Still Waters - Softcover

Lauck, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 074343966X ISBN 13: 9780743439664

Verlag: Washington Square Press, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

Clutching her pink trunk filled with the relics of a lost childhood, twelve-year-old Jenny steps off a bus in Reno and into the wide-open future. Separated from her brother, Bryan, and passed from caretaker to caretaker, Jenny endures as she always has: by following the inner compass of the survivor. But when Bryan chooses a tragic destiny, Jenny must at last confront the secrets and lies that have held her prisoner for years. Embarking on a search for answers, the adult Jenny discovers that the past cannot be locked away -- even when unraveling one's own anger and pain seems impossible. Now, in the warmth of her marriage and in the eyes of her child, Jennifer finds her own miracles. A hardened heart learns to love. A damaged soul finds peace. And life, once merely a matter of survival, becomes rich with the joys of truly living.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer Lauck is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Blackbird and its sequel, Still Waters. She lives with her husband, son, and daughter in Portland, Oregon.

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Chapter One: Reno, Nevada May 1975

The bus pulls into the Reno terminal and I hold the dirty duffel bag in my lap. People stand on the sidewalk and all the faces are just faces with eyes that don't look for me.

Inside my chest is a heavy alone feeling. Maybe no one will be here for me. I get off the bus and look around and my eyes stop on Grandpa Ed, Daddy's daddy.

"There she is," Grandpa yells.

I squeeze my fingers around the bag strap and walk until we are face to face, me small, him tall. Grandpa has his hands fisted on his hips like he has something to say but he just looks at me and shakes his head.

"Well, give your old Grandpa a hug," he says, kneeling down, arms wide.

I drop my bag and hug around his neck, the smell of coffee mixed with peppermint. He's just like I remember -- round cheeks, wide nose, white hair, and bushy white eyebrows. Grandpa laughs deep and warm against my face and stops hugging first.

"My goodness," he says, hands on the top of my shoulders, holding me back, "you're a young lady now."

My throat hurts, a lumpy kind of hurt and I smile and nod since I don't know what else to do. My arms and body still feel Grandpa's hug. I wish I was still hugging him.

I look at my tennis shoes with the hole worn through that shows my big toe and the silver key for the pink trunk is tucked safe under the laces.

Grandpa picks up my duffel bag and stands up then. "Is this all you brought with you?"

"No," I say. "My trunk is under the bus."

"Under the bus?"

A man unloads suitcases and boxes on the sidewalk.

"There," I say.

My trunk is pink and silver with flecks of gray and inside is everything I could fit. There are the wedding photos of Momma and Daddy, her pearls and wedding ring, stuff from my princess bedroom and my books.

I run up the sidewalk, pat the side of the trunk and it makes the solid sound of something packed tight. I put my hands on the black handle and lift, cool metal against my legs. The trunk is heavy but it's not too heavy to carry.

"Hey now," Grandpa says, "don't go and break your back."

"I can do it," I say. "I've done it a hundred times."

Grandpa moves his golf hat around on his head.

"That may be so, Jennifer Lauck," Grandpa says, "but you put that darn thing down and let me get it for you."

It's funny how he says my whole name, all serious, and I roll my lips together to keep from smiling. Grandpa bends, puts his hand on the black trunk handle and lifts like it's going to be easy.

"Be careful," I say. "It's heavy."

He makes a deep grunt sound and lets go of the trunk, stands straight, hands pushed into the low part of his back. He looks at me, at the trunk, and then laughs out loud.

"You're right," Grandpa says. "It is heavy."

Maybe it's the way he says those words, so surprised, maybe it's how he looks at me like I'm crazy for trying to carry the trunk myself or maybe it's how long it's been since I've seen him and how good it is to know he's here. I can't help but laugh at Grandpa and the two of us laugh so hard right there in the Reno bus terminal, I think I am going to cry.

Reno air is so hot, it's like being slapped across the face and it is this dusty color, not brown, not gray, but in-between with the lightest shade of green from the sagebrush bushes that grow everywhere.

