So then, after he glanced over all the messages again, he looked up and said “Thanks” in this quiet, kind of uncomfortable way. I felt really bad for him, and yet in a way I liked watching him standing there looking like a cocker spaniel puppy. I really had missed having him in our class, and I wished I could make him feel better. I was glad he was back.
In the afternoon during gym Katy got called out of class and sent down to Dr. Pinsher’s office. Dr. Pinsher is the school psychologist and is nice and all, but people only get sent there when something really bad or weird has happened in their life. You go into her quiet little office with all the mental health books—I’ve only been in there once to deliver a message from my teacher—and she makes you talk about what’s going on and how you feel about it and stuff. I heard all about it from other kids.
We were out in the schoolyard on account of it being such a great sunny day and were doing what’s called free play. That means you do whatever you want as long as it involves moving around and getting all sweaty. Katy and I had been tossing a basketball back and forth, pretending to be Aunt Mimi and Johnny on vacation in the Bahamas, and now that she was gone I was just bouncing the ball, trying to look really active. Bouncing the ball made me think of that game we used to play: “A, my name is Anna. My husband’s name is Al. We come from Alabama and”—well, you know the rest.
All of a sudden this voice called out, “Hey, Anna. Pass me the ball.” I looked up and Michael was right there. For a second all I could think was: Wow, his dad is dead. How can he stand knowing that? How can he not cry and cry all day long, which I’m sure is what I’d do if my dad was dead? He said again, “Pass the ball,” and he was smiling, so I bounced it over to him and he bopped it up and down a few times, fast, like boys do.
“So, how’ve things been?” he asked when he took a break from bouncing.
“Okay, I guess. I mean, you didn’t miss anything.” I wanted to say “I missed you,” but I’m way too shy for that. Plus, that was what I wrote in my message on the card, so maybe he already knew.
“Where’s Katy?” he asked. “You guys are usually together.”
“She got sent to Dr. Pinsher’s for something.”
“Yeah. I’ve been there. Everybody wants to make sure I’m okay and stuff.”
“Are you?” I asked. Then, really quickly, because I hadn’t meant to say that, I added, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to answer that.”
“I wish everybody would stop acting weird around me and go back to being normal.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“And I wish everyone would stop saying ‘I’m sorry.’ I must hear that, like, a hundred times a day.”
“I’m—” If you can believe it, I almost said “I’m sorry” again. “How was New Jersey?” I asked instead.
“It was all right. I like my cousins, and they go to this cool school with a big campus with trees and stuff. It’s way different from here, and you take a school bus for about a half hour to get there. It looks like a school you’d see on TV.”
“Sounds nice.”
“I told you about it in the letter.”
“What letter?”
“Oh yeah. I never mailed it.” He smiled a little guiltily. “Don’t ask me why. I just didn’t.” He shrugged, then said, “Anyway, my mom’s still deciding if we ought to move there.”
“For good, you mean?”
“Yeah. She says New York is going to be too expensive by ourselves. And in New Jersey my sisters can all go to public high school because the schools there are so nice. Plus my mom likes being near her brother and stuff.”
“Wow,” I said. “So you don’t really know where you’re going to live.”
Michael shook his head. “But I’ll be here till graduation no matter what.”
“And you get to go to Kendra’s big crepe party,” I said, trying to be funny.
“Yeah. Like, wow. Crepes are just pancakes, aren’t they?”
“Not just pancakes. French pancakes,” I told him, and he laughed a little.
“Are you going to be there?”
“Yeah. I love pancakes.”
“Good,” he said. “So I’ll see you there.” He bounced the ball back to me. I wasn’t expecting it and I also wasn’t expecting him to say “I’ll see you there” or to tell me about writing a letter to me from New Jersey, even though he never mailed it. So I missed the ball and it went rolling away and banged into the schoolyard fence. And then he just walked away and went back to playing something stupid with the other boys in our class. It was weird. Boy, it was weird. I couldn’t wait to tell Katy.
