by Sara Polsky
Why was Aunt Cynthia here? What did she mean when she said she made a decision because she was scared for her daughter—for Leila? Why does she seem to regret that decision all of a sudden?
The same questions I had upstairs, ceaselessly circling in my head.
I think of the last time my mother, Leila, and I were together, that day in August right before Leila and I started middle school, when we went out driving with my mother. The afternoon we spent playing with our dolls in the backseat while my mother sang along to the country radio station, strands of her hair moving in the breeze from the window.
My mother turned around in the front seat with a game for us, a challenge issued in her high-speed secret code voice. How fast?
It was just like any other game we played. So why did everything change?
—
“It’s Sophie, right?”
I jump, sloshing my tea. I’m certain Aunt Cynthia has somehow found me here in this empty corner of the cafeteria. I don’t know what to say to her about what I overheard.
But when I look up, it isn’t Aunt Cynthia—it’s Uncle John’s client, Trudy Carter. The one whose mother has been in and out of the hospital.
“Hi, Sophie? I’m not sure if you remember me—your uncle is designing my family’s new house. We met last time we saw him to discuss the plans,” Trudy says, her voice rising at the end like it’s a question. “You took notes for us?”
“Of course,” I say.
She’s right next to my table, so I stand up quickly and shake her hand. Then I wave at the empty chair across from me, even though I don’t really want Trudy to take it. She sits down, setting a plastic-wrapped chocolate chip cookie and a cup of coffee in front of her.
I watch as she pulls the coffee close and drinks, practically planting her face in the cup.
“Sorry,” she says after a long sip. She sighs. “It’s been that kind of day.”
I nod, thinking of how impossibly tired I’ve felt since yesterday. Since my mother got here, actually. The tea isn’t helping.
I don’t really know what to say to Trudy, so I just wait for her to keep talking, my arms resting on the table, crossed over the blank open pages of my sketchbook.
“Last time your uncle called us about the house, he said you were the one who came up with most of the ideas for my mother’s suite,” Trudy says after a few more sips of coffee. She unwraps her cookie, takes a bite, makes a face.
I shrug. “My uncle asked me to help him brainstorm.”
“Well, we all really liked what you came up with,” she says. “I even brought the plans upstairs to show my mother just now. She was nervous about leaving her own place, and I think your plans made her feel better about it.”
“Really?” I ask.
My voice comes out eager and surprised, and I feel a strange warmth in my chest at the idea that the plans I thought up with Uncle John helped Trudy and her mother. Fixed something for them. For a moment I forget all about my mother and Aunt Cynthia and my confusion.
“Really,” Trudy says. She smiles at me.
I think about telling her that my mother is here too, upstairs on the eighth floor. That I know exactly how tired she feels. But what could Trudy, a stranger, tell me that I don’t already know?
So I sit there quietly while Trudy sips her coffee and wraps up the rest of her cookie. I can tell that her attention has drifted away, so I pull a pencil from my bag and start filling the blank page in front of me. I look up only when Trudy’s chair scrapes back from the table. I didn’t want her to join me, but I’m actually glad she did.
“I’m sure I’ll see you again,” Trudy says, and I nod.
“Next month,” I say, wondering if I could get Natalie in trouble for this. “My friend took some photos of your house, and they’ll be in a show at the arts center. In case you want to come see it.”
I’m not sure why I choose this moment, now that I’m not talking to her, to call Natalie my friend. And I’m not sure how I know that Trudy would like the photos and wouldn’t mind that we sneaked into the house to take them. But Trudy smiles and thanks me, and I hope she really does come, so she can see someone else’s idea of what her house could be.
—
Trudy isn’t the right person to talk to about my mother, but as I leave the hospital and start back toward Aunt Cynthia’s, I realize there is someone else who might be. I change direction, toward the four streets of stores and restaurants that make up our suburban downtown. The whole way, I keep my fingers crossed that the person I’m looking for will be there at 6:30 on a Saturday evening.
He is.
When I step into the pizza parlor, where booths with blue plastic benches line both walls and there’s a line five people deep in front of the counter, James is behind the register taking people’s orders and collecting money. Even with his paper pizza parlor hat on, I realize it’s silly for me to pretend I don’t think he’s cute, because I do. I actually even like the hat.
I don’t want pizza, but I wait anyway, behind two parents holding their toddler’s hands between them. As the parents talk to each other over his head, the kid rests his weight on their arms and takes tiny jumps off the floor. One, two, three—jump. One, two, three—jump.
As the line creeps forward, I watch the families and groups of friends who fill the booths. I think of James finding me in the hallway last week and waiting for me to start talking instead of going in for band. Following me from English to art to ask if I was okay. I remember the question I wouldn’t let him finish asking me the other day in Leila’s room. And I repeat to myself what Uncle John told me the other day in his office.
You’re convinced no one else really wants to know what’s wrong, even when they ask you. But they really do.
