Bigger than a Bread Box Read online

  But then.

  Then my mother, behind me, said in a tiny voice, “Rebecca, please? Don’t make this any harder for me.”

  And I listened.

  I didn’t have to listen. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I turned my head from my dad and unhugged him. I pulled away from his arms, wiggled out, opened the car door, and ducked inside. I looked at my lap. I didn’t look at him. If he wasn’t going to cry, then I wasn’t going to cry either. I could be strong too.

  Dad followed, leaned in after me through the open door, grabbed my chin with his cold hand, and turned my face toward him. He kissed me on the forehead. He put something in my hand, folded my fingers shut, and squeezed my fist with his own big hand. “I love you,” he said. “I love you, Becks. So much love.”

  Which was funny to hear out loud. He didn’t say things like that very often.

  He reached back to touch Lew, but just then my mom turned the key, started the engine. The car made a big noise. My door was still open.

  Over the noise of the car, through my open door, Dad said, “Annie, please? We can still … They’re my kids.… I’ll try to … Don’t do this.…”

  “I already did,” she said. “We’ll call you when we get there.”

  That was how we left him, through an open car door. My mom stepped on the gas. The car began to move. My dad jumped back to the sidewalk, off balance. When I turned around, I could see him standing in the street. He was calling after us. My dad was yelling in the street for everyone to hear; then he was running behind the car. He was calling, “Come back! Come back!”

  I whipped back around to make sure Mom was seeing that, to make sure she had seen Dad yelling and running after us. But I guess she didn’t care, because she turned a corner, and we were gone. The open car door scraped the ground for a full block before I finally managed to pull it shut. The sound was terrible, grinding.

  I put on my seat belt. What else could I do?

  “Daddy?” Lew said, trying to turn around in his car seat. “Daddy?”

  Nobody answered him, so he put his stinky blue blanket over his head and slurped his thumb.

  We drove for a while like that. Mom turned on the radio to a news show full of serious voices talking about hurricane refugees. Under his blanket, Lew fell asleep like he always does on the highway.

  After a minute, I opened my fingers to see what the cold thing in my hand was, to see what my dad had given me. It was a necklace, Grandma Shapiro’s white gold locket, the one she was wearing in the picture on the living room wall, beside the other old black-and-white pictures of people I didn’t know. We didn’t visit much with our out-of-town family, and I didn’t remember ever meeting my father’s mother. There were only a few pictures in our photo albums, of me in her lap, and then of me and Dad at her funeral. I remembered Dad saying she’d died in that locket.

  Dad didn’t talk much to his family. They mostly lived far away, in Florida. Occasionally we got cards from them, for Jewish holidays and birthdays, with pictures of college-age cousins whose names I could barely remember. Dad didn’t even go to family weddings. He didn’t like fuss, he said, any more than he liked Florida. Mom said at least Dad had a family.

  I opened the locket with a fingernail and stared at the picture inside, a tiny photo of my dad as a baby, a little circle of faded color. He looked like Lew, with his hair in soft brown wings on either side of his round face. I closed the locket again and fastened it around my neck. It felt cold and smooth against my skin, and heavier than I’d expected.

  I tried to remember the last time my dad had given me something, and I couldn’t. But Dad didn’t have to give presents or say special words, because there were all these little things about him. Like how he slapped his chest with his hands in the morning while he sang “You Are My Sunshine.” How he put extra butter on the popcorn when Mom wasn’t looking. How he got really happy watching old black-and-white movies about manly men and pretty ladies. I didn’t watch movies like that by myself, but I loved them on Sunday afternoon with Dad. I thought about how he looked serious when he lit candles on Friday night, which was really the only Jewish thing he ever did. Whenever Mom was gone at dinnertime, Dad made scrambled eggs with cheese.

  It made me sad, thinking so much about him, even though the memories were happy, so I decided to stop. Instead I stared out the window and watched the trees go past. I remember thinking that I was riding in the front seat for the first time ever on a long trip. It was a weird thing to be thinking, but I couldn’t help it. Usually I was stuck in the back with Lew drooling beside me or—if he was awake—flinging raisins and animal crackers at my head. Now, up front, I could see ahead. I could see everything for myself.

