Blue Diary

THE FIRST THING I NOTICED WAS that he could walk past a mirror without casting a reflection. My grandmother always told me that a mirror can shine back a person’s dishonesty, but what did it mean for a man to have no reflection at all? Something bad, I knew that for certain. Something people should stay away from. I carried my knowledge around inside me until it started to hurt, like a splinter in my finger, throbbing and too tiny to see. Every time went into their house, I avoided the living room, where there was a big mirror framed in gold. That was where I’d seen him turn to look at himself. He didn’t seem surprised to find that nothing was there, only empty glass the color of dishwater. He didn’t even flinch.

I told Collie that the living room was too fancy for my tastes, with their nice furniture, and that anything too nice made me nervous because I was bound to break something. Collie believed me because he knows I’m clumsy; he didn’t guess I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I told my best friend—my only friend- -a lie right to his face, and that was just the start of my deception. I like nice things, as a matter of fact. The fancier the better, that’s the way I see it. I want to grow up to be rich, so no one will think they’re better than me, the way everyone at school does. All the same, I had the strangest feeling every time I went in that house, although we stayed clear of the living room where the mirror was, and Collie’s mother was always so nice to me, going out of her way to tell me things that are obviously false, like how I would be beautiful someday, when anyone can tell that will never happen. Not if I wait for a hundred years.

Of course, I made certain not to be there when Collie’s father was around. I could tell when he was about to arrive the way some people say they can sense when it’s likely to rain. I was like a dog who knew when his master was getting close to home, only in reverse. Instead of sitting by the door panting, I did the opposite and got out of there fast. Usually, I went out the side door and headed across Mrs. Gage’s yard, which separates my house from Collie’s, darting past the cherry tree and the willows. Sometimes, when the sky was dark or when the wind was howling, I ran. If Collie tried to stop me, if he said, Come on, Kat, stay, I told him I had a migraine. No one can deny a headache. I know that for a fact because my sister, Rosarie, who just turned seventeen, has migraines and you can’t talk to her when she gets them. She lies on her bed with a cold cloth over her forehead and the lights turned out, and we have to tiptoe around her like she’s the Queen of Sheba. My mother brings her orange juice and Excedrin tablets, and when it’s really bad some sort of medicine my sister shoots into her arm that makes her go limp, like a rag doll, and then she sleeps for ten hours straight, which, if you really want to know the truth, is a big relief for us all.

Lying on her bed, with the lights out and her dark hair tangled on her pillow, my sister actually does look like a queen. I’m always jealous when I stand there watching, though know she’s my sister and I’m supposed to want the best for her. I wish I felt that way, but I don’t. At such times, I am tempted to pour vinegar over her clothes or sprinkle her with sugar water, so when she awakes there will be ants entwined in the strands of her hair and she’ll smell bitter. It’s a terrible thing to feel this way. My jealousy is bound to clog my veins and turn me even uglier than I already am, which is what my grandmother says is the unhappy but well-deserved fate of envious people. When this happens you can see it in someone’s face if you look closely, a faint and poisonous green rising up through the skin. That’s envy, my grandmother tells me. Make no mistake abour it. That’s theír príce to pay.

I am named Katya, after my grandmother, but they have always called me Kat, and I’ve always been curious, probably too much so for my own good. Rosarie says I shouldn’t ask so many questions. She tells me a girl who can’t mind her own business will wind up with nothing but enemies, but I don’t care. My sister is five years older than I am, and in that time she has learned everything she needs to know to get whatever she wants. The meaner she is, the more beautiful she becomes. It’s not fair, but it’s true. She shimmers when she stamps her feet and insists on having her way. She glows when she pulls my hair or calls out a stream of curses.

When I lie on the floor and watch her get ready to go out on Friday nights, I have to admit I’m impressed by her beauty. I find myself doing whatever she tells me—I run to get her mascara, I lend her my hair clips, I search the kitchen for spring water so she won’t have to wash her face with ordinary tap water like the rest of us. I’m her slave and I don’t even like her. I can only guess what it’s like for some unsuspecting individual to see her for the first time; it’s perfectly understandable how fast somebody like that could fall under her spell, how easily they might be taken in by what is only skin deep.

Rosarie pretends to be good when it suits her. She comes home at midnight, the time of her curfew, kisses our mother and grandmother good night and goes upstairs, as if she were the last person on earth to consider breaking the rules. But as soon as everyone’s asleep, she climbs back out her window, like a blackbird, finally free of us, flying down Maple Street, with her long hair trailing behind her. She goes off with her boyfriends, taking as much delight in breaking their hearts as she does in winning them. Everyone knows she swims in Lantern Lake with no clothes on and steals flowers from Mrs. Gage’s perennial beds and lipsticks from the pharmacy. She torments the other girls in town by not caring what they think of her. When it comes right down to it, the only opinion that matters to her is her own.

