I talked a lot about the contest, and Grandma asked me a bunch of questions, like when would I find out which room or hallway we’d have (this week) and how was the voting being done (every student would have a chance to see the rooms and hallways and cast a vote, and Mr. V said he wanted 100 percent participation) and who would be helping me (Olive, and, hopefully, Rachel).
“Will you have any kind of theme?” Grandma asked. She hated when rooms were “matchy-matchy.”
“I don’t know. I guess it depends what room we have.” I was still hoping for the main hallway because every kid in the school would see it, multiple times, so that was sure to help get us votes.
Grandma didn’t eat much, just a salad, and I’d noticed Mom frown when she ordered. Grandma was already pretty skinny; she could have used some all-you-can-eat breadsticks. We did talk her into a big slice of chocolate cake, though, and Mom and I got one, too.
“As long as you don’t tell them it’s my birthday,” Grandma whispered. “I don’t want any ridiculous spectacle from the waiters.”
So we kept it a secret, but before Grandma took her first bite, I squeezed her hand under the table and said, “Make a wish.” She smiled and closed her eyes, then opened them and pretended to blow out an invisible candle. Then we all dug in, and for the rest of the night, I wondered what she’d wished for, but I knew she could never tell me because then it wouldn’t come true.
On the way home from the restaurant, after dropping off Grandma, I had an idea about decorating lockers. What if I did some kind of mural that was removable? I could use that peel-and-stick wallpaper. Grandma had decorated a dresser with that once, and it looked awesome. I decided to give her a quick call and ask her advice.
The phone rang for a while. Grandma didn’t have a cell phone, and her landline didn’t have an answering machine, so it was hard to catch her. Plus, she sometimes took her hearing aids out and didn’t even realize the phone was ringing. I’d heard Mom get angry with her about that recently. She’d said, “How am I supposed to know you’re okay when you don’t pick up the phone?”
Eventually, Grandma answered.
“Grandma, I had so much fun tonight!” I said loudly, just in case she didn’t have the hearing aids in.
“Who is this?” Her voice was thin and watery.
“It’s Maggie, Grandma.” She didn’t say anything. “Your granddaughter?” Did she know more than one Maggie? “We just had dinner together!”
“My what?” came the weak voice. Was she joking?
I just stood there. What was I supposed to say now? “Um . . . I said, it’s your granddaughter . . . Maggie.”
“My granddaughter?” she replied, after a long pause.
I didn’t know what to say. I made my way downstairs, my phone to my ear. I walked past the living room and saw my dad and Tony sitting on the couch, staring at Dad’s cell phone on the coffee table as though they were expecting it to do a trick.
“Who is this?” Grandma said, and I quickly answered, “Just a moment, please.”
Mom was in the kitchen. I handed her my phone. “It’s Grandma, but she doesn’t know who I am,” I whispered. I looked at the clock. It was well past 8 p.m. I shouldn’t have called. Mom had warned me about calling this late.
I started back up to my room, but I could hear Mom saying, “It’s Susan, your daughter. No, Mom, that was Maggie, your granddaughter.”
I pulled out my tablet and burrowed into my beanbag. My thirty minutes of screen time was already up for the day, but my parents weren’t exactly keeping track lately. The other day, I was on Roblox for close to three hours before anyone even noticed. Now I played a cooking game, mindlessly slashing vegetables, sizzling meat, trying to think about anything except what had just happened. When Mom stepped into my room, I was surprised to see it was dark outside.
“Here’s your phone,” she said, handing it to me.
“Grandma didn’t know who I was,” I said softly. I still couldn’t believe it. Just over an hour ago, we’d been having a great time.
“I know,” Mom said, sighing. “I’m going to go back out there and check up on her this week, as soon as I can.” Mom looked like she was mentally running through the week’s calendar, and she wasn’t liking what she saw. “And I need to take her to a doctor.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I need to see what’s going on, with the memory lapses. It might be—”
“Might be what?”
