Chapter eleven

Ronnie didn’t return until late the next day. I squinted, sitting cross-legged on my bed playing cards, and held my hand up to shield my face from the strip of sunlight that flooded the room when he opened the door.

“Where were you? ” I asked.

He let the door close behind him and turned to open the curtains. The heat of the afternoon sun blazed through the window onto my bed.

“You need to get your stuff together, ” he said.

I gathered the cards and dropped them into their box. He paused for a second at the foot of my bed, as if he was going to say something, the lines deep in his face and shaded by the several days’ beard he had grown. There were bags under his eyes and he had a smell about him that I recognized as stale alcohol. But he only stared at the bedspread uncomfortably and then moved on toward the bathroom. I heard him unwrap a plastic cup and turn on the faucet.

“Why? ” I said. “Where are we going? ”

The water ran for a while longer and then he reappeared, the edges of his hair damp as if he’d splashed water on his face.

He let out a sigh. “Listen, Jersey, I don’t know how to say this, ” he said, but then he didn’t say any more. He sank down on his bed, sitting with his back to me.

“Say what? ” I finally prompted, turning and letting my legs dangle over the edge of the bed. “What’s going on? Is it the funerals? Are they today? ”

“I don’t know about the funerals. Stop asking me about the goddamn funerals.” He smacked the bed, a muffled whump. He took another breath, wiped his face. “I can’t… I can’t even think about it, ” he said more softly. “I can’t think about anything. The funerals. The house. You. Every day I wake up and there’s all these things to do, and I can’t even get my head around them.”

I wanted to get up and go to him, sit next to him, wrap my arms around him and tell him how much I missed them, too. I knew it was what my mom would want, for me to comfort him and for him to comfort me, for us to be there for each other. But I stayed put, staring at his back, at his hunched shoulders and blackened elbows and the ragged hole in his T-shirt, that same invisible barrier keeping me at a distance.

“We’ve got to have the funerals sometime, though, ” I said. “We can’t just let them… rot… in the morgue.”

“I know what needs to be done, ” he said. “But it isn’t that easy. I’ve lost everything important to me.”

I slipped my big toe along the bumpy inside of my flip-flop. Almost, I amended for him. I’ve lost almost everything important to me. But I knew he’d said what he meant. He’d lost Mom and Marin—the important things. He was as stuck with me as I was with him.

“I did, too, ” I said instead.

He finally turned to face me. “I got hold of your grandparents. Billie and Harold Cameron.”

I frowned in confusion.

“The ones down in Caster City, ” he added.

“I know, ” I said. “I know who they are.” They were my father’s parents, the only grandparents I had, and Ronnie knew that all too well.

Mom’s parents had disowned her. In all my life, I’d never heard her talk about them unless one of us asked a specific question. But she’d talked about Billie and Harold Cameron. I don’t remember ever seeing them, and I never once got a birthday card or a Christmas gift from them, but I knew who they were in a vague sort of way. I knew that Mom disliked them. She thought they were cold as reptiles, and they’d probably gotten that way by being screwed over by their own kids so many times. I knew that she’d blamed them, in part, for my father leaving us, but that she’d kind of felt sorry for them, too, because all they ever did was clean up their kids’ messes and they never had any enjoyment of their own. She said they seemed depressed and jaded. Like life, and everyone in it, was out to get them.

“You told them about Mom? Why? ”

He finally raised his tired, bloodshot eyes to meet mine, which made my shoulders shrink and my stomach slip. “Jersey, I’m sorry, ” he said, and that was pretty much all he needed to say. I got it from just those three words.

“But why? ”

He spread his hands apart, and I got some satisfaction from seeing them shake, from seeing his chin quiver and the string of saliva that connected his top tooth to his bottom lip. “I can’t do it. I can’t raise you alone. I never meant to…”

Call me your daughter, my mind supplied, and that right there was the reason I could never embrace Ronnie as my dad. It had nothing to do with being abandoned by my drunk father down in Caster City. It was a barrier that neither of us could acknowledge but that we both knew was there. Ronnie never intended to call me his daughter. I was simply part of the package deal he got when he married my mom.

“So they’re coming up here to help you? Is that it? ”

He shook his head miserably. “They’re gonna take you down there.”

“What? I don’t want to go down there. I want to stay here. I was planning to help you rebuild. I don’t need some vacation from the storm.”

“It’s not a visit. They’re taking you to Caster City to live with them.”

“Uh, no they’re not, ” I said, standing suddenly. “No way.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“But why? I can help you. We can help each other. You’re overwhelmed right now. We both are. But it’ll get better. Besides, my friends are all up here. I can’t just leave them. I need them.”

“You need a mother, and I can’t give you that, ” he said.

“Billie Cameron isn’t my mother! Mom was my mother! She’s gone and I’ll never have another mother, and sending me off to live with strangers isn’t going to change that.”

“It’s the only option you’ve got, ” he said.

