Aunt Ann is standing on the doorstep, her face pinched with anxiety. Her face is so narrow that she almost doesn't look normal, but that's not her only problem. She looks like she's been ravaged by a hurricane. Her curly brown hair forms a tangled crown on her head. Her huge ratty coat hangs on her tiny body, and she holds her beaten satchel against her chest as if it is made of Teflon and she is expecting enemy fire.
Don't worry. She's fine. She always looks like this.
"Is your mom home?" she asks with her wavery voice. She is terrified to death of my mother.
"No."
She heaves a huge sigh of relief and barges into the living room. She drapes herself over the back of the couch and leans her elbow on the armrest. Aunt Ann has never used furniture right. "I'm so tired! Don't ever try yoga."
"Uh, there's really no danger of that."
"How's things?"
"Okay," I say, and then I wince because of course I sound fake.
"What's wrong?" She stands up too fast and gets a head rush but keeps talking. "Are you feeling all right? You don't have another one of those headaches, do you? You should have yourself checked for allergies! I should talk to your mother," she says with trepidation. She hates talking to my mother.
"I'm fine." She squints at me because she can tell I'm lying. "It's no big deal. It's just that I've been partnered for a project at school with Gusty Peterson."
"Why do I know that name?"
"Hildie's brother?"
"Oh, yeah. That one was a little looker."
"Now he's a big looker."
"And this is a problem because..."
"He's a totally egotistical jerk."
"Really?" She narrows her eyes at me. "He always seemed like a pretty nice kid."
"Well, he's not. He's insensitive and overprivileged, and I hate him."
"Methinks thou doth protest too much."
"Shutteth uppeth."
"Okay." I expect her to hang on to this topic like a pit bull on angel dust, but instead she takes a deep breath as if she needs to calm herself down. Ever since she started yoga, she's always doing this fancy breathing. She says she has to feed her mind plenty of oxygen to stave off Alzheimer's. She's not getting Alzheimer's—she just likes thinking about illness. It's like a hobby with her.
"So what's your blood pressure, Aunt Ann?"
"One oh four over eighty," she says with great pride as she finally sits down in a chair like a normal person. "I've been drinking plenty of water," she says, and then takes another deep breath. I'm starting to suspect that this is more than the usual health-obsessed breathing, because she's studying me warily.
"What's up?"
"Oh..." she says nervously. I can tell from her thoughts that whatever she has to say involves my dad and it's big. "Well, honey," she says, "your dad called today. Just now. I just got off the phone with him."
"Uh-huh."
She takes a deep breath and holds it. Her cheeks puff out, giving her narrow face the shape of a butternut squash. "He's coming home for a visit," she finally blurts.
I have stopped breathing. Every muscle in my body is clenched as though I could squeeze myself calm. Except that I am calm, but I don't think I'm calm. I feel my mouth open, and I think I should use it to say something, but instead all I can do is look at Minnie Mouse, who has curled into the shape of a cinnamon bun on the bottom shelf of our bookcase. She's watching me with her yellow eyes.
Her eyes suddenly look spooky and alien to me.
Her creepy yellow eyes are freaking me out.
Everything is freaking me out.
"Before you freak, honey"—Aunt Ann takes hold of my fingers and squeezes them with a sweaty hand—"let me tell you that he regrets leaving the way he did more than anything in his life, and he's ashamed of himself, and he feels like he's really let you down. He hasn't had the courage to come home until now, but he really wants to try and reconnect with you because you're so important to him."
"Uh-huh," I say, trying to work out how much of this came from Dad and how much is Aunt Ann's interpretation of what came from him. Dad doesn't use words like ashamed or reconnect.
"He's flying back next week. And I need to know—do you want to come to the airport with me?" She grinds her little teeth together and raises her eyebrows.
I'm silent, waiting for someone to speak. But the only person who can answer the question is me, so I say, "Um..."
"I think you should, Kristi, honey." She glances at the door because she hears a car door slam and she's afraid it might be Mom. "I really think you need to show him that you're ready to forgive him."
