The gift was two boxes of Marvel Puffs cereal.
Will looked at MayJune, his eyes suddenly shiny, and said, “Thank you! MayJune, how did you know I was two box tops away? And the postmark deadline is in just four days—September thirtieth.”
“You’re welcome, Will,” MayJune said. “Donna, do you think it’s time for Will’s birthday cake?”
A pang shot through me…that awful cake, both layers a gooey mess collapsed in their pans. Another flush rose up my neck and face. And then, as I looked at MayJune’s kind, soft face, I realized why she’d said not to worry about the cake, to let Will open his gifts first, that things would work out just fine.
I grinned. “MayJune, I’d love to, but it seems I can’t bake a cake worth eating. The one I tried to make just collapsed in on itself in a gooey mess!” I looked at Will. “Do you think, if you don’t mind sharing, we could have Marvel Puffs instead?”
“Yes!” Will whooped, jumping up from the couch. He led the charge into the kitchen. I got out eleven birthday candles, gave one to each child and two each to MayJune, Miss Bettina, and Jimmy, then quickly lit each candle. Jimmy gave me one of his candles as we started to sing “Happy Birthday,” and then Will closed his eyes and made a wish, blew out his candle first, and then ran to each person to blow out the other ten candles.
We used up both boxes of Marvel Puffs and all of the milk in the refrigerator. While we ate, Suze asked MayJune to explain her name. MayJune laughed and said her mama didn’t get around to naming her for months, and when she did, she couldn’t remember if she’d been born at the end of May or the beginning of June, so her mama named her MayJune.
That made Will whoop with delight and say that that meant she should get to celebrate her birthday for every day of May and June.
But once everyone was done eating, Will became somber again, carefully tearing off the two box tops, sternly instructing Jimmy to hold them carefully, while he ran upstairs to collect his other eight. I found an envelope and stamps. Then everyone gathered around while Will carefully wrote out a letter giving his name and address and requesting, with a little help from Jimmy, his deed to one square inch of Alaska, “in exchange for the enclosed ten box tops.” Will even included his 250-word essay about why he’d like to go to Alaska for his chance to have his photo taken with Chase Monahue, the actor who played television’s Sergeant Striker, featured on the front of Marvel Puffs boxes.
After recounting the box tops three times to be sure he really had ten, Will carefully addressed the envelope and put on four stamps—at least twice as many as he needed—and put his letter and the ten box tops inside.
Jimmy offered to drive Will—and Tony, Suze, Herman, and Harold—to the post office so they could all put Will’s envelope in the big, sturdy blue mailbox outside, where it would be in the care of the U.S. Postal Service.
The children all whooped at this prospect, as if riding two miles in Jimmy Denton’s car was a grand adventure. I looked at MayJune and Miss Bettina for guidance, and they both nodded—just slight nods that said it was up to me, but that I should approve.
And so I did.
Chapter 15
For a while, life kept feeling perfect: that night after Will’s party, as I curled up in Jimmy’s arms in his car parked at “our” spot by the Tangy River; even on Sunday, as we went to church with Grandma and Will dutifully thanked her for his socks and told her that he’d had the best birthday cake possible; and in the wee hours of Monday morning, after Daddy and Will were asleep, as I quietly worked in the basement studying Mama’s wedding dress for how I might completely remake it by homecoming.
Then came art class on Monday afternoon. Mr. Cahill paced nervously. I recognized his manic, wild-eyed manner from the moments when he got lost in his sketching.
As we settled into our seats, Mr. Cahill said, while running his hands through his already messy hair, “All right, class—who remembers Donna’s question from last week?”
My heart clenched.
His gaze alighted on me. A nervous flush crept up my face, but he pressed on. “Surely you remember. Since you asked the question?”
I shook my head as I mumbled, “No, sir.”
Then Lisa Kablinski raised her hand. “Mr. Cahill, I remember! I remember!”
She has a crush on him, I thought. She likes both of the men I like, Jimmy and…
Lisa repeated, word for word, with a mimicking lilt, “‘Why don’t we ever draw anything except spheres and cones and cubes?’” Jimmy frowned. Babs gave me a look that said, It’s OK, honey, we can beat her up in the girls’ room after class.
