Almost Home Read online

  “You can touch it, Sugar.”

  I take one of the kid dolls and bring her down the steps.

  I wonder when Papa will be home.

  I’m not sure where that came from—probably a book. I never called my father anything but Mr. Leeland.

  I bring the girl doll into the kitchen.

  I’m going to surprise Mama and Papa and make them chocolate chip pancakes. This is no big deal for me. I’m an ace at this.

  I move the girl doll into the kitchen and bring in the father doll to say something nice to her.

  I bite my lip. I can’t think of what he’d say.

  Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?

  Mr. Leeland usually said that to me. I never quite knew if it was a compliment or not.

  I would have come by sooner, but I got caught up with business.

  Mr. Leeland used to say that, too. Business for him was gambling.

  I sit back on my heels and cross my arms tight.

  I’m too old to be playing dollhouse.

  Lexie is licking stamps and putting them on post cards. “My life didn’t get good till I met Mac. He put in so much work on that dollhouse. Look, it even has little pictures on the walls.” I peer into the rooms. “You can come in here anytime you want, Sugar.”

  I touch the little porch rail, remember Reba sitting in her white chair on our old porch drinking iced tea, remember those last scary months when she was talking on her pink phone, clutching the little silver bell necklace.

  I hug my knees and look at this little house and want to become a miniature me and crawl inside. I look at Lexie, who has so much peace it doesn’t seem like she ever had trouble in life. I don’t know why I want her to know this, but I do.

  “I write poems sometimes.”

  “You do?”

  “Maybe I could show you one.”

  “I would like that.”

  I know the one to start with. I race up the stairs, past the photos on the wall, past the torn wallpaper.

  I get my writing folder and find the poem I wrote in Mr. B’s class about bad persuasion. I head back down and hand it to her.

  There are people in our lives we cannot trust.

  One of those people in my life is my father.

  She reads it a few times, nodding, then she hugs me strong. It’s one of those times when you don’t need words, but I know she’s got some broken places, like me. I hang on to her with everything I’ve got.

  33

  “WILL YOU BE deciding anytime this week?”

  The lady behind the counter at the Sweet Spot asks me this. I feel instantly stupid.

  There are cashew caramel delights, hand-dipped chocolate graham crackers, white chocolate logs, peanut-butter milk chocolate crunch bars, coconut cream balls, fruit and nut squares, chocolate mint cups—and that’s just the front row.

  I haven’t had choices like this in I don’t know how long.

  “Take your time,” Lexie whispers to me.

  A man waits behind us. “Go ahead, sir,” I tell him.

  All the time I was homeless I’d look in windows wanting to be one of the people inside. Now I’m inside, and I can’t decide.

  “How’s it going for you, Mildred?” Lexie asks the lady behind the counter.

  Mildred groans. Her son is out of work and he moved back home with her and her feet are killing her and her landlord isn’t fixing the drip in her kitchen ceiling and her neighbor plays loud music all night long and her daughter-in-law has an attitude.

  This sour lady doesn’t know much about sweetness.

  When it’s my turn again, I smile like Reba taught me to do—from the heart. “I’ll have the dark chocolate caramel chew with macadamia nuts, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Mildred sniffs, puts my candy on a napkin, and hands it to me.

  “I’m real sorry about your feet and everything else,” I tell her.

  She looks down. I bet most people don’t say that to her.

  Lexie gets a megasized chocolate-covered strawberry. We sit down at a table by the window. I take a bite of my candy. It’s so good, I nearly stand up and shout. I’ve got to come back and get one of these for Reba.

  The sun is beaming through the windows. Lexie’s wearing a bright shirt worthy of a peacock. A lady with a laptop computer is working in the corner, two mothers with babies in strollers are laughing at the next table over. I start laughing, too.

  “What did I miss?” Lexie asks.

  How do I tell her?

  “It’s just . . . well, it’s just so normal.”

  Lexie looks around. “Well, I guess it is.”

  I lean closer and whisper, “What I mean is, it’s normal because I’m sitting inside.”

  I tell her about the bakery back in Missouri where they’d give away what they didn’t sell at the end of each day to street people. But you couldn’t come inside to eat, you ate it by the trash compactor.

  “They make their own candy bars,” Lexie tells me.

  I take a small bite. I want to make this last. I didn’t know candy bars came like this. “This is one of my best days in a long time,” I tell her.

  She smiles like she’s got the warmth of the sun glowing inside her. “I’m glad, Sugar. Here’s hoping those best days start piling up for you.”

  I need to bring Reba here. She needs a best day bad.

  x x x

  “If I ever come into money,” Reba tells Shush, “this is the kind of house I want, with the wraparound porch and the double front doors.”

  She holds the copy of Southern Living out, and Shush sniffs it.

  “Heavens! Look at that garden.”

  Shush looks and wags his tail.

