Izzy, Willy-Nilly

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You’re a cool kid,” he said.

  But he was driving too fast and slipping through stop signs without stopping, and I didn’t feel at all cool. VW bugs, I reminded myself, always feel as if they’re going faster than they are. Marco had both hands on the wheel, and he leaned forward, concentrating hard, harder than he should have had to. He stayed in the middle of the road, with the center line running under the center of the car. I didn’t say anything, because at night you can see lights coming, and it was only a couple of miles anyway. I just wanted to get home, I couldn’t wait to get home. I just wanted to be back home and shutting the door on this part of the evening. I sat quiet.

  I don’t know how fast he was going, or why he decided on a long straight stretch to play the swerving game, swinging the car from side to side of the two-lane road, his arms swinging the steering wheel from one side to the other. The white center line shone under the headlights, sweeping under the belly of the car and then off to my side, then under again and off to the driver’s side. I felt the weight of the car swing out of control before I heard Marco’s voice, cursing, and I watched the tree—an elm—rise up at me. The car lights had swung off of it by the time the tree got to me. That was all I remembered. I remembered everything.

  By the time I knew I remembered, I couldn’t seem to stay clearheaded long enough to tell anyone about it. Faces floated sometimes above my bed when I opened my eyes. It seemed as if time wasn’t passing at all, I was always half-waking up and a face was always floating there. It felt as if I was trapped in some single moment of time that would never finish itself, just the way I’d been trapped in Marco’s car when the tree was coming at me.

  * * *

  “Isobel? I’m afraid we’re going to have to take it off.”

  That was Dr. Carstairs’s voice, I knew. Sure enough, it was Dr. Carstairs’s face floating there. That was the last time I saw him, or heard him. He disappeared from my life, taking half of my right leg with him.

  3

  I felt fine.

  The noise that woke me was a nurse lowering the crib sides of the bed, a quiet clanking of metal. The nurse stood between me and the window. I was in my same room, bright now with sunlight. I saw the flat ceiling and the right-angle corners where walls met. I heard the busy quietness of the hospital all around me. I had slept deeply and I felt good. The tent was gone, the IV was gone, I didn’t hurt anywhere.

  The nurse moved and I saw my mother, her makeup on, her suit crisp-looking, fresh, her blouse a dusky yellow and the sunlight streaming in behind her. She was reading a book. I felt a smile begin in my heart and spread up over my face.

  “You’re awake,” the nurse said. “Isobel is awake,” she said across the room. But my mother had already gotten up.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello, Angel. How do you feel?”

  “Fine.” That didn’t do justice to how I felt. “I feel good.”

  Inside my head, I saw this little person, a miniature Izzy in a leotard, kind of smoky blue, to match my eyes. The little Izzy raised her hands over her head and did a back flip, landing with her arms stretched out and her back arched, like Mary Lou Retton. That was a joke because I couldn’t do a back flip to save my life, I couldn’t even do a good back dive off of a board—but it was just exactly how I felt.

  “What day is it?” I asked.

  “Wednesday, and it’s …” My mother reached out her wrist to look at the time. “… almost eleven. Dad’s coming by at lunchtime.”

  “Can I sit up?” I asked.

  The nurse fiddled with the bed, until I was about half-sitting up, then showed me how to work the buttons myself.

  “Well.” My mother just stood there for a minute. I knew how she felt: as if we ought to be talking madly, but there wasn’t really anything to say because we were both feeling so good because I was feeling good. “Is there anything you want?” my mother asked.

  I couldn’t think of anything more to want. I shook my head no. Then I realized. “I’m hungry.”

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  But the nurse answered, “Dr. Epstein said she might be.”

  “If it’s all right,” my mother said. “What would you like?”

  I considered that. Steak sounded good, or a hamburger and fries. “Pizza.”

  “She’ll be on a light diet for a couple of days,” the nurse said.

  I think my mother must have read my mind, because she took over then, asking what I could have to eat, ordering eggs and toast and fruit. I hadn’t realized until I had a chance to eat how hungry I was, shaky-hungry, as if I’d been on a fast. “Milk?” she asked me. I nodded, going along with whatever she decided.

