Sam, page 4
“I woke up because I had a nightmare.”
He turns down the music. “You know what’s good for nightmares?”
“Staying at your house.”
“You have a one-track mind.”
“I can’t sleep!”
“How come, Sam?” She doesn’t answer, but he says, “What’s going on?”
She thinks maybe she won’t say, and then she thinks maybe she should—but she’s afraid. “I started it,” she says at last.
“Started what?”
Then she tells him how she’s scared Jack will come back. She describes how Jack smoked and how she wouldn’t move, and he picked her up and she fought him—but she doesn’t say she bit his arm. She tells how Jack threw her out the door, and her dad turns the music lower and lower as she talks, until at last he turns it off.
She looks over at him and his eyes are bright and dark. He seems like someone else; his arms are tense.
“Dad?” she says, but he won’t talk at all.
When they arrive, the yard smells like smoke and burgers and damp grass. Courtney is a cat with little black ears. Noah is a tiny lion. All the neighbors and relatives are there, including Noah’s grandma and grandpa and even Jack.
“Hi, sweetie,” Jen tells Sam. Jen’s husband Steve did all the decorations. Fake cobwebs, tombstones, ghosts hanging on the porch—but Mitchell doesn’t notice any of it. He walks straight through the yard.
“Fucking asshole!” He shoves Jack so hard that Jack staggers for just a second before he shoves Mitchell back.
“Whoa, whoa, what’s happening!” Jen rushes over.
Grandma B. is holding Noah.
“What, are you drunk?” Courtney screams, but Mitchell doesn’t hear.
Jack rises up like he will smash him, but Mitchell has an animal inside him too. He is a panther; he is so strong and fast.
The two of them are flying at each other and Noah is crying. Jen swears she’ll call the police, and Steve tries to separate them. He grabs Mitchell’s arm, but Mitchell throws him off.
Jack’s lip is bleeding. Blood soaks his shirt. He doesn’t care. He opens Jen’s cooler and kicks it, so a waterfall of ice pours out. Then he grabs a beer and smashes it on Mitchell’s face.
Sam’s dad doubles over gasping. His nose is pouring blood, but he keeps punching, hitting, and Sam is screaming, “Dad, Dad!” because this is her fault. She told on Jack.
Courtney is begging them to stop, but they don’t listen. They are on the ground, rolling in the grass. Jack is heavier and stronger, but Mitchell is wild. He’s got his hands on Jack’s face and his thumbs in Jack’s eyes—and it takes Steve and his brother and his cousin to pull them apart.
7
Courtney holds Sam back. She won’t let Sam help; she doesn’t care if Mitchell bleeds to death. She yells at him. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nobody hurts my kid,” Mitchell says, and Sam wants to say he didn’t, because the truth is Jack didn’t break her bones—but she is too scared to explain. “Nobody throws her out.”
Only Sam and Courtney know what Mitchell means. Sam says nothing, and her mom is saying, Leave.
Grandma and Grandpa B. accuse Sam’s dad. Everybody blames him because they saw him walk up and start the fight.
“You’re a fool,” Jack tells Mitchell. Jack’s lip is swollen huge.
Mitchell’s nose won’t stop. All the blood is pouring out of him. Sam does not think he can stand up, but he does. He stumbles to his car and it starts right away, and he swerves around on the street in front of the house and he takes off, speeding down the street.
And then Sam doesn’t see him, not for weeks. Jack comes around to play with Noah. Grandma and Grandpa B. take Noah to the playground or to their house, but where is Sam’s dad? She asks her mom, and every time, her mom says he is busy, or he is away.
“But where?” Sam asks.
“Working.”
“Where is he working?” Sam asks.
“On himself,” says Courtney. “Or he should be.”
“Is his nose better?”
Her mom says, “I guess so. Yeah.”
“You saw him?”
Courtney won’t answer—but why? How come she can see him, and Sam can’t? “He has car trouble,” Courtney says.
