“Have fun at school,” she says. “And I double dog-dare-you to say hello to the twins before they can say it to you.”
She rolls over, snuggles down under the covers, and gives a contented sigh. I drag her blanket off her on my way out of her room.
“Bye,” I say, dropping the blanket and closing the door before her bear can hit me in the head. It gives a soft thud against the closed door, followed by Karen’s laughing and her stomping across the room to get her blanket.
“Come home right after school, okay?” she calls through the door.
In science class I pull out my notebook. It’s still bowed and dog-eared from when I yanked it out from behind my bureau earlier this morning. I have no idea how it got there. I open it up to my notes from yesterday, where I’d written down nine different ways to escape a bear attack. I thought of number ten this morning. It requires freakishly fast reflexes and bull riding experience. I find yesterday’s date, February twenty-first, but instead of my How to Beat a Bear list, there’s another list altogether. I tear through the notebook.
Every page has a date, and under every date is a too-short list. Not enough to feed a hamster. She hid it in my room. Right under my nose. I am going to kill her.
I slam the notebook shut and stand up, knocking my chair over behind me. Mr. Delancey looks up from his steaming beaker, his eyes bugged out behind the safety goggles.
Everyone else twists around in their chairs. I stand there for a moment. I am not invisible, not at all. Sheila and Rodney stare up at me from where they sit in the row in front of mine.
“Donnie?” Sheila says.
I run out of the room, gripping Karen’s food journal in my sweating palm.
34
These are the things you think when you ditch school and tear down the streets of your town, when you run so hard you can’t get any air into your shrunken throat and you keep running anyway: The voice in your head is your own, and you are telling your sister to stop. You are telling her you love her and that this is killing her and that she has to please stop stop stop. You are showing her the journal, you are shoving it in her face, you are burning it together. Every step brings you closer till you are at your doorstep, till your key is in the door, till you are shoving it open, till you see her lying in the front hall, till you drop to your knees to revive her.
How did she even get that sweater on? It’s a little kid’s fisherman’s knit sweater, and it’s so tight against her chest that I can see what isn’t there: Her chest has been deflated, her boobs lie so flat against her that I could be looking at her back and I’d see the same thing. When I scream my sister’s name into her face, I can hear my father’s voice. I can hear my mother’s voice. We are all calling for Karen.
I slap her face. I grab on to the bony rounds of her shoulders and shake. I press my ear against the sweater, trying to hear a thump in her chest. There’s nothing. I scream when I can’t remember where to press on her chest to make her heart start again. I’m going to press in the wrong place, and I’m going to kill her.
The phone is on the table behind me. I am putting my hands on Karen’s chest, and I am kicking backward with my leg, knocking the phone off the table so it lands next to me. With one hand I dial 911, with the other I start to push on Karen. I drop the phone before anyone answers, lay my hands on top of each other, and push down and down and down and down. An ant is chirping inside the phone. I yell in the direction of the phone: “My sister is hurt, this is my address, please come and save her.” I yell it three times and then listen. The ant titters. I lean in closer to the phone as I breathe into Karen’s mouth, careful not to knock her loose teeth down her throat. The ant in the phone says the ambulance is coming.
35
Dad answers the phone in his work voice, says, “This is Joe, how can I help you?”
I swallow.
“Hello? This is Joe. . . . Hello?”
I can feel the breath build up, pressing out against my lungs, my throat, my mouth. “Donnie?”
I press the phone up against my face. I can hear him swallow, and he whispers, “Did something happen?”
I nod my head.
“Donnie? Did something happen?”
I can hear someone walk into Dad’s office, start talking behind him. It’s his assistant, Deborah. “Joe. Your neighbor’s on the other line . . . .” Her voice breaks up and she gasps. “You should get off the phone.”
“Donnie, I’m coming home.”
“Come home, Dad.”
“I’m coming home.”
“Okay.”
