Excerpt: Livie Owen Lived Here

I heard the whistle blast at 9:15. Funny, the thought that struck me wasn’t that the whistle had stopped blowing years ago, but that it should have blown at six. There was a time when the whistle was as reliable as the opening and closing of the hardware store or the passing of the ten o’clock train. The whistle used to rattle the windows and frighten the cats of Nabor every 6 AM and 6 PM for decades.

That was, as the older folks say, “way back when.” Used to be, everybody in Nabor who didn’t work at the hardware store worked at the paper mill, and the whistle told them when to come to work in the morning and when to go home at night. Then one day the whistle blew at 6 P.M. and everybody went home. The next morning, the whistle didn’t blow, so nobody ever came back.

Nabor – with an A – is my town. Nabor is also the neighbor to Neighbor – with an E – which is the town everybody’s heard of. Neighbor-with-an-E boasts a college and a Super Wal-Mart and several law firms with names like Schubert and Schubert and Williams and Williams and the less-popular Williams and Schubert. Nabor-with-an-A? Well, Nabor-with-an-A boasts that it is Neighbor-with-an-E’s neighbor. We’ve got a stoplight and two stop signs, a closed paper mill where the stray cats run wild.

And me. Olivia Owen. Former neighbor to just about everyone in Nabor.

You don’t have to believe me. You can look. Open a door. Peek through a window. It almost doesn’t matter which house you try; it won’t take you more than a couple of blocks. You’ll find Livie Owen Lived Here written on the walls of over 30 dwellings in the county. It’s the only sentence I ever learned how to write.

When the whistle blew, I was standing on a chair on my tip-toes, lining up drinking cups. My family had so many different types of drinking cups that if I didn’t keep them lined up neat, I could scarcely think about anything else. The chaos in the kitchen cupboards kept me distracted till I gave in and fixed it. There was nothing I could do about the mismatched collection of cups we owned, not with the high cost of sets of things. But at least I could give the cupboard a little peace by putting things in order the best I could manage.

I liked to put the glass cups on the top shelf. That way, when the cabinet was open and the sun was on, the light could catch the glass and sparkle. Plastic lived on the bottom according to color, left to right, starting with the cups that had words. With everything in order, I was always able to find my favorite cup, a glass coffee mug that felt like it was made out of hardened mud. I used it for everything from water to coffee to my morning yogurt, which was difficult to sip, but worth it if I got to use my mug. It felt worn and soothing under my hands.

I was just settling my mug into its place of honor at the far right of the top shelf when the whistle blew, so close I forgot for a moment I lived all the way across town these days. I remembered the whistle from my childhood – which is to say, I remembered being routinely frightened by a loud noise, and I remembered my mother saying, “Little Livie, it’s just the paper mill whistle. You’re all right.”

My mother was always saying, “You’re all right.” She said it to me when I got upset. Said it to my father when he stopped laughing and got forehead crinkles, which was usually when I was being difficult or when the bills came in before his paycheck. Back when there really was a whistle, she said it to the cats each time they went tearing out of the kitchen and slid under the sofa we used to have, the green one with all the stripes that made my eyes dizzy. They hid under that sofa every time the whistle blew. You would think after a while they would get used to it, but they never did. I think maybe they just wanted an excuse to be afraid, like my big sister reading ghost stories in the dark.

Or maybe it was something about the whistle itself that stopped them from getting used to it. It was a scary whistle, high and low at the very same time: a shrill note piercing a sky you imagined was dark from smoke and chemicals, then sewn up with a dark, heavy note like an angry cat’s growl, a note that made my stomach feel hollow.

I knew it was silly, but my eyes checked the microwave clock, glowing green across the dark kitchen at me. It really did say 9:15, not six – neither time to go to work, nor time to come home. I felt compelled then to check the calendar, just to make sure I had that part right, too. But it really was the proper year; nothing there had changed.
In the brief seconds it took me to confirm that nothing suspicious had happened with time, my fingers slipped on my mud mug and it dashed itself to the floor.

