The day after my mother’s funeral my dad started packing. He came home from the UPS store with a car full of boxes, two professional grade tape guns, and enough bubble wrap to keep a five year old making those popping noises until his poor little hands would fall off. He laid out the materials before us, my brother Adam and me, and declared, “Okay, let’s get going on this.”
“Fuck that,” was Adam’s response as he turned off the TV, exited the living room and walked out the front door, not returning for over a week. My dad scowled and muttered profanities under his breath as my stomach turned and grumbled with its destination clear: nausea turned diarrhea. Sensing the onset of his anger at my brother I had to compensate by being the one to stay, that and the fact that Adam took the car and left me behind as prisoner.
This may have been the first time in my life that Adam and I saw eye to eye on something, but not yet having the courage to stand up to my dad I grabbed as many boxes as I could carry and angrily locked myself in my bedroom, listening to Alanis Morisette CD’s so loud it shook the walls and ignoring the screams from my dad downstairs to turn it down. We could suffer together if this is what he wanted, if we needed to pack everything up during the first day of silent grieving, when there was nothing left to plan and no one else to blame, there we were, father and daughter, coexisting in this house without her. Looking back on it now, I see his perspective; him wanting to keep busy, to bury everything in a sea of boxes, to not have to look at her sweaters, her quilts, her pictures, her. But I couldn’t understand his method then, I thought he had gone crazy for sure, walking around with his black Sharpie and scribbling things down on big brown boxes the day after he buried his wife of 23 years. Maybe that made it easier for him, being productive, having a plan, because without structure my father would disintegrate into thin air leaving behind a scowl and a look of bewilderment; horror in his warm brown eyes. Without a course of action, he wouldn’t be my dad.
About a week or so of angry scowls and mutters, of no communication other than packing talk I decided that for my sanity—which was on the rocks—I had to get out. My best friend Stephanie came to pick me up, as Adam had once again disappeared with the car and I needed an escape route as quickly as possible. My best friend since eighth grade Steph was my army, my emergency exit, my sister, all packed into a five foot three, one hundred pound package. She’s a firecracker that girl, dark brown eyes and long brown hair, cut the same way as mine with long layers sweeping around her face. Sweet as sun ripened strawberries in summer unless you get on her bad side and then lookout; she can knock you over with her words and her stares. Her non-physical fighting skills are close to a super power I would say, and in the real world, she’s my own personal Wonder Woman, dressed in more appropriate everyday attire. She walked through the front door without ringing the bell, as she usually did and with nothing other than a hug she followed me upstairs to help gather my things. We grabbed armfuls of clothes and toiletries which we loaded into the backseat of her grey Nissan Sentra before my dad realized something fishy was going on.
“What are you doing?” He looked at me in surprise, the sun from the open door reflecting off his glasses.
“Leaving,” I stated, as if I was simply going to spend the day at the movies or on the lake.
“Did you finish all you’re packing?” He said, his voice on the edge of cracking with anger, his face reddening as it always did when he got mad, the one vein in his forehead popping and the lines between his eyebrows growing distinct both in their entirety and as separate entities.
“My room I did; the rest I’ll finish up throughout this week. As for now, I’m moving out, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” I even surprised myself when the words came out and it was the first time I remember ever feeling like an adult, the first time I ever stood up for myself, stood up to him.
Certain profanities were exchanged of which I cannot remember the details; I was nineteen years old and I had never said a “bad” word in front of either parent, but that day they poured out of my mouth, like a sailor drinking whiskey. Dramatically I made my exit with Stephanie, and as we drove away she looked over at me.
“You alright?” She said, her eyes studying my response, gauging it for honesty.
“Yea, fine,” I said, hot tears pouring down my cheeks and splattering across my bare legs, only inches of them covered by white denim cutoffs.
“Wanna go for ice cream?” She asked; knowing sweets are my weakness.
“No, let’s just drive for awhile,” I said sniffling and looking out the window.
