Girl Unmoored (26 page)

“How was that?” Mr. John yelled, popping up and dog paddling toward us.

I snuck a look at Grandma Bramhall. “A ten,” I said.

“Yes!” Mr. John yelled, raising both fists this time and sinking back into the water.

Grandma Bramhall and I had to suck in our cheeks not to laugh. “See how beautiful you are, Apron?”

It was like me telling Grandma Bramhall that her shake was beautiful. Except right then, smiling like that, she and her shake really
were
beautiful.

I looked back down at Mr. John, swimming toward us again. “An
amateur
ten,” I said, unwrapping my towel and standing up. “Now let me show you how the pros do it.”

During dinner, when steamed clams were everywhere except on my plate, which only had Tater Tots—I was pretty sure clams had parents—I got up twice to call Scent Appeal. No answer either time, which meant they were still at the hospital.

“What’s going on?” my dad asked the first time he found me in Grandma Bramhall’s kitchen with her phone in my ear.

“Chad,” I said like a fact.

“Oh,” my dad nodded, reaching into Grandma Bramhall’s icebox and pulling out another beer. “Did something happen?”

So I told him. I wanted to tell him in the car on the way over, but he didn’t want to talk, you could tell. But now, my dad leaned against the icebox and listened with worried eyes the whole time I told him about Chad and the hospital and his seizure. I made sure to leave out the part about nobody being at Scent Appeal this morning.

“You know, though,” my dad said, twisting open his beer but not drinking it yet. “They’re right, Apron. Minors can’t go into quarantine areas. Unless they’re family.”

I looked down.

“Listen,” he said. “I’m sorry for Chad. But you didn’t think he was going to make it, did you?”

I looked up at him.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s not like what your mom had, kiddo. No one ever makes it through what Chad’s got. At least not yet, anyway.”

He started toward me, but I turned away and picked up the phone again. “Let me know if they need anything, okay?” he said walking to the door, but then stopping. “Hey, has she seen any little people in here lately?”

I shrugged, even though right before dinner Grandma Bramhall told me she had seen one of them mopping her floor last night when she came down for milk. And she showed me the mop leaning against the back door to prove it.

I still hadn’t talked to Mike or Chad by the time we were in the car saying good-bye for the seven hundredth time already. My dad was counting. There were things to remember though, in case the unthinkable happened. There were cousins who lived in Detroit and old furniture being lent out that was “quite valuable, you know.”

When we finally pulled into our garage, my dad went straight upstairs to see M. And I went straight into the kitchen. Still, no one answered at Scent Appeal. My dad walked in, his face looking bad again. “Is she in
here
?” he asked, opening the pantry door and looking around before heading toward the back porch. M must not have been out there either, though. “Where the hell did she go this time?” I heard him say.

In the kitchen again, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the phone. “Off to bed now, Apron.”

“But Dad, if the phone rings, and it’s Mike, will you
please
get me?
Please
? Even if it’s the middle of the night?”

He said all right.

“Thanks,” I said. Then, without even thinking about it, I took a few steps toward him. I never kissed him goodnight anymore, but suddenly I forgot that. Before I got to him though, he spun around on his heels and headed over to the icebox, his forehead pinched in worry.

In the living room, I stopped at the bookshelf and slipped the frame into my backpack.

I had to be ready at any given notice.

The air smelled like worms.
I thought I had heard Suzanna’s car crunching down the dirt road sometime in the middle of the night. But now I remembered it was just the rain, sometimes pounding hard and sometimes tapping light.

It was already eight o’clock. I flipped over my covers and ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. I looked for a note that said Mike had called, but there wasn’t one. Not on my lobster, or on my cereal box or anywhere else. So I picked up the phone. They didn’t have an answering machine anymore. Just when I was about to hang up, Mike said, “Hello?”

“Mike, it’s me, Apron. Are you back?”

“Hi, Apron,” Mike said way too slowly, “I was waiting to call you.”

My stomach slipped out of me. “You
promised
,” I said, leaning into the wall.

“Apron,” Mike cut me off. “He’s here. Chad’s here, but he—it’s going to be his last day today.”

“How do you know?”

Mike laughed, so quick and sharp it could have been a hiccup. “It’s the Fourth of July. He wants to go out with a bang.”

“I’m coming right now,” I told him. Then before I hung up, I said, “Tell him to wait for me okay? I have something to give him.”

“I’ll tell him, Apron. He’s been asking for you.”

I ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs and straight into my dad in the hallway. He looked yellow, he was so tired, and his red hair was flat on one side and sticking out on the other. “Oh,” he said, “I thought you were Margie.”

“Dad. I talked to Mike. I have to go see Chad.”

My dad still wasn’t listening, though. He peeked his head into the little whatever’s room and said, “Is she downstairs?”

“I don’t know,” I said slipping by him and going into the bathroom. I whipped my toothbrush around and fluffed up my red layers. Then I ran back into my room and got dressed: jean shorts and a turquoise Indian shirt
.
After that, I grabbed my raincoat and slid into my flip-flops, only slowing down to put on my backpack.

