Some Things That Stay Read online

  Me.

  After I glue the letter closed and flatten it as well as I can by pressing against it with an encyclopedia, I leave it on the dining room table. Then I sit on the wood floor in the corner of the dining room, where the air is slightly cooler. Kip comes over and rests his head on my leg. I scratch his head. He must miss the Burns. He must wonder what he did wrong to be left behind.

  Ten

  The first Tuesday in August it starts to rain. The temperature drops into the seventies. It rains all week, never stopping. The bomb shelter becomes a swimming pool. It is finally useful.

  It is late afternoon, and rain falls outside, so much rain that it bands together like thick ribbons unspooling from the sky. I am melancholy, listening to Teresa Brewer sing “Till I Waltz Again with You,” wishing I could sing like that.

  The phone rings and I jump. It also startles my father, who is painting a couch picture of a summer cottage, dogwood trees blooming at the edge of an English garden; a photograph of this scene is clipped to the top of the easel like a price tag. Both of us look at the phone as if a lion has appeared indoors. It rings again, and he nods at it. “Okay, I’m coming,” he says to the phone. He carries a paintbrush over with him, pointed up like a dagger, tipped in cadmium red from painting the brick path that winds through the English garden.

  “Yes, hello,” he says gently, thinking, as I do, that maybe this is a doctor. So few people ever call us. Then he listens for a long time, his lips tightening together, his eyebrows almost folding down into his eyes. He shakes his head back and forth in small rhythmic motions. My hands sweat. My brother comes in from the dining room, standing in the archway. Robert and I hold perfectly still, as if any movement might bring bad luck.

  “No,” my father says. “I’ll do it. Please wait until I get there.”

  Then he listens for a while.

  “Yes, I could get there by then. It’s important to me to do it myself.”

  Silence.

  “I could, if you think …”

  Silence as he listens and nods. I want to suck my thumb, a habit I gave up at six. I can almost feel the round pad of my thumb pressing the roof of my mouth. My tongue curls around nothing.

  “I have two, but they’re not …”

  The person on the other end cuts him off again. Is my father talking about us? Has he forgotten Megan already? And what are we not? Not ready to face a corpse? I look up at the painting of my mother on the wall; she smiles with a closed mouth, she looks relaxed, as if she could sit there naked forever, even with her arm folded over her head. The picture changes as I look at it, from being a picture of my mother to something cold and scary; it feels like an heirloom of a distant dead relative. She has been gone only a month and already I have forgotten what she looks like except for in this pose. Tears fall down my face. I brush them away with my sleeve.

  “Fine. I know. Thank you for calling. I’ll bring them with me.”

  He hangs up, bites his upper lip, and stares at us. “I have to go to New York.”

  I look at Robert, who looks at me. We both understand now. It is his art, not our mother, and more than feeling relief, we are furious. Robert turns and walks from the room.

  “What?” I say, not that I misunderstood a word he just said, but that I am daring him to repeat it.

  “I have to,” he says. “The pictures, the new ones, have turned out to be quite popular. They want to set them up in the new gallery now, and they want whatever else I have. Apparently Renny showed a sketch to someone who loved it. They’ll pay good money for more sketches. I need to be there to hang the show.”

  I say nothing.

  “We need the money, Tamara. The sanitarium isn’t cheap.”

  “Then mail him the sketches and don’t waste money on an airplane trip.” I know he’ll fly. He would never make it if he drove for eight hours. I can just imagine the scene of the accident. Crushed canvases littering the highway, bright with blood.

  “I have to go,” he says. “Please understand. I have to.” He waves his hands as if he’s surrendering, but he’s still holding the brush and it looks more like a man trying to wave a flagless flag. He looks like an idiot. He is an idiot. And a fool. And heartless. I want to run away from home. If I had one.

  “You’ll be okay for a couple of days,” he says. “I’ll get Helen to come over. She could sleep here at night. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. You like her.”

  I don’t answer him. My arms are folded across my chest, holding hard against a scream, a Fuck you and I hope you go to hell scream, that I would shout, except for the picture of my mother on the wall.

