Something of a Reversal

By half past eleven on pick-up day, it was clear that the most reasonable explanation for her mother’s absence was a horrific, deadly car crash. There was no word from counselors, no word of course via cellphone because she was not allowed to have one at camp. Being in backwoods Vermont, this had never been an issue before. There had been days where a call may have been nice. Her time in the infirmary might have been a little less lonely with a call from mom, but then the loneliness didn’t last long. Another camper had joined her in the next bed, and the two had chatted when they weren’t reading or sleeping. The general peacefulness of the ward had been far from unpleasant, and Reese’s counselors had even brought her comfort items to her for the night.

              Those were packed now with everything else. She didn’t even have a pen to click.

Reese paced the back end of the basketball court. She chewed her lower lip. She tasted rust. The cleave in the middle stung.

Being abandoned hadn’t been so bad at first. She’d seen several other kids whose parents hadn’t showed yet mingling around even as the head of activities gave her welcome speech. It wasn’t as if everyone had to be there at a specific on the dot time. That’s what the opening breakfast was for. Mingling, talking. Meeting her new friends’ parents and families. Even as her bunkmates and families started to disperse from the blacktop to show off their cabin, Reese was able to keep her breathing mostly steady and a smile on her face.

Now she drank coffee and paced.

If there had been any creamer left, even the little plastic cups, she would have gladly chosen that instead. It was hot and shade was shifting away from the blacktop of the basketball court. No good reason existed to drink hot coffee let alone a lukewarm version of the stuff. It had been sitting out for over an hour now.  Just like Reese, it waited for the stragglers to make their way from the blacktop.

“Pokey little puppy.”

Mom had that nickname for Reese whenever the girl meandered particularly more than usual. Reese could pinpoint exact times but not count them on her hands or feet. Anywhere the family went, there was the risk of being dragged down by Reese’s pokiness. He mother knew to call Reese’s name when the chattering stopped. Her daughter tried to share the spaces within her mind, but the disjointed, knotted ball of strings without ends ran counter to Mom’s neat labyrinth of synapses.

Mom was not unique in this.

None of her family saw the worlds Reese existed with. They were legion, those realities within realities, and they found niches in Reese’s attention that Mom’s “real world” could never fill. Behind her eyelids, the dreams folded in on themselves and spun outward toward the horizon like so many loose ribbons in the wind. A moss-covered rock in just the right amount of shade, an outfit on a walker, trees, and flies: all of these could trigger a thought that might become a dream if Reese kept it for herself. She would forget what her aim had been a moment prior and slow to watch the sunlight streaming through a window just so. For what to her was only a moment, Reese might stand, touching the face of a stone, while all the connections clicked about to rearrange a prior idea.

In a good mood she teased the girl with the title of a little golden book. Pokey little puppy, an old watercolor favorite of Mom’s. She might pat Reese on the back. In a bad mood she would be snappier, chiding Reese for not sticking with her or paying attention to her surroundings. It was a coin toss as to how her humor would fall. Mom’s biggest peeve was the time Reese took to use the bathroom even in public. How could she possibly take so long knowing other people were waiting? In a better mood she might joke.

“Did you fall asleep?”

“I thought you drowned in there.”

Mom didn’t daydream while putting on socks. Her head came with a floor plan and signs to follow. She had destinations labeled on wall calendars all down the main hallway. Those calendars transposed themselves into reality by way of the ones in Reese’s kitchen. Mom noticed the right things at the right times and acted on her observations without having to ask for clarification. It was really quite admirable and distressing to Reese in noting the many ways she hadn’t inherited her mother’s abilities. Waiting for Reese rarely agreed with her way of moving through the world. Reese knew this well from each time Mom reminded her of it. Changing her own path through reality was much harder than recognizing the differences.

Of course despite the differences, Mom did wait for her. She waited constantly, always, not patiently every time, but she waited. Dad didn’t wait. Teachers didn’t wait. Mom factored in the time it would take Reese to stumble.

 How was she going to function as an orphan? Would her brother have to give up his plans of going to college in the fall, or would she be given to her godparents? Reese barely knew her godparents. She’d only met her god-siblings maybe twice—if she had met the younger one at all. Time blurred in reminiscence. How old were they now? How old was the little girl? She was the younger of the two, correct? Reese tried to place a date on when her family had received the letters announcing the adoption of her godmother’s second kid. Was it before or after Happy Feet?

Reese picked apart the scabs on her cuticles.

She recalled that the last time she’d been similarly stuck had been at her grandmother’s funeral. After the memorial service, the adults stood around for what felt like five hours without anything to eat or drink outside hot coffee and tea. Neither appealed to the bored, hungry nine year old. She was thirsty then for something cold, just as she was now at fourteen. She needed something to do with her mouth, and nobody was interested in talking to her. The difference was that the funerary coffee hour had at least supplied creamer cups. She’d invented a secret mission to snag those suckers, along with sugar packets, without being caught or questioned. By the time the grown-ups had finally announced it was time to head to the reception restaurant, Reese had swallowed about five creamers and eaten three sugar packets only one of which she’d mixed in with the cream.

Reese’s brother drank coffee sometimes because he was something of a grown up now. He was allowed. Reese was not. On top of the classic, stunted growth warning, it was sure to be bad for her learning disability. Even if it wasn’t, there was no reason she needed all that caffeine. Reese never minded the ban much. She didn’t like the taste of coffee. She was also not allowed to leave the basketball court without her parents.

Reese filled her cup halfway again before realizing that the sugar basket was gone. Only a single, dropped sweetn’low remained on the cocktail table. Reese picked it up.

There were no basketballs on the court. That wasn’t its purpose today. It was supposed to be a place of assembly. Reese craned again to see through the trees to the parking lot, but it was so full she would never be able to spot their car. As it was, she was on the very edge of the blacktop. She glanced behind her. A few counselors chatted near the hoop. She knew them of course, it was a small camp, but none of them were her bunk counselors. No eyes were noticeably on her. Reese bit into the Styrofoam. She rolled the sweetener packet in her fist.

Reese missed the garbage can with an overshot. The sweetener smacked the ground just beyond the plastic rim. Reese trembled. Her hands were so tense, so tense, her whole body felt it. She jerked her arms violently. Audible was the shift of cartilage in her wrists.

She could feel her heart.

Reese took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes against her shoulder. It was bad. She was fourteen. She was going into high school. She wasn’t allowed to fall apart like this; her bunkmates looked up to her. Some of them. Some of them knew her better than that.

For the first time since she’d eaten in the mess hall, Reese sat. She criss-crossed her legs and buried her head in her arms to rest forehead against hands. Why were they late? What reason could her mother have to make her wait? That wasn’t how anything had worked before. Flashes of disaster, of twisted metal and smoke answered Reese. Her mind’s eye, those worlds turned dark. The twisting of ideas became the death writhe of worms.

An old piece of advice from her therapist echoed in Reese’s mind.

“Take your worst case scenario and dissect it. If your mom dies, what is the worst that will happen? What is most likely to happen?”

Her grandparents, maybe. Reese thinks of her brother, how distant they are from each other. She thinks of her aunts and uncles, her godparents. She thinks of the pain she’ll feel. The absence.

Reese buries her head deeper. Thinking was the wrong idea.

She breathes. She closes her eyes. The sun is hot on her dark blue camp shirt. In soaks the heat. Cicadas call.

In a moment, there is the crunch of tires on gravel, and Reese shoves herself to her feet.

After everything, they were late because of roadwork.