Mom leaned against my wall, looked at me closely. “Have you ever heard of something called Alzheimer’s? It’s a disease that causes changes in a person’s brain—”
“I know what it is,” I said. “Olive’s grandpa had it.” I remembered Olive saying her grandpa kept telling the same stories from when he was a little boy. And sometimes, he actually thought he was a little boy. Unfortunately, pretty soon after Olive found out about his disease . . . her grandpa died.
“Why am I just hearing this now?” I asked Mom, feeling my body tense. “Alzheimer’s is serious! Why am I always the last to know anything?”
Mom put her hands on her hips. “Maggie, you don’t need to get upset with me. We don’t know anything either, not yet, anyway.”
“But . . . is Grandma going to die?” She couldn’t! Not now!
“You need to calm down and quit jumping to conclusions,” Mom said sternly, which was no help at all. My brain didn’t work that way. My brain was always going to run ahead to the next intersection and try to see if there was a semitruck coming around the corner. Mom added, “I told you not to call her so late.”
“Oh, so this is my fault?” I said. “Are you seriously blaming me?”
“You know what, I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Mom said, holding up her hands. She left my room.
I sat at my desk, flicked on the lamp, and tried to finish my science worksheet, but I just couldn’t concentrate. How could Grandma have Alzheimer’s? She was so normal, except for just once in awhile, when she couldn’t remember something, but that happened to everybody. Okay, maybe not everybody forgot they had a granddaughter, but still. She wasn’t like other old people, the ones you didn’t think had much time left in the world. I thought about her making a wish at the restaurant before she blew out her invisible candle. Did she wish to be well? Did she even realize she might not be?
It wasn’t long before Dad came in. He leaned against my doorway.
“Hey, Mags,” he said, “sorry we haven’t been hanging out much. It’s just that, well, obviously, we have a lot of crazy stuff going on right now.”
He said that like the stuff we had going on could be anything, like he had a deadline at work, at the same time as I had a math test, at the same time as Mom had two new house listings. Like regular craziness, not what it actually was, which was on a whole other crazy scale.
He rocked on his feet a bit, looking around the room at everything except me, the same way Tony did.
“How are you, Mags?” he asked.
It was an impossible question to answer. If I told him I was freaked out, he’d try to reassure me that everything was going to be just fine, but if I said I was just fine, he’d suspect I was lying. I really couldn’t win.
I shrugged.
He sat on the floor next to my desk, his back against my wall. “We’re going to get through this,” he said, “you and me, and mom, and Tony, too.”
“And Tony’s mom,” I added. “Tony’s mom will get through it, and then Tony will move back in with her.” So maybe it was selfish of me to want Tony to move out, but wasn’t it also nice to want Tony’s mom to get better?
“Yes, of course, her, too,” Dad said.
I hadn’t meant to start crying, but it was late, Grandma didn’t know who I was, and I felt like I didn’t know who my dad was anymore, and, honestly, all of that meant I wasn’t too sure about who I was either. I sniffled loudly, and Dad looked over, then got up and wrapped me in a hug, but instead of the hug making me feel better, I fel
t trapped.
It was my dad who had always picked me up off the playground when I’d skinned a knee, my dad who talked me through scenarios at school when I was caught up in whatever silly friend drama was going on. He’d always been so smart and wise. I’d always trusted him. But now . . . ?
I wriggled away, grabbed a tissue out of the box on my desk, and blew my nose.
“How was the phone call? With Tony’s mom?” I asked.
“She never called.” Dad drummed his fingers against his leg in an agitated way. “And Tony walked out of his counseling appointment today, even though the social worker’s case plan requires him to get counseling.”
“Dad,” I said quietly. “If Tony wasn’t here, I mean, if there was no Tony, ever, at all, would you even have told me, or Mom, about any of it, I mean, about Tony’s mom?” I couldn’t stand to think about it, but I had to know.
