Intentions (10 page)

I take the shortest route, avoid hills, ride as fast as I can without skidding, slipping, falling.

Finally I get home.

Without getting killed.

That’s good.

Right?

CHAPTER 14

TRUMPED

My phone is ringing and someone is knocking on my bedroom door at the same time. It’s only eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, and I don’t have Sunday school. I want to sleep!

But wait—what if it’s Jake? I texted him last night—
How was the meet?
—and last I looked (at two a.m.) he hadn’t answered. I just don’t get it.

By the time I find my phone under the bed, it’s stopped.

“Rachel,” Mom is saying.

“What?” I yell, fumbling with my phone to see who it was.

“Grandma’s here! Come down and eat brunch with us.”

Was this a plan? No one told me.

I look at my phone. Alexis. Lex called me? Wow. I wonder why. I will not get my hopes up. She probably needs a homework assignment or something. But nothing from Jake.

“You coming?” It’s Mom again.

“I have to get dressed and stuff. I’ll be down soon. Start without me.”

“Can I come in for a second?”

“OK.”

Mom opens the door, sticks her head in.

“She’s good this morning,” she whispers. Why is she whispering? Grandma is downstairs and half deaf. “Like her old self. Thought you’d want to see her like this, you know?” Mom is smiling.

Don’t be too happy, Mom. It’s not going to last. This is what I want to say. But I just nod and tell her, “Great. Thanks, I’ll be down in a minute.”

I call Alexis back while I’m peeing. Like the old days.

“What’s up?” she says.

“You called me,” I say with a little bit of irritation.

“Yeah, I thought, maybe you want to go shopping? I need new jeans and stuff. Thought we could go downtown. To Morrison’s, or maybe to that store that has used jeans? Or to the mall?”

“Eddie’s Exchange,” I say.

“What?”

“The store downtown that has used jeans.”

“Yeah, I know. Hold on. I’ve got another call.”

I want to go shopping with Alexis, but I don’t actually want to miss the good Grandma moment. Can I do both? I am going to do both.

“So?” Alexis is back.

“Yeah, I could go in, like, an hour or two?”

“OK.”

“My grandmother’s here. And Mom says she’s
good
, Alexis.”

Silence.

“So we’re having brunch. Listen, Lex, I really want to say again that I’m sorry about your parents. I wish I could have helped—and could help now. I really do.”

She doesn’t say anything. Did the line go dead?

“You there?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“OK. Um.” What? Did she not hear me? “So should I call you when Grandma leaves?”

“Yeah.” Her phone beeps. “No, no,” she says. “I’ve got to take this. I’ll call
you
.”

“Great,” I squeal. Oh God. I am pathetic. I stand up and almost drop the phone in the toilet.

I wash my face, try to scrub away my sleep and my insecurities. (Boy, that would be a great invention: a soap that gets rid of acne AND self-doubt! I’d make a million bucks.) My hair is a curly mess. If I brush it, it will only get frizzy. So I pull it back into a ponytail, which will make Grandma happy—the better to see my face, she’ll say, if she really
is
with it. I put on jeans and a shirt that Grandma bought for me. It’s a deep wine red, and it looks good on me.

“Rachelleh, don’t you look beautiful!” Grandma says as I walk into the dining room, where Mom has set the table as if it’s a special occasion.

“Thanks, Grandma.”

“I gave you that shirt! Looks good on you!” she says. “And with your hair pulled back, I can see your beautiful face!”

I lean down and give Grandma a big kiss on the cheek, and she kisses me back. I breathe in the smell of her. Charlie perfume and lox. I give her another kiss and rub my cheek against hers. Her skin is so, so soft.

“Grandma,” I whisper into her ear, “I love you.” Tears fill my eyes.

“I love you, too, Rachel,” she whispers into my ear, and I feel like all is right with the world for this moment. I hold on to it,
my cheek against hers. I squeeze her tight, but not too tight. Don’t want to break anything. I never, ever want to let her go.

But I have to. Because she starts reaching for her whitefish salad. Grandma wants to eat!

I sit down at the table and grab myself a whole-wheat-with-everything bagel and spread it with cream cheese. Mom is beaming at Grandma while simultaneously giving me a raised eyebrow. My mother the multitasker. Too much cream cheese is what that eyebrow is saying. Tough. I take two pieces of lox and a red onion. I will have to brush my teeth three times before going shopping with Alexis, but I don’t care.