  I watched the road without saying anything to my mom. Periodically she would point to some bird flying by or something, and sigh. I knew she wanted me to notice, to sigh with her, so that we could start chatting and then talk about things. But I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. Mom always wanted to talk about things, about every last little detail of her life. I knew that talking would make her feel better, and that it would probably make me feel worse.

  After about a half hour, she picked up her phone with her right hand and, with her left hand still on the wheel, dialed. I guess Gran didn’t pick up because Mom left a message. “We’re on our way” was all she said, which meant Gran was expecting us.

  I really didn’t want to break the silence, so I just sat there and said nothing, until, as we flew past the WELCOME TO VIRGINIA sign, I couldn’t hold it any longer.

  “I have to pee,” I said.

  Mom sighed and kept driving.

  “I have to pee bad.”

  Finally she said, “Oh, Rebecca, I’m so, so sorry,” in a shaky voice.

  “I just have to pee is all,” I mumbled, not looking at her.

  It was really late when we got to Atlanta. I was asleep, but I remember Mom poking my shoulder and saying softly, “We’re here, honey.” I opened my eyes. The car was parked beside a big hedge with flowers on it. Flowers in November? When I opened my door, I could smell them: too sweet, like old lady perfume. There was a streetlight shining down yellow.

  We climbed out of the car into what felt like spring, and Mom carried Lew up a set of brick steps while I followed behind her. The door swung open, and Gran was standing there in a nightgown and robe, looking sad and happy at the same time, with her short gray hair sticking straight up in the air. She hugged me. When she let go, she pointed me down a long central hallway full of doors and dark wood trim—just like I remembered—toward a pink door. I felt funny, like I was sleepwalking. I walked down the hall and pushed open the door. I pulled off my shoes and socks and jeans. I crawled into bed in my T-shirt and underpants. Almost instantly, I fell back asleep.

  CHAPTER 3

  I woke up in the morning in a strange bed in a strange room. Gran’s house smelled like coffee and bacon, and there was too much sun in my eyes. I climbed down from the bed and looked out a big window at the leaves still green on the tree beside the house. Through the leaves, I could see a flat blue sky, an empty sky. It took me a second to realize why that was weird.

  No gulls? I looked in every direction, but I didn’t see a single bird. A city without seagulls? It seemed wrong. It had never occurred to me that there weren’t gulls everywhere.

  I put on my jeans from the day before. I felt at my neck to make sure the locket was still there. Then I looked around. I could tell right away that the room had been my mother’s when she was a kid. I had a faint sense of having been in it before. There were pictures of her on the desk, all of them very smiley, and there was a plaque with her name on it. She’d won second place for archery. Archery? Really? The wallpaper was a pattern of faded flowers, and the bedspread and curtains were as pink as the door. I didn’t like pink. I liked blue. There were old dolls on a high shelf. There was a bookcase full of paperback books, mysteries mostly, as if my mom had left that room when she was a teenager and nobody had been i
n it since then. Though I knew that wasn’t true.

  I opened the pink door.

  From the hallway, I could hear Mom and Lew and Gran eating breakfast and talking loudly. I followed the sound and listened. Gran was fussing over Lew. She was saying, “Here’s a bitty bite for a hungry boy.” I guess she was trying to feed him, even though he was too old for that, but when I stepped into the doorway, I saw he was smiling and getting all sticky with syrup. He seemed to be enjoying the fuss as much as the pancakes.

  Everyone looked up at me and stopped what they were doing, like they’d all been waiting for me.

  Lew smiled and waved. “Babecka!”

  Mom set down her coffee and said, “Hey, sleepyhead.”

  I shot her what I hoped was a mean look and didn’t say anything back.

  Gran threw open her arms and shouted, “Rebecca! Let me look at you! You’ve gotten so big!”

  I hugged her, of course, because even when you’re being mad, you can’t not hug the grandmother you haven’t seen for almost a year. I was glad to see her, and to prove it, I let her make me a plate of pancakes and bacon, and then I ate until I felt too full. Grandmothers like to see you eat too much. Besides, we never had bacon at home. Dad didn’t keep kosher or anything, but for some reason he hated bacon. Too bad for him, because bacon is delicious, especially when it just happens to bump into some pancake syrup.