Downstairs, my dad was still standing around like he was lost, this time in the middle of the kitchen. He opened the back door and peered down the staircase. “She didn’t come home,” he said, like I couldn’t believe it either.

“Dad, I really—”

“Hold
on
a minute.”

He shut the door and turned around again, thinking. I tried to look worried while I tapped my feet and glanced at the clock on the oven. I might still be able to make the early bus if I left right now. “She probably stayed at Suzanna’s,” I said. And then I remembered: the buses weren’t running. It was the Fourth of July.

“Dad! There aren’t any buses today. Can you take me? Please?”

My dad turned his zombie face to me and shook it. “She didn’t come back last night, Apron. I have to wait here. What if she tries to call?”

“Dad?” I said, my jaw so tight it could break. “You said to let you know if they needed anything. They need
me
. Chad’s been asking for me.”

But my dad just turned his red head back to the phone and picked it up. Someone slapped me in the heart. I stood there watching him get ready to dial, then stop. “I don’t know it,” he said spinning around and staring at me with the same lost look. “I don’t even know Suzanna’s number.”

“Dad,” my voice was squeezed so high it came out my ears. “I need to see him before it’s too late. Like Mom.”

Finally, he listened. He put the phone back on the hook and started walking to the door. “Let’s go.”

And we were already down the porch stairs and halfway to the car by the time the screen door slammed behind us.

My dad’s face stayed tight the whole time we drove.
The only noise came from the windshield wipers: the steady swish and then the fast squeaky pull to get them moving again.

We found a place to park right in front of Scent Appeal. The street was practically empty and so wet that I couldn’t make it onto the sidewalk without stepping into a greasy puddle first. “I’m coming in with you,” my dad said shutting his door, drops of rain plopping onto his shirt. I was going to say no, he didn’t need to, but changed my mind when I saw his face.

He was looking at the picture frame I was carrying. “Is that—?” I heard him say. But I slipped it into my backpack and hurried up to the door, which was unlocked just like yesterday.

Inside the lights were off and all my vases were scattered around.

“Would they be up there?” my dad asked behind me.

I nodded, and he started up the stairs first.

I prayed there wouldn’t be anything contagious-looking in their apartment, even a cup. My dad took the stairs two at a time and stopped at the top to wait for me, making himself a wall so I could go in first.

The living room was empty and dark and so was their bedroom.

“Looks like they’re gone,” my dad said.

We were too late. Again. I grabbed onto the wall.

Until I heard, “You’re here.”

I spun around so fast my backpack hit my dad’s elbow. I looked at him to say sorry, but he held up his hand and nodded,
It’s okay
. Then Mike walked toward us, out of the dark bedroom, his hair hanging loose all around him.

“Hi, Mr. Bramhall,” he said, holding his hand out, but then pulling it back in again quickly and slipping it into his pocket.

But my dad said, “Hi, Mike,” and held his hand out there until Mike took it. And then when they stood like that, shaking hands for longer than normal, you could see they were the exact same height.

When they dropped their hands, they turned to me.

“Thanks for letting Apron come over, it means a lot to her,” my dad said.

“No,” Mike said. “Thank you. It means a lot to Chad.”

Mike smiled at me when he said that, and I smiled back.

“How’s he doing?” my dad asked, his face ironed down into a worry now.

“Well, he’s not in as much pain.”

My dad nodded. “So what time are you thinking, then?”

Mike blinked at my dad. “Tonight,” he answered, putting both hands in his pockets this time. “Definitely sometime tonight.”

“To pick Apron up, I mean,” my dad said quickly. “What time should I pick Apron up? An hour?”

“Yuh.” Mike pulled his hands out of his pocket, his face flush. “Sounds good.”

My dad turned to go down the stairs, but stopped at the top. For a second, I thought he might ask me if I wanted him to stay. But instead he said, “Can I bring you boys anything when I get back?”

“No. Thank you, Mr. Bramhall. We’re all set,” Mike answered.

So my dad waved once and disappeared.

Mike stood up straighter and looked at me. His blueberry eyes were cloudy. “Okay. You ready, kiddo?”

I nodded and slid off my backpack. Mike took my raincoat and hung it over a kitchen chair, and then I picked up my backpack again and followed him into the bedroom.

At first it looked like the bed was empty.
But Mike walked up to it and pulled out a hand. “Hey,” he said.

The sheets moved slightly.

“Apron’s here.”

The sheets moved faster.

“Calm down,” Mike said. “She’s not going anywhere.”

A head slid up against the bed board, and there was Chad, looking awful, his cheeks glued on the wrong way and his black splotches looking blacker. I turned my eyes away, into Mike. And then he knew too, that I wished I hadn’t come.

“It’s okay,” he mouthed, shaking his head. “He can’t see you.”

“I heard that,” Chad said in the same grumpy voice he used to have, when his eyes were real.

“Hi,” I said. I didn’t recognize my own voice.

“Get over here, Apron. I’ve been waiting for you.” Just saying that much got him out of breath. I looked at Mike. He nodded once and then we traded places.

“What’s the difference between a woman from Maine and a moose?” Chad asked slowly, his eyes turned exactly the right way into mine, but not moving at all.