonight,” Phil said, before he left.

  “I won’t. Hey! Your lunch.” She handed him the lunch pail and thermos. He kissed the top of her head and left.

  Later, after straightening up and making a vanilla cake for supper, she went out. She liked the new neighborhood. She didn’t see many kids her age around, but there was a little movie theater that was almost like a doll’s house, and up a hill behind an old abandoned church, there was a field overgrown with wild flowers and thorn apple trees: a perfect place for Barkley to run around and enjoy himself without bothering anyone else.

  The days were draggy without school. Camping had been better. More kids around, and swimming to help pass the time. They were pretty well settled into the apartment. She had her room almost all fixed up. Windows looked down over a spare backyard and there was almost enough space on the walls for all her posters. “Up you go again,” she said, tacking up her favorite of the girl and the farmhouse.

  Most of the posters were of animals and, maybe because they’d never had a house of their own, about ninety percent of them had a house somewhere in the picture. Terri’s favorite was a painting of a girl lying in a field of yellow grass with a book next to her, but not reading, just lying there on her stomach, her feet up, her chin in her hands. She was wearing a light blue dress the same color as the sky, and you could tell a wind was blowing from the wdy the grass bent. Far away behind the girl was an old silver-grey farmhouse. It was the sort of house, Terri thought, where they would have lots of old, nice, worn-out furniture, and tons of plants, and where a whole family lived—children, father, and a mother, too.

  “Did we ever live on a farm?” she asked her father that night.

  “A farm? Where’d you get that idea?”

  Well, she didn’t know, maybe just from dreaming about the old silver farmhouse. “I thought maybe we did, with my mother.”

  “Nope,” he said, and his face went blank. She called it his shut-the-door look. It always scared her a little. She wanted to see him smile again, so when he shut the door she didn’t kick it open, just rapped a little, a light knock.

  “I think I’ll buy some goldfish,” she said. Tap . . . tap . . . are you there? “I saw some really cute ones in the pet shop.” She cleared the plates, tossed him a sponge to wipe the table.

  “Goldfish,” he said. His face relaxed, his lips curved up into a smile. “They’re so dumb, Terr.” He made fish noises with his mouth. “Hey, I think they’re even dumber than guinea pigs.” And as if the subject was finished, he said, “That was terrific cake. I’ll take some to work tomorrow.”

  She ran hot water into the sink, poured in detergent. “My guinea pigs weren’t dumb.”

  “No? Wheeek! Wheeek! Wheeek!”

  “Daddy!” A few years before, all she had wanted for her birthday were guinea pigs. Phil had bought her two females—that’s what they told him in the pet store—but pretty soon she had six guinea pigs and in a few weeks it became apparent she was going to have even more guinea pigs. They were pretty, every one a different combination of colors, but all they said was, “Wheeek! Wheeek! Wheeek!” Phil could hardly stand it. Finally Terri decided to sell them back to the pet shop. They weren’t very interesting pets, but she’d always felt bad, disloyal really, that she got rid of them. It wasn’t their fault they were dull.

  “Anyway, they were beautiful,” she said.

  “Yeah, beautiful and dumb,” Phil teased. “And goldfish are even worse. They don’t have the brains to know their own mother, Terr.”

  She didn’t know what touched her off. Maybe she was tired and didn’t want to be teased. Maybe thinking about school starting soon was getting to her. She was going into junior high—a definite difference from elementary school. Or, maybe it was none of those things. She didn’t get mad too often at her father. But suddenly she shouted at him. “You always want things your own way. You don’t want me to buy goldfish because it’s my idea!”

  Hearing her, Barkley whined in a squeaky voice, as if he were a toy poodle instead of a big mutt.

  “Barkley, quit that whining,” her father said. “What’s the matter, Terr?” He looked absolutely amazed.

  “Nothing!” How could she tell him when she didn’t know herself? “I’m going for a walk!” She had learned this from him. There were moments when he, too, had to “go for a walk,” and by himself. She went up to the field and sat in the grass, and then lay down and watched clouds. She became calmer and felt as if someone were saying to her, It’ll be all right, Terri.

  When she came back her father was outside fixing a window on the camper. “See anything interesting?”

  “Man on a pink horse,” she said, still a little snappy.

  “Did you see the sky?” He pointed. The sun was setting, huge, fiery red, with a band of pure green just above it. A strange sunset.

  “It’s a sun show,” Phil said. “The greatest art on earth! Did you ever see anything like that?”

  “Only about a thousand times.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Thirteen, and already a full-fledged skeptic.” He put his arm around her waist. “You go ahead, get those goldfish—”

  “No, I don’t want them.”

  “A couple goldfish would be nice. They’d swim round and round all day, round and round and round and—”

  “All right, all right.” She had to laugh.

  A few days later, while she was fixing lunch, the phone rang. She was surprised. It had been installed only the day before. “I bet it’s Daddy,” she said to Barkley, picking up the receiver.

  “Hello—Terri?” a woman said. “This is Nancy Briet. Remember me?”

  “Sure. Hi, how’d you get our phone number?”