Dad is slicing the extra bagels to put in the freezer and starts telling a story about his day in New York last week.

“So I’m walking down the street, around Madison and Sixty-third—”

“What were you doing
there
?” Mom asks, a little suspiciously.

“It was after my meeting,” he says cheerfully, “which was on Lex and about Seventieth, and I thought I’d walk to the bus station, and I hear this guy say angrily on his cell phone, ‘My driver was supposed to be here, but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him through, so now I’m going to be really late.’ So I turn around to look at this guy, but there, walking out of a store on Madison, is—want to guess?”

“Secret Service?” Mom says. “So someone in government, right?”

“Right,” says Dad.

“Do we like this person?” asks Grandma.

“Yes,” says Dad. “We love her.”

“The first lady?” Grandma says.

“Bingo!” says Dad.

“Wow,” says Mom. “Very cool.” And she gives Dad a huge grin.

“I wanted to say something, but her people whisked her into a car immediately.”

“What would you have said?” Grandma asks.

“Hi?” Dad answers, and laughs, and Mom punches him lightly on the arm.

Oh. I am happier than I’ve been in a long time.

After we’re done with the bagels and lox, Mom brings out some vanilla yogurt and her granola. I am full, but I can’t help myself. I won’t try on any jeans later!

“Want to play cards?” Grandma asks, and Mom and Dad say “sure” immediately.

“I can’t. I’m going shopping with Alexis,” I say. “She’s going to call.”

“So play until she calls,” Mom says.

“OK.”

We play partners Pitch, me and Mom against Dad and Grandma. It’s our usual teams because Dad and I are the best players, and so the teams are evenly matched, but today Mom and I keep winning. I look at Dad’s face, and I can tell it’s bad luck with the cards. It’s not that Grandma is messing up.

Finally, when Mom and I win for the fourth time, I suggest we switch partners so I’m with Grandma. This is a hairy thing, because Dad and Mom usually fight if they’re partners. But today that’s not the problem. I deal and am ready to make a two-bid in spades. I have the ace, the jack, and a seven. But Mom bids two,
and then, when it gets to Grandma, she bids three. She must have a great suit, probably diamonds. I don’t have any. Dad passes, I pass. When Grandma says “spades,” I know we’re in trouble. No way should she have bid three spades if I have the ace and the jack. What could she have that made her bid three?

I get nothing on the draw. We’re screwed.

She plays the nine, a lead that says, I’ve got nothing. I throw the ace, and we get trash. I lead non-trump, Grandma throws the two of spades on it, and Dad takes it with his queen. I look at her face; she doesn’t register that she did something stupid.

Dad leads the king of spades; I have nothing to do but give him my jack. We’re going down. And then Grandma gives him the ten, even though later she throws the four.

I see Mom and Dad exchange glances, and Mom starts to tear up. Grandma is disappearing again.

To lighten things up and maybe get Grandma back, I start singing, “We’re going down, down, down,” but she doesn’t register anything.

We do go down three; Dad and Mom get three. Mom notes the score and deals the next hand.

“What happened?” Grandma asks.

“We went down, Grandma. No big deal.”

“Was it my fault?”

I shake my head, but I can’t bring myself to lie out loud.

Grandma looks at me in confusion. (I wish Alexis would call. Please call, Alexis. Now.) Grandma’s eyes start to puddle.

“No, don’t worry, Grandma. We’ll come back.”

“No we won’t,” she says, and starts crying. “I can’t do this without Leonard. Where’s Leonard?”

Leonard being Grandpa. I reach over and take Grandma’s hand, and stroke it. It feels as soft as always, but more fragile. I can see her veins.

Mom gets up, fills a glass with water, and brings it to Grandma. Dad gives the cards a couple of shuffles and then puts them back in the box.

“I want to go home,” Grandma whimpers. “See Leonard. Where’s Leonard?”

Mom coos to her, “You’ll feel better soon, Mom. Drink this, that’s a girl.” Mom gently pats her on the back.

Dad walks over to the CD player. I see what he picks: Grandma’s favorite,
Ella & Louis
. Good choice, Dad. But the minute the first song comes on, Ella singing, “I thought I’d found the man of my dreams,” Grandma starts sobbing.

“Nice going,” Mom says to Dad. “What the hell were you thinking?” She turns off the CD player.

