A Blue So Dark

by Holly Schindler

  Nell makes a special trip back to her house for her cockatiel and puts him right in the kitchen, where the sunlight is the warmest.

  "There you go, Cockamamie," she says, smiling at her pet, which has a bright yellow head and an orange spot on his cheek like he's blushing. "Talk too much, and it's only three steps to the oven."

  "I'll roast ya," Cockamamie whistles in a high-pitched slur. "Roast ya."

  The whole scene makes me laugh. But while Nell's standing there, talking to the bird, I suddenly see themall those broken pieces of fishing line, dangling from the ceiling, glistening like slender icicles in the sunlight. I think of the missing mermaids, still wrapped up in a blanket in the trunk of the Tempo. And Florida-I could practically pass out, the fumes from the memory of that vacation are so strong. There it is, the burn of salt water up my nose, and Mom saying, "We'll take them. All of them. We're just alike, me and Aura..."

  What's wrong with me? How can I be standing here laughing like everything is hunky-dory, a-okay? How selfish can one jerk really be?

  I have no idea what they're doing to her, my mother. I mean, Nell says she put Mom in a home-but like what? Like a nursing home, where old people are allowed to sit in their piss and shit and grow bedsores and beg for a sip of water? That kind of home?

  I want to puke or scream or pass out or die. Instead, I excuse myself and head back toward my bedroom. I do, after all, have roughly forty-three million hours of homework to finish-and the entirety of The Scarlet Letter to read. Criminy.

  My geometry book's spread open on my bed, and I'm giving the first problem what feels like the fiftieth try when I hear it-this rattle. It's unmistakable, you know? Rattlebang, clunkerty-clunk. I raise my head to look out my window that is still engulfed by the same awful garden of crazy flowers that have swirled across my bedroom walls for years. Sure enough, on the street beyond the glass, there it is, a red p.o.s. with blue fenders.

  Janny Jamison.

  I try to turn back to my proof, reading and re-reading the lesson. (Jeez. Surely somebody's written a math book that can explain triangles in English. I mean, they're triangles. Why are they suddenly so difficult?) But, rattle-bang, clunkerty-clunk, the engine starts to grow louder, closer.

  "Doesn't she have anything better to do?" I mumble as I crane my neck. While I'm staring out my window, she passes by again. But even as I ask it, I'm not annoyed. Seeing her circling through my neighborhood makes my heart overflow. When I touch the corner of my eye, my fingertip turns wet.

  "Who the hell is that?" Nell asks, stomping into my room and pressing her face against my window. "You don't have a stalker, do you?"

  "You never left," I blurt as Nell squints at the street. "You could have left town when Mom moved out, gotten away from everything that hurt, but you didn't."

  Nell gets this horrified look, like I've just accused her of trying to kill Mom with her bare hands. "Some thingssome things you just always are," she says quietly. "No matter how much time's passed. No matter how pissed you've been, how disappointed. I'll always be her mother."

  I nod as the clunkerty-clunk comes back again, for the four millionth time.

  The p.o.s. pauses, idling at the curb. But Janny-she's not just driving by for something to do. She's not driving to soothe her son. Janny's come because she doesn't know any of it-doesn't know about the red and blue swirling ambulance lights or that I talked to Fritz earlier that morning or that I practically gave myself a hernia hauling all my grandmother's shit into my house. Janny thinks that Mom is still here. Janny's come to help me.

  "That's no stalker," I finally tell Nell, who's glaring through the window. "That's actually-" I almost choke on the words. "It's my best friend." I stand and hurry through my bedroom door. And Nell is curious, or still a little worried, maybe, so she follows at my heels. But she stays on the porch as I run across the front lawn.

  "Janny," I call out, waving as the p.o.s. starts to take off again. "Janny!"

  She slams the brakes, which are apparently wearing out, because the car skids into the middle of the road. She sticks her head out of the driver's side window as I step off the curb. Her motherly concern gets a watercolor smear of annoyance on it, and I figure that's because she's just remembered the last time we actually spoke.

