“She’s had some bad experiences with boys,” Megan says.
Who hasn’t? Sid thinks as he gets the cutlery out of the drawer. Chloe and her girlfriends are always talking about how lame guys are, and he stills feel the sting of Tobin’s absence. He circles the table—knife, fork, spoon; knife, fork, spoon. Cloth napkins folded in triangles to the left of each fork. Water glasses at the tips of the knives. Fariza has come out from behind Megan. He can feel her watching him as he moves around the table. He puts a hot-pink napkin at one place, and a glass painted with the Little Mermaid.
He points and says, “That’s your place, Fariza. And here’s a chair for your friend.” He pulls up an extra chair, and Fariza seats the flamingo on it. Its head flops forward onto the table, like a guest who’s had too much to drink. “Thank you,” Fariza whispers.
“You’re welcome,” Sid replies, bowing slightly.
It’s All Good
Caleb says that Sid’s the only teenager on the planet who doesn’t look on summer vacation as an opportunity to sleep all day, stay up all night and spend as much waking time as possible away from adults. Sid knows he is lucky not to have to find a summer job. Caleb pays him to help out on the boat, and since Sid’s material needs are minimal—art supplies and the occasional movie and burger in town—he is able to spend his days doing the things he loves: drawing, riding his bike around the island, swimming with Chloe in Merriweather Lake, which is a half-hour bike ride from his house. He and Chloe have a lake ritual: they race back and forth across the lake (Sid always wins), they have a handstand contest in the shallows (Chloe always wins) and then they lie on the sun-warmed rocks and eat salt-and-vinegar chips and talk. Mostly Chloe talks and Sid listens. After a morning spent drawing, Sid welcomes Chloe’s chatter. Without her, he would probably sink even further into the world he has created on the page. A world he has been inhabiting since Megan first sat him down at the scarred kitchen table and gave him crayons and a piece of paper.
Now, every day after breakfast (Cheerios on weekdays, scrambled eggs on Saturdays, waffles on Sundays), he takes his place at the table, his pens and pencils laid out neatly in front of him, his sketchbook open. Before he begins to draw, he always gazes out the window at the cove, noting which fish boats are at the government wharf, how many cars are lined up for the next ferry, whether the eagle, which he long ago named Eric, is in its nest at the top of the fir tree near the dock. Only when he has scanned the view, does he start to draw. He knows he’s a bit OCD—he even read a book about it to make sure he’s not completely crazy—but he’s not an obsessive hand-washer or anything. His routines don’t hurt anybody. He has learned to be flexible when he has to be. He knows Megan and Caleb worry about it, but he figures it’s better than worrying about whether he’s doing drugs or fighting in the ferry parking lot after too many beers. Lots of their foster kids have been way more trouble than he is.
Today, a week after her arrival, Fariza is sitting beside him at the table, her flamingo in her lap and the remains of her Cheerios in front of her. She and Sid had named the flamingo one rainy afternoon. Sid came up with name after name—Frank, Fritz, Fanny, Frieda, Ferdinand, Fitzroy, Finn, Freya, Francine. None of them got a nod from Fariza. He tried again—Flora, Floyd, Frodo, Fiona, Fred. When he said Fred, Fariza nodded and smiled.
“Hey, Fred,” Sid says now. “How’s it going?”
Fred, of course, is silent, as is Fariza.
“Good Cheerios?” Sid says to Fariza.
She nods.
“I’m gonna draw now, Fariza. We’ll read later, okay?”
Fariza nods again, clears her bowl from the table and sits down next to Sid again after making Fred comfortable on the couch. She points at Sid’s sketchbook, which is open to a fresh page.
“What?” he asks. “You want to see it?”
Fariza nods and turns the pages back to the beginning of the sketchbook.
Sid has never shown his work to anyone but Tobin, whose one-word comment was “Disturbing.” He suspects that Chloe—and lots of the foster kids over the years—would sneak a peek if he left the book lying around, so the sketchbook is either with him or locked in a cedar trunk in his room with the dozens of other black hardcover sketchbooks he has filled over the years. Always the same brand as the first one Megan bought him. Always the same size. Always coil-bound. The key to the trunk lives on a silver chain around his neck.
Sid inhales deeply as Fariza strokes the first page of the book. What could be the harm in showing her? he thinks. It’s not like she’s going to talk about it. And it’s not really that disturbing. At least he doesn’t think so. He had been hurt by Tobin’s comment—more hurt than he ever let on.
