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Before
AFTER MOM DIED, after I got out of the hospital, I spent three months living with a foster family while my lawyer and the state tracked Dad down. I’d wanted to stay with my friend Ronnie. I usually stayed with her when my mother was out of town. But her parents had five kids of their own, and I needed constant trips to the hospital and physical therapy, and so it was decided—by Ronnie’s parents, by the lawyer, by the court, I’m not sure—that I needed a “medically experienced foster family.” Which is how I ended up with the Wilkersons, a couple with identical round faces and identical sour frowns. They trudged their way around the house like they were dragging all their life’s disappointments with them, and never left any doubt that their foster kids—me, Lily, and George—were some of those disappointments.
The first morning there, I stared up at the slats of the bunk bed and listened to the rest of the house wake up. Mr. Wilkerson grumbled and yelled his way through the morning, and Mrs. Wilkerson started yelling back about five minutes after he got up. They weren’t angry; they just didn’t know how to talk to each other without sounding angry.
Lily managed to sleep through it, or pretended to. But you wanted to get up before George did. If you were still asleep when he got up, he’d torment you. For little Lily, he liked to grab her feet and yank her off the bed so she banged onto the floor. George was fifteen. I was older, but he was bigger, and he thought that he could bully me, too.
We got up earlier and earlier to try to beat him. When I’d been there a few weeks and George realized that he’d get in trouble for harassing me, because I was so delicate, Lily would crawl into my bed with me before the sun came up. I’d wrap myself around her like she was a doll, and she’d snuggle in against me.
Lily’s father was in jail for beating up her mother, and her mother was a drug addict. Lily was six years old and had been in foster care three times already. Being around her was strange, because one minute I would think, At least your mother is alive, and then the next minute I would think, At least I had a mother who took care of me.
You don’t really need to know any of that. You don’t need to know Lily and George’s names. The world’s going to forget them a lot in their lives, so I doubt they’d even be offended if I did. But it’s important for me to remember, like it’s important to remember that my mother’s favorite color was blue and she liked starfish and when she laughed she hid her mouth with her hand because she had crooked front teeth.
Because when I lose the little pieces like that, I lose before. And without before, I only have the lake and the woods and the winter that I can taste in the air, and that’s not enough reason to stay alive. I cried when I said good-bye to Lily, and said I wished I could bring her with me. Now that thought is like a nightmare. It’s better that I’m alone, because then I don’t have to try to take care of anyone—try and fail.
The day Griff and I flew to the lake, though, I was missing her and missing home, messed up as it was, and I figured I was about as miserable as I could get. Which goes to show how whiny I could be back then. I might still whine, but at least now I’ve got a better reason.
After Bo and I had our not-so-friendly introduction, Dad led us all back up to the cabin. The path up was smooth, and he’d filled it in with pebbles from the shore. Two big rocks, painted white with ram skulls tied to them with thick twine, marked the transition from the beach to the cabin. Their empty eye sockets stared at me, and I shivered.
The cabin was small: two rooms, with no door between them. Just a doorway with a curtain. He didn’t even have a wood-burning stove, just a rough stone fireplace and a big black pot to boil water in.
Everything smelled of smoke and dog. Bo collapsed by the fire right away, but he didn’t stop watching me. Dad served us dinner. Venison flavored with wintergreen that grew nearby, and some blackberry preserves and a loaf of hot, crumbly bread. Except for what Griff brought in, all of Dad’s food was what he’d caught. Birds, rabbits, deer, fish, even squirrels when pickings were slim. Mostly fish, though. Lots and lots of fish.
I picked at the venison, trying to be polite by getting down a couple of bites at a time. I figured if I was polite it would soften the blow when I told Dad there was no way in hell I was staying here. When Griff left, I’d be leaving, too.
