“So, V? Are you mad at Mom or is she mad at you?”
“Both.” I get up. “It’s okay. Don’t ask.” Romeo ends up killing Tybalt for killing Mercutio.
“You can tell me later. And, V?”
“What’s that?”(“Stand not amaz’d,” another line.)
“Are you scared about Daddy?”
I sit down. “No. There’s nothing to be scared of.” Of course she doesn’t believe that. She’s not stupid. “The mono test came back negative, right?”
“Right. So?” The perfect bun is now complete. When Baby Teeth places it carefully on her burger with her left hand, her right hand seems to automatically drop her knife to the floor. There’s too much anxiety in that crowded mind.
I bend to pick up the knife. I notice my face still hurts from my stupid blacktop trip. “So I bet those tests will be negative too. Law of averages. That makes sense, don’t you think?”
She’s chewing a huge bite, but that doesn’t stop her from saying, “I geff fo.”
“You guess so. What does Dad always say? Swallow before you speak.” I imitate his deep, serious voice. “Remember that now, you little nutshell. If I was somebody else and I didn’t know you better, I’d think maybe you needed speech therapy after that one.”
Baby Teeth’s dimples are pink with delight. “And don’t forget he says, ‘Don’t chew with your mouth open!’ ” And don’t talk with your mouth full. Dad’s famous dinner lines. So what if I swallowed the truth. Maybe there’s somebody around here I can protect. I really am such a good liar. And now, I will take my runaway eyes back to the den.
. . . And bring in cloudy night immediately.
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,
That runaway eyes may wink, and Romeo
Leap to these arms untalk’d of and unseen.
Don’t talk with your mouth full. Sounds like Juliet’s mouth is stuffed with clouds—love clouds. Well, I think I’d rather go back to the chapter in The Varieties of Religious Experience. . . .
Unsuspectedly from the bottom of every fountain of pleasure, as the old poet said, something bitter rises up: a touch of nausea, a falling dead of the delight, a whiff of melancholy, things that sound a knell, for fugitive as they may be, they bring a feeling of coming from a deeper region and often have an appalling convincingness. The buzz of life ceases at their touch as a piano-string stops sounding when the damper falls upon it.
“Do I hear music?” I say to the air. “Is there a piano-string nearby? Not tonight.” Because what I read was: “From the bottom something bitter rises up: a falling of the sound as they bring a feeling from a deeper region as a piano falls upon it.” I shut the book.
I feed my dog, my Romeo, my own piano-string, who miraculously eats. Leap to these arms.
Who Can’t Fly Yet
Are you awake yet? There’s a whispering in the morning air. Everything’s okay. Time to get up. There are sleeping dog breaths beside my bed. It’s okay. Are you awake yet? I open my eyes.
There’s the half moon of the white door, the faded bedroom ceiling. “Nothing loose today.” Baby Teeth is awake. She means her bicuspids or incisors or any of her other teeth, which should’ve started falling out at least two years ago.
But at this moment I don’t really care.
“Did I wake you up?”
I close my eyes.
“Mom’s awake and already downstairs. If you look in her room, she didn’t sleep in her bed. It’s weird that Dad’s gone; he always comes in and kisses me goodbye.”
I groan, which reminds me. My hand dangles over the bed, and the worn green blanket on the floor shifts with stirring dog legs. Without looking I try to reach the favorite spot on his belly where the hair grows the longest. Lucky begins to stretch.
“Time to get up, you know. You’re gonna be late. Are you walking or taking the bus today?”
Usually he stretches until his black toes scratch the air and he looks like a flying-upside-down creature. But he can’t stretch that way now, not with the cast on. He tried yesterday. The memory slithers coldly across my nerves. Lucky remembers he can’t today, right? Please? But the canine earful as he tries to stretch splits the air until it echoes.
“What’s going on?” my mother hollers from downstairs as the Plymouth begins to roar outside. Lucky quiets to a whimper, which sends Baby Teeth hurtling across my bed to be near him.
And I am awake. A new day has finally come. I have to go to the bathroom.
It’s a good place to be alone. Remember to lock the door. I stumble across the lumpy blue carpet into the shower. There’s still hot water; I could weep. Wadstain often depletes the house’s entire supply.
Teach the dog to walk. Catch the bus. Find the possessed Eileen. Research this James character. James who? The Varieties of Religious Experience is almost one hundred years old—knowing that makes me wonder how many people have read it in all that time. Millions? Ignore Sullivan’s face in English. It was definitely his mouth I used to be interested in, not the rest of him. I wanted us to be like matches, ignite on contact. His lips, in spite of him, are full, lush, and soft. Damn him, anyway—why’d he have to be such an idiot? Stay awake in math. Go to the hospital. This is my day’s itinerary. Where do I begin? No, not in a good mood.
After my shower, I rub the steam from the mirror with the heel of my hand. I see my eyes, dark as ditches in the glass, and wonder who I am, naked and wet. These are my lonely lips.
