She’d laughed when she told me that story, great belly laughs like the ones her father let out when he watched Roadrunner cartoons on Saturday mornings. “Cartoons,” my mother had said with a sniff once when I mentioned it. “A bunch of foolish noise. Do you suppose he knows how to read? Myrna seems well enough educated—literate, anyhow. How can she stand being married to that man? Can’t she get him to take showers?”
If Myrna nagged Tom about bathing, I’d never heard it. Instead she joked cheerfully about his dirty fingernails and wiped up the stains he left on whatever he touched. “It’s good you’re not a criminal,” she’d told him once when I was eating dinner there, “because you’d never get away with anything. You leave fingerprints the way a skunk leaves stink, Tom.”
However messy Myrna’s husband may have been, her office was pristine, white and soothing. The scent of honeysuckle, wafting in through an open window, mixed pleasantly with the faint smells of bandaids and antiseptic. Myrna gave me some Tylenol and a hot water bottle and let me lie down on a padded examining table. “You coming over for dinner tonight?” she asked as she covered me with a blanket. I liked being covered, even though it was such a warm day. “I know you girls have a math test tomorrow, so I figured you’d be over to study.”
“Okay,” I said. Studying with Jane was a good excuse not to eat at home, and one I used as often as possible. We’d lived next door to each other for years, and I’d never had the courage to talk to her much because she had so many other friends. But this year we were in the same English class, and for our first creative writing assignment Jane had written a poem about trying to wash her dog Snarky with tomato juice after he’d rolled in a dead skunk. I’d thought it was really funny, and one day after class I’d told her so.
She’d wrinkled her nose. “Your mom didn’t think so. She gave me a C! Said smelly animals weren’t the right things to write poetry about, and anyway I’d messed up the rhymes someplace. Huh! I worked really hard on those rhymes.”
“I know,” I said, feeling miserable. Nobody was ever going to like me, the way my mother acted. “I’ll bet she told you so in iambic pentameter, too, so you’d feel worse about it. You should hear her at home. She thinks nobody’s written good poetry since Tennyson died.”
Jane laughed. “Well, she could talk all she wanted in iam—whatever you said, and I’d never know it. Who’s Tennyson?”
“Some old poet,” I said, feeling more miserable. Now she’d think I was showing off. “He lived in England a long time ago and wrote a bunch of poems about King Arthur and people who died. My mother thinks he’s God. She doesn’t like my poetry, either.”
“Really?” Jane said. She sounded surprised. “She didn’t like that one about the Munsters dressing up as the Brady Bunch for Halloween?”
“She thought it was silly.”
“Who are you supposed to write like? A ninety-five-year-old nun?”
“I’m supposed to write like Tennyson. He never would have written a poem about the Munsters, even if they’d had TV back then.”
“He sounds boring,” said Jane. “I’ll bet he didn’t write about smelly dogs, either. Do you want to come to our house for dinner?”
I’d eaten with the Hallorans that night, and since then I’d gone to their house at least twice a week. I was always surprised at how warmly they welcomed me. Didn’t they know my mother hated them? When Jane gave me the Sierra Club calendar for Christmas, because she knew how much I liked the lake outside town, I was almost too embarrassed to thank her. I hadn’t bought her anything.
“Wait,” I said, “I’ll bring you something,” and I ran home and got a bunch of my old Nancy Drew books, the ones I had two of because Aunt Diane had sent me some for my birthday once. Ever since then, Jane had been talking about how we’d have to have an adventure and solve a mystery. But lately she’d started spending more time with other kids, especially boys, and I was afraid she thought I was boring. What would she have said if she’d known I’d seen a ghost?
But I hadn’t really seen a ghost, had I? Ghosts didn’t exist. Then again, you weren’t supposed to bleed until you got your period, either, and that was happening. So maybe Ginny was a real ghost, and I was having an adventure instead of going crazy. But how could I tell?