  Once I was finished, I set down my fork and turned to my mom. “Now what?”

  “Well,” she said with a forced smile, pretending it wasn’t the first thing I’d said to her since we’d stopped to pee in Virginia the day before. “It’s been so long since we were last here, Gran and I were thinking we’d have a fun day today. See the sights! Since it’s a nice morning, we thought we might walk to the zoo. I always loved the zoo.” Mom sat there, waiting for me to be excited. She was still grinning, but her eyes looked tired and red.

  I made her wait a little longer before I said, “No, now what? What are we doing here? How long are we staying? I didn’t even say goodbye to Mary Kate. I need to call her.”

  “Annie!” Gran cried, whipping around to stare at my mom. “You didn’t tell them? You didn’t explain?”

  “There wasn’t time,” said my mom, looking down at her plate.

  “Explain what?” I asked.

  “It’s a twelve-hour drive from Maryland to Georgia,” said Gran. “How long does it take?”

  “Tell us what?” I asked, remembering that long, silent ride.

  “It didn’t feel like the right time,” mumbled my mother.

  Gran made a disappointed face at my mom. Then she turned to me and Lew and said, “You’re all going to stay here with me for a while.”

  “But … what about school?”

  “You’ll go to school here, in Atlanta. Just for a bit. Until your mom and dad can get everything all sorted out. Okay? There’s a great middle school just a few streets over, where I used to sometimes volunteer in the library. It’s a wonderful place. My friend Judy is a secretary there, and she’s already processed all the paperwork so they can let you in midyear. Isn’t that nice? Lew can hang out with me during the day. I’ve been looking forward to it! Retirement is boring.” She made a face at Lew, who wasn’t saying a word. He was just watching the rest of us carefully.

  “What!” I yelled, flipping around to my mom. “You found me a school? You said we were going on a trip. A trip is like a week, maybe.”

  “I said we’d go home when it made sense to, and we will, but nothing makes sense right now. And when I called Gran to talk, she offered—”

  “You didn’t say we were moving.”

  “We aren’t. Not permanently, I don’t think, and anyway, I didn’t know,” said my mom, looking into my eyes. “I wasn’t sure. I’m still not. About anything.”

  I turned away from her again. “I hate you,” I whispered. “I hate you.”

  “I know,” she said in a deflated way.

  I didn’t feel sorry for her. It was one thing to run away. People got mad and ran away from things all the time, but then they cooled down. It was something else to stay away.

  Mom reached for my shoulder. “Please understand, Rebecca,” she said. “I need some time to think, some headspace. I need help. I have a lot to figure out, and it’s nice for me … to be home, with Gran. Plus, I was able to set things up so that I can take shifts at a hospital here. It’ll only take a week or two to get my license in Georgia, so I can keep the bills paid in Baltimore while I get my head together.”

  “You got a job here?”

  “Well, not a permanent job or anything. I’ll just pick up extra shifts when I can. I’ll just be what they call a traveling nurse. Please … try to understand.…”

  “It’s November,” I said, turning back around to face her, suddenly feeling like I couldn’t breathe. “It’s the middle of the year. I don’t know anybody here. I won’t have any friends.”

  “You will, Rebecca,” said my mom softly. “You’ll make friends. I promise.”

  “But … Dad—”

  “Your dad’ll be just fine. He’ll make it work. And I promise, you’ll get to see him.”

  “How can you know he’ll be fine?” I asked. “How can you do this?” I stood up and my chair fell behind me with a bang, but I didn’t pick it up. I just ran out of the kitchen.

  Mom called out, “Please … come back and let’s talk about this!”

  In the hall, I flattened my back against the wall so nobody could see me standing there from the kitchen. I had no idea what to do and I didn’t know where to go, but I couldn’t be in the same room with her. I couldn’t stand her face. We weren’t going to talk about it. I was never talking to her again, ever.

  “Rebecca!” I heard Gran call loudly.