I dab the cotton swabs above my soft earlobes, brush my lovely teeth, comb my supple hair, and do a lazy stretch. Towel-dry and slather lotion everywhere. I am soft, I am hard. Subtle gray eyeliner, a dab of blush. Perfume the secret spots. My breasts fill my hands, just for a moment. I turn in the mirror, get a full glimpse. I want to sway with someone on a warm, dark night and feel hands heated with desire everywhere. Then I wrap myself in my robe, wanting to hide, even though I’m alone. My face burns, longing or shame? I keep changing my mind. It’s this love/hate relationship I have. With myself.
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The flat light of April is changing. As it reaches the classroom windows, it no longer glares against the glass, but streams roundly through, sweeping in arcs of richer light, carrying with it the warmth of May.
“The foundation of any romantic attachment is passion.” I look away from the windows to the face of Mr. Sanders, my English teacher, as he tells us this. He’s sitting on top of his desk. His face, which looks like it was just poured from a blender, all puffy and soft, gets in the way of those words. How is someone supposed to convey anything with a pancake-batter face like that? I glance around the room. Nobody moves. Not even the Romantics.
Why are they so still? Oh, I see. It’s his choice of words: romantic attachment. Is love a vacuum? A collision repair shop? Is anybody else thinking what I’m thinking? Or maybe another kind of attachment is on their minds, so heavy on the brain, they’re cemented to that word, the beguiling one with three letters, the s-e-x one, and neither their minds nor their bodies can forget it. So nobody moves.
If love is a vacuum, does it suck? Oh, stop now! I can’t see what people are thinking; I can barely hear what the uncooked face of Sanders is saying. It’s impossible for me to concentrate today. Big surprise. But, like maybe a bird that falls from the nest and can’t fly yet from the ground to the sky, I’m stopped on that word: passion. And it stays with me all day.
So Pale
“Where’s Baby Teeth?”
My mother is alone in the car, parked in the school parking lot. Waiting, the thought shudders within, for me.
“Over at that Quinn girl’s house. Get in.” Both her hands still hold the steering wheel, though the car engine is off. There are shadows beneath her eyes.
I’m standing in the air of the open passenger door, one foot on the curb. I don’t want to get in. “Why?” I say.
“The tests all came back negative.” Something is dragging beneath her words. “Will you get in the car.”
�
��Which tests?” I glance around the parking lot—any green VWs? I want to see my dad, so I get in. The air is slack.
“The doctor said he’s badly anemic and needs a blood transfusion.” The keys clink as her hand switches the car’s ignition. “I don’t want your sister to see him because he looks really terrible today. I was there all morning, cleaning him up.”
Cleaning him up?
We roll soundlessly out of the parking lot. My mother’s driving slowly, which is not unusual. I’ve always thought that she was simply cautious, but I see that she’s afraid. It’s her hands. They’re so pale. Maybe she thinks somebody will run her over.
“Well, what does it mean?” I say and watch her hands gripping the steering wheel. Have they always been so pale? I wonder what she’s so afraid of. Baby Teeth said my mother didn’t sleep in her bed last night. Did she sleep at all?
I glance away, out the window. All I see are vacant green lawns. The day is bright, but as I look at the sunny sky, it hurts my eyes, as if it doesn’t belong where it is. How can the sky be out of place? How can he be so suddenly sick? I see my father in one of his slick business suits, striding across the lawn with his locked briefcase. He’s big. He’s powerful. He’s not sick. How sick is he? “So why is he getting a blood transfusion? Is there something wrong with his blood?”
“Because it’s supposed to help. Dr. Sweeney’s going to do some other tests, and they’ve already taken more blood. He’s so exhausted he can’t even eat. Supposedly, his blood is not acting right.” I look at my mother as her lips press sharply closed.
“So the transfusion will give him energy?” The air rolls across my hands as if filled with tiny needles. I look down, see my hands unmoving in my lap, feel they might belong to someone else.
“If it doesn’t, they’ll put him on intravenous tomorrow; otherwise, he’ll get dehydrated.”
Dehydrated? Not “acting” right? My hands sting. It’s me getting afraid. I don’t want to look, don’t want to know how pale my hands are. “So when somebody gets a transfusion, they feel better immediately? What about complications? What about AIDS?”
“Oh, Virginia, I don’t know. It should work; it’s supposed to.” A tremor follows her words, so they sound like she doesn’t believe this. “And I’m serious, he can’t move, so don’t be surprised.”
Surprised? What could be more surprising than the guy who to my silly kid eyes seemed bigger than trees being unable to move?
“Does he know we’re coming?”
“Of course he knows.”
I don’t ask what I’m thinking. If it were me, I wouldn’t want anybody else around. If I were too tired to eat, I’d probably just feel like pulling the covers over my head and sleeping. But if I couldn’t move, then what?
Along the approach to the highway, there’s a major intersection. “I’ve been thinking about what I said to you the other night,” my mother says, her eyes watching the dangling traffic light.
What night? I do not say this out loud because I do not want to say anything out loud to her. And why is she doing this now? But okay, it’s either last night’s charming conversation about Loretta Getz’s drug mishap, or it’s Monday’s nightmare . . . my poor Lucky. I do not want to talk about it. I glance at my hands, clenched into fists—red, not pale at all.
