I turn around--and look at that--Ryan Daniels is a Lakeside cop. I did not know this. He's also the older brother of my high school boyfriend--I practically lived at his house for those four years. The last time I remember seeing him was when he came home from college early and caught me and his brother dry-humping on his parents' living room couch. Great.
He smiles at me warmly. "Hey, Callie. Good to see you."
"Hi, Ryan."
He must be thirty-six or thirty-seven now, but he looks almost the same as I remember--just with some new, light wrinkles around the eyes and a few strands of gray in his dark hair. But he's still broad, tall, and handsome, like all the Daniels boys.
"So . . . I reviewed the report again and, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to give your dad a ticket for the accident. There's really no way around it. Reckless driving."
Colleen nods, suppressing a giggle. "It's fine."
"It's not fine!" My father yells from inside the hospital room. "I've never gotten a ticket in my life and I'm not paying the man now!"
Then he starts to sing "Fuck tha Police," by NWA.
"Dad!" I yell. "Stop it! I'm so sorry, Ryan."
"They've got them hopped up on a lot of painkillers," Colleen explains.
He chuckles. "No problem."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck the police . . ."
I clench my teeth. "How does he even know that song?"
"The new Buick he bought came with a free satellite radio subscription," my sister says. "He's been listening to Urban Yesterday, all the classics are on there--NWA, Run-DMC . . . Vanilla Ice."
My father stops singing and goes back to yelling. "I remember you, Ryan Daniels--puking in our rosebushes after drinking that crap liquor you brought to Colleen's sweet sixteen!" Then he does a spot-on impression of Scarface. "You're not giving me no stinking ticket."
A pink flush crawls up Ryan's neck. "Wow. Your dad has a really good memory." He calls into the room, "Sorry about those rosebushes, Mrs. Carpenter."
"That's all right, honey," my mother's gravelly voice calls back. "You can regurgitate in my bushes any day--as long as you rally afterwards."
I cover my eyes. Praying for a tear in the space-time continuum to swallow me whole.
"So, a reckless driving ticket?" I ask Ryan. "Dad's usually a great driver; what happened?"
"His mind wasn't on the road, that's for damn sure," Colleen answers.
Ryan's flush burns brighter. "Your parents were being . . . affectionate . . . at the time of the accident."
"Affectionate?" I repeat, happily clueless.
Until Colleen ruins it.
"Mom was blowing Dad," she busts out, then folds over with horrified laughter.
I think I scream. Because those words should never, ever be put together in the same sentence.
"We had a good night at the slots in AC," my mother yells back. "We were celebrating." Then her tone turns disgustingly proud. "I've still got it. Though I think taking out the dentures might've helped."
I'm stunned, speechless--afraid to say anything that could make it worse. With my mom and dad it can always be worse.
"Your parents are so much funnier than mine," Ryan says, and now he's cracking up with my sister.
"Oh yeah?" I raise my eyebrows. "Wanna trade?"
~
Coming home to Lakeside always feels kind of odd--the way everything seems smaller and yet, no different at all. It's been longer this time since I've been back . . . years. I look out the window as my sister drives us from the hospital to my parents' house, passing the streets I know so well and the sweet ghosts that live on every corner. Colleen fills me in on the latest happenings around town--who's having babies, who's getting divorced. There was a fire at Brewster's Pharmacy a few months ago, but they rebuilt, painted it an ugly orange color.
It wasn't really a conscious decision for me to come home less often . . . life just sort of worked out that way. Money was tight my first few years of school; my parents were footing the bill for two full-time college tuitions, and a plane ticket from California to New Jersey wasn't cheap. I waitressed my way through those first Thanksgivings and spring breaks at a diner near campus . . . only coming home for Christmas.
It wasn't bad--I liked San Diego--the newness of it, the sunshine. And my mom had, once upon a time, hitchhiked her way from one corner of the country to the other--so she was always encouraging me and Colleen to get out there, see the world, make their own nests, and get to know the birds on all the other branches . . . to fly.
I started doing theater productions in the summers, so coming back to Jersey in May when the semester ended was out. My third year in school was a game changer. Money was better with Colleen having graduated and I got an off-campus apartment. My parents came out to visit and met Snapper, my glaucoma-afflicted, medical-marijuana-card-carrying neighbor. He was like their soul mate--I swear they would've adopted him if he wasn't forty-seven.
He lives in Oregon now and my parents still send him Christmas cards.
