Missing Pieces Page 5

  I sneezed. “Getting a cold?” my mother said. “Take—”

  “I know, take two aspirin and cheer up.” My mother hardly ever got sick, and when she did, she didn’t get in bed like a normal person. She soldiered on, and she expected everyone else to do the same. Maybe I had pneumonia. Take two aspirin and cheer up. Maybe it was already too late, and I was going to die. Take two aspirin and cheer up.

  “I don’t want to eat at Aaron’s house,” I said. “I didn’t accept his invitation. You did.”

  “Why is she acting like this?” my mother said to Aunt Zis. “I thought she’d be glad to be invited.”

  Why was my mother talking about me as if I weren’t there?

  Because you’re not. Because you don’t exist. Because the person sitting in the backseat is a clone from another universe. The Universe of Bad Moods.

  We drove through dark streets. Aaron’s apartment was on the edge of downtown, and everything was dark and shuttered. Not a soul in sight. I slumped lower in the seat and half-closed my eyes. The wheels hummed monotonously over the pavement.

  And then a strange thing occurred.

  Something—someone—seemed to settle in next to me. I felt the seat give a little, a kind of stiff bounce, as if someone were making himself comfortable, and I heard a sound, almost a growl, in my ear … my head … my mind.… Think you’re the only one who has problems … the only one who’s got it tough …

  I leaned into the corner. “You don’t know me,” I whispered fiercely. I waited for an answer. I heard the wind slide by the window, heard the murmur of my mother’s and Aunt Zis’s voices. Nothing else.

  ELEVEN

  Say It with Conviction

  “How long are we going to do this?” I said, falling into step with Meadow.

  “Do what?”

  “Be mad at each other. I bet you don’t even know anymore why you’re mad at me.”

  “I do too!” Her guitar case banged against her leg.

  “I’m over being mad. Why aren’t you? Are you jealous of Diane? Now don’t get mad. I’m just asking an honest question.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I am, and maybe I should be. How come you and Diane never fight? How come you’re always so happy with each other?”

  “That’s not true, Meadow. Anyway, Diane and I don’t see each other much, so it’s a honeymoon when we do.”

  “You make me so mad sometimes, Jessie! Honeymoon? What are you, lovers?”

  “You make me mad, too, with stupid remarks like that. But so what, I always love you.”

  “Me too,” she snapped.

  We stared tensely at each other. “Are we making up or not?” I demanded. “Yes or no? Say what you mean and say it with conviction.”

  “Yes! I’m saying it with conviction. Will you shut up now?”

  “Never. Just one thing, you have to take back what you said about Aunt Zis.”

  “You know I do. I took it back the minute I said it.”

  “Okay, then, we’re made up. Anyway, you can’t get rid of me, we’ve been friends too long.”

  “Creep.” Meadow slapped me rapidly several times on the arms. “Who said I wanted to get rid of you? Let’s go call Jack Kettle. That’s the way you can really make up with me.”

  We crossed the street to a phone booth. “I saw him the other night when Mom and Dad played in the tennis tournament,” she said. She dialed and quickly handed me the phone.

  “Heeey. It’s the girl with the voice,” Jack Kettle said.

  “Heeey, it’s the boy with the laugh.”

  He laughed.

  “So, do you want to talk about pollution and overpopulation, Jack? You want to talk about serious things?”

  He laughed again.

  “Did you ever think, Jack, that our planet is like a huge sprawling house, and we humans are like the family that moved in and forgot to pay the rent?”

  “Heeey.”

  “When we moved in, we had more rooms than we knew what to do with. More rooms than we’d ever need, so we thought. Which is why we didn’t bother cleaning up our messes. If a room got too grotty, well, hey, we just trekked on to a nice fresh room. We had so many rooms we’d never even seen them all.”

  “What are you doing?” Meadow hissed.

  I held up my hand. “A long time passed, Jack, and the family was having some problems. The plumbing wasn’t the greatest anymore, the roof was leaking, and people were starting to notice that just about every room in the house was in use, including some of the old dirty rooms.”