  When the hospital table had been rolled over, and I had myself sitting entirely up, and the tray of food had been placed in front of me—I was confused for a minute. It was as if I had forgotten how to eat. My mother fussed around, pouring the milk into the glass, shaking the knife and fork and spoon out of their plastic wrapping, tearing the corner off the salt and pepper papers to flavor the boiled eggs that she had already taken out of the shell for me. The meal came all in bowls, a bowl of eggs, a bowl of prunes, a bowl of applesauce. The toast, with its pats of wrapped butter, was the only thing not in a bowl.

  I drank down about half of the milk. It slid down my throat like liquid silk and I could feel my brain clearing almost as soon as it was in my stomach. Then I turned to the rest of my breakfast.

  I started with the eggs. Scrambled eggs are the only kind I really like, usually, but these eggs—with the rich yolk mixed in over the silky whites, with salt and pepper and just a touch of butter—I had never before realized how good eggs could taste. I’d never noticed how the different flavors of different foods filled up my mouth. I finished with the last of the milk, feeling it slide down my throat.

  The nurse came back with a little paper cup in her hand, like a table favor at a doll’s birthday party. Two little dark pellets sat in the cup. She handed them to me, with a glass of water: “Stool softeners.”

  That was about all I wanted to hear about that, so I swallowed them quickly. I grabbed the last piece of toast off the tray as she lifted it away. “What’s with her?” I asked.

  “Maybe she’s had a bad day. Or maybe she’s just that way. How do you feel about a shampoo in the next day or two?”

  I put my hands up to my hair. It felt dirty to my fingers, and my scalp did too. But it felt so good to raise my arms and put my fingers into my hair that I took a little time over it. “How would we do that?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ll figure out something.”

  I began to think of things I needed. “Could you bring me my radio?” I asked. My mother took her notebook out of her purse and wrote that down. My mother is a well-organized person, as well as the prettiest mother I know, and she is forever making lists, then checking things off. “I’ve got down nightgowns and toothbrush already,” she told me. “There must be more. A bathrobe?”

  “Can I have a TV?”

  “They said they’d deliver it sometime today. We’ve arranged to have you keep the single room, unless you want a roommate?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Do you think I should?”

  “Not necessarily,” my mother said. “It’s a matter of whether or not you’ll get bored on your own.”

  “I guess I better have my books here, and I’d better get the assignments.”

  “Oh, I think we can wait awhile on that. You’ll have to stay in the hospital for a while—until—until—”

  “Until it heals,” I said, because she was having trouble thinking of how to end her sentence. She looked at me, considering. I’m old enough to know what that considering look means, when she’s trying to be objective about one of her own children. “Did they say how long that would be?”

  “A couple of weeks. But then, with your other leg in a cast—”

  I could see that I’d be pretty much immobilized. “I guess you couldn’t bring my stereo, or a
nything.”

  That made her smile. “I don’t think so. I’ve got some mail at home for you too.”

  “The cast’ll be on for six weeks, isn’t that right?” I was remembering the many casts the twins had acquired. “How about my makeup bag and hair curlers, could you bring those?”

  She wrote them down.

  “Can I have visitors?” I asked and then, looking around, “What about a phone?”

  “They’re putting it in this afternoon. I know,” she said. “I know. A good mother would have made sure it was in by now. But they’ll all be in school.”

  “I’m going to miss Latin Club,” I realized.

