Circa Now Page 20

  “You mean, ‘A little help here, sweetie?’” said Circa.

  “You got it,” Mom said. “I’ve said that to him a million times this week. So I thought maybe one million and one might help today.”

  Circa nodded and smiled. She’d never known her mother to initiate a road trip. She wasn’t sure what had changed, but somehow, for some reason, all lights were green. Mom was pushing through, and Circa felt proud. Even so, she couldn’t help dwelling on the reality of what lay ahead. The trip was a victory for Mom, sure enough. And it had bought them one more day with Miles. But what then for him? she wondered. And what kind of sadness would be waiting for all three of them at the reunion scene?

  “Mom…what if Miles doesn’t even want to remember?” said Circa, watching his reflection as he gazed out the side window.

  “Then he can tell me to turn this car around,” said Mom.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Monroe. Thank you,” said Miles, as if he knew the trip wasn’t really about remembering at all.

  As they made their way through the streets of Wingate and onto the main highway, it troubled Circa to be so anxious about going somewhere, and it made her wonder if this was what Mom felt like all the time. As they passed one highway sign after another in growing anticipation, Circa felt even sadder, knowing this was the last drive Dad ever made. Every blurred mile of grassy roadside brought her closer to tears, until Mom spoke up and broke the silence in the best possible way.

  “Miles,” Mom said, “I’ve been thinking about this an awful lot over the last few hours, and I want you to know something.”

  Mom looked at Miles in the rearview mirror.

  “I want you to know that, if I have anything to say about it, you won’t be going anywhere with Barbara Linholt. And for the record, I plan on having a lot to say about it.”

  Miles suddenly looked a thousand pounds lighter, like Great-Uncle Mileage himself had swooped down in his plane and lifted a weight right off of him.

  “Not going with her ever?” he said.

  “Ever.”

  “Not back to Tennessee?” said Circa.

  “Not to anywhere,” said Mom. “In fact,” she said, “I plan to do my best to make you a permanent part of the Monroe family.”

  Circa could see Mom smiling in the mirror and Miles crinkling right back at her. She began to feel pretty crinkly herself.

  “Hey, bro,” she said with a punch to his arm.

  “Forgive me,” said Mom. “I keep calling you Miles, when I guess I should be saying Corey.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I actually prefer Miles.”

  “Miles it is, then,” said Mom.

  “And Circa,” she continued, “I’ve got something to say to you as well.”

  Circa prayed she hadn’t saved the bad news for last.

  “You know,” said Mom, “I’ve been hearing about all the photo work you’ve been doing lately.”

  Circa looked inquisitively at Miles, and he gave her a guilty shrug.

  “After you left the studio last night, I stayed behind and took a look through the Shopt folder,” said Mom. “I saw some old favorites in there, of course, but then I noticed some new ones.”

  “Mom, we were just goofing—”

  “No, now let me finish,” said Mom. “I was going to say that I noticed some new ones that were every bit as good as the ones your dad had made.”

  “Oh,” said Circa with a curl in her voice.

  “I’ve been so distracted I hadn’t taken notice of your work,” Mom said. “But now, I have to admit that I’ve been wrong. Circa, it is undeniable. You truly do have your father’s gift.”

  Circa puffed with pride.

  “So much so, in fact, that I think you should definitely have a go at the Maple Grove photos.”

  Circa bolted upright in her seat. “But what about the fountain?” she said. “Lily said they were putting a wall fountain up.”

  “I imagine that fountain can go anywhere,” said Mom.

  “Maybe they can knock it over and reflatten Stanley with it,” said Miles.

  But Circa paid no attention to Miles’s comment. She was busy enjoying the flicker of a dream coming back to life.

  “Wow. Thanks, Mom,” she said. She mouthed a thank-you to Miles, and he replied with a nod of congratulations. Circa felt so warm, it was almost like Dad had just climbed right into the car with them. The feeling carried on for nearly the rest of their ride, until they crossed over into Denfork County, where the worst of the tornado devastation had happened. In stunned silence, Circa, Miles, and Mom marveled at how quickly the scenery around them had changed from businesses and homes to unrecognizable heaps of things.