“So, I started this story about a year ago. It’s about a village called Titan Arum, in a place called the Uncanny Valley.” He clears his throat. Talking about it is hard—harder than drawing it, almost. “Titan Arum is named after a huge plant that grows in the valley. The flower can be as much as nine feet tall. Way taller than Caleb. And it smells really, really bad, like a super-stinky fart,” he says. Fariza places her hand over her mouth and giggles. The sound is almost shocking, as if a kitten had barked. “But there’s only one person in the whole village who can smell it and that’s him.” Sid points to a small skinny figure dressed in a striped T-shirt and baggy shorts. “He’s the main character. His name is Billy. No one believes that the big flower smells, so the townspeople think he’s crazy.” He stops again, not wanting to tell her about how badly Billy is treated, how hungry he is, how alone. He doesn’t tell her that Billy is the only character who never has a speech balloon above his head. He figures Fariza doesn’t need any more encouragement not to speak.
“Anyway, so the book is about Billy’s, uh, adventures in the Uncanny Valley.” He flips forward quickly to a blank page and tears it out of the book. Fariza watches as he neatly sections the page in half—two rectangles, one on top of the other—and sets it in front of her.
“Colored pencils or felt pens?” he asks. “Take your pick. Or I can get you some crayons.”
Fariza stares at the paper, but she doesn’t move to pick up a pen or pencil.
“Want me to start you off?” Sid asks. Fariza nods and watches as he picks up a black pen and draws in the top box. A small female figure with curly hair materializes on the page, sitting on an oversize couch. Next to her is a smiling flamingo, all gangly neck and crossed spindly legs. Above Fred’s head is the puffy cloud of a speech balloon. Sid uses felt pens to color the girl’s skin brown, her T-shirt red, the flamingo pink, the couch green. At the top of the page, he prints The Amazing Adventures of Fariza and Fred. His printing is small and precise, like something you’d see on a blueprint. He slides the paper back to Fariza, who smiles and picks up a pencil.
Every morning after the breakfast dishes are done and before they sit down to draw, Fariza helps Sid sort the dirty laundry, solemnly dropping the whites in one pile, the colors in another, after carefully reading the washing instructions on the labels. The whole process slows to a crawl as she searches for labels on ancient shorts and threadbare shirts, but Sid never rushes her. He folds clean towels while she works. Cleans the lint trap on the dryer. Pairs up socks. She reads well for an eight-year-old, he thinks as she holds up a silky blouse of Megan’s and points at the label. Dry Clean Only, it says. She shakes her head and puts the blouse to one side.
“Good call,” Sid says. Fariza nods and keeps sorting, frowning when she can find no label. Even without a label, though, she knows what to do.
“She’s done that before,” Sid says to Megan one morning as he and Fariza arrange their pens and pencils on the table.
“Done what?” Megan asks. She is sitting on the green couch reading a cookbook, her half-glasses perched on the end of her nose.
“Laundry.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Megan replies.
Megan makes a rule of never telling Sid the histories of the kids who come to live with them. If they wan
t to tell you, they can, she always says. They’re not my stories to tell. And besides, it’s best to draw conclusions about people from your own experience of them, not from a case history some overworked social worker wrote after a long hard day. Not that Megan has anything against social workers—she was one for many years—she just wants Sid to get to know the kids on his, and their, own terms. She doesn’t knowingly take in violent kids or kids with drug and alcohol problems, although many of her charges come from homes where violence and substance abuse are the norm. Some kids want to talk about what has brought them to the island; others don’t. No one ever pushed Sid to talk, and he isn’t usually inclined to pry. Even though Sid knows Megan probably won’t tell him, there’s something about Fariza—her silence, probably—that makes him want to find out what happened to her. If he ever does ask Megan about it though, it won’t be with Fariza in the room. He’ll have to be careful. Her silence makes it so easy to forget she’s there.
All he says now is, “She reads really well.”
Megan looks up from her cookbook. “Really? How can you tell?”
“She reads the washing instructions on the labels when we do the laundry. Never gets it wrong. She kept that yellow silk blouse of yours out of the hot wash a few days ago.”
“That’s great, Fariza,” Megan says. “Thank you, sweetie. I love that blouse.”
