The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard

  He taught her to put her arms over her head when they went down the loopiest parts. He kept his around her. She’d be reminded of that sometimes now when Garrett gave her a hug. She’d think how differently Josh hugged her. Garrett’s way of putting an arm around her—just one, not two—was casual, not really holding on so much as draping his arm across her shoulders, as if it just happened to end up there.

  One time, they’d driven all the way to Connecticut to pick apples. They stopped at a farm where you could watch them make cider and doughnuts.

  I’m not sure I’m happy I saw this, her mom said. Now I know how greasy they are. But even after standing in front of the machine, watching the circles of dough dropping into the deep fat and bobbing along like corks in a stream—just like in “Homer Price and the Doughnut Machine”—she still ate half of one. Josh and Wendy and Louie had two apiece.

  They checked out the animals in this barnyard next to the doughnut operation that Louie loved. This farm didn’t have that many animals, just a few of each kind for the little kids. There was another area where you could pay five dollars and make a scarecrow by picking out old clothes from a big heap and stuffing them with straw, with stuffed panty hose for the head. On the way back to the city, driving along Route 684, with her mother and Josh in the front seat and the scarecrow in back with her and Louie, the four of them sang “We Ain’t Got a Barrel of Money.” They sang “Old MacDonald” all the way from Brewster to White Plains, with every animal Louie could think of, even zoo animals. None of them knew what sound a lemur made, or a platypus, so they made them up.

  Sundays with Garrett in Davis were quieter. He stayed in bed later than other days, and when he got up, he spent a long time reading the paper. You fix yourself some cereal yet? he asked her sometime around ten-thirty.

  I had a grapefruit and some eggs, she said.

  She was thinking that they’d probably go for a hike or something, but around noon, when nothing had happened, she saw it wasn’t like that here. She was working on drawing a comic book, the adventures of a girl named Zara, who looked like this nerdy, loser kind of person with thick glasses and boring clothes, but after her parents went off to work in the morning, she changed into a purple-and-orange jumpsuit and went off on adventures. The comic book was called The Secret Life of Zara.

  Sometime in the afternoon, Garrett said he thought he’d cruise over and see Carolyn. You want me to leave Shiva here or take her with me? he asked Wendy.

  She can stay with me, Wendy said. She liked it that Shiva followed her around. She felt like some character in one of the movies she used to love when she was little, Old Yeller or Sounder.

  Catch you later, he told her. She heard his truck drive off.

  After he left, she looked in the refrigerator. There was a can of tuna fish half used up and a hunk of cheese. She took a slice of the cheese, even though she was mostly trying to avoid dairy products. She knew from her daily inspection of her body in the bathroom mirror that her shape was changing.

  Shiva loped over to her. Wendy gave her a little tuna fish and put water in her bowl. She picked up the cordless phone and took it out into the yard, where her father had a couple of chairs set up next to an old birdbath with an oven rack on the top, that he used for a barbecue. She dialed Amelia’s number.

  Finally, Amelia said. I’ve been practically dying here, I missed you so much.

  Me, too, Wendy said. It had surprised her that she hadn’t been missing Amelia more, but the minute she heard Amelia’s voice, she did.

  Tell me everything, Amelia said. Is your dad’s house the coolest ever?

  Not exactly, Wendy said. It’s okay. I’m sitting in the yard right now. There’s an orange tree in back, and you can see these hills that are sort of like mountains. He has a great dog.

  Orange trees. I hate you. Do you realize it’s forty degrees here? Is your dad around? she said. Can you talk?

  He went over to his girlfriend’s house. They’re probably having sex.

  Is she mean or nice? She’s jealous, I bet. Because you’re like a reminder of your mom, that he really loved best all these years. You coming back just points out what was missing in their relationship probably.

  She’s nice, Wendy said. She has a cactus collection, and she guessed my sign.

  And he’s so incredibly happy to be back together with you after all these years, right? Like the father in The Little Princess.

  When they were little, they had watched that one together with her mother a million times. They still liked to act out scenes from Shirley Temple movies sometimes, only changing the words—to make Shirley like a Valley Girl or someone from Brooklyn.

  He’s more of the laid-back type. It’s strange, after dealing with my mom and Josh all this time.

  Everyone at school was talking about you, Amelia said. A girl in seventh period started a rumor you had a nervous breakdown and had to go to a rest home. Hallie Owens said she didn’t blame you. She said just seeing some of the stuff they showed on CNN was enough that her parents put her in therapy. I told them you were fine. Having a getaway.

  It’s completely different here, Wendy said. People don’t even talk about what happened very much. Nobody here even knows where I was before, except my father’s girlfriend.

  There’s a new boy in our class, Amelia said. They had to close down his regular school for a while because it was in SoHo, and his family’s apartment got covered with dust, so now he’s living with his aunt and coming to our school. Wait till you hear his name. Chief. His actual name on his birth certificate is Chief. Which fits, because he is awesome.

  Have you talked to him?