  I paused to give him a chance to say something. He was silent. “What do you think about all this, Jack?”

  “He doesn’t think anything,” Meadow said. “He’s gone.” She had her finger pressed down on the switch. “You were boring him, Jessie. I know, because you were boring me.” She picked up her guitar case and walked away.

  I went after her. “Meadow, are you mad again?”

  “There wasn’t anything about me in that conversation.”

  “You don’t want me to mention your name, you don’t want me to say how you look, you don’t want me to say that you know him from the clubhouse. What am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know,” Meadow said. She looked forlorn. I threw my arms around her. “Jessie,” she said. “I missed you all week.”

  I hugged her. “I missed you, too.”

  We walked over to Allen Avenue, where her guitar teacher lived, and we talked about everything that had happened to us that week. I told her about the opera and PMS, but I didn’t say that in the car that night, I thought I heard James Wells speak to me. I couldn’t say it. Even if I had been in the habit of talking about him, I wouldn’t have said it. Who would ever believe it, except me—or God?

  TWELVE

  Somebody Good Like Me

  Just as I got home from school on Tuesday, the phone rang and a raspy voice said, “I have your aunt. Is this Jessie? This is Victor Perl. I’m a total stranger, but don’t worry.”

  Worry? Who, me? What did he mean, he had Aunt Zis? I only thought of little things, like kidnapping and murder.

  “I found her wandering around in the parking lot at the mall, Jessie. She was trying to find the bus stop, the one in front of Sears. She was pretty upset.”

  Considering that Aunt Zis must have used that bus stop a thousand times, I was pretty upset myself when I heard this. “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “Sure she is, she’s with me. I was going to put her on the bus, but then I said to myself, Victor, stop, think. What if this lady gets lost again, and somebody good like you isn’t around? Victor, I said to myself, call her family. Okay, Jessie, I’ve been calling, and I finally got you.”

  “I’ll come right away,” I said, and I was out the door.

  In the mall, I found my aunt sitting on a bench next to a small chunky man wearing a plaid jacket. “Oh, here’s Jessie,” she said. I thought there was a note of disappointment in her voice. No wonder. Victor Perl took her hand and kissed it! “What a lady your aunt is,” he said. “We’ve been having a good talk. Smart lady. She gave me a piece of good advice.”

  “Just common sense,” Aunt Zis said, smoothing down her skirt.

  “What happened with the bus stop, Aunt Zis?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Her hand rose, then fell. “I was going to the bus stop and it was gone. Well, not the bus stop, but how to get there. I just couldn’t … remember.”

  Victor Perl took me aside and, in a hoarse whisper, said, “She shouldn’t be wandering around on her own, Jessie. Don’t get me wrong, but she’s old, you have to watch her.”

  “We do!”

  He patted my hand. “I understand, I had a mother. I know what it’s like. You have to be extra careful when they get old.”

  “The experts say we have three kinds of memory,” my mother said, climbing a mound of snow on the sidewalk.

  “Sure. The things we remember. The things we don’t remember. And … oh, I know, the things we don’t wan
t to remember.”

  She looked at me and smiled slightly. “Memory for the past, memory for the present, and memory for learned things like riding a bike or swimming. That stuff you never forget. It’s the day-to-day stuff that goes first.… Like the checkbook. Like where the bus stop is. Still, everyone gets lost sometimes. Everyone forgets things. I’ve gotten lost in that wilderness of a parking lot myself.”

  “Ma, this is different.” I grabbed her arm so she wouldn’t slip on the ice. She was just wearing a pair of white sneakers. “She knew there was a bus stop, but how to get there had disappeared completely from her mind.”

  My mother sighed and dug her hands into her pockets. “That man was right, maybe the next time there won’t be somebody nice like him around to help her.”

  A wind was blowing. We turned up Edgemont Hill, and I pulled my scarf tighter around my neck. “You know what really scares me, Ma? What else is going to disappear from her mind? What if she went out and forgot our house?”

