What You Left Behind (9 page)

Over the next couple of days, I get a kind of routine going. Drop off Hope with Alan, spend all day at soccer, pick up Hope and drop her off with my mom, go to work, go home, get as much sleep between the crying fits as I can. I haven't managed to repeat the mellow nighttime feeding of the other night, but I have remembered to call Alan at lunch to check up on Hope. Plus, I've successfully avoided being in the same room as my mother for longer than two minutes at a time, so she hasn't been able to bring up the whole day care conversation again. I think she's been cutting me some slack because of our intense as all hell discussion at the kitchen table on Monday, but I see that look in her eyes—the reprieve isn't going to last forever.

“Where do you live?” Joni asks me Thursday at work.

“Why?”

“So I can pick you up for our tattoo extravaganza tomorrow.”

Nope. No way she's coming to my house. “I thought you didn't have a car.”

“I don't. But I borrow my stepbrother's car sometimes.”

Well, that won't do at all. “Where's the tattoo place?”

“Laconia.”

Perfect. “And you live in Clinton, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It doesn't make sense for you to come all the way out to Downey to pick me up. It's way out of the way for you. I'll pick
you
up.”

She shrugs. “Have it your way, Brooks. I was
trying
to be a gentleman.”

I laugh. “You don't look much like a gentleman to me, lady.”

We swap phones and enter our contact information. I feel a strange relief at knowing that I have a way to get in touch with Joni now. If I ever wanted to.

“Who's this?” she asks, holding up the home screen.

It's a photo of me and Meg at our spot at the lake, my arms around her as I give her a kiss on the cheek, her arm extended out in front of her as she takes the picture of us, her face all red and laughing. I look at that photo every time I use my phone. There's no reason for me to act weird about it now. Except for the fact that I can't tell Joni the truth.

“Oh,” I say, taking the phone back and pushing the button that makes the screen go dark. “That's my ex.” I keep my voice as nonchalant as I can.

“An ex and yet you still have her picture as the background on your phone.” Joni looks at me all knowingly. “Methinks somebody's not quite over it.”

I shake my head. “No, it's very over. Trust me on that.”

“Then why the photo?”

A woman with long, gray hair stops her cart next to us and saves me from having to explain. “Excuse me,” she murmurs and steps between us to study the various brands of sprouted quinoa. She has a bag of kale chips in her cart. Funny how when I first met Meg, I had no idea what a kale chip was, and now I work in a store where they fly off the shelves. One more thing to remind me of her.

We step back to give the woman some space, and I shove the phone in my back pocket. While we wait for her to go away, I straighten a few sacks of whole wheat flour.

“Can I help you find anything?” Joni asks her.

“No, no, just looking,” she says. Finally she plucks a bag of quinoa off the shelf and leaves.

“So,” I say to Joni right away, “what time should I pick you up tomorrow?”

“My appointment's at five thirty. Maybe, like, five? Does that work?”

That actually works out perfectly. Just enough time to leave Hope with my mom and get the hell out of there again.

• • •

“I'm going out, Mom.” I stop at her office door on my way to get Joni. “Hope's in her swing.”

Mom's office is covered in pink feathers. She's even got a couple sticking out of her hair. “Hold on.” She looks up, glue gun in hand.

“What is this, a flamingo-themed wedding?” I ask, joking.

She smiles. “Actually, yeah.”

“Really?” I haven't guessed one of these right in a while.

“Hey, as long as it pays the bills, I don't ask questions,” Mom says.

“You do realize that exact sentence has been uttered by every person who was ever involved in anything illegal?”

Mom laughs. “So where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Out where? You don't have work today.”

“I'm aware of that. I'm going out with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“You don't know her.”

Mom's eyes pop a bit. “Her?”

I shake my head. “Don't do that. It's just someone from work.”

“Listen, I'm glad you're making new friends, Ryden, but you've barely seen Hope all week.”

“I'll see her tomorrow. Your hot glue is dripping.” I point. “Gotta go. Love you.”

She sighs, like she knows it's not worth a fight. “All right then. Have fun.”

Joni's house is exactly the kind of place I would have pictured her living. It's big but not too fancy, there are a few kids' toys scattered in the driveway, and brightly colored flowers are planted along the front pathway. It's welcoming, like Joni herself.

There's a dude in the garage working on some sort of project. I give him a quick wave on my way to the front door, but he stops me. “Hey, can I get your opinion?”

I look around. “Me?”

“Yeah. Come here a sec.”

I go over. The guy is, like, twenty, and has dark skin but bright blond dreadlocks. He looks like he hasn't shaved in a few days. His hands are gray.

He gestures to the thing in front of him. It's some sort of sculpture done with clay and metal. It's almost as tall as I am and kind of like a tree—the trunk is all organic-looking, with intricately carved bark, but the branches and leaves are harder, more geometric, made from welded pieces of pipe and scrap metal. It's actually really cool.

“What do you think?” the dude asks. “I need another set of eyes on this.”

“It looks like a tree.”

“Yeah, but what do you
think
about it?”

“I don't really know anything about art.”

“You don't have to
know
anything to
feel
something. Just tell me your first impression.”

“Well…” I look at it some more. “I think it's…sad.”

“Sad how?”

“I don't know, it's like it was natural and something happened, something came along right around here”—I point to the junction between the clay and the metal—“and corrupted it, changed it into something else. Something
less
.”

He stares at it a minute. “Yes. That's exactly right. It's
sad
.” I don't know if that's good or bad, but he holds out his hand to me and says, “Thank you. That's exactly what I needed.”

I shake his hand, getting gray clay all over mine. “So…is Joni here?”

“Yeah, she's inside. You can go right in.”

I feel weird walking into someone's house—especially someone I barely know—but after two rings of the bell, there's still no answer, so I open the screen door and go inside. “Hello?” I call out.