“Can he get it fixed?”
“I doubt it.”
“Does he have a dead battery?”
Her mom thinks for a second. Then she says, “No, Sam, he totaled it.”
Sam listens to her mom talk to Jen at the salon. She pretends that she can’t overhear, but she listens to her mom say that Mitchell is unsafe. Unrealistic.
* * *
—
The next time Mitchell calls it is the day after Thanksgiving. Courtney says, “It’s your dad,” and Sam is almost afraid to take the phone.
In her mind he is still angry, but when he talks, his voice is light. He sounds like himself. “Hey, monkey.”
“Hi,” Sam answers softly.
“Happy birthday!” he tells her, even though he is five days late.
“Thanks.”
“How does it feel to be EIGHT?”
“I don’t know.”
“The same?”
“The same.”
“I got you something!”
“What?”
“It’s a surprise!”
“Okay.”
She thinks that he will come give her a present, but Courtney drives Sam to town instead. She drops Sam at the Atomic Bean and says, “I’ll be right here in the car.” She parks in front where Sam can see her through the window. “Here’s money.” She gives Sam a ten.
Sam says, “What’s that for?” because wouldn’t her dad pay? She is nervous, walking in alone. What if he doesn’t come?
But Mitchell is right there waiting, and he is fine, even his nose. He is hugging Sam off the ground, and he is strong. He has a table and he has already ordered her hot chocolate and a glazed donut.
He laughs because he catches Sam looking for her present. “Hold on, hold on.” He wants to know about school and reading and if she is still practicing the monkey bars.
“Not really.”
“Okay,” her dad says, like that’s fine; everything is fine. “When you’re ready, you’ll get back to Boulders.”
Sam frowns because he is unrealistic, just like her mom said.
But good news, her dad is back at work, which means gigging in New Hampshire, and he is driving a new car. Actually, it’s his girlfriend’s car. Her name is April.
“April?”
But that is her name, and she lives in Portsmouth. Sam can come up and meet her. They will all go to Strawbery Banke where you can ride a carriage through the old town and peek into the windows to see how people used to live. Sam says okay.
It’s like listening to a story, hearing how it’s going to be, the horses’ hooves on cobblestones.
Her dad is sipping coffee, and she bends over her mug to lick the whipped cream. He tells her, “We’ll have tea and scones.”
“What are scones?”
“You don’t know what a scone is? It’s better than a muffin. It’s buttery and flaky. Sometimes it’s got currants. Sometimes you eat them with strawberries. The strawberries are tart and sweet at the same time.”
“Yum,” Sam says dreamily.
“Music is great at Strawbery Banke,” he tells Sam. “And it’s a great place for magicians.”
Now Sam sits up straight. She knows what’s going on. “You’re moving!”
Her dad says, “Not permanently! I’ll be back all the time!”
“When?”
“I’ll come down, and you’ll come up.”
“How will I come up?” She looks through the café window, and there is her mom sitting in the car. Probably she already knows about this. It makes Sam mad because nobody tells her anything. “How far away is it?”
“Just forty miles.”
“Forty miles!”
“It’s not far at all!” He reaches to the floor and picks up a big cardboard box that wasn’t even there before—but that doesn’t surprise her. “Did you forget your present?”
She hardly wants her present anymore, but he says, Open it.
Slowly she lifts the top and finds a pair of pointy climbing shoes, bright blue and yellow with a little bit of black. He says try them on, so she slips her feet in, and they are way too big for her.
She just looks down at those big shoes, while her dad says, “Room to grow!”
If he were really magic, he would tap her shoes, and they would shrink to fit—but then he would know her size already, without looking. He would know her size and he would know what she is thinking—that she never wanted shoes or Boulders without him.
8
Sam stops climbing up the doorframes. Her mom says thank you. Then, later on, she says, Honey, don’t be sad.
Sam says, “Honey?” because her mom never calls her that.
