Catcher, Caught

by Sarah Collins Honenberger

  “Red. I’m talking to you,” Mom whispers.

  Through slitted eyes so they won’t realize I’m not asleep, I watch him put down the manuscript. He’s trying hard to smile, but it’s not working.

  “What was your question, Sylvie?”

  “It wasn’t a question. I think they should put Daniel on an IV. How long can he live without food?”

  “It’s been four days. He’s drinking the milk shakes. I think he’s okay.”

  “They had him on an IV in the hospital. I’m going to call the doctor.”

  “Which doctor? Doctor Morley won’t tell you anything. He’ll just refer you to the ER team who saw Daniel when we went in. You’ll never get any of them on the phone. They work a twenty-four-hour shift, crash, and work another twenty-four-hour shift.”

  “Maybe the nurse can tell me something.”

  “Maybe.” He’s fingering the pages on the sofa. I imagine a timer ticking away in the background. As long as she’s talking, he’s losing money. And if she stops talking to him, she’s going to be on the phone with the medical people and those bills will go up, so he’s still going to be losing money. I wonder if fathers, even fathers without dying sons, lie awake worrying about where the money will come from to take care of their families.

  “Did Walker phone about the new hearing date?” Mom asks.

  “Sometime in February, he said.”

  “When did he call?”

  “He didn’t. He said that before. You don’t remember?”

  “No…but I believe you. If the court hears the evidence in February, when will we get a decision?”

  “I have no idea. Walker’s the one to ask about that.”

  “I can’t. It costs us money every time I ask him a question.”

  Dad picks up the manuscript and sets it on his lap. Silence.

  Two weeks to Christmas. Although the other tenth graders are scheduled to take exams after Christmas break, the county school board gives me the option. I go ahead and get it out of the way. Partly because I know Mom is still trying to finagle a way to get me to Mexico. And partly because Joe’s coming home for Christmas. But mostly because Meredith’s going to be out of school for ten whole days and her mother works days.

  Four exams in one week is a grind. Especially after two blood transfusions earlier in the month. The school people, though, are overly considerate. They let me schedule the exams first thing in the morning because I get so tired by the afternoon. It turns out Stepford-Hanes proctors two of my exams, English 10 and World History to 1600. She doesn’t even blink when I turn the World History exam in early.

  “You found the course work easy enough without a teacher?” she asks afterward. We’re just shooting the breeze while I wait for Mom to come back and pick me up.

  “History is almost straight memorization.”

  “It won’t be like that in college. You have to draw conclusions and apply them to other events. They’ll want your opinion, not just regurgitated dates and places.”

  “You think I’d like college?”

  “Of course you will. It’s the time in your life when you figure out where you’re different from your parents, what you’re good at, how you can alter other people’s opinions with your expression of ideas, not just by what you’re wearing or how many goal kicks you can get past the goalie or what friends you hang out with.”

  “I’m not going to college.” This is not something I’ve said right out loud before and it’s harder than I thought to make the words loud enough for her to hear.

  “There are scholarships.”

  She means well, she’s just not used to kids with my particular predicament. It seems too incredible that she can’t have heard about The Disease.

  “A scholarship isn’t the only thing I need.”

  “Daniel, I…I don’t understand. Both your parents went to college. Joe’s at the University. Why wouldn’t you go to college too? Don’t you want to go?”

  “It’s like number thirty on my list.” From her face I see maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say. It may change her opinion of me as a serious student. Loving Meredith endlessly and forever is at the top. I haven’t told that to anyone, except Meredith. To be honest, going to New York City used to be second, but now it’s having children with Meredith. I know, I know, a sixteen-year-old boy can’t possibly be interested in children. But the idea of Meredith and me creating something that will last beyond me, into the unseen future, that’s too amazing, like sci-fi, when I know that I won’t even be able to swim come June and there’s no English 11 in my future.