I do? I am?
"So his flight is next Thursday evening at seven thirty-eight, but let's get there a little early because those parking garages are so big, and then we'll both be at security waiting for him, and we'll be holding hands."
"Uh..." I get a mental flash of us standing near the metal detectors in the airport, and I realize this is Aunt Ann's fantasy of how I will be there to comfort her when her baby brother comes back to America after two years of fighting horrific African diseases.
"I hope he's not carrying anything," she says as she scoots off the chair and stands up. "I'm sure they get shots, but Jesus, some of the diseases they have there are—" She roots through her purse, looking for her hand sanitizer. "I think I'll look into getting us some shots beforehand. We could just get all those shots you're supposed to get before going to Africa and that way we'll be safe."
"I don't like shots," I say.
"Nonsense, honey. It's a tiny little needle and your skin is so big!"
Suddenly I'm trying to breathe all the air in the room at once. Aunt Ann stops looking for her sanitizer and sits next to me, her hand on my back. She rubs and rubs. She stays until I can breathe normally, but leaves soon after because it's dark outside and she doesn't want to be here when Mom finds out. Dad's coming home.
TELLING MOM
By the time Mom gets home I am calmly watching news footage of a terrible bus crash. When Minnie hears the garage door she jumps off the couch and pads back to my room. I follow her and lock the padlock. Who says you can't train cats?
I wish I could train her to tell Mom about Dad coming home.
Mom comes in breathless. "Hi, honey!" She smiles at me, something in her expression unfamiliar. She's different. I can't put my finger on it until she stretches her arms over her head, saying, "It's weird sitting down most of the day!"
Oh. That's what's different. She's not exhausted.
Instead of her usual scrubs she's wearing a nice skirt, stockings, blue leather pumps, and a silk blazer. She looks skinnier. Somehow the skirt hides her thick legs and the blazer shapes itself to her waistline. Her eyes look really huge and black because she has actually put on makeup. She never used to wear makeup because she says it can interfere with the sterile environment of the operating room. She's even wearing lipstick, so her lips look a lot fuller than usual. She looks good. She almost looks pretty. Suddenly I see why people expect me to take it as a compliment when they say I look just like my mother. Maybe to them, it is.
"Did you order dinner?" she asks.
I shake my head no. For the first time in over two years, I feel like wrapping my arms around her neck and letting her hug me. But I haven't let her hug me in a long time and I'm not about to start now. She stands in the hallway pulling off her shoes and then her stockings, and then she walks into the bathroom calling over her shoulder, "What do you feel like tonight? How about steamed Chinese vegetables? Or I hear there's a new Indian place that delivers. We can do that, as long as you don't order anything too greasy."
"Dad's coming home," I say.
I wait, standing in the living room. She slowly comes back out of the bathroom, one hand frozen in the process of pulling pins from her hair. She drops her hand and her hair twirls into a curl and rests on her shoulder as though it is suddenly overcome with emotion. Her oval face becomes very sharp. "What?" she says, despite the fact that her voice
has cracked down the middle.
"Dad's coming home. Next Thursday."
She stares at me, her lip hanging to show her bottom teeth. "How do you know?"
"Aunt Ann came by."
"Well, he's not staying here."
I remember what Aunt Ann said, and I panic. "But we have to show him we forgive him so that he won't be afraid of us and he'll stay!"
Mom's dark eyes travel my face. There is such pity in the way she looks at me, I don't even have to read her mind to know she's thinking, Poor Kristi. But thinking this only seems to make her angrier. Slowly she walks to the couch and sits down, her fingers pushing at her temples, rubbing, rubbing. She closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, but this seems to make her feel weak, and she bends over to hold her head between her knees like you're supposed to do if you feel like passing out.
She stays like that a long time, then straightens back up and grabs the phone. As she dials she pats the cushion next to her. I tiptoe over and sit by her, which is quite unlike me, but I feel like we're in battle conditions and the couch is our foxhole. I swear, I even smell smoke.
