“You should be nicer to her. You said yourself she wasn’t well.”
We could hear Dad crumpling up wrapping paper and shoving it in the trash. “And your face,” he lectured her. “What are you trying to do—scare the kids?”
“Come on,” I said. “If you come downstairs, they’ll stop fighting.”
“Why should I care about that? Every one of you lied to me about what was happening in this house.”
“I
didn’t! I told you the day I found her, and you didn’t believe me! You told me I was crazy!”
On the radio was more laughter and the sound of a bicycle horn.
“Phil!” Dad was at the bottom of the stairwell again. “Phil, are you coming?”
“Come on, Phil,” I said.
He turned up the volume on the radio to hear the song about worms by Captain Rock.
“Okay,” I said. I stared one last time at the new tooth, which was pure white, making the others seem yellow, and then I went downstairs, where my parents stood uncomfortably at each other’s side.
“We can start without him,” I reported. “He thinks he looks ugly.”
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Dad said. “Phil! Now!”
We all waited at the bottom of the staircase, Dad occasionally nudging Momma to stand up straight, like he was training her.
At last, my brother came down and stood on the bottom step, not raising his head.
“Don’t just stand there with your eyes glazed over,” Dad said to Momma under his breath. “Do something.”
Momma took a small step toward Phil. “I’m sure the new tooth looks very good,” she said. “Now you’ll be more handsome than ever.”
He scowled. With his unruly hair covering his eyes, Phil was anything but handsome, and he knew it.
“There’s a present on the table for you,” Dad said.
Phil stared at it, but didn’t move from that bottom step.
“I’d like you to open it,” Dad said more forcefully.
Momma reached out her hand to touch Phil’s arm, but the moment she made contact, Phil jerked as if he’d been given an electric shock.
Dad snatched the present off the table and shook it hard with both hands, so Phil could hear it was a jigsaw puzzle. “Look,” he said, pointing to the card. “It says it’s a celebration for the whole family.”
Phil said nothing, but turned a deep shade of pink, while Momma wrapped her arms about her waist.
“Open it!” Dad yelled as he ripped off the wrapping paper. “Like this, see? Just cooperate. Say, ‘Oh, good, a puzzle. Let’s put it together tonight!’”
With his hands balled into fists, Phil snatched the present from Dad and stormed outside. My pulse pumped in my neck when he slammed the door. For that split moment before the door latched, Momma reached out her hand—maybe to open the screen—but pulled it back again while Phil marched between our neat rows of marigolds. When he reached the middle of the street, he set up like a punter and dropped the puzzle toward his foot. With the first try, he missed completely and had to pick the box back off the ground. The second time he hit. It was a lousy kick.
S
O AFTER ALL THAT
complaining about his tooth, he decides he likes it better silver,” Dad said, clearing our plates. “I should have saved my money.”
When Phil didn’t come back inside to apologize, we taught him a lesson by finishing the celebration dinner without him. Dad said you can’t reward temper tantrums, and if Phil chose to be left out, that was
his
problem.
Dad squirted the table clean, and soon all that was left on it was the puzzle he’d picked off the road hours earlier. Though Phil had kicked it, the box was hardly damaged.
“I’d like to put this together,” I said, hoping to change the mood for Momma’s sake.
I expected Dad to shake his head, but he opened the box and emptied the jigsaw pieces onto the table. Momma organized them into piles of like colors, her hands shaking, while Dad grumbled continuously about the importance of listening and respecting your superiors.
“I’m sure he snuck in the side door,” he said, keeping his eyes turned toward the puzzle. “He’s probably in his room, pouting.” But of course this wasn’t true, or we would have heard the cans.
After a while, Momma left the table to sit alone on the couch. Dad got up next, but I continued to stare at the puzzle because I wanted to finish the edge of the sky.
I could hear Dad opening a Hefty bag, and soon he moved from room to room, collecting trash. Each time he left a room, he turned off its light, and after he left the living room, he turned off Momma’s light, too, not even seeing her there.
“Dad, wait,” I said. But I could hear he was already moving to another floor of the house.
