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From the first moment, Bridget was slow. She was tentative. She didn't go after the ball. When it came to her she kicked it away. It made her team confused and listless. They were used to building on her intensity. Los Cocos scored twice in the first five minutes.
Molly signaled to the ref for time. She looked at Bridget like she was a stranger. “Come on, Bridget. Play! What's the matter with you?”
Bridget really hated Molly right then. She'd never been great with authority. “You wasted me when I was good. Right now I'm not. Sorry.”
Molly was furious. “Are you punishing me?”
“Were you punishing me?”
“I'm the coach, goddammit! I'm trying to turn you from a showoff into a real player.”
“I am a real player,” Bridget said, and she walked off the field.
First Tibby brought up the box of Entenmann's crumb donuts, but then the crumbs reminded her of rodent pellets, so she ran back to the kitchen and shoved them into the back of the cabinet.
Then she thought of ice cream, but she didn't want to go where the ice cream was. Instead she grabbed a box of dinosaur fruit snacks—Nicky's favorite—and brought them upstairs. Her eyes fixed on Ricki Lake, she systematically chewed through eight packages of garish gummy dinosaurs, tossing eight silvery wrappers on the floor.
For Jerry Springer she drank two liters of ginger ale. After that she threw up in fizzy Technicolor. After that she watched the shopping network for a while.
Three-quarters of the way through Oprah, her phone rang. Tibby turned the volume way up. She hated to miss even one word. Oprah was very sympathetic.
Try as she did to avoid it, Tibby could still hear the voice on her answering machine. “Uh, Tibby. This is Robin Graffman, Bailey's mom.” Long pause. “Do you think you could call or come by? The number is 555-4648. Room 448. Fourth floor, make a left when you get off the elevators. Bailey would really like to see you.”
Tibby felt the pain invading her chest again. Her heart was not right. Pain exploded in her temple. She was having a heart attack and a brain aneurysm at the same time.
She looked at Mimi's box. She wanted to curl up in those soft wood shavings and breathe in Mimi's salty rodent smell and sleep until she died. It didn't look hard.
Carmen dialed the numbers. She half expected to hang up when she heard a woman's voice pick up, but she didn't. “Lydia, this is Carmen. May I speak to my father?”
“Of course,” Lydia said hastily. Did Carmen seriously think that Lydia would bring up anything unpleasant?
Her father's voice came quickly. “Hello?” She heard both relief and fear in his voice.
“Dad, it's Carmen.”
“I know. I'm glad you called.” He sounded mostly like he really was glad. “I got the package. I appreciate your thought.”
“Oh . . . good,” Carmen said. She felt herself being tugged into the comfort zone. She could apologize. He would be overly understanding. In under two minutes, all would be shiny again. Life would go on.
She had to fight on. “Dad, I need to tell you something.”
She felt his silent pressure not to do it. Or was it her own pressure? “Okay.”
Go go go, she commanded herself. Don't look back. “I'm mad at you,” she said a little brokenly. She was glad he stayed quiet.
She took a breath and dug into the skin around her thumbnail. “I'm . . . disappointed, you know. I thought we'd be spending the summer together, me and you. I really, really wish you'd warned me about moving in with Lydia's family.” Her voice was shaky and raw.
“Carmen, I'm . . . sorry. I wish I'd warned you. That was my mistake. I really am sorry.”
He finished with a note of finality. He was closing it off again. Cauterizing the wound before there could be any more bleeding.
She wasn't cooperating. “I'm not finished,” she declared. He was silent.
She gave herself a few moments to steady her voice. “You've found yourself a new family, and I don't really fit into it.” Her voice came out squeaky and bare. “You got yourself this new family with these new kids. . . . B-But what about me?” Now she was completely off the road and driving fast. Emotions she hadn't even realized she felt were flying past. “What was the matter with me and Mom?” Her voice cracked painfully. Tears were falling now. She didn't even care if he was listening anymore; she had to keep talking.