Chapter Seven
I didn’t get a chance to ask Katy what had gone on in Dr. Pinsher’s office because by the time she got out, we were in science class studying photosynthesis again. It looked like she’d been crying. But of course, everybody who comes out of Dr. Pinsher’s office looks like they’ve been crying. It’s like Dr. Pinsher wants you to cry. Her whole office is filled with Kleenex boxes. I noticed that the day I brought the note to her.
Anyway, as soon as school ended and I got Katy alone, I asked her what was going on.
She was really quiet when she spoke. I could hardly hear her, with buses and cars driving by on Broadway. “She asked me if I understood how it was with Sam. His ‘condition.’ She called it his ‘condition.’ ”
“Of course you do. You’ve been living with him your entire life!”
“That’s what I told her. But then she asked if I understood how ‘grave’ it was and how Sam would never get any better. If I realized that he was severely retarded and would be growing into a big, grown-up retard that was still in diapers that my mom couldn’t handle.”
“She didn’t call him a retard!”
“But that’s what she meant. Believe me. Then she said that after last night—with my mom getting stitches and Sam breaking his wrist—we had to think of putting Sam in some kind of place. Like some kind of institution where other mental people live.”
Katy swallowed so hard I could see a lump bulge in her throat. “It would be for the good of everyone, Dr. Pinsher said. Because Sam’s ‘condition’ is ‘taking a toll’ on all of us and it’s getting worse and actually turning dangerous, and Bug Eye and me and my mom can’t go on the way we’ve been.”
“Is that true?” I asked. I didn’t really know what to think. I mean, I know it’s awful when Sam is wild or doing certain disgusting things, but he can also be really sweet. Sometimes he’ll cuddle up on the sofa with his teddy bear and he’ll look just like a baby—a huge, hairy baby, but sweet all the same.
“Well, last night was bad. And sometimes he gets a little wild. But nothing like that ever happened before. It was just, you know, an accident.”
“What does your mom say?” I asked her next.
“That’s the weirdest part. My mom never told me anything. The first I heard about the idea was from Dr. Pinsher. Why didn’t my mom just talk to me?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. But what I guessed was that Mrs. Paoli didn’t know how to explain it to her, so she got Dr. Pinsher to do it instead. Not that it mattered all that much; it was awful no matter who told who.
“Bloody hell,” Katy said, suddenly in her Johnny voice. “I’m not letting them send me nephew off. He doesn’t belong in no boarding school.” I looked straight ahead down Eightieth Street to the border of trees in Riverside Park. Some of the trees had pink flowers all over them, and they looked so bright on the green of the other trees and grass. I don’t know why, but the petals and trees looking so pretty the way they did made everything seem even sadder.
“I can take care of ’im,” Johnny said. “I’ll spend more time at home.”
“Your dad’d be proud of you, lad,” I said. And while I was saying that about Johnny’s dead dad, I was suddenly thinking of Michael’s dad, and for the first time ever, playing felt sort of weird. I mean, sad things that we used to pretend were happening had started to happen in our actual life
, and it gave me a scary feeling, like a big hole was opening underneath us and Katy and I—and Bug Eye and Sam and Michael and maybe even everyone—were falling into it.
That night was the first time Katy’s mom agreed to come in for a drink. She looked even worse than usual; the huge pink bandage above her eye stretched across her whole forehead. She and my parents went into the living room and stayed there for a long time. Katy and I didn’t even try to eavesdrop on them.
“I know what they’re saying,” Katy said. I figured I knew what Katy’s mom was probably saying, but I wasn’t so sure about what my parents were saying. I got this awful thought about my brother. Like, what if Tom got into some terrible accident or something and got brain-damaged and turned into a person like Sam who was sweet sometimes but also wild and out of control? What if he knocked my mom down and she had to get stitches, and he broke his own wrist doing it? And what if he was never going to get better? Would my parents keep him at home with us? Or would they think it was “taking a toll” on me and put him away in some mental institution, like Katy’s mom wanted to do with Sam?