When he takes the phone away from his ear, I can hear Deborah start to sputter, cry, “I’m so sorry, Joey, I’m so—”
I’d gone into the kitchen to call Dad, so I could still see Mom and she wouldn’t hear me from where Elvis had laid her on the couch after wrapping her finger. Now I lean against the kitchen doorway, forcing myself to breathe.
“Mom?”
She doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. One arm is lying over her chest, the other hangs heavy off the couch, the finger with the puffy white gauze barely touching the carpet. It must be pulling on her shoulder to have her arm hanging like that for so long.
“Mom!” I say it a little louder and I can see the cop who’s waiting on the front steps till Dad comes home turn his head and glance inside. Mom still doesn’t move. Just her eyes, they keep flicking like she’s watching a train pass by. Counting cars. One two three four five six seven.
“Dad’s coming home. He’s coming home. I think the Durants called him.” I wipe at my tears with my sleeve and stare at the back of the cop’s head.
I don’t know where to go, where to put my body. I think about lying down by Mom on the couch, letting myself go limp. I walk over to the couch, kneel down beside her, and rest my fingers on the couch cushion where she lies. Close enough so I can feel the warmth from her shoulder. Every few seconds I see Karen in front of my eyes, every few seconds I can feel her under my palms. So every few seconds I hold my breath, close my eyes, and wait for it to pass. We stay like that, Mom limp like soft rubber and me still beside her.
She lifts her head when we hear Dad talking to the cop. She lifts it and looks at the door, grips at the couch with nine of her fingers, but doesn’t get up. Her face is quaking now, quivering as Dad opens the front door, steps in, and stares for a second at the front-hall floor. The cop must have told him where it happened. Dad turns his head to look at us. We stay trapped there, just like that for a long, long moment. It makes me jump when Mom whispers, “Donnie, your father and I have to go up to our room and talk for a minute.” She is looking at me with flat eyes. “Just for a minute. And then I’m going to come downstairs and talk to you. But first your father and I . . .” Dad is helping her to sit up, and then stand. He says, “We’ll be down in a minute, Donnie.” I watch them walk upstairs and into their bedroom, and then hear them wailing inside. I stay kneeling by the couch, pushing the fibers of the carpet one way, then the other, waiting my turn.
36
You still eat breakfast when someone dies, especially if they die like my sister. I think that’s weird. I would have liked everything to stop. But Mom is knocking lightly on my bedroom door, telling me breakfast is on the table and we need to be at the church by ten. Mom’s voice is barely there, and she walks like someone is standing on her shoulders.
I’m up already. I’m even in my suit. I found it last night in the attic and slept in it. It smells like my sister because she wore it last, for Halloween two years ago. There’s a buzzing sound in my very hot head. It’s going to get me through today. If I concentrate on it and look at it with my mind, then my whole body will buzz and I won’t feel anything that is happening.
I pass Dad in the hall on the way to breakfast. He grabs my arm and turns me around.
“Donnie?”
He looks like he’s searching for something on my face. I search his and see that there are lines cut into his cheeks and around his eyes and mouth. Old-man
lines.
“That suit’s a little snug on you . . .”
I look down at the suit and realize he’s right. I haven’t worn this suit in three years. The pants reach my calves and the jacket stops somewhere around my stomach.
“I think you can fit into one of my old suits. You want to come in and try?”
I have a feeling I’m being “handled,” the way Dad leads me into Mom’s bedroom. I didn’t feel crazy when I woke up this morning, but peeling off the suit, I wonder if maybe I’m losing my mind.
The only suit of Dad’s left in the closet is the retro one he wore when he married Mom. I put it on and let him tie the tie for me. Dad tells me the tie is red because Mom carried red roses down the aisle.
Breakfast is endless. I feel like every pore of my skin is absorbing what’s happening. Every clink of a fork against a plate, every scrape of the chair as Dad gets up for seconds and then thirds. Every tear that falls off of Mom’s face and lands in her eggs. I’m sucking it all in, my skin is eating it all. None of us has said a word. It is deafening. I’ve never had thoughts like this before. I want to tell my parents that I’m not right. I open my mouth and say, “I’m not right.”
