Chapter

Seventeen

“This bitch better not start raggin’ on me,” Nancy says from the backseat as we turn off Interstate 90 at Ellensburg.

“Don’t do that,” Walter says. “You keep that in your head and anything she says will sound like ragging on you.”

“Well, she just better not.”

Having been in the system since I was a fetus, I’m pretty used to how therapy works. “It’ll probably be like with that woman we used to see at the mental health center,” I say. “The second one, Mary Ellen something. It’s just a way to get everything out in the open.”

“I don’t want ever’thing out in the open. People been stickin’ their nose in my life all of it. That’s what happens when ever’thing is out in the open.”

If I had the choice between being this therapist or Momma and Pop’s, I’d choose suicide.

Walter says, “Nancy, you’ve told me how many times you wished you could do it all over. Nobody gets a chance to do any damn thing over, but once in a while we do get to make repairs.”

“I don’ know. This was just a bad idea.”

I say, “You’re just scared. Do you know how I used to hate it when you were coming into therapy with me? I was always afraid you were going to rat me out. Look, you’ll be there an hour. You can take anything for an hour. Can’t be worse than the dentist. Then we go out on the town, stay in a nice place.”

“Damn straight,” Walter says. “’About time we classed this relationship up.”

Leah’s eyes are glued to the highway. This girl deserves a medal; she has no stake in any of this but agreed to drive so I didn’t have to borrow Momma’s car and get Pop all up in her face.

About ten miles outside Yakima, Leah takes a left into Re-Start’s long driveway, then coasts into a small side parking lot.

“Y’all wait in the car,” Walter says. “Or take a drive if you want. I’ll be in the waiting room; I’ll holler when they’re done.” He lifts his cell.

Walter and Nancy disappear through the front entrance and Leah drives around the circular drive. As she guns it, I see Walter waving in the rearview mirror. “Stop, Leah. We gotta go back.”

“Gone,” Walter says when we circle back.

“Where?” I ask.

Nancy stands on the concrete porch, stunned.

“Don’t know,” Walter says. “The woman in charge says some guy drove up and leaned on the horn. They called nine-one-one but Sheila ran out and jumped in. Left all her stuff.” He takes Nancy by the arm and leads her to the backseat.

“Bitch,” Nancy says. “Come all the way down here, ready to let ’er tear me up in front of one more damn counselor an’ jus’ like always. She runs.”

When Leah pulls in front of Nancy’s place that evening, we’re spent. The leisure aspect of this trip crashed in unanimous agreement. Nearly four hours in the car, I’ll bet we didn’t say five words. Nancy sat in the backseat pissed and sad and dumb as she’s ever been. Walter was smart enough to sleep. Leah drove and I stared out the window.

Walter gets out to open the door for Nancy, but she just bangs it open with her shoulder and stomps up her walk. He watches her go, looks for a second like he might follow, then gets back in the car. “Best drop me at my place,” he says. “Let her cool down. There’s no getting through that.”

Momma and Pop were expecting me to stay in Yakima for the night, so Leah and I go to her house because everyone’s out; she calls Tim and the three of us order pizza and watch a movie.

Maddy says, “This is a better story than most of the ones we read. What happens with Frankie?”

I have given the book club the Reader’s Digest version of “The Ballad of Frankie Boots,” with Leah filling in with an outsider’s perspective, to great interest.

“He’s with Wiz for now,” I say, “but the plan is for Sheila to pull it together. More a hope than a plan, really.”

Mark says, “It doesn’t sound like your sister is coming to her senses anytime soon.”

“I don’t know that she has senses to come to,” I say. “I should have remembered, just because Frankie aches for his mother doesn’t mean she aches for him.”

Leah says, “But remember, she came back after she disappeared and she also went to rehab; she had to have some connection to him. It was a dumb-ass plan to run, especially with all that gas I wasted. . . .”

I say, “Maybe she hates CPS more than she loves Frankie and came back just to show them. Anyway, I don’t know where it goes from here.”

Seth’s hand goes up. “I do believe we have come to the place where real life and literature separate.”

I say, “Tell us, Seth.”

“Editing,” Seth says. “In literature, when circumstances don’t play out well, the author rewrites. All the how-to writing books say it.”

“And in real life . . .” Leah says, ushering Seth along.

“No rewrites. What’s done is done.”

“You guys know why I became a librarian?” Sharon asks.

Maddy says, “To increase the hot factor of all librarians throughout history?”

“There is that,” Sharon says, “but . . .”

I remember. “The Color Purple.”

“Beyond that,” Sharon says.

“To hide your rack among the stacks?” Leah slaps her hand over her own mouth. “That just came out! It was like . . . bad rap!”

“That’s what I get for asking a rhetorical question, right, Seth?” Sharon says, tapping her forehead. “I wanted to find the bridge between stories and life. As long as I can remember, every important literary character reminded me of someone, and almost all the ones I loved reminded me a little bit of me. Of course many of those I hated also reminded me of me. Seth is right; stories are . . . cleaner, because of rewrites. We don’t get the rewrites, but we also don’t have to bring our stories to conclusion in three hundred and fifty pages, so no rewrites, but do-overs, maybe.”

Oliver says, “I like that.”

“Something else has become clear to me,” Sharon says, “listening to all your stories, and particularly this mess of Annie’s. I think we’ve missed the boat, focusing on heroes and/or heroic acts; you know, finding them in fiction and then in life.”

Leah says. “So what should we have been talking about?”

“Narrators,” Sharon says. “The tellers of the tale. It isn’t a question of whether or not you’re the hero of your life, it’s whether or not you’re the narrator; whether you tell your own tale or let someone tell it for you. The characters I love stand up for themselves, understand that they run their own show.”

I’ve heard this before in one form or another, from Leah and from Walter.

The conversation continues, but the rest is word salad to me because my mind slides down the road of “standing up for themselves. . . .” I see it again so clearly; I get so mad at Pop because he wants to tell my story. When he tries, I get devious and elusive; I lie, and live a story that’s not his, but it’s not mine, either. I felt such relief that evening in the den when I just gave up—refused to let him own me. So, easy enough: from here on out, tell the truth and let what happens, happen. The truth has a way of catching up to you, as they say, which sounds right, but I also need to catch up to it. But I’m on the other side of this, too. I want to control Nancy. I’ve done everything to make her feel guilty about not taking care of me in the first place and about not keeping contact. I want to control Sheila, because I want to control what happens to Frankie. Maybe Sharon is right. Maybe those aren’t my stories.