  Meredith would be the coolest mother in the world. I can see her lining up three or four little blond kids on skis at the edge of the mountain and having them shout “Life is glorious” before they bullet down the slopes. It’s not the Landon male heir thing. I know Nick can carry on the family name, but having kids of my own who look and act like Meredith would be exponentially cooler. It’s as close as I’m going to get to growing old. But it’s only a dream. I can’t ruin Meredith’s life any more than I already have.

  Stepford-Hanes isn’t ready to change the subject from college. “Well, I daresay your list will change more than once before you get to graduation.”

  Mom looks in from the hallway and waves, then disappears immediately. Since Thanksgiving she’s been making a conscious (and obvious) effort to let me have my own relationships, without second-guessing every decision. Dad must have read her the riot act. There’s no other logical explanation.

  “Mrs. Landon?” A summons from Stepford-Hanes. She stands up and rests her hand on my shoulder for just a second as Mom steps back into the room.

  “How’d it go?” Mom asks me while they’re shaking hands. She’s doing that brave-parent thing, a dead giveaway that Stepford-Hanes does know the whole truth and has all along. I’m confused now about our conversation. If she knows about the leukemia, why does she talk about things she knows are impossible?

  “Daniel and I were just talking about how different college classes are. Have you started looking at schools with him?”

  Mom looks blank. Her fingers work themselves around the car keys in her hand, the way a blind person tries to familiarize herself with something new. Stepford-Hanes waits for another second or two for an answer. Her face puckers at Mom’s silence.

  “Well, it’s a big decision. Whenever you do start, if you decide you want some suggestions…I think I could steer Daniel to a couple of schools that would really fit well with his interests and talents.”

  “Thanks, thanks a lot.” Grabbing my book bag, I move toward the door, hoping to get Mom out of there before she breaks down.

  “Don’t be a stranger.” Stepford-Hanes says, her face creased into a zillion wrinkles over the whole incident.

  In the hallway Mom puts up her palm to signal no questions. Walking past the open classroom doorways where I can see blue jean legs and flip-flops stretched into the aisle and lacrosse shoes dangling from the backs of chairs, it’s hard not to agree with Mom. Silence is safer.

  Four days to Christmas and Joe arrives in snow flurries that are barely more than raindrops in white coats. Mom’s banging around in the kitchen like she’s in a hurry or hacked. The smells are sweet, though, Christmassy. I can’t think when she last baked cookies. When we were in grade school, maybe. She must have found a recipe that substitutes honey for refined sugar, another serial killer of humans according to her. Nick helps Joe carry in his stuff. A lot more books than normal.

  “My man.” Joe high-fives Nick, who’s chomping at the bit to go see the new Batman movie. They confer in tight side-of-the-mouth whispers. Like I’m already dead and gone. Ticks me off royally, right when I was feeling so mellow for a change. Meredith’s just gone home.

  “Hello to you too.” Pretty obvious and pretty juvenile, but I can’t help myself.

  “Daniel. You look like shit.”

  Big brothers are such idiots.

  “You look a little grungy yourself. To
o many late nights?”

  “You should ever.” He chucks his duffel bag behind the sofa, a badly beaten-down plaid thing with wooden arms that makes me think we’re living in a TV sitcom rerun, one of the unfunny ones. “Want to go with Nick and me to see the Caped Crusader?”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s just what I’d like. A taste of immortality. If only on the silver screen.”

  Joe has Nick in a headlock and is drumming on the top of his head. His teeth glisten as he laughs. “Didn’t Danny boy miss me? Nick missed me. What’s the matter, Danny boy? Meredith have a new flame?”

  “Leave Meredith out of this.”

  Even Nick, his eyes on me, starts to shrink away from the conflagration that is Joe. One foot of Nick’s is in the hallway, his hand on the door frame to give him enough leverage to spring himself free. The sound of me grinding my teeth reverberates in the living room so loudly I’m shocked no one else seems to hear it.

  Joe lowers his voice ever so slightly. “Guys, guys. Can’t we loosen up a little? It’s Christmas. I came home to celebrate.”