We ended up at Baskin Robbins where I managed to put back a double scoop cone, one scoop pralines and cream one scoop chocolate chip mint, while Steph had the non-fat raspberry sorbet. Later we watched “Love Actually” on her laptop while we laid in her bunk bed, our long brunette hair intertwining, both of us on the bottom bunk looking at all the past loves we had etched into the wood above us, all the boyfriends and crushes past from high school days, when life seemed dramatic and simple all at once.
“EW!” I said, looking at some inscriptions I wrote.
“EW who?” Steph asked, smiling.
“Matt Gebhart! Yuck!” I yelped.
“He was cute when you guys were dating,” Steph said, and she was right. He was my first kiss, and a sloppy one at that, but there was something very cute about him back when I was sixteen, his red mustang, brown hair and tan skin. Or maybe his guitar playing at youth group, either way, he was cute enough for sixteen.
“What about you Steph? Brandon?? Yuck!” I said, reading her heart drawn around their initials that had since been scribbled out and replaced with two, if not three other boys’ initials.
“That was forever ago!!” She yelled, never taking it lightly, always being overly dramatic, and always being a girl.
“And what about Adam Wadsworth? What is he up to these days?” She asked me, changing the subject.
“He’s still in jail for that marijuana thing, and when he gets out, he’s moving to Portland.” I said nonchalantly, knowing my indifference wouldn’t fly.
“And? Are you two going to stay together?” Steph asked accusingly, never liking Mr. Wadsworth and tiring of his endless conversations on philosophical topics that I found enthralling.
“We’ll see,” I said, already knowing deep down that we wouldn’t last through my first semester, but clinging to him through the summer so intensely because he knew my mom, because we grew up together; because I grew up with him.
“Well, I don’t want to have to listen to him go on and on about grapes and wine again. That’s for sure,” Steph said with a laugh. And I responded by hitting her playfully on the arm and thinking about the past week, when we had all drunk wine together and Adam had gone on entirely too long about the process of fermenting wine, which caused Stephanie to laugh inappropriately and Adam to get offended.
“You just need to move on from these artist types,” she said, shooting me a look that I avoided. And she would tell me the same thing at least a dozen more times, but I would never listen.
Somehow I fell asleep beside her that night under the bunk of relationships past, not remembering my worries or my dreams in the morning. I spent two more nights there, lying out in the grass during the day in my swimsuit, getting a suntan and drinking iced lattes and forgetting that anything was happening or had happened. Three days of ignoring the pain, not talking about anything except guys and movies and superficial ‘what ifs’, and this was her specialty, Stephanie, keeping my mind off the things that wandered their way in so often, the things that caused my eyes to sadden in a way only she recognized. Maybe that’s why I needed a girlfriend, a sister, even more after my mother was gone, because it seemed no matter how much love they gave me, I would surely drown in the sea of men that made up the leftovers of my family.
Reality hit that weekend though, as it has a sneaky way of catching up, when I realized I needed to leave in two weeks and Steph was leaving in one and that’s when the summer was officially over. I thought about last summer compared to this one and how different everything seemed to be, how easy the lazy days had been in the past, slipping away from me like chocolate melting on my tongue. Now, only a year later, each day bared a heavy weight, like something I had to get through, rather than something I would allow myself to enjoy with ease. Steph dropped me off at Ryan’s house where I moved into the guest bedroom. It was one of those dramatic scenes in life; I showed up on the doorstep, haggard and teary eyed and he took me to dinner at Red Robin where we talked about everything except what I was doing there over greasy cheeseburgers, fried mozzarella sticks, and chocolate fudge malts; the good kind with the side silver container that drips condensation onto the table and keeps the ice cream partly frozen until you’ve finished your tall glass alongside it. That’s the great thing about my brother Ryan, he never asks too many hard questions, and he always takes me out for fried food.
“I’ll drive you down to school,” He said matter-of-factly, dipping a mozzarella stick into some ranch and biting into it, opening his mouth to let some steam escape before burning his tongue.
“You will?” I said, surprised.
