I’m numb. The light changes and the car inches forward. “Yes. I thought about it.” I sound like a stranger. “Well, I should never have told you that, and I’m sorry I did.” My mother returns to silence, her eyes on the road ahead.
Why? Don’t say it, my mind says. Not a word. I can barely see her face because she has one of those sleek haircuts that sweeps forward, in a supposedly carefree way, around the face. But it looks good on her, like everything else does, in that tailored, polished way she has that gives off the warmth of a stone. She’s decent-looking for someone over forty, I decide. The thought surprises me. Why shouldn’t she have told me? Wasn’t it true? It’s a bigger surprise when I start to wonder if I’ll ever know her. Does she ever tell the truth? Or is it me, not being able to tell what the truth is anymore?
Where Are the Windows?
My dad is still green.
All that moves are his eyes. They are unparalleled, really, in their way of seeing everything at once, with a look that digs holes in whatever he’s focusing on. In this instance, me.
“Hey, Dad.” I stand in the doorway, willing my voice to sound regular, not full of the shock I feel when I see him. A jolt rushes up my legs as if I have jumped from a dangerous height.
“Hey, Virginia.” My dad is horizontal under a faded yellow blanket on the steel bed. The blanket does little for his moldy complexion, but the blue of his eyes deepens above it. “You just missed Edward,” he says. His voice is as flat as his hair, which is stuck to his head with sweat.
“So there is a God.” I roll my eyes heavenward. At least he can laugh. Then he starts coughing. I want to apologize. He’s actually green, like damp moss is stuck to his face. Only his eyes are the same, unwavering blue. “Are you okay?” I say. He sits up slowly, but he can move. Relief floods my throat, and at that instant I gulp so much air I choke on it.
“Are you all right?” He stops coughing finally and stares at me. Why didn’t I just walk in and crash my face into the wall? I’m choking like I swallowed a chain-link fence. That my dad doesn’t have on the blue plaid pajamas he was wearing when he left the house yesterday doesn’t help. The green-striped pair he’s got on shocks me—because maybe they make me feel like he’s going to stay here. But I eventually swallow and say, “See, Mom said you were . . .”
“She looks worse than I do, don’t you think? Where is she? Come in, come in, sit down.” He impatiently waves his hand toward a metal chair with an orange vinyl seat. “And don’t tell her that.”
I sit. We both ignore the sound the puffy seat makes, and I momentarily feel that the “intestinal” problem of Eileen’s father has become my own. “She’s getting you some stuff in the cafeteria. You do look a little—drained.” My own face is hot. “That’s good.” He nods. “Drained. Accurate. The way they’re taking my blood, I will be drained. She tell you?”
I nod. “Uh-huh.” I look around the dismal room. There’s another bed, which is empty; another, I’m sure, flatulent chair; and a large shelf near the ceiling with a television set on it that tilts down in an unbalanced way. “Nice place,” I say. “Cozy, huh?”
“You said it. Take a cozy disinfectant and call me in the morning. If you’re going to die, start in a clean place. That ensures your trip to—what’s that place?—heaven.” One of his hands presses against his chest. Maybe it’s sore from coughing.
“Shut up, Dad. Nobody’s going to die,” I say, which is possibly the most inane statement I’ve ever uttered. For all I know, the previous tenant of that empty bed just did. I’m in a hospital. People croak in hospitals, V.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Sorry. So, anything happening?” He slides himself back under the covers. The coughing fit brought a ruddy tinge to his face, but it’s draining fast.
“Oh, you know. Not much.” Right. So tell him some tall dog tales. “Yeah. Sure.”
My thoughts exactly.
“So how is she?”
“What?” I say. My mind is wandering—no, sprawling.
All I see for a few moments is green, and it’s not my dad’s face. It’s that damned VW, racing through my head again. “Your mother. She looks like hell, as we’ve already mentioned. So how is she otherwise?”
“I guess she probably feels like hell too,” I say. I can feel myself blink. This room is too small.
