The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [81]
“So now you’re turning back into a party girl?”
“Too late. Wild, wonderful California beckons, but I’m taking my kid. It’s not party time, believe me. Courtney hates me. She hates John, too, just not as much.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” Julianne says as she opens the door. “She’s just upset.”
“Yes, and no wonder. I spoiled her rotten from the minute she got sick. This is what I get. But I’ll be damned if she’s going to a new school on the other side of the country with a tattoo around her arm. I hope having it taken off hurts like hell.”
“Oh, it will,” Julianne assures her. “Unless they’ve changed things since I got mine taken off, you can be sure she’ll feel the pain.”
Andrea nods. “Good.” Her small, nondescript features look, for once . . . rather fierce.
Julianne becomes aware of her headache again even before she waves goodbye to Andrea at the bottom of the driveway. Solitude, she thinks gratefully. Then a voice says, “Mrs. Havelock?” And though Julianne has grown accustomed to Brynne occasionally hanging out in her yard after dark, waiting for Doug to leave or Julianne to get home because she’s been forbidden to be in a house alone with a boy, even Toby, she’s startled when the girl calls her name.
“What’s up?” Julianne asks, walking her toward the house.
“I wanted to ask you about something. I mean, since you work in a doctor’s office . . .” It always begins like this.
“What, honey?” She opens the door again. In the warm light of the hallway, as usual, Brynne practically screeches to a halt.
“It’s just that . . . She’s not comfortable anymore.”
“Well, we talked about that, didn’t we?”
“I know. But this is all the time. Even when she’s sleeping. I can tell.”
“Do you want to come sit down?”
Brynne shakes her head no. She folds her arms over her chest, as if to brace herself. “She’s never going to be comfortable, is she?”
“Probably not.” Julianne is not going to lie.
Brynne drops her arms, sags a little. “It’s even getting to Melody,” she says. “Up till now she didn’t really notice.”
Julianne sighs. What child named Melody wouldn’t be despondent, when the only music playing is a dirge? “Come on in,” she says and leads the way into the kitchen before the girl can refuse. Julianne pours her a Coke and sits her down at the table.
“Has someone told Melody what’s going on? Your father? Your grandmother?” Julianne asks.
“Everybody’s told her. I think she just gets more confused. Or did get more confused. I think I straightened her out.” She takes a drink and holds the fizzy liquid in her mouth a long time before she swallows. “When we were little, my mom used to read us The Little Engine That Could. I mean, all the time. So the other day I asked Melody if she remembered how Mom always told us how we should be like the little engine who said, I think I can, I think I can. Well, of course Melody did.
“So then I asked her, remember the other engine who can’t help take the toys over the mountain because she’s tired and just wants to go back to the roundhouse? Well, I think Mom is getting so tired she wants to go back to the roundhouse. That’s what I told her.” Brynne sets the Coke down onto the table. “I think she got it then.”
Julianne’s chest tightens at this notion of Brynne, age fourteen, having to mother her eight-year-old sister, maybe from now on. She puts her hand on top of the girl’s only long enough to reassure but not embarrass her. This is what she learned from raising boys. “That’s very brave,” she says.
“I always knew she wasn’t going to get better,” Brynne says. “But for a while . . . it was actually okay. She seemed like she was resting. I hoped we’d go on like that. I didn’t want anything to change.”
“Of course you didn’t.”
“But now.” Tears brim in the girl’s eyes, and her voice trembles with them. “I don’t want her to have to go on like this. It’s too hard for her. She’s too tired.”
“Yes.” The beat of Julianne’s headache is strong behind her eyes. How old do you have to be before you understand that the burst of energy that