In the morning, when Rosarie finally gets out of bed, she combs her hair. She yawns and doesn’t notice what falls out from among the strands: fireflies, petals, white moths, heartache. When some new boy follows Rosarie home, our grandmother never lets him past the front door. She shakes her mop at the lovelorn boys in our yard and tells them they’re too young to be pining after someone, especially if that someone is our selfish Rosarie. As far as my grandmother is concerned, those boys are nothing but moths caught up in a spider’s web, but I have compassion for them. I bring them Cokes with ice and listen to their sad stories; I offer them consolation, along with cookies and chips. Someday they’ll think fondly of me, the ugly little sister who sat beside them on the grass, or maybe they won’t remember me; they’ll only recall the sweet sodas they drank as they looked into Rosarie’s window, hoping for a glimpse of her beautiful face.

You would think that what has happened in our family would show up in my sister in some way, that her complexion would turn yellow. or her dark eyes would be dulled, or her red mouth would fade to an ugly white pucker, but none of that has happened. Unfortunately, the same is not true for me. You can see everything in my face, which is why people tend to stay away from me. The ones who are frightened by what they see call me names behind my back, and I don’t blame them. Even the biggest fool could take one look at my miserable complexion and sorrowful features and know well enough to avoid me. Even someone like that could see bad luck written all over my face.

Some people might guess I took a dislike to Collie’s father to get back at my own father for leaving us the way he did, and that I was looking for somebody to hurt, but that wasn’t the case. My father made certain choices because he was sick. It was too bad that my sister was the one who found him. My grandmother and I were up in the attic, going through the belongings she'd brought when she came to stay with us. If it had been me who opened the garage door, everything else would have been easier. I would have known that he loved us, now and forever, but my sister didn’t understand, and our mother’s reaction was worse. She didn’t speak for six weeks after our father died, not even when Rosarie burned his clothes on the back patio. Rosarie poured lighter fluid over everything and lit it up so high that the leaves of the mimosa trees caught on fire and Collie’s father, who is a volunteer fireman, with one of those blue globes he sticks to the top of his car, which allows him to speed to the scene of a fire, jumped over Mrs. Gage’s fence and came running to ensure that our house wasn’t burning to the ground.

This year the leaves of the mimosas have come back blackened, black feathers hanging from the branches, falling on the slate and on our bare feet as if there were a flock of blackbirds living above us. Collie and I sit on the patio to study the mimosas almost every evening. We don’t have to speak about the way my father died: we don’t have to talk at all. Silence doesn’t frighten us. We can just look at each other and recognize that there is pain in this world, even on beautiful nights when twilight settles in our backyards, sifting through the grass and the hedges. We take a blanket out there and look up through the black mimosas; we call out the names of the constellations we know until we’re too tired and dizzy to look up anymore.

I probably would have been on the patio gazing at stars that night if Collie hadn’t come down with a fever. But he was home in bed, and it was no fun being alone in the dark. As a matter of fact, it was kind of scary, with those sour black leaves and so many stars you could never hope to count them all, not if you tried for a thousand years. My sister had a new boyfriend, Brendan Derry, who seemed to think that Rosarie belonged to him, and he wanted her to spend every second of her free time with him. Poor Brendan didn’t have a clue that he’d be gone before long, another speck in my sister’s romantic history Still, Rosarie liked a good time, even when she was breaking somebody’s heart, and I knew she wouldn’t be back for hours. I felt free to go into her room and turn on the TV she'd gotten as a Christmas present from one of her boyfriends the day before she dumped him. None of us remembered his name anymore, but the TV worked great.

I threw myself down on her unmade bed without bothering to take off my shoes. Rosarie was the lazy sister, she was the rude sister, but she was the sister who had everything, and I was the one watching TV all alone. I had brought a bowl of popcorn with me to her room, even though I knew Rosarie would kill me if she found a single kernel in her bed. Frankly, I didn’t care if popcorn accumulated on the sheets. I could be mean, too, after all. I could be selfish and thoughtless when I tried, or at least that’s what people around here said. Maybe that’s because everybody was crying at my father’s funeral except for me. When you do things like that, when you stand there and shut your mind until all you can hear is the humming of bees, people think you don’t have any feelings. They think what they see is what you feel deep inside.

