The Girls
Page 10
I’m glad Rose hasn’t asked me to take a leave of absence from the library. I would miss Roz and Rupert and Whiffer and Lutie and everyone. And I would miss the kids very much. And I think we’d be missed too. We will be missed. Rose and I haven’t told Roz or anyone about the aneurysm. We don’t want to be pitied or worried over.
Since she started to write her book, Rose has been asking me, Do you remember this? Do you remember that? She asked if I remembered the chocolate-chip thing when we were twelve years old, and the hair thing when we were in high school. I asked if she was writing about the chocolate-chip thing and the hair thing, and she said she wouldn’t discuss what she was writing, and that I shouldn’t either. I said, Then stop asking me, Do you remember this? Do you remember that?
Okay—so I thought I was nibbling chocolate sprinkles that had fallen behind the fruit bowl on the big table in the kitchen. It turned out it wasn’t chocolate sprinkles but mouse shit. I had a bad cold and couldn’t taste it. Anyway, I did not scream that I needed to have my stomach pumped out, and I did not pretend to fall unconscious so that Aunt Lovey would take me to the hospital. I really did fall unconscious, and though it sounds funny, it was not at the time. At all.
And the hair thing. Just in case that one comes up. Rose was the one who wanted to straighten her hair to look more like mine. We know it was not the smartest thing to use a product for black people’s hair that we found in a torn package in the bargain bin. I still say I set the timer right. Anyway, it grew back slightly less frizzy, which is what she wanted in the first place.
Because we work at the library and have access to so many books (well, actually, I guess everyone has access to all those books, don’t they?), we have read about dying and all the emotional stages that we should be or will be going through. (I’m not the biggest reader. Rose says I’m intellectually lazy, and I guess it’s true because what else do you call it when you’d rather watch bad TV shows than read a good book?) Maybe I’m going through the stages backward, but I’ve been pretty much in the accepting stage since we got the news.
Aunt Lovey took us to the library when we were young and showed us a huge picture book full of people with deformities. The pictures came from the Mütter Museum, which is in Philadelphia and is basically a place where human specimens are on display. It’s used for teaching medical students, and it’s also for the public who like freakish things. On the way home, Rose wanted to talk about the pictures and the deformities, but I had the mumps coming on, or something, and her talking was making me carsick. Rose wanted to know if all deformed people had their pictures taken for that book and if we would when we died. Aunt Lovey said it was up to each person to decide what to do with their earthly remains. (That book is still on the top shelf, and Rose still looks at it sometimes. I do not understand why.)
Aunt Lovey was sorry she’d shown us the book, because the same night we saw those pictures, Rose was still going on about it. And she was asking a lot of questions about dying. Aunt Lovey had already told us that if one of us died, the other would die too. We were young, but we understood. She had also already told us that we might never grow old. She said that we might reach adulthood, but the tangled veins in our heads would likely give us trouble at some point (which they have), and I also have some gastrointestinal troubles that have threatened my life—and so Rose’s life too. (I was this close to having a full colostomy, but the medication finally started to work.) The doctors we’ve seen throughout the years have not always been truthful with us, but we could always count on Aunt Lovey. She believed a patient should make informed choices. I suppose some people might have thought she was being cruel for being honest.
Rose and I are the oldest surviving craniopagus twins in the world, and we’re only twenty-nine. There are many things that an average person would have done by the age of twenty-nine (university, marriage, career, children, travel) that we haven’t done, making twenty-nine seem younger than it is. On the other hand, we’ve learned things about life that an average person would not have the chance to learn until they were much older. Rose says we shouldn’t kid ourselves, that we are really very naive. But I think we can be naive and wise at the same time. Aunt Lovey was like that.
(Aunt Lovey believed people could be separated into three categories. People who love children. People who love their own children. And people who don’t even like children but have pets they call Baby. Thinking about that now, I’d have to add a category for Mrs. Merkel. People who treat their pets like children because a tornado took their only son.)