“That’s right, Miss Kablinski! That’s exactly right!” Mr. Cahill said, with excitement another teacher might have reserved for a student perfectly reciting a line of Shakespeare or an algebraic equation. Lisa sat up a little straighter in her chair, preening.
Mr. Cahill’s gaze slid back to me. I stared down at my desk. “I’ve been thinking about your question, Miss Lane,” he said, as if he hadn’t been able to shake the question free from his mind, like I wished I could shake away my betraying, awful thought about Mr. Cahill and Jimmy and liking them in the same way.
“And the answer to that very insightful question of Miss Lane’s, about why I haven’t had you draw anything except basic shapes, is…” He paused, then rushed on, “The answer is that I’ve been lazy and assumed that no one here really cares about art or can understand it.”
I looked up at him, startled. The class went completely quiet—no giggles or restless movements. But Mr. Cahill grinned, seemingly oblivious to the hurt silence, and said, “So now we must start over! We must discuss the question: What is art?”
Silence.
“Fine. No volunteers?” He gazed around the room, pausing for a second at Jimmy. Not Jimmy.
“Mr. Coleman, what is art?”
“Uh…it’s a picture of something.” For just a second I felt a little pity for Hank as red splotches mottled his cheeks.
“For example?”
“Uh…uh…maybe of a…dog?”
A few kids tittered with quiet laughter. Hank stared down at his desktop.
Mr. Cahill said, “OK, a picture of a dog. But the class laughed.” He pointed at Babs. “You. You laughed. Why? Do you think a picture of a dog can’t be art?”
“I guess it can be,” Babs said, hedging her bet. “If it’s a good picture of a dog.”
Next Mr. Cahill focused on Cedric Knowles, who was known for being painfully shy and not very bright. I felt a pang of sympathy for Cedric as Mr. Cahill put his hands on his desk and leaned toward him. Cedric squirmed nervously.
“What makes a picture of a dog good?” Mr. Cahill asked.
“I—I dunno. I guess if it looks…just like a dog. Not like a stick figure dog, or something.”
More chuckles.
Mr. Cahill stood up. “Cedric here makes an interesting argument.” Cedric looked shocked—and pleased. “He’s saying that a good picture of a dog—a picture that can be defined as art—has to look like a dog.”
Babs raised her hand slowly. Mr. Cahill nodded at her.
“So, if the picture of a dog has to look just like a dog to be art, why not take a photograph? Why would someone have to draw or paint a dog, then?”
Mr. Cahill beamed, as if Babs had just asked the most brilliant question possible.
“Yeah, like Ansel Adams,” Hank said.
“What about Ansel Adams?” Mr. Cahill said, ignoring the class’s surprise at Hank’s unexpected contribution.
Hank shrugged. “My grandma has a book with his photos in it.”
“And when you look at them, how do those photos make you feel?”
For a second, Hank looked thoughtful, but then broke into his usual jerk grin. “Like I’d rather look at the photos than at the doilies on Grandma’s tables.”
Mr. Cahill walked to Hank’s desk. “Dig a little deeper, Hank. How do Mr. Adams’s photos of the West make you feel?”
Mr. Cahill�
�s voice dropped to a near-whisper at the end of the question. The class was silent as Hank stared defiantly at Mr. Cahill. “Like I wanna get out of this place,” he said. “See something more than the smokestacks of Groverton sometime in my life.”
We all knew what he meant—well, all of us except Jimmy, who had gone pale at the implied criticism of the business his father ran, a business that supported most everyone in town in some way. But Hank was saying something that all of us had felt at one time or another.
“Ah,” Mr. Cahill said, walking to the front of the classroom. “So a photo or painting or sculpture has to make you feel something for it to be art. Touch you, move you, in some way.”
Cedric raised his hand and Mr. Cahill nodded at him. “So if that’s true,” said Cedric, “then is it art if the picture of the dog ain’t anything like a dog, but moves you in some way?”
I thought of Trusty, Will’s Trusty at Stedman’s Scrapyard. Would a painting or photo of poor Trusty be art? It wouldn’t be art that most people would want to see.