As I sprawled out on the bed with nothing to do but eat popcorn and envy my sister, my mother came in to say good night. She was still pretty, and she wasn’t old, but she wasn’t the same as she used to be. She hardly ever talked anymore. Just the bare essentials. Just Pass the green beans and You have a dentist appointment and Don’t forget to shut the front door when you leave.

Sometimes I’d catch my mother staring across the yards, watching Collie’s parents as they worked out in the garden, laughing and having so much fun. I knew what she was thinking. She’d been shortchanged, with my father and all. She was forty-six years old and living with her mother and her two thankless daughters, and how had that happened? Once she’d figured that out, she’d probably start talking, but for now, she was keeping it simple. She sat on the edge of Rosarie’s bed and ran her hand through my hair, even though her fingers caught on the snarls at the base of my neck. Those knots hurt, but it had been so long since anyone had touched me, I didn’t complain. I have terrible hair that sticks up where it shouldn’t and makes me even uglier than I already am. When I see Rosarie’s beautiful long dark hair, I want to pull it out, and every time I feel that jealousy. I know my true self. In spite of everything Rosarie’s done and how selfish she is, I’m far worse than she’ll ever be.

After my mother went to bed, I stayed in Rosarie’s room, eating popcorn and making a mess. I could feel myself curdling; I was a sour pudding, a recipe made of envy and spite, green at the edges. When I feel that kind of badness inside me, I am capable of anything. I really am. I opened the window even though it was raining. I did it on purpose, just to see something of my sister’s be ruined. I let raindrops splatter all over Rosarie’s pillow; and her white quilt, and her night table where she keeps her jewelry box, the one my father gave her for her sixteenth birthday, a gift she now says is nothing but a piece of junk.

I had the TV on, but I was busy sorting through my sister’s jewelry, the tangled gold necklaces various lovestruck boys had given her, the earrings missing crystals and beads, the silver rings she wore on all of her fingers. When his picture came on, I wasn’t really listening. I just looked up and there he was, as if the image that should have been cast in the mirror had somehow arisen on my sister’s TV screen. I reached over and turned up the sound. It was one of those real-life crime shows, and although I had missed most of what they’d said about him, I did hear his name. It wasn’t Ethan Ford, that was the strangest part, it was something entirely different, but that was definitely his face, the one with no reflection, so I wrote down the number to call.

I sat on Rosarie’s bed for a while, and after a time I went out her window. By then it had stopped raining, and the streets were wet and shining, as if stars had been mixed in with the asphalt. My father did what he did because he didn’t want to drag us through any more pain, but it seems I’m the only one who understands that he acted out of love, except for our family doctor, Dr. Abbot, who said that courage took place in all sorts of ways you could never even imagine. We were standing in the driveway after my father’s funeral when Dr. Abbot said that, but I don’t think anyone else heard him. They were heartsick, stuck in their own disbelief, but not me. I always expected the worst. I was born to be that way, and when it came to Collie’s father, I have to say I wasn’t as surprised as somebody else might have been to discover that Ethan Ford wasn’t everything he pretended to be.

I went down to Hannah’s Coffee Shoppe on the corner of Front Street and Lincoln Avenue. I could see Rosarie in there, having a grand old time with her friends. Brendan Derry was all over her: he looked so proud and pleased with himself, but that wouldn’t last. By next week he’d start to appear chalky, he’d cry himself to sleep and wonder what on earth he’d done wrong. I thought about talking the situation over with Rosarie, confiding what I’d seen on TV, but she always made me feel stupid, so after a while I just decided by myself I went to the pay phone in the parking lot and made the call. When I got home, my grandmother was waiting for me. She was sitting in the kitchen with the black candles she’d found in my room and the rest of the supplies I’d sent away for, and she wasn’t happy.

“What is this supposed to be?” she asked me, but she knew. The manufacturer’s advertisement swore that if used properly these items would dissolve the curtain that separated this world from the next, but I wasn’t so sure. I had been trying to contact my father for nearly a year, and so far I’d had no results.

My grandmother was usually right about such matters. I sat down and had a cup of tea with her and thought about her advice. My hands had been shaking ever since I’d gotten back from the phone booth outside the coffee shop, but my grandmother didn’t seem to notice. I feared I might just have changed what was meant to be with the phone call I’d made, or maybe my seeing Collie’s father’s photograph on TV and calling in was a part of what was meant to be in the first place, and now I’d never know which one it was. Not for sure. I’d simply have to live with the doubt hanging over me.