When we were little girls, Aunt Lovey would put Rose and me in the middle of the bathtub. We each had a set of stacking cups to play with. We liked to pour water over each other and ourselves, and Aunt Lovey says it was interesting to watch how often we stacked our cups working together, and how little we did it alone. She said even though we were so different in our personalities, our instinct was usually to cooperate. She said cooperation made us efficient and ensured our survival.
Aunt Lovey had a big green plastic watering can from the garden that she’d fill with warm water, and after she shampooed our hair she’d say, Close your eyes, girls, because the sky sure looks like rain. And she would tip the watering can, and the warm drops would fall on our heads and over our faces and wash away the shampoo. It seemed to take an hour, but it still wasn’t long enough. When I think of Aunt Lovey, I feel warm water rushing down my head and my back and I can smell that herbal stuff for Rose’s dandruff.
After the bath, Aunt Lovey’d lay us on the bed and unwrap us from the sewn-together towel and we’d say Gobble us up, Aunt Lovey! Gobble us up! And she’d kiss our tummies until we screamed for her to stop. Then she’d spread olive oil on Rose’s flaky skin and dab cortisone on her red spots, and she’d dry and style my hair in a side ponytail (the only kind that really works for me) or clip it back with my butterfly barrettes. (Rosie said the hair dryer made her hair frizzier, so Aunt Lovey had to be careful directing the nozzle.)
Last week we discussed our upcoming birthday. Neither of us said if we turn thirty, which I think is good because I believe in the power of positive thinking. But we are so far apart on how we might celebrate our birthday I think we might have to go to the coin. This is something that we don’t often do because we can usually work it out (which means I usually give in). But sometimes I feel like being as stubborn as Rose, and we have to toss a coin. Like when we were going to the prom and Rose thought it would be funny if she wore a tuxedo instead of a dress. (I won—Rose wore an ugly navy gramma dress just to be a spoilsport, and I wore a vintage sea green taffeta that Aunt Lovey cut down for me and gathered at the waist with a cluster of tucks.) And the time Rose wanted to write to the Children’s Wish Foundation, even though Aunt Lovey had forbidden it because it was stealing an opportunity from a child who was really sick, which we weren’t. (I lost that one—Rose wrote the letter anyway and sent a picture of us and everything, but we never heard back—which was proof Aunt Lovey had been right. But maybe it was because Rose wrote that our wish was to meet the queen of England, and that is not the most believable of wishes, if you think about it.)
Get this. To celebrate turning thirty, to celebrate defying the odds against us, especially the recent ones, Rose wants to call in for pizza and drink a bottle of expensive champagne in bed. I can’t stand alcohol, and she knows it. Our blood crisscrosses the joined sides of our brains, so if alcohol is in her bloodstream it’s in mine too. We can’t and shouldn’t drink because it’s dangerous. If Rose loses her balance and falls, it can be serious for us both. That’s why she wants to drink the champagne in bed. But I made the point that eventually she’d have to get up and pee.
My idea is a surprise party, but I’m telling Rose that it’s a taxi ride and a dinner at a fancy restaurant on the river road. First I’ll say I forgot my purse at the library. I’ll have to go and get it from the staff room, and that’s where the surprise party will be! The guest list is Roz and Rupert and Whiffer and Lutie, Dr.
Ruttle and Richie, and Mrs. Todino from next door (if she’s up to it), and because he lives with her we’ll have to invite her son, Nick. I’ll invite the Merkels, but they won’t come.
I’ve always wanted a surprise party. That the surprise will be on Rose makes it even sweeter. I have to remember to get Roz to bring in a few mirrors and get Whiffer to bring his video camera because, for sure, I want to see Rose’s face!
I just thought of something. If we don’t celebrate this birthday (her way or mine), no one will be reading this. Because our birthday is now only eight weeks away, and there’s no way Rose could write her whole autobiography in eight weeks, and who would want to read the story of a life if the person died before it’s fully told? I’ve never heard of that before.