“Ryden?” Joni calls from somewhere upstairs.

“Yeah.” I start up the steps as she comes bouncing down the hallway. She's wearing these baggy linen pants that sit low on her hips and a red tube top. She's actually got a hell of a body. I clear my throat.

She grins down at me from the top of the steps. “So you just waltz into people's houses willy-nilly?”

“I rang the bell. Twice.”

“Mhmm, sure you did.” She crosses her arms.

“The guy outside said I should let myself in. I'm sorry, I—”

She drops her arms and rolls her eyes. “I'm messing with you. Lighten up.”

The door off the kitchen opens, and two little kids—a boy and a girl, both with a skin tone about halfway between Joni's and the dude outside's—come running in, shrieking at the top of their lungs and firing at each other with Super Soakers. A girl who looks like she's not that much younger than Joni and me follows them inside, towel-drying her hair and shouting at the kids that the house is a water-gun-free zone. They share a glance and turn fire on her.

“Stevie!” Joni says to the girl.
“¡Es tu trabajo para mantener a los niños lejos de los problemas de hoy!”

“I
know
,” Stevie says. “But it's hard, okay? There's
two
of them.”

Joni sighs and motions for me to follow her.

“Willy-nilly?” I repeat as we walk down a hall with framed paintings covering the walls. The house smells like fresh-baked bread. “Who talks like that?”

She laughs. “I do, apparently.” She pushes open the door at the end of the hall. “Welcome to
Chez
Joni
.”

Holy. Shit.

Joni's room is
insane
. The rest of the house was pretty normal. Colors everywhere and lots of art, but nothing crazy. This is hands down the trippiest room I've ever been in. You step inside and it's like you're stepping outside. Or through a magical wardrobe or some shit. The ceiling is one large, angled skylight, with a few strategically placed crossbeams supporting the glass. Above us, the sun is still fairly high in the sky, and the leaves of an old elm tree rustle together like they're trying to keep warm.

The walls, closet door, and light switches are covered in the most intricate mural I've ever seen. It's a 360-degree panoramic view of a city park. The details, the depths, the lighting…it's like a photograph. I don't feel as if I'm looking at a wall; I feel as if I'm looking out a window.

All the furniture is white—the bed, the lamp, the desk, the dresser.

There's some sort of soundtrack being pumped out of hidden speakers somewhere. Street traffic, the constant slosh of water from a fountain, and someone playing the violin far off in the distance.

And the floor…

“Is this
AstroTur
f
?”

“Yeah, my parents wouldn't let me plant real grass in here, so this was the best I could do.”

“Where
are
we?”

“Washington Square Park,” she says. “It's in New York. It's my favorite place in the world.”

“I've never been there. What's so great about it?”

“I have this picture of me there with my mom when I was a baby. It's one of the only photos I have of just the two of us.” She opens her computer and pulls up a picture of a young woman who looks a little like Joni, wearing a winter coat and hat and holding a fat baby about Hope's age. They're in front of a big arch. “I don't really have any memories of her, but this picture feels like a memory, if that makes sense.”

I nod. It's like the journals. A poor substitute for the real thing, but better than nothing.

“So when my stepmom and my sister Stevie and my best friend Karen and I went on a trip to New York a few years ago, we all went there.” She shows me another picture of the four of them under that same arch. A tall, darker-skinned woman who I guess is Joni's stepmother; the girl from the hallway, only younger; and a white girl with a huge smile. Joni's hair was longer then—and pink. “It's this perfect little square of music and art and history and intellect and nature and harmony, right in the middle of a bunch of screaming streets.” She looks me in the eye and smiles. “It was incredible. Because those are all things we have inside us too. You know, the things that make us human? Even though pressure, rules, drama push in on us from the outside and try to take over. I like being reminded that if this little, unassuming park in the middle of Manhattan can fight back against the bullshit, so can I.”

I gape at her for a long moment, slowly coming to realize that Joni is
my
Washington Square Park. My way to connect with who I was—am—in the middle of all the bullshit.

She
gets
it.
I wonder how she knew that was the exact right thing to say to me.

“What bullshit are you pushing back against?” I ask. She always seems so perfectly happy.

She shrugs. “Family being all up in my business all the time. Friend drama. Karen and I…I don't know, lots of stuff.”

I want to know more, but then she'll feel like she can ask me more about my life, and we're not going there. So I nod. “How did you even do this?”

“You'd be surprised what you can do with a little elbow grease and imagination.” She grins. “Elijah did most of it.”

“Elijah?”

“The guy in the garage? He's my stepbrother. Anyway, you ready to go?” She jumps up and down. “It's tattoo time!”

We wave to Elijah on our way out, but I don't think he sees us, he's so immersed in his work. The kids are out of sight, but I can still hear them screaming and laughing.

“So what are you getting?” I ask as we drive. The evening is warm, and we have the windows rolled down.

“An outline of an elephant on my shoulder,” Joni says as her short hair blows around in the wind.

“An elephant? Why?”

“Because they're beautiful.”

Fair enough. “Your parents don't care?”

“Nah. My dad let me get my first one last year. I'd been telling him I wanted a tattoo for as long as I could remember—since I was six or seven. I've always loved the concept of decorating your body. Anyway, he kept saying, ‘Sure, Joni, when you're sixteen, you can get a tattoo.' I think he thought I'd forget about it by then. But I turned sixteen and still wanted one, and my dad never goes back on his word.”

Joni's dad's follow-through seems to mean a lot to her. I file that bit of information away for future negotiations with Hope.

“What did you get?” I ask, taking the Laconia exit.

Joni gives me a closed-lipped smile. “Tell me how you got your eyebrow scar and I'll tell you about my tattoo.”