by Sue Halpern
The story we never retell is the one I remember best, about the afternoon I was scrambling up a boulder and dislodged a piece of rock—schist, Willow told me later—that slammed into my left foot and pinned it so I couldn’t move. I must have yelled louder than I’d ever yelled before because both my parents came rushing up the trail within seconds.
“It’s okay, baby,” Willow said in her most soothing voice.
From what I could tell, she thought I’d climbed too high and was too scared to come down, which really pissed me off.
“My foot!” I yelled down to her.
Steve was already climbing up the boulder, and when he was eye-level with my foot, he picked up the rock that was crushing it, called out to Willow to watch out, and tossed it aside. Then he carried me down and hustled us to the lake, setting me down in damp sand at the shore edge, so my foot could rest in the water.
It was almost fall by then. The nights were colder and there would be a frost most mornings. We didn’t have a calendar, so I don’t know how long we had been at #3. When I’d ask what day it was, either Willow or Steve or both of them, in unison, would say, “It’s today!” which they seemed to think was hysterically funny, so I stopped asking.
The lake water was freezing. Not literally freezing—that happened later—but so cold my foot went numb. That was the idea, Steve said. “Cold water is Mother Nature’s anesthetic,” and he held my foot down when all I wanted to do was pull it out. I was crying, and my cries were ricocheting off the mountains, and the sound must have gotten to Willow, because she told Steve they needed to take me to the emergency room.
“That is exactly what we don’t need,” he said, cautioning me to keep my foot, which I could no longer feel, underwater.
“Someone should look at that foot,” Willow tried again.
“I’m looking at it,” Steve shot back.
To him, bodies are like cars, and he’d never take his car to a mechanic. I, after all, his only child, was born in a hot spring in California, no doctor, no midwife, just Steve coaching Willow, who was floating on her back as he held on to her shoulders till I came out and he tied off my umbilical cord with a piece of dental floss. Steve is opposed to doctors. He says they are part of the medical-industrial complex, that they are owned by the drug companies, and that the drug companies put profits before people. Don’t get him started. But Willow did, and he ignored her, even after he lifted my foot out of the water and the top of it was purple and puffy and Willow swore it was broken.
“The foot has twenty-six bones,” Steve said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Willow said. She sounded angry. “That there are spares?”
Meanwhile, I was just sitting there, shivering and crying, with a broken foot, Willow said so, and there was no way that I was going to the hospital and Steve was pissed and Willow was angry, and Steve scooped me up without saying anything and took me back to #3 and told me to crawl in, take off my damp clothes, and get under the covers.
It was my fault my parents were mad at each other. It’s always my fault. I could hear them arguing on the other side of the nylon tent. I even yelled, “I can hear you!” to get them to stop, but they couldn’t hear me over their own voices and they didn’t. After a while Willow came into the tent and got under the covers with me and told me it would be fine. I didn’t know if she meant my foot or my family, but with her hand stroking my forehead and her fingers running through my hair, I believed her. Later she rubbed some arnica on my foot and gave me a cup of valerian root tea that made me gag but also put me to sleep. I didn’t notice when my parents came to bed, or if they came to bed.
Steve and Willow were both out of the tent when I woke up. I listened to the sound of their voices: Were they still angry? Had that storm passed? Was Steve grumpy, was Willow sad? When you’re an only child living in a tent with your parents, you get good at knowing what’s going on even when you can’t hear a word of what your parents are saying. It’s all about tone. I wasn’t hearing anything, though. Not voices, not the sound of a stick prodding the coals. Maybe they were being quiet because they didn’t want to wake me. Or maybe they had stopped talking to each other. My foot was killing me. It was twice the size of the other one, scabbed where the rock broke the skin, and black and blue everywhere else. As I was inspecting it, Steve opened the tent flap.
“Rise and shine!” he said enthusiastically, practically shouting it. He had a big grin on his face, like it was Christmas morning and he had a surprise for me. And he did: a pair of crutches he’d made with tree branches and twine.
“Don’t put any weight on your foot and you’ll be fine,” he said.
A couple of days later, when I was sick and tired of hobbling around #3 on Steve’s crutches, which were hard to use on the uneven ground around our campsite, I gave them up.
“See? What did I tell you,” he said to Willow when he saw me limping and hopping without them.
And I wondered: What did he tell her?
Chapter Four
6.28.10–7.4.10
She staked her Feathers—Gained an Arc . . .
—Emily Dickinson
“So I hear that the little ray of sunshine is spending July Fourth at your house,” Evelyn greeted Kit when she got to work.
“That’s news to me,” Kit said. She made her way to the reference section, where Sunny, who had gotten there early, was unfolding the day’s newspapers.
“How do you like this?” Sunny sang out as Kit approached. Attached to the sign that said reference desk was one written with colored pencils that said answers!
“I made it myself,” Sunny said proudly.
That, Kit reflected, was clear. “But why?”
“Because some people don’t know what ‘reference’ means, but pretty much everyone knows what ‘answer’ means. My parents say it’s fine, by the way.”