I got up to hit the switch, but Momma said, “Just leave it off.” And she began to cry.
“It’s okay, Momma,” I said, finding my way to her side. “It’s okay.” Though we both knew it wasn’t.
At first I could only hear her sniffling and feel the thin terry cloth of her robe, but light from the dining room helped me gradually see her and the tears streaming down her face. I sat beside her and didn’t move, though my neck ached. When she wiped her nose with her sleeve, I uncurled my fist, not even realizing my hand had been in a fist, and inside was a sweaty puzzle piece, the slick side peeling away from the cardboard. Dad would have to mark another game box with masking tape and a note that said:
Missing piece of sky
.
We heard Dad move through the different floors of the house, heard him go out a side door and then come back in. Steadily, his pace picked up, opening and closing doors with more force, until finally I heard him grab his car key off the wicker table
beside his bed. He burst into the living room and threw on the light.
“Tillie, get your jacket.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“I need your help finding Phil.”
Momma covered her mouth, her blue eyes wide open with worry as Dad walked out the door. I hurried behind him, forgetting my jacket, hardly able to keep up.
“I think you upset Momma,” I said, starting to jog.
“We can’t worry about that right now. I won’t have this kind of disobedience from your brother.” He unlocked my door. “Get in.”
We drove slowly past the school, the 7-Eleven, the small park with the bent basketball rim. We drove beside a boy who scuffled along the sidewalk in a hooded sweatshirt, hands in his pockets.
“Is that him?” Dad asked.
I rolled down my window. “Phil,” I called, and he walked faster.
We stayed with him and I continued to shout, “Phil!” until, finally, he turned around to give us the finger and to show we’d been following the wrong boy.
“What if we don’t find him?” I said, facing forward in my seat again.
“We’ll find him, and he’s not going to do this again.”
The sky, always true to my box of sixty-four Crayola crayons, had turned from Ocean to Midnight Blue. Dad drove slowly up and down the blocks Phil liked to walk, and then, as if an idea suddenly came to him, he sped up, drove through several stop signs and across and then below the Cabin John Bridge. He stopped the car so the headlights shone on the bank where Phil
liked to fish. It was too dark to see anything at first and then our eyes found the shadow on a nearby sandbar.
“Phil!” Dad called, jumping out of the car.
Whoever it was on the other side of the river wasn’t moving. Dad started to cross the rocks toward the shadow, but his shoes slipped underwater. He shouted back for me to stay on the bank, but I followed.
Each slippery step brought us farther into the dark water, the shock of cold seeping into my shoes. I could barely see the shadow slumped against that huge rock, but I just knew it was him.
“Phil!” Dad called again, and there was no answer. “Tillie, go back,” he told me. Then, seeing how far I’d come, he said, “Okay, come with me. Stay close.”
“Is he dead?”
“Tillie, hush.”
“Oh no, I hope he’s not dead.”
Dad hurried across the rocks and jumped onto the sandbar. I could now clearly see Phil’s wet and motionless body, his knit cap with hair curling out of the bottom. Dad had just about reached him when my legs refused to go any closer. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to drive home with his body facedown across the backseat.
Dad slowly bent down to touch his shoulder, and my brother went wild, punching and screaming, “Get off of me!”
He’d only been sitting there, brooding. I almost wanted to laugh. My father grabbed him by the shoulders and rolled him on his back. “Phil, get control of yourself!”
My brother kicked again. “You can’t make me!”
Both of their voices were strange and high-pitched. I slipped off a rock and stood shin-deep in the water as they wrestled on
the ground, Phil swinging his arms and Dad sticking his knee on Phil’s chest, pinning him there with all his weight.
“Get. Off,” Phil said.
You could see how much force Dad had put into his knee, my brother struggling for air. Finally, when Phil had stopped thrashing around, Dad stood up. And never taking his eye off of him, he said, “Get in the car.”
My brother didn’t move, except for he was shivering so hard. We all were.
“Phil, just do it,” I said, up to my knees in the river. “I’m freezing.”
Phil’s face showed how cold and exhausted he was. I knew he wanted to be in the car as much as I did; he just didn’t want it to be Dad’s idea.
