Chapter 72
— Chapter 72 —
Hans follows me in his car. His steady headlights in my rearview mirror keep me from turning back. I don’t want him to see me wimp out. And whatever happens, at least I know I have a witness.
He pulls over in the cul-de-sac, nodding to me as I drive by. I park in front of the walkway. It takes me a minute to collect myself and my things and get out of the car. I spent so much time thinking of what I would say, but now my mind has faded to black, and I can’t tell if my thoughts will return to me or slip further away.
I rap the brass knocker against the door and wait. I’m just about to knock again when I hear footsteps inside.
Steena answers, wearing tight black pants and a cashmere wrap sweater that looks like an expensive version of the ones dancers wear. She’s barefoot, and it’s jarring. I forgot that we have the same feet—second toes taller than the bigs, pinky nails curled to a sliver, impossible to polish.
I hold out the papers and a ballpoint pen. I grabbed the pen from the house and didn’t realize until just now that it says Arnalds Insurance: We Protect You! down the side in gold letters.
“I need you to sign these,” I say.
“What is this?” Steena asks, holding up her hands, glaring at me as if I just showed up and vomited on her doorstep.
“It’s a temporary guardianship agreement dated from now until Aubrey’s eighteenth birthday, a power of attorney form, and a permission form for Aubrey to take the GED. If you and Charlie sign and Hans”—I point to his car at end of her driveway—“notarizes, we don’t even have to go to court.” I say the words like I’m reciting times tables. I can’t feel my body. I can’t feel my heart. I think if I could, I’d be crushed by the sadness of this moment, by how bad things have to be for it to come to this. And I think I’d also be crushed by having to fully metabolize the sadness I carry because I didn’t have someone to do this for me.
“Why would I sign any of that?” Steena says. Her eyes are bright, the way our mother’s would get right before she set off on a cruel, cutting rage.
But I reach in my bag, pull out Step’s notebook, and flip open the back cover.
“Can you explain this list to me?” I ask. My voice is shaking, but I don’t care. It doesn’t matter if I sound brave.
“What list?” Steena barely glances at Step’s scribbled words.
“Right here. It’s a list Step was keeping,” I say, pretending I’m puzzled. “I still have to go through a bunch of his paperwork at the house. But I thought it might be easier to just ask you.”
Steena shakes her head. “I can’t even read his writing.” But she’s still standing here with me, and I know that’s meaningful. She’d dismiss me if she could.
“It’s so funny,” I say. “I thought this was a checklist of things Step wanted to see on a trip he was planning. But you all did those condos over by the grocery store, didn’t you? My friend Bee, remember Bridget Shulman? She lives over there, and I was just at her place and realized all the streets are flower names. The same ones that are right here.” I point to Step’s book. “And then I drove around town and realized that the streets in Cliffside Heights are the rock names here. Atrium Pointe is the birds. Harvest Grove is trees. Did you name these streets, Steena? You always did love a good theme.”
There is true fear on her face, and it makes my brain feel fast and powerful.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“No, Steena, I’m sure you know,” I say. “Remember? I see you.”
“What are you getting at?” The tremble in her cheeks reminds me of our mother.
I reach into my bag and pull out a piece of Bee’s kitchen wall. We cut it out carefully to get an entire blue Daqin-Gunter stamp smack in the middle. “Well, this is the important part, I think.”
I hand it to Steena. She takes it before she can tell what it is, gypsum dust snowing on her black pants. But as she looks it over, I see the recognition on her face, the horror.
I have no idea what’s in those boxes of Step’s paperwork in the basement. I don’t know anything for certain except that Bee’s condo was built after that drywall was banned. I assume Charlie bought recalled materials cheap and pocketed the difference. That he’d done it before and would do it again. He probably greased a lot of palms to get permits anyway, and he needed an insurance guy who would quietly pay out on claims if the acid in the drywall started corroding pipes and wires. I could be wrong about some parts of my theory, but I don’t need to secure the facts.
“You definitely owe Bee a remodel.” I laugh, and it sounds unhinged. “But I could start knocking on doors, kicking in walls.” I lift my foot to show her the white scuff marks on my boot. “Or I could just go away.”
She stares at me, and I stare right back. I feel like I’m shedding skin. I spent my childhood thinking if I tried harder, I could figure out how to be someone Steena would love, but it was always a lost cause.
I hand her the papers and pen. She takes them without saying a word, flips through the pages.
I wave to Hans, who drives up to join us.
Steena uses Bee’s drywall like a clipboard, signing the papers with her perfect, sweeping script. Then she lets Hans collect her thumbprint.
I wish it weren’t this easy. I wish Steena loved her daughter enough to rip me to shreds right now, but she is not sad or sorry. She may as well be signing away the title on a used car. I don’t know if the difference between us is biology or circumstance, but I wish my sister was better than she is.
Charlie is looking rough when Steena drags him outside. He’s wearing a Red Sox cap low on his forehead, but I can still see his bloated face, the puffy bags under his eyes.
“What do I have to do?” he says in a low voice, somber. He looks to Hans like a lost child hoping for direction.
Hans stands next to him, kindly pointing to each place Charlie needs to sign. Charlie leans the papers against the house to scribble his name. When Hans collects his thumbprint for the record book, Charlie glances up at me quickly, then looks away. I wonder if he feels like a criminal.
Charlie says, “Are we done, sir?” retreating into the house as soon as Hans nods. Steena follows, closing the door behind them.
And it’s all over. I got what I wanted. What Aubrey needs. But it’s nothing to celebrate.
Hans walks me to my car. Says he’ll file the paperwork and send copies where they need to go. When I thank him, he pats my shoulder, flashes a sympathetic smile, and I do think he understands how I’m feeling.
“I’m always surprised,” he says, “by how many big moments feel more like a whimper than a bang.”
Now there’s nothing keeping me and Aubrey from the trail.
On the way home, I go to Gristedes and buy a half dozen cupcakes for me and Aubrey. It’s not the twenty-third, but it may as well be our birthday. We sit by the swamp to eat, throwing bits of cake in the water for the ghost of Lenny Juice.
Aubrey reads me a list of things she wants to see on our trip. “There are birds called indigo buntings. They’re really small, but super bright blue. They just sound like birds. But these other ones called purple martins, they sound like laser guns in a space movie.”
I worried Aubrey might be sad to hear that her parents signed the papers, but she seems relieved. Ready to move forward. While I’m still pretty nervous about our trip, Aubrey is purely excited. She spends every free moment adding to her Field Notes. She doesn’t bother with her magnetic piercings anymore. She’s stopped wearing makeup, and cut her hair to her shoulders so her braids won’t get stuck in her backpack straps. Before we go, she’s going to help me dye my hair back to brown so my roots won’t be obvious when they grow out.
“And then on Mount Rogers in Virginia, there are wild ponies,” Aubrey says. “Like about a hundred of them, and they don’t belong to anyone but themselves. We’ll probably see them.”
“I hope we do,” I say, throwing cake crumbs at the water.
“Yeah,” she says, smiling. “I think we will.”