Missing Pieces Read online

  Diane held a pillow against her chest. “Come on, Jessie, give her a break. You’re so hard on her.”

  “What?” My eye twitched nervously and I got that flash of heat in my cheeks. Was that true? Sure is, a voice said in my ear … my head … my mind.… A man’s voice. His voice. Scratched the belt buckle … not exactly a light touch … pretty damn hard on everything.… I shook my head, like clearing it of water.

  Diane was saying something about the orchestra. “I was so nervous. My first trumpet solo.”

  “You and Meadow are talented. I’m a musical idiot.”

  “My father says everyone has talent. He says when he went to school, all the kids got music lessons free. That was in a little town near the Vermont border.”

  “I thought he grew up in South Carolina.”

  “That’s my mother. My grandfather was an artist, and he wanted to live in the country. They were the only black family in town. My father says they were such a big tribe, they never got lonely. There were seven kids. He says it was great growing up there.”

  I sat down next to her on the bed and started braiding her hair. “I’m jealous of you. Your family is so big—”

  “Well, I’m jealous of you, so we’re even.”

  “You’re not jealous of me. I don’t believe that.” I pulled the braid apart and brushed her hair smooth with my fingers. “What could you possibly be jealous of?”

  “Your spontaneous self. I worry too much about my dignity. I guard myself. I know I do. I should be more relaxed and open.”

  “Diane, you’re nuts. You’re perfect the way you are.”

  Sasha, her golden retriever, who was lying at the foot of the bed, whined up and down the scale. “See, Diane, Sasha agrees with me. You’re perfect.”

  “Oh, yes, perfect Diane McArdle. Straight A’s, cheerleader, wears up-to-the-minute clothes, and practices her music at least an hour a day.”

  I held out the hairbrush like a microphone. “Tell our audience, Ms. McArdle, how it feels to be a perfect person.”

  “It makes you feel sick.”

  “Perfectly sick, I presume?”

  “Your stomach is in knots, you want to throw up. You’re always afraid what if you can’t do it. And even when things happen in your own family and you feel bad, you can’t cry or you’ll upset them. They want you to understand and be perfect and upbeat and cheerful all the time, and sometimes I can’t stand it.” She was breathing hard. She wiped her eyes with her hand and turned her face away.

  “Diane?” I said uncertainly. I felt like someone who’d walked into a room expecting a party and found a hospital ward. I didn’t understand what had just happened. Was someone in her family sick? Had something happened, something unmentionable? “Diane?” I said again.

  She sat up and took a sandwich and started tearing the crusts off. “I hate crusts,” she said. “Don’t you?” Her voice was vehement, but her face was shut down tight as a closed door.

  EIGHT

  Jealous Eyes

  “Brush harder, sweetie,” My mother said, slapping Domino on the rump. “Don’t be afraid, this little baby is not going to mind. She likes it.”

  “I’m not afraid of her,” I lied. Domino was a spotted gray mare. I brushed harder. I liked her smell, and I liked the smell of the stables, but I wasn’t at ease around horses.

  “I wonder if Alicia is around today,” my mother said. “I bet she’d let you ride.”

  My mother was always excited when her boss said I could take one of the horses, but for me, riding was a grit-your-teeth act of courage.

  She picked up the wall phone to call up to the main house. “I think I’ll ask her if you—”

  “Ma!” I held her arm. “I have something I want to tell you. I’m calling the Wellses.” I hadn’t planned to say it.

  “You’re doing what?”

  “Calling all the Wellses. Everyone in the phone book with the same last name as us.”

  “Why?” She put the phone back on the hook.

  “Maybe one of them is related to James Wells.”

  “I’ll tell you right now. No.”

  “How do you know that? Are you sure?”

  “I don’t want you to do this, Jessie.” She slapped her pockets, looking for a cigarette, even though she couldn’t smoke in the barn. “Hey, if you’re going to do that, why stop with our phone book? This could be a lifetime project, you could call the Wellses in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Dallas. Every city in the country.”