We are both dealing with dying in different ways. I guess Rose wants to write about it. I want to talk about it. With her. Because no one else could understand. And because I want her to know how sorry I am about certain things that have happened. And I’m afraid she won’t let me say it.
The Secret Life of Crows
Last week of June, just before our sixteenth birthday. My hair was growing back in dark, kinky puffs after my sister’s botched attempt to straighten it with the wrong kind of product. I was pitiful—and miserable. Leaford was in the fifth day of an extreme heat wave, and Ruby and I were on our way out of the school gym, where our eleventh-grade math exam had just been canceled because of the crows. A battalion of crows had descended upon the grub-studded turf of the football field and could not be scared off. The symphony of caws was so distracting that the principal scheduled a makeup exam for the following day.
This day, expecting to see Aunt Lovey waiting for us on the school steps as usual, Ruby and I left the musty gym to find bony little Nonna, dressed as always in tea-length black, dabbing her eyes with a stark white hankie and wringing her hands like a bad actor. Nonna spotted us as we walked down the hall. “Your Uncle Stash,” she called out, choking, “has the heart attack.”
Without a car of her own, our trembling Nonna drove us in Uncle Stash’s old red Duster (I suspect she didn’t have a driver’s license either) to St. Jude’s Hospital, where we found Aunt Lovey conferring with Dr. Ruttle Jr. (who by this time was Sr. to his recently graduated doctor son, Richie). I didn’t recognize Aunt Lovey when we first got to St. Jude’s Emergency. She was wearing a borrowed black sweater, and her gray curls were combed out because she’d been at the hairdresser’s for a wash and set when she got a call from Vanderhagen’s. “Girls,” she’d breathed upon seeing us. “Girls.”
“The next twenty-four hours,” Dr. Ruttle Jr. said, then raised his palms heavenward to remind his best ex-nurse “It’s not up to me.” We went home to the farmhouse with Nonna that night, the only night we spent away from our Aunt Lovey until the day she died. We three said little to one another when we got back to the house. Ruby and I were excused from chores and went out front to lounge under the willow for the rest of that deadly hot afternoon. I reviewed Grapes of Wrath for the literature exam scheduled for the next day, even though I felt sure I’d be missing it due to a death in the family. Ruby listened to soft music on Uncle Stash’s portable radio, even though she’d be taking the same exam and had yet to read Grapes of Wrath, let alone review it.
At dinnertime, Nonna called us into the house. She looked inside our refrigerator and, deciding there was nothing fit to eat, announced, “I be back.” She climbed into the old Duster and sped off, weaving down the country road, returning after what seemed like hours with a tinfoil pyramid of mortadella on Wonder Bread, a giant bag of Humpty Dumpty chips, and something in cellophane for dessert. Ruby and I were delighted, then remembered Uncle Stash and couldn’t eat a thing.
I needed to know the details of what had happened to Uncle Stash. When? Where? Did he call in the emergency himself? If not, who’d found him? I imagined what had happened must have been horrible, because I wasn’t being told, and no one else was asking. Finally, I begged the story from Nonna, who hesitated until Ruby said, “I want to know too.”
THAT MORNING, UPON hearing from the radio that the extreme heat conditions would be torturing Leaford for yet another day, Uncle Stash had almost called in sick, a thing he had never, in twenty-seven years with Vanderhagen’s, done before. He was scheduled to drive out to Harwich for a face-to-face with a cattle farmer named Berb Foyle, a local man regarded as a nut and a hothead. Berb had been held by police on suspicion of murder years ago, and though he was never charged, and was not guilty, people stayed away. The more people stayed away, the crazier Berb got. He’d threatened the gas man with a hoe. And chased the quality-control guy from Vanderhagen’s when he’d knocked on the door a week before. Management had asked Uncle Stash to have a talk with Berb, because Berb’s elderly mother was Slovak and used to come into the butcher shop, where she found Uncle Stash to be especially kind. The boss at Vanderhagen’s thought if anyone could talk to Berb, Uncle Stash could. Uncle Stash couldn’t say no. Now his stomach roiled at the thought of the confrontation with the abnormally tall, wild-eyed farmer.