I had found if you didn’t expect much, you weren’t disappointed as much. That’s probably why I liked Collie; he was the opposite of me. He saw the best in everybody. When I tried to get him to hate someone at school, he’d shake his head and laugh, and there wasn’t anything I could do to get him riled up and vicious the way I was sometimes.

“Sometimes.” That was the kind of answer my grandmother always gave, the kind that gave you room to move around in but didn’t quite offer you any peace of mind, so that the answer wound up being more work than the question had ever been in the first place. She knew there were things that could never be explained, and that people had obligations in this world. When my father got sick, she moved here from Hartford, Connecticut, and she must have left her cat behind, the one she loved so much, because Rosarie is allergic to dander. She left almost everything to take care of us, and I had to wonder how many people would be willing to do that.

I guess if I had one good quality it would be my loyalty. I take after my grandmother that way. I had never turned my sister in no matter what she did wrong. I had found plenty of evidence in her room when I was snooping around and trying on her clothes. I’d discovered marijuana and condoms. I’d examined her birth control pills and the packets of love letters that were filled with details I didn’t understand, but I never did tell a soul. On this night I stopped off in Rosarie’s room to think things over; the truth was, I went there because my room was too childish for the sort of things I had to think about. I guess I was mad at my sister or wanted to get back at her in some way for sitting in Hannah’s, sharing a plate of French fries with a boy who was in love with her and having fun when I had to make a decision that could ruin people’s lives. I must have been angry, because before I left her room to go to bed, I locked her window so she couldn’t sneak back in.

When she came home later, Rosarie had to climb in through the bathroom window, and in the process, she slipped in the shower and broke a bottle of her favorite bath oils. She came marching into my room, smelling like vanilla and steaming mad. She pulled my hair and called me a traitor but I didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, she could pull most of my hair right out of my head and I wouldn’t be the worse for wear. I’d probably look better bald than I did ordinarily.

That next week I had a terrible feeling in my stomach. I wouldn’t go over to Collie’s. kept telling him I had headaches, the way my sister did, and I kept a cold compress on my forehead whenever he came over to watch TV Instead of paying attention to any of the programs we tuned in to, I was mostly keeping an eye on him, thinking about how good he was and how hed never hurt anyone and how he always expected the best from everyone. After a while. seeing his father’s picture on TV felt like a dream, and climbing out my sister’s window to call in and report him seemed as though it had happened to someone else entirely. I was starting to forget the whole thing. It’s amazing what you can block out when you really try. Although some things stay with you no matter what; they affect everything that you do. My mother, for instance, no longer parked her car in the garage. She wouldn’t even open the door. Squirrels could be nesting there, the roof could be falling in, and she still wouldn’t go near. Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to forget.

One day we got off the school bus on the corner of Maple and Sherwood Streets and I knew something terrible had happened, only this time to Collie. It was a hot day. and Collie and I had done our homework on the bus so we’d be free. It was the last week of school, and the day was as hot as August, with the sky a shimmering blue and the leaves turning dusty the way they did in the heat and so many birds singing you could hardly hear yourself think over their calling. knew something was wrong because the Fords’ front door was open, and they never went into the house that way. Someone had left so quickly, he hadn’t even bothered to close the screen.

When we went inside, it felt like one of those houses you see in films of disasters, how everything is always left exactly as it was at the moment when catastrophe struck. There was a bowl of strawberries on the counter, leaking red juice onto the wood, and a coffee cup left in pieces on the floor. Above the sink, the clock was ticking, too slowly, it seemed, for the time to be right. Through the window, I could see Mrs. Gage’s cherry tree, sprinkled with the last of its snowy white flowers. Collie went through the house, room after room, calling for his mother, but anyone could tell that no one was home.

Someone else might have called Collie a momma’s boy, but I didn’t make judgments like that. How could I when I had been such a daddy’s girl? I would have been nobody’s favorite if not for my father, who cared about people’s true selves, not what they looked like or how mean they might appear to be.

I suggested we go to my house, where my grandmother probably had her soap opera tuned in. Whenever we watched it with her, my grandmother would tell us what was going on in the story, which she'd been tuning in to for more than twenty-five years, and her narration was always much more interesting than what was actually happening. We had fun trying to figure things out before the truth was revealed—who would run away together, who’d come down with amnesia, who would find true and undying love but that day I felt sick just looking at the TV I wished I hadn’t been watching that night when Ethan Ford’s picture came on. I wished I lived in another town, someplace where nobody knew me and I didn’t have any obligations to do the right thing.