  “Guess there are lots of folks’ lives in need of restoring, huh?” said Mom.

  Circa and Miles both nodded in agreement, struck by the sporadic scenes of destruction along the roadside. Just past a tractor turned upside down, Mom slowed the car and veered off the highway at the next exit.

  “This is the place,” she said.

  Moments later, Mom pulled into a little paved parking lot next to a wooded picnic area. Once they were stopped, Miles wasted no time getting out of the car to go explore.

  “Be careful,” said Mom. “It might be kind of dangerous with all that damage over there.”

  Miles gave her an affirmative wave and disappeared among the bushes.

  “What if he doesn’t remember anything by June sixteenth?” said Circa. “Will they try to send him away?”

  “June sixteenth?” said Mom.

  “The date on that appointment card on the fridge,” said Circa.

  “Oh, that wasn’t for Miles,” said Mom. “That reminder was for my appointment.”

  Circa couldn’t believe what she’d just heard, after all those years Dad had tried to arrange that very thing, but it sure made her glad to hear it.

  “Dr. Jones feels certain he can help me with my own struggles…in a much less drowsy, nightmare-free way,” said Mom.

  “Good,” said Circa. “But Mom, what made you be able to come do this today?”

  Mom looked to the little rectangle of gray sky in the sunroof. “You’re asking the wrong person,” she said.

  The two of them climbed out of the car.

  “Mom,” Circa said as she shut her door. “What really made you change your mind about the Memory Wall?”

  “I told you already,” Mom said. “It was that talent of yours.”

  “Was that it?” said Circa.

  “That and maybe just a couple extra nudges,” Mom said.

  “From who?”

  “Well, when Miles came inside early this morning, he found me in the studio and told me in no uncertain terms he thought you were ready to continue your dad’s work. That I had been paying attention to what you couldn’t do instead of what you could. That you and your dad were ready to say something important, I believe is how he put it. Powerfully sweet, considering he thought it would be one of our last conversations,” she said.

  Circa felt her heart swell with gratitude. “What was the other nudge?” she said.

  “Hmm, well, the other one is a bit of a mystery,” said Mom. “While you were upstairs waiting for Miles last night, someone from Maple Grove called the house. He whispered to me that he had some friends that were very much in need of that wall.”

  Circa searched her brain for who the caller might be. She knew it wouldn’t have been Stanley.

  “Was it Hank-not-the-Mayor?” she said. “Did he mention his intestines?”

  “No,” Mom chuckled. “No mention of those.”

  “Did he say who the friends were? That might narrow it down.”

  “He only said friends,” said Mom. “Then he told me that we had a job to do, and after that he just hung up.”

  “Huh,” said Circa, as they ne
ared the clearing. “Maybe it was Joe the food— Wait, did you just say a job to do?”

  But Mom didn’t say a word. Instead, she just stopped still as a statue at the outskirts of the picnic area. Circa noticed immediately what had caused her mother’s reaction. There, at the entrance to the clearing, were the obvious marks of an accident. The Jeep had long since been towed away, but the tire ruts in the grass and the fallen tree remained. It was a gut-wrenching discovery, and within moments of seeing it, Mom went totally white and had to sit down in the grass. Circa joined her at once, feeling woozy with grief herself.

  Totally oblivious to Mom and Circa’s discovery, however, Miles wandered the area in the distance and searched, like he was playing a game of hide-and-seek with his own memories. There were so many smaller trees crisscrossed on the ground, he had to jerk his leg free with every step. Speechless and sickened, Circa and Mom sat leaning against each other on the grass while Miles lifted twisted metal chairs and splintered picnic tables off a big pile of damage at the other side of the clearing. Circa wondered how much more of this she could stand, when Miles suddenly shouted, “Hey! I found it!”