  The other day I ate lunch with him and we had this intense conversation about God and if he exists why something could happen like the World Trade Center. Chief was saying he thinks everything in the world is part of a giant plan, even if you don’t understand it at the time, because we’re like ants in this anthill and our whole planet is actually just one tiny speck in some cosmic game.

  He sounds a lot different from Seth, Wendy said.

  Yesterday we went to the East Village after school and picked out the tattoos we’d get if we could.

  But you won’t really, right? They had a pact they were going to get a tattoo together when they turned sixteen. Matching roses.

  My parents would kill me. But I could get it someplace they wouldn’t see. The problem is, it costs forty dollars, and most places need a permission letter if you’re under sixteen.

  I guess you really like this kid, huh? said Wendy.

  It’s not like with you of course, Amelia said. I could never talk about the things we do. But for a boy, he’s definitely awesome.

  How about you? she said. What are the kids like out there?

  I don’t know any that well, Wendy told her. I’m not actually going to school here.

  What do you mean? Your father’s letting you stay home?

  He doesn’t know. I just stopped showing up, and nobody did anything. I take bike rides and go to the mall. Friday was really warm, so I went over to the campus of the college here and sat on the lawn and listened to this bunch of people playing drums. There’s a bookstore where the owner lets me sit and read as long as I want, and he gives me herbal tea for free.

  You might want to watch that, Amelia said. He could be one of those pedophile types like on the Internet who are on the lookout for really young girls to become their sex slave.

  He’s nothing like that, Wendy said. He leaves me alone pretty much. Most people do here. Even Garrett. It’s kind of strange after being home, where everyone was so concerned all the time.

  So do you like it? Amelia asked her.

  I don’t know, Wendy said. She wanted to tell Amelia the other part. Amelia was the one person who’d understand.

  I make up stories, she said. Like you, but more. I tell people things that never really happened. One time I ordered food at a restaurant and didn’t pay. I told this one woman on a bus that I’m a child pr
odigy who got sent to UC Davis to study astrophysics. The man at the bookstore thinks Louie’s going to be the next Dalai Lama.

  I wish I was there, Amelia said. Other than Chief coming to school, it sucks here. Everyone’s stressed out all the time, waiting for some bomb full of chemical weapons to go off. There’s men in rubber suits checking all the letters. Louie’d probably want to dress up as one for Halloween if it was now.

  It’s not exactly great here either, Wendy said. Just different is all.

  You think you’ll be home by Christmas? Amelia asked. We could dress up in wild outfits and go skating at Wollman Rink. We could take your little brother. Or Chief might have a friend for you.

  I don’t know what’s happening, Wendy said. It’s like my whole life is a movie I’m watching.

  Just don’t have a breakdown for real, okay? It’s happened to some people. My mom told me the therapists in Manhattan are all working overtime.

  I’ll be fine, Wendy said. The hardest part is missing my little brother. Josh, too. And you, naturally.

  Tell me about it.

  Amelia, she said. One interesting thing.

  What’s that?

  I’m getting thinner. I’m not anorexic or anything. I’m just changing is all.

  Well, I’m exactly the same as before, she said. Flat as a board.

  You are so brave, Amelia said. If it was me, I don’t know what I’d be doing now.

  I better go, Wendy said. This probably costs a fortune. Hearing Amelia’s voice like this was making her miss home a lot more.

  Say hi to your dad for me.

  Your parents, too, she said. Amelia said their special good-bye code from their old made-up language back in fifth grade: Spice Girls forever.

  Michael Jackson is a pervert. What you said back.

  The whole time they were talking, Wendy had been in the backyard, sitting in one of Garrett’s old lawn chairs. She had been studying a parade of ants carrying crumbs of toast, one crumb at a time, across the bricks of the patio to their anthill home. In the orange tree beyond, a couple of hummingbirds were hovering beside the blossoms. Shiva had found a sunny spot to sit and lick herself, but now she was asleep.

  Wendy walked back in the house. She went to her room. She opened the top drawer of her bureau. She took her mother’s dress out—the one from Halloween, that she kept in a plastic bag, separate from all the other clothes—and lifted it to her face.

  She breathed in deeply then, as if she were diving to the bottom of a reef, looking for conch shells, and this one breath would have to last her till she made it back to the surface again. She filled her lungs with the scent of her mother’s dress. She kept her eyes closed, waiting for a picture of her mother to come to her, the way it had the first time she smelled the dress.

  In those early days, after that first terrible one, Wendy had only to close her eyes to see her mother’s face or hear her voice, but the image of her had started to grow less clear. The edges were blurring. What came to Wendy now, when she held the dress to her face, was no longer a picture or a sound—more of a feeling. Her mother no longer seemed like this separate person, with clothes and shoes and hair, a voice, a way of walking, a job, but like a piece of herself now, a piece still forming.

  The thought came to Wendy that a person didn’t just die in a single instant, but gradually, in stages. She had begun to lose her mother that day in September, but it was still happening, a little at a time, as if her mother had been on a little boat that was very gradually drifting out to sea, or holding on to a balloon that kept on rising till you couldn’t see it anymore.

  Sixteen

  Monday, after Garrett dropped her off on his way to work, Wendy took the bus into Sacramento again. She didn’t even know where she was headed. When she saw the hospital sign, she decided to get off.

