Page 107 - Too Much and Never Enough - Mary L. Trump

The backyard was quiet in the early-September afternoon. I jumped up the two steps to the cement patio and rang the doorbell. There was no outdoor furniture, just an empty slab. The only person who’d ever used it when we were younger was my uncle Rob. At one time there had been a couple of wrought-iron chairs out there, and when he was home for the weekend, he’d pull them together, and, using one as a footrest, he’d slather himself with baby oil and prop his folding aluminum tanning reflector under his chin.
Minutes passed. I was about to press the doorbell again when my grandmother finally answered the door. She seemed surprised to see me. I pulled the screen door toward me to enter, but Gam remained in the doorway.
“Hi, Gam. I’m here to see Dad.”
Gam stood there wiping her hands on her apron, tense, as if I’d just caught her at something. I reminded her that I was leaving for school the next day. She was quite tall, and with her blond hair swept up and pinned tightly behind her head, she looked more severe than usual. She didn’t move to let me in.
“Your father’s not home,” she said. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
I was confused. I knew my father had wanted to see me off—we’d talked about it only a few days before. I assumed that he had forgotten I was coming by. In the last year, he’d often forgotten when we had plans. I wasn’t surprised, exactly, but something about it still didn’t seem right. Directly above where my grandmother and I stood, the sound of a radio came through the open window of my father’s bedroom.
I shrugged at Gam, pretending not to care. “Okay, then, I guess tell him to call me later.” I moved toward her for a hug, and she put her arms around me stiffly. When I turned to leave, I heard the door close. I walked down the path and down the stairs to the driveway, got on my bike, and rode home. I left for school the next day. Dad never called me.
I was watching a movie in the brand-new auditorium of the Ethel Walker School when the projector went dark and the lights came up. The students were there to watch The Other Side of the Mountain, an uplifting story about an Olympic skier who becomes paralyzed in a skiing accident. Instead, The Other Side of Midnight—a decidedly different kind of movie