Chapter

Sixteen

Wiz says one of the scariest things about human beings is what slaves we are to habit. He did all the things needed to give Frankie a running start before he resigned, and then the ball got hiked, right around the time Sheila went into substance abuse treatment.

Margie was walking Sheila and Frankie down the long road toward reunification with great care and great love, way more than anyone’s ever given her. Margie got her to agree that nothing good was going to happen until she was clean and sober, then placed her in inpatient treatment down in Yakima, where she could get away from all the people she’s been dirty and messed-up with.

For a month she was in blackout: no visitors so she could focus on herself and her treatment. She got one phone call a week, which she didn’t use because she didn’t have anyone she wanted to call.

How pathetic is that?

After that month she still doesn’t have anyone she’s dying to talk to . . . so my phone goes off.

“Hey, Sheila.”

“These assholes say I can have visitors now.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Great. Who would I want to see?”

“Me.”

“Don’t mess with me.”

I say, “I’m not. You want to see me.”

The line is quiet, then, “Okay. You.”

On Saturday we don’t have a game, and Leah had early workout. Tim is busy at home, so Leah and I make the three-hour drive to Yakima in two and a half. Leah scouts out coffee places where a girl can read for a couple hours while her BGF hangs out with her sister in drug treatment.

“So how is it?” I ask. We’re in the main lounge, me in an overstuffed chair and her across the table on the couch.

“How do you think? It’s drug treatment.”

I am not doing battle. “Relatively speaking, then.”

“Relatively to what? It’s the only drug treatment place I’ve ever been in, if you haven’t noticed.”

I’ve noticed. “Sheila, I don’t know how you want me to ask the question. Are you gonna make it?”

“My counselor says I’m doin’ pretty good.”

“That’s great. How long do you think you’re gonna be here?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “Of course I’m going good. I can’t get my hands on anything.”

“The brochure says you get individual and group counseling. Are you making any friends?”

“When have I ever had a friend?”

“Yvonne.”

“Yvonne. I’m still pissed she told you where I was. I would never have texted. . . .”

“Come on. She was trying to help.”

“An’ she’s like a weak little baby anyway. How is someone like Yvonne gonna help me through this? She uses as much as me, an’ hell, I’d rather have me as a mother than her.”

“I wasn’t saying you should hook back up with Yvonne, even though she uses weed, and you use . . . whatever. I was saying if you can make one friend, you have the ability to make another, somebody who’s, like, a little more together.”

Sheila slaps the cushion. “This couch is more together than Yvonne.”

I’m not helping. “So what do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“Aren’t you in touch with your caseworker?”

“No, I’m not in touch with my caseworker, other than she sends notes of ‘support.’ Bitch . . . get a job at Hallmark. Besides, when I wanna know what’s really going on, I’m not askin’ somebody who works for the state.”

“Well,” I say, “Frankie’s still in at Wiz’s place, waiting to see if the Howards are going to get it together as a permanent place.”

“I’m a permanent place. What the hell do they think I’m doing in this shithole?” She says it loud and other patients glance over, then away when they catch Sheila’s threatening look.

“You are a permanent place. But they have to have a fallback position in case you blow out.”

She puts her head down, fiercely massaging the bridge of her nose. I don’t know a whole lot about drug treatment, but Sheila’s got a long way to go. If she got out of here today, she’d be flyin’ by dinnertime.

“What about Ma?” she says.

“What about her?”

“You talk to her about all this? Me?”

“Little bit,” I say. “You know Nancy. She blames it all on social services. When she’s not blaming it on you.”

“Yeah, well, I blame it on her.”

I’m surprised she asked about Nancy at all.

She waits, then, “You think she’d come down here?”

“You mean to go into treatment?”

“No, dummy, to . . . do some sessions with me.”

Wow.

“Somethin’ they look for is resentments,” Sheila says. “I got plenty of those. My counselor says it might be good if Ma came to a couple of sessions. Down the road, I mean.”

I take a deep breath. “She might.”

“Yeah, well, if you wanna make yourself useful, find out.”

