Izzy, Willy-Nilly

by Cynthia Voigt

  I talked her into it. We sat on the bed, and Rosamunde held up a hand mirror to watch. I tried the full treatment first, but it didn’t look good at all, so she washed it all off and started again, with something very simple, just liner and mascara. Lipstick too, I thought, but I didn’t tell her that.

  “You really ought to make yourself go back to school,” Rosamunde said.

  “I know.”

  “It’ll be pretty bad,” she said.

  “I can imagine. Even if I do decide to work on the paper.”

  “But what are you really frightened of, Izzy? And why does everyone call you Izzy, anyway. You’ve got a good name, Isobel.”

  “In the hospital they called me Isobel. I felt like they were talking about somebody else. I guess they were, weren’t they?”

  “La Belle Isobel, Best of Breed.”

  I drew back. I had the mascara in my hand. “You want a mustache?”

  “I’ve already got one.”

  “You should dye it.”

  “Dye it?”

  “You know, bleach it. I have some bleach, I’ll show you.”

  “Do you?” Rosamunde asked. Her eyes really were neat-looking. They were a great color.

  “You really do have good eyes,” I told her.

  “You really think that, ” she said. “Okay, okay, I’II admit it, so do I, and I have for years.”

  I did her eyelashes, just lightly. It looked good. “Now, go wash your face and try it yourself.”

  “Yes, Mommy,” she said, sarcastic. But she went off to the bathroom again. I think she was embarrassed to show how pleased she was.

  “Anyway,” she said, back on the bed, trying to draw a line with the pencil along the edge of her eyelid the way I had. “What is it you’re frightened of about school?”

  “The people. I really don’t want to—face everybody, and all that.”

  “But it’s only the first time that’ll be bad. You know how people are, they forget pretty quickly. And most of them are your friends, anyway.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Most of them are Izzy’s friends.”

  “You’re changing your name to Isobel?”

  “No, bu—you know what I mean.”

  “Okay, I can see it. But there isn’t anything for it, but to face it out, is there?”

  “I guess not.”

  “And you’ve got the courage, Izzy. Or Isobel. Whoever, you’ve got courage.”

  I hoped she was right. I wanted her to be right. I knew that in a way she was, and that made me feel good.

  “So, you’ll be there on Monday? I’ll wait to meet you somewhere. You’ll need someone to carry your books and all.”

  “No. Not Monday.”

  “Okay, Tuesday.”

  “Don’t nag.”

  “Izzy, you can’t hide away forever. Even with a pool, and even if your father does get you a special car as soon as you turn sixteen—you’re going to have to come back into the world.”

  “I know.”

  “So Monday then. Or Tuesday, that would be okay.”

  I knew she was right.

  “I’ll tell you what really scares me,” I admitted. The little Izzy inside my head had her hands over her face and her words were muffled. “I’m not too eager to see Marco Griggers.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “No. I don’t know what I’ll act like.”

  “What do you mean? He must know he’s not your favorite person.”

  I shrugged.

  “What does that mean?” She glared at me, the mascara brush in her hand. “Haven’t you told him what you think of him?”

  I shook my head.

  “What did you do, tell him it was all right? How nice can you get, Izzy? Honestly. I wonder about you.”

  “Look, I haven’t told him anything. I haven’t heard a peep from him, since—”

  “He didn’t even apologize? He didn’t? And you let him get away with that?”

  “What was I supposed to do, call him up and yell at him? He just talked to Suzy a lot, and all.”

  “And now she’s dropped him.”

  “Suzy has? Why?”

  “Found someone better, a college boy. But that Marco—he ought to be shot.”

  “That’s what Jack says.”

  “Jack can’t be all bad. What about you? What do you want to say to him?”

  “Nothing. I don’t ever want to see him again. I don’t want to have to see him,” I said. I heard the anger in my voice. “So I don’t want to go to school.”

  After a long time, Rosamunde said, “That just lets him make an even bigger mess of your life.”