  “I better tell Megan,” he says, with a look toward the stairs. He walks over to the easel and cleans the brush, then places it carefully with the other brushes. He looks back at the stairs again. “Maybe I should ask Helen first.” He goes back to the phone, picks it up, listens a second, then puts it down. “I don’t know their number. I’ll just go over there.” He goes out to the kitchen, taking a jacket from the coatrack. He doesn’t even know that they aren’t allowed in our house. I’ll let him find that out for himself.

  My father comes back fifteen minutes later, taking off his wet shoes as soon as he comes in the door. Still, his socks leave puddles of water on the kitchen floor. “I’m going to change. I’ll be down in a minute. Wait right here for me.”

  Robert and I look at each other. Where would we go?

  We can hear him changing, throwing things around, then yelling through the door to Megan to get out of her room and come downstairs. He comes down alone.

  He waves us to the couch, then paces back and forth in the tight space between his easel and the floral chair.

  “Well, there was a problem with my plan,” he says. I grin. “But I’ve worked out an alternative. You will stay at the Murphys’.”

  I gasp, loud and clear, like someone just jumped out of nowhere and scared the bejesus out of me. I can feel my heart race. “No,” I say. “I won’t.” I have that same panicked sound to my voice that Robert had when he said no to his shot.

  Robert doesn’t say a thing. He doesn’t look scared at all.

  “We don’t have a choice,” my father says. “They think this house has germs. I convinced them you kids don’t, but I couldn’t change their minds about the house.”

  “I won’t stay there,” I say.

  “I don’t care,” says my brother. “It’s okay with me.”

  My father smiles kindly at him. “That’s my boy. The problem is going to be Megan. But I figure she’ll go over there when she finds out she will be alone in the house at night. Helen says she’ll carry Megan over if she has to. Mr. Murphy says she can come in to do that if she covers her mouth with a handkerchief. They’re very adamant about this germ thing.”

  “Your problem is going to be me,” I say, standing and trying to look firm, although the idea of sleeping in this house, with Timothy’s ghost and the noises it makes, without either parent, does not sound too exciting.

  “Tamara, you will be no problem at all. Your mother relies on you. Do you want to disappoint her? Besides, we’re only talking about a few nights. You can stay here during the day. It’s not that I don’t trust you alone, it’s just that it would be unsafe at night in the country like this. There have been some awful things happening …” He doesn’t have to finish this sentence to scare the bejesus out of Robert.

  “I’m not staying here alone at night. Tamara can, but I’m not. Would I be sleeping in Rusty’s room?”

  “Yes. On the floor though. They have a sleeping bag for you.”

  “Cool,” Robert says. And now I see his ulterior motive. He’s always trying to follow Rusty around, get in with him. This is like a dream come true.

  “Helen and Brenda share a room, but Helen says she’ll sleep on the couch and Megan can have her bed. You’ll get the floor, Tamara. They have a sleeping bag for you too.”

  “I’m not sleeping there!” I say. “I’ll get cockroaches in my ears a
t night.”

  “Tamara Anderson, I can’t believe you said that. The Murphys are fine people and it’s very good of them to let you sleep there for a few days.”

  “If they’re such fine people, how come you and Mother never even invited them over here once!”

  He stops pacing. He actually looks ashamed. “We should have,” he says. “It’s our loss that we have been so solitary.” He looks out the window, although you can hardly see the Murphys’ house because of the rain. “We’ll invite them over when I get back.”

  “They won’t even come in our house!” I shout. “We have the cooties!” I stomp upstairs to my room and slam my door. I don’t think I slammed it hard enough, so I open it up and slam it again.

  I pick up the mirror on my bureau and look at myself. I’m not pretty in the least. I have big features and mud-colored hair and no mother and now I have to go sleep in a tar-papered house because my father wants to fly off to New York City. I notice he didn’t offer to take us with him. That would never have occurred to him.

  I slam the mirror down on my bureau. It is a miracle it doesn’t break. I give God ten points for not breaking the mirror, and subtract thirty for making us stay at the Murphys’. He’s back to ground zero.

  Saturday morning, my father drives away, taking an overwide turn out of the driveway because he glances back at us for one final look. The front left tire goes off the paved road, almost into the ditch, then he overcorrects, zigzagging the car down the country road like a drunk. One hand reaches out through the open car window; a quick, haphazard wave, then he is gone.