Dad took my hand to help me back across the rocks.
“I’d rather stay here and freeze,” Phil said, but all the while, he followed behind us.
Dad seemed to understand that Phil’s cooperation counted on him being quiet and not turning around to look. He made no comment when Phil got into the back of the car and kicked the passenger seat as we drove past the black water. Dad only spoke when we pulled up to the house, telling us to shower before bed or we’d catch colds.
The house was dark, and Momma lay with her face to the back of the couch. I couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Phil and I sulked up the stairs, smelling of fish and mud. When we got to the hallway at the top, Phil stared at me with his mouth stretched tight so that his lips disappeared into a thin line. Then, with no change in his expression, he punched me hard in the ribs.
I gasped for air, trying to punch back, but he palmed my
forehead so I couldn’t reach him. “This family’s a joke,” he said, shoving me to the floor.
There was no point in getting up. It would just encourage him to knock me down again. I stayed there, level with his soaked jeans and shoes, until he walked away, each step oozing water. I waited to hear the clanging of cans, and when it was finally quiet, I crawled to my room and into bed with my wet clothes. I could still feel his fist in my ribs, and it felt good, like the truest thing that had happened in months.
A
LONG THE SIDE OF
the house, I sat on one of the stone steps, pitching rocks into the ivy. If the ivy ever died back, you would see the many things I’d buried there: school exams with disappointing scores; Halloween candy I refused to eat—Almond Joys, caramels, Raisinettes; even silverware I didn’t want to wash because something gross was stuck on it.
“Well, there you are,” Dad said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I’ve been here.” I pitched some small rocks and let them disappear into the green.
“I’ll get right to it,” he said. “Your mother and I are having trouble making this work, and we have some difficult decisions to make.”
“Dad, no. We just got her back.”
“I’m sorry, Tillie.”
“I’m going to go see her,” I said, rising to my feet.
“No, you’re not.” He tugged me back down by my belt loop.
“I need to go to the office to get some work done, and you’re coming with me.”
“I want to stay here.”
“Your mother needs some time alone,” he said, and mumbled something about the complicated world of adults. Then he picked up a rock. Pitched it. Picked up another, and so did I. As soon as he released his, I tried to hit it down. The next time, I threw a whole handful.
“You’re just going to give up on her?”
“We haven’t made any decisions yet, but we’re running out of things to try.”
“You never even tried being nice,” I whispered.
“What? I didn’t hear you.”
“Never mind,” I said, throwing another rock.
“Okay, then. I’m going to get my briefcase, and I’ll meet you at the car.”
As I stood by the Volvo’s back door, Phil rode down the cul-de-sac on a plastic skateboard, banana shaped and neon yellow.
“Where did you get that?”
“When your friend moved, they dumped all kinds of stuff on the curb,” he said, hopping off and scooping it into his hand.
I reached out to touch the nicks, spin the wheels. It felt good to have something of Hope’s.
“Want to ride it?” he asked.
I remembered how it tickled the bottoms of my feet when I rumbled down Hope’s driveway, always jumping off before I got going too fast.
“I can’t. I have to go to Dad’s office,” I said.
“Too bad. I’ll be riding this down to the school.”
“Why don’t
you
have to go?”
“I guess he’s not worried about leaving me with a crazy lady.”
“Shut up.” I tried to stomp on his foot, but he moved it.
“Don’t get so touchy,” he said.
“Did Dad tell you?”
He hunched one shoulder toward his ear. “Doesn’t surprise me.”
Phil changed after that night on the Potomac and not in the way I expected. I thought he’d start blasting his music; he played it softer. I thought he’d skip meals; he was there right on time, then cleared his dishes afterward. In some ways, he seemed more agreeable than ever, except there was always a twist: He’d clear the dishwasher but put things back in the wrong places. Or Dad would suggest we eat a vegetable for snack, and Phil would bite into a head of iceberg lettuce.
Dad closed the front door, hurrying down the steps with his briefcase in one hand and a blazer draped over the other arm. “Why doesn’t Phil have to go?” I asked him.