by Delia Ephron
“Sean!”
“Dad?” I whirl around.
My mom, outside, gapes at me through the kitchen window. Ever heard the expression “jaw-dropping”? Well, Mom’s jaw was on the driveway right next to the car wheels. “My God,” she says. “I thought you were Sean.”
“Me?”
She opens the back door and totters in.
“The clothes, the hat. I don’t know, I thought…” She dumps her grocery bag on the table and sinks into a chair.
I see him again at that moment, crumpled on the floor, one leg in one direction, one in the other. Startled. Mold on his face.
“We have to take those clothes to Goodwill. Pack them up.”
“I’m wearing them.”
“Exactly my point.”
“I was wearing them yesterday and the day before. It’s not my fault that you’re out of control. These are mine, he was mine. You got rid of him.”
“Frances Anne, this is out of hand!”
“You mistook me for a dead man.”
I don’t wait to see her reaction. I hope her jaw hits the floor and stays there. I hope her eyes pop out and bounce off the walls like pinballs. They’re no good to her anyway, because she surely can’t trust them.
For one second I believed he was alive again. Furthermore, thanks to her, I referred to Dad as a dead man. Like that’s all he is.
On my way upstairs, I pass Mel. “Is your mother okay? Honey,” he calls, “are you all right?”
I lean over the banister to watch their reunion. Mom is still collapsed in the kitchen chair. She tilts up her head for a kiss. “Hi, Booper.”
12
“Wake up, Frannie.”
Mashing my face into the bed, I utter agonized throaty moans.
“Frannie.”
She shakes my shoulder.
My head feels like lead, it has to be four in the morning. No, four in the morning was when I went to sleep. “What time is it?”
“Seven. You’re going to work.”
My eyelids refuse to obey signals from my brain, but I manage to prop myself up on my elbows. “What?”
“You’re going to work.”
Now I can see her—this whirlybird hauling boxes away from the bureau, opening drawers, flinging a T-shirt, bra, and underpants onto the bed. “Hey, watch out,” I shout, because she nearly bangs the shelf where I have artfully displayed Dad’s beloved objects: the wavy bird and all the dump treasures. “I won’t work in your flower shop. I hate flowers.”
At that moment her cell phone rings, and in the middle of forcing me out of bed into work slash jail, Mom snaps instructions to Carmen at the flower market. “Three dozen in apricot. Six flats of pansies. Same with ranunculus and petunias. Assorted.” She opens my closet and tosses my Nikes on the bed.
I lie back down.
“Lilies? Let’s see, yellow and white. You pick the roses, whatever looks good. Thank you, Carmen.” She yanks the blankets off me. “I mean it, Frannie. Up.”
“No.” I pull the blankets over my head.
Suddenly the bed sags, so I guess she’s sitting on it.
I flop the covers down. “I don’t want to go to work with you. If I do, I’ll just sit there, and if the phone rings, I’ll tell them, I don’t know what, you’re closed or something. I’ll make them hang up.” I have to stay here. I have to do this thing that Dad left for me, but I can’t tell her that. I won’t tell her. It’s not her business. It’s mine. I’m going to do the puzzle today and every day until it’s finished.
My mom taps the phone against the bedstead. She stares at the wall as if she’s never before seen my amazing Paul Klee poster of Dream City. Her silence gives me the creeps. All I hear is a leaf blower blasting, but far away down the block. I’m not breaking the silence. I’m not working at her stupid store, either.
“Not at the store,” she says finally.
What is she talking about? She’s tricking me to get me to talk, and if I talk to her, she thinks she can talk me into something.
She goes to the bureau and takes a tissue from the box. In the mirror, oh God, not really, I see her blot her eyes and blow her nose. She’s crying. My mom is crying. “I don’t know what to do for you,” she says. Her shoulders shake and little piglike noises squeak out, I guess from trying not to cry and failing.
I have never seen my mom lose it. Not even when the oven didn’t light, and, like an idiot, she looked inside—did Hansel and Gretel teach her nothing? Whoosh, the oven fired up, singed her, and for a month she walked around with no bangs or eyebrows, looking like an egg.