“Why wasn't your old family good enough? Why did you move away? Why did you promise me . . . we'd be closer than ever?” She broke off so she could try to catch her breath. “W-Why did you keep saying we were, even though it wasn't true?” She was flat-out sobbing now. Her words rose and fell on waves of crying. She wondered if he could even understand what she was saying.
“Why does Paul visit his drunk father every month, and you visit me two or three times a year? I didn't do anything wrong, did I?”
She stopped using words at all and just cried, maybe for a long time; she wasn't sure. At last she got quieter. Was he even there?
When she pressed the receiver to her ear and listened, she heard a muffled sound. Breaths. Not dry, wet.
“Carmen, I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”
She figured she might believe him, because she realized that for the first time in her life he was crying too.
Tibby was sinking into sleep the next afternoon when a knock came at the door. “Go away!” she barked.
Who could it be? Her parents were both at work, and Tibby had scared Loretta sufficiently to keep her away forever.
“Tibby?”
“Go away,” she said again.
The door opened partway. Carmen's head appeared. As she took in Tibby's horrific appearance and the mounds of crap on the floor and bed, Carmen's face grew pointy with concern. “Tibby, what's going on?” she asked in a soft voice. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine,” Tibby snapped, sinking back under her covers. “Please go away.” She turned up the volume. Oprah was coming back after a short commercial break.
“What are you watching?” Carmen asked.
With the shades pulled down, there wasn't much to look at besides the TV and the hulking piles of mess.
“Oprah. She's very sympathetic, you know,” Tibby snapped.
Carmen waded through the piles and sat on Tibby's bed. It was testament to her concern, because Carmen hated any mess she herself hadn't made. “Tibby, please tell me what's going on. You're scaring me.”
“I don't want to talk,” Tibby said stonily. “I want you to go away.”
The phone started ringing again. Tibby glared at it as though it were a rattlesnake. “Don't touch it,” she ordered.
Beeeep, went the answering machine. Suddenly Tibby dove for it, furiously searching for the volume dial. She dropped the whole thing on the carpet.
Still the voice on the machine came through loud and clear. “Tibby. It's Bailey's mother again. I want you to know what's happening here. Bailey's not doing so well. She has an infection and . . .” Tibby could
hear the woman sucking in air. Her lungs sounded like they were full of water. “We—we'd just really like you to come. It would mean a lot to Bailey.” She sobbed a little and then hung up.
Tibby couldn't look at Carmen. She didn't want to see anything. She could feel Carmen's eyes digging little tunnels into her brain. She felt Carmen's arm come around her shoulders. Tibby looked away. An infinite number of tears hovered behind her eyelids.
“Please just go.” Tibby's voice wobbled.
Carmen, being Carmen, kissed the side of Tibby's head and got up to leave.
“Thanks,” Tibby whispered after her.
Unfortunately, Carmen, still being Carmen, arrived back in Tibby's room about an hour later without being invited. This time she didn't even knock. She just appeared.
“Tibby, you have to go see her,” Carmen said softly, floating in Tibby's half dream at the side of her bed.
“Go away,” Tibby ordered groggily. “I can't move.”
Carmen let out a long breath. “You can so. I brought you the Pants.” She laid them down over Tibby's feet. It was the only place in the room where they wouldn't be swallowed by ravenous mess. “Put them on and go.”
“No,” Tibby rasped.
Carmen disappeared out the door.
Tibby chattered and shivered. Didn't Carmen understand that her heart wasn't working and her brain had an aneurysm and her nose ring was getting infected?
She fell into comatose sleep for hours and awoke to see the Pants glowing at her in the bluish light of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The Pants were telling her that she was an awful person, and they were right. She sank back down, feeling the weight of them on her feet and ankles. They seemed to weigh about fifty pounds. Who could walk in such heavy pants? “Surprise yourself,” Jay Leno told her. She stared at him. He had not just said that.
She leaped out of bed, scared, her arrhythmic heart racing. What if there was no time left? What if it was already gone?
She pulled off her pajamas and pulled on the Pants. She stuck her feet in a pair of wool clogs. Her hair was so dirty it had gone around the bend. It looked clean again.