  My mother lit a cigarette, turning her head to blow the smoke away from me. “So what do we do? Tell her not to go to the mall anymore? I’ve already taken the checkbook away from her. What’s next? She can’t go to the drugstore or the market? Why don’t we just tell her not to leave the house at all.”

  “Don’t even say it, Ma. That’s awful.”

  “I know, Jess! I hate it. She’s been independent all her life. I can’t do that to her.”

  “But we have to make sure she’s safe,” I said. “There must be something we can do.”

  We walked and talked. We went up hills and past all the fancy houses. We talked, but we couldn’t come up with any good answers.

  THIRTEEN

  A Large, Grape-Colored Menu

  “I need to get out of my house,” Diane said over the phone. “This minute. I can’t stand being around my parents. Invite me to sleep over.”

  “You’re invited.”

  “Ask your mother.”

  “I don’t have to. When are you coming? Do you need a ride? I can ask Ma to pick you up.”

  “No, meet me at the Grape Kitchen in the mall. I want to eat supper out. My treat.”

  The waitress at the restaurant decided we were celebrating a birthday. “Our pastry chef will send you a cake for dessert, compliments of.” She handed us each a large, grape-colored menu and told us to take our time.

  “Order anything you want,” Diane said. “In honor of your birthday.”

  I studied the menu. “Maybe I’ll have the stewed lapin. In honor of your birthday.”

  “You like rabbit?”

  “So that’s what it is. Pass.”

  “The red snapper with baked mushrooms is good.”

  “I’m allergic to mushrooms.”

  “How about calamari? That’s what I’m going to order.”

  “I’m probably allergic to that, too. What is it?”

  “Octopus.”

  “I’m definitely allergic to it.”

  I settled on pasta primavera, which, at the diner where my mother works, would be called spaghetti and veggies. It was when we were eating dessert that Diane told me her parents were breaking up.

  I put down my fork. “No, they aren’t.”

  She bit her lip and sort of shrugged. “Yeah, they are.”

  “Is that why you were upset last week?”

  “Yeah. My mother’s flying to Phoenix next week to see my aunt Maxine. She just had a baby, and my mother wants me to go with her. My father’s taking my brother and flying to Bethesda to see his sister, my auntie Gracie.”

  “How many aunts do you have?”

  “Seven. Four on my father’s side.”

  “How many cousins?”

  “About thirty-five.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Jessie, get a grip. Did you hear what I just said about my parents?”

  “Sorry, Diane, sorry.”

  She picked up the menu and half-smiled. “Jessie, what if you were handed a big purple menu before you were born and told to choose your parents from it? Would you take your same parents?”

  “My mother, sure. What about you?”

  “I would, too, even though right now I’d like to dump them both. I know why they’re doing all this traveling, so they don’t have to be with each other. It’s like, all of a sudden, after twenty years, they can’t even stand being in the same room.”

  “Are they fighting?”

  “You mean arguing and screaming?” She shook her head. “We don’t do that in our family. Not the McArdles. It’s more like we’re walking around inside an ice chest.” Her eyes filled, and she pressed the napkin to her face.

  The waitress came with the check. I started to take out my wallet, but Diane pushed my hand away. “Just think of it as guilt money, Jessie. My father gave Charlie and me each fifty dollars and said we could do anything we wanted with it.”

  When we got back to my house, Diane and I couldn’t agree on who should take the bed.

  “I am not kicking you out of your own bed.”

  “Diane, you already paid for my meal, that’s enough.”

  “You think that was a sacrifice or something?”

  The result was that we both slept on the floor. Two sleeping bags side by side. “This is dumb,” I said.

  “It sure is,” Diane agreed, but neither of us moved.

  I was falling asleep when I heard her say, “I never thought anything like this would happen to me, Jessie.”

  My eyes opened. “I know. Your family seemed so happy.”