The whistle was still blowing when the sound of glass shattering raised the volume almost to unbearable. My ears didn’t like so many levels of noise all at once. I teetered on the chair, ready to fall, and felt familiar pressure building up inside my head. The mug looked so sad and betrayed on the floor, all scattered into pieces I was certain glue wouldn’t fix. As the whistle faded into the night and the sound of glass gave way to the sound of my breathing and the clicking of the cooling stove, I curled my toes into the chair’s woven seat and let my hands find their way into my hair.

“That did not happen!” I hollered into the darkened house. “That had just better not have happened, young lady! Don’t you dare drop that mug, Livie Owen! Hold on tight before the whistle blows!”

The mug didn’t pick itself back up, so I jumped down off the chair to get it. That’s when I remembered it was made out of glass, and glass is sharp. Crashing backwards and knocking over the chair, I tumbled to the kitchen floor and grabbed my bleeding foot.

“That did not happen!” I bellowed again. “Glass is sharp, young lady! You watch your step!”

“Oh, lord,” I heard my mother murmur, and her bedroom door opened. “Livie, is there glass? Come away, honey.” A light switched on.

I blinked up at my mother and hollered, “The paper mill blew its whistle at the wrong time! It’s supposed to be at 6! It made Livie drop her mug and Livie is very angry!”

My mother quickly took in the scene around her and grabbed a dishtowel off the counter. She wrapped it around my foot and held it there. I watched her, but I couldn’t feel the cut anymore. I was too busy fighting off my overwhelming fury at the whistle.

“Simon!” Karen called. Although her voice was just as loud as mine, my mother never hollered or bellowed. She sounded gentle even with her voice raised, as polished as I was rough, my father Simon said sometimes.

“Three hours and fifteen minutes late!” I yelled at my mother. “Why was the paper mill whistling so late, Karen? It’s supposed to blow at six and six!” I got louder with every word and I heard someone shuffle sleepy feet in the doorway.

“Livie, shut up!” my little sister Lanie yelled, skidding into the kitchen in her socks and her purple pajamas. “I’m trying to sleep! I have the science fair tomorrow!”

“You tell that whistle to shut up! That’s who should shut up!” I yelled back, slamming against the cabinets and jarring the silverware in its tray. Underneath my noise I heard Karen’s soft voice explaining to my sister, “She’s hurt herself. Simon! Lanie, get your father.”

Lanie took one look at my foot and her eyes widened in horrified fascination. She dashed for my parents’ room, screeching at a volume rivaling my own, “Daddy! Come and see! Livie’s cut her foot off!”

I heard shuffling, quite a bit faster than my father usually traveled, before he appeared beside my mother looking winded. “What’s all the hollering?”

“Liv dropped her mug and stepped on it.” Karen handed my injured foot to my father and scooted around to hug me from behind. Karen was much better with words and hugs than blood. “The girl was up on a chair at this hour, stimming on the glasses.”

“It was the whistle’s fault!” I hollered, because nobody seemed to be listening. “The mill whistle blew and it wasn’t six! It was three hours and fifteen minutes late and it made Livie drop her mug!” My eyes traveled up to the great height of the chair, higher still when I was lying on the floor. I wrapped my hands in my hair and tugged, feeling the pressure inside me ease as though I were pulling on a cork.

“Livie, stop that!” Karen swatted gently at my hands. “Stop it. You’re all right.”

“I am not all right, I’m angry!” I yelled. “The whistle blew wrong!”

“What whistle?” Lanie asked grumpily, blowing her long hair impatiently out of her face. “I didn’t hear a whistle!”

My eyes traveled to her, but she wasn’t lying. I could tell by her nose not crinkling. So I checked my parents and they were looking at each other with Concern and Dismay on their faces, two emotions they had gotten so good at that they deserved their own capital letters.

Fear shook my hands loose from my hair and made me cold. I wrapped my arms around myself tightly. “Only Livie heard the whistle?” I ventured. My speech therapist Miss Mandy worked with me a lot on third person verses first person. First person was when I said “I” and “me” instead of calling myself “Livie,” and I was supposed to use first person all the time, just like I was supposed to call Karen and Simon “Mom” and “Dad.” Only sometimes when I got upset, it made more sense just to use the proper names for people so everybody knew who was who.

