Hear Everything
The next morning I got up early again. Forrest was making the coffee.
“Looks like mornings will be our time together,” he said, pouring me a glass of orange juice, freshly squeezed. “We’re the only two people in this house who know how great it is to catch the sunrise.”
I knew this about Forrest: He was not the kind of person who felt a need for a lot of small talk. He got right to the important topics, but in a way that never felt as though he was fishing around for gossip.
“Listen,” he said. “I know your mom and dad are going through some difficult things. I bet it’s been hard on you. That was part of my thinking when we invited you up here this summer. To give you a break from all of that.”
As was often the case, I didn’t know what to say. I also knew that with Forrest I didn’t have to say anything.
“To be honest, it’s not like things are ever easy between Regina and me either,” he said. “I know it’s no secret. She’s had . . . problems. I can be a real idiot sometimes.
“Certain things happened,” he said. “Life isn’t easy for Regina. The people who judge her don’t know her story.”
Neither did I. But as forthcoming as Forrest could be, particularly about himself, it was plain he wasn’t saying more about that, and I had nothing to contribute.
“Regina and I have an unusual kind of relationship,” he said. “It might seem more obvious that she needs me, but the truth is, I need her too, and not just because it’s her money that pays the bills around here. We actually love each other.”
This was Forrest for you. I’d never known anybody before who talked to me as if I was a person who mattered, not some random kid.
“I’m hoping we can show you a wonderful time here this summer,” he told me.
“But more than that, maybe, I’m hoping that this can be a time for you to discover that you’re in charge of your own destiny.
After a point it doesn’t even matter so much who your parents are or what they do.
You can find your own path, same as I did. ”
I spread a dollop of jam over my toast. At that moment it felt like too much to meet his eyes.
“You’re a wonderful girl, Frances,” he said. “You deserve to have an amazing life.”
I was glad there was toast in my mouth; that was my excuse for not responding.
Young as I was, it had seemed that for me the horizon had always sat low.
How was I ever going to get myself beyond the confines of my parents’ dark, quiet, anger-filled apartment, our dirty little neighborhood?
In the books I checked out of the library, I could read about other kinds of lives people might live.
I just never saw myself as having a life like that.
More than anything, I wanted to believe that what Forrest said to me now was possible.
I had a blue desk. A yellow bicycle. A leatherbound journal in which to write whatever I wanted. A whole other family, almost. For ninety-two days, anyway—the number I’d get to be at Wonderland. I was keeping count.
That night I wrote in my journal again. I told the story of how, at dinner, Hayward had looked up from his hamburger and said to me, “I hate to tell you, Frances, but your epidermis is showing.”
For a moment there, I’d felt my cheeks grow hot, wondering which body part I’d left exposed.
“I know what you were thinking!” A burst of laughter came out of him then, like Woody Woodpecker. “It’s just your skin, stupid!”
After closing my journal, I lay stretched out in my little bed under the eaves, looking out the skylight to the stars. I heard a noise that sounded for a moment like some kind of animal.
But it was just snoring. It was Forrest in the spare bedroom. That was where he slept, alone. Directly below my bed. Where I could hear everything.