An hour later, I am on a yellow school bus. I’m the oldest person, the only teenager. Everyone else is between the ages of five and ten. I have my lunch in a brown bag. Fact, not opinion: If your mom cries, she can get you to do anything.
13
“You have to ride with the campers,” Mom tells me as a final zetz. A zetz is a zap spiked with extra nasty. “I have to go to work.”
Mr. DeAngelo, the driver, invites me to “sit wherever,” so I collapse in the first available seat, which happens to be right behind him, after a quick alarming glance at the maniacs farther back. Kids bounce up and down, scream, snatch things. One boy dives over a seat back and ends up with his legs poking into the air.
Mr. DeAngelo pulls the bus over. “Rocco, get your ass in the seat.”
I don’t think Mr. DeAngelo is supposed to use the word ass when addressing the kids. Rocco’s legs fall sideways, causing another kid, not visible, to howl—presumably Rocco’s legs have clubbed him. A second later Rocco’s head bobs up. He has a pudgy face, cheeks like fat peaches, and enormous round black eyes. I had a stuffed dog once with exactly the same eyes, only the dog’s eyes were made of felt. “You’re holding up the bus.” Mr. DeAngelo talks to him without turning around. He observes him in the rearview mirror.
“Sit down, dodo.” A girl with pigtails yanks Rocco’s arm, and he plops down out of sight. Now, I assume, he’s sitting. I also assume, because she used the term dodo, that the girl is his sister.
“You can keep driving now, Mr. DeAngelo,” she says.
“Thank you, Lark.”
As the bus continues on, the kid behind me kicks my seat.
I will never forgive my mother for this. Never, as long as I live.
“Why don’t you teach them a song?” Mr. DeAngelo is addressing me via his rearview mirror.
I should teach them a song? How astonishing. Maybe he’ll forget he said it.
“Aren’t you a counselor?”
“Yes.”
“Teach them a song. They like that.”
“I don’t know any.” I close my eyes. Maybe I can nap. Another kick. I swing around. “Don’t kick the seat.”
Two little girls clutching Barbie dolls cease all motion. “Sorry,” one whispers. “I didn’t mean to,” says the other barely audibly, and she sticks her thumb in her mouth. Good grief. I’ve made her revert to infancy. I should have been nice. I should have asked, “Is that Malibu Barbie? I see she has a surf board and is dressed for the beach.” Or at the very least, “What’s your doll’s name?” Although aren’t all Barbies named Barbie? I don’t know—I was never a doll person.
The bus rumbles along out of Hudson Glen and a half hour later turns down a road with a carved wooden sign: a bear pointing with one paw, Lake Winnasaki. And a few minutes later another bear sign, Camp Winnasaki.
With a bullhorn Ms. Thornton booms a greeting. “Welcome, campers!” All the kids crowd over to one side of the bus to see who’s talking. “Hel-lo, how-de-do, hi there, and a hocus-pocus.” She finds nearly twenty ways to let them know they’ve arrived while the bus crunches down the gravel road and parks in front of a small log cabin, the kind Abe Lincoln was born in.
Ms. Thornton teaches biology at Cobweb. That’s how Mom knows about this camp. She probably conned Ms. Thornton into hiring me without an interview by reminding her that I was dadless. I wonder if Mom told her that I love little kids, a big lie
. Ms. Thornton’s classroom is full of slimy creatures like garter snakes, which she lets slither up her arm (“and God knows where else,” Jenna says). When she dissects a frog, she displays the severed legs on her bare palm. Ms. Thornton always mashes down her voluminous, screaming-red hair with a wide, white headband. The result is not quite a hairdo, more like she went to the hospital and got bandaged. She is covered with freckles, even her legs, which I notice through the bus window because she’s wearing baggy plaid shorts.
“Here you go.” Mr. DeAngelo swings the kids out, one after another. When Rocco’s turn comes, the kid declares, “I’m going to leave the bus backward with my eyes shut.” Mr. DeAngelo grabs him anyway. As soon as he lands, Lark shoves Rocco’s lunch box right into his chest so he has to hold it, no choice. “Carry your own lunch, dodo bird. And don’t talk to me again in public.” She is definitely his sister.