My dad rubs his hand over his eyes, winces, looks at me. “It wasn’t always like this,” he says. “She used to be . . . like a light switch. You wouldn’t believe how much she used to laugh. The reason I married her is because of the way she used to slap her leg when she laughed—as if that might help her stop, because she couldn’t once she got going.” He slaps the air with his hand. “You wouldn’t believe it. . . .”
Embarrassed, I feel my forehead furl. I’m uncomfortable because I do—and I don’t—want to hear this. What happened? I really want to know, but it’s too much to ask that now. “She’s not laughing too much these days” is all I say.
“We do the best we can, isn’t that right?” He’s still wincing.
The black telephone has been pulled so close to his bed, its cord looks ready to snap from the wall. It sits on a high, wheeled table, next to a box of tissues and a maroon plastic pitcher.
“So you’ve been working?” I say.
“Nah, just in case they need me.” We both gaze at the phone. “Deadline, you know.”
My dad’s in advertising. A long time ago, he was one of the first to put live animals in TV ads. Sounds dumb, but his company made a fortune. Now he does “concept” stuff, which really means all he does is talk.
“Big account?” Why am I saying this? Go ahead, tell him the smell of the room is making you dizzy.
“Nah, small potatoes. Toothpaste. Some print ads.” He can move. He’s not exhausted. I wonder if he’s faking.
“You could watch TV.” Oh, I see. My brain won’t stop chattering these stupid things because it’s not used to my dad like this. So green and helpless in that huge bed. It makes me nervous.
“Not today. Got a headache. So tell me something.”
“What?” Why is his hair plastered down on his head so that he looks like somebody in a cartoon? Does he know it? So that’s what she meant by “cleaning him up.”
“Anything. How’s the lucky dog? Today’s favorite philosophy flavor.” His hands rest on the blanket. I don’t know why they look so big.
“Wrong kid,” I say. “I’m not Baby Teeth.”
If it’s possible, his eyes frown.
“Okay. Lucky ate breakfast, he walked a little, hooray.
What I learned in school today is the foundation of any romantic attachment is passion.”
He doesn’t blink. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
My dad groans. “Attachment is the wrong word there.
Try engagement, entanglement, even better. Now you’re talking. That’s English, the class?”
I nod, impressed. He understands. “No—attachment didn’t sound very philosophical. Adumbrate, mundification—those are philosophical words. So what are you reading?” “Shakespeare.” Adam who?
“Good luck.”
His green face is turning gray. Is it the day’s diminishing light? A nurse squeaks in on white, rubber-heeled shoes. There must be two hundred pounds inside that tight white uniform. We all say hello. She checks his pulse with one hand and, with a free pudgy thumb, starts a stopwatch.
“Am I still here?” he says to her. “Still ticking, or is it the watch?”
She smiles without showing any teeth. “Still here. Dinner will be up in an hour, then your transfusion.” And with that, she squeaks out.
“Then your dessert. Is that what she said?” He sighs.
“That is one big nurse.”
“Less is not always more,” I offer.
“More what?” My mother walks in, carrying a carton stuffed with food. Looks like she robbed the place.
Well, my dad is skinny enough to eat it all.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” my dad says, closes his eyes, and is asleep.
| | | | | |
Am I really awake? I’m home, in bed. My eyes are open. I want to reach up with my hand and grab the darkness, hurl it out of the way. Where is the soothing moon? It is so dark tonight I can’t even see my hand in the air. But my eyes don’t care. They stare against the dark, wanting to see. See what? I can’t take it.
On my elbow I lean and switch the tiny lamp on the wall above my bed into brightness. The beam hits my pillow, but I can see figures beyond the direct light. There’s Baby Teeth sleeping, her eyes closed. The sight tugs at my throat, like I might cry. I look quickly away and see Lucky on the floor, his front paws dreaming in rhythmic twitches. I’m quiet. I don’t wake either one as I rise. Then I find myself downstairs, as if I have just woken up. As if upstairs, I saw nothing, because nothing was there, and I didn’t exist. It’s unreal.