Grandpa and me ride in his big car called a Tornado. Grandpa says he just had it painted to match his golf cart back home. He calls the color metallic green.

The air conditioner is on full blast and the smell of the air is wet and cold.

I look out the window at everything, the wide blue of the sky, the sagebrush, the flasher signs with the names of casinos in bright lights. come to the mapes, win at the nugget.

I know I'm here, but I can still feel L.A. in my body, dirty pavement under my feet, homeless people holding up their cups and asking for a nickel and in my stomach, that hungry feeling that never goes away.

I can still see Deb with her green cat eyes and her angles and edges and I can still hear her kids laughing and calling me names, happy I was finally leaving.

I rub my hand over the goose bumps on my arm and look over at where Grandpa sits. He wears wrap-around dark glasses that go over his regular glasses and they make him look like a superhero. While he drives out of the bus station, he asks about the bus ride, did I meet anyone, if I ate. I tell him the bus ride was boring, no one sat next to me, and I ate a whole roll of hard cherry candies I bought when we stopped in Fresno.

Grandpa laughs when I say that about the hard cherry candies and it's nice to make him laugh. He drives under this big arch that says reno in big letters and under reads the biggest little city in the world. Grandpa stops at a red light and then looks over at me again, a funny tilt to his head.

"I'm just trying to remember the last time I saw you," he says. "Was it '71?"

In the reflection of his wrap-around shades, I can see myself shrug my shoulders.

"It couldn't have been that long ago," he says, rubbing his hand over his face and then pinching his wide nose. "Maybe '73?"

"I don't know," I say, tucking a bit of hair behind my ear.

"Hmm," he says, both hands on the steering wheel, lower lip pushed out, face set to thinking.

This is something grown-ups do, using the years to remember, but I don't think about time that way.

Time is the last big thing that happened, how it was L.A. this morning, one-way ticket and twenty bucks in my hand, good luck and good-bye.

"No, no," Grandpa says, "I think it was '74."

How I rode from L.A. to Fresno without anyone sitting in the seat next to me. In Fresno, I got off the bus, looked over the desert, and thought I could just walk down the road and disappear into that empty wavy space of heat on asphalt.

" '72?" Grandpa says, talking to the windshield.

How I got on the bus instead, hard cherry candies in my hand, nineteen dollars and some change in my back pocket.

"It had to be '72," Grandpa says. "The year your dad married Deb."

I kick my foot up and down on the floor mat.

"What?"

"The last time I saw you," Grandpa says. "1972, the house in Fountain Valley."

The light changes from red to green and Grandpa makes a left onto the freeway.

"That's it," Grandpa says, "I'm sure of it."

The only sound is the fan blowing cold air and out the window, Reno slips by at sixty miles an hour, sagebrush and blue sky. The air in the car is cold and I squeeze my arms around myself.

Grandpa's seat is adjusted so he sits straight up and close to the steering wheel, those funny glasses on his face. He looks down my way, smile on his face, and I see myself bite my lip.

"Something on your mind?" he says.

"I was just wondering," I say.

"What, honey?" he says, leaning toward me like he can't hear.

I sit up in the seat and clear my throat.

"What's going to happen now?"

"Oh," he says, leaning back to normal sitting, eyes out on the road.

"I'm going to take you home to Grandma," he says, "and then, well, we'll just have to see."

"See about what?" I say.

"Oh, this and that," he says, head side to side, "complicated things you don't have to worry about."

"Is Bryan there?" I say.

"At the trailer? No, no, he's over in Carson with Georgia and Chuck for a bit, but not for long."

"Why not for long?" I say.

Grandpa smiles then, something about that smile that makes me think of Daddy. He puts his hand on my leg, pat-pat the way grown-ups do.

"I forgot that about you," he says.

"What?"

"You like to ask questions," he says.

I bite the edge of my thumb, that soft...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Washington Square Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 074343966X
• ISBN 13: 9780743439664
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 448
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; AA Utrecht; 3584; Niederlande