  I stop just short of her window, hide my hands as I cross my arms over my chest. Wish, for a minute, I could shove my whole stupid face down one of the pockets of the Nell-style slacks I'm still wearing.

  "She's okay," I manage.

  "Yeah, but for how long?" The way she screws her face up, you'd think her words tasted like a fistful of raw red onion.

  "She's in a hospital, actually," I say. "Professional help galore. Are you?"

  "Am I what?"

  "Okay."

  "I don't really know what you mean," Janny says, pushing some greasy, flyaway hairs from her eyes.

  "You really did move out? From your parents' place?"

  She hesitates, nods her head slowly. "We were at each other's throats so bad, I'm actually not sure if I stormed out or they kicked me out." She shrugs. "I've got an apartment behind the Kum & Go. It's not the Shangri-la, but it's all right."

  "Is Ace helping at all? At least sending money, or something?"

  She frowns. "What are you, retarded?"

  "What about work?"

  Janny rolls her eyes. "Who made you the chief of the baby police? I shampoo hair at Super Cuts, all right? Woman downstairs from me has a kid, too. We stagger our schedules so we can sit for each other."

  I stare at her hands, already red and broken-out from washing hair all day long. Glance through the back window at the baby sleeping soundly.

  "What happens when she moves, your neighbor? What happens when you can't juggle schedules?" I ask. "You need your diploma."

  She snorts out a laugh. "I need a lot of things. To win the lottery, for starters."

  "If I help you look after your kid-" I start, inching my toes closer to the car.

  "Ethan," Janny corrects. "And I don't need a sitter, you know. I'm fine."

  "No, that's not-If I help you study, would you get your GED?"

  "Why?"

  Because, I want to tell her, the whole time we've been friends, I've always been the one who was drowning. The one asking you to keep my head above water. You were never afraid of the ocean.

  "I think maybe our friendship was a little one-sided," I say. "I think you were there for me for a long time, and when you needed somebody, I was AWOL."

  Janny tilts her head; a ray of midmorning sun washes the shadows off her face. "What the hell, Ambrose?" she asks through that pit-bull expression of hers. "You come out to my car to write some schmaltzy-paltzy Hallmark card?"

  I narrow my eyes at her. "Maybe I did, you dumb-ass," I say, which gets her to smile.

  She puts her head down on the steering wheel and laughs. It's a good sound. Pretty-like piano music.

  Postmortem brain tissue research is proving to be very important in the study of schizophrenia. .And because the brain is removed from the back of the skull, there is no disfigurementwhich, if you really dig open,casket funerals, is a great big (though highly morbid) bonus.

  don't understand what the problem is," Nell's snapping at me as cars honk all around us. She's taking me to school, no more driving for me until I get my license, tsk-tsk.

  "This is very simple," she insists, blaring her horn at an ancient station wagon. She leans out the window and screams, "The gas is on the right," at some poor gray-haired, white-knuckled driver.

  Oh, yeah. And I'm the one who shouldn't be driving.

  "I don't know-" I say, biting down on my thumbnail.

  "What's there to know?" Nell shouts. "You like to draw. You're talented. Just like your mother." She must feel me cringe, because she says, "That's not a bad thing, Aura. You're talented like your mother. Wear it like a Girl Scout badge, all right?"

  But I can't. She should understand. It's not like you can just turn a page and goof. A magical ha
ppy ending pops into view. You don't carry this all-encompassing dread around, you don't look at your mother absolutely convinced that this is a mirror, this is who I'll be someday, nuts, nuts, nuts, and then discard that thought in one afternoon. You can't, all right?

  Correction: I can't.

  "You let me sit in that damned meeting with that horrible counselor of yours, and you never once mentioned anything about the accelerated arts and letters program. You made me find out about it by listening to the old messages on your machine?"

  "I don't-I just don't want-"

  "Just because a couple of artists throughout history have had schizophrenia, that doesn't mean you will. That's ridiculous, Aura," she tells me. "I'm sure there were bankers and farmers who had schizophrenia, too. And lawyers and secretaries and manicurists..."