“Yea. Me, you, and Chase will drive down together,” He said, chewing.
“Really?” The thought swept through my mind; trying to take a four year old on a 2,800 mile journey in the back seat of a car piled high with stuff.
“Sure, we’ll stop at Disneyland on the way,” He said, as if it were nothing more than a casual road trip, the three of us jumping in a car and driving the twenty hours to Disneyland, void of emotional baggage and the actual baggage that would be filling the car.
“Alright, that sounds good to me,” I said. Because 5 days spent on the road with my dad would have killed us both.
And just like that it was settled, we would make the drive to college together, the three of us, and once we arrived the two of them would fly back, leaving me with my mom’s car and to sort out the mess of memories and establish my new beginning amidst the class of 2008 at Trinity University.
~
When I was seven, my family took a vacation to Disneyworld in Florida. Usually our vacations were to historical sites or to visit grandparents/aunts and uncles. This time our destination was the most magical place on earth. My parents flew in first, a business trip for my dad and a spa day for my mom, while Adam and I stayed behind with grandma and grandpa. Ryan would meet us there from Arizona, where he was going to college, it was the only vacation I remember him coming on, and Adam and I were thrilled. I don’t know if it was the age difference between Ryan and the two of us—him being ten years Adam’s senior and fourteen years mine—or just the fact that he was our big brother that made us covet his attention so much, but I remember I would look forward to my time with him more than with anyone else, more than anything else when I was a little girl. I would wear his old sweatshirts that smelled like him when he was away, and I would climb into his lap and stay there whenever he was home. I would write him letters and send him gummy bears that would melt into crazy glue upon arrival in the Arizona heat.
Adam and I flew into Florida with each other and we fought the whole plane ride over, as we always did, arguing about what we would do first when we arrived, and about who’s happy meal on the flight had the better toy. The flight attendants shuttled us safely to my mom who was relieved and my dad who was trying to keep us on schedule as he could never seem not to plan even one minute of our vacation. My dad is one of those people who can’t relax, who works too hard during his ‘on time’ to have any hint of ‘off time.’ So whenever we went on vacations, one of two things would happen: A. He would let down his guard and be sick the entire time or B. Every second of every day would be scheduled, to make the most of the time we had. The rest of us are late sleepers, loungers, relaxers, but not him, and maybe we needed that extra push.
I remember we rented a Lincoln town car for our stay, the only ‘luxury’ vehicle my dad ever sprung for on a vacation. We needed a roomy back seat, as the three of us were sitting in it, me in the middle, Adam and Ryan on either side. The excitement was too much to contain as I saw the bright colors of the rides and Cinderella’s castle appear over the trees as we drove up to the park. When we entered the gates my mom bought me my own Cinderella tiara that I still have to this day, and my brothers and I all had Mickey mouse ice creams, which is like all ice cream only three times the cost. It was the best ice cream I had ever tasted though, and I grabbed Ryan’s hand and insisted he sit next to me on all the rides, and take pictures with me and all the princesses. I was too scared to go on some of the ‘big kid’ rides, though my height would have let me onto all, even at seven, I was tall for my age. But Ryan convinced me to go on most, telling me to be brave and that is would be fun, and I trusted him the most, so I would go. We went on Splash Mountain three times, my mom’s favorite, and we ate funnel cakes and turkey legs and cotton candy until I felt sick to my stomach and refused another roll-a-coaster and so we sat down to watch one of the parades.
Later, Adam and I swam in the hotel pool while my parents sat at a white, umbrella covered table, and Ryan stole a few moments away, sunning his back on a lounge chair in a far off corner.
“Ryan, Ryan! Watch me!” I yelled at him several times, flipping and turning in the pool.
“Good Miss!” He called over his shoulder, barely looking up.
“NO! Watch me!” I shrieked.
“Missy! Leave your brother alone for awhile,” My mom said smoothly.
And so I spent the remainder of the afternoon in a pout, turned up lips and all, and thus earned my childhood nickname from my father of ‘pout face’ which remained intact far into my teenage years.
