Shannon’s Reviews > Bigger than a Bread Box > Status Update

A nice, little, book.

She was sitting at the same desk in the same school in the same city as always. And I ... wasn't. So I could say "I'm lonely" or "It's fun here," but she wouldn't know what I meant, not really ... especially when both statements felt completely true and totally inadequate. I didn't understand it myself, and I didn't want her to feel sorry for me. It was too hard. I stopped returning her calls.

"Everything's awful." As I spoke that sentence, I knew it wasn't entirely true. That wasn't fair. Everything wasn't awful. Gran was great, of course, and school hadn't been so bad. Then there was the bread box. But my anger felt like something I could give him. I could say it was awful for him. Maybe it would even get me home sooner if I did.

He reached back to touch Lew, but just then my mom turned the key, started the engine. The car made a big noise. My door was still open.
Over the noise of the car, through my open door, Dad said, "Annie, please? We can still ... They're my kids ... I'll try to ... Don't do this ..."
"I already did," she said. "We'll call you when we get there."
That was how we left him, through an open car door.

I didn't have to listen. I shouldn't have, but I did. I turned my head from my dad and unhugged him. I pulled away from his arms, wiggled out, opened the car door, and ducked inside. I looked at my lap. I didn't look at him. If he wasn't going to cry, then I wasn't going to cry either. I could be strong too.

I felt frozen. Stuck to him, stuck with him in a bubble, in that hug so tight it was bruising my arms. We were going to leave him—my dad—and there was nothing I could do. It wasn't possible. It was too fast. I just hugged and hugged and hugged.
But then.
Then my mother, behind me, said in a tiny voice, "Rebecca, please? Don't make this any harder for me."
And I listened.

I put my arms around his chest. He didn't make a sound, and there were no tears, but his body was shaking all around me, like a silent movie of someone crying. Or maybe he was just shivering in the wind. He smelled a little like cigarette smoke and a lot like sweat. My dad. My dad. My dad was so strong. He never cried. "I don't know ...," he whispered to me. Answering a question I hadn't asked.

"You think I like the way things are any better than you?"
She didn't answer him.
I couldn't stand it after that. It was totally dark and quiet. I'd never been anywhere so still as that room. It was like I was waiting in the back of a closet, sitting on lumpy shoes. Only there was no door to open, nothing I could do to get out. I'd never listened so carefully to something I didn't want to hear.

I was kind of impressed with this seagull. He didn't care that we were bigger than him. He didn't care that we were kicking at him. He didn't even move when we got up and ran right past him to buy our ice cream. That seagull had a sandwich and he was going to eat it. It was his playground and he wasn't going anywhere.
I never forgot that dumb bird.