by Rachel Klein
“I’m too tired. I think I’ll go back to school. I just want to go back,” she said.
I insisted on going back with her, and she sat down on the sidewalk and began to cry. “Let me go by myself. I don’t want to ruin everything. Charley came all this way to see you.”
I refused to let her go by herself. I didn’t know if she could make it. In the end, everyone decided to come back with Lucy and me, and Charley went home early.
On the way back to the train station, Charley pulled me aside and asked about Ernessa.
“She’s dropped out of the picture,” I lied. “I hardly see her now. It’s almost as if she’s not at school anymore.”
It is true that Lucy never goes into Ernessa’s room now. She’s too tired to do anything except lie on her bed.
“She’s totally tight-assed,” said Charley, “but she did me two big favors. She turned me on to some great shit, and she got me kicked out. Otherwise I’d have gone out the window like Dora. Headfirst into the ozone.”
“Ernessa wanted to get rid of you,” I said. “She thought you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like it was a secret she was selling drugs to everyone.”
“Did you ever see Ernessa get weird when she smoked?” I asked.
“What do you mean by weird?”
“I don’t know. Kind of changed, different.”
“I actually think she was immune to the stuff. It didn’t seem to have any effect on her at all. Probably because she smoked all the time. Can you imagine, immune to pot? That would take all the fun out of life.”
I wanted to tell her more, but Charley had lost interest in the subject. She was already talking to Claire about something else.
I turned and watched Lucy drag herself along the sidewalk arm in arm with Sofia. Her eyes were colder and more focused than I thought possible. She couldn’t have heard our conversation.
In the end, I was relieved to say good-bye to Charley and to go back to school.
Lucy didn’t say a word on the train ride. When we got back to school, she closed herself up in her room and didn’t come out for the rest of the day. I didn’t see her again until lunch today. She hasn’t been to church for weeks, and she didn’t go this morning. I used to tease her about going to church, but now that she’s stopped going, I’m annoyed.
I didn’t check on her the whole time. If she ate something, she wouldn’t be tired all the time. When we got back to school, I asked her if she had her period, and she said that she hasn’t had it for months.
FEBRUARY
February 1
If I approach Lucy, she pushes me away. If I avoid her, she comes to me in my dreams.
Lucy was in bed. I had gone in to get her up, but I couldn’t wake her. She was lying on her side, and I shook her shoulder again and again, but it felt like wood. Finally, I pulled back the covers. She was naked, and her nakedness embarrassed me; it was different from her usual nakedness. She was completely stiff, with her legs tucked up to her chest. To get her up, I had to unbend her legs and spread them. Each time I forced them apart, she clenched them back together. At last I managed to turn her on her back. Between her legs was the cane of a rose bush, covered with green leaves and reddish buds and large brown thorns. She held it tightly between her thighs, and I had to rip it out, tearing the flesh. The blood ran down her thighs in rivulets and soaked into the sheets.
February 2
Last night Lucy passed out on the way to the bathroom. I heard her hit the floor, and I ran into her room. She was lying on the floor, barely conscious. She wouldn’t let me take her to the infirmary in the middle of the night, and the next morning she insisted that she felt much better. I made her go anyway. I said I would tell the nurse what had happened if she didn’t go by herself. She was really furious at me, but she went. I’m glad I forced her to go.
The nurse made her stay in the infirmary. The doctor examined her during the morning and said that there was nothing the matter with her that a little rest couldn’t cure. She has to stay there for a few days. He really wanted to make sure she was eating properly. Mrs. Halton is going to talk to all her teachers.
After school I ran up to the florist and bought Lucy a bunch of red tulips. I bought the brightest flowers I could find. They cost a fortune, but I know how much Lucy loves flowers, and I think they will cheer her up. She was really upset when the doctor said she had to stay in the infirmary. They wouldn’t let me be with her for more than ten minutes. I don’t know why, if she’s not really sick. She can rest in bed while I visit. They said it would be “stressful.”
At least she appreciated the flowers and wasn’t angry with me anymore.
February 3
Today I couldn’t get to see Lucy until late, about half an hour before quiet hour, because Mr. Davies had arranged a poetry reading after school and asked me to come. He read two of his poems, and I actually thought they were good. They were simple, not at all what I expected. I guess I’d never really thought about what his poems would be like. One poem was about a thrush singing in a dead tree: the sudden and totally unexpected apparition of beauty in the middle of everyday life. Which is real, the bird’s song or the dead tree, because they can’t both be real?
I’m sure none of the other girls liked his poems. They are too quiet. They keep their meaning hidden. The girls want pain and angst, even from a man. There was plenty of that in their poems. Spiraling downward into dark pools of despair, being sucked under, suffocating. Everyone is misunderstood and moaning over some silly boy or some imagined pain. Living is a giant cliché. Even the desire for death becomes a cliché in their poems.
I’m so glad I didn’t take that class. It’s bad enough to have to think about yourself all the time, but then to waste poetry on yourself is a sin. There are so many things to write about, so many pure things, and that’s what poetry should be about. But everyone loves to expose themselves in their poems and then to put on a show for the others. I only write “I” in my journal, where no one can see it.
