Cleo and I make it a point to avoid the hormonal males surging around us in our high school hallways. I banter with them more, keep a friendly dialogue, while Cleo barely acknowledges their existence. She rarely expounds on her deeper thoughts, but I know she ignores them out of horror of being one of the girls who cries by her locker when someone breaks up with her after a heated six week fling. We have an unofficial understanding that such nonsense is for other teenagers.
Cleo threw an afghan over the sheets and asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. My dad made it sound like she would want to know me. Then he told me not to call her. I have no idea.”
“Does he know her?” she pulled off her jeans and hopped onto the bed, kneeling in her blue underpants and t-shirt looking like the next fresh-faced add campaign for Hanes. I
smiled when I thought of what most boys at school would do to trade me places. Probably gnaw off their feet with their own teeth.
I helped myself to her dresser drawers, pulled out some pajamas and lobbed a pair of sweatpants at Cleo’s head. She pulled them off her face with a huff. While I dressed, I told her everything my father said.
“Let’s go look for some food and wait for inspiration to strike,” she said when I finished. I told her I just wanted to think and asked her to bring me back an orange if they had any. Peeling oranges always helps me think. Or maybe they help me stop thinking because I am concentrating on the feel of the peel tearing jaggedly away from the fruit. She left and I looked at the red numbers on the clock radio glowing 8:44. Too early to sleep, but my body felt too heavy to move anymore. I closed my eyes, feeling my spine flatten into the mattress.
I couldn’t just call her. Not without thinking of a way to introduce myself. I tried a few different phrases in my mind, but I could not dismiss my overriding emotion of burning disbelief. Things like this didn’t happen to people like me. I put a hand on my hot chest where the embarrassment burned under my ribs. It’s a horrible realization to find you’ve been left out of your own life.
Cleo returned and tossed me a scrawny looking orange. “Lucky day - one left.” She nibbled on a piece of bread with a slice of Swiss cheese, her favorite snack, and reminded me that we had barely started Hanshaw’s assignment. “I could work on it while you think… or call…” she prodded.
“I can’t
tonight
. It’s almost ten o’clock there. And
if
it’s her I have nothing to say.”
“Nothing to say?” she asked incredulously. “I think you have sixteen years’ worth of things to say. She might not even know you exist. I think that is something she wouldn’t mind getting a late night phone call for.” Cleo’s rationale seeped into me. She made it seem logical to pick up the phone and have a pleasant conversation. No worries.
I shook my head, letting my hesitation settle back into place like a weight in the back of my skull. “Not enough privacy here. The boys will interrupt.” Stephen devoted himself to me several years ago, which means he often trails us around the house.
“I swear on my life they won’t.” Cleo promised, “I will go downstairs for as long as you want and bar any and all interruptions!” Then her voice quieted, “After you say hello. I just have to hear you say hello and then I will leave.” She saw my resolve weakening in the silence and added one last thought. “It will probably be the best phone call she’s ever gotten.”
I looked at Cleo, but it was Sarah’s face I saw. I knew I was going to do it. At some point. At some time. Why not get it over with? Without warning my eyes pricked with tears. Hopeful tears. If I waited one extra second I could never do it. I reached out my hand, “Give me the phone.”
“Really?” she asked breathlessly.
I shook my hand meaningfully at her, afraid if I spoke again it would shatter my fragile courage. Cleo didn’t waste the opportunity. She snatched her silver cell phone off the desk and pushed it into my palm, a lead weight in my hand. Then she opened the laptop, jerking the mouse to wake the blank screen. A tiny hum, followed by a metallic melody, and Sarah’s number appeared, looking impatient.
Where did you go?,
it seemed to ask petulantly. For a moment I debated making Cleo dial, but the phone felt fused to my fingers. I flipped it open and stared at it, a shot of electricity running from my fingers to the bottom of my spine.
Ten numbers. Next year I would be in advanced trig. I’d mastered a graphing calculator. I could hit ten numbers. I watched my finger press the first button, heard the unassuming chime, saw the number blink from the green screen. Like a timer. Running out of time. My breaths filled the room, blocking every noise but the tinny sound of the key tone. I never heard Cleo’s steps, but I felt her hovering in front of me. My finger kept dialing, each number intensifying the shock running through my body.