Courtney says, “You look so sad and tired.”
“I’m not.”
Courtney looks doubtful. She thinks Sam is pretending, but Sam is telling the truth. She is not tired. She is not honey either.
“We’ll come down this summer,” Mitchell tells Sam on the phone. Right now, he’s on the road in Maine, Vermont, and Montreal. He is juggling, and conjuring, cutting April in half, but when school’s out, they will take Sam to Crane Beach, and maybe camping, and maybe sailing to the islands—the little ones that you can see from shore. They’ll get a boat!
Surprise, surprise, that summer nobody comes down. Her dad is up in Maine alone. Courtney says he has no boat, no money, and no April.
The day school lets out, Courtney says, “We’ll go anyway.” It will be the three of them, and maybe Grandma B.
Sam doesn’t feel like swimming, but Noah says, Please, please? And so they go. Grandma B. drives, and she wants Jack to come, but he does not. He and Courtney are on and off again. That’s what Courtney tells Jen at the salon. There are many fish in the sea, Jen says.
Mostly Sam finds dead horseshoe crabs. Grandma B. is setting up her beach chair and Noah is digging in the sand, but Sam and Courtney are walking along the wet sand where crabs wash ashore.
Sam wears a striped one-piece bathing suit, but Courtney is wearing a bikini the color of a nectarine. People turn and look at her as she walks by. Guys are throwing a Frisbee, and it lands right at her feet.
Courtney throws the Frisbee back, slicing the air, but she doesn’t ask to play. She wades into the waves, instead. “Too cold!” says Courtney, but she keeps going, hip deep, then chest deep. She is standing in the water, and Sam is almost standing. On tiptoe she can touch the bottom.
“RIP second grade,” says Courtney. “The older grades are better, and high school is the best!”
“Is that when you met Dad?”
“Not really.”
“Didn’t he go to your school?”
“Well, he did, and he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t try it.”
The water is colder down by Sam’s legs. Cold prickles her body. “How come you always say that?”
“You know what?” says Courtney. Sam thinks, Don’t get smart, but Courtney doesn’t say that. She says, “Your dad is an artist. Lots of people pretend they are, but he really is. His art isn’t in museums. His songs aren’t on the radio. His magic isn’t in, like, the Magic Hall of Fame, but he’s the real deal. He just—he puts ideas together you would never think of—and when he has his—” She interrupts herself. “He’s unbelievable.”
Sam asks, “In a good way, or a bad way?”
“I love you.” Courtney laughs.
“What?” Sam hops to keep her head above the water.
“We met at the beach,” Courtney says.
“Here?”
“No, Singing Beach. And you know what he was doing? Building sandcastles. I was sixteen and he was eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” Sam says, because wasn’t he too old to play in the sand?
But her dad’s castles were fantastic. That’s what Courtney says. He built her a castle three stories tall, and it had towers with scalloped shells on top and windows of sea glass, and a moat that filled with water when the tide came in.
* * *
—
Sometimes it’s easier when he’s far away. It’s better when you aren’t reminded of him.
When school starts again, Sam’s dad is up in Canada, which is north of here. Her mom says, “Do you want to see it on the map?”
Sam says, “No thank you.”
When Sam turns nine, Mitchell sends her fifty dollars. After Sam’s party with the kids from school, Courtney cleans up the melted ice cream cake and says, Look at these beautiful markers. Why don’t you write to Dad? Or draw a picture?
Sam stares at her new pad of art paper, and she has no idea what to draw. She doesn’t have as many ideas as she did when she was younger. She tries to draw her mom, but then she rips the picture out.
“Hey, wait, I liked that!” Courtney says. She recognizes her green eyes and her long reddish hair. She is wearing her bikini top and she’s got a mermaid tail. “But where’s the rest? You didn’t finish.” It’s true, Courtney is all alone on the white paper. Sam doesn’t have all day, so she takes her dark blue and her light blue and her green-blue and quickly fills the whole page with squiggles for waves, so now Courtney is swimming in the ocean. “Sign it,” Courtney says, “and write the date.” Sam writes her name and then 11/21/99. “I love it,” Courtney says, but that’s because she is Sam’s mom. Sam isn’t good at drawing anymore.