Fariza and Sid take their places, side by side, at the table. Side by side, they stare out at the cove for a few minutes. Fariza points at the top of the fir tree and then flaps her arms.
“Yup, there’s Eric,” Sid says. He points at a green car in the ferry lineup. “It looks like Chloe and her mom are going to town.”
“The party’s this weekend,” Megan says. “I’m trying to find a new dessert to make.”
“What—no éclairs?” Sid gasps and puts his hand to his heart. “Megan’s éclairs are awesome,” he says to Fariza, who is looking both puzzled and worried. “Whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Mmmmm. Midsummer Madness without éclairs? No way. Next you’re gonna tell me that Irena’s not making her famous potato salad or Caleb isn’t barbecuing salmon.”
“He’s such a traditionalist,” Megan says to Fariza, who still looks puzzled.
“Someone who hates change,” Megan explains. “If you want éclairs, you’re going to have to make them yourself, Sid. Last year I made three dozen. I’d be happy to pass the torch to you. You up for it?”
Sid nods. “Me and Fariza will do it. Right, Fariza?”
Fariza nods.
“You don’t know what you’ve signed up for.” Megan laughs. “I’ll get the groceries today. The party’s in three days. Don’t leave it till the last minute.”
“No worries,” Sid says. “I’ve been helping you since I was four. I think I can whip up a few dozen éclairs—no problem.”
He sits down beside Fariza and opens his sketchbook. Every day he tears out a page, divides it into boxes and draws something in the upper half. Every day, Fariza fills in Fred’s speech balloon and writes some more of the story in the bottom box. The next day, Sid draws what she has written the previous day. Right now, cartoon Fariza and cartoon Fred are about to embark on a kayak trip. Fred is having a hard time getting into the kayak. My legs are too long, it says in his speech balloon. And I don’t have any arms. You’ll have to paddle. Sid draws the scene and then hands the page back to Fariza, who immediately starts to write in the lower box. Her printing is smaller and neater than it was when they first started working together; she fills the space below the drawing with line after line of words, her fingers clutching the pencil fiercely. She is already developing a bump on her middle finger, just like Sid’s.
As she writes, Sid considers Billy’s ordeal in the Uncanny Valley. For the first time since he began the story, he wonders whether he wants to continue with it. Nothing good ever happens to Billy; maybe he should just wander into the forest of Titan Arum and be poisoned by the stench. When his body is finally found, his family will realize that he was right all along—the giant plants are indeed toxic—and they will set up a memorial in his memory. End of story. Sid closes the sketchbook. He has never felt this way about one of his creations. Never wanted to kill off a character. He looks over at Fariza, whose tongue is protruding as she fills another line with tiny print.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says to her. She nods slightly but doesn’t raise her eyes from the paper.
Sid goes up to his room and takes a brand-new coil-bound sketchbook from a stack on his bookcase. He goes back to Fariza, and waits for her to finish writing. While he waits, he opens the new sketchbook and writes The Amazing Adventures of Fariza and Fred at the top of the first page. Underneath he writes Written by Fariza and Illustrated by Sid. Under that, he draws Fariza and Fred on the couch. Then he takes the half-dozen pages they have already completed and carefully tapes them into the book. When Fariza finally puts down her pencil, he hands her the sketchbook.
“You and Fred need your own book,” he says. “Just like mine.”
Fariza’s eyes widen as she opens the book and sees her name on the page.
“Thank you,” she whispers. Her voice is scratchy but sweet. She pats his hand before picking up the book and hugging it to her chest. She slides off the chair and goes over to the couch, where Fred is waiting for her.
Laugh Out Loud
“I bet you wish Tobin was here,” Chloe says.
Sid shrugs. “Yeah. I guess.” He knows better than to tell Chloe how much he misses Tobin. Chloe had a crush on Tobin, but Tobin wasn’t interested. It’s not a topic he and Chloe discuss.
“Remember the time you and Tobin took off in Nancy Benton’s Porsche?” Chloe says. “Irena was so pissed.”
Sid grins. Two summers ago, at Midsummer Madness, he and Tobin had been doing what he and Chloe are doing today: directing guests to parking spots in the field beside Chloe’s house. Irena has thrown an August long-weekend potluck open house for over thirty years—all permanent residents of the island (and their families) are welcome. No summer visitors (triflers, Irena calls them) permitted. Since Irena knows each and every person who lives year-round on the island, it is impossible to crash the party, although many have tried. Nancy Benton’s parents still live one cove over, so Nancy’s presence is acceptable. More than acceptable—she is a celebrity, an island girl who made good in Hollywood.
