Catalyst

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  I open the freezer slowly. “Don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  I stack the containers of casserole one on top of the other in the freezer. “I guess.”

  Toby hands me a container. “You guess?”

  I put the last container in and shut the door. “Those sandwiches had mayonnaise, didn’t they? Can’t freeze those.” I put the bag of quartered sandwiches in the fridge. “You can take some to school if you want.”

  “The funeral, Kate.”

  “It was just a funeral. You’ve seen plenty.”

  “Was I there?”

  “What?”

  “I was real little. Did Dad let me go?”

  Okay. The dishes are washed and the food is put away, but the counters are filthy. Somebody spilled lemonade and it looks like the top must have come off a saltshaker. I take the Comet out from under the sink.

  “Kate?”

  “I don’t know.”

  First I wet the surface and wipe up as much salt as I can. Then I sprinkle the Comet on the countertop, squeeze the sponge under hot water, and scrub. “I don’t remember.”

  Toby leans against the refrigerator. “Dad told me that all the grandparents came, and Grandma Stuart was already senile and kept wandering off.”

  “If Dad told you about it, why are you bugging me?” I rinse out the sponge and scrub some more.

  “Because he won’t tell me everything.”

  I use my thumbnail to scrape away something hard and gray stuck in the middle of the counter. It is oatmeal.

  “I think he likes to pretend it never happened,” Toby adds.

  “You got that right.” I rinse the sponge again and wipe down the counter. That looks much better. “Help me with the trash.”

  Toby snaps open a garbage bag and holds it while I lift the smaller bags of trash and dump them in. “How many people were at Mom’s funeral? As many as today?”

  I spin the garbage bag and fasten a twist-tie around the neck. “There were lots of cars. They had to park in the front yard and way up both sides of the road.”

  I set the bag by the back door and wash my hands. Then I snap off a square of plastic wrap. The salad needs to be covered.

  Toby hops up on the counter. “Did she have an open casket?”

  The plastic sticks to itself. “Geesh, Tobe!” I crumple it in a ball and try again. “I don’t remember the casket.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.” I pull the last of the plastic wrap off the roll and stretch it across the bowl. It seals perfectly.

  “Did Dad help carry her casket to the grave?”

  “It’s morbid to obsess about funerals.”

  “He carried Mikey’s casket. Did he help carry Mom’s?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “We need more plastic wrap.”

  “Why not?”

  I open the refrigerator door and talk to the skim milk. “Because I wasn’t there, okay? You want to know what I remember? I remember running out of the church. I was wearing black patent leather shoes and I ran down the road and I got blisters and I kept running and the blisters popped and I kept running and then my feet were squishy and wet and I kept sliding in those stupid shoes like I was on ice or something. By the time they found me, Mommy was buried in the ground. I didn’t see it happen, I don’t remember it. okay?”

  Toby pushes himself off the counter. “Yeah, okay. Relax. I just wanted to know.”

  I let the cold air cool me down before I put the salad on the top shelf. “Sometimes not knowing is better.”

  I close the door a little too hard and the magnets fall off. Toby bends down and helps me. We work silently, putting up his soccer schedule, my track schedule, his honor roll certificate, my high honor roll certificate, the list of emergency telephone numbers, a postcard of the MIT campus, another postcard, an old one, of the periodic table. The last piece of paper is a drawing of Mikey’s, an enthusiastic roundish thing entitled ball. I let Toby put that one up.

  I wash my hands again. “I’m going to the store to get plastic wrap. Want anything?”

  He bites his lip. “Maybe you should go to the store later.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Well, she was in a hurry. I figured she wanted to get away from everyone, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Tell me. Who left?”

  “Teri. Teri borrowed your car. An hour ago. She said she needed cigarettes.”

  11.2 Entropy

  Good news: She didn’t take Bert far.

  Bad news: She’s swinging a sledgehammer. And yelling.

  I sprint down the hill to the Litch house.