“She wants me to drive all the way down there and sit in a room with someone what’s on her side so she can bash me?”

“That’s not how she put it.”

“A course that’s not how she put it. You remember when your therapist roped me into coming in with you?”

“Uh-huh. Right after you brought a Level-three sex offender into our basement. ‘He seems like a nice guy. I’ll keep an eye on him.’” I’m wicked with the imitation.

We’re in the mostly empty bleachers following a Friday night basketball game Nancy saw almost all of. Walter and Leah are about twenty yards away, each waiting to escort one of us home. Pop isn’t here to criticize my play or keep me away from my family “lowlifes” because since he and Momma have been going to therapy, there’s a moratorium on jumping my shit.

“Well,” Nancy says, “I didn’t bring no sex offenders down on your sister.”

“I read the note the therapist gave her to give you. She’s not bringing you there to get bashed. She wants to give Sheila the chance to get her feelings out and you the chance to respond.”

“That’s just a fancy way of sayin’ I get one more chance to hear what a shitty mother I am.”

I take a page from Seth’s book. “Let me ask you a hypothetical question.”

“You mean one that don’t make sense.”

“No. It’s like a what-if question. If you knew that sitting through a few sessions would give Frankie a chance to live with his mother—like help him avoid what we all went through—would you do it?”

“You mean if I knew it would help?”

“Uh-huh.”

She shakes her head as her shoulders slump. “I guess. But I got no way to get there.”

“Leah and I’ll take you. Walter can come, too, if he wants. We’ll go to dinner after.”

“Sounds like some miser’ble double date,” she says.

“Exactly. A miserable double date, only Leah’s boyfriend might take exception to that description.”

I hear intense conversation through the heat-vent walkie-talkie in Marvin’s room—Momma and Pop closed in their bedroom, wrestling over some therapy issue.

“. . . is not on the table, Jack. That girl has had more losses than any three kids should have had to suffer, and I’m not giving her one more.”

“She lies,” Pop says. “And then does whatever she pleases. I can’t have that. What kind of message does that send to Marvin?”

“Jack, have you heard a thing we’ve talked about in therapy? And not that you’ve noticed, but Marvin is totally capable of deciphering all incoming messages. And you may have noticed he’s so mad at you he can’t see straight.”

“A function of his immaturity.”

“He likes Annie. And she likes him.” It’s quiet a minute, then, “You do realize, dear, that as long as Annie was lying about . . . everything she felt, you had no problem with her. It was when she started telling us who she really is that you came completely off the tracks.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“You know, back in high school, this is the one thing my parents warned me about.”

“Don’t even start with your parents,” Pop says. “Your father has always loved me like a son.”

“My father likes you because he would do anything to make his daughter happy. You know what he said to me right after we told them we were getting married? He said, ‘He’s a good kid, Jane, but he has to have things his way. I hope you’re ready for that.’ And you know what? I thought I was. But you know what else? Over the years it’s just made me sneaky.”

I feel the air go tense. “Careful . . .” Then, “Have you had other relationships?”

“My god you are thick. No, I have not had other relationships. I’ve barely had this one, and if no other good comes from all of this, I am finished being careful.”

I hear Pop’s chair scoot, then, very low, in a total change of tone, “Jane, if I’m willing to work on all the other things that have come up, are you willing to give up Annie’s placement here?”

“All the other issues?” Momma says.

I wish I could see their faces; Momma sounds interested, maybe even intrigued. My heart almost chokes me. I’m already out of Marvin’s bedroom when Momma answers, because I do not want to hear it.

“You lose stuff from the day you’re born,” Walter says, “starting with a nice, warm safe place to be. You got to learn to lose it with grace, otherwise you leave no room for what’s next. Learnin’ that was the only way I come to manage everything the war took.”

“How did you do it, Walter; or better how do I do it? She was . . . Momma said I didn’t have to worry, and then, you should have heard her voice. I don’t mind moving, but I couldn’t stand her backing out on me. And it would mean no placement for Frankie . . . I couldn’t stand to hear her tell Pop yes.”