"Hello, Ann?" Mom says. "Yes, Kristi just told me ... No, I'm not mad. I just need to know his plans ... Of course this isn't your fault—we're all just doing the best we can ... Ann, I need you to calm down for a second and just focus, okay?...Is he staying with you?...Well, can he? Because I'm just not ready to have him—...I see. Okay ... Yes ... Only if Kristi wants to. I don't want anyone talking her into anything, do you understand me?...Ann, no matter what you do, things will take their natural course ... Well, at this point, I don't know what to hope for."
Listening to their conversation is like listening to bombs going off, one by one. With each explosion the sound gets closer and closer. There is so much noise in my mind, I can't tell if the bombs are in my thoughts or in Mom's. Maybe they're in both.
I desperately want to go find my earphones and put on Maria Callas at full volume, but I can't make myself get off the couch.
I barely notice when Mom hangs up and puts her arms around me.
I don't even care that she's squishing my face into her armpit.
We sit like that until our stomachs rumble, and then we fix organic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and watch the end of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and then we drive to the all-night market and buy two pints of all-natural ice cream, strawberry for her and double fudge chocolate chip for me, and we each eat an entire pint in the car, and then we come back home and realize that somehow we're still hungry but all we have is whole-wheat bread and organic goat cheese she bought at the farmers' market, so we fry up grilled cheese sandwiches, and they're crispy and salty and comforting somehow. We don't talk about Dad or Aunt Ann or anything. We barely talk at all. We watch the news until we are both so exhausted that we can't keep our eyes open. I fall asleep on the couch, and she falls asleep on the recliner. In the morning we both feel completely ill, and we look like someone parked a Sherman tank on our faces, our hair sticking up in every direction. Mom goes to the shower, but she doesn't sing at all. Usually she sings. I go to my room and take my daily bubble bath, but I don't break down and I don't cry.
I'm glad I don't cry. But I don't know why I don't. It seems strange to me.
WREAKING HAVOC WITH MALLORY
Today is Friday, and that means we have Processing during the last few minutes of school. It's a bizarre ritual that entails people saying whatever is on their minds, and everyone in the school is supposed to listen with an open heart. If I possibly could, I would keep my earphones on, but Betty Pasternak is sitting right behind me and she expects me to listen.
Gusty is sitting across the room from me with his legs crossed and his elbows on his knees. I try to search his thoughts to see if he's still mad at me, though I'm not completely sure what I did to make him mad, unless the "impervious to false flattery" thing was insulting or something. Evil Incarnate is whispering at him and he nods, but he seems to be looking for someone, because his eyes are trailing along the crowd. When he sees me, his eyes stop and he kind of straightens up. I know I should look away, I really should, but I can't stop looking at him. He doesn't seem mad. But he doesn't seem happy. Or neutral. I listen for his thoughts but there's so much else happening in the room that I can't get a read on him.
Finally he tilts his head to one side and raises his hand in a kind of wave. I nod at him. By now Evil has found who he is looking at, and her eyes fix on me with dark hatred. I look away. Sometimes I just don't have the energy to return the nastiness I receive. Especially knowing that my dad is coming back in six days after being gone for two whole years. This thought alone drains me of energy, leaving barely enough to keep my heart beating.
Brian walks to the center of the circle, the usual seething smile on his weirdly wide face. Today he is holding a big yellow bell, and he swings it in an arc. It makes a rude clanging noise, and everyone stops to look. Once the room is quiet Brian laughs and says, "Do you like my new bell? This is the attention bell, and from now on, when you hear it, that means it's time for our meetings to begin, okay?"
"Okay," Jacob Flax says.
Some people snigger. Gusty doesn't, though.
"Who wants to start off this week's Processing session?"
Gusty raises his hand, but Brian doesn't see him and calls on one of the guys on our lacrosse team instead. The guy stands up and announces, "I think our fall dance should be a costume party this year, and we should have it on Halloween since it falls on a Friday anyway."
Brian raises his eyebrows as if this were the most brilliant idea since Newton discovered gravity. "Okay, I like it. Are there countersuggestions?"