Dad watched me as closely as Bo did. When he finally glanced at Griff, I palmed a piece of meat and wiggled it where the dog could see it, figuring it would make it look like I actually ate something. I meant to toss it so he wouldn’t come close to me, but he lunged up and over immediately, and he was so big and the cabin was so small that he’d reached my dangling hand before I could whip it out of the way. But he stood there, nose to my fingers, whistling wetly into my palm, and didn’t take the meat.
“You have to say ‘take it,’” Dad said. He was grinning again.
“Take it,” I said, looking at Dad instead of the dog. Bo snatched the meat out of my fingers and retreated to the fire to eat it. Then he licked his chops and went back to watching me. Only this time he had that begging-dog look instead of a wary one. “I think he’s warming to you,” Dad said. “And you don’t have to worry about eating, kiddo. I know your appetite’s probably pretty screwy. Moira never could eat when she was nervous.”
Moira. Mom. He said her name with such affection. “I’m tired,” I said.
“You can have the bed until I build that extension,” Dad said. “I’ll be fine outside unless it rains, and then I can take the floor with Bo.”
I looked over at Griff. He wouldn’t be leaving in the dark, I thought, and he was a couple of beers in, which really meant he shouldn’t be leaving. He’d wait until the morning, and then I’d go with him. I was safe to sleep for the night.
I nodded and rose. I thought about asking if I should help with the dishes, but then I realized that I had no idea how he’d do the dishes. Probably wash them down in the lake. And it was all too much—back then washing dishes in a lake seemed like hardship—so I just grabbed my duffel and headed into the back room, closing the curtain behind me.
I stayed in my jeans and long-sleeved tee rather than changing. Griff and Dad were talking and eating, but maybe they’d want to check on me and pop their head through the curtain. I never undressed in front of people anymore. At the Wilkersons I had to change in the bathroom with George hammering on the door.
At least there, all of us were some kind of broken. I was just the only one that came labeled. And that’s what the scars were: a big label that told people everything they thought they needed to know about me.
I sat on the bed, heaping the blankets over my lap. I hauled my duffel up beside me and slowly unpacked my things. Last of all I took out a photograph. This was my nightly ritual, staring at the one reminder of Mom I let myself carry.
The photo showed Mom and me, standing with our arms around each other and the wind whipping our hair over our faces. We look alike, everyone says so. Pointed chins and dark eyes, dark hair that’s in constant rebellion and never stays where it’s told. Except she was prettier than me, and I don’t look like that anymore. The scars pull at my face, make it uneven. The skin over my eyelid is burned, and my lid droops a little. It doesn’t bother my vision. The weird thing is, it usually makes people think I’m brain damaged or something. If I wear sunglasses, they treat me just about normal. If I take them off, they start talking really slowly and sweetly, like I’m a little kid.
It was hard to look at the old photo, and I’d thought about keeping one with just Mom in it, but it wasn’t just Mom I wanted. It was the two of us. It was her arm around me, and the wind that carried us both up, up, to where there was no one else. I looked at it every night. It was like if I didn’t check it every night, it might disappear, and my memory of Mom with it.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew I was waking up to the sound of plane engines, and I swore. I grabbed my duffel. And then I realized that my things were still out, on top of the blankets. I stuffed them back into the duffel, then yanked my shoes on. The engines were getting louder. He’s going through the checklist, I told myself. You’ve got time, you’ve got time, just hurry.
I left my shoes unlaced. I thump-stepped through the cabin and outside, where my dad stood with his hands on his hips, watching Griff’s plane as it glided across the water and its nose pulled up and it lifted smoothly into the sky.
I stumbled my way forward. “Wait, don’t leave,” I said, but my voice was a whisper and it hardly got out of my mouth. “I can’t stay here.”
But Griff was gone. Dad turned to me with a big grin.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” he said.
“He left,” I said stupidly. The plane was already getting far away, turning the size of a yellow jacket. I walked forward, almost to the water. As if he’d see me and turn around if I just tried to follow. But the plane was nearly gone, and with it any fantasy of a quick return.
I was stuck here, with no company for hundreds of miles except a father I didn’t know at all.