Looking back at photos of the trip, we all look so content in our tourist tees and fanny packs and brightly colored sunglasses. It remains to this day my only memory of a trip we all went on together, the five of us, as a family.
~
At 7am on a Tuesday morning we set out for our first leg of the trip. From Seattle to northern California we trotted in a quick thirteen hours, Ryan driving the whole leg of the trip and me offering to trade with him at least ten times. Chase sat in the back, squished in between boxes, not making a peep unless he had to potty and sitting contently with his Leap Frog learning pad or passing the time with his personal DVD player, that he often fell asleep watching. Whenever I glanced in the back seat he would smile at me and I would reach to tickle his legs or tug on his toes. We all listened to a mixed CD I had made for the California part of the trip, and by the end of day two, Chase was singing along to all the songs, his little voice permeating the car with happiness.
We stopped off in Manteca, California; a suburb of San Francisco where my dad was renting an apartment until the house just two blocks away was done being built in September. The house my parents designed together, with wide open rooms that melted into one another, crown molding, and a banana tree that would sit in the corner of the yard, watching over the pool and Jacuzzi with its wide green leaves, and shady nature. My mom would finally have the big kitchen she always wanted to cook in and entertain, and she would swim laps in her own back yard before work in the morning at the elementary school right across the street from our new house.
“Do you want to stop over, and see the house tomorrow?” Ryan asked me when we arrived, climbing up the stairs to the two bedroom apartment that smelled of Clorox and carpet.
“No, not especially,” I said, and I meant it.
“Me either. We’ll just leave when we wake up.” He said, carrying a sleeping boy over one shoulder and a toiletry bag over the other.
“Goodnight, I love you,” I said.
“Love you too Miss.”
Maybe it was the excitement for Disneyland, or the one day we had already made it all together in the car, but the three of us were all smiles that second morning. We stopped off at a Super Wal-Mart, getting lost in the aisles and looking for new DVD’s for Chase and some road food for Ryan and me.
“Beef Jerky, Reese’s, Twix, Cheetos, what else?” Ryan said, throwing it all in a basket.
“I really just want some Special K bars, and some of that Arizona green tea,” I said, looking at all the calories and fat swarming around in our basket. Thinking about how many gas station stops I would have to make if I consumed too much of any of those things.
“We’re on the road Miss, and Special K bars have no place in our car,” he said, throwing a box of blueberry ones in the cart.
“Thanks,” I said.
I sat in the back seat for the rest of the drive that day, after some serious rearranging I squeezed in next to Chase to watch Ice Age on the DVD player and we both laughed at everything that little squirrel did. Somewhere between Santa Barbara and Orange County I must have drifted off, the warm sun pooling into the car and causing me to relax and ease into a nap. Next thing I knew there we were, at our Disneyland resort hotel, in two days time and a few hundred miles we managed to find ourselves at the happiest place on earth. Sadness at Disneyland is almost against the rules, and so for the day, I abided by that.
Chase wanted everything. Mickey ears, Mickey ice cream, Buzz and Woody dolls from Toy Story, and Ryan bought it all. We were one of those groups that day, the three of us, Disney’s dream consumers, stopping in all of the post-ride shop that they trap you into walking through and buying a trinket from each and every one. We seemed to hit all the rides that day, or at least the ones Chase agreed to go on, Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan, and Snow White being some of the highlights. Nothing too high or too fast, and that was fine with me, I wasn’t feeling the need for an adrenaline rush that afternoon—why I can’t be sure. Chase and I took pictures with all the Disney characters we saw and I loved watching how excited he got each time we spotted someone new.
“Look!” He would say and point to someone dressed up as Donald or Cinderella. Then he would get really shy when it actually came time for the picture and I would inevitably have to accompany him to greet them, smiling awkwardly next to one of the cartoon characters. There are hundreds of pictures of me that day, in my blue tank top and cut off denim shorts, hair windswept and wavy, wearing aviator sunglasses and smiling, squatting down at times to be closer to Chase. I look genuinely happy in all of them.