  Reba turns the pages, lost in her dreams. “Can you imagine this porch done up all in green?” She grins and scratches Shush under the chin. “And we could have little cakes out there and drink iced tea. You’re a fine little gentleman. Yes, you are.” She whispers, “The houses I’m cleaning now? The people aren’t keeping them in shape like they should. People have lost the sense of tradition, but you and me, we’re not going to lose it.”

  Shush climbs onto Reba’s lap as she reads to him about how to make whoopie pies. “Now, you need real butter and you need to make sure it’s soft. . . .”

  Lexie walks in with chocolate cookies she bought at the Sweet Spot. Reba takes one, bites in, and nods.

  “How long,” Reba says, “do you think the state will want Sugar here? I’m just curious.”

  I don’t like that question.

  Lexie bites her lip. “That’s hard to say.”

  Reba flips a page. “I was just thinking that since things are going so well for me . . .” She doesn’t finish that sentence.

  They haven’t been going well for very long!

  Reba looks at Lexie and smiles a fake smile. “I know you don’t have children of your own. I know you’re very close to my daughter.”

  Whoa, Reba.

  Lexie face gets tight. She sits down. “You have a fine girl here, Reba, and Mac and I are happy to have her stay with us for as long as—”

  “You know, sometimes I wonder, do you want Sugar and me to be able to live with one another?”

  I march up to her. “What are you saying?”

  Shush isn’t used to me shouting. He looks scared and confused.

  She’s going all-out Southern now. “I’m merely asking a general question about propriety and this system and how I can best understand it.”

  “The goal in all this,” Lexie says slowly, “is to reunite parents and children when it is best.”

  Reba puts Shush on the floor. “And who decides that?”

  I break in. “Dana Wood. You know that, Reba.”

&nb
sp; She smiles sweetly. “And maybe a judge.”

  “That’s right,” Lexie adds.

  “Well, I best be going.” She taps the Southern Living with her finger, gives Shush a hug, gives me one, too.

  I don’t like how I’m feeling. It’s like something came into this room and left a bad smell. Lexie marches back to the kitchen carrying the cookies.

  “I’m sorry she said those things, Lexie. She shouldn’t have—”

  “It’s all right,” Lexie snaps.

  No, it’s not.

  If we were near a lake, I think there’d be ripples on the water.

  34

  THE NEWS AT Joonie’s house is complicated. The police found Joonie’s dad living in Arizona.

  “He told them he didn’t have any money to pay all those years of back child support, but he was living in a nice house with his new wife and little son. He got arrested and put in jail,” Joonie tells me. “So, I guess, somewhere out there, I have another brother.”

  I gulp. “It’s good they found him.”

  “I guess. Helen’s glad.” She rubs Shush. “He’s been married four, no, five times now.”

  “That’s a lot.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dante sits on the steps. “We don’t quite know where my uncle is.”

  I can relate. Mr. Leeland is somewhere out there, too.

  “We could start a Somewhere Out There club,” Joonie suggests.

  And for some reason I tell them about the fight I overheard when I was in third grade. Mr. Leeland was yelling at Reba that he wasn’t ready to be a father and when I came along he couldn’t handle the responsibility. He was screaming at her, You should have been careful. What’s the matter with you? Like he didn’t have anything to do with it.

  “I changed their whole marriage.” Shush sighs and leans against my leg. “Sometimes it feels like I ruined everything.”

  Joonie shakes her head. “That’s not true.”

  King Cole said that when I told him about it.

  “Really not true,” Dante adds. “Write that down, Sugar. I’m not kidding.”

  It’s cool to have friends who help you figure out your life.

  Chandler comes out on the porch in his pajamas. “Are we going to see Daddy?”

  Joonie puts her arm around him. “I don’t know. Do you want to?”

  Chandler thinks about that. “If we saw him, how would it be?”

  Joonie shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She looks at me and Dante. “Help me out, guys.”

  Dante clears his throat. “It would probably be a combination of being glad to see him because he’s your dad, and feeling a little uncomfortable because he hasn’t been around and helping.”

  Chandler nods and scratches his knee. “Maybe the dragon with forty-seven daggers could fly us over there.”

  “Maybe,” Joonie says.

  Shush jumps over Dante’s legs and heads right to Chandler. He sits in front of him and wags his tail. Chandler laughs and then he hugs him for a long time.

  That’s when a silver car drives up the street, and a hand waves from the window. My heart catches in my throat as Mr. Leeland gets out holding a big teddy bear and a box of chocolates, looking handsome like a movie star.

  “Well, Miss Sugar. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?”

  I don’t say anything, I can’t say anything.

  Mr. Leeland walks right up to the porch. “Well, I’ve had better greetings, I’ll tell you what.”

  What do you want from me?

  I want to run, but it’s like my legs have turned to stone.

  “Who’s that?” Chandler asks me.

  I look down. “This is Mr. Leeland, my father.”

  Dante gets up and stretches out his hand. “How do you do, sir?”

  Mr. Leeland shakes it. “’Bout as well as I can.”

  x x x

  Mr. Leeland sits down in Mac’s special chair like it belongs to him. “Reba said she’d meet me here. We’re looking at apartments together.”