  “Sorry.” I stand up and ram my arms in my fleece jacket. “Celebrating is not exactly what’s on my mind lately.”

  Surprise of surprises, Nick comes back out of hiding. “Leave him alone, Joe. You don’t know anything about it.”

  I don’t wait to hear the rest of the sad story. People can die from suffocation and I need air. A lot of it. If I call Mack from the dry cleaner’s, he’ll come and pick me up. We’ve run this drill before, more often than I like to admit.

  As I cut across the backyard to Washington Street, through the kitchen window I see Joe hug Mom. It’s easy to imagine how he gives her the rundown on his exams and then hedges at her question about when he has to be back for next semester. We’re all used to not hurting Mom’s feelings. It comes naturally.

  When I call Mack, he’s out. Mrs. Petriano is full of the Christmas spirit.

  “How are you doing, Daniel? Merry Christmas. Nice we missed that snowstorm, isn’t it? We’ve been thinking about you. Your mother said you took your exams. I bet that felt good.” I can see her looking around like a deer in headlights. What the hell do you say to your son’s dying friend?

  “Yeah—I mean yes. Ma’am. It’s nice to have it over with.”

  “You don’t have to be proper with me, sweetie. I’ve known you since diapers.”

  “Yeah.” I’m damned if I’m going to correct it again after that home run at making me feel small. “Do you know when Mack will be home? I really need to talk with him.”

  “I think he has his dad’s cell phone with him. He said he was going to meet up with friends. I thought maybe he meant you.”

  There’s no suitable reply to that when I know he’s been avoiding me since the last time we talked. “Can you tell him I called?”

  “Of course I can. I’ll write it down so I don’t forget. I’m getting so fuzzy lately. Early Alzheimer’s.”

  She actually giggles and I’m getting claustrophobic, wondering if I can ever end this call.

  “Did you want the cell number?” she asks.

  “No, I don’t want to bother him. Just tell him I called.”

  She’s still talking when I say goodbye.

  Mack doesn’t call me back, but in one of my calls to Meredith, Juliann leaks that he’s avoiding her, too. It worries me. Mack mad at the world is not the Mack I know and love. Something’s happened or he’s gone over the edge with the white stuff. I decide to rest up and corner him over the school holiday. He can only hide from me for so long.

  I finish the first semester of tenth grade without ever attending a class. Three A’s—Biology, World History, and English—should put me at the top of the class, but then Algebra II wrecks my average with my all-time favorite math grade of B plus. I can’t remember any math grade I ever received higher than a B plus. How can it be that I can get that close but not any closer, no matter how hard I try?

  You’re thinking, just like my dad, that the bio grade was a fluke. Science has never been a favorite of mine. The measurement and recordation of each little detail, the constant comparison of one thing against another, it’s just so much minutiae without meaning. The thing is, now it’s so much more important for me to understand biology than history. It’s an incentive I’ve never had before. And Meredith grilled me. She’s an ace at science.

  Two days before Christmas Mom sends Nick to the public library Internet to check on plane fares to Mexico. Supposed to be a secret, but they have this big powwow in the front cabin when they think I’m asleep. Dad hogs the cell phone to call his textbook people to drum up more business. He snakes me into philosophical debates, almost out-and-out dares me to discuss the headlines, to focus on bigger issues, but he’s no better than I am at the distraction. What do I care whether the U.S. embassy in Nairobi is attacked again? I’m never going there.

  Although Holden doesn’t say much about his dad, I see right away that it’s an obvious black hole in his life, compared with the way my dad is right there in mine. Holden says he doesn’t want to hear the grief from his dad about yet another prep school failure, but there’s more to it than that. Rereading about his secret visit to see Phoebe, I hear a panic that doesn’t fit the crime. You get the impression his father is a big corporate guy. HC never disses his father. So my take, the problem for Holden and Leonard and Meredith—kids whose fathers are mostly absent from their lives, too important, too busy to really connect with their kids—is bigger than you think.