  That was when I told her what had happened that night. I made her promise not to tell anyone, and then I told her the truth.

  Rosamunde had nothing to say. I barely looked at her, and she didn’t interrupt me. It didn’t take very long to tell. Then she still had nothing to say.

  It was depressing to talk about it. I thought I shouldn’t have talked about it, because it just made me depressed.

  When Rosamunde did speak again, her voice was thick, as if fury choked her—and tears too, that she was trying not to show. “He passed out, that’s what happened. You know that. That’s why they took so long getting to you.”

  I said I guessed so.

  “Damn him, God damn him.” She got up and started pacing the room.

  “It’s no use, now. It doesn’t do any good, Rosamunde. That’s what I mean.”

  “You can’t just let him get away with it.”

  “What am I supposed to do, take an axe to his leg?”

  Rosamunde stopped, looked at me, and then smiled. It wasn’t a particularly jolly smile, but it was an attempt; “I’d like to see that, though. I really would.”

  “You just have to accept it.”

  “And there are your parentS—”

  “It doesn’t do any good to—stew and steam. Because it doesn’t do any good.”

  “—they really are something, you know? You’re all of you right, of course. That’s the only way to handle it without going crazy.”

  “We don’t go crazy, we Lingards,” I tried a smart-aleck remark.

  “Snob,” she answered, equally smart-aleck. “No wonder Tony Marcel said he felt guilty.”

  “It’s nothing to do with him.”

  “I know, but I guess you better work on the paper. I guess that makes that decision for you.”

  I didn’t know about that. I wouldn’t have minded seeing Tony every day, even if whenever he saw me I was looking stupid at what I was trying to do, as well as crippled. But I didn’t want to be reminded every day that I wasn’t normal, didn’t have the chances I would once have had. Except, more than anything else, I remembered the way he had said he would feel better about himself if I did. Because I didn’t want him feeling badly about himself.

  “I think I will, probably. Until they throw me off for incompetence. Or something.”

  “They’ll probably make you editor your senior year, and they’ll probably be right. No, I’m not kidding, but—this means you have to come back to school, Izzy. And since you have to, the sooner you get it over with the better.”

  “Okay, okay. I will.”

  “When?”

  I didn’t know.

  “Monday, tomorrow. It’s better that way, really it is. I’ll meet you at the main entrance, I’ll wait for you. Will you be there, Izzy?”

  I said I would.

  I said I would, but I wasn’t. What I did, that Monday morning, was pretend I was still asleep. I heard my mother come into the room and look at me, then she left, closing the door behind her.

  Rosamunde called me that night, and I told her I’d slept through. She didn’t quarrel with me, just said she’d see me tomorrow, Tuesday, and reported that all of my classes would be meeting on the ground floor.

  “Good,” I said, agreeing to meet her at about eight fifteen.

  I didn’t. I got up in time, and my mother was rea
dy to drive me in, but when she asked me if I was sure I was ready, I said no. Rosamunde called that night, again. She sounded a little put out. “I didn’t ask you to wait for me,” I told her.

  “Okay,” she said, “but I’ll be there tomorrow, and the next day too, in case. But I won’t be pestering you.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “But you told me you would, Izzy,” she pestered.

  I didn’t go to school on Wednesday either, and it wasn’t worrying me that much anymore, because I had seen how I could just—not go, morning after morning. It wasn’t so bad. I didn’t feel so bad about it.

  But Thursday morning, Rosamunde was there in the kitchen at eight. She wore her PAL windbreaker and overalls, she had an armload of books and my mother wasn’t any too pleased to have company at that hour. Rosamunde ignored that and ignored me too.

  “I didn’t know Izzy had invited you over for breakfast,” my mother said, with more than a little edge to her voice.

  “Oh, well, she needs someone to carry her books for her, Mrs. Lingard. No, thanks, I’ve already eaten.”