  Circa and Mom got up and held hands as they carefully wove their way to where Miles was in the distance. They found him standing next to a half-crumbled brick barbecue grill. Propped diagonally across the top of the grill was the leafy end of a big, fallen tree.

  “This is where I was,” he said. “Right before I heard everything start crashing. Only this tree wasn’t here when I first crouched next to the bricks.”

  There was such rubble piled over the fallen tree, Mom and Circa had to stoop to see the small, person-size hiding space under the trunk.

  “Look at that,” marveled Miles. “The tree landed across the grill and kept all these tables and stuff from crashing down on me.”

  Circa glanced around and shuddered at the heap of destruction that surrounded them. Then she looked back at the tree. Her eyes followed the length of it all the way back to the entrance of the clearing.

  “Mom,” she said slowly. “Look at this tree.”

  “Amazing,” said Mom. “It saved his life.”

  “No, Mom, I mean look at the whole tree.”

  Mom and Miles both took in the entire length of the tree, from where they stood all the way to its splintered trunk at the entrance of the clearing. There were tire ruts deep in the ground at the base of the stump.

  “It’s the one Dad hit,” Circa said, an oil-and-water mix of anguish and amazement coursing right through her. “That’s the one that saved Miles.”

  “You mean your dad—” Miles stopped midsentence and just stood gaping at the small triangle of shelter. “He did come help me.”

  Mom wrapped her arm around Miles and started to cry, but Circa suddenly found herself more full of inspiration than tears. She studied the tree, all the way from its jagged break to its soft green canopy of shelter. As she did, for the first time ever, she considered how a person’s purpose here on earth might not be made up of a thousand past or future thens. How it might be all about just one now, when he was there at that very moment someone really needed him. Even for Dad, who was right here to rescue a desperately lost, hurting boy…a boy who would in turn rescue Circa and her mom when it was time for Dad’s own soul to go.

  She thought about the song Dad loved and could almost hear him poorly belting out the lyrics. “Oh Lord, keep your eye on this place.” Circa touched her hand to the coarse bark of the fallen tree. As she did, she wondered if Miles was the answer to Dad’s prayer. And if Dad was just maybe the answer to Corey James’s prayer.

  “Wow” was all that Miles could utter.

  “Come on,” said Mom, smiling tearfully as she patted Miles on the shoulder. “I think we’ve seen enough.”

  “Wait. Not yet,” said Circa.

  While Mom and Miles searched for a safe pathway out through the mess of debris, Circa stepped high up onto a righted picnic table and turned in a slow circle, searching all around the clearing, longing to find any of the wonderful things Dad had added to this picture. She stopped when she heard the sound of something being flapped by the wind in a tree limb above. It looked to be a piece of paper caught on a branch barely within reach, and she stretched to grab it free.

  Circa smoothed out the paper and took one look that made her heart spill over with sadness. It was another one of the Linholt Reunion photos, all pinkened, but otherwise plain as ever. Nothing tangled in the trees, no sly potato, and worst of all…no baby. Looking at the place in the photo where that Shopt baby should have been made Circa try to imagine life without Miles, and she couldn’t stand the thought. Circa pressed the print to her belly and shuddered at how she’d tried to Shopt out all the trees, including one very important one, from the clearing.

  “You know,” said Miles from behind her. “The beaver would have been long gone by now anyway, right? Mrs. Linholt probably turned the potato into salad. And the watch, well, the wind might have blown it to who knows where.”

  “Botswana,” said Circa.

  Miles hoisted himself up onto the table. “But the missing baby, well, I can’t really say.”

  “I can,” said Circa, dropping the picture and letting it float to the ground.

  Circa looked Miles in the eye. “The baby grew up to be a real hero,” she said.

  “Heroic as Great-Uncle Mileage?” said Miles.

  “Even more so,” said Circa.

  Mom came stumbling through the picnic fragments to the table.

  “Mom,” said Circa, holding out a hand to help her up. “I was just thinking, this place could really use some candy vines.”

  Mom took in a deep breath.

  “I don’t know,” she said, so doubtfully that Circa was afraid her comment had just made things worse.