“We’re having apple pie for dessert tonight,” Myrna Halloran said, snapping me back into the world of hot water bottles and math tests. “And I’ve got some vanilla ice cream.”
“Great,” I said. “That will be nice.”
“Do your parents mind that you eat at our house so often?”
I tensed, even lying there with the hot water bottle which was supposed to relax me. What was she really asking? Did she actually want to know what my parents thought, or was she dropping a hint that it was high time I asked Jane to have dinner at our house? Nearly everybody thought I was a snob because my father was a hot-shot doctor and my mother used fancy words; did the Hallorans think so too?
I wanted to have Jane over for dinner, but I couldn’t. It was bad enough that I ate at the Hallorans’ so often. Jane, if neater than her father, still stood for everything that was unacceptable about her parents. If Jane came over and my father wasn’t at home, Mom would talk about poetry in a way calculated to make Jane feel stupid.
And if he was home it would be even worse, because Jane was prettier than I was. She had thick red hair and long legs, and even though she was skinny she already had bigger breasts than I did. I’d seen him watching her through the window once, and he’d smiled and said, “Your little friend’s going to be a heartbreaker in a few years. Why don’t you ever bring her over, Emma?”
I didn’t bring her over because she was my friend, and I couldn’t let her get stared at like that. And even if he didn’t stare at her, I couldn’t let her see him staring at me, much less let her hear the conversations they had about me: the famous doctor discussing surgical procedures for obesity, making amiable jokes about wiring my mouth shut or stapling my stomach, Mom taking my part and chiding him, only to turn around and tell me how I might look a little like lovely Jane Burden, William Morris’ wife, if only I’d slim down. “Ginny was light as a bird,” she’d say, and heap my plate with food.
“Emma?” said Myrna Halloran. “Are you all right?”
No. I’m not all right. “Yeah,” I said. “Just cramps.”
“Breathe,” Myrna said, frowning. “Breathe into the pain, hon. Your breathing’s shallow, and that’s not helping.”
She coached me on breathing for a few minutes, the way I’d heard women got coached when they had babies. “Better?” Myrna said, and I nodded, amazed. I’d always thought women breathed like that to remind themselves that there were scarier things than having kids. I hadn’t believed that there were ways to breathe that made things hurt less, instead of more.
“If it’s really bad your dad can prescribe something for you. It may get easier once your body’s used to what’s going on.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. When Myrna’s frown deepened, I realized that I should have kept my mouth shut.
“No? Why not, hon?”
I swallowed. “Don’t know. Just don’t think so.”
She was watching me very carefully now, too carefully, as carefully as he ever did over dinner. “Emma, you don’t look too good. You didn’t look good when you came in here. What happened?”
“Huh? Nothing. I got my period, is all.”
“You’ve got a bruise coming out,” Myrna said matter-of-factly. “On your arm. How’d you get that?”
Blood and bruises. He hadn’t been elegant at all, had he? I moved my arm under the blanket, trying to make it look casual, and said, “I don’t know. Something in gym, I guess. Maybe I got hit by a softball.”
“Softball was last week,” Myrna said gently. “You’ve been doing calisthenics since Monday, and it’s a new bruise.”
“Look,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “I probably just walked into furniture or something. I don�
�t remember.” I shivered then, realizing that I sounded like Ginny. “It doesn’t matter. It’s only a bruise.”
“All right,” Myrna said, but she didn’t sound as if she believed me, and I hated lying to someone I liked. “Do you feel well enough to stay in school today? You can go home if you want to.”
“No.” He probably wouldn’t be home anytime during the day, but you could never tell. “I don’t want to go home, I can’t miss the review sessions for that math test tomorrow.”
“All right, Emma. But come back if you change your mind. Do you think you’ll still be at our house for dinner tonight?”
“Yes,” I said. I’d suddenly realized how I could offer Jane an adventure and find out whether Ginny had been real, all at the same time.