There’s a blue glow in the living room. It’s the light from the den television spilling in. My naked heels make no sound as they cross the glowing carpet. I stand in the doorway. There’s a blur of motion on the television but no volume. An empty glass sits on the wood table next to my mother’s chair. Legs tucked beneath her, knees poking whitely out from her robe, her head in her hands. “Can can can,” she moans. Can what? What can? She doesn’t see me.
Can’t? I must have breathed in a big way because she lifts her head.
“V.” Is that an echo?
“Mom?” She never calls me V.
We look at each other. Where are the windows? The walls? I see nothing but the daze of her eyes.
“I dunno wha’sgonna happen,” she says, the words reckless as her unfocused eyes.
“I know that. I know, I know.” My words tumble. They are rocks, because I am made of stone.
“Can’happen, can’t,” she says.
“Stop, okay,” I say, “please stop, it’s okay.” There are those emergency words again, landsliding out in their lying way. It’s not okay.
| | |
I’m beside her chair. Though the glass is empty, I can smell booze. It burns, both sweet and sizzling, in the air.
“Why don’t you go to bed now,” I say, but in a voice that stabs the air.
My mother looks up at me, and her head sways. She’s out there on the high seas and I’m dizzy. She’s that carved figure on an old ship’s bow, drenched in the whipping sea spray. I wonder if she can really see me.
“You need to go to bed.” My voice is drenched. I sound older.
“Doeddn’ matta’.”
“Let’s go. I’ll help you.” I reach for her as she stumbles out of the chair. She’s actually listening to me. As she lurches, I catch her arms. She can’t even walk.
“Doeddn’ matta’.”
But it does. As we weave up the stairs, she sways heavily from my grip and pitches against the wall. I step behind, one stair lower, and push from the back. What else can I do? My eyes fill, but it is only colors. Green. Ice blue. The aqua robe. I push. She feels so small.
She is small as I lean her against the prized mahogany dresser in her bedroom and her hands skid across the top, knocking the perfume bottles into a clunking heap. She thuds down the side of it before I can reach her. I flick the light on, and her face lies on the gleaming surface. She drools on the polished top. I yank the bedcovers down, because it’s either hurry or leave her kneeling on the floor and I’m desperate to end this awful scene because there’s a howling in my lungs that has taken my breath away. So hurry, drag her to the bed and let her fall into the soft sheets so she can stop hurting herself, please no blood, though she won’t know she’s hurt until she wakes up, until she’s not drunk anymore. And then she can pretend it never happened, even though there’s a black eye fresh on her face to show it did, it really did.
It does matter as her swaying head sinks into the pillow and her robe is twisted like a big rope around her. I try to loosen it as a gurgle rises from her throat in a baby-sounding way, and she closes her eyes, since they are heavier than anchors, and the ripping sounds of her breathing finally wind down into hushed grabs of air, and eventually drop into smooth breaths that sound like she’s finally part of the world as I stand there.
Yes, it does matter. My mother is a wreck. As I look down on her sleeping face, her mouth open like Baby Teeth’s when she is dreaming, she seems impossibly younger than my eight-year-old sister. As I swallow whatever rises in my throat, the unreality of the night heaves through me. This scared little child-mother of mine, no matter how much I hate her, needs me. It’s either her innocence that lingers like a clump of cement in my throat as I try to swallow or the disappearance of my own.
What Is and Is Not
Sometimes the night never ends; it just breaks into light and we pretend. I am alive, though I tend to forget that when I’m pretending, and I’m fifteen. I have sweeping dark hair and hazel eyes that turn green when I cry. Sometimes I rub my hands together, maybe just to see if it’s really me. I wear the glasses I’m supposed to wear when I’m in the mood and whenever I remember my sunglasses because the day hurts my eyes. Maybe the pretending has torn the edges of who I am, so the result is a frayed and sensitive me.