One left. I tore my eyes from the phone and looked at Cleo. Her face reflected everything I felt - apprehension, tension, doubt - only her eyes shimmered with the added gleam of excitement. It was much easier to watch than do. I hit the last number.
Silence. Nothing. Until I realized I forgot to hit TALK. Before I could consider the consequences I pressed the green button and fought my sudden compulsion to throw the phone. I panicked and looked to Cleo again, wondering how I came to be holding the phone with the faint sound of a ring coming through the earpiece in my hand.
Cleo held her breath, her eyes growing impossibly bigger with strain. She signaled something with her hand when she heard the soft second ring. She made a strangled cry and finding me helpless, grabbed my hand and put it to my ear. “You have to talk,” she whispered desperately.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered.
My mouth opened, I swear I pushed the air up my throat, but it stuck stubbornly at my Adam’s apple. I just started to make a sound when she said ‘hello’ again, more doubtfully.
“Hi.” Is the first thing I managed. I jumped up and started taking senseless steps, the frantic tingling in my body demanding movement. “Hi,” my thoughts were coming. Lagging, but coming. “Is this Sarah Dyer?”
“Speaking. Who is this?” she asked suspiciously. She didn’t sound like Mother, but her voice encouraged me. It wasn’t jarring or clipped. She sounded smart. And gentle.
“I am . . .” Quick change of tactics. “Are you Claire Dyer’s sister?” I asked. An almost inaudible intake of breath and then silence. Cleo was still there, glued irrevocably to her spot, her expression horrified and hopeful at the same.
“Who is this, again?” she asked, fear spilling into her shaking voice.
“My name is Jennifer. Claire is my mother.” My voice was shaking now. I would begin to cry in earnest any minute. But the funny thing is that the tears replaced the fear. With the hardest words already spoken, crying seemed to be the only way my ravaged body could remove the adrenalin racing through my system.
“Jennifer,” she breathed. It wasn’t a question at all. I knew as soon as she spoke that she had known about me. “Jennifer?” she said louder, wonder breaking her voice.
“Hi, Sarah.” I saw Cleo’s eyes glisten when I looked up and she quietly backed from the room, closing the door behind her. I was alone with my aunt.
“Jennifer…” I sensed her searching for words, trying to find her first question. I knew how she felt. Her voice took on a new intensity, “Is Claire okay?”
“Yes,” I hurriedly answered, “we’re all fine. I just… I found out about you tonight.”
“Oh,” she said it so tenderly it was almost musical. “I didn’t think you would know. Did Claire tell you?”
“No. Not exactly… Not at all,” I amended. Then I went straight into the story of her picture - she made a beautifully happy sound when I told her I looked like her – and she interrupted frequently to ask small questions: How was my father? Was I really sixteen? What grade was I in? When I filled her in all the way to the current phone call I felt an overwhelming sense of power. Like the story had been told by other people up until that point and now I was stepping in and taking over, picking the words and the scenes. It was the first time the story of Sarah and Claire Dyer, as incomplete as it was to me, belonged to my life.
“Jennifer, I am so glad you called,” she said earnestly when I stopped talking. “That was so brave and I am so grateful. I… I just don’t know what to say first. I could talk to you all night.”
I glowed. The relief radiated off my skin. “I’m glad, too.” The dark mystery pushed far to the corner of my conscious and all I wanted to know were the happy things. What she was like. What she liked doing. When I could see her. I asked her if she was married, if I had any cousins and her painful hesitation made me regret my question. She told me no, never married, but she had a family of friends in Smithport she would love to introduce me to.
“You would really love them. They’re characters, some of them. Do you like reading… literature?” she asked.
“Oh, of course. When Mrs. Hanshaw isn’t teaching I absolutely love it.”
“Good, good,” she said absently. “I was hoping you would.” She waited, a question hanging in the quiet air between us. “I’ll be done with work in a few more weeks. If you ever wanted to… if your mother would let you…” She said timidly, trying to invite me to Smithport. Every cell in my body responded to her summons like a magnet.
“What do you do?” I asked, suppressing my excitement. She didn’t understand my question at first and I had to clarify and ask her what her job was.
