The Dime

Part 1 - Lily

Everything changed on a day that started like any other. Except for Wednesdays, when Old Man Mooney gave me the day off, and Sundays, when the Five & Dime was closed because it was God's day. No two-day weekends for me. Not that I minded. Having Wednesdays gave me a chance to walk down Second to the lake, sit on the rocky shore in my bikini away from the prying eyes of a crowded weekend and sketch while the quiet wrapped its warm, comforting arms around me. Saturdays at the lake, kids splashed, dogs barked, and moms yelled through it all.

I had finished mopping the entryway. The linoleum reflected the ceiling lights. The cleaner scratched my nose, overpowering the stale candy scent that usually ebbed and flowed through the day. Mooney was in the office in the back, where more often than not he slept through the early afternoon hours when the only customers were retirees puttering down the aisles in their scooters and a mom or two stocking up on Otter Pops for the weekend. It was Thursday after all, and it was supposed to be a scorcher. As in, "90 and 90." If you don't know what that means, you never lived on the East Coast. If you do, you know that made for a miserable spring day. The kind of weather that didn't typically show up until well into the summer.

Leafing through a week-old Us, reading about a Kardashian and a kleptomaniac diva, I heard the church bells toll three times. I put the gossip rag aside, wiped down the counter one last time, and waited. Teenagers and preteens alike streamed through the door in a rush, grabbing candy and cans of soda pop. Going through the magazines, the girls giggled at the pictures and put their hair up like they saw the stars do. The boys loitering in the back laughed at the tacky t-shirts and pants that passed for Five & Dime style.

All the while, I wished I could see my sister in that crowd. Hassling the boys, getting teased back. Maybe there would be a cute guy who hung by her side, filled with awkward teenage charm. Or, Sophie could be the center of attention in the circle of girls that hung out by the magazines, or where the cheap cosmetics were displayed. Giggling and laughing, sampling lipsticks and five-dollar perfumes, Sophie would smile brighter than any girl there, brighter than the fluorescents on the ceiling or the sun bleeding through the front windows. Her smile would be bright enough to ease my guilt and sorrow. Her laugh would be infectious, drawing people to her.

It never happened that way though. When school was over, Sophie got on the bus for the short trip home or pushed her wheelchair there, where she did her homework and watched TV. Typically, as evening approached, she would go out to the porch and wait for me to come home. A quiet dinner and we'd start it all over the next day. As it had been for two years, since I turned eighteen and got the right to care for my sister.

* * *

We went to New York City. Our parents, Phil and Kirsty Madison, thought it time for us to see the sights of the big city. You may have heard of them, one-hit wonders responsible for a big pop hit in 2002, their career of nondescript folk music turned upside down when that one ballad, "You Make Me Want to Love You," went to the top of the charts. For a brief moment they were famous. And rich. They took all of that and escaped to Northville. I was six, Sophie had just started walking. They never performed again.

Except for Sophie and me — in the family room on quiet nights with a fire crackling and the wind rattling outside, or in the car on road trips to nowhere because that's where they thought we should be headed. They sang only to us, providing a backdrop to our earlier years.

I was ten, Sophie five. We saw the Statue of Liberty, rode the subways, got in a taxi with a driver who was on his second day on the job and asked our father, "The Statue of Liberty? How to get there?" He held out a map, then went careening through traffic to get us to our destination.

On New Year's Eve we danced with the revelers in Times Square, staying up later than we ever could have before. I had to pee, but there were no restrooms, so Daddy told me to hold it or do it right there. I held it until I could no more and peed right there, surrounded by the protective shell of my parents and sister, who giggled while I did my business.

On the ride home Sophie and I played the alphabet game. I had to look for complete words. She got to look for letters. In alphabetical order, we fought an epic battle, but I got stuck at Q, while she kept going. Leaping and bounding through the alphabet, Sophie got all the way to X.

"X!" she yelled, pointing out my window.

"Where?" I feigned disbelief, but I had already seen it. Nexus Printing, blared a roadway sign. I knew I was done.

Sophie broke the game up then. "Hey, Lily. See that cloud?"

"Where?"

"There." She pulled me to her side of the car and pointed out what I could only see as a blob of white against the blue sky. "It looks like a rubber ducky with a sailor hat."

"Huh?"

"Look," she demanded. "Don't you see it?"

I looked again, and as I did the driver of the semi next to us decided to change lanes into ours. Daddy couldn't get out of the way. He and Mom died instantly, the front end of the car crushed like a collapsed accordion. Sophie in the passenger seat on the side nearest the semi, was paralyzed from the waist down and left brain-damaged — enough at least that her thoughts slowed down a bit and her words slowed down just a bit more.

I, on the other hand, had the good fortune of being protected in a cocoon of collapsing steel that formed a chamber around me. I emerged virtually unscathed. Except for the guilt and fear and uncertainty that has haunted me since.

* * *

Every day it seemed like one of the kids would walk off with something. A bag of m & m's slid in a pocket. Lipstick palmed. A bottle of water hidden in a purse. A cheap paperback tucked brazenly under an arm. I saw it every time, and when I told them to stop, they ran. These kids knew who I was and I knew who they were. Maybe I was a few years older, but I knew and they knew I knew. Susan and Emily and Carlos and Josh and Stan and Ashley and, well, even in a little itty bitty place like Northville, there were enough of them. They knew one other thing. As long as they didn't get caught, as in stopped, they were good to go.

I wasn't gonna tell Mooney. Or their parents. Or the cops. Cops. Right. Northville's one cop. Mooney's brother Matt, who spent five days a week, Wednesday through Sunday, patrolling the streets in his shiny Crown Victoria. Monday and Tuesday, the wild streets of Northville were patrolled by the county sheriff. The only time Officer Mooney got to run his siren or flash his lights was when a kid asked him.

Which is why they ran. Even when I heard their jokes about the kids who had to ride the short bus, not realizing Sophie was my sister and she rode that bus, I let them go. And come back the next day. It was an unspoken deal. Keep it small. Keep it quiet. I would make a show of an effort. They wouldn't make me look bad. Even if I hated them for their intolerance and lack of compassion for Sophie.

It was an odd thing, this guilt that hung over me. I wanted Sophie to be the five-year-old she once was, running and skipping, a nonstop flurry of activity. In my memory, she always smiled with dimples puckering her chubby cheeks and kept me laughing with her incredible imagination. I wanted to see her dancing with a boy and playing on the school basketball team instead of being trapped in her wheelchair, seemingly without friends.

It's clichéd to say that it should have been me instead of her. And, ultimately, it would also be a lie for me to say that. I was ten. It's not like I had already lived my life and would gladly take her place. That wasn't it. I just never understood how I escaped unscathed. If the rest of my family had been left dead or permanently maimed, I should have too. Maybe guilt was my permanent scar, one that did strange things to me.

Like letting the stupid little shoplifters go. It was the guilt driving me. I didn't want to be responsible for something bad happening to them. If I stopped them, if I told Mooney, if they got in trouble, where would it end? Better to let them go with their small treasures than to be responsible for messing up their lives. Even if I was frustrated that they didn't give a crap about Sophie, shooting daggers from my eyes at them when they made their narrow-minded little jokes.

They loitered. They stole. They ran. I let them. Then one day, there was a new kid. He didn't run.