Change Places with Me

by Lois Metzger

  “This party is gonna be so much fun,” Selena said. “I sent out the insta-vites, and tons of kids are coming.”

  “Did you invite Kim Garcia?” Rose asked.

  “Her? You know that her father drives a tow truck,” Astrid said. “He shows up whenever a hydro-bus breaks down.”

  “And the stuff she wears . . .” Selena left it at that.

  It hadn’t occurred to Rose that Selena and Astrid wouldn’t start warming up to Kim. But Rose could do something about that, help bring them together; this party was a good first step. “I want Kim to come,” she said.

  “Fine,” Selena said under her breath.

  The food arrived. Rose wrapped her long fingers around the chopsticks, got the hang of them after a while, and imagined the three of them coming back here with Kim, and they’d do other stuff outside of school too, go to a movie, listen to music, or just hang out—a new group of best friends.

  Selena and Astrid forgot to treat Rose but at least paid for themselves. Mostly.

  After school it was time to get Mr. Slocum to talk to her. Rose had a friendly conversation planned in her head. “Mr. Slocum—” she began.

  “Not now.” He spoke from behind his wraparound computer screen.

  “When?”

  He pointed to a pile of work on one of the student desks. Rose had to grade a surprise quiz from a morning class and do some filing.

  Patiently, Rose waited. She graded the quizzes. She filed. Two hours went by and still Mr. Slocum said nothing. But why? Mrs. Moore had loved the attention, couldn’t get enough of it.

  “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Rose said at the end of the afternoon, trying not to sound disappointed.

  “That’s the arrangement.”

  He never even looked at her.

  On the way home, she brightened when she caught sight of a dog in a sweater. “It’s so great you put a sweater on him!” she told the owner, a guy on his phone, who didn’t really want to be interrupted. “That means you’re taking good care of him.”

  During one of her free periods on Friday, Rose had to check in with Ms. Pratt, the school psychologist.

  “Goodness,” Ms. Pratt said. “You look well.”

  “I feel well.” Rose knew this office—the pale-blue walls; the indentation in the couch; the tall flowers, now a bit brown around the edges, held in a glass vase filled with water and stones; and Ms. Pratt herself, dark wavy hair, olive skin, always wearing muted colors like beige and taupe. It had never occurred to Rose before, but now she wondered if Ms. Pratt’s understated style was her way of saying The important thing in this room is you.

  “You were here while I was away,” Ms. Pratt said. “You spoke with Ms. Gruskin; I read her notes. You had a disagreement with Mr. Slocum?”

  “I’m working on that. I’m doing my school service with him.”

  “Really?” Ms. Pratt couldn’t hide her surprise. “Tell me what’s been happening with you.”

  “Well, I’m Rose now.”

  “Rose?”

  “Don’t you think it suits me?”

  “I think it’s a wonderful name for you. I see you’ve changed your hair, your clothes—”

  “You look different too.” Rose realized that Ms. Pratt had a kind of glow about her.

  Ms. Pratt couldn’t hide a small smile. “Is it that obvious? Well, it’s not exactly a secret, why I was away. My wife and I went to a reservation in Arizona to adopt a baby.”

  “That’s fantastic! Tell me about the baby.”

  “We’re not here to talk about that.”

  “Can I see a picture?”

  “We only have a few minutes—”

  Rose clasped Ms. Pratt’s hands. “Please?”

  “Oh, all right.” Ms. Pratt had several pictures on her phone, actually. “That’s my wife, holding Ethan—she took an extended leave to take care of him.”

  “She’s keeping him safe and sound.” Rose gazed at Ms. Pratt’s beautiful son.

  “Now let’s get back to you and Mr. Slocum,” Ms. Pratt said.

  “Today’s my last day of school service, and Mr. Slocum and I are going to have a nice, long talk. We’ll be peachy after that.”

  “Peachy, huh?”

  “My dad used to say that. Ask him, how are you, he’d say, peachy. I’d get mad and tell him, you can’t feel like a piece of fruit! Anyway, why a peach? Why not an apple, or a tangerine?”

  “I have a feeling you weren’t the easiest child.”