“Nancy didn’t mind,” Sid says. “In fact, she asked Tobin if he wanted to take it for a spin. Said every boy should have a chance to drive a car like that. He’d just got his Learner’s permit. Remember? Irena wasn’t the only one who was pissed. I seem to recall you refusing to come out of your room.”
Chloe snorted. “That wasn’t because of you, asshole. It was because Irena was treating me like her personal slave. Chloe, get more chairs. Chloe, the silverware isn’t shiny enough. Chloe, you can’t wear that. Chloe, your hair is a disgrace. And anyway, Nancy Benton is so full of herself, now that she’s finally in a hit series. Mom says everyone’s conveniently forgotten what a bitch she was in high school.”
Sid raises an eyebrow at her. “Since when do you care? Anyway, she seems nice enough to me. Maybe she’ll turn up again this year—in a Ferrari. You telling me you wouldn’t want to go for a spin?”
Chloe swats him on the arm as a perfectly maintained baby-blue Studebaker parks in the circular driveway. An elderly gentleman in a beautiful cream-colored suit and matching fedora emerges slowly from the car and hands Sid the keys.
“Be careful with her,” he says to Sid as Chloe takes his arm and helps him up the front stairs.
“Always, Mr. Goodwyn,” Sid says. “You’ll get the primo spot near the front door.”
The guests begin to arrive in a steady stream—on foot, by bicycle, in battered old cars and shiny new trucks. Some even come by kayak or canoe and walk up from the cove. Some bear armloads of flowers; one little girl has a daisy chain she has made for Chloe. Others carry casserole dishes full of hot wings, paper plates pi
led with Nanaimo Bars, Tupperware containers full of three-bean salad. And then there are the chips—bags and bags of chips in every variety and flavor imaginable. Sid knows how Irena feels about chips—she calls bringing chips and dips to a potluck the ultimate social sin—but after he’s been on parking duty for an hour, he’s ready to rip into the next bag of chips he sees.
Megan appears on the front porch with Fariza, who holds a can of Coke in each hand. Fariza’s hair is in neat cornrows, punctuated at the tips by tiny glass beads. Chloe’s mission, since Fariza’s arrival on the island, has been to tame Fariza’s wild hair. She started her campaign slowly, showing Fariza pictures she found online, explaining how she would get the tangles out first, using lots of conditioner so it wouldn’t hurt. But it was the seaglass beads—soft blues and greens, milky white—that finally won Fariza over. Chloe’s mom had found them at a local craft fair years before and kept them in an old Mason jar on the kitchen windowsill. Chloe loved to play with the beads, running them through her hands like water. Now the beads click whenever Fariza turns her head. When she is anxious or tired, she strokes one particular green bead—the color of her eyes—that dangles near her chin.
“We thought you might need a break,” Megan says. Fariza solemnly hands Sid and Chloe the drinks. “Go inside and get something to eat. Fariza and I will take over out here.”
“Are you sure?” Sid says.
Megan nods. “You don’t want to miss Irena’s potato salad, do you?”
“Nope,” Sid says. “And I better snag a few éclairs before they’re all gone. Did you get one, Fariza?” They had spent the day before in the kitchen—beating the glossy batter, melting the dark chocolate—and this morning cutting open the éclairs and stuffing the cavities with whipped cream.
Fariza nods and rubs her belly.
As usual there are more people than chairs, so Sid helps Caleb drag furniture from the house out onto the lawn—dining-room chairs, footstools, the wicker settee off the front porch, an old office chair, even the coffee table is pressed into service. Blankets are thrown on the lawn; only a narrow path is left down the broad front stairs. People begin to trail out of the house, balancing plastic wineglasses and plates piled precariously high with food. Blankets become tablecloths for impromptu picnics; chairs are pulled into circles around invisible tables. Conversations become more animated as the wine and beer flow and the food and the weather work their usual magic. The mouse-squeaks of plastic cutlery on Styrofoam plates are drowned out by shouts of laughter and the siren wail of a tired baby. Someone has put an old James Taylor CD on the stereo.
Three Little Words Page 2