“I didn’t hear anything but glass breaking and then you,” Karen said in a shaky voice, one that underlined just how frightened she had been when she heard those noises. “Simon?”

The way she asked, I knew she was humoring me, knew that if Simon couldn’t hear a kid banging around and breaking glass all over the floor, he definitely couldn’t hear a whistle that, apparently, was imaginary. “No, honey. I didn’t hear no whistle.”

My eyes blinked back and forth, but my parents weren’t lying, either. I could tell by their eyes not moving away from mine. So mine did the moving instead, rolling up to the cupboard, which now had an empty spot on the far right side of the top shelf. I started squeezing my joints tight, first my shoulders, then my elbows, then my wrists, all the way down to my toes, trying to use the technique Miss Mandy taught me to relax when I got upset.

After a few minutes, a breath went out of me and then I felt less pressure, maybe like I wouldn’t explode now. I let myself lean back against Karen and relaxed my muscles a little.

“Ouch,” I said faintly.

“I’ll bet,” my mother said, planting a kiss on top of my forehead.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said to Lanie.

She sniffed. “Whatever. Don’t do it again. I have stuff to do.” I heard her feet shuffling with impatience all the way back to the bedroom.

My mother stroked my hair back out of my face and dropped another kiss on top of me. “She’s just nervous about her science fair,” she said. “Don’t worry about it, honey.”

“What were you doing standing on a chair in the middle of the night?” my father’s somewhat less sympathetic voice asked from his place at my foot.

“Oh.” I forgot about that part. “It’s not really the middle of the night. It’s only a little after nine. I started thinking about how Lanie did the dishes, and I know she never does the cups right.”

“Well, I think your old folks were right about standing on chairs not being safe,” my father said. I loved him for a lot of reasons, but one of them was because that was all he said. Lying on the floor with a dishtowel around my foot and the remains of my mug scattered around me on the floor, I could easily see what a stupid idea it was to stand on a chair in the middle of the night. It was seeing these situations from the other end, before they happened, that was the hard part. Apparently, you just never knew when an imaginary factory whistle was going to startle you into breaking something.

My father finished wrapping my foot and hooked his arms under mine, lifting me onto my good foot. “Well, I think you’re going to live,” he announced. Then added dryly, “I think the floor’s going to make it, too”

“Don’t move,” my mother said, perhaps a little more sharply than she intended, when I started to hobble toward my room. Then added softer, “Let me get the broom.”

Before any of us could move, the trailer jumped with the force of a firm knock on the door. We all three tensed again and nobody moved for a minute.

Unless we were expecting a package or we’d moved next door to someone generous who was good at baking, a knock on the door almost never meant anything good. Sometimes it was the guy wearing khaki who came to shut off the water. Other times it was the neighbor complaining because of my cats getting loose in their yard.

Tonight I knew it was one of two people, and neither one of them was welcome. It was either Glenna from one door down, or it was Janna from one door up.

“Please be Glenna!” I hollered as Simon finally moved to answer the door. Karen shushed me. The door opened and the first thing to blow in on the stiff October wind was three orange leaves.

The second was not Glenna. It was Janna and she wasn’t smiling.

“Good evening,” my father said formally and I wished he slept in something other than his boxers and a tee shirt. I felt my face get red.

“Simon,” Janna said with a stiff nod for my father. Then glancing at my mother, “Karen.” Her eyes slipped over top of me without focusing. My eyes were more than happy to avoid her, too. Her stern lips and thin cheeks made me queasy.

“Bed,” Karen said firmly before Janna could say anything else. With her hands on my shoulders, she steered me around the broken glass. I limped on the tip-toe of my injured foot and hobbled down the hallway toward my bedroom, casting a nervous glance over my shoulder as I did. Simon offered Janna a chair, and she refused. Her sweatpants had stains. I didn’t like the way she was frowning.