  “Maybe so. But my dad never complained.” Rose leaned forward eagerly. “Ethan—what a great name. So what was he like on the plane ride home? Does he sleep through the night? I’d love to see him in person. Will you bring him to school?” Rose had more questions after that, and then the free period was over.

  At the end of her final day of school service, Rose plunged right in. Last chance! “Mr. Slocum, why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  He glanced up from behind his computer. “Whatever for?”

  “You think I don’t listen—”

  “I don’t think it, Miss Hartel. I know it. Lately there’s been improvement, I’ll admit. But for all of September and most of October, you were off in la-la land.”

  “Not true. I’m sorry it looked that way.”

  “I had to send you to Ms. Pratt. Nothing personal,” he added.

  Nothing personal? He’d singled her out in front of the whole class for a trip to the school psychologist. “I’m here now—you can talk to me.”

  “Why should I want to talk to you now?”

  Mr. Slocum wasn’t making this easy. “Well, you’re a science teacher. Maybe you could tell me about . . . Mount Vesuvius.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said that; she’d never thought much about volcanoes, but for some reason it was there in her mind.

  Mr. Slocum glared at her; his big, round, shiny head turned purple. “I wasn’t an eyewitness to the destruction of Pompeii, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “Of course not!”

  “Miss Hartel, you need six hours of school service. That’s the tenth-grade requirement, unless I’m such an old ruin I’m remembering it wrong.”

  Rose was afraid she might trigger another eruption here in the lab, but she pushed on. “Maybe you can tell me where you were born, why you became a teacher, that kind of thing?”

  He looked at her intently. “You’re quite full of yourself.”

  “Not true! I’m modest!”

  “Don’t sound so proud of it.”

  Maybe Rose should leave it alone, as Evelyn had suggested. Clearly Mr. Slocum wanted nothing to do with her. Still, it was important to try to get through, reach out to the humanity within. The best thing was probably to be direct. “You must be very lonely,” she said.

  But Mr. Slocum looked at her as if she was the one to be pitied.

  That night Rose and Evelyn went to work transforming the apartment. Selena had suggested battery-operated dancing skeletons and glow-in-the-dark pumpkins from Party-A-Rama. Rose had thought they could go shopping together, but Selena said, “Sorry, no time!”

  Evelyn was hanging a disco ball from the ceiling light. At lunch Astrid had said disco balls add atmosphere; they’d gone to a Caribbean place. Rose made a point of telling them that next time they really had to bring more cash.

  “Did you call the psychic?” Rose asked.

  “I did,” Evelyn replied.

  “I want to pay for her. Now that I have a job, I think that’s only right.” Evelyn really ought to get some sleep, Rose thought. Those bags under her eyes—she looked almost bruised. Evelyn was still relatively young and undeniably beautiful, and to look older and beaten up was just wrong. “The music—I wonder what kids listen to these days. Wow, I sound a hundred. Now that would be funny—that I could be an old lady at fifteen!” She started to laugh but for just a moment remembered how she had once felt old and bruised and—

  She shivered, chilled to the core.

  “Rose?” Evelyn said.
>
  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sure a stream will be fine. For the music.”

  Rose looked around, noticed the festive decorations, and snapped back cheerfully into pre-party mode. “Selena wants a DJ.”

  “Selena can hire one, then.”

  Rose was still wondering about Evelyn. Why hadn’t she ever remarried? She never even dated. A couple of years before, a man from her real estate office called for a while. But Evelyn never went out with him, and the calls stopped. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?” Rose asked.

  “What? No,” Evelyn said. “I’ve been married.”

  “What about being in love?”

  “I’ve been in love.”

  “You make it sound like a driver’s test. You take it once and if you pass, you never have to take it again.”

  “I . . . didn’t think I was capable of the depth of feeling I had for your dad. It’s highly unlikely I’ll feel that way again. And I don’t think I want to.” Evelyn untangled a skeleton, pushed a button, and watched it float around the room, slowly jiggling its arms and legs. “Not exactly dancing, is it?”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to?”

  Evelyn sighed. “Let’s just say my parents didn’t set the best example.”