Collie’s mother didn’t come for him until it was very nearly dark. She knocked on the door too hard, the way people do when they’re in a hurry, or frightened, or when their world has just fallen apart. When my grandmother went to let her in, she took one look at Collie’s mother and said, “Jorie, what happened?”

Jorie Ford stood in our doorway and you could see how wrong something was from the expression on her face. Her hair was knotted and her clothes were wrinkled, and when my grandmother gave her a little hug, Mrs Ford started crying right there, half in and half out of our house. It happened fast, and then she pulled herself together just as fast. She was still upset, but she wouldn’t let any tears fall. Not in front of us. Not with Collie there.

Collie and I were sitting on the floor in the front room, sharing a bag of potato chips my grandmother had told us would ruin our dinners. Right before his mother knocked on the door, Collie had turned to tell me something; his face was animated and it seemed as if he was going to say something funny, he always had dozens of jokes, but he never did speak. When he saw that his mother had arrived, Collie got up and went to her. As soon as she put her arms around him, Jorie Ford started crying again. You could tell she didn’t want to, she was trying with all her might to hold it back, but sometimes it’s impossible to do that. I know that from personal experience. You have to turn yourself cold as ice in order to stop yourself, and then if anything falls from your eyes it will only be blue ice crystals, hard and unbreakable as stone.

I could tell from the way my grandmother was watching Collie and his mother that she was thinking about how quickly things could turn from good to bad. I would bet she was reminding herself of how precious every peaceful moment was, which is what she told me after my father died. She said that we had to savor whatever time we had in this world and believe in the ultimate goodness of the universe, but I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered. I bclicved I had lost my father, and I didn’t really care much about the goodness of the universe without him in it. never said any of this to my grandmother. I would never do that. People who have faith were so lucky, you didn’t want to ruin anything for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat such individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you.

My grandmother asked if there was anything she might do to help. Considering the fact that Jorie had brought dinner over for us for two weeks straight last summer, there had to be something we could do to return the favor, for this was clearly her time of need. But Jorie shook her head; there was nothing. The sky was turning murky by then, a marine blue dipping into darkness around the edges. You could smell cut grass and heat even now. Tomorrow, the town pool would be opening, and Collie and I had plans to get there early, but I could tell we wouldn’t be going. There would be races and diving contests, the way there always were on opening day, but it wouldn’t matter. Not to us.

“At least come in for dinner.” My grandmother reached to draw Collie’s mother inside our house, but Jorie took a step back. She didn’t want to be touched and she didn’t want anyone to be kind to her. She was filling herself up with ice, and when a person starts doing that any human contact can be dangerous.

“We just want to be alone.” Jorie’s voice was ragged and her mouth looked sour. She was usually so nice to everyone. She brought my grandmother vegetables from her garden, armfuls of lettuce and snap peas so fresh Rosarie and I argued over who would get the larger portion. As soon as these rude words were out of Jorie’s mouth, you could tell she was sorry She stepped forward and put her arms around my grandmother. “I didn’t mean that. I’m not myself,” she told us both, and we nodded as if we understood, then watched as she and Collie walked across Mrs. Gage’s lawn to their own house, where all the lights were off and all the windows had been left open.

My grandmother and I went out to the porch and stood there in the dark. I could tell we both felt like crying, but for different reasons. One by one the lights turned on in Collie’s house, but I already knew: his father wasn’t there. They’d come to take him away while we were at school, and maybe that was for the best. Maybe it’s better not to be at home when such things happened. Close your eyes and count to ten whenever sorrow strikes you, that’s what my grandmother recommends, although in my opinion even ten thousand isn’t a high enough number. But tonight, my grandmother didn’t offer any advice. She only circled her arm around me, and she didn’t even tell me not to be afraid of the dark the way she usually does. We could hear the leaves on the mimosa trees moving. We could hear the caterpillars that would turn into white moths before long. Soon enough it would be exactly one year since my father died. The night before it happened, he stood underneath this same sky and told me he would always love me, no matter what. He said that if somebody really loved you, you would always hear his voice somewhere inside your own head.

We couldn’t see them anymore. Their door was closed, and it was just as if they’d never even been standing here with us and we’d been alone the whole time. It’s like that when people leave you behind. You get to wondering if you ever had them in the first place. Still, it was a beautiful night, and my grandmother went out to the lawn that had been in bad shape since last summer, uncared for and littered with weeds. She picked a pod of milkweed and blew on it until the seeds lifted into the sky. She has always told me that you could blow your bad fortune away by doing so, and as I watched the milkweed drift upward into the sky. I wished I still believed in things like that. I wished I could fly our troubles away.