  “Your father called me this morning.”

  “He did?”

  “Oh, sure, we’ve had quite a few nice little conversations these past couple weeks.” That was news to Terri. “Listen, I want you two to come to dinner. I promised, remember!”

  “How’s Leif?” Terri said.

  “Oh, super! I’m getting him enrolled in day care for the fall when I go back to school. Oh, boy, am I scared about that!” She gave a big laugh. “Listen, your father said check with you on a good day for dinner. How about Friday night?”

  “Okay,” Terri said.

  “Come hungry. I’m going to cook up a storm.”

  The Friday dinner went so well that on Sunday, Phil, Terri, Nancy, and Leif all drove out to a county park for a picnic. While Phil and Terri worked on the fire, Nancy played with Leif. “My leafy Leif, my little tree.”

  “Not a tree.”

  “Oh, excuse me! You’re a branch.”

  “Not a branch!”

  “A twig?”

  “No!”

  She picked him up and held his face to hers. “I know, you’re just my Leif.”

  “You look like Madonna and Child,” Phil said.

  “We do?” Nancy looked pleased.

  “Madonna in blue jeans,” Terri said, “and Child with mud on his nose.”

  “Oh, Terri, you know how to help
a woman keep her feet on the ground,” Nancy said. Later she was surprised to find out Terri’s age. “I thought sure, fourteen or fifteen.”

  “What’s the difference?” Phil said.

  “Oh, a lot, Phil. A year at that age—? A lot.”

  “You only thought I was older because I’m tall,” Terri said. She was almost always the tallest girl in her class.

  “No, that isn’t really it.” Nancy turned to Phil. “There’s something about your daughter—I would call her very poised. She knows how to be around grown-ups, don’t you agree?”

  Terri wished they’d drop the subject. Maybe she appeared poised to Nancy, but what she felt was embarrassed to be talked about in that confidential way, as if she weren’t present.

  “Let me tell you,” Nancy said, “I’ve had girls Terri’s age babysitting Leif, and oh boy, they can be real little pains. Just so self-absorbed.”

  “Want to play, Leif?” Terri turned her back, but of course she could still hear Nancy and her father.

  “That’s a very, very nice kid you’ve got there, Mr. Mueller.”

  “I like her.”

  “Well, I do, too!” Nancy said, but from the way she had been looking at Phil, Terri thought it was him she really liked. He did look very handsome and full of fun that day in Levi’s, sneakers, and a Mickey Mouse tee shirt that said, Don’t Mouse With Me.

  At first, Terri wasn’t sure how much she liked Nancy. Nancy talked fast and loud and sometimes swooped Leif up into her arms as if he were a pillow or a stuffed toy, holding him around the waist, his legs dangling. Leif didn’t seem to mind, laughing and pounding on his mother until she noticed and straightened him up.

  Again on the following Friday, the four of them ate supper together at Nancy’s place. Phil brought a bottle of wine and Nancy had a fire going in the fireplace, although it was a warm evening. Nancy and her father got into an argument later—not much of one, but Nancy didn’t back down. “I don’t understand the way you two live,” she said. “So you have a bed and a couch and two spoons and three plates. Don’t you want things?”

  “We have each other,” Phil said.

  “That’s all very nice. I have Leif and he has me. I still feel the need for my own stuff—you know, it gives you a sense of home, no matter where you are. Don’t you think so, Terri?”

  “I like the way we live,” she said. Did Nancy think she wouldn’t defend her father? She wouldn’t have said for the world that Nancy’s argument had touched something in her, some longing that wasn’t satisfied.

  Nancy went on arguing and Terri said she’d read Leif a story and put him to sleep. But he wanted to play jumping games. “Okay, we’ll play Hot Lava,” she said, making it up as she went along. The whole game was this: Leif perched on his bureau, arms outstretched. Terri cried, “Hot Lava! Hot Lava all around, Leif! Leap for your life!” Then he jumped, she caught him, they hugged and kissed, he was safe, and they started all over again.

  She turned around to see Nancy standing in the doorway watching. “I can see him in twenty years. He’ll be walking up the aisle with his bride and whispering in her ear, ‘Hey, I know this neat game.’”

  “One more,” Leif said. Terri put him up on the bureau.

  Funny, but she liked the game almost as much as he did. There was something so satisfying in catching him, feeling his arms go around her neck, and then holding him close for a moment. It was a feeling as if she really had saved him from some great danger.

  One night, not too long after school had started, her father said, “Terr? Do you like Nancy?” It was a hot, still night, and all the windows were wide open. Terri was lying on the floor in shorts and tee shirt with her English book propped open on her stomach. She was reading a play about Nathan Hale, but thinking about Shaundra Smith, a girl in her gym class.

  “I like Nancy,” she said.

  “She likes you.” He was wearing cutoffs, his bare hairy legs swinging over the arm of the old red couch. “Interesting, isn’t it,” he said, “how she’s alone with her son, and I’m alone with you.”