The rest of the day passed in a blur. At one point I saw Myrna talking to my mother in the hall, and my stomach clenched; but when I stopped by Mom’s classroom after lunch she gave me one of her sweet public smiles, a little more guarded than usual, and said only, “Myrna Halloran told me you got cramps after all. Are you all right now?”
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m going to Jane’s house after school so we can study for the math test.”
The smile vanished at once. “Emma, how in heaven’s name can you study anything there? The place is always full of screaming children, and they must keep the television on twenty-four hours a day. Soap operas and game shows, stupid celebrities chattering trifles: just what you need to prepare for an exam.”
The Hallorans’ TV alternated between sports and PBS, and the loudest person in the house was Tom, but there was no point in saying so. Mom must have had cramps herself, because she’d never been this bitchy about the Hallorans where someone from the outside world might hear her. They were much more popular at school than she was.
She tugged at a stray wisp of hair, and for a moment she looked so much like Ginny that it gave me goosebumps. “I don’t see why you won’t let your father help you with homework. Your grades would probably be better.”
I’d made honor roll four marking periods in a row. No sense saying that, either; Mom would just remind me that it hadn’t been high honor roll. “When, Mom? He’s always at the hospital.” Except at dawn. “Jane’s good at math.”
“Well, bring her over to our house where it’s quiet, then. Do you really have to go over there all the time?”
This time I will be bringing her over, I thought, but you’re so deaf you’ll never know about it. “I already told her mother I’d be eating with them,” I said. “I might as well go straight there.”
She turned her head away from me, and I saw her throat quivering. “Pizza,” she said. “Pizza and potato chips. That’s what they live on, isn’t it? On that diet you’ll get as big as their house.”
“Oh, come on, Mom. Give them a break. They grow their own salad, you know. I can’t eat your flowers, can I?”
“If the state of my rose bushes is any indication, their dogs are doing vile things to the lettuce. I wouldn’t eat their salad.”
“They haven’t asked you to,” I said, and watched her face turn white. I was really asking for it: she might say I couldn’t go there at all. I swallowed and said, “Mom, they wash everything before they eat it. Mrs. Halloran’s a nurse; she’s not going to give her kids the plague. She cares about nutrition as much as you do, really she does. Don’t worry.”
“I won’t,” she said coldly, and went back to grading vocabulary quizzes.
As I’d expected, I didn’t have much trouble convincing Jane to go to the lake instead of home. “It’s too nice a day to stay inside,” I told her. “We can study after dinner.”
“Sure,” she said. “You’re the one who’s always so hyped on studying. We can go to the beach and get some sun—”
“Not the beach,” I said. “Another place.”
“Huh? Where?”
“A place I know,” I said. “Where we can talk without anybody hearing us. I have to tell you a secret. It’s about an adventure.”
Jane shook her head. “You’re talking like a book.”
My eyes stung. “Aw. Come on, Jane. I thought you liked adventures.”
“Well, sure, if it’s fun. Will it be fun?”
“Sure,” I said.
“This had better be good, Emma.”
“It will. I promise.”
So I took her to my favorite spot at the lake. A mile north of town, and accessible only by dirt roads, the lake was the only place where I was always happy. I loved it even in the summer, when everybody went swimming. I hated wearing a bathing suit, because it showed too much of my body, but once I was in the water people couldn’t see me. I was safe in the water; I could stay there for hours.
Sometimes I thought I should have been born as a whale or a walrus, some big animal that was graceful underwater, even though it had a lot of fat. It was good to be fat in the water. Fat helped you float, and it kept you warm. “You have your very own wetsuit,” my father had told me when he was teaching me to swim. He’d smiled when he said it, and he’d even complimented me on my endurance. I knew he wanted me to swim a lot so I’d lose weight, but I liked the compliment anyway. Today I clung to that memory, because so many others were spoiled.
