ICE-BLUE QUIET SMACKS ME when I open the front door after school. It’s been this way every day since the diagnosis, six days ago.
“Hi, Mom, I’m home!” I yell into the loud quiet, but I know she won’t answer me.
She’s curled up on her side on the couch. She’s still wearing her pink flannel nightgown and green wool sweater. Her eyes are wide open, but she doesn’t look like she’s seeing anything. There’s a bowl of tomato soup with a spoon in it on the coffee table. Soggy pieces of saltine crackers float in the cold orange soup.
“Mommy,” I say, and crouch down next to her. I rub her head really gently, just the way she likes.
“Chirp,” she says in the littlest voice. Her breath smells like something that needs to be cleaned out of the fridge.
She doesn’t ask me how my day was. She doesn’t tell me to change out of my school clothes and into my play clothes. She just lies there with her eyes open.
“Do you need anything?” I ask.
“No,” she says.
“I’ll go change into my play clothes and put my school clothes in the hamper,” I say.
“Okay,” she says.
“And then I’ll come right back.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Have you eaten anything?”
“Uh-huh,” she says.
She’s my mother, so I’m supposed to believe her. What I know is that she’s barely been eating all week, because she’s so depressed, and Dad’s really worried. Last night he made her kasha varnishkes, which is food from her childhood, and she promised that she’d eat it, but she just pushed the kasha and bow-tie noodles around on her plate like a little kid.
I take a deep breath and hold it while I climb the stairs. I hold it while I walk to my room. I hold it while I jump, one, two, three, on my bed. I hold it three more jumps, just to be safe.
If I can take off my skirt, turtleneck, tights, and shoes before I count to fifteen, everything will be okay. If I can toss my clothes into the hamper without having anything fall on the floor, everything will be okay. Okay. I pull on my purple corduroy bell-bottoms. They’re the color of blackberries. I pull on my Saltwater Dance Brigade sweatshirt and then change my mind, since being reminded of the dead-soldier dance might make Mom even sadder. Should I wear a nice bright color to cheer her up? Or would it be easier on her if I were a little gloomy, too? According to Miss Gallagher, white isn’t its own color but all of the colors mixed together, so I guess it isn’t cheery or gloomy. I pull on my white turtleneck.
“Coming, Mom!” I yell. “I’ll be right there!” As if she’s called me, as if she’s waiting.
“I’m so sorry,” Mom says when I walk into the living room. “I’m so, so sorry.” That’s pretty much all Mom says these days. I’m not exactly sure what she’s apologizing for. I’ve tried to ask her, but she just says, “Oh, Chirp,” and shakes her head.
“Okay, Mom,” I say, “time for the show. C’mon. You have to sit up so you can see.”
Mom doesn’t move.
“You have a front-row seat, Mom. You have the best seat in the house. Sit up, Mom. You don’t want to miss it.”
Mom slowly uncurls herself. She rolls onto her back. She just lies there, staring up at the ceiling, like she’s forgotten what she was doing.
“Mom.” I reach my hands out to her. I pull her up and tuck a pillow behind her back. Now she’s sitting.
“Two minutes to showtime,” I say. I run to the kitchen and grab the record player. I run up to Rachel’s room and grab her pink plastic box of 45s. When I get back to the living room, Mom’s head is bent forward so her chin is resting on her chest. Dad says she’s been having a terrible time falling asleep, because she’s feeling so down. He gives her sleeping pills, since he can get a prescription because he’s a psychiatrist, but the medicine doesn’t help her.
I put the record on.
“And now, for your entertainment, Lily of the Valley will spin and dive, twist and jive, to the lovely strains of ‘Build Me Up, Buttercup’!” I say in my radio voice.
Mom lifts her head, but she looks sorrowful. Sorrowful means “full of sorrow,” and that’s exactly what Mom is. I start off with my eyes closed, just tapping my foot. By the time I’m done, she might be smiling. Why do you build me up, build me up, buttercup, baby … I shimmy my shoulders. I wiggle my hips. I twist my way over to the corner of the room so that I’ll have space to do my leaps. First I do a simple side leap. Mom taught me how to do them when I was really little. Now here’s the tricky switch leap. It’s a fake-out where it looks like I’m going to leap with my right leg but actually I bend my right leg and kick it back while I leap forward on my left leg. Three leaps. Three nailed landings. Pah pah pah. An attitude leap is the hardest. Mom showed me how to do them at the beginning of the summer at Heron Pond in water up to my armpits. She picked me up so that I could practice the positions underwater. “Okay, Snap Pea. Right leg stretched out long and strong in front of you, left leg lifted high and bent behind you, back arched, chin up. There you go. That’s it! That’s my dancing girl!” Then I tried the leap over and over again in shallow water, because the soft, wet sand makes for a nice, easy landing.