  I can’t believe he’s left us, I tell myself, full of indignation, but of course I do believe it, with no trouble at all. Helen stands between Robert and Megan—who has come downstairs and outside. I’m a few feet away, but we are all in a straight line if you connect the dots. Across the road is the rest of the Murphy family, watching my father leave. It’s early enough in the morning that Mrs. Murphy hasn’t left for work. For a moment, after my father is gone, no one moves and I feel like I’m in a painting titled The Day Their Father Left. The sun is low in the sky and shadows lie sharp on the ground like slashes. The dog sits on the porch, waiting to be fed.

  Megan breaks the silence by turning, stomping up the steps, then slamming the front porch screen door, which is too light to slam properly, but she does a good job of it anyway.

  “Jeez Louise,” Robert says.

  “He’s the worst damn driver in the world,” I say, not caring that Helen can hear me, not caring about much, I tell myself. “He’ll probably crash the car on the way to the airport and die.”

  Robert slugs me in the arm. I didn’t see it coming and it surprises and hurts me. “Take that back,” he yells at me.

  I give him a good shove with both my palms on his chest and knock him to the ground.

  “Now, now, please,” Helen says. She bends down over Robert to help him up, but he slides away on the wet grass and stands, putting up his fists.

  “Come on and fight like a man,” I say, waving my fingers, gesturing for him to come at me. “Sissy!”

  “Hey, Robert!” Rusty’s voice from across the road stops us all. “Come on over! I got to show you something!” Rusty’s mother stands next to him and nods to Rusty like he’s done a good thing.

  With an evil glance at me, eyes squinted like a beady little rat’s eyes, Robert swaggers over toward Rusty. My teeth tighten against each other and my eyes get hot. I bend over and pick up a handful of pebbles from the driveway, and throw them at my brother. They fall short, bouncing on the road like the faint echoes of distant rain.

  “I’m going to the pond,” I say to Helen, who looks bewildered, her mouth slightly open as if she has something to say but has forgotten what it was. I don’t wait for her to remember.

  At the pond, I take off all my clothes and lay them on the ground as if they are another person, then I lie down on them, my face to the sky, my breasts rising and lowering with each breath. I imagine myself a virgin sacrifice. Brave and too proud to cry.

  About an hour later, my stomach rumbles, but I refuse to go back. No one has come looking for me. No one needs me.

  Everything is dense with color; the deep green of rain-soaked grass, the black of wet bark, the rich brown of cattails, the golden yellow of wild yarrow, the warm orange of Indian paintbrush, the tiny explosions of purple clover. I know why my father wants to paint. I just don’t understand anything else about him.

  I have a thought that keeps rising up and I keep trying to push back down, but now it’s stuck in my head, even though I don’t want it there: I want my mother to stay sick, so I don’t have to move again. I am afraid God will hear me, and think I am really asking for this to happen, but no matter what I do I can’t stop myself from thinking about it.

  I want to believe in God, but I’m scared. I’m afraid of getting what I want, and afraid of losing what I have. I’m scared that if He comes to me and I know He is real, my mother won’t love me anymore. I’m scared my father doesn’t love me at all. I can’t move. I close my eyes and listen for a voice that isn’t mine to tell me what to do, but even the birds are quiet in the noonday sun.

  I go back to the house when I can’t stand the hunger any longer. Across the road, Robert, Brenda, and Rusty are building a bonfire, dragging logs and sticks out of the woods and piling them up like a tepee. I can hear my brother shout Rusty’s name. “Like this, Rusty? Should I put it here, Rusty? Do you want more sticks, Rusty?”

  I go inside.

  At dinnertime, Helen comes to the door to fetch me. Megan stands behind her. We are all going to eat outside at the Murphys’ picnic table. Reluctantly, I go over. I have been smelling barbecued chicken for the last half hour.

  Megan follows Helen around like a baby duck. It makes me sad to watch. Megan needs a mother, and chose Helen, not me. Megan still isn’t speaking, but she does whatever Helen asks her to do.

  For dinner there is barbecued chicken, baked potatoes, green beans, and applesauce. Robert picks up a drumstick, but Rusty stops Robert’s hand before he can get it to his mouth.