Dad sips his juice, and Mom scrapes butter against her toast.
“I’m not right!” I say again, louder. Dad looks at me.
“What are you wrong about, honey?” Mom asks in her whisper-voice.
“No, not like that. I’m just not right.”
Mom cocks her head to the side, reaches her hand across the table, and puts it on my forehead.
“You’re burning up.”
I press my forehead against her hand, wondering what it feels like on her palm. She keeps her hand there until Dad comes back with the aspirin.
“Take these. They’ll help.”
I swallow the pills and immediately regret it. I decide that having a fever is the best way to go through today. I want the filter of the fever to get me through. I want this to be a fever dream. I lie down on the couch and listen to Mom whisper into Dad’s neck that she can’t do this. It’s too much and she can’t do it.
The aspirin helps. I fall asleep and dream about hollow-sounding giants that shrink to the size of beans. When I open my eyes, the house is dark and the grandfather clock is chiming that it’s four. I’ve slept through the wake.
“Hey, Donnie.”
I know that voice. I roll over and in the darkness see Amanda sitting in Mom’s rocker. I guess somebody must have told her. I wouldn’t have told her.
“You were sick so I said I’d stay here with you.” She’s leaning forward; I can see her hair has grown longer.
“You should leave.” I hear myself say it.
She covers her face with her hands and I can hear her cry into her fingers. I don’t care. I roll back over so I’m facing the couch cushions.
“I said you should leave.” I keep my voice hard, I try to bite her with it.
“Your mom asked me to stay for a couple days.” Her voice is just tired, there’s no bite to it. I don’t let myself feel bad, I just keep my back to her and listen to her walk up the stairs to Karen’s room.
37
I wake up long before I realize it. I don’t know how long I’ve been staring at the pattern on the couch cushions. I must have slept down here all night; I’m still in the suit. Somebody put another blanket over me. I am enjoying the blank buzzing in my mind. As soon as I realize I am not thinking about anything, I think about Karen.
I twist around so I can see over the arm of the couch. Mom’s at the kitchen table. Amanda is pouring hot water into Mom’s teacup and then into her own. I thought maybe I’d dreamed Amanda. She puts the kettle back on the stove and sits in Karen’s seat at the table. After a second she slides over into mine.
Mom is patting Amanda’s hand and saying, “She really loved to get your letters.”
Amanda nods and sips her tea. At the other end of the kitchen Dad leans against the counter and watches Mom in that warning way he has. He hates it when she cries. I think today should be an exception.
“She wouldn’t ever let me read them. You know Karen. She’d rather . . . do anything . . . than let me know what was happening in her life. But once in a while she would let something slip, something you were up to. You had a boyfriend?”
Amanda nods and sips. “We broke up,” she says. Mom nods.
Dad twists his mouth.
“She missed you so . . .” Mom draws a shaky breath; Dad and Amanda hold their breath and watch her. “. . . much.” Everybody exhales. It’s like watching a rock skip on water, knowing any second it will stop skipping and sink.
“I missed her, too,” Amanda says, squeezing Mom’s hand. Bullshit. I can’t believe she says that with a straight face. She missed my sister so much she stopped writing, stopped calling. Only comes to visit for her funeral, for Christ’s sake.
A car horn beeps.
“They must have driven all night,” Dad says, and Mom drops her head on the table and cries, “Oh, thank God. Thank God they got here.”
“Diane,” Dad says. Mom looks up at him, matching his warning with amused astonishment. She sniffs. “Diane” Mimicking his voice back to him. It’s kind of funny.
“For Christ’s sake, Diane.” Dad dumps his coffee in the sink, lets the cup fall in with it, and grips the counter. “I’m just trying to hold it together, that’s all.”
Karen would snort if she saw that. She’d whisper, “Soooo dramatic.”
“Well, thank God you’re here then. To hold it together for us.”
Amanda is pretending to be busy clearing the table.