  She knew my mother thought she was intruding, and I knew my mother was angry at her for being there at that ungodly hour, and even Francie had the sense to stay quiet. But my mother didn’t know what Rosamunde was up to; she had sort of judged and condemned Rosamunde as a dinger, and she thought Rosamunde was being rude. So I didn’t start any arguments with Rosamunde about her showing up at our house. We rode to town in a thick silence, with nobody saying what she was thinking. It wasn’t until I was standing on my crutches beside the car, with people moving around me and pretending they didn’t see me, that I realized what I had done I had stuck by Rosamunde; but I wasn’t ready to go back to school. I almost panicked.

  My mother came around, to give Rosamunde my books to carry. She was still angry. Rosamunde was ignoring both of us. “Have a good day, Lamb,” my mother said, kissing me on the cheek.

  “Mom?” I couldn’t break down or chicken out with everybody around. “What do you have on for today?”

  My wonderful mother knew. She knew what I was asking She gave me what I needed without making me explain: “I’m going to be at the hospital, until about noon—then we’ll probably get lunch, I’m going to make a reservation at Peppers You know today’s my tennis day, so I might be a little late coming to pick you up.”

  “I can wait,” I said. I knew now how to find her, if I needed her.

  I didn’t watch her drive away. I turned myself around, on the crutches, and made myself start the long, swing-stepping journey back to school.

  20

  School. It smelled and sounded the same, it looked the same; nothing had changed except me. There’s no sense in going back over those first two days at school. The worst was the sudden brittle silence that froze the air whenever I made an entrance. If you imagine it, if you imagine the kind of person who has everything, blond hair and blue eyes, a good figure, popular with boys and with girls, the kind of person who is always sort of moving around and cheerful and silly, who seems to do everything easily; if you imagine seeing that same person with half of one leg just hanging down inside her blue jeans; if you imagine how you would feel about it, whether you liked her or not, but especially if you liked her; then you’ll hear the silence I’m talking about.

  The best was the way people tried to help out. For example, John Wintersize. The second day, I made myself go down the long staircase to the cafeteria for lunch, which was hard enough, but when I got up from my table, a few minutes before the bell rang, and went to the bottom of the stairs and looked up—I had forgotten how hard it was to go up a set of stairs on crutches, with a backpack full of books. I knew I’d have to do it, and I knew I could, but—

  Somebody grabbed me from behind and lifted me up into his arms. It was John Wintersize, whom I hadn’t seen since that night of the party at his house. I’d never noticed how big he was. My crutches clattered to the ground, and he had to shift my backpack around. “Somebody pick those things up,” he said. “Hey hi, Izzy. You don’t weigh more than a feather, do you?”

  I was embarrassed, and I was relieved, and I felt stupid being toted around like a baby, and I felt like one of those helpless ladies in a movie, swept away by a rescuing knight. He went up the stairs easily. He set me down gently at the top, helping me get the crutches back in place.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “No trouble,” he said. He stood there, hulking over me. I didn’t know why he didn’t go away.

  “We have the same lunch,” John said, “so we could have a standing date. I mean—” He was as embarrassed as I was.

  I had a very confused reaction, shame and resentment that he was obviously pitying me, gratitude that he had given me a hand. “That would be a big help,” I said.

  “Hey, good. That’s okay then. I’ll see you Monday then.”

  “Same time, same place,” I told him, making a joke out of it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay then.” He moved off, feeling pretty good it seemed. I guessed I felt pretty good toward him too.

  At the end of the day, I was tired. “How was school?” my mother asked, as I got into the car.

  “Fine,” I answered. “I’m really wiped out.”

  “I can imagine,” she said, and I thought maybe she could.

  Rosamunde reassured me, that weekend, “Everybody’ll get used to it. People get used to almost anything. The worst is behind you, I bet. Or, most of the worst, anyway. You’re holding up all right, aren’t you?”

  I guessed I was.