  “We say grace first,” Mrs. Murphy says. Robert looks at the drumstick, then Rusty, then bows his head.

  After grace, there is no talking because everyone is too busy eating. The chicken falls right off the bone when I bite into it. Megan puts fresh-cut chives on her potato, just because Helen does, even though I know she hates chives. I can see her face trying so hard not to grimace with each bite, but she eats the whole thing. Rusty nudges me with his foot under the table but I ignore him. Robert is the first one to speak.

  “Can I light the bonfire? Rusty said I could.”

  Mr. Murphy laughs. He has a deep laugh for such a thin man. “Sure, Robert, as soon as we’re done eating and the table’s cleared.”

  Robert eats twice as fast as normal, which is almost impossible. When his plate is cleared he watches everyone else eat, willing them to finish.

  “Should we clear the table now?” he asks.

  “Pretty soon, Robert.” Mr. Murphy winks at him.

  When everyone is done, Rusty slaps Robert on the back. “Let’s take in the plates and get some matches.” Robert tries to get up too fast and falls off the bench. Rusty helps him up.

  Brenda, Helen, and Mrs. Murphy get up to carry in plates also. Megan silently does the same. I am stuck between staying here with Mr. Murphy and going in the house. I stay.

  “We sure were lucky to have such a nice day,” Mr. Murphy says, smiling at me. He has a piece of barbecued chicken stuck on his tooth, and it looks just like his tooth is missing.

  I nod. I guess it was a pretty day. I wouldn’t call it nice.

  “So you’re staying with us, huh? I think Brenda’s pretty excited about it, having you sleep over. You’ve been very kind, helping her with her math. She was proud as a peacock, getting a C+ on that big test. Thank you.”

  Brenda never even told me. I give God an eight, like I promised, but take it away
for making me stay here. He’s got nowhere near a hundred points yet. I give Mr. Murphy a half-smile and say, “It’s okay, I don’t mind helping her.” When I look away, I see the tar-paper house. I want to shudder. It reminds me of a picture my mother showed me of a model of a human body with no skin. “How come there’s no wood on the outside?” I ask, right away ashamed I said it, but I can’t take it back.

  Mr. Murphy looks at me and doesn’t say a thing. He isn’t smiling now, but he doesn’t look mad, just thoughtful, like he has all the time in the world to answer my question. Finally he just shrugs. “You know, Tamara, siding costs a lot. More than I have at the moment. And the rain stays outside, and we stay dry, so I guess we just have to thank God for that much. Sometimes it’s just a waste of energy to be cross about the things you can’t do anything about.” He pauses for a bit, then kind of chuckles to himself, like he just heard a good joke. “Someday I’ll fix it up,” he says. “Mrs. Murphy will sure be glad when that day comes, I can tell you that.”

  I look down at the table. I don’t know what to say. Luckily I hear the screen door bang shut. Robert comes running out. “Can I light the fire now, Mr. Murphy, can I?” Brenda is right behind him with a bag of marshmallows.

  “Okay, let’s do her. You ever light matches before?” Mr. Murphy asks, as he gets up and limps over to the tepee of old limbs and broken-up kindling that’s been built up even taller than his head. He douses the whole thing with lighter fluid.

  “Oh sure! I lit matches before!” Robert says. He burns his fingers on the first two tries, but insists on going for the third. Mr. Murphy cups his hands around the wooden match as soon as Robert lights it, and together they travel the few yards to a loose wad of newspaper stuffed into the bottom of the pile. The paper catches with a whoosh, and the flame spreads, following a trail of lighter fluid. In seconds, the kindling is crackling and popping, fire snaking along the old logs and broken branches. Robert whoops like an Indian. Brenda is already stuffing lines of marshmallows on the sticks Mr. Murphy cut off baby maple trees right before dinner. I watch the fire. I can’t take my eyes off of it. It’s a great and wonderful bonfire. The biggest I’ve ever seen. Suddenly there is something moving behind me. Mr. Murphy has brought me over a folding chair that has bright-green plastic strips. Some of the strips are missing, or dangling down to the ground. I say, “Thanks,” and sit down.