“Tiffany, open your eyes,” Mom demands.
So I do.
I’m standing with my back pressed up against the wall. Back in my old apartment in Chicago. Watching...me. Younger-me.
I cover my mouth in awe as I observe the scene. I remember this day.
Mom wipes her tears with a paper towel. Her bald head is covered with a pretty scarf and she wears pajamas. “Tiffany, are you just gonna sit there with your eyes closed?”
“If you’re gonna cry, you should be in the designated cry room. Those are the rules,” I state simply, arms folded, lips pursed in a tight scowl, eyes clenched shut.
“Can we suspend the rules for today, Tiff? Would that be okay?” Mom asks.
Younger-me opens her eyes slowly. They’re red and swollen.
“I don’t mind moving into the hospice. It’s time.”
“That means you’re done fighting. People go to hospice to die! We can keep trying.” I look so desperate, so strangely young. But this was only a few months ago. I couldn’t have aged all that much in a few months, could I have? Yet, for some reason, staring at young-me feels as if I’m staring at an entirely different person.
A little girl.
“Tiffany, the tumors have doubled in size and now there’s one in my brain and two in my lungs. I can’t do another round of chemo and radiation. I’m too weak. I’m dying.”
“Mommy, no.” I cover my mouth with my shaking hands. “Please don’t give up. We can try other things. I—I read online there’s this, um, this cancer center in South Africa. People get cured there. I read all about it.”
“Tiffany, we don’t have any money. Baby, I’m so tired...” She trails off.
I swallow the giant lump in my throat and I see young-me swallow the lump in hers.
“Grams is not equipped to finish raising you,” Mom goes on.
“What do you mean she’s not equipped to raise me? I’m already raised.”
“Tiffany, please. Your grandma doesn’t drive. She’s got bad arthritis. She’s seventy-eight years old. We talked long and hard about it, and both of us agree—the best option for her is to move into an assisted-living community.”
“Assisted living? Oh, awesome. Sounds like a blast. Hope she has fun. And where do I go? An orphanage? I mean, what the hell is going on right now?”
“Tiffany, please watch your—” Mom trails off again, as if not only is she tired of living, she’s tired of parenting and, in fact, couldn’t care less that I just said hell. “It’s already been decided. You’re going to go and live with your father.”
“The sperm donor? The file at the Chicago sperm bank? I’m gonna live in a folder?”
“There’s something you need to know, Tiffany.” Then Mom does the most bizarre thing. She looks at me. Not young-me. Me. Standing off to the side, watching. She smiles. “You need to know that everything is going to be okay. Everything.”
* * *
I open my eyes.
We’re alive. The Hummer is facing dead-stopped traffic.
London wails in the back, screaming her head off as smoke fills the air outside. She pulls on the car door handle. “Let me out! Let me out!”
“You can’t get out!” Marcus bellows with the first real emotion I’ve seen him display. “Stay in the car! You have to stay put.”
I turn to catch a better look at the semitruck. It’s on its side, smoke rising from the engine, trailer banged up and toppled over. We don’t exactly seem to be a safe distance away from it, from what I can see.
“It’s Jehovah God!” London’s hysterical. “He’s mad at me. He’s punishing us!” She thrashes in the back seat in what I’d call beyond hysteria. Insane. London’s gone insane.
Marcus calmly unhooks his seat belt and climbs into the back seat. He flings off his gloves and takes London’s hands in his, massaging her hands slowly. Tears still stream down her face, but she begins to calm. Mesmerized by the calming effect Marcus is having on London, I, too, begin to calm, watching in fascination.
“I haven’t been very nice to you.” London wipes a fresh flood of tears. “How can I worship Jehovah God and not even be nice to my very own neighbor? Please forgive me, Marcus.”
“No need to forgive,” Marcus replies softly. “I was never hurt or angry.”
A bang on the door startles us all. We turn to see a firefighter outside the car window.
“I need you to evacuate the vehicle!” he says seriously.
We push open our doors.
* * *
It’s six o’clock when the truck is finally towed off the freeway and we’re able to continue home. By the time we make it back to the beach house, the sun is beginning to set, transforming the sky into a blend of orange and purple streaks of color over the majestic Pacific. The beautiful serenity of Malibu seems an odd juxtaposition to the morose energy in the car.
“We have to call the hospital.” London breaks the silence. “To make sure that truck driver is okay.”
I nod, even though I saw him when the paramedics took him away. Barely moving, face streaked with blood, eyes clenched shut. Dead for sure.
“And we all agree,” she adds. “We never tell our parents what happened.”
“I won’t say anything,” I declare honestly.
Marcus nods as London leans forward and places her hand on his shoulder. “If it weren’t for your excellent driving skills...who knows what would’ve happened to us. Thank you, Marcus McKinney.”
“You’re very welcome, London Stone.”
* * *
The prodigal “dad” has returned. He’s wearing a pair of brown cargo shorts with loafers, a brown T-shirt and a dark vest. He’s also wearing a scowl. He looks thoroughly pissed when he, Margaret and Pumpkin push through the front door of the small beach house. Pumpkin’s screaming her head off, which...seems like normal Pumpkin behavior at this point.