  More good news, sort of. She’s not pulverizing my car, she’s attacking the half-renovated kitchen at the back of her house. The back door has been torn from the hinges and the window smashed to bits. Her hair is coated with dust and swinging wild around her face as she wields the sledgehammer, every blow punctuated with a curse. She’s in a trance, lost in the action of beating a counter to death, heart pumping, lungs like bellows.

  The kitchen looks worse than it did after the fire. The double-insulated windows are shattered, the new drywall has been ripped from the studs, and all but one of the cabinets have been torn out and smashed on the ground. The sink is still hanging from the wall, but the drainpipe under it is missing. She hasn’t torn down the roof or ripped up the floor yet, but the way she’s going, it’s just a matter of time.

  Bert is parked dangerously close to the storm. He looks unharmed, though I bet he has a nail or two in his tires. It’s a miracle she hasn’t hit him with anything, the way she’s tossing lumber and tools around. At least she didn’t drive him into a bridge abutment.

  Teri drops the hammer and kicks the counter fragments out the door to the ground below. Yesterday there were steps leading from the dirt to the kitchen door. They’re gone. She picks up a crowbar and inserts it between the last cabinet and the wall. She leans back, veins standing out in her neck, and pushes with her legs, her butt hanging out for leverage. The nails scream, she swears, and the cabinet breaks free and tumbles to the floor. She tosses the crowbar aside and crouches down to pick it up. It’s too big for her to get her arms around.

  “You want some help with that?” I ask.

  She jumps a bit and squints through the former window in my direction. She’s still not wearing her glasses.

  “No.” She takes a length of rope off the floor and ties it around the fallen cabinet.

  I climb up into the kitchen. “That’s awfully big. You might hurt yourself.”

  Teri tightens the knot, then wraps the ends of the rope around her fists. She bends her knees deeply and pulls. The cabinet moves slowly, scraping grooves in the new plywood subfloor. She pulls until the cabinet is almost at the doorway, then she moves to the other side and pushes it off with her boot. It lands on the ground with a little crack.

  “Or maybe not,” I say.

  Teri takes off her work gloves and lets them fall. She picks up a can of soda from the floor and gulps it down, then wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “You come down here to stare at me?”

  “No. I was looking for my car. You could have asked, you know.”

  She crumples the can in her fist and flings it into the yard. “You’re such an idiot. Here.” She takes something out of her pocket. “I used the keys this time.”

  She tosses them over my shoulder. I don’t move. “It’s not just the car. I was worried about you.”

  “I bet you were.”

  She slips her work gloves back on, picks up the crowbar, and jumps to the ground. She breaks the cabinet into kindling with a few blows, then kicks the pieces.

  “Is the party over yet?” she asks.

  “Yep. Your mom went back to Betty’s house.”

  “Did she ask where I was?”

  “No.”

  “Typical.” She studies the crowbar in her hand for a
second, then sets it on Bert’s roof and reaches in for the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard. She shakes one out and sticks it between her lips. She shakes another one halfway out and offers it to me.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” She tosses the pack back in the car and lights up.

  “I saved the leftovers for you. They’re in the freezer.”

  She inhales deeply and blows smoke at the sky. It floats above her head like a gray ceiling, then dissipates and drifts away.

  “People always bring too much,” I say.

  She removes a flake of tobacco from her tongue and inhales again. The ash at the end of the cigarette is the same color as her face.

  I should go. My car is in one piece. It’s none of my business if Teri wants to wreck her house. I need to go home and wash the kitchen floor, check my e-mail, call Diana for the chem lab notes. I have to buy plastic wrap. I should go.

  Teri flicks the end of the cigarette with her thumb and the ash crumbles. “I dressed him, you know.”

  “Dressed who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Idiot. Moron. “Oh. Sorry. That must have been hard.”

  Her chin dips down the tiniest bit, then comes back up. “The funeral guy wasn’t going to let me do it at first and I got pissed. But your dad talked to him. Then he said it was okay.”