“What’s fine?”
“You know, for me to come over.”
“But you can’t,” Kit said.
“No, really, it’s fine with Steve and Willow.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kit said, but Sunny didn’t seem to hear her.
“Steve says he can drop me off at four. The thing is, the babysitting job I was supposed to be at in the afternoon fell through—both kids have whooping cough, and since I’m not vaccinated my parents didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to go over there, but they already had plans to go out, so they didn’t even seem to mind. About the fireworks.”
Kit looked dubious, though she knew she shouldn’t be surprised. “You’re not vaccinated?” she said.
“Nope.”
“Aren’t you worried?”
“I’m worried about the government controlling my body. Why should the government get to tell you what you can and can’t do?” Sunny said.
“Do you wear a seat belt?” Kit asked.
“That’s different,” Sunny said.
“How?”
“It just is. No one is poking holes in your skin when you put on a seat belt.”
Kit groaned. She pulled her hand through her hair and looked at Sunny with renewed sympathy. This kid was being raised by people who probably thought jet contrails caused cancer and fluoride in the water was a government plot to create docile, submissive citizens.
“Fine,” she said. “Come over and we’ll make hot dogs, like real Americans on the Fourth of July.”
“No,” Sunny said.
“No?”
“No hot dogs. I’m a vegetarian, remember?”
“All right, I’ll have a hot dog. You can have a tofu dog.”
“Tofu pup,” Sunny corrected her.
“Okay, fine.”
“I’ll bring a sleeping bag.”
“I’m sure you will,” Kit said.
Later, looking back on their conversation, Kit wondered why she hadn’t put up more resistance. She knew what Dr. Bondi would say—that, despite herself, she wanted Sunny to come over and intrude on her solitude—but she wasn�
��t convinced. Solitude suited her. She was looking forward to climbing up to the roof, Chardonnay in hand, to watch the fireworks and listen to the crowd and feel the warm summer air wrap around her. No—it wasn’t that she didn’t not want to be alone; it was that she didn’t want to feel responsible for Sunny being alone. Not alone in her house while her parents were out that night, but alone in the future when she would be lost in a world that was so alien to her. Why not expose her to something normal?
“How rich is that?” she could imagine herself saying to the doctor. “I am someone’s conduit to regular old life.” What she couldn’t imagine is what he’d say back to her.
* * *
Sunny/fireworks
Steve and Willow dropped me off on the corner of Coolidge because the street was blocked off for the fireworks. When I got to 1635, Kit was sitting on her porch reading The New Yorker, and I guess I was quiet as I approached because she jumped when I said hi and then was embarrassed that I’d startled her. I didn’t care. I mean I cared that I had startled her, which was not cool, but it wasn’t a big deal.
“Did you bring a book?” she asked, and when I said no, she brought me inside to a room, full of them, and told me to pick one.
“I can’t pick just one,” I said.
“They are not potato chips, Sunny,” Kit said. “Take a couple. Maybe you’ll find one you like.”
I know I shouldn’t have been surprised. She’s a librarian. She has this conversation dozens of times a day. I’ve heard her.
The house was dark, though it was still light out: it didn’t have many windows, and the ceilings were so low they made me want to duck. I’m about five-eight, which is a guess, but Steve says he’s five-ten and I’m about two inches shorter, which puts me on the tall side for girls, and Steve about average for men. Kit’s ceilings sagged, and the doors were framed with thick old beams that made the place feel like a hidey-hole. There wasn’t much furniture in there, either. A couch and a coffee table in the living room, a table and a single chair in the kitchen. A desk in the room off the kitchen that probably used to be the dining room. There was a cot in there, too, and that’s where Kit told me to leave my stuff. There were extra bedrooms upstairs, she said, but she had never gotten around to getting beds for them. I started to tell her about the kind of blow-up bed we eventually got when we were living in the tent and it was getting cold out and the cold was seeping up from the ground—which I’ve always thought was odd since heat, not cold, is supposed to rise—but Kit said she didn’t need any more beds.
“What about Jane Austen?” she said. “I liked Jane Austen when I was your age,” and pointed to a copy of Pride and Prejudice on the coffee table that she must have put there earlier, on purpose; it was like she was waiting to have this conversation, and waiting to give me the book and set me up on the couch, just like she did to people at work.
“I read it already,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said.
She seemed nervous and like she didn’t know what to say, so I told her it was a long time ago—it wasn’t—and sat down on the couch and turned the pages while Kit sat opposite me and seemed to be doing the same with her magazine. After what seemed like forever but was probably about fifteen minutes, Kit stood up abruptly and asked me if I wanted to go for a walk, so we put down what we were “reading” and emerged from the dimness of the house into the early-evening glow. There was a steady stream of people making their way down Coolidge, and we joined in, stepping behind a family of four holding hands in one long, impassable line and in front of a man with a little girl on his shoulders. People were walking in the opposite direction, too, and some of them recognized us and called out, “Library, library!” or shouted my name, and a few little kids actually broke away from their families to give me a hug or a high five. It was fun. About four streets from Kit’s, the crowd broke up to grab seats on the metal bleachers that had been set up there. There was an ice-cream truck and a man selling frozen lemonade from a cart and people grilling meat on hibachis and a reggae band that we listened to for a long time. Kit had a smile on her face. She seemed relaxed. But not so relaxed that when I tried to get her to dance around with me, she said, “We should go soon.”