“Look,” I say, hoping to end any chat here, “I don’t take drugs.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about your dog.”
Oh, no, not now. “Is he still in the den?” I ask, because I can’t help it. I had moved Lucky’s bowls and blanket there this morning because the den is quiet. I hope he will sleep there when I’m not around.
“He’s in the den. I just went home; he’s fine. Answer me.”
Will this light ever change? My eyes veer away from it, land on the red side of the Dairy Bam. I hate the Dairy Barn because there seems to be one everywhere I go.
Everything is red. I feel like a bull. If it’s red, why can’t I be in my room, looking at my favorite red box? I have a collection of boxes. I could just sit and peacefully look at the red one for as long as I wanted. I could sing to my dog. It’s impossible. I can’t ignore her.
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I know my mother never wanted Lucky, but I didn’t know why. On Monday, I agreed to work three days a week for Dr. Wheatie, in exchange for Lucky’s operation and cast. I said I would start when school ended for the summer.
When Mr. Utley dropped me off, the first thing I did was grab the special green blanket from its place by his food bowl in the kitchen. I fluffed it and smoothed it and laid Lucky down. Then I washed the blood off my hands. With a warm, damp cloth, I wiped all over him, searching for any spots of dried crud the vet might have missed.
I murmured and pleaded in the nonsense language that seems to flow in emergencies and that, really, lies. “It’s okay, boy, you’re so so good. It’s okay, my little dog-head, baby bark.” Nothing was okay, but Lucky finally stopped shaking. I carried him, in the new cradle way, to the den, where it was cool and dark, and I started shaking. For a few minutes it seemed like I might never stop. Then Eileen called, but I couldn’t talk to her; my throat seemed to close when I tried. So I sat there shaking, waiting for Lucky to fall asleep on the couch.
Then my mother called from the engineering firm where she worked. My would-be pet-murderer mother. “So you didn’t go to school.”
“Eureka,” I said. My throat ached.
“Well, how are you?” she asked in her everything’s-fine office voice.
Was she joking? Delusional? Pretty good for a person with a dead dog, I thought. I wanted to spit into the phone. She thought Lucky was dead and I would go to school anyway. Such a big heart.
“Poor Lucky; I’m sorry.” Her voice strummed with something. Was it satisfaction?
“Lucky’s fine too.” Saying his name seemed to empty me. I was drained. So how could my eyes fill with tears?
“What?” If satisfaction had strummed, its opposite snapped.
“He’s got a cast. He’ll have a limp.” There was just my empty voice. The tears dried.
“We’ll talk about it when I get home.”
We didn’t pretend with “hello” or “good-bye” anymore, so “What’s going on? Who paid for this?” is what she said when she found us later. Lucky was wrapped in the blanket, all peaceful. I was stretched out beside him, reading Shakespeare. Some bright, angry thing climbed into her eyes when she looked at him. My poor dog even tried to wag his tail. Then he howled in pain.
“I am. Leave me alone.” I held his tail.
“I’ll ignore that. That’s a lot of money for a crippled old dog.”
“He’s not crippled,” I said. No, he’s not tripping into his grave just yet. She’s such a liar. Like I said, she states only the obvious and lies about everything else.
“Leave me alone—don’t ignore it.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, get away from me! Can’t you hear me?” I tried not to yell because I didn’t want Lucky shaking again.
Then another part of me, quiet and calm, said, “Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re the crippled old dog.”
She reached for me then, and I stood up. Lucky didn’t budge, but Shakespeare thudded to the floor. I hadn’t realized I was bigger than she was. “Don’t touch me. You’ll be sorry.” My hands were fists.
“Well, that figures,” she said, as if that made any sense. But she backed away, and her shoulders slumped and she looked so small.
My mother began to leave, but then she turned, her mouth twisted, like a rag being wrung dry. “I never had a dog. I found an abandoned puppy once, all alone in a cardboard box on the street, and I brought it home. It disappeared the next day.”
Her voice was filled with something wild. There were branches in it. Like the ones that smashed against the living-room picture window in a bad storm, scraping and scratching. “My sister and I couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “We had meat loaf for
dinner that night, and it tasted bad. We didn’t know why; all we knew was that we had to eat it, every bite of it, before we were allowed to leave the table. It was dog food—I had scraped the change together myself and bought the first can.”
My mother’s eyes shone like the steel-capped streetlights. The whole room seemed to glow. She crossed her arms and gripped her own shoulders with those pale hands.
“I didn’t know until later that my mother had drowned the dog. She told me, no, she confessed to me, when she was dying. You know why? She wanted me to forgive her.”
“Why?” Was that my choking voice? Were those branches in my throat?
And then her eyes were dark. “You tell me, little girl, since you can take care of everything yourself.” I opened my mouth, which made no sound.
“My mother said we were too poor to have a dog. But my father had just bought a new car. So you tell me why, since you’ve got all the answers.”
And then she was big again. So big those words filled the room and the rest of her yanked all sense away with one choking look. I had no answers. The world vanished until I heard the ice cubes clattering into a glass in the pantry. It sounded like someone falling down a flight of stairs. I looked at the place where my mother had been standing. It was just empty space.
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