  “What was he wearing?” I ask.

  Teri smiles a little. “Jeans. Sneakers. Mickey Mouse T-shirt.”

  I shiver. “Did you put on diapers or pull-ups?”

  “Pull-ups. So he could be a big boy—” Her voice breaks off.

  I step toward her. She blows past me and leaps up to the kitchen, scooping to grab the sledgehammer. She raises it over her head with a roar and slams it into the wall where the cabinet had been attached.

  “Teri, no!”

  She can’t hear me. I can barely hear me. The air fills with her voice, the hammer hitting the walls, dust, wood, plaster flying in all directions. Her face is red and wet, her mouth open. She screams, screams, hits, hits, stops to pant, then brings the sledgehammer up again and lays into the walls, the door frame, anything that she can destroy.

  “Please stop. Look, you’re bleeding. Come home with me. I’ll take you to the doctor, whatever you want.”

  She stops to look at the blood on her left forearm, gashed by a piece of wood. She turns over the palms of her hands. She didn’t put her gloves back on—they must be raw.

  “This isn’t doing any good,” I say. “You’re just wrecking your house. Come on.”

  She picks up the hammer and breaks through the wall that leads to the playroom, then pounds away until there is enough space to step through. She drops the hammer and disappears inside.

  It’s quiet. I move along the outside of the house until I can see her through the windows. She’s studying Mikey’s handprints on the wall, and the “art” we added. It looks so stupid from where I’m standing. I hope she doesn’t think we were trying to make fun of her and her family, or that we were defacing her house. Mitch was right, that was a stupid thing to do. We didn’t belong there.

  “Teri?”

  A paint can sails through the closed playroom window, spraying glass like a fountain. The lid comes off in midflight and a yellow swath of paint splats on the ground. A few drops land on my shoes. A second can launches through the middle window. I throw my arms over my head and duck. It arcs over me and explodes in the dirt like a blue bomb.

  “Stop!”

  Teri comes to the window. “What’s wrong, Katie, scared?”

  “Of course I am. Look, I’m sorry about the wall. We were trying to, I don’t know, we were trying to say good-bye to Mikey. I know it’s stupid, I’m sorry.”

  She picks a shard of glass out of the window frame and tosses it at me.

  I jump out of the way. “We’ll fix it. We’ll repaint it for you. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  Her red eyes harden. “I am home.”

  I step toward the window. “Exactly. That’s my point. This is your house. You can’t tear it down.”

  “Watch me. I’m going to rip out every board, every beam, every door, all the locks, the stairs, the walls, the freaking windows. . . . ”

  She steps away from the window, then—smash—the sledgehammer comes down on the frame, splintering the wood. She whales away at the frame until she can kick the whole thing out of the wall. She stands where the window used to be, struggling to catch her breath. “You can help me or you can go home. Suit yourself.”

  “Teri, you need professional help. This is not normal.”

  Her laugh sounds like cloth ripping. “What the hell is normal?”

  “You need time to deal with this, talk to a counselor or something.”

  “That’s bull.”

  “You’re not thinking.”

  “I don’t want to think.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  She pulls a broken piece of plaster-covered wood from the wall. “Ridiculous? When I wasn’t looking, my kid wandered upstairs and got killed. He had his brains fried. I don’t want to think, Kate. Never again.”

  She turns her face away.

  In the distance, there are cars and trucks speeding on the highway. The sound of their tires on the road provides a background hum, background radiation, like the ticking clock or dripping faucet you don’t notice until you notice it, and then the sound drives you nuts. My little black dress and my velvet headband feel like they are on a different body, like I’m inhabiting something else, the space between Teri and me, maybe, or maybe I left myself back up the hill. My hands are ice, but Teri is dripping sweat. What does it feel like to drive a sledgehammer through a wall? To scream so loud that the birds fly away? To rip down an entire house because it hurts so much to look at it?