“I’m sick of it!” he bellows.
Margaret looks flustered in her pretty purple sundress and sandals, hair loose, grazing her shoulders, looking prettier than I’ve ever seen her look. She nods in agreement. “I understand, honey. I do.”
“Our lives are being terrorized by a two-year-old!” I pull my legs under my chin and hope they don’t notice me sitting on the lounge chair on the balcony, staring out at the black ocean waters under the light of the moon.
“She’s a bully! A baby bully.”
“She’s autistic, Anthony. Sometimes it seems like you forget.”
“On the spectrum. Not the same thing. And she still needs discipline. She gets a free pass to be terrible? An iPad out the window! A six-hundred-dollar iPad reduced to freaking freeway scraps!”
“What if we got more help?” Margaret asks, setting the screaming toddler down. “I checked with a few nanny agencies and they have autism specialists. Some are live-in.”
“A live-in nanny? Are you kidding me? She needs a spanking, not a live-in nanny.”
“You get spanking!” Pumpkin screams. “Bad behavior!” She stands and makes a lunge for Margaret, tiny hands balled into fists, but Anthony’s too quick for her. He snatches her up by one of her arms.
“You’re getting a spanking, Pumpkin! Upstairs. Now!”
“Nooooo!” she howls as he drags her upstairs kicking and screaming. I hear a door slam and more screams followed by silence.
Oh, shoot. Did he kill her?
Margaret begins pulling food from the fridge and Anthony returns. “Is she okay?” she asks with an annoyance to her voice I’ve not heard before.
“She’s lying down on our bed. I whipped her butt.”
“She lacks reasoning to understand why she’s being spanked.”
“She calmed down, didn’t she?”
“But she thinks you spanked her because you were mad. ‘Daddy’s mad, so he spanked me.’ She doesn’t think, ‘I threw the iPad out the window, therefore I got a spanking, therefore I should not do something like that again.’”
“What should I have done, then?”
“The class I took says it’s better to let them calm down, then discipline. Perhaps it would serve you well to take a class, too.”
“I refuse to let a bunch of wannabe-experts tell me how to raise my kid. And what’s wrong with London? I got a voice mail from the school that says she came home sick after first period.”
“Oh? I didn’t know she left. I assumed she was at the scrimmage game with Heaven and Nevaeh.”
I quickly stand and hobble inside from off the balcony. “It’s food poisoning. Hi. Sorry. I was asleep on the balcony when I heard you guys talking about London. I got it, too. Lots of us were throwing up at school today.”
“Hey, Tiffany, hun,” Anthony says.
“Hey...” Dad. Just say it, you fool!
“I should call the school and complain.” He’s angry again.
“No, no. It wasn’t the school. It was...Izzy. She brought sushi from home and we all ate it and...yeah. We got sick.”
He frowns. “What kind was it?”
Crap. I’ve never had sushi before. “It was raw.”
“That goes without saying, Tiff. What kind of fish was it?”
“Duh. Right.” I slap my hand across my forehead. “It was...gray.”
“Was it eel?” Margaret asks.
“Yep. Eel.” Ewww. Raw eel? People eat that? Supergross.
He moves toward me, touches my forehead and looks in my eyes. “You don’t feel warm. Any blurry vision?”
I shake my head.
“How’s your stool?”
“It’s...normal...now. It was diarrhea-ish.”
“Diarrhea-ish? What is that?”
“You know...like...an explosion of...poop.”
He grabs my arms, massaging them. “Any tingling? Numbness?”
“Nope. I feel good.”
He squeezes my cheek and bops my nose. “Lots of water today. I don’t want my daughters taken out by bad fish.”
“Got it.”
Margaret steps forward. “Tiffany?”
“Yes?”
“You’ll never guess what I did today.”
“Drove to LAX?”
She smiles. “I washed Pumpkin’s hair. And guess what? Not one scream.”
“No way.”
“I did some research based on what you said and discovered it’s the water in her ears that changes the way she hears. Total sensory, like you read online. That’s what makes her so scared. So I used a plastic cup. Let her sit up the whole time and poured the water over her hair that way. Her ears never got wet. She didn’t scream. Not once.”
“So cool, Margaret.”
“Pumpkin screams when you wash her hair?” Anthony asks in a clueless fog.
“Not anymore,” Margaret replies. “And there’s a class at the regional center, Tiffany. December 12. I signed us both up. You still want to learn, right?”
“Absolutely, Margaret. I can’t wait.”
“I was thinking you and I could go and have breakfast together,” Anthony adds like a rapid-fire afterthought. “Tomorrow? There’s this awesome spot right on the water.”
“Like a floating restaurant?”
“Not literally floating. Right on the edge. And I think it should just be you and me. Give us a chance to get to know one another.”
I swallow. The thought of time alone with Anthony Stone is making my cheeks twitch and my palms sweaty. “Uh. Okay.”
“And do me a favor, Tiffany? Next time one of London’s legally blonde friends offers you rotten eel, say no thanks.”
“Yes. Good idea.”
“I’m going to check on her.”
I send London a quick text: You ate rotten eel.
She texts back: Got it. Thank you, Tiffany.