The horn beeps again, two staccato beeps, and Mom says, “Well, then.” She wipes her face on the sleeve of her bathrobe and gets up. Amanda follows her out of the kitchen, and after a second Dad walks out too. They cut through the dining room, I guess not wanting to wake me.
My insides feel heavy and dense, like wet sand packed in a bucket. Even though I kicked off the afghan, it still feels like I’m wrapped in a hot blanket.
I get up and stand behind Mom and Dad and Amanda while Amanda struggles to unlock the front door. I think, Turn around and notice me, turn around and notice me, turn around and notice me, but they don’t. I wonder if I’m still asleep on the couch. I think fever, fever, fever.
It’s freezing out. The cold burrows deep into my ears like pins pricking at my brain. The world’s gone white bright, and I close my eyes against the glare of the sun off the ice that’s covering everything. I gasp against the cold, and Mom, Dad, and Amanda turn around and look at me. They’re surprised to see me there. Amanda moves past me, back inside the house. Mom’s hand is on my forehead, my face, the back of my neck. Her bandaged finger flutters near my face, wanting to touch it too. She keeps looking at Dad, shaking her head. I concentrate on making my fever fall. It doesn’t work.
“We got your prescription refilled,” Mom whispers, her eyes looking everywhere but at mine. “Amanda went and picked it up. You can have some toast and then take one. I think it’s your ears.”
“Do they hurt? Do your ears hurt?” Dad asks, sounding very Dad-like.
I say, “Yeah, they hurt.”
He hugs me with both arms.
Amanda comes back out, carrying jackets for all of us. Dad pulls the hood up on mine, the ugly orange one Aunt Janice sent me at Christmas, and cinches it close around my face. We stand at the top of the driveway, watching the movements inside the sedan parked on the street.
“It’s Aunt Janice and Uncle Dan,” Mom says.
I guess she says it for Amanda, because Dad and I know the chances are very slim that anyone else we know would be driving a pink Cadillac. The engine cuts out; through the glare against the windshield, I can see Aunt Janice looking up at us.
The driver’s-side door opens and my uncle pops out, his bushy head of orange hair smooshed down by a hunting cap with earflaps. He looks up at us, waves, and calls, “Hello,” and then seems to regret doing it. Then he gives us a
really solemn nod and moves around to the passenger-side door to open it for Aunt Janice. I watch the way she reaches her hand out for him, and the way he takes it and gently helps her out of the car. It takes two seconds for Mom to streak by us, skidding down the icy driveway into Janice’s arms. I say “Mom” when she runs by. It’s like she’s leaving us.
Mom grips Aunt Janice’s shoulders like the ice under her slippers is trying to suck her down. Aunt Janice says, “Oh, my poor baby, my poor little girl.” I don’t know if she’s talking about Mom or Karen.
Uncle Dan stands for a second next to Aunt Janice and Mom, shifting from foot to foot. Finally he leans over and kisses Mom on the back of her head and walks up the driveway toward us. He looks back toward the car and yells something. Dad mumbles, “Bobby’s here?” And from the street we hear Aunt Janice say, “Of course he came,” because I guess Mom asked her the same thing.
Bobby hasn’t come to our house in two years. Not since he went to college. Aunt Janice says it’s hard for him to get back for holidays. Bullshit. He’s actually closer to our house now that he’s in college than when he lived at home with Aunt Janice and Uncle Dan. I guess if I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t come to my house either.
Last time Bobby came to visit we sat out on the back steps after dinner. Bobby had this way of asking “How’s things?” that made me want to tell him every single thing that was happening in my life. He actually listened for as long as I wanted to talk. He’d listen and then tell me how all the popular kids end up fat and bitter, still living in their hometown. He said they’d never go anywhere, never do anything. They reach their peak in high school, and there’s nowhere for them to go but down. And all the kids that get the crap beat out of them, he said, well, we’re the ones that run the world. It was the same speech he gave me every time, but it made me feel better.
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