  “Okay, maybe it’s stupid,” I said. “Is that what you’re telling me? It’s stupid? Just say it. It’s stupid, Jessie!”

  “I didn’t say that. Just”—she pushed her hands through the air—“useless. You’re wasting your time.”

  I brushed Domino, long hard strokes, pushing my forehead against her flank. “What if one of those people knows where James Wells is?”

  “Jess, don’t do it.” My mother forked straw and manure into the wheelbarrow. “Nothing will come of it but grief.”

  “How do you know that? Why? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “There’re a lot of things you don’t know.”

  “What does that mean? What don’t I know?”

  “Could you just take my word and not do it?” She put her hands around my face and looked at me steadily. “I love you, sweetie. You’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “I love you, too, Mom,” I mumbled.

  She pushed the wheelbarrow to the next stall. Now she was saying something about Aaron and dinner at his house next week. Her voice was muffled by the wall between us. I heard the steady scrape of the shovel against the cement floor.

  I started working on Domino again. I tried to push the conversation with my mother out of my mind. I thought about horses instead. I thought about how sweetly Domino stood there and let me brush her and bump into her, and then I thought about wild horses, herds of them racing in freedom, manes flying, raising dust, splashing through water. The wild ponies of Chincoteague. I’d always wanted to go there and see them. Even if I was uneasy around horses, I still loved them for their beauty, their independence, their big, intelligent faces.

  Nobody tells them what to do. But that wasn’t true. Maybe my mother was right. Calling one hundred and sixty-three Wellses was ridiculous. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. My husband’s folks are all from the South … barking up the wrong tree … that’s not even my name, dear.…

  Even if I did find someone related to James Wells, what difference would it make? I’d still be in the same place I’d always been. The place of no father, the place of know nothing, the place of who cared, anyway.

  My hands felt swollen and stiff, and the brush lagged down Domino’s flank. She stamped her feet suddenly, as if she knew how I felt and she didn’t like it. I stepped back until she got calm. Then I started brushing her again, thinking how strange it was that you could know everything about an animal’s parents, but nothing about your own.

  “Have you done anything on that family history assignment for Mr. Novak?” Meadow asked as we got on the bus.

  “No.” I didn’t want to talk about it. Nothing I’d thought of seemed good enough. We walked to the back and took a seat.

  We were on our way to the mall to meet Diane and watch Aunt Zis and her tap group dance. They were raising money for flood victims.

  “Want one of my ideas?” Meadow asked.

  “Our families are nothing alike.”

  “Well, you have to do something,” she said. “You don’t have that much time left. I’m interviewing my father about his uncle—”

  “I don’t have a father. End of subject.” I looked out the window. Heaps of dirty snow everywhere. “Don’t talk to me, I feel really irritable,” I said, and a moment later we exploded into a fight.

  Meadow was acting thrilled, because she’d read that a movie star was coming here. “We might get to see him,” she said. “Oh my god.”

  “Your tongue is h
anging out,” I said.

  “Excuse me, Jessie? I was just expressing enthusiasm.”

  “You’re always getting heated up over guys. Jack Kettle. This what’s-his-face. If it’s male, you think it’s wonderful.”

  “Shut up, Jessie! What are you smiling about? You look like a Halloween pumpkin. What am I doing on this bus with you, anyway?”

  “Going to give Aunt Zis moral support,” I said sweetly.

  “Aunt Zis,” she spit out, “is an old fart.”

  My heart started beating really hard. “Meadow, take that back, or you just shot yourself down.”

  “I’m so scared.” She flipped her long hair behind her ears. The bus ground to a stop, and she rushed off ahead of me.

  “Don’t think I’m forgetting that, Meadow,” I said to her back. “What a rotten thing to say.” My voice cracked. “And you know how much Aunt Zis likes you, too.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive,” she said. “Can’t you take a joke? I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Like hell you didn’t. You showed your true colors. Rat colors.”

  She turned and bared her little teeth in my face. “Sometimes I hate your guts, Jessie.”