He shakes his head. “You hear Momma’s voice through a heat grate and decide everything she’s said to you up to now is a lie? That make sense? You’re geared to believe folks are lying to you because of how you grew up. C’mon, girl, Jane Howard loves you, and you love her.” He taps his temple. “Think!”

We’re in our favorite corner at Revel, which is nearly empty in the early afternoon. “Some people pay a hundred fifty dollars for therapy, Walter. It only costs me a cup of coffee.”

He laughs. “I was thinking of having a scone.”

“You’re covered, but we might have to extend the session.”

“Slow day,” he says. “I don’t have another client until”—he looks at the wall clock—“well, hell, till you call again.”

“You’re probably right about Momma, but it’s the anticipation,” I say. “It’s not knowing for sure.”

“Hate that,” he says. “You know what I do about not knowing?”

“What?”

“I know—make the next thing happen,” he says. “Why let somebody else decide your fate? Weigh in on your own. Let’s say your cockamamie fear about Jane is real, which it is not. Tell the Howards to crap or get off the commode. Whaddaya got to lose? Hell, you’re almost eighteen. In some cultures you’d be a sex slave by now.”

He means I’d have a job.

“If anticipation is the enemy,” he says, “kill it. Going up the losers bracket is the same in life as at Hoopfest. Lose one, kick ’er in gear. Basically we’re talking about an education, right? The Howards were good for tuition?”

“Yeah, I mean they still might. And there’s Marvin. I’d lose him, too.”

“Tuition. Marvin. What the hell,” he says. “They can’t keep you from Marvin any more than they could keep you from your bios. And hell, do a couple years at community college—walk on if you can’t get a scholarship—play hard, and get something at a four-year place.”

“I don’t know if I’m that good.”

“Only one way to find out. If you don’t stack up with the big girls, go to a school with a crappy team. Plenty of those.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Darlin’,” he says, draining his coffee cup, “I can come up with solutions all day long and you can come up with reasons. Either you take control or all you’ve got left is reasons.”

“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”

“Gonna sit here a while an’ read,” he says, hoisting his tattered book bag. “We still making that Yakima run?”

“Soon as I get the word from Sheila. Keep your calendar open.”

I answer, “Come in,” to the knock on my bedroom door.

“Hey, Annie,” Momma says.

“Hey.”

“Listen,” she says, “we need to talk.”

“Can I go first?”

“Of course.”

“I think I should find another place to live.”

“What?”

“It would make it a lot easier for you guys to figure things out.”

She stands wide-eyed.

“I heard you talking. I know I’m, like, what Marvin calls the bargaining chip or something.”

Momma rolls her eyes, takes a deep breath, and sits on the side of the bed. “No offense, but you’d be the lamest bargaining chip ever invented. You’re not going anywhere. Or if you are, you’re going with Marvin and me.”

“I thought . . .”

“Annie, Jack’s going to have to learn lessons he should have learned a long time ago. That, or I’ll learn the one I need: that letting a man have his way all the time is the best way to turn him into an asshole. Look, Jack can be a nice guy, when he wants to be. He’s funny, he makes a good living; compared to a lot of people, he might even be a passable parent. But I’ve let him tell me what’s best for Marvin and you, and what’s best for me, when I knew it was all best for him. I’ve always cajoled and danced and eventually gotten my way, but it’s wearing me out.”

“Yeah,” I say, “but if I weren’t here, you could just worry about your own family. Your relationship.”

“You are my family. As snotty and bitchy as you can be, and you can be, you’re ours, or mine. This isn’t the first disagreement we’ve had about you.”

“But still . . .”

“Enough. If I were to follow Jack’s ‘direction,’ or if you were to leave because of all this uproar, I’d resent him for the rest of my life, or until I poisoned his soup.” She stands. “Let us handle the big people’s problems and you just get yourself through the rest of this year and figure out what’s next. And you go see your family whenever you damn well please.” She starts to walk out. “Just don’t bring them here, except for Frankie, of course.”

“But if Pop stays and I stay, he’ll never talk to me.”

“You can always hope,” she says with a smile, and she’s out the door.