The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard

  You might get married, Louie. I might do that, too. We’d probably have kids eventually.

  But we can still stay in our same apartment, right? We’ll just make some more rooms.

  Your wife might want to go live someplace different. You might want to explore other places.

  I won’t. I just want to stay here.

  Then it was morning, and they were in Nebraska, a man told her, when she went to the dining car to get her cereal. Nebraska looked flat and cold, but not as flat and cold as Iowa, and Iowa seemed to go on forever. She took out her postcards again, and tried drawing, but she wasn’t in the mood. When she was back in New York, though, she would pay a visit to her favorite store, Forbidden Planet, and check out the underground comics. They had a book there she wanted to get, on how to draw different facial expressions. She had been thinking that she might want to sign up for a figure drawing class someplace, on the weekends, with a live model. Across the seat from her now, a man was reading a paperback book about how to keep from getting wrinkles. She studied his hand, resting on his forehead, and thought how she’d draw that.

  In Chicago, when they had to change trains, Wendy hated to leave her little compartment. She had begun to like the feeling of being sealed up in the train, like a space capsule, but shooting over land instead of through the atmosphere. She made her way down the steps onto the platform and found the sign for the New York train, leaving in just a little less than two hours. She got herself a turkey sandwich and stood at a newsstand, reading People magazine. Jennifer Lopez had gotten married. Drew Barrymore was getting a divorce.

  The second train was almost exactly the same as the first one. This is a pretty big trip for a young lady to make all on her own, the porter said. Some people would want to take the plane. But if you do that, you miss everything, right?

  I like to see where I’m going, she told him. Even the parts that aren’t all that beautiful.

  It’s all part of life, right? he said.

  When she woke up, they were in New York State, heading to Buffalo, then Schenectady. Louie, if he heard that name, would probably say it over and over, or try to. Josh, if he was there, would do something like grab her mother and say, Run away with me, Janet. Let’s run away to Schenectady.

  I would go with you anywhere, sweetheart. But please, could it be Paris instead?

  The porter came by. Forty-five more minutes and we’ll be at Penn Station, he said. Just wanted to give you time to gather up your things.

  Out the window now, there were just buildings, no more green. The area they passed through looked like the kind of place with more factories than houses. Gray smoke billowed out from some of them. Wendy could see highways and cars, and another train, on a parallel track, coming from the opposite direction. There was a little snow on the ground, still, but not much. Viewed from the train, the city—even with its permanently altered skyline—looked sparkling and beautiful, in a totally different way from the hills outside Davis, or Yosemite, or the Golden Gate Bridge. Wendy wondered where Carolyn was at this moment. And Garrett, and Shiva.

  She put on her headphones and slipped in her Sade CD. She skipped to number seven—Sade’s lullaby to her daughter, her mother’s favorite. She didn’t play this one often. Like her mother’s dress, that she kept sealed in the plastic bag so the smell of her wouldn’t wear off, she didn’t want to use it up. As it was, if she didn’t overdo it, she could imagine her mother with her, when she listened to the words. She could bring herself back to the two of them listening together that time, her mother saying, Just once more, okay? Her mother’s voice singing out of tune, along with Sade. I will always remember this moment.

  When I hear this song I want to cry, her mother said. But it’s a good feeling.

  Listen, Mom.

  I’m here.

  I went to California.

  And how was it?

  Good.

  I wish you could come back.

  But I can’t.

  I know.

  When you have a child, an amazing thing happens, her mother told her once. The thing I used to fear most was dying. But once I had you, it wasn’t that way anymore. The worst thing would be if something happened to you.

  You don’t need to worry then. I’m fine.

  The train was slowing down. Out the window, she saw many other trains now, pulling into the station. The man across from Wendy picked up his suitcase. She reached for her backpack, then her cactus. The porter had already set her larger suitcase by the steps.

  I hope someone’s meeting you, honey, he said.

  It’s all right, she said. I know my way around here.

  She got herself a cart to put her suitcase on, and the clarinet case and the basket with the cactus. She wheeled the cart out to the curb and found a taxi right off. Park Slope, she said.

  As the taxi made its way across the bridge, over the East River, Wendy could see the buildings in Brooklyn Heights, where, last September, a swirl of paper and debris had drifted over from the towers like a freak blizzard. There was the Watchtower building, and the warehouses along the water, the stretch of road where she and her mother used to Rollerblade.

  Back in California, Wendy had promised Carolyn that she’d call Josh and Louie to say she was coming, but she hadn’t. She remembered what it was like being little and waiting for something that seemed to take forever, the way she’d waited for Louie when her mother was pregnant. Time will fly, her mother had said, but the days before his birth had seemed endless. Better to just show up. Call out to them, I’m here.

  She thought Josh would be home when she got there but he wasn’t, and his bass was gone, so she figured he was probably off giving a lesson. She set her things in her room, which looked exactly the same as how she’d left it, except for her Madonna poster not being up. The rest of their apartment looked pretty much the same, too, though a little messier than it had been before. Evidently they’d put away the train set for now at least.