  “But she has a lot of relatives,” Terri said. Nancy had a sister in Ohio, a brother in New Orleans, parents in Florida, and as she said, “countless relatives everywhere else in the world.” Another difference was that while Terri’s mother had died in a car crash, Leif’s father had walked out on him even before he was bom.

  “Do you like Nancy enough to, ah, for her to—” Her father, with an odd little smile on his face, cleared his throat, and Terri realized what he was going to say.

  “You want to marry Nancy?” she blurted. They had always teased and joked about the ladies who liked him, and would this one or that one make her a good step-mother.

  He looked relieved. “You really get down to the nitty gritty, daughter. The answer to your question is, Maybe. And if so, not right this instant.”

  “But you’re thinking about it?”

  “Let’s just say I’m checking in with you on the idea. Nothing definite, nothing but an idea . . .”

  “Okay, swell.” She felt a rush of emotion and bewilderment. Daddy and her living with other people? She’d have to get used to that. They wouldn’t just go moving around, would they, if he got married? Where would they live? Would she have to call Nancy “Mother”?

  “Hey—” Her father nudged her leg with his bare foot. “I’m not doing anything in a rush. And I’m not doing anything you’re not going to agree to. Nothing is changing today, or tomorrow, or for a long time.”

  “Okay,” she said. She picked up her English book again, but she wasn’t concentrating. “It would be nice to have a real family,” she said after a while.

  He was sipping a cold beer. “Oh, we’re not real?”

  “No, I mean—you know. Parents. Two. Like other people.”

  He held the beer can to his cheek. “Give me a break, honey. Must be plenty of other kids have only one parent.”

  “Yes, but—” She shook her head, felt suddenly tight, and wanted to end the conversation. He was right—there were always kids around who were living with just one parent, and sometimes a kid whose mother or father had died. But all the same, it was never the same. Terri didn’t know why, only that in some mysterious way she wasn’t like other kids.

  At the door Barkley moaned his take-me-out sound. Her father got the leash. Terri sat up. “Daddy? I’ve been thinking about my mother, and—Daddy, I don’t know anything about her.” He snapped the clip on the leash. “I think you should tell me some things.”

  “Terri, that’s the past.” He straightened up, held Barkley on a short leash. “You’re growing up, almost a young lady . . . and you’re beautiful. You’ve got everything ahead of you. Why be morbid?”

  “I want . . . I just want . . .” Her voice fell away. She felt confused, then resentful. Why was it so bad to want to know about her mother?

  “Bringing up things like this will only make us both unhappy.”

  She persisted. “My mother’s name was Kathryn. That’s all I know about her. And that she was killed in a car crash when I was four years old.”

  He didn’t answer. They looked at each other over Barkley. His silence meant, I don’t want to talk about this. She felt an answering stubbornness rising in her. He left with the dog, and she went to the window, looked down at the street, and watched the two of them walking toward the corner. She put her head out the opened window, feeling the impulse to yell, “You better tell me!” But that was childish. She wasn’t a child anymore. She had questions, wanted to know things about her life. She needed answers. She wanted answers. She felt something strong in herself and said out loud, “I want answers.”

  THREE

  “Shaundra, hi, Shaundra,” Terri said, trying to sound casual. She looked up from tying her sneaker, which she had been tying for at least five minutes, as she waited on the corner near school for Shaundra Smith to pass. The old shoelace trick. If she and Shaundra got to be friends, maybe she’d tell her.

  “Hi, Terr
i,” Shaundra said, and she stopped. Great!

  Terri picked up her books. Then, across the street she saw George Torrance, and for a moment she couldn’t say anything. Was it a good luck sign, seeing George the first time she got to talk to Shaundra outside school?

  “Where’re you going?” Shaundra said.

  “No place special. Home, I guess.” Had George seen her? A few days before, she had noticed him playing the oboe in band during an assembly. A skinny boy with glasses, but something about playing the oboe transformed him. She’d been sitting in the front row and couldn’t get her eyes off him. Since then, everywhere she turned, she saw him.

  “What’d you think of assembly?” Shaundra asked. For a moment Terri thought the other girl had read her mind. Then she realized Shaundra meant today’s assembly. “Wasn’t it gross?”

  A man from the DA’s office had talked to them on juveniles and the law in Michigan. Forty-five minutes of legal language.

  “He was the most boring person I ever heard,” Shaundra went on. She was a chubby girl with masses of dark, coarse hair hanging down like curtains around her face. She had a round face and round, dark eyes.” I think Mr. Hemphill was snoring,” she said. “I know I was totally vegged out.”

  “He was boring, but I felt sorry for him,” Terri said. The two girls walked along together.

  “I didn’t. He should have arrested himself for disturbing the peace!”

  “I guess I just, in general, feel sorry for people like that. I mean, I wonder if they know they’re boring everyone.” Shaundra pushed her hair off her face. “Even if they knew they wouldn’t care. That’s what makes them so boring.”

  “Want to go have a soda?” Terri said.

  “Not a Coke. They rot your insides.”

  “I know, and they have a lot of caffeine, too. Only, did you ever have one with ice cream, milk, and vanilla flavoring?”