Ms. Thornton and several counselors wear white T-shirts that say CAMP WINNASAKI. All the counselors look to be my age. Well, I look old for my age in my opinion, because of my awesome maturity and possible air of tragedy. Maybe they’re older than me. One counselor, a guy with a buzz cut, is doing push-ups. He springs up, performs a few jumping jacks, and shakes his arms to loosen up. I guess you need to be in good shape to handle a bunch of kids under the age of ten.
“Hey, I’m Simon, who are you?” He jogs a circle around me as I trail everyone onto a tennis court that has weeds growing around the edge and cracks in the asphalt, perfect for tripping and falling.
“I’m Frannie.” I give him a Mona Lisa smile. The Mona Lisa is a famous portrait by Leonardo da Vinci of a woman with long brown hair, wearing a scoop-neck top. Dad showed me a picture of it. The important thing isn’t her hair or her clothes—which are nothing to write home about—but her smile. It’s mysterious, no teeth showing, lips pressed together but they go up the tiniest bit at the edges. Dad argued that her smile is mysterious because of her eyes, not her lips. Man, he never shut up about eyes and how they’re the key to everything, but I digress, which means to ramble off on a side track giving other people either anxiety or utter boredom. Jenna and I practiced Mona Lisa smiles in front of the mirror. When someone bugged us at school, we would say, Give him (or her) the MLS. With the MLS, it’s not clear if you’re smiling, being secretive, or, in the case of me with Simon right now, acting superior.
“Frannie,” he repeats. “Frannie-bo-banny.”
Forget the MLS. A total snub is in order.
“Simon. Simon, raise your hand,” calls Ms. Thornton. “Simon teaches canoeing, nature, and sensitivity training.”
“Yo, dudes,” says Simon.
Sensitivity training. Of course sensitivity—Ms. Thornton teaches at Cobweb. She introduces all the counselors except me, then, in a roll call, divides the campers into groups according to their age. Everyone should call her Harriet, Ms. Thornton announces. Whichever group stands in the straightest line will get s’mores at the end of the week, she promises.
Lark raises her hand. “Rocco can’t eat sugar, he’s allergic.”
“We’ll find something else for you to eat, won’t we, Rocco?”
“Me eat flies.” Rocco beats his chest.
“That’s nice. We’ll find you some juicy ones,” says Ms. Thornton.
“I rode on a cloud,” he adds.
“He did not,” Lark calls loudly.
“If I eat sugar, my mom blows a gasket,” says a girl wearing a tiara. “It makes me hyper. Except carrot cake. Are we going swimming?”
A bunch of kids start carrying on about how they had carrot cake for their birthdays. I guess it’s a popular cake type. Ms. Thornton blares through the bullhorn. “Silence, please.” The counselors all put their fingers to their lips to indicate that their campers should obey. Ms. Thornton then disperses the groups to various activities—hiking, canoeing, folk dancing, archery, swimming. I’m the only one left on the tennis court when Harriet notices (it’s going to be hard to get used to calling her Harriet) and claps her hands. “Frannie, I forgot you were coming, and we need you desperately. You’ll set up in there.”
She waves toward a ramshackle barn over near some trees. One side sags, causing the whole structure to tilt—Dad would love that; maybe he would even have appreciated the tarpaper patches dotting the roof. The side windows must be missing or cracked, because the panes are partially sealed with plastic. Harriet rambles on, “I assume you’ve got it all worked out. Your mother says you’re a complete genius.”
At what am I a complete genius? That I would like to know.
Should I admit I’m clueless about the exact nature of the job? It slipped Mom’s mind to tell me, probably because she was so busy crying. And it slipped my mind to ask, because I was so busy being agreeable so she’d stop crying.
At that moment Ms. Thornton, aka Harriet, discovers a bird feather. “My goodness, look at that.” She snatches it from the ground and holds it out. “Can you make use of this in your arts and crafts program?”