  Then Mom wiped her eyes and said, “I was thinking more along the lines of a Kapow! bush.”

  “Or a koala bear,” said Miles, with a crinkle.

  As the three of them steadied themselves side-by-side on that wobbly picnic table, Circa marveled at how a dad could magically make things okay, despite being missing from the picture. She grabbed on to Miles’s and Mom’s shoulders and looked to the sky.

  Thank you for the thens, she thought. And thank you for the now.

  Circa could feel her heart beating in her earlobes. The festivities at the Maple Grove Residence were just getting started, but August sixth had already far exceeded her once-faded, wildest dreams. From Circa’s perch on the bricked edge of the walking path, at the center of the atrium, it appeared as though a hundred people had shown up for the unveiling of the Studio Monroe Memory Wall. She stood as still as her nerves would allow as Nurse Lily tried again and again to pin a corsage to Circa’s new dress without sticking her in the shoulder. As Lily fiddled with the big pearly straight pin, Circa surveyed the entire scene from just above the crowd’s heads.

  All around her, a delightful mix of residents, family, and friends milled about. There was Ms. Rempy and her slurring parrot, Hank-not-the-Mayor and his digestion, Maki Lee carrying the branch she’d decorated for Circa, and even the Nelsons, wide awake and holding hands in their side-by-side wheelchairs. There were church friends, neighbors, and schoolteachers. Even Sergeant Simms from the police station was there. She was sorry to note that there was also Stanley Betts, standing right next to the stage with a broom in his hand. Lily had instructed him not to leave her sight, so all he did was stand there looking surly and sweeping the same crumpled napkin back and forth. Circa had secretly hoped to see him smile at least once, so she could check if just maybe his teeth were a little Shopt yellow.

  “Oooh,” said Lily. “Somebody already needs a nap.”

  Through the glass wall between the atrium and the lobby, Circa was tickled to both see and hear the Boones’ arrival, as little Durret was indeed in the midst of a small tantrum. She watched Nattie and f
amily walk straight over to Mom, who was greeting one person after another in the lobby and sharing with each of them the stories on the Memory Wall behind her. Even Circa had to admit the wall was a grand thing to behold, and as it should be, for she had worked tirelessly for weeks restoring to perfection the images of her Maple Grove friends and the town they called home. Mom had even done her own special part, paying a visit to the center in July to make a new portrait of each resident—all but one, that is—to include with the older pictures on the wall.

  After Mom introduced the Boones to the display, she directed them over to a food area, which was really Lily’s desk draped in a purple velvety cloth covered with all manner of cheeses and fruits. To Circa’s delight, Mom had picked up everything herself at the store and as a surprise, she’d even tried to slice the apples into thinnest-evers. Naturally, Circa kept it to herself what a poor job Mom had done. After all, it was worth eating thickest-evers for the rest of forever to see her mom smiling regularly.

  “Lily,” said Circa, her eyes fixed long-distance on the swath of purple fabric. “I sure do wish Captain Mann would have come out today.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Lily, finally getting the corsage situated. “But you and me just might need to set that wish aside for a while, baby.”

  It had gotten so crowded in the atrium that Circa hadn’t even noticed Nattie weaving her way through, until she’d bounded onto the bricks and done a huge fake sneeze onto Circa’s carnation.

  “Nattie!”

  “Sorry, Circ, I just had to do it,” she said. “Did you know that the Europeans used to use the carnation to treat fevers?”

  Nattie patted the big flower.

  Circa rolled her eyes. “Poop magnet,” she muttered.

  “No, seriously, it’s true,” Nattie said, “But mainly I wanted to tell you what an amazing job you did on that wall.”

  Circa felt herself blush. “Thanks, Nat. That’s real sweet.”

  “Amazing job, that is…for a total shmoo,” said Nattie, taking a leap off the bricks before Circa could swat her. Nattie nearly collided with Miles, who was making his own careful way toward the stage carrying three glass-bottle Cokes.