The year I graduated, I came home to be the maid of honor in my sister's wedding. But then, I sort of became my family's time-share--their excuse to go on a vacation every year. Them visiting California eventually evolved into all of us picking a different place each year to spend each holiday. Sometimes it was Lake Tahoe, sometimes it was Myrtle Beach . . . but only once in a rare while was it Lakeside, New Jersey.
On Main Street my sister gives two quick beeps on her horn and Ollie Munson waves at our car. I smile and raise my hand against the glass, waving back.
My voice goes soft. "Ollie's still here, huh?"
Colleen makes a duh face at me. "Of course he is. I would've told you if something happened to Ollie."
A few minutes later, we pull into my parents' driveway--the same brown ranch I grew up in, with the neat front yard, white wicker chairs on the front stoop, and my mom's dream-catcher wind chimes hanging beside the door.
"So." My sister turns the car off. "We need to talk about a schedule. How we're going to handle Mom and Dad's recovery."
It's the "we" that hits me, right between the eyes. A big red flag with a bull right behind it that signals my life is about to change.
"I hadn't thought about it."
It's been like a tornado since her phone call--a whirlwind of throwing stuff in a bag, getting the first flight to New Jersey that I could, and grabbing a taxi to the hospital.
Colleen's head tilts with disappointment. "Callie-dally. I realize you have this whole shiny, single life going on in California--but you couldn't really think I'd be able to do this all by myself."
Embarrassment thickens in my blood--because that's exactly what I thought. Maybe it's little sister syndrome, but Colleen's always so on top of everything, a regular Super Woman, I've never considered there's something she can't handle alone.
"Can we hire a nurse?"
"Ah, no. Medicare won't cover that. Gary does okay at the insurance company--well enough for me to stay home with the kids--but we can't afford a private nurse. Not for the amount of time they'd need help."
My brother-in-law, Gary, is a nice, average guy--in every way possible. Medium height, average build, medium brown hair--even the tone of his voice is average--not too deep, not too high, always spoken at a steady, even volume. And like Colleen said, they're not rolling in dough but he makes a good enough salary to take care of his family, to allow my sister to be the stay-at-home, PTA-warrior, dinner-on-the-table-at-five soccer-mom she always dreamed of being. Just for that, I love the guy way above average.
"I can take care of Mom and Dad during the day, after I get the kids on the bus," my sister says. "I can take them to their doctor and rehab appointments. But at night, you're going to have to be here in case they need anything, fixing them dinner, keeping them out of trouble. You know Dad--he'll be trying to hobble out the door with Mom in his arms and squeeze both their freaking casts into the Buick for a joyride, on day one."
I laugh. It's funny because it's true.
And then I rub my eyes, exhausted, like mustering that laugh took all the energy I had left in my bones.
I give my sister my big news, with considerably less excitement than I'd felt yesterday. "I got a promotion. I'm the new executive director."
She hugs me tight and strong, the only way Colleen knows how. "That's awesome! Congratulations--I'm so happy for you." Then the joy dims on her face. "Is taking time off going to screw that up?"
The tendons in my neck feel stiff and achy. "I don't . . . think so. I have to look into it, but I'm pretty sure they'll let me take an emergency family leave and hold the position for me. But the pay for that kind of time off is only a fraction of my normal salary. It won't cover my rent."
And if I start dipping into my savings, I can kiss my seals goodbye forever.
My sister skims her palms over the steering wheel, thinking.
"Julie Shriver, the theater teacher at the high school, is pregnant and just got put on bedrest."
"Julie Shriver is having a baby?" I ask.
Julie Shriver was always the odd girl around town. Her hobbies were beekeeping and pen-paling with the prison inmates in Rahway.
"Yeah! One of the inmates she wrote to was released last year and turned out to be a really nice guy. They got married a few months ago--he plays on Gary's softball team and is the new deacon over at Saint Bart's. Adam or Andy . . . something like that. But the point is, Miss McCarthy is in desperate need of a theater teacher for the year--she'd hire you in a heartbeat."
Miss McCarthy was the grouch-ass principal when I went to Lakeside--and I can't imagine the seventeen years since have made her nicer.
"Teaching? I don't know . . . that would be weird."
My sister waves her hand. "You have a master's degree in theater arts." Her voice takes on a teasingly fancy tone. "And you're the executive director, now, la-dee-da. A high school theater class should be a piece of cake for you."