  They probably thought I was off sobbing on that awful pink bed, but I wasn’t going to cry.

  Mom said to Gran, “Let her go. It’s a shock. This is going to be hard. She probably needs to be mad at me right now.”

  I did. I was mad, and it only made me madder to listen to her trying to sound all understanding and loving and motherly when she was anything but. Still, I listened from the hall. I wanted to know what they were saying.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t explain this to her, Annie,” said Gran. “She’s not a little girl. She’s twelve. Almost a teenager. What were you thinking?”

  “I guess I wasn’t thinking,” I heard my mother say.

  I wanted to call my dad. I’d ask him to come and get me, ask him to bring me back home with him, and Lew too. Mom could stay here and “rest up” by herself. She could “rest up” all she needed just fine without us! She could see how it felt to be alone. How Dad felt.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t know where the phone was in this house. I didn’t know where anything was. Quietly I stepped away from the wall and tiptoed down the hallway, in search of a phone.

  The first door I opened was a pink-tiled bathroom. Ugh, more pink.

  The second door was a closet that smelled like mothballs. Everything inside it was covered with plastic bags.

  The third door led to what looked like Gran’s room, and lots of plaid.

  Behind the fourth door was a steep, narrow staircase. I climbed the stairs, my hands touching the walls on either side of me. There wasn’t a railing.

  At the top of the stairs was a dusty attic. “Clutter” was the word that jumped into my head when I saw it. Light streamed in from two dirty windows at either end of the big slanty-roofed room, onto piles of dusty boxes and pieces of forgotten furniture: a broken rocking chair, an old sewing machine attached to a table, a light blue kitchen chair. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find a phone up there, but I couldn’t help poking around anyway. It was interesting. We didn’t have an attic in Baltimore. When things took up too much space, we had a yard sale.

  In one corner a plastic Christmas tree gathered dust. The lights were wired onto the branches, and old threads of silver tinsel clung to the needles. One old
candy cane hung from a spindly branch. Next to the tree was an old metal washtub full of moth-eaten linens and a wooden ironing board. Beside that was a box labeled ANNIE’S THINGS.

  Along the sloping wall behind the washtub was a set of low shelves with a bunch of old boxes. They were all different. Some were metal, and some were wood. Some were painted bright colors, and some were falling apart. I could tell they were bread boxes because most of them were painted or stamped with the word “Bread.” I guess it was a collection, but it seemed weird to go to the trouble of collecting a bunch of stuff and then just stick it all in an attic.

  I began opening the boxes. Some were rusted shut, and I had to really work to pry them open, but except for a few dead bugs and a lot of dust, each box I opened was empty. I lost interest and sat down in the tub of dingy linens. It was comfortable, and I decided not to go back downstairs for a while. Let them wonder where I was!

  I sat like that and thought about how Dad would come and rescue me. I made it into a little movie in my head. I pictured him driving up to the house. I pictured myself carrying Lew down the steps. I pictured Mom, wringing her hands on the steps, calling after us. I pictured us driving away.

  Then it occurred to me that we’d taken the car when we left, so with his cab totaled, there was no way for Dad to drive anywhere. The movie in my head faded, and I sneezed from the dust.

  I wondered how long it would be before someone found me in the attic. Eventually either Mom or Gran was sure to come looking. I wouldn’t need to eat for hours, after all those pancakes, but how long could I last in a dirty attic with nothing to do? I wished I’d grabbed one of the paperbacks from the bookshelf in the room downstairs.

  “What am I going to do with myself up here?” I asked a scratched oil painting of a girl sitting on a footstool in an old-fashioned red dress, holding a book. A little brass plate on the frame read “Molly Moran.”

  “I wish I had a book,” I said to Molly.

  Molly stared back at me, with eyes so dark they were almost black. Her face was pale and thin, framed by brown curls. She looked sad. But of course she didn’t answer me, so I got out of the washtub and pawed around in the boxes some more, looking for anything that might keep me busy. Maybe I’d come across an old puzzle, a pad of paper and a pencil, anything. It seemed strange that with all the other junk in the attic, there weren’t any books, or even a stack of old National Geographics.