He kind of looked angry for a second, just a flash across his face, and I didn’t know if the anger was at me, for asking these questions, or if he was just mad at himself.
“You’re at a weird age, Mags,” he said. “Mom and I are still trying to figure it out, what we can talk about with you, I mean, because you’re kind of on this bubble, between being a kid and being a grown-up. Do you know what I mean?”
“I guess,” I said. “What you’re saying is I’m suddenly really hard to talk to.”
“No, Maggie, that’s not—”
“Yes, it is, and that’s fine, and you know what? You’re not easy to talk to either these days.”
He just stood there and looked at me while I felt my tears starting up again. Had he said I was on a bubble? Well, I felt like I was the bubble, and I was ready to pop.
Dad wiped some tears off my cheek with his thumb. “Sometimes we don’t tell people things because we’re trying to protect them. Because we love them.”
I took a couple ragged breaths. “Is that why you told Mom you didn’t . . . want me? Because you wanted to protect me?”
That seemed so wrong. It couldn’t have been to protect me, and it certainly couldn’t have been because he loved me.
“What? Maggie, what are you talking about?”
I turned away from him, hiding my face. “In second grade,” I said. “When you and Mom were going to get divorced, and I had to decide who I was going to live with, Mom said you didn’t want me to live with you.”
He took a very slow, deep breath. “You remember that?”
Of course I did. I would never forget it. Why do parents think kids forget everything? We might forget to brush our teeth, but we remembered the important things. And not just the hurtful moments. I remembered all our talks, how they said we had to stay close as a family, how we were like a stool, the three of us, all balancing each other out.
He let out a long sigh. “Your mom shouldn’t have said that to you,” he said flatly. “I only suggested that a girl would probably want to live with her mother, but we weren’t even at that point, not by a long shot. That was premature, on her part, to imply we were separating. She was hurting, and she . . . well, we’ve worked that out now. A long time ago. You were only what, eight?”
“Seven,” I said.
Outside, the streetlight flickered on, and Mittens crawled up on my beanbag. I picked her up and put her around my neck. A minute or two passed while we both listened to Mittens purring.
Finally, Dad said, “Tell me something good, Mags.”
The only thing I could think of that was good right now was the contest, but he knew about that. I hadn’t told him about the prizes, however.
“So, the winner of that design contest? At my school? She gets to be Principal for a Day,” I said. I could suddenly see it so clearly, me in the principal’s chair, feet up on the desk. I could tell other people what to do for a change. I’d be in charge.
Dad stood up and moved to the door. “Sounds fun, honey.”
That was it? That was all he had to say? “There’s also a trophy and a pizza party,” I added.
“Well, isn’t that wonderful? Time for bed, okay.” He left my room but poked his head back in a minute later. “I assume a big kid like you doesn’t need anyone tucking her in anymore,” he said.
I gave him a half smile, then got into my pajamas, went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, and bumped into Tony on my way out.
“Hey,” I said. “Sorry about your mom, you know, not calling.”
“Yeah, well, I better brush my teeth,” he replied, and scooted past me.
Guess he didn’t want to talk about it yet, or maybe ever. Back in my room, I kicked aside some Better Homes and Gardens that were littering my floor.
I hadn’t thought about it much before now, but you know, nothing was ever as perfect as it looked in those magazines. The photographers spent hours staging a little area of a room to get the perfect photo, but we couldn’t see what was just outside the frame. I mean, we never saw the cat’s hairball on the chair around the corner, never heard the camera guy snap at the designer over some stupid thing, or find out the posh tablecloth was actually made by a kid who was forced to work in some factory on the other side of the world when she should be out playing in the sun.
And the families in these magazines . . . a husband and wife and two kids in matching polo shirts, a baby on the mom’s hip. And everybody smiling, always smiling, like there was an extra-large ice-cream sundae waiting for them after the photographer was done. I thought of our own family photos on the wall in the hallway, everything so posed and perfect. All “before” photos. Or were they? Would I always think of our family as before and after Tony?
