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She needs somebody who will set limits, send her to bed, tell her to get off the phone and wash her face.
She needs me to make her do her homework and to manage Mom, who can only pass as a decent parent if there’s somebody around to make her work at it.
She needs me.
Resentment spikes in me, dark and poisonous.
I wish I knew some way to give her back. If I knew how to stop caring—to become as faithless as my father—then I could go to Putnam and stay there. Send Frankie a card on her birthday.
I could make myself over into Caroline’s West, with wide horizons and endless options.
“I’ll miss you,” my sister says.
Fists clenched, I have to close my eyes.
I would leave you behind if I could.
I wish I could. I want to.
But I open my eyes, open my mouth, and tell her, “I’ll miss you, too. I’ll be home in a few months. Then I’ll take you somewhere cool. Portland, maybe. ”
“Really? What about San Francisco? Keisha says they have sea lions there, and there’s this store that’s all kinds of chocolate. That’s where we should go. ”
“Yeah, I guess we could go to San Francisco. Maybe go camping on the way. See the redwoods. ”
“Camping? No way. Camping sucks. ”
“When have you ever been camping?”
“I know about it! You sleep in a tent and don’t shower, and spiders fall on your head. No thanks. ”
I’ve never been camping, either. But who’s going to take her if not me?
“We could have a fire. Make s’mores. We’ll find a place to stay with a shower. ”
“A fire would be good,” she says. “As long as there’s a shower. And you would have to kill all the spiders. ”
“I can handle that. ”
r /> Whatever has to be handled—spiders, nightmares, homework, fathers—I can handle it.
What choice have I got?
I stand. “Hug me goodbye. ”
She gets up and wraps her arms around me.
I kiss the top of her head. Her hair is soft. It smells like pink chemicals, and all the resentment in me is gone, washed away as if it had never been.
We walk down the driveway together. She chatters about San Francisco.
She watches me from the road. Waves whenever I turn around.
She belongs to me. I can’t do anything about it.
It’s five miles into town, but I get lucky and hitch a ride with one of Bo’s neighbors.
I look out the passenger window at the landscape, white and wheat, beige and brown, the sky wide open and relentlessly blue.