  “She didn’t tell me that.”

  He smiles. “Our little surprise.”

  Lexie brings coffee, Shush trots in and stops.

  “Well, hey there, little guy.” Mr. Leeland puts his hand out, but Shush backs off.

  My father throws a bag to me. I catch it. “I didn’t know what to get you, but I remember your mother teaching you about the fine art of gratitude.”

  Shush sniffs the bag. I open it to a box of cards with sunflowers on them and the words THANK YOU written in gold.

  “I remember those sunflowers you grew,” he adds.

  Okay, this is a pretty good gift, but I’m not getting sucked in. “They’re probably dead now.”

  “Or they’ve shot up to the sky,” he says. “There’s a gold pen in there, too.”

  I find that in the bag. Mac is standing in the doorway now.

  Mr. Leeland looks at everybody. “Could my daughter and I talk alone?”

  “No,” Mac and Lexie say together.

  He laughs nervously. “All right then. Sugar, honey, your mother called me and told me what happened. I got here as soon as I could.” He looks at his tan hands. “I want to help.”

  “She needs to keep getting stronger,” I tell him.

  “And how ’bout you, Sugar? What do you need?”

  I look at Lexie, Mac, and Shush.

  I need a real house and a normal family.

  “I don’t need anything,” I tell him as Shush licks my cheek.

  “I know I have to prove to you and your mother that things can be different.”

  I sit there not talking.

  “You know,” he says, “there were good times.”

  I remember that week in fourth grade when he picked me up from school and took me to a poker game in Boyd Marsh’s basement. I had to sit by the boiler waiting for him to lose so we could go home.

  I had to tell my teacher the next day, “I didn’t get my homework done, Mrs. Powell, because my father bet a straight and lost to three aces.”

  “I’ve taken a room in town,” he says.

  Me, too. Mine’s pink.

  That’s when Reba shows up. Mac leads her into the living room. Her face breaks into joy. “It isn’t!”

  Mr. Leeland chuckles and shouts, “Oh, yes it is!”

  She runs into his arms and they have the kind of kiss that makes everyone else in the room uncomfortable.

  Lexie stands by me and puts her strong hand on my shoulder.

  You keep your hand on me, okay? ’Cause I’m going to need it.

  When they’re done kissing, Reba pulls me away from Lexie. “We’re your family, miss. Don’t you forget that.”

  35

  HE CAME AND he went, my father did. But then he came back.

  He came with promises, and Reba believed every one.

  Now we’re going to be a real family.

  Starting now, things are going to change.

  He came to Lexie’s without calling and brought doughnuts. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t have to, but Lexie said she’d be there with me since that was the law.

  Mr. Leeland and I sit in the kitchen and eat doughnuts. Lexie is there, too. That’s the law of the state of Illinois, supervised visits. Illinois has some good laws.

  “Sugar, you don’t like me much, do you?” he asks.

  How does a kid answer that?

  “I don’t know you much.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “How come you didn’t help us when we lost our house?”

  “I tried to get there. I was detained. It killed me not to come.”

  His voice sounds like he means every word; his eye
s fill with love.

  I look at him, really look, at his blond hair and his black eyes, and his white-tooth smile and his blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his wedding ring on his hand and his jeans and cowboy boots.

  And I just get sick of being lied to.

  “No sir, I don’t think you did.” I stand up. “I think you like making promises so people will like you, but you don’t know how to keep them much.”

  “Just a minute, young lady.”

  I shout, “No, sir, I haven’t got a minute.”

  “I’m full-out tired of this attitude, you hear me? Every day, I’m looking how to win best for me and our family.”

  You’re a loser and you brought us down with you until we had to leave everything we loved.

  Lexie is standing now. I look at her and she shoots courage into me. “I don’t want to talk anymore,” I say.

  Mr. Leeland pushes back his chair in disgust. “This isn’t much of a system. I’m trying to get to know my daughter and I feel like I’ve got a crowd around me.”

  “I understand,” Lexie tells him, “but it’s the way the system works.”

  “For now!” He leaves without saying good-bye.

  I wanted him to leave. And it hurt me when he did.

  I stand there crying. Shush runs up and I hold him close. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  Mac walks in and heads to the refrigerator. “Well, that man is your father, Sugar. And there’s love inside you for him, no matter how you feel.”

  “I don’t want there to be any of that. He doesn’t deserve any of that!”

  “Under the circumstances, I think you’re doing pretty darn well. This isn’t easy.” He opens the refrigerator and gets out two root beers. He gives one to me. I’d forgotten how creamy a root beer tastes.

  He sits down at the table, and I do, too.

  “We had a drummer who played with us for two years,” Mac begins. “He was always late for practice. Sometimes he didn’t even show. He was a friend of mine, so I let it go. He was always going around town wearing his Fresh River jacket, telling everyone what a great band we were and how much he loved being part of it. He wasn’t fully part of it, and it hurt everybody. We knew what real commitment looked like and this guy didn’t.”