T he phone rang at 4:13 A.M., startling Kathleen awake. She felt the bed shake as Mike groped in the dark for the receiver, then heard him mumbling into it in a sleep-thickened voice: “Hello… Yes…
Really…? How far behind?”
Kathleen groaned and rolled over with her back to him. Mike’s engineering firm did consulting work all over the world; wasn’t anyone on his staff bright enough to figure out what time it was in America before calling him?
He hung up and climbed out of bed—a bad sign. She pulled the pillow over her head when she heard the water running in the shower. Then she remembered that she was leaving today to drive to New York for her sister’s party and a wave of nausea washed through her. It had taken two hours and a sleeping pill for her to fall asleep the first time. She would never get back to sleep now. Kathleen still wasn’t sure how this sacrifice— and there was no other word for it—would help Joelle. She only hoped that her daughter would see it as a gesture of love.
She was wide awake, staring at the ceiling, when Mike finished his shower. He tiptoed to his closet with a towel tied around his waist, drying his bristly hair with another towel. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“Our client in South Africa. I’m sorry he woke you. It looks like I’ll have to fly over there.”
She scrambled to sit up. “To South Africa? When?”
“Well, if I hurry I can catch a morning flight and be home again by the middle of next week.”
“But… but I’m supposed to go to my sister’s get-together this weekend. I’m leaving today, remember?”
“So?” He looked at her blankly. Was he that dense?
“I can’t leave Joelle here all alone. And it’s too late now to make other arrangements for her.”
Even as she said the words, Kathleen felt relieved. Maybe she would be spared this ordeal after all. Maybe her willingness to go would be proof enough that she loved Joelle.
“Take her with you,” Mike said. “She can meet your family.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! I don’t even want to be with those people— how can I inflict them on my daughter? I’m so ashamed to show her where I came from, how I lived, who my family is. …” Tears cut off her words. Mike sat on the bed in his wet towel and pulled her into his arms.
“Hey, hey… there’s no reason for you to feel ashamed. Your past wasn’t your fault. Maybe Joelle would cut you some slack if she knew about it.”
“I don’t want her pity—or anyone else’s.”
He sighed as he released her. “Do you want me to call the office back and cancel South Africa?”
“You would do that?”
He nodded—reluctantly—and she was stunned to realize that he loved her enough to change his plans for her. She saw how her own act of selfdenial might send a similar message to Joelle.
“Thanks. But you’d better go. One of us needs to stay employed if we want to keep a roof over our heads.”
He smiled, his hair sticking up like a punk rock star. “Will you at least consider taking Joelle with you before you call your sister and bow out?” he asked. “All those hours in the car would give you a lot of quality time together.”
“Goody. Six hours of listening to Jessica Simpson CDs. I can hardly wait.”
She woke Joelle at seven o’clock to invite her to come along, hoping that her daughter’s enthusiasm for meeting her relatives would fade when she found out that it meant getting out of bed before noon.
“I’ll go, but do we have to leave this early?” Joelle moaned.
“Yes. It’s a long drive. Believe me, I’m not happy about going there, either,” Kathleen told her. “But I want us to be—” What? The perfect family she never had? “I would really like you to come with me,” she finished.
Joelle gave a faint, mischievous smile, one that Kathleen hadn’t seen since she was a toddler. “What about my appointment with Dr. Russo?”
Kathleen felt a smile tugging at her mouth, too. “Dr. Russo can go analyze herself.”
“Yes!” Joelle pumped her fist in the air and climbed out of bed.
Kathleen poured herself another cup of coffee while she waited, then quickly dumped it down the drain. Her nerves were already jumping around like a flea circus. She made a quick tour through the house, checking to make sure that everything was turned on or off that needed to be on or off. She called Dr. Russo’s office to reschedule the appointment, studied the road map one last time, and dug out some loose change for tolls.
Joelle shook her head at the offer of breakfast, grabbing a granola bar and a cola instead. They finally climbed into the Lexus at ten minutes past eight.
“So how long is this trip gonna take?” Joelle asked when they were on the highway. All the lanes heading into the city were clogged with rushhour traffic, but the congestion wasn’t bad at all in the direction they were going, away from the city.
“I’m guessing six or seven hours,” Kathleen said. “Depends on the traffic.” They were nervous with each other, no doubt about it. In the past, Kathleen would have switched on the radio or put in a CD—anything to fill up the uncomfortable silence—but today she didn’t.
“So, am I finally going to meet my grandmother and grandfather?” Joelle asked after awhile.
“My mother died when I was eighteen, right after I left home to go to college.”
“Oh. Sorry. I forgot.” Joelle’s expression looked soft and childlike, as if imagining her own mother dying and feeling sad about it. “What about your father? Do you have any brothers and sisters besides Aunt Annie?”
Kathleen took a deep breath, letting the question about her father slide for the moment. “I have two brothers, JT and Poke, and —”
“Poke? What kind of a name is that?”
“His real name is Donald, like my father, but he was always a dawdler—a slow poke—so the nickname stuck. JT’s real name is John Thomas, which sounds much too dignified, seeing as his favorite pastime was torturing insects and small animals. And Annie is my only sister.”
“Are they older than you or younger?”
“I’m the oldest. I was four when Poke was born, six when JT was born, and eight when Annie was born.” She glanced at Joelle and saw her smiling. “What?”
“I’ll bet it was fun to have a baby sister. Like having a real-live baby doll to play with.”
“You would think so. But Annie spent every waking minute of her life crying. It’s a wonder she didn’t grow up to be all leathery and dehydrated like that awful yuppie fruit leather your dad buys. Poke and JT were like the James Brothers reincarnated.”
“Who are the James Brothers?”
“You know… Jesse James, the famous outlaw, and his brother Frank. My brothers probably drive motorcycles and are covered with tattoos and piercings by now. It’ll be a miracle if they aren’t incarcerated. They were always into some deviltry or other.”
“Like what?”
She searched her memory for one of their more harmless escapades. “Well, there was the time they got tired of watching our sister, Annie, so they hog-tied her with the belt of my mother’s bathrobe and stuffed her in a closet.” Joelle’s girlish giggles spurred Kathleen on. “And one time they got mad at the neighbor lady so they stuck the nozzle of her garden hose down her dryer vent and turned it on.”
“Oh no!” Joelle laughed. “That’s awful!”
“Yeah, they were well on the road to becoming criminals at a pretty young age, and—” She froze when she remembered Joelle’s recent brush with the law. Joelle quickly turned away, as if studying the passing scenery, but her cheeks had turned pink. She and Kathleen had been doing so well, and now it was as if a door had slammed shut, and Kathleen didn’t know how to open it again. She would welcome some help from frumpy Dr. Russo right about now, but the doctor wasn’t here. Kathleen was about to turn on the radio in self-defense when Joelle broke the silence.
“Daddy told me you had a hard childhood.”
“He did? What else did he say?” She felt as if she were sitting on a box of vipers, trying to keep the lid on and all the ugliness inside.
“He said it was up to you, not him, to tell me about it. But only if you wanted to. He said it was traumatic.”
“Yeah—well, for one thing I grew up very poor. I spent my youth hunched over with my mousy brown hair hanging in my eyes, hoping no one would notice me. And you know those run-down slum houses you see in the movies with sagging roofs and rusting cars in the driveway and little kids running around outside half-naked, covered with filth?”
Joelle stared at her as if to see if she was joking.
“It’s true. That’s how I grew up. Of course, I didn’t know we were poor when I was really young. But I clearly remember the day I first realized that we were. I was nine years old that summer. …”