By the time I got to Lucy, it was getting dark outside. I had two Hershey bars in my pocket and a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Demian, in case she was bored. (She said she wanted to read it, but I doubt she will.) I opened the door and entered very quietly. At first, I thought she was asleep because she was lying so still on the bed, but when my eyes became accustomed to the light, I saw that her eyes were wide open. She didn’t even blink. She was lying on her back, her arms pressed to her sides, and her face was as white as the covers on the bed. Even her lips were white. She was fading. Maybe it was the twilight, but neither of us raised our voices above a whisper.
“I brought you some chocolate and a book,” I said.
“Thank you.”
I noticed that an unopened book lay on the covers by her hand. It was a copy of Jane Eyre, in a pale green binding with gold letters. I opened it up and saw the name, Ernessa Bloch, written on an endpaper stained with spots in a black ink that had faded to brown. Even her handwriting is old-fashioned and formal; the E and the B were tall and elegant, and the rest of the letters tiny and almost illegible. It reminded me of the books in my father’s library, old books that other people bought and signed and read years ago without giving a thought to what would happen to the books after they died. I used to look at the signatures and think about the people who first owned them, how they held the books in their hands and never imagined that one day they would die and the books would end up in my hands.
“Ernessa brought that for me. But I’m too tired to read. That book is so heavy.”
“Don’t you feel any better?” I asked.
“A little bit.”
“Lucy, Lucy.”
“I don’t feel sick,” she said. “Nothing hurts. It’s not a bad feeling, being so weak. I’m not scared. All I have to do is lie here and think about breathing. I listen to the breath coming out of my mouth. Then there is one second, before I decide to take the next breath. I don’t really deci
de. …”
Her voice trailed off. For a while we didn’t say anything. I had never heard Lucy talk like that before. It frightened me. When the room had grown so dark that I couldn’t distinguish her face from the pillow, I reached over and turned on the lamp beside her bed. The light from the lamp wasn’t strong, but Lucy turned her face away and covered her eyes with her hands. Next to the lamp were the flowers I had brought her. The bright burning red had turned pink. The stalks and leaves had lost their green, but they hadn’t shriveled up.
“What happened to your flowers?” I asked. “They’re all faded.”
I stood up and looked into the vase to see if the color had somehow run out into the water. But the water was clear.
“I guess they’re starting to die,” said Lucy.
“They were so fresh yesterday.”
At that moment, the bells for quiet hour began to ring, and the nurse came. I knew she wouldn’t let me stay any longer, so I kissed Lucy and left.
When I was halfway down the corridor, I realized that I still had the chocolate bars in my pocket and I was holding the book I had brought for her. I hated to leave Lucy there all by herself, thinking about each breath she took.
February 4
Lucy only has the energy to breathe. She is getting weaker, and Ernessa is getting stronger. Lucy’s energy goes to nourish Ernessa. It’s her food. They make Lucy eat in the infirmary, but she will waste away to nothing, while Ernessa becomes enormous and strong. I watch Ernessa during dinner. She pushes the food from one side of the plate to the other. But she looks so healthy. I need to keep her away from Lucy. I’m glad the nurses don’t let anyone visit for long.
February 5
I’ve actually been much happier with Lucy in the infirmary. I don’t have to look out for her all the time. The nurses do it for me. She’s safer there. I love Lucy, but having her in the room next to mine was beginning to be a drag. I haven’t enjoyed being with her except for a short time just after winter vacation. Even then, every nice time we had together was ruined for me.
In the last week, I’ve been very relaxed. I’ve practiced the piano for two hours each day, done all my homework, finished the second volume of Proust. I can write in my journal whenever I want to. It’s been wonderful. I sleep well at night, and I’m not anxious. I’ve been alone most of the time or with Sofia. When Lucy is out of the picture, I can be with Sofia. Tomorrow we’re going to take a long walk together after lunch. We like to walk past all the big houses with swimming pools and tennis courts and fancy cars parked in front. Some of the day students live in these houses.
Yesterday I had a good talk with Mr. Davies after school. I kept thinking about his poems and how surprised I was that I liked them. I didn’t feel uncomfortable being alone with him. He asked me what I’ve been reading, and I told him that I want to read all of Proust.
“What about Dracula?” he asked. “That’s been my favorite book since I was ten.”
I must have looked disgusted.
“I promise you it’s as good as Proust and much shorter. It’s as perfect as a book can be. There’s not a single word you would change.”
“I can’t read those books anymore. They ruined my fall.”
Mr. Davis looked so disappointed that I added, “Maybe when I’ve finished Proust.”
I told him about my father’s set of Proust, which I brought back with me after vacation. There are twelve of them lined up on my desk: little blue books with turquoise and white covers. I’m reading them because I like the books so much. It makes a difference reading a book if I like the way it feels and looks. It’s got to be a real book, which is usually an old book, with a certain smell, musty and vegetable. I don’t like new things.
I love to read my father’s books, to touch the pages he touched. The cells of his fingertips rubbed off on the pages, and they are still there. Sometimes my mother talks about getting rid of all his books. I’ve made her promise to save them for me, but I don’t trust her. She could wake up one morning and decide she can’t stand to have them around and call someone to come and take them away.