  She looked in the fridge. The crisper drawer was full of fruits and vegetables, and the fact it was made her happy. Hopeful anyway. The Spanish tapes were out on the counter, as if Josh had been listening to them again, though if so, he was still only on lesson three. There was a library book, Choosing a Puppy, with Post-it notes marking a couple of breeds. There was a cereal bowl and a plate on the table with a puddle of maple syrup on it still. They’d left in a rush, nothing unusual about that.

  She walked into her parents’ room. The last time she’d seen it his clothes lay in piles on the floor, but everything was put away now. The picture of her mother and Josh in New Orleans was still on the bureau, but when she opened her mother’s side of the closet, the clothes were gone. There were a bunch of boxes on the shelf. Janet, they said.

  She looked at their wall clock. Felix the Cat, with jewels in his eyes and a swinging tail, bought by her mother for Josh’s birthday that time. If only you’d have more of these birthdays, you might get to be as old as me someday, her mother said.

  Well, now he would.

  She went to the closet. She got out her winter coat that was hanging right there, as if it was just yesterday she’d hung it up, instead of a whole year ago almost. Last March probably, the last really cold days of last winter.

  Louie’s school was five blocks away. She had only been there a few times, back in the fall, when she’d picked him up.

  After all these months she still knew where to find his classroom. It was naptime when she got there. They were lying on their mats while a tape played of Native American chanting.

  I’m Louie’s sister, she whispered to the teacher.

  He’s got an appointment today, Wendy told her. I came to pick him up.

  I thought you were gone, the teacher said. Louie used to talk about it all the time. California, right?

  I was, she said, but I’m home now.

  He’s going to be so happy.

  She walked slowly over to his mat. Even lying on his belly that way, with nothing but the ba
ck of his head showing, she would know him anywhere. She bent very low over him. His hand, that would have been up by his mouth so he could reach his thumb, in the old days, formed a tight fist at the side of his mat. He was asleep, or almost.

  Louie, she whispered. I came to get you.

  He opened his eyes and studied her face. He looked older, and not just because he was five instead of four.

  Sissy, he said. I dreamed you were here.

  Later they would go many places. If not today, then soon, she would take him where the towers used to be, as close as the policemen would let them get.

  Is this where Mama is? he might ask her.

  This is where she used to be.

  That’s a very big crane, isn’t it, Sis? he might say. He might even know the official name for it. He knew all the names of the vehicles.

  So this is where it happened, she would tell him.

  The men are cleaning everything up now, aren’t they?

  Yes, Louie, she’d say. After a while, all this mess will be gone. But Mama’s building isn’t there anymore.

  No, Louie.

  Or Mama either.

  I used to think there was such a thing as magic, he said. I used to think if you believed hard enough, it might come true.

  In a way that’s so, Louie. Just not the way you might picture it. We won’t get things back how they used to be. But if you think it’s going to be okay again someday, it will be. If you believe in goodness, it’s still there.

  Sometime soon, she thought, they would send out invitations. They would find a place—not a church maybe, but a big beautiful room or, if they waited a few more weeks till the warm weather came, some outdoor spot—and maybe they could rent one of those portable dance floors. If she had her way Mark Morris would be there, but there would be someone to dance anyway, in a red leotard and a boa, with a zest for life. Josh would not have his bass that day, but there would be other musicians, friends of his probably, and he would know all the songs they should play.

  Kate would come back from Hawaii, and probably even though they hadn’t gotten along that well, her aunt Pam would be there. Amelia. And lots of other people, friends. She thought Garrett would want to come, too, and if he did, she would tell him, You should bring Carolyn.

  She would not wear a black dress to her mother’s service. She would wear a yellow one. She would sit next to her brother, and even though sometimes it was hard for him, sitting still, this particular time she believed he would manage.

  They would be very sad that day, and for many days after. In certain ways always. They would also never be the same as how they used to be. But they would also be happy sometimes.

  Aren’t we lucky? she said to him now, as they walked out of his classroom and down the hall, out the big wide doors of his school into the sunny day, Louie shifting his backpack so he could take her hand.

  What if I never got to have you for my brother? she asked. I would have had to miss you forever.

  Did you know, Sis? he said to her. I learned how to skip.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel came out of the desire to tell the story of how it is that a young person can survive great and terrible heartbreak, with a certain sense of hopefulness about the future intact. No voice has ever spoken more powerfully on that subject, for me, than that of the young Anne Frank, writing in her diary more than half a century ago from the tiny annex where she and her family lived for two years before their eventual betrayal and capture by Nazis. Her brave, optimistic attitude about life, in the face of great danger and imminent threat of death, was never far from my mind during the writing of this novel.

  I am indebted, as well, to a number of real-life girls whose ideas and stories and feelings I tried to give voice to, through the character of Wendy. They are Giovanna Marrone and Nicole Monestero of Park Slope, Brooklyn, and the seventh grade of Grace Church School, in Manhattan, whose enthusiasm and willingness to assist me helped me to believe in the value of telling this story. The time I spent at Grace School and with Giovanna and Nicole, in September, offered an invaluable glimpse of the buoyancy and grit that a young person is capable of, even in the face of devastation and despair all around.