“Why are you asking me?” Mr. Cahill was saying to Cedric.
“’Cause you’re the art teacher!”
This time, Mr. Cahill chuckled. “I may be the art teacher, but that doesn’t mean you don’t know something about art. It’s in you.” He tapped Cedric’s shoulder. “Art is in you.” Then he tapped Lisa’s shoulder. “And you.” He did the same to Babs and Hank and several other students.
He looked at me, and for a second I thought he was going to come tap my shoulder and say, “And you” to me, too, like a pastor or priest giving a blessing. But then he stopped.
“Your art can touch someone else, if it comes from you, from your heart. Art starts with emotion! So today, forget cones and spheres and cubes. We’re going to draw emotion! Get out your sketchbooks. Draw what you’re feeling right now, or the emotion you feel most of the time, or the emotions that you don’t want anyone to know, and put it in a picture. It doesn’t have to look exactly like something. It can be scribbles—just show some emotion!”
The class stared at him. He stared back, for just a second. Then he said, “Oh, for pity’s sake, it can even be a sphere—a happy sphere or an angry sphere—as long as it has some emotion in it. Just get started!”
And with that, he turned, went to the chalkboard, and started sketching, his lines quickly turning into a bowl filled with fruit. Persimmons….
I got out my sketchbook, opened to an empty page, and stared at its suffocating blankness.
I thought, Life is perfect. I’ve been telling myself that ever since Jimmy walked into my grandma’s diner and took me out. So I should draw “happy.” But how do you draw happy? Sunshine and butterflies?
I put my pencil to the paper, let my mind go a little blank, just like I did when I sketched clothing ideas, let my hand start moving, expecting happy to show up, somehow, on my page.
But my lines came out as thick, dark, angry slashes, forming the outline of a dog.
I didn’t really see this, though, until Mr. Cahill was right by my desk, bending over my work, too close, too close. I could smell his scent, a mix of coffee and cigarettes and menthol aftershave, and feel his breath on my cheek, and hear him saying in a low murmur, “Donna, now you need to tap into wherever this anger is coming from and work with that.”
In the next second, he was gone, at another student’s desk. I looked after him, wanting to catch his eye, but instead, my eyes connected with Hank Coleman’s. A mean, taut smile curved his lips.
“Donna Lane?”
It was Principal Stodgill saying my name, and the look on his face said trouble.
Will.
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Will. Somehow, I knew something was wrong with Will.
In the hallway, Principal Stodgill gave me the pitying look I’d grown to resent and tolerate from Groverton adults, the only kind of look I’d gotten until I started dating Jimmy. And there it was again, as he said, “I just got a call from the nurse at Groverton Elementary. It seems your brother is very ill. We called Groverton Ace but your father isn’t at work today, and there is no answer at your house….”
I ran past Principal Stodgill, down the hall toward the high school’s front doors. I didn’t wait to hear the rest. I just wanted to get to Will.
“Flu!” Dr. Emory proclaimed Will’s diagnosis with a triumphant tone and wide grin, like he had just made a major discovery.
I looked at Will, shivering under the thin blanket over his lap, his bare shoulders hunched like he wanted to curl up into a ball, bounce out the doctor’s office door, and roll home. “You don’t think it’s…It’s not…”
Dr. Emory gave me a patient, patronizing smile. “It’s not polio,” he said. “Will doesn’t have neck stiffness or arm and leg pain.”
Will gave me a See? Told you so! look.
I wanted to say, But flu comes with fever, which Will doesn’t have. I wanted to say, Flu doesn’t make eleven-year-old boys pass out in the middle of a geography lesson, especially when that’s their only favorite subject.
Tears filled my eyes. I’d been so swept up with Jimmy…with my perfect life…I’d stopped looking around at my real life. If I had, maybe Will would have mentioned to me—as he’d just told Dr. Emory—that he’d been throwing up, off and on, for the past several weeks.
The throwing-up confession was what made Dr. Emory proclaim, “Flu!” Who has flu for weeks? Without fever or chills?
“Just make sure Will gets plenty of rest and fluids. He’ll be fine,” Dr. Emory said. “Will, go ahead and get dressed. Donna, let’s give Will some privacy.”