  Rose got distracted. The blue chair, her dad’s favorite place to sit and watch baseball, had been moved. But she and Evelyn hadn’t touched the furniture while getting ready for the party.

  When Rose caught up with what Evelyn was saying, it was something about being in a house with a storm raging outside and her mother standing at the window, insisting it was a beautiful day.

  “But that was nice of her,” Rose said. “Maybe it was a beautiful day and you just hadn’t noticed. That happened to me when I woke up on Sunday—it was so beautiful out. I’m so glad I noticed it.” She didn’t mention the red light, so obtrusive again the past couple of mornings, like the wrong kind of alarm clock.

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Did you move the blue chair?”

  “What?” Evelyn glanced at the blue chair. “I was reading. The light from outside was bothering me.”

  “It left a dent in the rug. See? It’s saying, ‘I was here, don’t forget I was here.’ It’s saying it as loudly as if it could actually talk. It wants to be put back where it belongs.”

  Evelyn looked down at the spot. The skeleton swooped between them. “Rose, are you happy?”

  “Yes, very,” Rose replied without hesitation.

  “It’s what I’ve always wanted for you.”

  Rose tucked her hair behind one ear, a move that had already become almost unconscious. “Then you got what you always wanted. Now you, your turn. Are you happy?”

  Evelyn looked at her carefully. “Yes and no.”

  “Meaning—?”

  “Meaning, I am if you are.”

  But Rose had just said she was.

  CHAPTER 8

  “The thing to remember about cats,” Dr. Lola told Rose on Saturday morning, her first day at the animal hospital, “is that you can’t hold a cat that doesn’t want to be held. Cats are still somewhat wild, much more so than dogs. Dogs are pussycats.”

  “Dogs are pussycats?”

  “But guess what. You can fool a cat, psych her out. That’s your weapon. Never mind that a cat can run away if she tries to. She’ll stay if you make her think you’re in control.”

  Dr. Lola had given Rose a pale-green smock to wear over her clothes. Rose had spent the morning cleaning out litter pans and refilling bowls with dry food and water. The whole place had a dark, musty scent.

  Dr. Lola picked up a black-and-white cat. “This guy is the Great Catsby. Hello, Catsby,” she said firmly, pulling the skin on the back of his neck so tight his eyes became slits. “Don’t look so alarmed, Rose. When they’re kittens, their mothers carry them around like this.” Dr. Lola gave Rose’s hair a careful look. “That your natural color?”

  “I wish!”

  “Well, at least you chose a reasonable shade. When I was your age, I dyed mine rainbow stripes. Can you imagine? My parents tried to get mad at me, but they couldn’t stop laughing!”

  It sounded like Dr. Lola’s childhood had been a happy one.

  That was when Rose felt it—a trickle of anger that traced a searing path along the inside of her chest.

  Then Rose remembered the lady she’d talked to who knew things about her that she was only now discovering for herself, and heard the lady saying in that flat, generic voice, as if joining in the conversation, There’s no anger. It’s gone—like a banished king, never to return. Once again, she was exactly right—why be angry about the fact that Dr. Lola might’ve had a happy childhood? Rose took a long, deep, calming breath that filled her lungs.

  “I bet you looked pretty,” Rose said lightly.

  “Sweet of you to say. So, you’ve got him by the neck.” Dr. Lola tightened her grip. “You can’t lose confidence. Don’t go near his mouth or he’ll bite you. Wrap your other arm around his legs, like this, so he can’t scratch you.”

  Rose laughed nervously.

  “You should be glad we only do cats and dogs here, no exotics—parrots, snakes, ferrets. Now, Catsby needs a shot. He’s got kidney problems. Don’t worry about the needle.” The needle looked about a foot long. “He won’t feel it; cats have thick skins.” Quickly Dr. Lola let go of his legs, pinched some skin on his back, and stuck the needle right in. After a moment the cat let out a low growl.

  “I thought he couldn’t feel it.”