Maybe they really do, I tell myself. They really do. I’m practically whispering it out loud as the toddler in front of me swings from his parents’ hands, back and forth, back and forth. I guess I’ll find out.
The parents grab their pizza and find a table, the dad giving the little boy a boost into his seat. And now I’m at the front of the line.
“Sophie.” James sounds surprised to see me. He clears his throat. “Hi.”
The last time I saw him, James had just watched me yell at Leila and fling a grease-drenched paper plate across her room.
“Hi,” I answer. I stare down at the counter.
I’ve just realized I have no idea what to say next. I was so busy reminding myself of Uncle John’s words that I forgot to come up with some for myself. Now I’m jittery and nervous. What am I doing here?
I consider pretending I’m only here to buy a slice. That way I can order it and leave, shove the door open and walk away as fast as possible.
Instead I force myself to say, “I know you’re working, but do you have a few minutes?” I gesture toward one of the few empty tables. “I can wait if now’s not a good time.”
James checks behind me—there’s no one else in line—and then over at the clock.
“I can probably take my break now,” he says. He doesn’t comment on how weird it is for me to show up like this, and I appreciate it. “Let me just make sure.”
He disappears into the back for what feels like fifteen minutes but is really only three or four. When he comes back, his paper pizza parlor hat is off and he’s carrying a plate with two slices on it. One pepperoni, one veggie.
He steps through the door at the side of the counter and offers me the plate.
“Want one? I know how much you like veggie pizza.”
James grins at me, and in spite of myself, I have to smile at what I know he’s remembering: Leila’s and my sixth birthday party. Just as I’m thinking about it, James starts telling me the story. It’s the kind of story families tell—the kind of story the parents in front of me in line would probably tell everyone they knew if their little bo
y were the one in it—but I haven’t heard anyone in my family tell it in a long time.
“We were all sitting at that table your uncle had set up in the backyard, remember?” James asks. “My parents came with me too, and some of the other kids from our class and their parents. And you and Leila were sitting there with your birthday hats, trying not to look too impatient for the cake and presents.”
I remember just how impatient we were, me sitting there holding my fork upright; Leila looking over at the pile of presents every couple of minutes and then trying to pretend she was looking at something else. Every time my mother caught Leila looking, she would tease her about adding another minute onto the time before we could start opening the boxes.
“Your aunt gave you a slice of veggie pizza and you decided you didn’t like it, but instead of saying anything, you just picked all the veggies off the plate, got up, and buried them in your aunt’s garden. You dug a little hole and dumped them in.”
“So they would decompose,” I say like that should be obvious.
James laughs. “You were always into science and stuff,” he agrees. This is why I’m here, because the way James knows me has nothing to do with my mother. He just knows me: that I’ve always liked science. That I’m still an artist. That sometimes I choose to bury my vegetables.
He holds the plate toward me again to make sure I still don’t want any.
“No thanks,” I tell him, holding my hands in front of me to ward away the vegetables. I’m surprised how easily the retort comes, like it hasn’t been years since we’ve had this kind of conversation. “There’s nowhere to put those veggies around here. Too much concrete.”
He laughs again, and for some reason I blush. What am I doing? James follows me outside, eating as we go. The bells on the small strip hanging from the door jingle behind us as we leave.
We walk without speaking for a block, and it’s like the memory we were sharing gradually fades away and the tension from the last few times we’ve seen each other rushes back in its place. At the corner, we both turn, toward the train station and the diner on the next corner, and keep going, our steps nearly synchronized. I’m thinking about the story James just told me. I’d almost forgotten that day, the way we all sat there, laughing and eating off of pink and purple plates and opening presents and taking pictures. It was just…a normal day. Just like the day we spent with Natalie and Zach. Suddenly, I can remember a dozen others we had, with James and without him.
Finally, in front of the town green, I stop walking. There are benches and a rotating series of statues here, the current one a brightly colored twist of metal that looks, when I tilt my head a certain way, like a woman dancing, balanced on her toes. Ms. Triste brought the sculptor into class, so when I look at the statue, I see her, an older woman with a long gray braid down her back.
I don’t sit down, and I don’t turn to face James. All I can manage is to stare at the ground and talk.
“My mother’s in the hospital,” I say. “She has been since the fourth day of school. She tried to kill herself by OD’ing on pills.”
I hear myself, abrupt and matter-of-fact, like I’m just opening my mouth and letting the words drop heavily to the ground. I’m not trying to sound like that, but it’s the only way I know to get the sentences out. Just let them fall.
“You were wondering why I’m staying at Leila’s house now.” I hardly ever say my cousin’s name out loud, and it feels strange coming out of my mouth. “That’s why. And why I seemed kind of out of it.” Because that’s exactly how I’ve been feeling.
James says nothing for a long moment.
Finally, twisting my empty hands together in front of me, I look up at him.
He’s staring at me, the plate held forgotten at an angle in his hand. Then he says, “Holy shit, Soph.”
And I know in a rush; Uncle John was right.