So I am the arts and crafts counselor.
A revolting discovery. I don’t know anything about arts and crafts. I draw. D-R-A-W. Art is serious. Arts and crafts—that’s making-potholder time. Trust Mom not to know the difference.
I consider screaming. Can I simply open my mouth in the middle of Camp Winnasaki and howl? For the next eight weeks I’m expected to ride here every day in a bus full of shrieking brats and teach them arts and crafts, something about which I know nothing, when I should be home doing the puzzle.
I leave Harriet Thornton and walk to the barn.
“I’ll send over your first victims in an hour.” She honks a laugh. Her laugh is famous at Cobweb for resembling the call of an elephant.
The barn door refuses to budge. Shoulder first, I throw my weight against it, and it creaks open a few inches, revealing a glimpse of the impediment: a gigantic bale of hay. I squeeze in and then, using my nonexistent muscles, inch the bale away from the door.
It’s nice inside. How unexpected. Sunlight seeps in between loose shingles, and the whole effect is mellow yellow. Straw on the floor, musty smell, old things. To me, comfort food. There’s a large metal windmilly thing—maybe part of a thresher. Although I’m not sure what a thresher is, for some reason that word comes to mind. Dad would have popped his cork over its lovely shape of interlocking circles. He’d have leaped around, viewed it from every angle. The only eyesore—a metal table, quite long, leaning against the wall with a few stacks of folding chairs—must be for my nonexistent arts-and-crafts program. I look around for shelves or a cabinet. None. No supplies as far as I can tell. What is the Honker thinking?
The table, all rusted, makes skin-shivering squeaks as I unfold the legs. Several times it crashes over. That’s my klutzy fault. I set up the chairs around it—now I’m wiped from the most exertion I’ve had in months. I collapse in a chair and stare half-wittedly at the floor, an activity I highly recommend for brain dulling. Soon the floor begins to seem inviting, and the next thing I know—the urge is too compelling—I lie down on it.
Straw prickles my neck, the hard wood chafes my shoulder blades. Gazing up, I notice spiderwebs in the crossbeams, a jagged lightning bolt of a crack in the ceiling, a certain musical quality to the shifting light patterns. I swear there is melody in light. What I mean is, you can think of the wind and the sun and the clouds, even time—all the elements that combine to affect color and the nature of light—as an orchestra playing different tunes in different combinations every second of the day. Dum, de, dum, dum.
I almost cease to exist lying there.
The ground vibrates. How bizarre, although interesting. Then I realize why. Small feet thundering in. Seven-year-olds peer down at me, and looming over, Harriet the Honker. Her forehead crinkles, eyes narrow, probably wondering what sort of weirdo she has on her hands.
“I’m getting horizontal,” I offer by way of explanation. Her forehead furrows until there’s a crease you could dive into. I am freaking the lady out
.
I stand and brush off the straw. Harriet picks a few bits out of my hair.
“What’s horizontal?” asks a boy, scratching his sides.
“Are you itchy?”
“I have twelve mosquito bites.” He lifts his T-shirt. “One, two, three…” He counts nine red spots on his stomach, two on his arm, and one on his ankle.
“What’s your name?”
“Brandon.”
“Well, Brandon with the twelve bites, getting horizontal is an official art term. It means lying down.”
“I’m Pearl. Who are you?” says the girl in the tiara.
“Frannie.”
Rocco is using the thresher-sculpture as a jungle gym.
“Please get down from there, Rocco,” I say.
“No.” He leaps, grabbing at a higher bar.
“Rocco!” I might have shrieked, I’m not sure. I grab his legs and hug them to my chest. “Let go, right now.” He flops over my shoulder, and I deposit him back on the ground. He waves me to come close.
“What?” I ask.
He cups his hands around his mouth. “The moon is a marble.”
“Who told you that?”
“Me. I can cut the sky in two.”
“Oh, well, okay. Stay down here, do you understand? Stay off that, whatever it is.”
“Have fun,” says the Honker, suddenly satisfied, and she splits.
I chase her. “Ms. Thornton. Harriet.”