I followed Dr. Emory out into the hallway, thinking about how the elementary school nurse had told me that he’d thrown up twice at school in the past week, that he’d seemed lethargic lately. None of this made sense to me. He’d seemed fine during his birthday party, just two days before. I hadn’t seen any signs of illness…except that morning, the first Friday of the school year, when I’d made those small choices that, even in that moment in Dr. Emory’s office, I still didn’t fully understand as life changing: skipping school with Babs and thus meeting Jimmy; taking a secret modeling job with Mr. Cahill…
Suddenly I realized that while I’d been in my dreamy relationship with Jimmy, and visualizing big life plans because of Mr. Cahill’s encouragement, Will had been keeping his own secret: how poorly he felt.
In the hallway, Dr. Emory stopped and looked at me with a concerned frown. “Donna, as you were able to put together in the exam room,” he said, “Will’s condition probably isn’t flu. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Will, because I know you are trying your best, but I am concerned about not just Will, but you, too. How well your, ah, basic health needs are being met. If you have enough to eat, nutritious enough food—”
“What? No—we’re fine; we’re doing just fine—” The color drained from my face as I realized that what Dr. Emory was trying to say, in his roundabout way, was that Will was sick because of neglect. “I—I make sure Will is taken care of! He eats breakfast every morning, and I pack a healthy lunch and make sure there’s dinner every night. Well, I’ve probably let him eat too many Marvel Puffs the past few months. I—I should have convinced him that tossing the cereal and sending in the box tops was a better idea.” Dr. Emory looked genuinely confused, but I went on. “Maybe now that he’s sent in his box tops, he won’t be ill. I’ll never let him have Marvel Puffs again, and—”
Dr. Emory put his hand on my shoulder in his fatherly fashion and I fought the urge to shrug him off. “It’s a big responsibility,” he said, “watching out for your little brother while trying to grow up at the same time.”
I arched my shoulders back, making his hand fall away from me, and said, “We’re doing just fine. I make sure he gets his homework done and I’m signing him up for Little League baseball this coming spring, and—” Tears started forming again, choking my voice, and I stopped talking, because I hated that. I hated showing any kind
of weakness.
“I know you’re trying to do all of that,” Dr. Emory said, emphasizing the word trying, “but as I said, that takes a lot of work, especially with your high school responsibilities and your, ah, normal teenage interests.” He glanced toward the door to the waiting room.
I knew what that glance was saying. Jimmy had grabbed my books and sketchbook and followed me over to Groverton Elementary. He had insisted on driving Will and me to see Dr. Emory, and he’d insisted he’d wait for us.
“Have you thought about having your grandmother come stay with you and your dad and Will? I know she’d be glad to.” Dr. Emory gave me a kindly smile, as if he could just imagine Grandma puttering about in the kitchen in a floral print apron dusted with flour, as she whipped up cakes and treats and casseroles that would ensure our wholesome well-being. This wasn’t the first time Dr. Emory had made such a suggestion, and he wasn’t the only Groverton adult who had done so. Grandma, I knew, had told anyone who would listen, “I tell Porter all the time that I’d be more than glad to give up my house, or have them come live with me, to help him take care of Donna and Will.”
“We are doing fine,” I said, my face going to stone, my tears to gritty salt. “Daddy is just busy, working extra shifts at Groverton Ace. He’s joined Alcoholics Anonymous.”
Dr. Emory looked stunned that I’d know about such a thing, what’s more share it with him.
The door creaked open and Will came out of the examination room. From the look on his face, I knew he’d been dressed for a while, listening to my conversation with Dr. Emory. The little stinker. But his eyes looked so dark, almost bruised, and I couldn’t stay mad at him.
“Come along, Will,” I said, in my most crisp, motherly voice. I thought the mothers of Suze and Tony and Harold and Herman would be impressed.
In the next second, though, I thought that MayJune and Miss Bettina wouldn’t be. They’d just cluck and shake their heads sadly: Donna, Donna, remember to be kind….
So I put my arm gently around Will and said, “Come on, kiddo. I’ll make your favorite flavor of Jell-O, OK?”
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