I moved toward him, reaching for him. “No, it’s not. It’s not an option at all. I want to stay here. I want to stay with you. Please, Ronnie, don’t make me go live with them. I don’t even know them.”

“I’m sorry, ” he said, and turned onto his side, his face smushed against the ugly bedspread. He said something else, but it was too muffled for me to make out.

I turned and looked around frantically—for what, I didn’t know. I felt like I needed to do something that would show him what a bad idea this was. Something that would make him change his mind.

“Please, Ronnie, no. I don’t want to go. Please, ” I begged, kneeling by the side of his bed, but he stayed with his face buried, spewing unintelligible noises into the polyfiber. “I’m not going! ” I cried, trying to sound defiant but knowing that I had no real threat to make. I had no money, no stuff, no other family to turn to. “You can’t make me do this.”

Finally, Ronnie sat up and wiped his eyes. “I’m sorry, ” he said, calmer now. “I don’t want this. But I don’t want to take care of you right now. I know that sounds horrible and makes me a bad person, but I can’t help it. It’s how I feel. I don’t know what to do with you. Except this.”

“Mom would hate it.” My jaw ached from being clenched so hard. “She would hate you for doing it.”

“Your mother would understand.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She would never understand why you would send me to live with them.”

“I’m sending you to someone who can take better care of you than I can. She would want that.”

I stood. “She wouldn’t.”

“They’ll be here in a few minutes, so you should get your things together, ” he answered.

Anxiety washed over me. A few minutes? There was no way I’d convince him this was a horrible idea in just a few minutes. Of course, he probably knew that, which was why he had waited to tell me. My mind raced, trying to think of an offer, a deal, anything I could do to change this. But I came up with nothing.

“Fine, ” I said, bending to gather what few items I had and stomping across the room to stuff them into my backpack. “Wait.” I froze. “They’re coming now? What about the funerals? ”

He looked down at the floor, smashing his lips together. “I’m sorry, Jersey” was all he said. Again.

Fury engulfed me. He was sorry? I was going to miss the funerals because he was too selfish and cowardly to let me stay with him, and he was sorry? “You can’t be serious. You can’t actually be thinking it’s okay to send me away before I get to say good-bye to my mother and my sister.” At this, my voice cracked, and tears started anew. “How could you do that? ”

“I don’t know when the funerals are going to be. I can’t even make myself go to the hospital or talk to the funeral home. I don’t know where I’ll get the money. We’ll have a memorial… later. After I get things figured out.”

“The right thing to do would be to let me help you figure out those things, not send me away. I didn’t get to say good-bye, Ronnie. I didn’t get to tell them…” I pressed my lips together, unable to go on.

There was so much I hadn’t gotten to tell them. So much I wanted to. So much I should have been able to.

But who was I kidding? Saying any of those things at their funerals wasn’t the same as saying them to my mother and sister. They were already gone. I’d already missed my chance.

“I’m sure Billie and Harold will bring you up for it, ” he said.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I hate you, ” I said, and I meant it with every fiber of my body.

Ronnie slunk off to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Desperate, I reached for my cell phone and dialed Dani.

“Hey, ” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Glad someone is, ” I said. “I need your help.”

“What’s going on? ”

“He’s sending me away, ” I cried.

“Who is? Sending you away where? ”

I pressed my forehead against the wallpaper—pineapples, how weird—feeling like I couldn’t breathe. “Ronnie. He’s sending me to live with my grandparents in Caster City.”

“No way. For how long? ”

“I don’t know. Forever, I think, ” I said. “He says he can’t take care of me. Help me, Dani.”

“He can’t send you away forever, ” she said. “Can he? Is that, like, legal? ”

“I don’t think he cares. I mean, they’re technically my family, so it probably is. But I don’t want to go. You’ve got to help me. Let me stay with you. Ask your mom.”

“She’s not home. You want me to call her? ”

“Yes, ” I said, but deep down I knew by the time she got ahold of her mom and called me back with an answer, it would be too late. They would have already come and taken me. I would be on my way to Caster City with people who were, according to my mom, cold as reptiles.

I hung up and continued to stuff things into my bag. I pulled out my Western Civ book and my math binder and threw them in the trash, keeping only Bless the Beasts & Children (hint, hint, ladies and gentlemen!) and a few pencils and pens. I rolled up the few clothes I had and crammed them inside the bag, cradling the porcelain kitten I’d brought from home. I pulled out Marin’s purse, running my fingers lightly over the fake leather.

I sat with it on my lap and waited, bitterly watching the TV rerun more footage of the tornado destruction. What the news crews couldn’t show was the real damage Elizabeth’s monster tornado had left behind. How do you record the wreckage left in someone’s heart? I pulled out a piece of gum and popped it into my mouth, then smoothed out the foil. I found a pen on the nightstand and drew a picture of a big stick figure holding a little stick figure.

Marin has a dad, I wrote beneath the picture, and then folded the foil into a tiny square and added it to the stash.

Marin has a dad.

Even in her death, she has a dad.

But I don’t.

I never did.