“Yeah, exactly,” I agree, pushing down an odd impulse to laugh. Instead I nod toward the pizza that’s starting to slide off James’s plate. Then I reach over and straighten it, my hand brushing against his arm. My face reddens.
I turn and start to walk, and James’s steps keep up. We’re making a square around town, back toward the pizza parlor.
I don’t say anything else, waiting for James to follow up, to ask me whatever he wants to know. But the only sounds are our sneakers scraping the sidewalk in a rhythm much steadier than I feel.
Then I get it. James has already asked me questions, those times in the hallway and this week when he came over to work on the project and saw me sitting on Leila’s floor with messy hair and red eyes. Now it’s my turn to decide whether and how I want to answer him. Whether I want to let him into what’s going on in my head.
So I take a deep breath and begin.
—
“My mother has bipolar disorder,” I tell him. The words still come out steady and clinical even though the trampoline jumpers are back to their routine in my stomach, bouncing to a rhythm of what will he think, what will he think. “That means she can have pretty serious mood swings, and a lot of times bipolar people attempt suicide when they’re manic or in a mixed state, because that’s when they have the energy to act on suicidal thoughts. That’s why she overdosed.”
“I had no idea,” James says, and when I glance over, he’s shaking his head slowly back and forth, looking stunned. I believe him.
But that means everything I thought about why he and Leila stopped speaking to me no longer makes sense.
“I thought you knew,” I say.
“No,” James says again. “What made you think that?” He turns and starts to walk backward, facing me. And he really does look like he wants to know. His whole body is loose and open, here, waiting.
I look down and slow my pace, shuffling my feet. My stomach turns over. I wish I could melt into the sidewalk and become one of those little bumps in the concrete. That would be easier than talking about this.
“When we stopped hanging out in middle school,” I mumble. “I figured it was because you guys thought my mother was crazy.”
“Wait, what?” James stops abruptly and sticks his arm out to the side, as if to keep me from trying to make a break for it. He doesn’t need to stop me. I’m already standing completely still.
“I never thought that,” James says. “I thought you didn’t want to hang out with us.”
“But you didn’t—” I start. Then stop. “Leila was the one who—”
I glance at James again. He looks confused. I feel confused, and all I can do is shake my head the way he did a moment ago. I don’t understand. Didn’t he see Kelly making fun of me and just sit there not doing anything about it because he thought Kelly was right? Didn’t he choose not to call me back?
We both start walking again then, as if we’ve agreed standing there isn’t helping. When we get back to the pizza parlor, James continues right past the door, even though I’m sure his break must be almost over.
“Then why did we stop hanging out?” I ask. As much as I don’t want to talk about it, it also feels important that I know the answer.
“I guess I don’t know,” James says, his voice low. “You never came and sat with us at lunch after sixth grade started, and I didn’t really go over to Leila’s house after school anymore, and I just thought…” He trails off. “I don’t know what I thought. I just assumed you’d decided you wanted to find some new friends. Lots of people in middle school did.”
He doesn’t sound bothered by it now, but I suddenly picture his smaller self, skinny and floppy-haired, wondering what I was doing. Were you upset? I almost want to ask. I want to know what was going through his head, and suddenly I have an idea how he might have felt the past few days, asking me questions I refused to answer.
We turn the corner again toward the station and the green.
“Did something happen?” James asks. “Back then,
I mean, with Leila? To make you guys stop hanging out.”
“I don’t know,” I say, but it’s so soft I’m not sure James even hears me. I think of that last summer, before sixth grade, playing with Leila and my mother every day. What am I missing?
“Maybe you should talk to her,” James offers, as if he’s answering my mental question. “She seemed pretty upset after the other day. Even though you guys don’t hang out anymore, you’re still kind of on the same wavelength most of the time.”
“Maybe,” I say. James has spent hardly any time with both of us together in the last five years, but somehow he’s right. Leila and I usually are on the same wavelength in a way. We’re like two trains taking the same route on tracks that never touch, that stretch parallel to each other all the way until the last stop.
But then I think about the way I yelled at Leila the other day and raged out of her room. I don’t feel ready to talk to her yet. I’m not sure when I will be.
Instead of completing the square again, I turn around, and James follows me back to the pizza place. He pulls the door open, the bells jangling again, and I start to walk away.
“Hey, Soph?” James calls from behind me. I turn back. “That really sucks about your mom. I’m sorry. I know there probably isn’t much, but let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
He pauses for a minute. “Your mom was always pretty cool, you know. I mean, my stick figures would all still have really long torsos if she hadn’t taught me about proportions.”
Despite everything, then, I laugh. James looks absurdly pleased, like that was the effect he was going for. He stands there, one hand on the door of the pizza place, watching as I turn around to leave.
And I start to think that it’s not just Uncle John who was right; maybe Natalie was too.
Twenty
When I wake up on Sunday, the house is unusually still, the kind of quiet so noticeable it feels even louder than sound. Where is everyone?