I really wondered about this. It was different with my parents, of course, because there are two of them, and maybe with two people, especially if one’s a dad, it would be easier to keep a brain-damaged kid at home. It was awful to think about something like that. Long after Katy and her mom had left, I lay there in bed, clutching my old stuffed elephant, wondering what my parents would do. And not just about Tom. What if something that terrible happened to me?
Chapter Eight
The night after Mrs. Paoli had a glass of wine with my parents, I was reading in bed and my mom came into my room to talk. You can always tell when parents have something serious to say. They sort of move differently—slower, more carefully, like they’re walking on tiptoe.
My mom sat on the edge of my bed. That’s another sure sign it’s serious.
“So,” she said, “how is everything at school? I hear that Michael Trefaro’s back.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Michael she wanted to talk about, even though she likes him a lot and thinks it’s a big tragedy that he lost his dad.
“Sweetie,” she said, the most major sign that something bad was coming, “do you know about Katy’s brother? Do you know, I mean, that he hurt their mom the other night?”
“Yes,” I said, “though I’m sure he didn’t mean to. Sometimes he can’t help himself. He gets out of control and—”
“Of course he didn’t mean to. Sam is very ill.”
“Everybody knows that, Mom.”
“Anna, what’s wrong with Sam won’t get any better. In fact, it may get worse. That’s because his body will keep growing while his brain will remain the same. He’ll grow into a man, but his brain will stay a baby’s brain. Already his mother has to shave his face.” That was weird to think of. I pictured Sam with a long black beard, curled up in bed with his teddy bear.
“Darla—Katy’s mom—has had to make a very hard decision. To put Sam in a hospital.”
“She’s doing it, then?”
“She has to. It’s dangerous to keep him home.”
“But nothing ever happened before.”
“Maybe not,” my mother said. “But the doctors at the hospital said it probably will again. What would happen if he really hurt his mother? I mean seriously injured her. Who would take care of Katy and Gem?” Gem? Who on earth was Gem? Then I remembered: Bug Eye. Bug Eye had a real name, and of all things, it was Gem. Like a diamond or a ruby or something.
“Katy doesn’t want her to. Katy wants to keep him home, and it isn’t right that Mrs. Paoli didn’t even talk to her about it. Her mom is mean.”
“Anna, sweetie, don’t you see? Katy is why she’s doing it. For Katy and Gem, not for herself. She’s terrified that one day Sam will hurt the girls.”
“Katy says he won’t.”
“Her mother can’t take a chance like that. How would you feel,” my mom went on, “if Katy was badly hurt by Sam?” I didn’t think she really expected an answer to that, so I didn’t say anything. I’d feel bad, I knew. It had been hard enough seeing her that morning with her hair all a wreck and her face not washed.
“But it isn’t fair. It’s not Sam’s fault!” I felt myself almost starting to cry. It made me think of a girl at school whose parents made her get rid of her dog because it had bitten her little brother, who was poking it with a stick. And the dog was old and had been a good dog for twelve whole years.
“It’s true,” said my mom, “it isn’t fair. A lot of things in life aren’t fair. Just look at the television news. You see children starving or living with war. The children didn’t cause the war, and yet they have to live with it. Or look around our neighborhood; you see people in wheelchairs, people who are blind or deaf. These are just terrible facts of life.”
“But why do they have to happen?”
“I wish I knew the answer to that. Maybe it’s God’s way of making others more like Himself—more compassionate and aware and more creative about finding ways to help the ones who are suffering.”