  We crossed the bridge to the mall. Diane was waiting for us by the south entrance. “Hi, you two!”

  “Hiii!” Meadow gave her an excessive hug. I walked ahead and found my aunt and the dance group near the fountain, where a “stage” had been marked off with yellow tape. A crowd had gathered. Aunt Zis noticed me and wagged a finger.

  “Hi, sweetie,” I said. A tall old man was soloing, skinny legs cutting the air like scissors.

  “This is fun,” Diane said, hugging my arm.

  “I know,” I agreed, but everything seemed wrong to me, fake and false. That Meadow and I weren’t talking, that we were both covering up in front of Diane, that Diane had been so unhappy the other day and was so cheerful today. There was even something wrong about Aunt Zis, the way her legs were going, her feet tapping the floor. Was this the same Aunt Zis who’d crept up the stairs the morning the gas had been cut off?

  “What’s that music they’re dancing to?” Diane said. “I should know it.”

  “‘Good Ship Lollipop,’” a woman standing next to us said. “Shirley Temple danced to it. She sang it, too.” She eyed the three of us. I felt Meadow sort of slide behind me, out of range. “Shirley Temple was the most famous child in the world,” the woman said. “She sang and danced like an angel. She was a talented actress. There was nothing that golden-haired child couldn’t do. Talent, talent, talent, loaded with talent, persistence, and perseverance.”

  The woman stared at me, as if she knew all about me, knew I didn’t have even a sprinkle of talent, not to mention my total lack of persistence. I’d given up so easily on calling the Wellses. I thought I had so much spirit, so much grit and independence. It was all a false front. One word from my mother and I’d let it drop.

  “My first tap dance teacher was Helene Audrey Van Sternberg,” Aunt Zis said. We’d taken a table in the food court. “She lived across the hall from us. She was eleven years old and gave lessons in the kitchen.”

  “Why the kitchen, Aunt Zis?” Meadow asked.

  I took a bite from my raspberry ice-cream cone. Now she was being sweet? Another phony thing.

  “Where else would she give lessons?” Aunt Zis said. “There was no such thing as a living room, not with nine people in three rooms. The kitchen was where everything happened. The children did their homework there, everyone ate there, and they had their fights there, and the bathtub was in there, too.”

  “The bathtub?” Diane said. “In the kitchen?”

  “Cast-iron with a wooden board over it. Two of the little Van Sternbergs slept on that.”

  Diane collapsed against me. “Did you hear that, Jessie?”

  Meadow was watching us, biting on a strand of hair. She had miserable, jealous eyes. Was she jealous enough to do something bad, like end our friendship? Like disappear out of my life? My stomach lurched. I took a long drink of my soda and made my mind pull away. I know how to do that—it’s something I found out a long time ago. It’s like stepping out of a room, then turning around and watching what’s going on inside. I thought about Meadow and me as if I were thinking about two other people. That’s the way it is … people disappear … it happens all the time … and if it does, well … then it does.

  NINE

  Buckets of Sound, Lakes and Oceans

  “I’m glad you could join us, Jessie,” Mrs. McArdle said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. She was driving.

  “Thank you for asking me.” First my mother, then Aunt Zis, had made me promise I’d say that. I would have anyway. I pulled my hair back behind my ears and sat up straighter, wishing I’d worn something better. All the McArdles were dressed up. Mr. McArdle was wearing a black bow tie with his suit. Both Diane and her mother were wearing long skirts and silk blouses, and Diane’s hair was twisted up into a thick knot. Compared to her, I looked like I was going to a grade-school dance.

  We were on the way to the Civic Center to see an opera called The Magic Flute. I had Charlie’s ticket. I’d never been to an opera before, and I didn’t know what to expect. “Why didn’t your brother want to go?” I asked.

  “He says he doesn’t like opera,” Diane said.

  “Charlie’s the independent type,” Mr. McArdle said, from the front seat.

  “He’s also mad at my parents,” Diane whispered.

  “How come?”