She is still good at hiding.
When Jack comes around, she climbs the beech to watch and listen. When his black truck pulls up, she waits for him to leave, and if he stays, she won’t come in until it’s dark and cold. Then she hides out in her room.
One night she hears Jack say, “What’s wrong with her?”
Her mom says, “Leave her alone. She’s having a hard time.”
He says, “Just keep making excuses. Good parenting.”
“You would know.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Think about it,” Courtney says.
“Think about it,” Jack echoes.
Courtney says, “Your mom is still making excuses for you.”
That night Courtney and Jack start fighting for real.
Sam is sleeping in her bed, but she wakes up when her mom shouts, “No!”
There’s a crashing sound and Noah wakes up too.
“While I live here, it’s my house,” Courtney screams.
“It’s my house,” he shouts back. “Nothing here is yours. You don’t kick me out. I kick your ass out.”
Sam hears the front door swing open. She feels the winter night through the thin walls. He’s going to throw her mom out. That’s all she knows. Noah is crying and she scrambles out of bed and gives him his teddy. “Hold Bill,” she orders. “Don’t move.”
She rushes into the living room where her mom and Jack are struggling at the door. Her mom is strong, but Jack is turning back into the bear. He’ll kick her if he can. He’ll cover up her mouth and eat her head.
Sam launches herself at him. “Get off of her!”
“Sam. Stay back,” her mom screams, but Sam is hitting Jack as hard as she can.
He turns on her and slams her to the couch. Before she can catch her breath, her mom says, “Get Noah. Find your boots.”
Jack stands and watches as Courtney grabs Noah, who is holding Bill. Sam follows and they start the cold, cold car.
And that’s how Jack wins. He gets the house.
9
The first night, Sam and Noah and Courtney sleep on Jen’s couch under quilts.
The second night, they sleep down in the finished basement on new air mattresses.
Then Courtney finds an apartment in town.
It’s for the best. They can walk to school, and Courtney can park under the building, so they won’t have to shovel out the car.
Moving is gonna be great. Maybe. They collect empty cartons from the salon, the supermarket, the liquor store. After school, they drive back to the old house for their clothes and kitchen stuff. Every day they take a load to their new place.
The apartment is two bedrooms and one bath, and everything is pretty new. They have a dishwasher and that is huge. Sam has a tent. She sets it up on the carpet next to Noah’s bed.
She got it when Jen was cleaning her garage to find them some chairs. “Look at all this camping stuff,” said Jen.
“Can I have that?” Sam asked.
“Sam, that thing is filthy,” Courtney said, but Sam brushed off the leaves. Then Steve helped Sam vacuum it.
The tent is olive green with white mesh windows. You can sleep there and then sit up and get dressed for school in privacy. It’s like having your own house. Sam keeps her savings (seventy-three dollars) in the tent, along with her good markers and expensive drawing paper, her lollipops from the salon, and her china sheep, missing its front leg.
The apartment has wall-to-wall carpeting soft on your toes. They take off their shoes to keep it clean. What’s missing is a beech tree. They have a balcony, but it’s not big enough for anything. It’s a trade-off. Another trade-off is that Courtney has to take a second job to pay the rent. She works at Staples in the shopping plaza, and that means Afterschool.
“Look at these classes at the Y,” Courtney tells Sam.
“No way.”
The Y is practically for babies. Sam says, No, don’t make me go there, but Courtney signs up Sam for the Y, anyway, because who else can take Noah? “He can learn to swim,” Courtney says. “And look at all these classes for kids your age.” Sam can take photography or cooking or homework club—or climbing. “They have a climbing wall!”