  She is so pushy, I can seriously understand why she had so much trouble with my mother.

  "... and trash collectors and doctors and zoo keepers," Nell goes on. "Does that mean you don't want to be any of those things when you grow up?"

  When Igrow up? Gag. I'd just as soon talk to Fritz.

  "You try to stifle your creativity, all you're going to wind up doing is hating yourself. You'll wind up being boring," Nell insists, rolling her eyes. "For God's sake, whatever you do, just don't be boring."

  "Let me out here," I snap.

  "I'm taking you to the front door."

  "Let me out here," I shout. Instantly, Nell veers to the curb. Horns blare and tires squeal on the pavement behind her.

  "I'm not letting go of this," Nell shouts at me as I throw open the door of her Toyota. "It's too important. You're taking art."

  I slam the door and rush off down the street. I know what I saw happen to Mom. And it got worse the more she painted. That Bedroom in Arles on her wall, it sucked her dry. It bled her, stole her health, like meth or booze. Nell doesn't know everything. If I do what she wants, I'll die. Can't she see that? I'll die. I've already got two generations before me afflicted by the same madness. And the thing they both had in common is that they were both artists. I can't help it. These thoughts are like a dirt path I've worn through the grass by taking the same shortcut every day. And once you've taken a shortcut, who can ever bear to go the long way around again?

  As I near the Circle, I start to get a little queasy, because I figure word has traveled fast. I expect voices to trail off when I approach. Hands to cup mouths. Whispers to dance through the air like tiny butterflies with translucent wings. Here she comes, they'll all say, the one whose mom is wacko. The one whose mom even ran her father off. He couldn't take it anymore. Just look at her, how she walks, how she talks, how she fidgets. I'll bet the reason her father doesn't want her around is that he's afraid. Because, just watch, everyone will find out sooner or later, she's loony, too-or she will be, she-

  I straighten my back, the same way I figure Janny would if she knew she was gossip-fodder. So they'll whisper when they see you, I tell myself. So what? I decide to pretend that they're all whispering because I've just been through some miraculous thing-I've emerged as the lone survivor of the worst plane crash ever, or have rescued twelve dying kittens from a burning apartment building, or have found the cure for cancer living in an old wad of chewing gum on the bottom of my sneaker. I will pretend that they give me the big tennis-ball eyes because they're completely amazed.

  Except they don't. Everybody's just talking amongst themselves, clustering and smoking, and nobody cares. My appearance doesn't exactly bring the goings-on of the Circle to a screeching halt. I don't even bring a momentary hiccup. Nobody even looks my way-well, one of them does.

  Jeremy's got his hair pulled into a ponytail today, so it doesn't whip into his eyes. He stares at me like a boy watching a movie: Wonder what will happen next.

  I want to say something to him. Jesus, just fucking hello or something. Maybe, Am I some kind of asshole or what? But I lose my guts, duck my chin into my chest, and sprint straight out of the Circle, toward Crestview's back entrance.

  I have to pass the art room to get to my locker. I love the way the hallway smells just outside it-all pasty, dusty, and cool, like a fresh chunk of clay. I stand behind the door, peeking into the room.

  The art teacher's got big wire glasses and an enormous white beard that makes an upside-down triangle down to the middle of his chest. The kids call him Grandpa Smurf. There's laughter when a pot collapses on the wheel in the back of the room.

  I can hear feet behind me. The clopping of hard-soled shoes puts me in gear, because I figure it's a teacher-Now, now, no loitering, you little gypsy. Off to class, or better yet, until the morning bell rings, why don't you head on to the library? But just as I'm taking that first step, I see them. Blue cowboy boots with stars.

  "Hey!" the Freak shouts.

  "Hey, back," I mumble.

  "Did you drop Bio or something?" She frowns. I notice she hasn't had a haircut in a while, and this morning, her daisy petal hair is standing out even more than usual.

  "No," I shrug.

  "What do you think, I'm gonna to carry you the rest of the semester?" she screeches.