  “Oh, he’s got his reasons. Dad.” Diane leaned forward. “Do you know this is Jessie’s first opera?”

  Mr. McArdle turned to smile at me. He had a shining bald head with a thick fringe of black hair. “I wish I was going to my first opera. I was fifteen, and my grandfather took me. He didn’t take my sisters, and to this day they have no interest in opera. My grandfather had a magnificent voice, almost another Paul Robeson. Do you know who he was, Jessie?”

  I shook my head.

  “A great singer,” Diane said.

  “And actor,” her father said. “And athlete. And scholar. A fabulous human being. A black prince. One of those men God endows with brains, strength, beauty, and talent.”

  “Wow,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Tonight you’re going to hear the music of another prince. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Maybe this will be the beginning of a love of opera for you, too, Jessie. I hope so. When we leave, you tell me what you think, okay?”

  He gave me another smile, and I made up my mind that even if I was bored to tears, I’d tell him I loved it.

  In the auditorium, Diane and I sat together, between her parents. Every seat was taken. The orchestra was tuning up, and a deep buzz of voices filled the hall. There was a kind of excitement in the air that I could almost reach out and touch. It was totally different from going to the movies, or even from plays and musicals I’d seen in school. But when the curtain went up, I was disappointed to see an almost bare stage with just a few pieces of fake-looking scenery.

  “Here comes Tamino, the prince,” Mr. McArdle whispered to me.

  Some prince! Not like the one Mr. McArdle described in the car. This was a chubby guy in green tights and a green tunic, who was trying to avoid a monster who wouldn’t have scared a two-year-old. After a while, three women warriors holding spears came onstage, and they were chubby, too. Everyone was singing and speaking in German, so I couldn’t understand a word. Diane and her parents didn’t seem to care. They all looked rapt, and when the women warriors finished off the monster and Tamino fainted, they and the whole audience roared with laughter. Okay, it was cute, but not that funny.

  The warrior women were singing, having an argument, I thought, about who would get their mitts on Prince Tamino, when suddenly the stage darkened. Drums rumbled, the music soared, and in a flash of white light, a woman appeared in a glittering black gown.

  “That’s the Queen of the Night, Jessie,” Mr. McArdle wh
ispered.

  She opened her mouth and sang, and if I hadn’t had chills already, I would have got them then. From that moment, I was caught. I forgot the bare stage and the silly plot. All I knew was the way I felt listening to those voices, pouring out sound. Buckets of sound, lakes and oceans. Music, so much music, as if the world had been turned into music.

  When we were leaving, Mr. McArdle said, “So, Jessie, what did you think?”

  “I liked it,” I said. “I loved it.”

  He looked happy, and in the car, we were all happy together, like one family. Diane put her arms around her parents. “I’m out with both my parents!” She kissed one, then the other. “I love you guys.”

  “I love you, too, sweetheart,” her father said. “You are so precious to me.”

  It was like hearing the music again. It was like a song to Diane. I love you, sweetheart … you are precious to me.… Had James Wells ever said anything like that to me? Probably not. Or definitely not. Because if he had, he would never have walked out on me, would he?

  TEN

  Take Two Aspirin and Cheer Up

  The brakes squealed as Maribeth slowed for a stop sign. Something always squealed, squeaked, or rattled on our car. “Let me out,” I said. “I want to go home.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” My eyes hurt, my throat ached. A virus, PMS, or the fight with Meadow? We still weren’t talking. All I wanted to do was curl up and feel sorry for myself.

  “What movie did you say we were going to?” Aunt Zis said.

  My stomach clenched. “We’re not going to the movies, Aunt Zis. We’re going to Aaron’s for dinner.”

  There was a tiny moment of silence. “I thought he might be showing a home movie,” she said.

  Fast thinking. If I hadn’t been feeling so crummy, I would have patted her on the back. Or laughed. Or cried. Diane said that for two days before her period, she cried at the drop of a hat. Meadow wouldn’t even mention her period; she thought it was gross to talk about things like that.