It was the baby sitting on the sofa staring at us and the sensation that his wife was watching me while she talked to Claire that made me so anxious. He was only playing, but I couldn’t relax. I shouldn’t have let Claire talk me into visiting him.
February 6
I’ve visited Lucy every day in the infirmary. Today (Saturday) I went after breakfast, and I’ll go again after Sofia and I get back from our walk. She says she’s not really bored and she doesn’t mind being there. I don’t know how she spends her time, since whenever I go in there, she’s lying on her back staring up at the ceiling. I guess she’s a little better, although she doesn’t seem any different to me. Her eyes are red, as if she’s been crying the whole time. She’s probably getting out tomorrow. I brought all her schoolbooks today, because she has to try to catch up on her homework over the weekend. She’s going to be so hopelessly behind. After she gets out, she’s not going to have to take gym for a while.
I gave her the Hershey bars, but I doubt she’s touched them. She used to be practically addicted to chocolate and had to eat some every day after school. It drove Sofia crazy that she could eat anything she wanted and not gain a pound. She says she doesn’t have much of an appetite, but they make her eat at every meal.
It’s lunchtime. I’m starving. I’ll finish this later.
After lunch
I’m so angry. Sofia and I can’t take our walk. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself until dinner. I was counting on being with Sofia.
Sofia came up from lunch, and she discovered an enormous pile in the middle of her room. Sweaters, bags, shoes, books, dirty underwear. She couldn’t get in her room. For the last few months, she hasn’t bothered to clean her room each morning. She shoves everything under her bed and pulls down the spread. Somehow her corridor teacher, Miss Fraser, discovered it this morning, and she pulled it all out. Sofia has to spend the afternoon cleaning her room. Miss Fraser is going to inspect it this afternoon. It really was incredible what Sofia had managed to stuff under her bed. I don’t know how she found anything to wear. Claire and I stood in her doorway and stared in amazement. Sofia sat on the mound with her legs crossed and did a perfect imitation of Miss Fraser with her long, drooping fingers and drawling voice: “My dear, someone like you with an artistic temperament finds it hard to bother with the mundane details of life. I understand so well. But we have to. Rules are rules.”
We all laughed, but Sofia has to clean her room, and my afternoon is ruined. “I don’t blame her,” said Sofia. “It’s a mess.”
She can’t help feeling sorry for Miss Fraser. She says Miss Fraser once dreamed of being a modern dancer, and she feels that she’s never been able to fulfill her artistic potential. Miss Fraser is a frustrated artist.
I think it’s a different kind of frustration: sexual. Isn’t purple supposed to signify desire? Sofia says that Italians think it brings bad luck and death. Anyway, absolutely everything in Miss Fraser’s suite is some shade of purple. The bedspread is a rose purple. The curtains are a bluish purple. The throw over the sofa is lavender. The rug is a black purple. I once went in there when Sofia needed her to sign a permission slip. Miss Fraser sat at her desk, her tight black skirt creeping above her knees, flat shoes like ballet slippers on her feet, her reddish hair pulled back in a bun. Her hair is so thin that I can see her pink scalp underneath. She always has the same white roots. She must dye her hair from time to time, but it’s permanently grown out. When she reached for her pen, I noticed that her perfectly painted nails (a pale lavender) were so long that they were beginning to curl up at the ends. They didn’t look like part of her body any longer. It would be impossible to hold a pen with those pearly nails. That was probably why she wrote so incredibly slowly. As she traced each letter on the little white slip, she would whisper it aloud. S-O-F-I-A C-O-N – She paused and stared down at the paper through her half glasses. Th
en she scraped it up with the nails of her other hand, crumpled it into a ball, threw it into the wastepaper basket, and reached out for a new slip. She started writing again, making huge loops with her hand as she went. Each letter had to be attached to the one before it and the one after it. When she finished each word, she went back and carefully dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, just so. Finally, after three tries, she handed the completed slip to Sofia.
Sofia got angry at me when I made fun of Miss Fraser. She thinks she’s sweet and harmless and the best corridor teacher. If Sofia had been on our corridor, Mrs. Halton would never have noticed a thing. We agreed that Miss Fraser is sad.
After dinner
I saw Lucy for a little while this afternoon and helped her with her homework. She is definitely getting out tomorrow. I really don’t want her back.
February 8
Lucy is back, and she seems much stronger. She got up this morning and came down to breakfast and actually ate. She’s a bit like her old self.
Charley may come down on Saturday. We’re trying to figure out what to do. I think Lucy’s coming along.
At breakfast, I overheard a conversation between Lucy and Kiki. I was sitting at the other end of the table pretending to talk to Carol, but all the time I was really listening to what Lucy was saying. Carol had to keep repeating herself. Lucy was complaining that Miss Bobbie is always after Ernessa; she used the word “persecute.” That’s a big word for her.
“Ernessa hasn’t been feeling so good lately. After about ten minutes of calisthenics, she’s completely exhausted. She can barely move. But Miss Bobbie won’t let her sit out, even for five minutes, without a doctor’s note.”