  We had all, Lisa and Lauren and Suzy and I, joined Latin Club last year, for our activity. You need an activity for your college applications. We chose Latin Club because our Latin teacher, Mr. DePonte, was the advisor, and after a week of school there wasn’t one of us who didn’t have a minor crush on him. Mr. DePonte had dark hair and dark eyes, he was young, and he had a dry sense of humor. Latin Club actually turned out to be fun. We learned about the food they ate in ancient Rome, and their architecture, about the clothes they wore and getting married and divorced. We built model bridges and painted maps. At the end of the year we had a Roman feast—not Italian food, but meat marinated first then roasted in chunks over a fire and chewy flat bread—at Mr. DePonte’s house. He was married and had a baby, but we liked his wife too. There were only about fifteen people in the Latin Club, and we’d decided we’d stick with it. We had already discussed what offices we’d hold in our senior year. Lisa would be president, Lauren would be the vice, Suzy would be secretary and I would be treasurer. I didn’t mind missing school, but I did mind missing Latin Club.

  “I’m sure they’ll miss you too,” my mother said.

  That was such an automatic-politeness response that I looked carefully at her. “Are you worried?” I asked.

  She wanted to snap back some answer, but she didn’t. That worried me.

  “I really do feel fine,” I told her.

  “I’ll get on home and collect your things,” she said. “Would you like visitors?”

  “Yes.”

  My father came for lunch, and after he left and I’d been lying there wondering when they would hook up the TV, there was a knock on the door. A pregnant nurse came in. She had a maternity nurse’s outfit on, ballooning top and trousers and those soft-soled white shoes. She was medium height, with dirty-blond hair held back from her face with combs.

  “Hello, Isobel,” she said. I didn’t correct her. She sat down in the visitor’s chair, resting the clipboard on what was left of her knees after her belly took its share, smiling. She had a nice smile, not bright but warm. “I’m Helen Hughes-hyphen-Pincke.” I looked at the name-pin on her chest and there was her name, Hughes-Pincke. “You better call me Helen,” she said.

  I thought, knowing how my parents feel about kids on first name terms with adults, I’d better call her Mrs. Hughes-Pincke. Or, judging from her hyphenated name, Ms. Hughes-Pincke. “Ummn,” I answered.

  “Or whatever,” she said. It was as if she had read my mind. “Whatever feels comfortable to you.”

  I just nodded. I wondered what she was doing, who she was, but I thought it would be rude to ask, so I just sat quiet, my hands on the blankets under the empty table.

  Mrs. Hughes-Pincke arranged the papers on her clipboard, giving me plenty of time to look at her. “I could get you a pack of cards. They’re going to bring the TV sometime today, but you can never tell what that means. It may be midnight.”

  “But I’ll be asleep,” I said.

  “It was a joke,” she said. “They work union hours, so it’ll have to be before five. It was,” she said, “a pretty poor joke.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said politely.

  “You look much better than the last time I saw you.”

  “Did we meet before?”

  “Not so’s you’ll remember. I take a look at patients I’ll be working with, when they’re still too sick to see me. How do you feel now?”

  “I feel fine.”

  “You look fine too. Oh, to be young,” she said, her pen waiting. She wore a wedding ring, but no engagement ring, so I thought her husband probably didn’t make very much money.

  “You don’t look too old,” I said.

  “I’m not. I’m twenty-nine,” she told me, which was odd because usually adults don’t volunteer their ages. “You’re in tenth grade at the high school, right?”

  I nodded.

  We had this conversation, then, with her asking brief questions and me giving the answers. “So you got that blond hair from your father.”

  “But I look more like my mother. The twins look like Daddy.”

  “What about Francesca?”

  “Francie’s only ten, but I think she’s going to be tall and skinny too.” I didn’t know why she was so curious, but I couldn’t think of why I shouldn’t answer.

  “How about a boyfriend, Isobel. Do you have a steady boyfriend?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did you ever?”

  “No, not really, not yet. We all—” I stopped myself. I didn’t feel like talking about this.

  “Who’s we all?” she asked, after a while.

  “My friends and me. Suzy and Lisa and Lauren.”

  “Do you have a lot of friends?”

  I nodded.

  “Anyway, you all what?” Mrs. Hughes-Pincke returned to the subject.

  I didn’t know how to sidetrack her, and I knew it wasn’t important, just private. “We think it’s smarter to play the field.”

  “That makes sense. It makes more sense than I was capable of making at fifteen. Do you think kids are getting more sensible these days?”