“Sorry! I tried,” Dad grumbles. “I have to work anyway.”

“Fine!” Mom says. “I’m taking Mother home. I’ll stay with her until she’s OK.”

She looks at me. “Have a good time with Alexis.”

Ignores my father.

Rushes out. I don’t even get to give Grandma a kiss.

Dad starts doing the dishes, banging them loudly as he puts them in the dishwasher.

“I’ll do it,” I tell him.

“Thanks.”

He goes down to the basement to his office. I put away the leftover food, stealing a little bit more whitefish salad, load the dishwasher, hand-wash the big platters. The warm water and suds are soothing. Sometimes a mindless chore is just the thing.

Better than waiting for Alexis to call. It’s almost two o’clock, an hour and a half past the time when I said I could go. But who’s counting? I wait another fifteen minutes, and then I finally call her. She doesn’t answer.

I yell down and ask Dad if he’ll give me a little driving lesson. “Yeah, maybe later, honey,” he answers.

I wipe off the kitchen counter and decide it needs more. I move everything off it—the canisters, the coffeemaker, the blender, the toaster oven, the utensil holder, and put it all on the kitchen table. Then I get out a clean sponge and scrub the whole counter. Hard. Then go at the sink. The faucet. The windows ill behind the sink. I dry the counter, put everything back, rearranging it all how I think it should go.

Alexis still hasn’t called.

I take out the copper cleaner and attack all the pots with copper bottoms. The great thing about copper cleaner is that it shines up the copper immediately. You don’t even have to rub hard. This is such a great metaphor for what I wish I could do in my life!

Why
isn’t
she calling? Or texting? Why isn’t Jake? Maybe he emailed!

I check. Nothing there or on Facebook.

I think about scrubbing my bathtub, but that would be way over the top, so I do something that is also way over the top, desperate, and I call Alexis again. Surprise, surprise, she picks up her phone.

“Yeah?”

“Hey,” I say.

“Who is it?”

She can see who it is. “It’s me, Rachel.”

“Oh. I’m on the other line. What is it?”

“Aren’t we going shopping?”

“Can’t.”

“Call me back,” I say. But I can’t tell if she’s clicked back to her other call already.

I go scrub my bathtub.

Dad and I back down the driveway a few times, which is hard, because our driveway is long and has a curve in it. Then he shows me how to parallel-park. I’m going to need more lessons. Afterward I take a nap. When I hear Mom come back from Grandma’s, I go downstairs.

“How is she?”

She shakes her head. Her eyes are all red.

“You OK?” I ask her.

She shakes her head again. “I let myself get my hopes up. It’s just, I thought, maybe she’s back, you know? Maybe it was just grief this whole time. But when I got her home, she was so confused she almost peed on the footstool instead of in the toilet. I had to call an agency and have an aide stay with her. Oh, Rachel, I shouldn’t have told you that, about the peeing.”

“It’s OK,” I say, but I wonder if I’ll ever get that image out of my head.

“Where’s your father?”

“Working.”

“Right.” Mom goes into her bedroom. I hear her crying. Should I go in? I figure if she wanted to cry in front of me, she would have stayed out here.

I go up to my room. Open my math book. Not for the first
time, I wonder how someone as smart as I am can be so clueless about math.

Question: If one girl has twenty-six math problems and it takes her ten minutes to do the first one, and she gets the wrong answer, how many minutes would it take her to do all twenty-six problems correctly?

Answer: Googolplex minutes.

Better answer: Infinity minutes.

Best answer: Zero minutes.

CHAPTER 15

ACTION, ACTION, WE WANT ACTION!

I have to push myself through the mob watching the cheerleaders doing their thing in front of the school.

“Action, action, we want action! A-C-T! I-O-N!”

I am guessing there is a really big football game on Friday for them to start the pepping on Monday. I don’t follow football, and I’ve never been to a game. I am not starting now. But I like the motto.

Really like it.

I will take it on as mine. My motto, my mantra, my reason for living. Forget
kavanah
, forget intention.

“Action, action, I want action. A-C-T. I-O-N,” I shout along.

I walk into school and down through the halls, which are quiet and empty because everyone is standing outside cheering. Or almost everyone. The geeks and the Goths are inside, like me. I am neither geek nor Goth; I am a girl who needs to get back her friend and her almost-boyfriend.