“And now for some attitude,” I say. I wonder if it’s called an attitude leap because a perfect one can change your attitude. I really want Mom’s to change, because I can’t see any sparks left in her eyes and she doesn’t even answer the phone when she’s home all day alone, which her friend Clara says is disturbing behavior, since everyone in the Saltwater Dance Brigade adores her and wants to help her pull through this tough time and she can lead a good life with MS but they can’t help if she won’t let them and would I please encourage Mom to pick up the phone herself the next time since Clara, of course, is always happy to hear my sweet voice but it’s not really me who she’s worried about and I do understand, don’t I?
The music’s building up right before it’s going to fade out at the end. I—I—I—I need you-ou-ou, more than anyone, darlin’. I twirl twice, and then I spring into the air. My back leg’s bent just the way it’s supposed to be, front leg straight and strong. I arch my back. I’m flying through the air. I land right in front of the couch. I look at Mom to check on her attitude, to see if she’s smiling.
Her face is buried in her hands. She’s rocking back and forth. She’s mumbling to herself. Maybe she’s doing her own version of what Zayde, Mom’s father, did when he visited us when I was five. Every morning he bowed and swayed and chanted in a beautiful box of sunlight in front of the window in Rachel’s room. Rachel explained to me that her window faced Jerusalem. Zayde was praying to God.
“This should fill you with a sense of wonder,” Miss Gallagher says, pointing to the gray rock stuck behind a metal fence that’s stuck behind some fancy white columns. I’m still too full of bus sickness to be filled with wonder.
“It’s just a gray rock,” Joey mumbles.
“With a crack in it,” Lisa B. says.
Miss Gallagher starts in on her Plymouth Rock speech, which is pretty much like Mrs. McHenry’s Plymouth Rock speech from this exact same field trip last year.
“I think it shrinked,” Sean whispers, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“It did not,” Dawn says, all huffy. “It was just this little last year, too.”
“Enough!” Miss Gallagher says. “This rock is a significant part of our nation’s history, and it deserves our respect. With Thanksgiving approaching, we should be thinking about the great gift of—”
“Turkey!” Sean shouts, all excited, and everyone cracks up. Miss Gallagher turns pink, grabs Sean’s arm, and marches him away to sit by himself under a maple tree. When she comes back, she takes a deep breath and talks, talks, talks about the Pilgrims, like her words are acorns that she’s whipping at us. I wish that I was sitting by myself under a maple tree and looking up through the branches at the bright leaves. I wish that while I was under my tree the wind would blow, shhhhoooo, and make the leaves drift down on me. I wish I was getting buried under red and orange and yellow leaves and I could just reach out and choose the prettiest ones to bring home to Mom, since she’s missing fall because she won’t go outside, not even to the front door to take a peek, not even when Dad, Rachel, and I all stand together with the door wide open and say things like Wow, the Morells’ maple looks like it’s on fire and I’ve never seen our birch tree quite so yellow to try to lure her over.
Claire raises her hand. Miss Gallagher points to her and says, “Claire, question?” and Claire nods. Miss Gallagher looks happy.
“When are we eating lunch?” Claire holds up her pink Barbie lunch box.
Miss Gallagher’s shoulders droop. “When I’m done teaching you about the significance of Plymouth Rock.” Now her words aren’t acorns. They’re thick and oozy, like the mud in the mudflats where the oysters and clams live.
I take the world’s tiniest step backward. Dawn, on my left, doesn’t notice, but Joey, on my right, does. He looks at me. I don’t want him to get me in trouble, so I don’t look back. I nod like I’m listening to Miss Gallagher while I take another tiny step backward. This time, Joey comes along. Leaves crunch on the pavement under his feet. He smells like lime. Joey takes the next step backward. I come along. I hold out my fingers, one, two, three, and we go together. We’ve got enough free space in front of us now that someone walking along might think that we’re two brave runaways who left our unhappy homes and hatched a smart plan to listen in on school groups so that we can get some education and grow up to be important members of society. One, two, three, step back. One, two, three, step back. The trick is not to move too far too fast.