If the night never ends, who can see? The day boils down to pretending what is and is not there. Because she does not want me to, I do not see the black eye on my mother’s face as the bruise changes, fades a blotchy red to a tattered purple, then spreads to flat green.
Because he assumes nobody does, I do not see the increasingly bloodshot eyes of my brother as he stares past me at dinner. And I do not see the raised eyebrows on Baby Teeth’s face that settle more frequently into surprise as she watches and helplessly learns this pretending game. I wish I could tell her she doesn’t have to play, though if she’s to survive life in this house, she will.
So I do not notice that on the days that we do not go to the hospital, she spends every afternoon at other people’s houses now. And I especially do not see the absence of my father at dawn when he does not kiss the sleeping Baby Teeth good-bye before he climbs down the stairs in his solid brown shoes and goes to work. And I do not see his absence as I pass his empty chair at night when I walk into the kitchen to feed my dog. The last thing I do not see is my tilting, limping Lucky as he waits by his empty bowl, or the image of the vile green VW that hit him.
So what do I see? That I have learned to pretend so well, I can do it with my eyes open. April has ended, and its cruelty too, I hope, when we weren’t looking, or were busy pretending, or maybe while we slept.
So it’s May. And what does it bring? April showers bring May flowers. Well, really. I try to remember, uncertainly, if there was a lot of rain last month. No. But please flower anyway, all over me. I’ll keep my eyes open. Maybe it won’t happen all at once, the way change seems to. Now that’s something. Change blooms.
| | | | | |
Here at school, everything is the same. Standing by the wall of windows across from the science rooms, watching people fill the hall since the bell just rang, I’m safe. Math is over for one more day.
The brick school building was designed into what are called wings, and each subject has its own. One side of each wing is lined with classrooms, and the other, with windows. Science is located in C wing, down the hall from the administrative offices. Even my feet feel safe as I stand on the worn stone floor. They are warm and pleasing in my shoes. What’s wrong is this bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know what it is.
I cross the hall and glance through the tiny window of the classroom door to see what’s taking Eileen so long. People are grabbing their books and rising from the lab tables; somebody’s pushing the door open. I spot Eileen in the back. Oh, no, Parker paired her with Grant Sullivan for lab. Their Bunsen burner is still burning on the scratched gray table. Sullivan is talking to her, but her back is turned toward me, so I can only imagine the pained expression on her face. Sullivan laughs, amusing himself again, I suppose. Poor Eileen. I lea
n in, about to call out her name and save her, but I hear her laughing as she bends to pick up her books. When she straightens up, there’s something on her head. Is that a hat? Did I miss something? Connor has placed an ugly black hat on her head.
I cross the hall again. Change can bloom, but it can also wilt. What’s with the hat? Just seeing it makes me feel like something is really wrong, like, what’s Eileen trying to cover up? Maybe it’s me, unfathomably paranoid, but maybe I don’t want to make peace with Eileen at this moment after all.
We’ve been avoiding each other for days now, ever since Sagamore. I’m not blaming her, no, not completely. But put a lid on it, I think to myself, that feeling of being willing to apologize to Eileen even though the fault wasn’t mine. Just to end the stupid fight. Because where is my friend? I need her. We’ve had a million stupid fights. But I suddenly remember how nasty she was at Sagamore. Who does she think she is beneath that dumb hat? Some mysterious movie star? No, not now. I don’t want to interrupt Eileen’s performance. The bad taste in my mouth is worse. So I turn. And then I see her.
With this impossibly long hair, so long it falls past her hips. Like a black horse’s tail, it sways across her black jeans as she walks through the hall, passing me. I wonder if she sees me as she walks by. She doesn’t seem to, but she passes me so closely it’s as if she moves through me, so close I can smell the leather from her jacket. What kind of boots is she wearing that make no sound? I have no choice but to breathe her black motorcycle jacket in as she glides by, surrounded by the darkness of her clothes, this oh-so-cool and silent-footed girl, who I have never seen before.
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