Karen looked at me lovingly as she led me to my room, but there were other emotions all tangled up in the creases around her eyes. I couldn’t name them all. Miss Mandy liked to tell me it was okay not to know the names of all the emotions I saw, but I didn’t like not knowing the names for things. I liked names. I liked to keep lists of them. These emotions weren’t simple like the happy and sad and angry flash cards Miss Mandy liked to show me. They didn’t make flash cards for this.

“Sweet, girl, please don’t get up again tonight,” my mother said tiredly.

I felt an uneasy feeling in my stomach that I think was called guilt. This one was familiar enough I had a name for it. “I promise,” I said quickly.

She smiled that tired smile. “Good girl.”

“Hey Kar – Mom?” She accepted me calling her Karen, but sometimes joy got crinkled up in her eyes when I called her Mom, so I tried to remember. “Was there really not a whistle?”

“I don’t know, darling. I just didn’t hear anything.”

“‘Cause I heard it loud and clear. Just like at the Sun House. Six and six.”

She smiled and kissed my forehead one final time. Then turned on my fish lamp and turned off my big light. She piled my nine blankets on top of me so I felt weighted down enough to sleep.

“Good night, Livie-bug.”

“Good night, Karen.”

Only tonight I couldn’t sleep, not with Janna’s voice going on in the kitchen, loud enough to hear even over the familiar whir of my fish lamp. I turned on my side and watched the little plastic speckled fish swim endless circles around their tiny swath of fake ocean. I wanted to hear the ocean. Instead I heard Janna and caught the words “inconsiderate” and “out of control.”

Not quite forgetting my promise to Karen, but hiding it in the back of my thoughts, I slipped from my bed just behind her and crept down the hallway to listen. Janna was pretending to be patient. I knew she was pretending because she was talking faster than usual and I could hear a note of stress in her voice.

“When you first rented,” she said, “you told me she was better. After last time, I thought … but you told me she was better, and I took you at your word.”

“She is better,” Karen said quickly as though offended about something.

“She doesn’t sound better.”

“It’s doesn’t happen overnight, ma’am,” Simon said. Anyone else might have thought he was calm, but I could hear the venom in his tone. “She’s better, not cured. There haven't been any miracles, but she’s grown up a lot and she has more self-control than she used to.” I sort of felt like I had swallowed something cold. I didn’t like hearing them discuss me this way.

“Well, see that she manages to control herself at this hour in the future,” Janna said stonily. “Half the neighborhood is awake and if they complain to me, I’m going to have to complain to you.”

“Have a nice night, Janna,” Simon said firmly, and I heard him close the door behind her. Immediately, he began to swear, running his hands through his graying hair over and over. I knew he was because he always did. My mother shushed him.

“You’re all right,” she said softly.

“I’m going to start looking out of town,” he answered, beginning to pace the length of the kitchen. I could hear the linoleum creaking under him, back and forth across the darkened room. “I’m going to have to.”

“Oh, we’re not there yet,” Karen said briskly. I heard stitches pulling and knew she was picking at her robe. It had almost no embroidery left anymore.

"Are we going to wait until we are there before we deal with it?" Simon asked tiredly. “If we lose this place, we’re not going to find another one in Nabor. We’ve burnt all our damn bridges.”

I waited for Karen to tell him he was wrong. Not finding a place in Nabor meant living someplace else. Not acceptable.

“But Livie loves it here, Simon. We all do.”

His voice got longer like the shadows down the hallway. “I can't always make everybody happy. We have to eat, Kar. We have to have a roof. If it's a roof in another town, well, it's still a roof and we still have to have one."

She didn’t answer and I wasn’t sure I knew how to, either. The tiles and the floorboards and the sidewalks of Nabor had been my home my entire life. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Slipping quickly back into my room, I burrowed under my nine blankets and had a serious discussion with myself.

“Livie, you cannot do this again,” I whispered. “You have to control yourself.”

From deep inside me, a response wisped up like smoke, but it was only another question.

“Shush,” I answered in the darkness. “I don’t know how. You’re just going to have to do it.”