When we left Disneyland and descended into the desert that next evening, Ryan opened the sun roof of the car, showing me how bright the stars can be in the darkness of the desert’s night. I sat for a long time looking up and out at them, a million tiny sparkles shining down on us from above. They seemed to speed away faster and faster as I kept my eyes on them, thinking if I could only see a shooting star, a wish might come true. But I didn’t see one that night, though I searched three hours to find one, I wanted it so badly that my eyes started playing tricks on me. I looked down finally and shook my head, giving up.
“What’s the matter?” Ryan said, glancing at my shaking head.
“I wanted to see a shooting star, you know, to make a wish.” I told him, mildly embarrassed at the thought of it.
“You’ll never find one when you’re looking,” he said, shaking his head.
And maybe that was my problem, I always seemed to be looking for something I could never find, like a sign that God existed, or what it means to fall in love. It was as if my childhood, fairytale dreams were no longer working, no matter how many Disneyland songs I hummed along to, the happy feeling they used to bring me no longer washed over me. Instead I felt something else now, and it wasn’t whimsical or soft. It pressed down on me heavily, its full weight swallowing me whole and that night in the car it burst out of me suddenly.
“I miss mom,” I said so quietly I was sure he hadn’t heard me.
Silence
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said, tears pouring softly down my cheeks and onto my green sundress.
“You’ll get stronger,” he said, looking forward, eyes on the road, tears glistening on his cheeks in the hints of light that crept through the car window. “This time next year,” he said, “things will get easier.”
And at that moment I didn’t believe him. I felt like a four-year-old child lost in a supermarket, crying out for my mother I would never find my way back to.
~
We stayed at a motel that night, one of those cheap shitty ones that you only find on the stretch of road between Arizona and New Mexico, where the boarders pass by so quickly you don’t even see the signs and you’ve been driving so long that the whole desert looks the same, our only Oasis being Wonderwall playing softly on the car stereo in the background. It was just after 2 am when we got there, and the place looked dead except for a small hanging light just above the office that wasn’t lit up for either option: Vacancy or No.
“Don’t forget, you’re sleeping with the kicker tonight,” Ryan reminded me, as it was my turn to share a bed with Chase, notorious for his thrashing capacity.
“Yea, yea,” I muttered back as I ran into the front office, asking the small man behind the kiosk if there were any rooms available tonight.
“What kind of room do you want?” He asked, smiling at me with crooked teeth.
“Whatever you’ve got with two beds,” I said, glad Ryan was with me because otherwise I would have to sleep with a chair propped against the door like in one of those bad horror movies.
He checked for several minutes, as if something would suddenly become available that hadn’t been waiting there all evening, vacant.
“I have one for you, room 241, ok?”
“Ok,” I said and I dug out my credit card, not asking how much but guessing by the sign outside that promised “Free HBO and $5.00 Adult Movies” that it would definitely be under fifty bucks. Forty-two as it turned out got us one old fashioned silver key (none of those swipe cards in these parts) and a two dollar off coupon at Dairy Queen, the only restaurant in town. Great, we could have Blizzards for breakfast. Ryan carried in Chase and laid him down first on one of the beds and then the two of us grabbed our bags and trotted in and Ryan passed out cold on the smarmy, uncomfortable mattress while I washed my face and changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt. I was exhausted but I lay awake that night, not sure what to do now that I was no longer praying. I decided to talk to God anyway, to tell him what I was thinking about, to ask him if my mom was up there too, watching over us, listening. But like most of our conversations, I heard no response, and after awhile I felt ridiculous for talking to myself and wasting precious minutes of sleep that would cause my mood in the morning to be unpleasant; like brother like sister. I listened to the slow snore of Ryan on the bed next to me, and I curled up next to Chase in my bed, him lying under the covers and me above them, too scared of the fabric, thread-count, and origins of the sheets to immerse myself beneath them. I wondered what he was dreaming about tonight as his tiny chest rose and fell with each sweet breath he drew in; I hoped it was of Disneyland, or something equally wonderful.