  “I’m sorry,” my mouth says. “I came down here to help you.”

  “No, you didn’t!” she screams. “You came for your goddamn car! Get out!”

  She’s not rational. Get a grip, Malone. I pull my sweater closed and tie the belt around my waist. I rub my hands up and down on my arms and clear my throat once. “I wish I could help you.”

  “Fuck you very much.”

  Well, then. I pick up the keys and get in my car, which reeks of smoke. I roll down the windows and toss out Teri’s pack of cigarettes and the soda. According to the odometer, she only drove eleven miles, but I doubt that she remembered to shift. Probably killed the transmission. Poor Bert. I pat the dashboard and put him in reverse.

  A paint can flies through the last intact window of the playroom. The sound of exploding glass makes me flinch and stomp on the gas. Bert shoots backward and the can bounces off the top of the windshield on the passenger side. It tips and pours red paint everywhere.

  I slam on the brakes and throw it into park. It takes a few minutes to stop shaking, a few more to realize that the windshield is still in one piece. The glass has a small spiderweb crack where the can hit, but the rest of the windshield is whole.

  Teri stays out of sight, banging and cursing inside. I turn the heat on high and flick on the wipers. The motor whines as the blades smear the thick red paint across the glass. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  12.0

  Activated Complex

  SAFETY TIP: Never mix chemicals without a defined procedure.

  Dad’s mechanic promises to look through some junkyards for me. He swears the crack won’t get any bigger as long as I avoid speed bumps and I don’t exceed ten miles per hour. Poor Bert. I stick him in the garage to recuperate. After dinner I lose myself on-line. Teri stops by to chat with Dad. By the time I go downstairs for something to drink, she’s gone. Dad says that she decided to stay at Betty’s house for a while. She’ll pick up the rest of her stuff tomorrow.

  Fine.

  I go out for a little run at midnight. There is a light on upstairs at the Litches’. A flickering candle.

  Fine.

  After colleges have sent
out acceptances and rejections, it’s rather pointless to make seniors show up for class. Like they have something new to teach us? Please. But I am still Kate Malone, so I attend class on autopilot. I keep forgetting to do homework, but I’ll make it up later. The week plays out without drama. I go through the motions, move from station to station along the assembly line. At night I run, in the morning I sleepwalk. I keep my curtains closed and try not to breathe too much. This flu/not-flu thing has put a big hurt on me.

  Teri’s name shows up on the absent list daily. Good Kate thinks about collecting her books and homework, but somehow I don’t get around to it. I have her clothes, toothbrush, lighter, magazines, all her junk packed in a duffel bag, waiting by the front door. She hasn’t stopped by.

  It takes Dad a couple of days to figure out that a) Teri is living in her house, and b) Teri is destroying her house. I watch from the sidelines as he moves from concern to deep concern to frustration to anger. He tries to talk to Teri. She treats him the same way she treated me, more or less. He tries to talk to her mom. He talks to the police, two shrinks, county social services, and back again to Mrs. Litch. The answers drive him crazy. She can’t be arrested; it’s not against the law to knock out walls in your house, not with the water and electricity already turned off. She won’t need a demolition permit until she breaks through an outside or retaining wall. She’s eighteen years old, so no one can go after her for cutting school. She’s living in a house that her family owns, so social services won’t get involved. And her mother doesn’t care one way or another, as long as she can keep living at Betty’s. Basically, Teri is doing what she wants and nobody can stop her.

  She’ll move out of there eventually; November, maybe. Definitely by the first snow.

  Toby has to write a biography about someone for his English class. He wants to write about our mother. I suggest he choose a different subject. He slams his door and turns up his CD so loud it scares the dog.

  I sleep all weekend or maybe I don’t sleep at all. Hard to tell what is asleep and what is awake. They have blurred into each other. I’ve given up on my contacts. Wearing them is like jamming thistles in my eyes. My glasses are fine.