The sun was starting to descend, and the sky was getting dark, and it took some weaving in and out to skirt the crush of people heading to the waterfront. Back at Kit’s, she turned on the lights and pointed to the sofa and to my book, making sure I was sitting down before she retreated to the kitchen to make dinner. I asked if I could help her, but she said she was fine doing it herself. She did say that it felt odd, having someone else in the house, and that she hadn’t made dinner for someone else in a long time. She shouted this from the kitchen, and I could hear her just fine, but when I shouted back to ask her how long it had been, she didn’t respond. After a while she summoned me to the kitchen, which was bigger than I imagined it would be, and had one of those old-fashioned Franklin woodstoves next to something more modern and electric, a smallish refrigerator, and a table with a one-caned chair. There was nothing hanging on the walls except an oven mitt near the stove and a calendar from an exterminating company with pictures of waterfalls and snowy mountains over the table.
“Here,” Kit said, and handed me a plate with two tofu pups and a bunch of potato chips, then looked stricken for a moment and asked me if I was allowed to eat potato chips. “Or,” Kit said, “don’t you believe in them.”
I think she was trying to be funny, but it seemed a little mean, and she must have seen something in my face because she said, “Sorry,” but I pretended it was fine and told her that Steve’s biggest vice was barbecue potato chips, really greasy ones that turn your fingers orange, and that he tried to get me and Willow hooked, too, but we thought they were disgusting.
I was telling her this as we carried our food up a narrow set of stairs to a tiny room at the top of the house that had a wooden bench built in along three walls. It was amazing up there—we could see the park behind us, dotted with people picnicking on blankets and little kids and dogs, and the tops of trees, and the river, and on the river a wrinkled image of the sky, so that the lazy, usually brown water was a deep blue with golden highlights and, eventually, the sun lowering like a flag till we were sitting in darkness.
And then, out of nowhere, there was a huge American flag, stars and stripes, hanging in the sky that preceded a huge boom and then morphed into bits of smoke that left an impression, like warm breath on a cold window, before disappearing altogether behind a steady stream of starbursts that bloomed red and silver and green and gold, then rushed like rain toward the river, which carried them away.
“This is awesome,” I said to Kit, who was sitting catercorner to me with our knees almost touching so I could feel her jump a little each time a new rocket exploded.
“I had forgotten how loud this was,” she said, pouring herself another glass of wine. “Every year, I forget.”
She didn’t seem to mind, though. I could see her smiling sometimes in the glow of a rocket, not a big, toothy smile, but something quieter, what Willow calls a Mona Lisa smile, though I doubt Kit would have admitted it. I don’t think she’s being mysterious on purpose. It’s like she can’t help it. She’s not shy—she’ll talk to anyone—and she’s not exactly distant, but even so, she’s unreachable, as if there’s an invisible fence around her, or a force field that repels whatever gets too close.
When the fireworks were over, people began cheering and whistling and then booing when it was clear there would be no more. Kit and I climbed back down the narrow stairs, carrying all our stuff to the kitchen, and I helped Kit clean up, her washing, me drying. I know she knew I was there—she kept handing me things after she’d rinsed them—but it also seemed as if she’d forgotten I was. She was quiet, preoccupied.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I tried, which is something Willow sometimes says to me when she wants to know what I’m thinking.
“What? Oh,” she said, and then paused. It was
a long pause. The kind of pause where you’re pretty sure after waiting and waiting that nothing is coming after it. But then she said, “Maybe Steve is right. About fireworks.”
“Not you, too,” I said. This was truly disappointing. Why can’t adults just enjoy things without having to—as Willow also sometimes says—bring along their baggage?
“It’s late,” Kit said, handing me the last plates to dry. “You know where your room is. There’s a little bathroom opposite it. If you want to stay up reading, there’s a light on the desk. There are lots of books in there. Some of my favorites. Feel free to browse.”
That was it. Another library speech. I followed her into the hall, and she was about to go up the stairs and I didn’t want her to. Willow says that the best way to make friends is to ask them something personal but not too personal about something or someone they care about that will have more than a one-word answer. Bad example: “Can I pet your dog?” because they will say yes or no. Good example: “How did you train your dog to walk without a leash?” because then they have to go into a long explanation and you can ask more questions and then you’re having a conversation.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said. I saw her grip the banister as if she were catching herself from falling, though there was no chance of that since she was standing flat-footed on the landing. I guess I spooked her, but I went ahead and asked anyway: “When you read a book, do you skip to the last page first so you know what’s going to happen before you even start?”