The next morning we did eat Blizzards. Chase and I ordered brownie batter, a limited edition summer flavor, and Ryan ordered Reese’s, he actually crushed up extra Reese’s from one of the bags rattling around on the floor and threw them on top. That day was our quietest I remember, we were burnt out on CD’s and tired of road games and so conversation was minimal. We weren’t sick of each other, the way the trip may have gone if three other people were stuck together in a car for that many days straight; instead we were calm together, making the final decent into San Antonio, relaxed and at ease with the silence.
Trinity was just as I remembered, only the August sun made the heat unbearable, unbreathable, reflecting off the red brick buildings and inescapable even in the shade. Ryan unloaded all my boxes from the car, carrying them up the three flights of stairs to my dorm room, dripping with sweat but never complaining. Chase hovered next to me, curled up against my body as we met my new roommate LaShell and her family. When I arrived the best of everything had already been claimed; the bed by the window, the top drawer in the bathroom, the right side of the desk (the other side was behind the door). So I accepted the second best everything in the room; I cared but I would never say.
“Hi! I’m LaShell, and this is my mom and my grandma and my sister and brother.” She said it all in one breath before coming over and giving me a hug. She was 5’6 with Texas blond hair and makeup that must be able to withstand the high humidity temperatures; it was so perfectly constructed that her skin looked airbrushed, her eyelids fluttering with bright blue like one of those ad campaigns for a makeup company, where you know the girl has false eyelashes on but she’s advertising a new mascara.
“I’m Ashley, and this is Chase, and my brother is getting all my stuff, he’s Ryan,” I smiled and went back to unpacking as the clan of them made their way out of the room to head to lunch.
“Well, I guess we’ll see you later,” LaShell smiled.
“Sounds good,” I said smiling back, as Chase remained mum the entire time, silently observing his unfamiliar surroundings.
“Where’s Dad?” He asked, his big hazel eyes looking up into mine.
“He’ll be right back, he’s just helping bring all the boxes out of the car,” I said sitting down on my sunken in mattress that was surely going to need some sort of pillow top attachment.
“When are we going to see the whales?” He asked.
“We are going to SeaWorld right after this buddy; just wait a little longer, a few more minutes.” And as I heard myself say it I thought about how long he had already waited to see the whales at SeaWorld, an entire week long wait in four year old time must have felt like a year and a half. As we sat there together on the bed, side by side, both sweaty and tired, waiting to see the marine life at another magical park he looked up at me.
“I think grandma would want to see the whales too,” he said, his big hazel eyes looking into mine for reassurance.
“Of course she would, I bet she will be able to see them, you know, she can see us, from heaven. You can talk to her anytime you want.” And as the words escaped my mouth I realized I was comforting him with ideas I no longer believed.
~
When it was time for Ryan and Chase to leave the next day, they dropped me off at my dorm room. They would bring my car back tomorrow; drop it off in the morning before their flight, then take a cab to the airport. Beezy third was my new location, overlooking the highway and the freshman quad, where I would live the next year of my life with LaShell, who seemed uptight but nice, book smart, but socially awkward. She was in awe of me when I told her I wore no makeup, she sighed intensely when I undressed in front of her and told me she would never wear a swimsuit next to me, and when I put on a dress with a designer label she didn’t hesitate when asking how much it cost. That first night she wanted to stay up and ask a hundred questions, surrounded by darkness in the little space between our beds; I just wanted to close my eyes and wait for morning to come.
“Alright Miss, this is it,” Ryan said, tears streaming down his cheeks, blowing his nose into a tissue from the box on the floor.
“Wish mom could have been here to see you off, but we’ll do the best we can.” He hugged me and kissed my cheek and I got out of the car before I thought about clinging to him and changing my mind. I opened the door of the back seat to kiss Chase and give him a long squeeze before I retreated away and up the stairs to my new home, without looking back.