  It seemed that way to me, and to most of the people I talked to, but it wasn’t polite to say that to an adult so I just shrugged. She didn̻t say anything then, and the time stretched out. I figured I should think of something to say, even though I still didn’t know why she was there. “When are you due?” I asked her. It was a question my mother asked pregnant women, even strangers waiting in a line beside her, so I knew it was all right.

  “At the end of next month.” She smiled. “It’s a Thanksgiving baby. Do you like children?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you want to have children?”

  “Sure.” I wished she’d stop prying.

  “What about a career?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. I knew she thought I ought to have career plans, but I honestly didn’t have anything I wanted to be, except a housewife like my mother. I thought probably if I didn’t get married in college, I’d work for a year or two after college, as a secretary or airline hostess or something, and then get married. There was nothing I wanted to be, like Suzy wanted to be a vet or Lauren wanted to be a model. All of my own plans were wrapped around getting married and having a family. I thought my mother had a good life, and I knew she was happy, and I wanted to be pretty much like her when I grew up. I didn’t often say that, though, because—in the first place, nobody ever asked me, not seriously, and then, it was just too much what a nice girl would think. There was one girl at school, Rosamunde Webber, who always gave wild answers when people asked her what career she was interested in. Rosamunde wasn’t one of our friends, but we all had a lot of classes together, because she took Latin too and was also a member of Latin Club. She wore denim overalls and sloppy shirts, and she was a brain, and she didn’t fit in. If anyone asked her what she was going to do for a career, though, she’d say spy, or movie star, or moonshiner, anything that popped into her head. I never minded having Rosamunde around, especially in a class, although I felt sorry for her because I thought she wanted to be better friends with us than she could ever be and, besides, as far as we knew she hadn’t yet been asked out on a single date. But I wished right then I had one of Rosamunde’s snappy answers for Mrs. Hughes-Pincke. “I don’t know,” I said, and I knew that would bothe
r her, because everyone thinks all girls ought to be liberated and everything. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why do you apologize?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t know who she was, or why she was allowed to come and ask me questions.

  She put her pen away. “I’ll be back tomorrow.” I smiled politely. “I’m here for you to talk to, if you feel like talking.”

  I nodded. Why did she think I would talk to a perfect stranger, when I had my friends, and my mother too?

  Right after she left, the room got hectic. The man came in to hook up the TV and explain the remote control to me, my mother came in with a suitcase and a big clothing box, which she put on top of the table, and a nurse came in carrying a phone, which she placed on the night table beside me. The nurse crawled around to plug in the phone, while my mother opened up the suitcase to show me what she’d brought. The TV man held up the receipt for my mother who signed and nodded, not paying attention. She went back to the suitcase and pulled out a nightgown. Dr. Epstein put his head into the room and stopped there. The nurse stood up from behind the night table. The phone rang. “Later,” Dr. Epstein said to me. My mother held up a little traveling clock she keeps in her desk drawer, in case she ever travels, I guess. “Shall I put it on the table?” I answered the phone.

  “Izzy.” Suzy didn’t have to identify herself. “I’ve only got a minute. Thank God, I caught you.”

  Whatever Suzy was calling about was urgent. “What’s up?” I asked. For all of her brains, Suzy is the emotional one, or—as she prefers—the dramatic one.

  “Are you alone?”

  “No.” Suzy, I mouthed to my mother’s inquiring expression.

  “Just listen then,” she said, almost whispering. “It’s Marco.“ My hand tightened around the phone in response to some feeling I didn’t even have a name for. I had trouble paying attention to what Suzy wanted to tell me because I was pushing down that feeling. “He says he’s really sorry. He says to tell you he thinks he must have had a concussion because he just passed out. He says he hopes you won’t try to get even with him or anything, because he says everyone who was there would get in trouble too, not just him, and he can’t remember what happened. He’s really worried, Izzy. He told the police he doesn’t remember what happened, just that the car must have gone out of control, but he doesn’t think they believe him. Izzy? Can you hear me?”