  “It’s the medicine; it burns a little.” Dr. Lola took the needle out. “Now he needs a pill. Here’s how you pill a cat.” She popped open the cat’s mouth by pinching the corners of his jaw and tossed in a pill overhand, like a pitcher. “See how I’m stroking his throat? He can’t help but swallow; it’s a reflex. Otherwise he’d spit it right out. Ever try to shove a soggy pill down a cat’s throat? Not fun.” Then she placed him in a cage.

  Dr. Lola asked Rose to take Rouge out for a walk. Unlike Cocoa and Fudge, Rouge walked like a dream. She kept pace with Rose’s every step, never budged from her side, and sat obediently at red lights.

  It began to snow lightly, an early first snow of the year, little bits of fluff falling to earth and melting without a trace, like they’d never been there at all. Rose wandered through the kids’ playground at Belle Heights Park and stood next to the motion-sensor fountain, where large concrete turtles sprayed water in the summer. “My dad used to bring me here,” she told Rouge. “He held me up even though that meant his clothes got all wet. Once he ruined a really nice suit. My stepmother wasn’t thrilled, but he said it was only a suit and I was having so much fun.”

  This was one reason people liked dogs, Rose realized. They were such good listeners. Trustworthy, too. She knew Rouge wouldn’t tell a soul.

  That afternoon a woman named Ms. Brackman stopped in with her cocker spaniel, Candy. Stacey, the receptionist, told Ms. Brackman to please take a seat.

  “Candy hates to wait,” Ms. Brackman said, not sitting.

  “It’ll be just a minute,” Stacey said.

  “Candy doesn’t know that. For all Candy knows, it’s forever. She’s eleven, you know. That’s seventy-seven human years. Older than me, and I’m no spring chicken.”

  “Would you like to wait outside?” Stacey asked her.

  “It’s snowing!” Ms. Brackman said, though it had already stopped and hadn’t stuck. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to get Candy here in the first place?” After waiting for an answer that didn’t come, she sat with a thud. “I’m staying put. Candy’ll do anything for chicken, broiled, no skin. I always have some in my purse.” Candy ate it eagerly and noisily. She had mournful eyes. Maybe that defined the breed, Rose thought, mourning dogs.

  “I heard the most fascinating story,” Ms. Brackman said, turning her attention to Rose. “There were these two dogs that were always fighting. One day, one of the dogs died. You’d think the other dog wou
ld be happy—but no. He went to the site where the dog was buried and dug him up.”

  “That’s awful,” Rose said.

  “I’m getting to the good part! It turned out the other dog was still alive! He was in a coma, or had fainted. Now you’d think the dogs would become best friends after this, right? Because one dog had saved the other’s life? Well, guess again. They went right back to hating each other.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “I don’t think it’s true,” Stacey said then. “No one would bury a dog that had fainted.”

  “Or was in a coma,” Ms. Brackman corrected her.

  “Even so,” Stacey said. “When you hold the dog, it’s warm, you can feel it breathing. And, what, the dog was buried somewhere out in the open, not in a pet cemetery?”

  “It’s a reliable story,” Ms. Brackman said, drawing herself up and standing. “It came from a highly reliable source. And I might watch my tone, young lady.” She walked to Stacey, leaned across the counter, and picked up an index card on Stacey’s desk. “What’s this?”

  “What’s what?”

  “It’s Candy’s card, isn’t it? It’s got a red star on it. With the letters TC, also in red. Look at that, my name’s got TCO next to it.”

  Stacey pulled the card away. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Of course it means something,” Ms. Brackman said, “or why go to the trouble of writing it? And it’s in red.”

  Stacey was turning red herself.

  Rose had never thought of herself as fast on her feet, but the words seemed to tumble out of her. “That red star means the animal is wonderful. Just this morning I heard Dr. Lola talking about Candy. Candy’s her favorite.”

  Ms. Brackman beamed. “That’s so true. Candy’s everybody’s favorite! And the initials—?”

  “TC means Terribly Cute.” Rose didn’t miss a beat. “TCO means Trustworthy, Caring Owner. That means we can count on you to give Candy the right dose of the right medication.”

  “That’s certainly true too,” Ms. Brackman said.

  Stacey looked gratefully at Rose.

  Finally Dr. Lola was ready for Candy, who leaned back heavily and struggled, but Ms. Brackman pulled her along.