I sat in my beanbag and read some Edgar Allan Poe for an upcoming Language Arts assignment, but it started to freak me out, so I put the book away and crawled into my loft, where I found Mittens curled on one of my pillows. I carefully picked her up with one arm and climbed back down with the other. Then I snuck into Tony’s room, where he was sprawled on his stomach and already snoring. I set Mittens down on the foot of his bed, petting her a minute while she got settled, and I went back to my room.
I missed the feel of my dad’s hand smoothing the sheet down, missed the way the last smell in the room at night was his after-shave. Did I need someone to tuck me in? No. Did I want someone to? Yes.
I imagined Tony did, too.
The Focal Point
Monday morning, and my mom was driving fast. She was usually pretty careful, following the speed limits and everything. But today she was rolling through stop signs and hitting the gas too hard on green lights, which was giving me a stomachache.
Tony and I were both in the back. He had tried to sit in the passenger’s seat, but Mom shook her head and said, “I’m not totally sure what the height and weight requirements are, Tony. I know Maggie doesn’t quite weigh enough to sit in front yet.”
“I always sat in front in my mom’s car,” he said.
“Yes, well, that may be true, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable, until I double-check the rules,” she’d replied.
Tony had been frowning ever since. I knew how he felt. I was, like, only five pounds under the recommended weight for sitting in the front. I liked rules and all, but this was one case where I wished we could forget them.
His backpack was on the seat between us. It was red and had a big marker splotch on the front where it looked like someone, maybe him, had colored over another kid’s name.
We could have taken the school bus, but Mom wouldn’t hear of it. For some reason, she wanted to drop Tony off on his first day. She never did that with me, and I didn’t know why she was being so overprotective. Maybe she just wanted to make sure he went inside and didn’t make a break for it.
Honestly, though, this was better than riding the bus. No other kids to deal with. Fewer questions about my “new” brother. And since Tony was a grade ahead of me, I wouldn’t see him at all once we got to school.
“So, Tony, your homeroom is with Mrs. Kauffman,” my mom said. “I’ve already spoken w
ith her. But you need to stop by the office at some point today to pick up some paperwork. Maggie can show you where everything is.”
I felt my chest tighten up at the thought of being Tony’s tour guide. I barely knew where everything was myself, and I’d never even been to the seventh grade wing. Tony didn’t react. He was busy staring into space.
“Did you like your other school, Tony?” Mom asked. She probably just wanted to fill the silence, but I wished she’d focus on the road and quit looking at us in her rearview mirror.
“Sure,” Tony said. “I mean, it was fine.”
“Bircher Middle School, right?”
“Yup.”
He started flipping the zipper back and forth on his bag.
“Do you miss your friends?” I asked. “At Bircher?”
He shrugged.
“You probably played basketball, right?” I had almost expected him to bring his ball to school, but he just had his backpack, and that seemed to be empty, except for the brown-bag lunch I saw my mom zip into it earlier.
“Yeah, I played, for a while,” he said, “but I didn’t have a way to get to practice, and you had to pay for a uniform, and the coaches wanted us to sell all these pizzas or else they said you weren’t ‘pulling your weight.’ ”
“What’s that about pizzas?” Mom called back. Tony was mumbling. Even I was having trouble hearing him, and there was only a foot of space between us.
“Nothing,” we both said at the same time.
“Jinx,” we both said at the same time.
I thought I saw the start of a smile on Tony’s face, but it quickly disappeared. “Did you have friends from the team over to your house or anything?” I asked.
I don’t know why I was so worried about it, but it was the same feeling as when I’d asked Tony if he had grandparents. I imagined him being alone, and it made me feel sad. My mom and dad would probably let him have some of those friends over, if he wanted. I could make myself scarce, go to Olive’s or something. As long as they stayed out of my room, it would be fine.
The Rule of Threes Page 7