After they’d led me into the house and asked me if I remembered it and I said yes and no, after they’d shown me my old room where my toys were not lined up like I’d left them, but where there was a TV, Xbox, and fold-out couch—We’ll get you a beautiful bed tomorrow, Jenny—after we huddled around the kitchen table, because that’s what it felt like, huddling around a fire to keep warm but the fire was me, after we talked a little about this and that but not really about it, after they asked me what I wanted for dinner—Dad said let’s order in, but Mom said I was getting a home-cooked meal, chicken and mashed potatoes, that was your favorite—Ben came home.
Dad had to go get him. First, he’d tracked him down by phone—Is Ben there? he’d asked at least three different people—because Ben wasn’t answering his cell. When he finally got a yes and then actually got Ben on the phone, he said, Hold tight, I’m coming to get you.
Ben must’ve asked why he’d be coming to get him when he had his own car and was perfectly capable of getting home on his own.
Leave it parked there, Dad said. I’ll explain.
What do you say in a situation like this? Hey, Ben, your sister’s back? Wait for him to walk back into the house, then yell Surprise?
Some news can only be delivered in person.
Dad gave me a brief, awkward hug before walking out the door. Then it was just me and Mom, and that was awkward too, suddenly not like the police station where we couldn’t stop holding each other, but like sitting in a house with a distant relative you’d once met as a kid. Mom brought out a photo album.
“I haven’t looked at this since . . . since, well . . . we lost you. Would you like to see it?”
“Sure,” I said.
Jennifer Kristal, it said on the cover. A photo album of me.
Jenny’s First Day was written at the top of page one. Me in the hospital—lying, eyes closed, on Mom’s chest, Mom looking like Snow White again, or frankly more like Sleeping Beauty waking up from general anesthesia. Then me in Dad’s arms. Then me being held by some older person.
“Do you remember him?” Mom asked. We were sitting on the living room couch, nestled up against each other, back to being snug as two bugs in a rug.
“Grandpa?” I said.
Mom nodded. “He adored you, you know. When you . . . disappeared, it took everything out of him. Grandma had already passed on, so you were kind of it for him. His Jenny.”
“I remember he used to bring me Tootsie Rolls, but I had to guess which hand they were in first.”
“You remember that?” Mom smiled. “He did the same thing to me when I was a girl.”
“He must’ve had them in both hands because I never missed. Never. I always got a Tootsie Roll.”
“How about him?” Mom said, pointing out someone else holding me that day in the hospital, very delicately, as if he thought he might drop me.
“Not sure. Looks kind of familiar, but . . .” I shrugged.
“Your uncle Brent. Dad’s stepbrother. You don’t remember him at all?”
“Oh sure,” I said. “Uncle Brent. I remember. You got mad at him once because he let Ben light a firecracker on the Fourth of July, and Ben’s hand got burned, and you got real upset at him.”
Mom turned and gave me a super-surprised look, like maybe I deserved two Tootsie Rolls for remembering something from that long ago. Go, me.
“That’s right,” she said slowly. “I did get real upset at him. Ben still has the scar.”
She went back to the album. To my first birthday. Me blowing out a single candle on the cake—though it looked like Dad was the one really blowing it out, since I was just sitting there with a stupid expression on my face. Me with chocolate birthday cake smeared all over my face. Me sitting on Mom’s lap surrounded by lots of ripped-open presents. Jenny Turns One this page was titled.
Then me on a pony ride, the kind where someone holds on to you the whole time around the ring. I was wearing a pink cowboy hat and looked scared shitless.
“You used to love horses,” Mom said, “remember?”
It went on like this, Mom providing the commentary as we progressed through the terrible twos, the terrific threes, the fabulous fours, on our way to the sexually abused sixes.
“You cried when you touched snow for the first time,” she said.
I could understand why, because there was a picture of me sitting on this snowy hill at about age four, pretty much swallowed up by an oversize down jacket. I looked like a Thanksgiving Day balloon. Our little Snow Bunny, it said.
“Really?” I said. “I don’t remember, Mom.”
I liked how the word sounded coming out of my mouth. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. It was my new favorite word. Me and Mom leafing through old times, and soon Dad would come home with my big brother. Maybe we’d take the Game of Life out of mothballs, and I’d spin the wheel and go speeding down the road in my pink convertible, and who knows where it would take me? It had finally taken me back here, hadn’t it? And what were the odds of that happening? It would be just like I visualized it when that policeman told me to, after I admitted I was scared. I was still scared. I’d had the trembles sitting around the kitchen table earlier, but sitting this close to Mom gave me the warm fuzzies.
When we passed my first-grade pic—the one I’d seen stapled to that telephone pole, Mom quickly turned the page as if she couldn’t bear to look at it. Then the album stopped. It was like the screen going dark in a movie theatre when a projector jams. Smack in the middle of this great story, and suddenly you’re staring at blankness. I wanted my money back—the story had been interrupted, and this was my story.