  I blink at her. "I hadn't thought-"

  "I've done all the lab work since you've been gone. I'm not gonna to let you get credit for my work. Neither is Wickman. And I'm not gonna spend the rest of the semester tutorin' you to get you back on track. So don't even ask."

  As she lays into me, I imagine that we're not in the hallway at all, but an autopsy room. I'm stretched out on a carving table, a giant "Y" drawn on my naked chest where she's going to hack into me, head shaved in the back where she's going to pull out my brain. Angela's wearing her butcher's coat, all blood splattered. "I knew you'd never help me with this," she says, tugging on a pair of latex gloves. "Gonna make me do it all by myself."

  "I'm so sorry," I say sarcastically. As I sit up, I purposefully knock Angela's tray of dissecting knives onto the floor. "I didn't mean to bother you with this. I won't trouble you anymore." I swing my legs and hop off the table.

  "Where are you goin'?" she screeches. "I got dibs, remember?"

  "The hell you do," I say. I throw my T-shirt on and stomp out of the autopsy room.

  I'm laughing, thinking of it, and that just pisses the Freak off even more. But I have to admit, I never thought Frieson could look as beautiful as she does at this moment, frowning at me and shouting, "I mean, it Aura. You're not my responsibility." The way she's yelling at me for such trivial crap, it sort of makes me feel like life might actually, honest-to-God become normal.

  `When admitted, your schizo relative will be given a complete psychiatric and physical exam. Poked, prodded, sucked, interrogated, drained. .And you -wonder -why they re not grateful to see you when you show up for your visit, a strained grin plastered across your cheeks like you re a yelk w happy face?

  ell goes to visit Mom. She goes alone, on a Saturday, and comes back late in the afternoon. I'm at the kitchen table with Janny, who's filling out a bunch of enrollment papers for the GED program at the community college. All three of us-Janny, Ethan, and I-jump like cartoon cats when Nell comes tearing through, looking like she's been crying. She stomps down the hall slamming doors.

  Danny shakes her head at me in such a sad way that I drop my head into my hands and wish I could melt, like a stick of butter. Melt in one of those all the king's men just couldn't put her back together again kind of ways.

  By the time Nell drafts me as her sous-chef for our dinner spread, her face isn't so bright red and she seems to have calmed down. "You should go see her, Aura," she says. "She was asking about you."

  I flinch, stop chopping up a stalk of celery for the soup. It's like Nell's ripped the knife out of my hand and stabbed me in the heart.

  "You should go," Janny chimes in. She's still at the table, pouring over her scheduling worksheets. Ethan's asleep, his face pressed against her chest. "I'll go with you if you want. I wouldn't go in her room-I'd give you guys privacy-but I'll drive you there and wait in t
he lobby for you. Moral support and all."

  God love her, it's as nice an offer as I'll ever get. But the whole idea of seeing Mom freaks me out worse than not seeing Mom had, the day she'd tried to water our nolonger-existent rose bushes. The same day I'd found Mom at the theater behind the art museum, watching an imaginary play.

  What could she possibly have to say to me? Me-the one who got her locked away? What kind of hate will spill out of her mouth? Or maybe even worse-what if she doesn't talk to me at all? What if she's completely done with me?

  I mean, a fight is one thing. And maybe, okay-so maybe, I think as I'm staring at Janny, a fight you can get over. But being put away because of your own kid? That's another matter entirely.

  I let the whole thing drop.

  Janny, on the other hand-

  "I think you should go see her," she tells me the very next time she comes over. She's gotten a job answering phones at the administration office of the community college and is thinking about staying on once she passes the GED, studying something ultra-practical like dental tech. She's looking better, too-her hair is thickening up and her thighs are finally thinning down. And I love how great everything is going for her, but I swear, I could kick her out of my kitchen for being so good at giving me such grief.

  "I'm going to go," I tell her. "She's my mother. I can't avoid her the rest of my life."

  "Exactly," she says. "What're you doing this afternoon?"

  I drop back in my chair and let out this monster of a sigh. It's so loud, I wake Ethan. He starts getting all squirmy in his stroller. Janny instantly starts to rock it with her foot, still staring right at me. She raises an eyebrow.