  Parents are already nosy, right? Born that way, by definition. They want to know what their kids are doing, eating, thinking. It may be natural, but too much of that nosiness isn’t healthy. Especially once a kid is self-sufficient. Sixteen or seventeen for a guy, a little later for a girl because of all those protectionist issues with females. Like in the studies they do with chimpanzees on the Discovery Channel, a kid has to separate himself from his parents. You would think if adults were so smart, they would make sure the schools taught you how to forage, how to cook, how to lease an apartment, instead of algebraic formulas or when the Mongols tried to take over the world. Those are not skills crucial to making your own way in the new-millennium world.

  Every parent’s goal, from the first step to potty training to driving a car, is to have his or her kid survive on his own. Checking books out of the library is not a survival skill. Playing soccer is definitely not a survival skill.

  But here’s the real problem. When there’s only one parent, that parent can obsess or be neglectful. Without the other parent, there’s no counterbalance. The heavy end of the scale drops. The kid flails and drowns. Sure, you can argue that some kids do fine with only one parent. Yeah, and some blind people manage to find a job. But some have to be taken care of their whole lives. Look at my mother. If Dad weren’t there to keep her grounded and realistic, we’d be eating mushrooms in some godforsaken mountain village. Maybe wearing coffee plant leaves. Good intentions.

  I love Mom, don’t mistake this for anger. But she’s working with a huge disability here. She loves me. She doesn’t want me to be in pain. She could never make the hard decision to amputate. But Dad has a different perspective. It means that they can talk about possibilities and make decisions without the whole weight being on one of them. When Mom loses it, Dad takes over. When Dad blows something off, Mom keeps bringing it back up. It’s a good system, one I never noticed before when they were yelling at me for jumping all over Nick or forgetting to write Grandma a thank-you note.

  Which brings us back to the humongous danger of a parent being absent. Not that I’d change a single thing about the one perfect night in my life—my night with Meredith—but someone wasn’t paying attention. I’ve never met Mr. Rilke. From Meredith’s descriptions of her visit with him over Thanksgiving break, he loves her. Even if he couldn’t stay faithful to Mrs. Rilke. But what if it hadn’t been me, what if it had been Leonard or some fugly football player who took Meredith home after the Halloween party and just used
her? Mr. Rilke dropped the ball. He wasn’t there to remind Meredith or her mom that curfews are set for a reason. And beautiful girls like Meredith need protecting.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not making a moral judgment about sex before marriage. I didn’t take advantage of Meredith. We’re in this together. That’s the point in spades. If her father knew how messed up her life is going to be when the boy she loves dies before he turns seventeen, her father should have been here to enforce the goddamn curfew. And he sure as hell ought to be around after I die when she falls apart.

  How come I’m so sure she’s going to fall apart? I mean, I’m not trying to kid anyone. Daniel Solstice Landon is not the most incredible sixteen-year-old guy in the world. My hair’s too long and stringy. I’m bony. I can’t run worth a damn. I get freaked out under dark bridges. I think phragmites and having a little sister like Phoebe Caulfield to talk to are more interesting than playing spin the bottle or winning a soccer game. I fall off bridges, for chrissake.

  Apart from the fact that I love the way Meredith lets the last word of a paragraph drop into silence and that thing she does, rubbing her bare feet on the rug when she’s worried, and apart from being sure she loves me because, although she knows my favorite song is a hymn called “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning,” she would never, ever reveal that to anyone…apart from all that, I know she’s going to fall apart when I die because our sleeping together was the first time. There’s only one first time for everything. And when it happens at sixteen and then one of the people dies, it’s traumatic. For both people.

  Meredith calls on Christmas Eve, but she doesn’t talk to me. Mom comes into the kitchen where I’m drying dishes as Joe washes. The turkey carcass hulks on the counter. The leftover stuffing odor of onions and spices fills the room with the comfort of the familiar.