The very last picture in the album was taken at a beach— it must’ve been right before it happened. We’d made a sand castle complete with moat—Mom and me—and someone had written Kristals’ Castle on it, each letter dug into the sand, and we were standing in front of it like proud sentries. Like no one was getting into this castle, no one—it was, what’s that word . . . impregnable. Only it wasn’t impregnable—someone had breached the castle walls and stolen the princess from right under their noses.
Mom slowly traced her finger down the opposite blank page. It reminded me of a blind person I’d once seen reading braille on a bus. Jenny’s gone, this page read.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s all. We never got to take another picture . . .”
I took her hand and squeezed tight.
“We can take more pictures now, Mom, and put them in the album. Why not?”
Then the door opened and Ben walked in.
We recognized each other. Not like Wow, you’re my sister and You’re my older brother.
No.
Like Shit, you’re the guy who was hitting on me outside that pizzeria, and Fuck, you’re the girl I tried to bum a smoke from. Both of us staring at each other and probably wondering if we should say so out loud. At least, I was.
He said zip and stayed frozen right inside the front door, even when Dad gave him an encouraging nudge from behind.
“I know this is really strange for you, Ben, it’s strange for all of us, but how about you say hello to your sister.”
He didn’t say hello. He gave an almost imperceptible nod and remained right where he was, as if he wasn’t sure if he’d walked into the right house—it was entirely different from the one he’d left this morning . . . and it was. Sure it was.
“Hey, Ben,” I said. “Long time no see.”
I was trying to be funny, or trying to be something, but no one laughed. Dad managed a weak smile, walked into the living room, and sat down next to us on the couch.
“Ummm, Ben?” Mom said. “How about we all sit down and talk a little?”
Apparently, Ben didn’t feel like talking.
“Ben . . . ?” Mom said again.
It took her a few more entreaties, delivered with increasing levels of frustration, before Ben actually joined us, if you could call it that, since he took the seat farthest away from everyone—way across the room on an orange love seat. Not that there seemed to be much love coming from it.
I’d noticed what must’ve been an old science project of Ben’s sitting in what used to be my bedroom—a papier-mâché diorama of the solar system—and if me, Mom, and Dad were the sun, Mercury, and Venus, Ben was an outer planet. Pluto maybe, the one they’d downsized to a speck of cosmic dust.
Sides were being drawn.
“So, would you like to say anything to your sister, Ben?” Mom said.
That would be a no.
“Okay. You must have a thousand questions, Ben, we all do,” Mom said. “Jenny’s had a really hard time out there, and I think we should just get to know each other again. Can we do that? No one’s expecting you to feel like a brother to her—not yet—I understand that. This will take time. A lot of time. But maybe if we just talk, if we just get the ball rolling . . .”
Ben wasn’t in a ball-rolling mood. He rolled his eyes instead, just enough to get a tired sigh out of Dad. The kind of sigh that said, We’ve been here before, haven’t we, and I’m tired of it. Okay, so maybe things hadn’t been too rosy around the Kristal home lately.
“Jenny, I think this is just a real shock to Ben. I’m sure he’s trying to process it. To understand. We all thought you were . . . you know . . .
“Dead,” I said.
That seemed to be a buzzkill. Using a word like that. Anyway, it shut everybody up.
“I’m really tired,” I said. “Can I go to sleep?”
“Of course,” Dad said. “You must be . . . Jesus, we should have realized . . .”
Mom said she’d make up the sofa bed for me.
“Is that okay?”
“Sounds comfy,” I said. Then we all stood up as if we were leaving a restaurant. Everyone except Ben, who stayed where he was, eyeing me the way security guards eyeball shoplifters—good security guards, not ones like Mr. Hammered.
I waited inside my old room while Mom brought in sheets and pillows, Dad grunting as he pulled out the mattress from the inside of the couch, both of them trying very hard to show me how happy they were that I was back home.
“Can I give you a nightgown?” Mom asked. “I think we’re about the same size.”
“A T-shirt’s fine,” I said. “That’s what I’m used to wearing.”
“Really, you sure? Okay, I’ve got plenty of those.”
She brought in a blue T-shirt that said COSTA RICA on it, and Dad asked me if I wanted him to turn up the thermostat.
“No, it’s fine, Dad.”
It was the first time I’d called him that, Dad, and I saw him physically flinch, then blush. “Okay . . . well, good night,” he said, standing awkwardly by the door, looking like a first date who doesn’t know if he should kiss or quit.
“See you in the morning,” he said.
Mom gave me a hug—a real one—but after she left and closed the door behind her, she tiptoed back in with something in her hand. I’d already turned off the lights and slipped into bed, so I couldn’t see what it was at first. Then I did.
“I don’t know why I kept it,” she said. “Dad made me throw everything out. After the third year. Because it was too painful, I guess. He was right. It was. But I kept one thing, just one . . . for in case. Good night, Jenny . . .”
Goldy.
I nestled it under my neck, where the soft mane tickled my throat. I thought it smelled of childhood. The good kind.
Just before I drifted off, I heard someone walking up the stairs, then stopping just outside my door.
“Ha,” Ben said.