  “Maybe my life has been too happy.” She ran the zipper of the sleeping bag up and down. “I never had anything really bad happen to me before this. You know what I think? It’s my turn now. Everybody has bad stuff, don’t they? Why should I be any different? Look at Meadow’s little brother, he’s got diabetes. My brother, Charlie—”

  “What’s wrong with Charlie?”

  “My mother says he’s not having a normal life. He’s speeding through school too fast. He’s a senior, and he’s only fifteen.”

  “What does Charlie say about your parents?”

  “Nothing, he just closes the door to his room.” She started crying.

  I leaned over and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Diane. I know how much you love your parents.”

  I kept thinking about Mr. McArdle, what a really nice person he was. No, not nice, great. A great father. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I turned one way, then the other. The light from a passing car sprayed the ceiling. Far away, I heard a dog barking. The street was quiet. The house was quiet, my room seemed to breathe in and out. And the same thing happened that had happened in the car.

  I felt his presence. I didn’t see him, but I felt him looking at me from the darkness. I thought he wanted to tell me something. “What?” I sat up. “What?” I leaned forward, trying to see into the shadows, trying to hear, but even as I did, he was slipping away. “Coward,” I whispered. “Runaway.”

  I pulled the sleeping bag up over my ears and turned, looking for a comfortable spot. My hip hurt from the hard floor. I turned again, shifting and turning, turning away from the darkness, from the shadows, from something pressing hard on my heart.

  FOURTEEN

  Jimmy

  “There’s no James Wells here!”

  “Sorry I bothered you.” I dialed again.

  A sleepy-sounding woman said, “James Wells? Sure. What about him?”

  My stomach turned cold. “I’m his daughter, and—”

  She gave a high yelp of laughter. “I don’t think so!”

  “Well, yes. I am, but I haven’t seen him since—”

  “No, no, no, I don’t think so!” She couldn’t stop laughing. “James is right here with me. I’m feeding him, as a matter of fact. He loves orange juice in his morning bottle.”

  “What are you doing, Jessie?” Aunt Zis called upstairs from the kitchen. “Didn’t you go to school yet?”

  “In a moment. Don’t come up, please. I need q
uiet.” My next call—D. K. Wells—was an old man who really wanted to talk and did so. I finally had to hang up on him. Then I got two answering machines, one disconnected number, and one wrong number.

  “Jessie, go to school,” Aunt Zis called. “You’re going to be late.”

  “Okay, okay.” How come she remembered that when she forgot so much else? I dialed quickly. One more call and I’d go. This time a boy—probably about my age, from the sound of his voice—answered.

  “Wait a sec,” he said. “Dad!” he yelled, “a girl’s on the phone for you.”

  I heard a man saying, “Ask her name.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I’d already given it to him once. “Jessie Wells.”

  “Her name’s Jessie Wells!”

  “Ask her what she wants.”

  “What do you want?”

  I felt like saying nothing from you, but I went through my little speech again. “—trying to find out if anyone in your family knows James Wells,” I finished.

  “Dad! She wants to talk to you!”

  Finally, a man said, “Hello. This is Dennis Wells.”

  “You don’t know me, Mr. Wells, but I called to ask if you’re acquainted with James Wells.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Excuse me? You are acquainted with him?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I was so flustered I began stuttering. “He’s, uh, he’s, uh, he’s my father. So, are you saying—I mean, how do you know him? I mean, are you related to him or what? You both have the same last name,” I added stupidly.

  “The James Wells I know doesn’t live here anymore—is that the one? We’re cousins. What do you want to know about him?”

  “I was wondering—do you know where he is?”

  “No. Not now. What’d you say your name was?”

  “Jessie. Jessie Wells. I’m his daughter.”

  “Oh, yeah. So what’s Jimmy up to these days?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Wells. I don’t know anything about him. That’s why I called you.”

  “Well, Jessie, you didn’t call at a good time. I have to go to work. How long are you going to be in town?”

  “How long—I’m here. I live here.”