  Eventually, though later than intended, last fall, I left the United States and settled in Guatemala to write this book. As has been true in the past, my freedom to work was made possible by the great generosity of my dear friend Jim Dicke II of New Bremen, Ohio. Another longtime friend, Mark Nemmers, owner of my all-time favorite bookstore, Bogey’s, in Davis, California, made my absence possible by taking care of all the things a person can’t manage herself when she’s living without telephone, Internet, or reliable mail service—not to mention providing essential information and advice concerning Yo-semite National Park and life in Davis during the winter of 2001-2002, and caring in the most loving way for my dog, Opie. To any reader who might suggest that the small independent bookstore described in this novel is too good to be true, I can only say, go visit Bogey’s.

  This novel was written in the small village of San Marcos, La Laguna, on the shores of Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. My first reader was Didier Verbrug, a gifted young writer who put aside the pages of his own novel in progress, many evenings, to switch from Dutch to English for the purpose of listening to mine. He was an unlikely reader but an invaluable one, as were—a little later in the process—the fourteen wonderful writing students who joined me in Guatemala last February, who stayed up late more than once, after long days of work on their own manuscripts, so I could read them portions of mine. They were my American (and Canadian) ears when I needed them most.

  Josh Needleman—bass player supreme—informed me on the subject of playing stand-up bass. My friend Joe Heavey can always be depended on, when my computer cannot. Bridget Sumser reminded me of how it is to be a fourteen-year-old girl, when I forgot. Vicky Schippers—always a treasured reader—talked to me about Brooklyn, with the love and insight of a mother who has raised five children there. Graf Mouen, my brother of choice, collaborator and friend for thirty years, and the one with whom I traveled to Ground Zero, late in the middle of the night after that first terrible morning, has—all my adult life—provided me with mind-altering inspiration.

  Charlie Bethel, my older son, saved me from grievous errors concerning the art of skateboarding. It was missing him as I did this year and thinking back on the child he once was that inspired me to conjure, on the page, the character of a four-year-old thumb-sucking boy with a dreamer’s love of costumes, and unwavering devotion to his older sister. My daughter, Audrey Bethel, who is not the girl in this novel but who endured some of the same struggles my young character did, as a child of divorce, caught in the middle, taught me more than anyone ever has, over the years, about how it is to love two parents who no longer love each other. And if her brothers are the model, in this story, for brotherly devotion to a sister, she is the model for a sister’s devotion, back.

  I am indebted to Jan Weil, child psychologist with the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, who agreed to read my manuscript in its earlier stages and offered essential insight into the experience of children who lost a parent on 9/11, and to Kathi Morse, bereavement counselor with the North Shore Family and Child Guidance Center in Roslyn, New York, who also took the time not only to read my manuscript but to share with me so many important lessons that came out of her many months of counseling children and families of 9/11 victims.

  At the time when I embarked on writing this novel, I could not have conceived of intruding into the private grief of anyone directly affected by the terrible events of that September day. Many months later, though—and recognizing that the story of every single one of those people remains utterly unique—I sought out the experiences and observations of people who had gone through some of what my fictional character does. I am indebted to Tara Feinberg, whose father, Alan Feinberg, was a fireman with Engine Company 59, killed in the line of duty at the World Trade Center, September 11. Another
whose experiences and insight informed my story is George McAvoy, of Brooklyn, New York, a counselor and brother of John McAvoy, Ladder Company 3.

  Three writers—one I never met, two whom I am lucky enough to count as good friends—offered crucial guidance and inspiration for this project. Judy Blume, who understands young people as well as any writer I know, was one of the first people with whom I talked about the idea of this novel. Jacqueline Mitchard gave my character her name, and so much more.

  The gift, from Carson McCullers, was her exquisite novel The Member of the Wedding, which my daughter, Audrey, and I read aloud to each other over the course of ten irreplaceable days we spent together last fall. The love my character expresses for that novel is mine.

  No editorial assistant has ever offered more support or encouragement to me than Nichole Argyres—a calm and reassuring voice at the end of the telephone on many hard and lonely days. I am deeply grateful to the time and thought given this novel by Stephanie von Hirschberg, a wonderful editor and, now, agent, as well as my fellow writing instructor on Lake Atitlan. Special thanks goes to Joanne Brownstein, of the Brandt and Hochman Literary Agency, and to Sara Sanchez, for help way beyond the call of duty in procuring the rights to the lines of books quoted in these pages, and for taking care of many other things besides.

  My agent, Gail Hochman, remains unfailingly supportive and fiercely loyal, in addition to being a deeply perceptive reader and a voice of reason when mine falls somewhere short, and a true friend.

  Once again, I want to thank my treasured editor, Diane Higgins, whose enthusiasm and support was present for this novel from that dark September day when I first told her my idea to this one, a year later. What Diane brought to our many-months-long dialogue concerning this novel—as she has in the past—is not only her perfect pitch for language and unerring sense of story, but an understanding of the lives of children and parents and what it means to be a mother, a sibling, a child, that mirrors and complements mine as closely as that of any person I have ever known.