  Even then, she didn’t have a plan. Maybe she’d bump into some little kid Louie’s age in a wheelchair with a terminal illness and she’d read to him. She could volunteer to be one of those people who take the trays into people’s rooms. There might turn out to be some old grandma type of person—not a grandmother like Garrett’s mom, but the kind who bake cookies and tell stories of the olden days.

  She studied the buttons on the elevator. Cardiology. Intensive Care. Oncology. Fifth floor was Obstetrics and Gynecology. Also the neonatal unit. She pushed five.

  There were a couple of women in hospital gowns walking up and down the halls, holding their bellies. Wendy knew from when Louie was born that they were in the early stages of labor.

  She walked farther down the hall. There was a glass window, and inside the room were rows of cribs, lined up like seats at a theater.

  If Amelia was here they’d choose their favorite. Or make up names for the babies, or imagine what each one would be when they grew up. One of them, a baby with a blue ribbon on his crib, at the far right in the front row, looked like her geometry teacher back home, Mr. Hutchinson. A girl next to him had a full head of black curly hair—so much it even stuck out from underneath the little hat they’d put on her.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen babies this little. Not since Louie was born. She’d forgotten the funny spastic way they flailed their arms and legs around, like they were punching in the dark. Even at this stage, though, Louie had started finding his thumb.

  She imagined Louie back home on those mornings snuggled up in the bed next to her, sucking his thumb hard and a little guiltily, knowing he was a preschool boy now. Like he was trying to get whatever good thing it was out of that thumb before he had to go to school, where he would try hard not to let the kids see him do it. First thing in the morning, his thumb always had a wrinkled look, as if he’d been in the tub too long.

  Sissy, he said. Is it true God sees everything?

  I don’t know, Louie. What do you think?

  Then he’d be watching even when I poop.

  He probably has more important things to do, Louie. There’s a lot of people to keep track of.

  Do you think he knows where my mama is?

  I don’t know.

  Because if he did, he should tell us. So we could go there.

  A girl was standing next to her in front of the baby window. She was wearing a bathrobe and paper slippers, and though she was a skinny person, her stomach looked a little pooched out. She had stringy hair and her front teeth were crooked, but with her mouth shut she was a little bit pretty.

  None of them’s yours, right? she said.

  I’m just visiting, Wendy said. She must really have changed for someone to imagine she could be some baby’s mother. Not that this girl looked old enough either.

  Mine’s the second on the left, second row, she said. Walter Charles.

  Wendy couldn’t see him that well but she said, He’s really cute.

  I wasn’t going to keep him but I am, the girl told her. My mom kicked me out of the house. She said she knew if I kept him she’d end up taking care of him, but she’s wrong.

  If he was mine, I couldn’t give him away either, Wendy said. You’d always wonder what happened to him.

  That’s what I thought. Plus, he’s the first person I ever met that’s just mine.

  Wendy thought what Garrett might say if he were here. That children didn’t belong to their parents. They had to be free.

  One thing’s for sure, the girl said. My boyfriend’s history.

  Lots of people have kids without a father, Wendy said. When I was little, it was just my mom and me, and we did fine.

  My name’s Violet, the girl said. How old are you?

  Almost fifteen. I just look young for my age.

  I’ll be seventeen next week, she said. I guess he’s like my birthday present, huh?

  It sure will be fun when you get to take him home, Wendy said. If it was me, I’d just want to put him on my bed and look at him the longest time.

  You could come over sometime, if you wanted, Violet told her. I’m not living at my mom’s house anymore. I rented a room in t
own. I had some money saved up from my job.

  Don’t you go to school?

  Not anymore.

  Me neither, Wendy said.

  What’s your name, anyway?

  Kitty.

  You could hold him if you wanted. Once I get him home. They’re letting us out right after lunch. Only problem being they have this rule that you can’t leave without some family member going along with you, and my mom’s not speaking to me.

  I could pretend to be your sister, Wendy told her.

  That’s what I was thinking, Violet said. I always wanted a sister anyways.

  Wendy waited in the sunroom while Violet checked out. She picked up a magazine and read about no-muss, no-fuss summer fun desserts. The magazine was from July. She thought about where she’d been in July—New York mostly, but that was also when they took their trip to Nantucket. A million years ago.

  Violet came out. A nurse was pushing her in a wheelchair, and she had Walter Charles wrapped in a blanket in her arms. She had on sweatpants and slip-on sandals.

  I can walk fine. It’s just the rules, she said.

  So this is your sister, said the nurse. I was picturing someone older.

  They rode the elevator down to the curb. A taxi was already outside waiting.

  Well, here you go, said the nurse. Don’t let her tire herself out, okay, honey? the nurse said. You need to get a car seat, she told Violet.

  They got in the back.

  Man, said Violet. I thought I’d never get out of that place.

  Walter Charles made a squeaking noise from inside the blanket. I think he’s hungry, she said. My mom said I’d wreck my boobs if I breast-fed him, but I read in my baby book that it’s a ton healthier for your baby than if you give him a bottle.