It wasn’t warm enough to go in the water yet, even if I did have my own wetsuit, but that meant I could wear jeans and a sweatshirt and not have to worry about anybody seeing too much of me. And the lake was beautiful: silver water surrounded by tall green trees. You saw deer come out of the woods to drink sometimes, when there weren’t too many people around, and there were always birds and frogs and waterbugs. Schools of minnows swam in the shallows, casting intricate shadows on the bottom; the water reflected shifting patterns of leaves and clouds. There was always something to watch.
Jane usually went to the eastern beach, where the other kids hung out and blasted their radios, but today I took her to a small abandoned dock on the western shore, where you could almost forget that anybody else was around. I spent hours there, safe in the knowledge that no one could find me. I’d never told anyone about the dock before.
“Aren’t you hot in that shirt?” she said as we walked there. We were both sweating. “I should think you’d at least roll up the sleeves.”
“I’m okay.” Jane’s skimpy shorts and tank top embarrassed me; I was uncomfortable even looking at her. “I don’t want to get bug bites.”
“So use bug spray. Shoot, Emma. You wear too much clothing. Me, I’d be dying in all that stuff. Where is this place?”
“We’re almost there,” I said. I hoped she’d like it.
She didn’t. “This is your secret place?” she said when we got there. “This old dock? Everybody knows about this place. They don’t come here ’cause the beach is more fun, that’s all.”
I felt myself turning red. Now Jane thought I was a fool. Did people know I’d been coming here? Had they been watching me? “It’s just a place to talk,” I said. “It’s not the secret.”
“Okay, so quit being so weird and tell me the secret.”
“You have to promise not to tell anybody.”
“I can’t do that until I know what it is.”
“Jane!”
“I’ll promise if it’s something that won’t hurt anybody.”
“Of course it won’t hurt anybody! I wouldn’t do that.”
“Okay. So tell.”
“All right.” This wasn’t going very well, and I was getting nervous. I drummed my hand on the wooden dock and got a splinter. Great. “Okay. There’s this locked room in my house, see—”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know what’s in it. It’s locked.”
“Why’s it locked?”
“My mom doesn’t want anybody in there.”
“Oh. Like my mom and her study. You can’t go in there when your mom’s in there? It’s her quiet place? Is that it?”
Every room was my mother’s quiet place. “No, she doesn’t go in there. Nobody goes in t
here. That’s why I need your help, because I want to find out what’s in the room.” If I could get into Ginny’s room, maybe I could find proof that she was real. The bracelet she’d talked about, or those yellow pajamas. Then I’d know I wasn’t going crazy. But I couldn’t tell Jane about Ginny, because then she’d really think I was weird.
“If your mom doesn’t want you in there she must have a reason,” Jane said. “Anyway, what am I supposed to do about it?”
“Well, see, I can’t find the key—”
“Try the key to another room, maybe. I can’t pick locks, Emma.”
“The other rooms don’t have locks. Not working ones, anyway. My mother had this one put on before I was born.”
“Wow,” Jane said, and laughed. “She really doesn’t want you in there.” But at least she sounded interested now. “What do you think you’re going to find, anyhow? A dead body or something?”
My mouth got dry. “I don’t know. But it must be something pretty interesting. So anyhow, you know that big ladder your dad used when he was painting your house? Do you still have it?”
Jane started giggling. “Shoot, Emma! What, we’re going to drag that ladder out of the garage and climb into this room and nobody will see us? Are you crazy? That ladder must weigh about thirty thousand pounds, anyhow. We couldn’t even carry it. Use your own ladder.”
“We don’t have one,” I said. “My father hires people with equipment for stuff like that—”
“Oh, people like us, right? Because he’s too busy being a rich doctor and having dinner with the mayor? Huh! Can’t even get his hands dirty with paint.”
“He gets his hands dirty all the time,” I said, my throat constricting. “He cuts people open.”
Jane glared at me. “He hardly even says hello to any of us.”
“Well, I do, don’t I? Come on, Jane, you have to help me—”
Flying in Place Page 3