Leaving Home: Short Pieces by Jodi Picoult Read Free Book Online Page B

me. “Sometimes. Why?”

    I shrug. “I guess I just wanted to know what you do when I leave for school.”

    My mother grins. “I curl up near the door like a puppy, Jenna, and wait until you come home.”

    “Yeah, right.” I hesitate. “Did you ever want to be anything else?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Like, I don’t know, join the circus. Or work in an office, like Dad. Anything.”

    “I majored in zoology in college,” she says. “I had this vision of going to track elephant migration in Africa.”

    My mother? In Africa ? “You don’t even like camping .”

    “Yeah, well, the dreams are always different from the reality, aren’t they?” She laughs. “Anyway, I met your father, and suddenly Africa seemed very far away.”

    Suddenly, I remember what my mother said after the fight about Devon not going to college. When my father asked her to talk sense at my brother, she stood up and asked if anyone wanted more broccoli. “You think Devon should travel,” I say.

    My mother sighs. “Maybe. Or go work for the Peace Corps or fall in love with a woman from Somalia or play at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. I don’t know what he should do. I just know what he shouldn’t .” She glances up. “He shouldn’t wake up one day when he’s forty-three and wonder what it looks like in Bangledesh or Bali, or if the toilets really flush in the opposite direction in Australia. I guess I just wish…I wish I had spent a little more time in the world.”

    It occurs to me that there are Ritz-Carltons in every corner of the planet. That this might not be a break for my mother, but a beginning. What if it turns out I didn’t come here to bring her back, but to say goodbye?

    “You must be exhausted,” my mother says. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

    I want to tell her that I’m fine; that I don’t have to sleep at all, but suddenly I am so tired that I can’t even form the words. I fit my curves against hers, as if we are carved from the same stone.

    When Devon and I were little we used to put on gymnastics shows on the front lawn. Sometimes, when a somersault came out wobbly or a cartwheel landed wrong, we’d shout out Do over ! This was the cue for Mom, who was the audience, to pretend that the first one had never happened. “If you could,” I ask, “would you start over?”

    Not only does my mother listen; she understands what I’m asking. She reaches across me to turn out the light; it feels like an embrace. “No,” she answers. “I wouldn’t have missed you for the world.”

    #

    For a moment when I wake up, I think I’ve died. I have a cloud drawn up to my chin; the world is washed in the watercolors of early morning. Then I remember where I am, where we are, and I focus on the insistent knocking on the door. My mother wraps the terrycloth robe around herself; pulls open the door and falls into my father’s arms.

    Then she lets go so that she can gather Devon beneath her wing; and from the way he clutches her, it’s hard to believe this is the same brother who barely acknowledges her when his friends are around, because it’s uncool to have a mother, I guess. Instead, he grabs onto her – awkward, because he’s bigger than she is by now – and if I am not mistaken, he might be crying.

    Meanwhile, my father’s spied me. He stumbles in an effort to get closer and crawls onto the bed to wrap me in his arms. “If you ever run away again,” he threatens, the words muffled into my hair, “I will kill you.” But he’s holding me so tight, I know he couldn’t possibly mean it.

    I wonder if this is why people run away – not because they want to get anywhere, but because they need to remember what they’d miss if they left for good.

    #

    Devon eats a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream; I have oatmeal and raisin toast and tea poured out of a little pot just for me. It would be great to get a little china teapot like this, even just to use in our boring old house.