Saving CeeCee Honeycutt Read Online Free PDF Page A

tried to talk to my father.
    I remembered the day I was sitting in the grass by the side of the house, playing with a toy bear. I looked across the street and saw Gloria unloading bags of groceries from her car. As I was about to call her name and wave, my father pulled into our driveway. When Gloria saw him, she trotted across the street, her short black hair shining in the sun.
    “Carl, I need to talk to you. It’s important. Something’s wrong with Camille,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I’m worried about her, and I’m scared for Cecelia. Please come over to my house so we can talk in private. I’d like to—”
    “Gloria, I’ll handle my own family,” Dad said, holding up his hand.
    “I just think—”
    But Dad turned and left her standing in the driveway.
    Gloria was never the same after that day. She came over less and less, and then she stopped altogether. She’d always smile and wave hello whenever she saw me, but she didn’t come across the street and talk to me like she used to. Then one day a big green moving van pulled up and parked in her driveway. Later that afternoon, Gloria and her husband locked their front door and moved away. She didn’t even say good-bye.
    And now here I was all these years later, staring into the starless sky, thinking about how much easier everything would be if my mother was locked up in a sanatorium. I sometimes even wished she were dead. It was terrible to think such a thing, but I just couldn’t help it. I’m not saying I wanted to skip through life in a rosy blur from one Disney experience to the next—all I longed for was to know one whole happy day.
    The following Saturday morning the phone rang, and when I answered, a woman’s voice said, “Oh, uh, hello. I’d like to speak to Carl.”
    I recognized her voice. She had called several times in the past. “He’s not home. Who’s calling?”
    There was a long pause, and then she said, “It’s not important, I’ll call back another time.” And she quickly hung up.
    Late that afternoon she called again, and still she refused to leave a message.
    Not ten minutes later I heard my dad’s car roll into the driveway. I ran out the back door and watched him pull a six-pack of beer and a small suitcase from the trunk. Before he reached the top step of the porch, I blurted, “You have to do something. Momma needs help. And I—”
    “C’mon, CeeCee, move over,” he grumbled, pushing past me.
    His face was as tight as a clenched fist, and he reeked of liquor, underarm sweat, and a three-day-old foul mood. I knew that smell was a big red flag warning me to stay clear, but I followed him into the kitchen anyway.
    “Momma needs to be in a hospital, and she—”
    “For God’s sake. Can’t I even walk in the door without getting hounded?” He grabbed a beer, shoved the rest of the six-pack into the refrigerator, and pushed the door closed with his foot. “I took your mother to a big-deal doctor in Cleveland. He put her on so many pills the bathroom looked like a damn pharmacy. You know darn well she won’t take them, and even when she does, none of them do much good.”
    “There’s a special hospital in Eastlake for mentally sick people. I looked it up in the phone book.”
    He opened his beer and dropped the bottle opener into the drawer with a loud clang . “Do you have any idea what that would cost? I’m not made of money.”
    “But you’re not here to see all the things she does.” I marched across the kitchen and yanked open a cupboard door. “These are the only dishes we have left, and do you know why? Because when she gets mad, she throws them against the wall. Last week she threw the toaster down the basement steps, and then she—”
    He grabbed hold of the back of a chair and squeezed until his knuckles turned white. “My life isn’t a walk in the park, either. I just lost a big sale yesterday. As it is we’ll have to tighten out belts. I can’t afford to send your