A girl with long black hair and light blond roots raises her hand. "I think everyone should come as vampires!"
The whole room erupts into a million pointless conversations about the pointless Halloween dance, and Brian starts ringing the bell as if he were calling the entire solar system to attention. "Calm down, everyone! Let's put it to the ballot box and we'll vote on it, okay?"
This shuts everyone up.
"Does anyone have anything else to share?"
Gusty raises his hand again and this time Brian sees him. "Gusty, what's on your mind?"
Gusty stands up. He has one hand in the back pocket of his jeans, and he's hunched over, embarrassed. "Uh, there's someone I just want to apologize to. For some stuff. And maybe we can talk about it later. I just want to say I didn't act very—um—mature and that next time we get together I hope it'll go better."
He sits back down and doesn't exactly glance at me, but his eyes definitely dart in my direction. His thoughts float over to me, gently, and the word, Okay? drops onto me like a fluffy white feather.
Yes, he's too gorgeous for his own good, but he's trying to be nice. I look at him until our eyes find each other, and I give him a little smile. He smiles, too, which makes him look simply dazzling.
"Thank you, Gusty." Brian clears his throat. "I hope everyone has gotten a chance to welcome Mallory to our school." With a curl of his wrist he beckons Mallory to the center of the circle. Mallory strides over to stand next to him, his face turning an even brighter red. He hates this. Why does Brian have to single people out? "If you haven't said hello to Mallory, please do. I'm sure he'd like to hear from you." He raises his eyebrows at Mallory. "Do you want to add anything to what I've said, Mallory?"
"Rock on," Mallory says, and then walks back to the perimeter of the room.
The end of Processing is always the same. We have to sing our school song, which is so boring and stupid that I won't bother with the lyrics. Here's a quick paraphrase: Journeys is great. Freedom lives on. Get to know yourself. Nature nature blah blah. We are all special. Until we meet again. Now let's all go and pick our butts and think about how great our crusty anuses are. Until we meet again.
We all head for the doors, and I'm looking for Gusty because maybe he wants to talk right now, but Mallory catches up with me. "
Hey, Kristi, want to come hang out at my house?" I can feel him thinking, Don't look at her boobs. Don't look at her boobs. Don't look—but he can't help it. He slops up a huge eyeful. I wait for his eyes to travel back to my face. It takes a very uncomfortable amount of time.
"Uh..." I look through the crowd in time to see that Gusty has just rushed out the front door. I hear his skateboard slap the sidewalk and it speeds away. I try to catch my mind up to him, but he and his thoughts are out of reach.
"Ground control to Major Kristi, do you read?" I see Mallory is looking at me with a dopey grin. "Want to come over?"
I feel my chin tense up the way it does just before I start to cry, but that is obviously the last thing I would ever do over Gusty Peterson. He is a beautiful person, and he is apt to say one thing and do another. Not to be trusted. Beautiful people = BAD.
"I have a better idea," I tell Mallory, and I head for the park.
I walk fast, forcing Gusty and his weird apology out of my mind. I don't need to think about Gusty Peterson because Gusty Peterson doesn't matter to me. He just doesn't.
It's late September by now, and the sun feels farther away. The wind ebbs and flows, and already leaves are collecting at the edges of the schoolyard. As we walk, Mallory has one hand crammed into the hip pocket of his white hemp jeans, and with the other he smokes, jabbing his cigarette between his lips and taking short, violent puffs on it. Something about the way he moves, even the way he holds still, reminds me of a coiled spring, as if a light touch in just the right place could send him bouncing out of control. I like this about him because I feel the same spring inside of me, and I long for someone to come along and trip my wire.
It's better to be with Mallory. He doesn't think I'm sick like Gusty does. I have no reason to think about Gusty. I'm not thinking about Gusty and the way he left without talking to me. Unless—
Of course. I'm so stupid! He wasn't talking to me during Processing at all! How could I be so dense?
But he smiled at me right after. He smiled as though we understood each other.
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