“Oh, I’m a teacher, so I’ll be out for the summer on June 6
th
.”
“What grade, what subject?” I asked, intrigued.
“All grades, all subjects. I teach gifted students from kindergarten to High School. The District only has one teacher for the gifted, so I rotate with all of our students.”
We talked about that for several minutes and she told me she currently had eight students, one of whom was particularly special. Then she returned to her question.
“Do you think Claire - your mother - would let us meet? Would you even want to?”
“Of course I want to,” I assured her. “Now more than ever. I don’t know what my mother would say.”
Liar.
I had a very good idea what she would say. “But we are really close. Just let me work on it and see what I can do.” There was a good bye hovering, and I knew our conversation must end soon. The clocked gleamed 9:30. Almost an hour talking.
“Jennifer,” Sarah asked seriously, almost cautiously, “I just want to know. . . how is Claire. What is she like?”
“She’s good, Sarah, really good. She works as the library director for our school district and she’s happy. Until tonight I never guessed that anything was wrong. She and my dad are…” I couldn’t find a word that didn’t sound like gushing, “they’re good. She’s a great mom.”
“Thank God for that,” she sighed. I didn’t know if she was talking about everything I said or just the last part. “I wish I could…” she didn’t finish. Too much to say. We were both struggling to contort our feelings into tidy words. “I should probably let you go, but I want to talk soon.” She laid a heavy emphasis on the last word.
“I know. Me, too.” I drew in a breath and tried to express what was throbbing in the middle of my chest. “Sarah, I’ll find a way to get there. I’m so glad I found you.”
“Amen to that,” she answered very softly before telling me good night. I replied ‘good night’ in a dwindling voice and closed the phone, feeling it snap in my hand. My chin jerked up at the sound and I felt dizzy when I realized I was in Cleo’s room. It felt like I was coming back to myself from very far away. As far as the ocean.
Cleo found me several minutes later, sitting on her bed, rolling the unpeeled orange through my hands. She hesitated a moment in the doorway and then stepped in, clicking the lock behind her. I tried to find an opening line, but when I lifted my face away from my hands, I couldn’t do anything but explode into a grin.
Her face broke into a smile that nearly blinded me. “Seriously?” she gasped. “Good?” She carelessly flung a small stack of paper she was holding on the pillow and sat beside me, grabbing my hand tightly.
“Seriously good,” I answered with satisfaction.
“I
told
you so!” she slapped my arm in triumph.
“You told me so,” I admitted. She demanded I repeat every word, which took longer than the conversation itself due to our constant interruptions and commentary. Cleo thoroughly abused her “I told you so” privileges for the rest of the night –
I told you she’d want you to call. I told you she’d like you. I told you you would have enough to talk abou
t – and I took it with good graces because I could not deny any of it.
Near midnight we were lying in our beds, whispering quietly, to avoid keeping the rest of the family awake, when Cleo asked, “Are you going?”
I paused to let the question sink in. “I don’t know if I can,” I said haltingly, dropping each word and listening to it fall on the night.
“If she lets you, will you go?” I knew she meant my mother.
“She won’t,” I replied woodenly. “There’s no way. If you saw her tonight…” My mother’s tirade seemed so long ago. I couldn’t believe that it happened just that evening. “If you saw her you wouldn’t even ask.”
“So then… nothing?” Irritation weaved through Cleo’s words. She didn’t like quitters.
“No,” I answered too defensively.
“So then… what?” Cleo’s question dripped with unmet expectation.
“I don’t know, Cleo,” I said in exasperation. “Did you think I would have a perfect plan already? Do you think I always know the perfect thing to do next? Like you?” I added, not taming the spite in my voice.
She let one too many beats of silence fill the room before she answered calmly, “No, I didn’t think you would know everything. And I don’t think I know everything.” The flawless poise in her voice made me ashamed, and vaguely livid.
I continued my criticism, fully knowing I was in the wrong. “What about ‘I told you so, I told you so’? Why don’t you tell me now? What do I do with an aunt I need to meet and a mother who hates the aunt? Maybe you should have come up with a plan while I was having the heart attack trying to talk to her. I’ve been kind of busy tonight.”