She paused for a moment, then looked at me in a serious way. “Here’s where you can play a part.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean here’s your chance to really stand with Katy and show what kind of friend you are. One good thing that happens when terrible tragedies occur is that people realize how lucky they are to have good friends.” She sounded so grim and serious, it was making me sort of scared. I really didn’t know what else I could do to show Katy I was her friend. We had the kind of friendship where we didn’t have to say a whole lot of stuff about loving each other. We both just understood that we did.
“Katy needs you, Anna. It’s going to be hard for her. She’ll need you when she’s ready—to listen and just be there. To let her vent and show her sadness any way she needs to.” She looked into my eyes and held them. “Do you think you can do that?”
“Yeah. I guess.” I said the words, but I wasn’t really sure. I mean about what she meant.
The next time my mom spoke, she had switched to her cheerful, optimistic voice. “It’s the best decision for everyone. It’s been hard, you know, for Katy and Gem. Their mom feels bad that she hasn’t had time to give them much attention. Katy’s strong—thanks in part to having a best friend like you—but Gem’s been having problems.” She probably had no friends, I thought, on account of her being so weird and mean. But I didn’t mention that to my mom.
“Plus it’s not like they’ll never see Sam again. They can visit him whenever they want. And people with special training will be there to take care of him—twenty-four hours, night and day.”
“So when are they going to take him away?”
“Oh, Anna. No one’s going to take him away. They’ll take him to the hospital just as if they’re going to the doctor—”
“And then they’ll just leave him, the way they left Laura’s dog!”
“What?”
“Never mind. It just seems so mean to bring him there and let him think that everything is normal, when the truth of it is he’s never coming home again!”
It was awful then what happened. My mom’s eyes started to fill with tears. I hate when she cries, and I wished I hadn’t said what I had. I mean, there she was, trying her best to comfort me, and I ended up making her sad. She blinked a few times to make the tears go back where they came from. Then she dropped her hand onto my leg and started to stroke my knee.
She said in a really quiet voice, “Katy’s lucky to have a sensitive friend like you.” I shrugged. Right then I didn’t think Katy was very lucky about anything. My mom went on stroking my knee for a while. Then, after what seemed like a pretty long time, she said, “Are we on for Friday afternoon? Dress shopping, Katy and you? We’ll go out to dinner afterward. Anywhere you want.”
“Okay,” I said, but my voice was flat. To tell you the truth, it didn’t excite me all that much. I was too sad and sc
ared for everybody. I mean for all of us.
Chapter Nine
On Friday afternoon my mom came breezing into the schoolyard to pick us up. I know it will sound like I’m saying this just because she’s my mom, but she looked good. Compared, that is, to the other moms in their jeans and sweatshirts and running pants. She was wearing a navy blue pantsuit and swinging a big black pocketbook, and her blond hair was catching the sun and floating a little in the breeze as she swung over to us and sang out, “Let’s shop till we drop!” I was hoping Kendra saw her and heard her say that. And I hoped Michael saw her too and knew what a cool, pretty mom I had.
The first store we hit was Macy’s on Thirty-fourth Street. That’s the world’s biggest department store, and it was loaded with dresses, let me tell you. Katy and I were secretly playing. I was Aunt Mimi taking Clarissa to shop for her high school prom dress. My mom didn’t have a clue, because we said the same stuff we would have said if we were ourselves looking at dresses, such as “Hey, this one’s nice” or “Wow, talk about ugly!” She thought we were using English accents just to goof around and make the other shoppers think we were visiting from London. She even started to talk in an English accent too.
“Here’s a charming frock,” she said, holding up a dress that looked like it belonged to Little Bo Peep. We knew she was kidding about the dress. But there were a lot of nice dresses there too. I almost bought one that was white with tiny pink flowers all over it, but they didn’t have it in my size. Katy liked one too, but then she looked at the price tag and suddenly didn’t seem to want it anymore. After that she started looking at the price tag before she even looked at the dress.
Suddenly my mom said, “This place is overwhelming. Let’s zip across the street to Daffy’s and see if they have anything. We can always come back here later.”
The Goodbye Time Page 3