“You too,” I tell him, and turn off the light.
In my dream, I’m walking down a street in a small town I’m certain I’ve never been in. I walk past a hardware store, then an antique store. I stop in front of a coffee shop called the Perk Me Up.
I push open the door and go inside. A waitress is wiping off a table. She glances up at me and says, “Sit anywhere. I’ll be right with you.”
I sit down and look at the menu on the table. I’m not hungry, so I don’t know why I’m here. I think I’ve come to see someone. But who? There are four other customers in the shop. Two are old men sitting at the counter reading newspapers. The other two are a mother and a little boy. She’s eating a piece of pie, and he’s spooning ice cream out of a bowl and into his mouth, although a lot of it seems to be sticking to his face. I don’t think any of them are who I’m looking for.
Then the waitress is standing next to me. I look up at her. She’s probably sixty or so, with red hair that’s going gray. Her name tag says Rhonda.
“What can I get for you?” Rhonda asks, and right then I know that it’s her I’ve come to see.
Seven
As the Creature from the Black Lagoon swims along a few feet underneath the unsuspecting girl he’s fallen in love with, I watch Tom Swift and Anna-Lynn. They’re sitting together on a blanket not too far away from me. Tom has asked me to stay nearby for moral support on his first date. I’m sitting with Clodine, Starletta, and Hank, who decided at the last minute that they wanted to come. It’s a double feature at VFW movie night: Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Wolf Man. Clodine loves classic monster movies. So, apparently, does everyone else in town. The lawn is packed.
Clodine hands me a jar of pickled green beans that she put up last summer. I take one and chew on it while I wait for Tom to make his move. He’s been working up to it since the scientists arrived in the jungle. Finally, just as the Creature reaches up to touch Kay Lawrence’s foot, he reaches over and puts his arm around Anna-Lynn. She leans into him, and for a second she rests her head on his shoulder.
I’m happy for Tom, but I’m also sad. I know this is a terrible thing to think, but I can’t help being a little bit jealous that because he looks like a guy, and because he likes girls, it’s easier for him to find someone. Not that being Tom Swift is easy. I know that. And who knows what Anna-Lynn will say if or when he tells her about himself. But for right now, the world looks at them and sees a guy with a girl, and that makes his sitting with his arm around Anna-Lynn okay.
If I had my arm around another guy, you can bet someone would say something.
The pickled green bean makes me thirsty, so I take a bottle of soda from the cooler. The Grands packed it, so of course it’s full of Nehi. I don’t look at what flavor it is, so it’s a surprise when the cold blast of grapey goodness hits my tongue. I don’t even mind that it mixes with the vinegar and garlic from the beans. It’s so sugary that my teeth ache.
Tom and Anna-Lynn sit like that for the rest of the film. At intermission, Anna-Lynn disappears for a while, and Tom comes over to me.
“Looks like it’s going well,” I say, trying to sound like I’m happy for him. Which I am. Sort of.
He sits down beside me. “The funny thing is,” he says, “this is what I dreamed about the other night. You know, when we did the thing with the flowers.”
“Really?” I say. We haven’t talked about our dreams, because Starletta said if we did, they wouldn’t come true. I guess now that his has, it’s okay. But I still don’t tell him mine.
“Yeah,” Tom says. “I dreamed I was here with Anna-Lynn.”
“Is that all?” I ask.
Tom rubs his ear. “Not all,” he says, and he sounds embarrassed. I know immediately what he’s not saying. Then he scrambles to his feet, and I see Anna-Lynn coming back. “I’ll see you later,” Tom says.
I leave halfway through The Wolf Man. I’ve seen it before, and I don’t want to be around when Larry Talbot is killed by his own father, who doesn’t know that his son is under the wolf curse. Besides, the whole curse thing makes me kind of uneasy. I suspect it makes the Grands uneasy too, because it doesn’t take much to convince them to come with me. Besides, Clodine has eaten the last of the pickled beans anyway.
I don’t say goodbye to Tom Swift.
We don’t talk on the way home, the four of us squeezed into the Ford’s cab. I know we’re all thinking about the curse. Or maybe not. Maybe just I am, and the Grands are thinking about other things. Whatever the reason, we drive in silence.
Back at home, I go to my room. I take out the fifth record from my mother’s collection. Black Sabbath’s self-titled album from 1970. I put it on the stereo, place the headphones over my ears, and listen to the sounds of a thunderstorm and church bells that starts the record off.
I hesitate a moment before taking out the note that my mother put inside this particular sleeve. Number five is always a tough one for me. Sometimes I’m tempted to skip it. But I never do. That would be cheating.
The note my mother put inside Black Sabbath says this:
Your father is going to tell you that I ran away. I know why he wants you to think this, but it’s not true. I’m dead. I know this is hard to understand, and maybe you never will. But some people just can’t live in this world. I’m one of them. This isn’t your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way things are. So please, don’t wait for me to return. I can’t.
The first time I read this note, I wanted to run to my father and show it to him. But I didn’t, because I wanted to see if he would ever tell me the truth. He didn’t. And then I started to wonder if he even knew. Maybe he really did think my mother had just run off and left us. Or maybe he was just trying to protect my feelings. And eventually I decided that it didn’t matter. Either way, my mother was gone.
I’ve never told anybody about the note. I know that sounds weird. But the thing is, my mother left the records to me. Not to my father. Not to anyone else. And (as far as I know) he didn’t look at them for thirteen years, until he gave the box of them to me on my birthday. And I really don’t think he did look inside them, because I’m pretty sure he would have discussed at least this one with me.
So there’s another one of my secrets: I’m the only one who knows that my mother killed herself.
I almost told Tom Swift about it during our sleepover. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted him to know that I have this huge thing I can’t tell anyone either. But I’m not ready for it to not be my secret anymore.
Some people would probably think it was creepy that my mother left what is basically a suicide note inside a Black Sabbath album. I don’t know. I mean, it’s a great album. Yeah, it’s dark. My favorite song on it, “N.I.B.,” is a love song sung from the point of view of the devil asking someone to be his lover. But that’s interesting. Who would the devil fall in love with? Is it a man or a woman? The lyrics don’t say. All we know is that the devil has never been in love before, and that this person has changed all that. That’s pretty cool when you think about it. I can see why this is one of Ilona’s favorites. Was one of Ilona’s favorites.