Uncle Stash hadn’t been feeling well for a few days and had complained to Aunt Lovey as he was leaving for work that morning. She’d thumped his hard ball stomach and joked, “Lay off the sausage, Pork Chop.” Uncle Stash climbed into the old work truck (which he parked in the driveway behind the Duster each night) and headed for Harwich County. The truck’s refurbished engine had started to smoke several miles from the Foyle property. Cursing, Uncle Stash abandoned the overheated vehicle. He took to the dusty road muttering in Slovak, and by the time he had walked to the edge of Foyle’s, he was roasted.
Uncle Stash could see the old farmer, erect among his tomato beds, propped up by a hoe like a scarecrow, not looking admiringly upon his young plants but darkly, even suspiciously, into the dense canopy of maple trees, which rose up on either side of the wide, deep ditch, with their long branches entwined so completely they seemed more like one tree than two. Uncle Stash knew that Berb Foyle was not a murderer (there was a big misunderstanding about some bones found on his property), but he looked crazy, and that was frightening enough. Only a crazy person would look at the trees the way he did. Like they were alive. Like they wanted something from him. In the distance, behind old Berb, Uncle Stash could see a dozen underfed cows. He walked closer, nauseated from the heat.
Though his eyes never left the towering maples, Foyle shouted from across the ditch, “You seen my shepherd, Darlen?”
Uncle Stash shook his head. He knew Foyle was referring to his farm dog, a German shepherd, and he hadn’t met any dogs on the road.
“You know my boy?” Foyle called, his eyes still on the trees.
Uncle Stash nodded. Foyle’s teenage son, Frankie, was a year ahead of Ruby and me at Leaford Collegiate. He lived half the time with his father at the farm and the other half in Leaford, on Chippewa Drive, in the little bungalow Mrs. Foyle was renting from Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash (the same house where we live now). Frankie Foyle was the only person in our school to have an insane father and separated parents.
Old Berb Foyle kept his eyes on the maple trees. “I hit the dog. I hit the guldarn dog.”
Uncle Stash waited, then asked, “With the hoe?”
Berb let his eyes leave the trees to find Uncle Stash, ashen by the road. “With the tractor, Darlen.”
“Oh.”
“I hit the guldarn dog with the guldarn tractor, and he just run off into the bush.”
Uncle Stash felt a stab of sympathy, for the dog and for Berb.
The old farmer lifted his left hand and pointed at the distant figure of his teenage son. “Boy’s looking out the back.”
Uncle Stash nodded. The dog had to be found.
“He’s got the rifle.”
Uncle Stash nodded again.
Berb Foyle swiveled his head. “You got no truck, Darlen? You walk all the way out from town? Come on in the house. I’ll get you some water, and we’ll talk about my cattle.”
The fellows were drinking their cold beers, trading Tiger baseball trivia, when a shot rang out in the field beside them. They were quiet for a moment, then Uncle Stash, uncharacteristically gentle in his approach, said, “You know we have problem with the beef.”
The old farmer pushed himself back from the table, walked to the kitchen door, opened it to the heat, and held it for his guest. “Get the hell outta here, Darlen.” His invitation to exit the house was as surprising as the one to enter. The farmer was shaking. “I said, get the hell off my property.”
An unbalanced farmer. An uncased rifle. Uncle Stash had no choice but to leave, and swiftly. It occurred to him, however, as he staggered down the farmhouse lane, that he’d drunk a gallon of water, and the beer of course, and was badly in need of a bathroom. He made his way to the road at the edge of the property, then hunkered down in the ditch. Sweating and panting, he unzipped his trousers, letting them fall to his ankles. He pissed a steady stream and sighed, and was about to hoist up his trousers when he was shocked by the sudden sting of sharp claws piercing, then seizing and squeezing the muscle of his heart. He clutched his chest and stumbled back, falling bare-assed into the wild lily ditch, under the canopy of conjoined maples.