  The first Monday morning, I had to really make myself get going. It had been so pleasant over the weekend, at home. For the first time I could sympathize with those people who simply did not want to go to school, didn’t want to enter the big door and the long, crowded corridors, didn’t want to sit down at a desk and watch the clock start on its way around to the end of class. I had no trouble during classes. It was getting there that bothered me. I would watch with dread as the minute hand approached the end of the time. I came into classes a minute or two later than everyone else and was given a desk close to the door. For a while, the teachers sort of carefully didn’t pay attention to me, not putting any pressure on me, I guess. So for most of the two weeks left before the Christmas vacation, I didn’t do much in classes except get through them. I saw Marco, a couple of times, from a distance; he kept out of sight, so I knew he was keeping clear of me.

  I did tell Tony Marcel that I’d like to work on the newspaper. I started going to the after-school staff meetings that were held four days a week, Monday through Thursday, in the newspaper room. The paper came out every Friday, so there was always something to do, as I learned. We would sit around a long table, and somebody would stand my crutches up against a far wall, because there was no room for them anywhere else. Everybody was there on Thursdays, when the next week’s articles were assigned and advertising orders checked in, but the rest of the days only those with work to do showed up. They were too busy to pay much attention to me, once Tony had introduced me. At first, I just sat uselessly beside him, watching what he was doing. He had to oversee the business manager as well as the reporters, as well as write the editorial and do the layout, as well as see that the dummies were taken to the printer by five on Wednesday for that week’s paper, as well as pick them up the next evening, so they could be distributed on Friday. I sat quiet while he worked, trying not to be in the way.

  The other people on the paper didn’t mind me, and I’d watch them do whatever they were doing. There were fifteen in total on the staff, Tony and Deborah, Danny, Pat, Sandy, Susan Hawkes and Susan Wrightson, Freddy, Maureen, Will, Peter, Jason Dooley and Jason Morse and Jason Tellery, and Tag Simmons. Tag was there, as he said, for comic relief—he drew the cartoons and cracked jokes constantly, bad jokes. Deborah was the best writer, but Danny had the best ideas. Jason Dooley, who covered sports with Susan Hawkes, was a sullen and quarrelsome person, but Susan had a cowlike personal
ity that worked well with his. It was interesting to see all these people working away. I stayed late the first Wednesday, to help with layout, gluing and pasting. When I realized that we would be late, I called my mother to tell her not to pick me up at the usual time. Tony said he’d drop me off home after he took the dummies over. My mother hesitated before giving me her permission. I tried to tell her, without giving anything away, to her or to Tony, that it would be okay, and I guess she heard me.

  Newspaper made a big difference to me in school. It was something to look forward to, even though I didn’t have any definite job. I fit in well enough and I lent a little bit of a hand wherever I saw anyone needing one. I could look forward to newspaper.

  And the truth is, I liked seeing so much of Tony Marcel. I liked working with him, in however unimportant a way. I liked seeing how he made decisions, and how he stood back to let the whole staff decide something. I liked knowing him better. He was always thoughtful about me. He always remembered to bring me my crutches when it was time to go, doing it as naturally as he handed Deborah a blue pencil and told her to cut a piece by fifty words. I even liked watching him with Deborah, in a way, in a funny way. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he acts toward a girl he is crazy about. I really liked Deborah too, and I liked the way they got along together.

  It was an odd time, that time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, at school. I honestly don’t think I could have gotten through it without Rosamunde, who was there, with me, whenever she could be. Even though I dropped Latin Club, we still had English and Latin together. She always walked with me to those, so I didn’t have the feeling of dropping slowly to the rear of the race up the hallways. One of the first days, she met me coming down the cafeteria steps while she was running up so as not to be late. She stopped for a minute to watch. “How you doing? No, don’t tell me.” She moved back as people surged past us. “I gotta run, but—” I couldn’t hear the end of her sentence. The next day, however, she was waiting for me at the top of the steps. She moved down them behind me, not helping me at all as I concentrated on not losing my balance, as I lowered the crutches, hopped down, then lowered the crutches again. “Isn’t there an easier way? There must be,” she muttered behind me.