When Miss Gallagher finally says, “Okay, okay, lunch time. Stay within sight and within shouting range,” Joey starts running backward, lifting his knees up high and pumping his arms like he’s in the cartoons, and he looks so funny that I start laughing, which makes it hard to keep up with him.
“Never weaken, matey!” he shouts at me, so I know that he’s happy that I’m coming, too.
“Heck no, matey!” I yell, and we laugh and keep running backward, away from everybody, but they don’t notice. The wind is tossing around Joey’s hair. It looks like a messy heap of straw. My ears ache on the inside, since I’m not wearing my purple hat. We run until we come to a bench right by the water.
“I wonder how good Miss Gallagher can see,” Joey says.
“I wonder how loud she can yell,” I say.
Joey smiles and plops down on the bench. He pulls his blue wool sweater off, spreads it out on the bench, and smoothes out the wrinkles with his hands. He reaches into his brown paper bag, pulls out a sandwich on white bread, and lays it down on the sweater. He reaches in again, pulls out another sandwich, and puts it down right next to the first one. Then he moves the first sandwich over and carefully puts a bag of potato chips in the space between the two sandwiches. He smoothes out the sweater wrinkles again.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m eating lunch,” he says. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
It looks like he’s doing a lot of nothing, just like he did with the wing by the side of the road on Halloween, but I don’t say anything. I sit down, careful not to bump his sweater, pull out my cheese sandwich, and start eating. The sun keeps going in and out between the clouds and making cool shapes in the water.
“Lemon,” Joey says, pointing to one of the shapes.
“Clarinet.” I point to another.
Suddenly a puff of wind turns a bunch of dried leaves into a minicyclone. It spins on the pavement right in front of us. Joey puts down his sandwich and stands up. He sticks his arms out and just stands there, like a cross. Maybe it’s a Catholic religious thing that you do when you see a minicyclone. Joey starts spinning, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He tips his head back and whirls around and it looks really fun, so I jump up. I don’t stand still like a cross, because I don’t think I’m supposed to, just like I’m not supposed to say Jesus, so I say Cheez Whiz when we sing Christmas carols at school, but spinning feels good, spinning feels really good, like jumping into Heron Pond and swimming underwater on a 3 h’s day.
“Free at last! Free at last! Great God Almighty, I’m free at last!” Joey shouts.
“Free at last! Free at last!” I shout.
“Cowabunga!” Joey yells.
“Bowacunga!” I yell. I open up my mouth, and cold air rushes in.
Now we’re slowing down. Everything is mixed up and not at all like it usually is, and that feels exactly right. I’m a little sick and dizzy, but there’s sweet in my throat, like I’ve just chewed a giant gumball.
“Joey?” I say, but I’m not sure what it is I want to ask him. He doesn’t say anything, and when I look at him, his eyes are closed and he’s swaying back and forth. Miss Gallagher is calling, “Children, it’s time!”
“I can’t hear her,” Joey whispers.
“Me neither.” I close my eyes. “I can’t see her.”
“Me neither,” Joey says.
“I guess we’re breaking the rules.”
“And we’re rude and noisy and lousy little turds,” Joey says, opening his eyes. He looks at me and smiles. “Rude and noisy and lousy little turds! Rude and noisy and lousy little turds!” he chants, jumping up and down. “Sing it loud and sing it proud!” he yells. “Rude and noisy and lousy little turds! Rude and noisy and lousy little turds!” We jump together. We jump until our faces are red. We jump until our hearts are pounding. We jump until Miss Gallagher has called us two more times.
“Okay, okay, here we come,” Joey whispers. He’s taking loud breaths while he carefully packs his lunch back in his lunch bag, then shakes off his sweater and ties it around his waist. I pack up, too. We walk back slowly, even though we know we should be rushing, even though we might get in trouble.
“Hear that?” I say, grabbing Joey’s arm.
“What?” He stops walking and freezes, just like I want him to.
“There!” I say. “Ah-ooo, ah-ooo.”
Joey tips his head to the side. He closes his eyes.
“It’s a common eider. A female,” I whisper. “They make pillows and quilts out of their feathers.”
We stand still together. Joey keeps his eyes closed, and I don’t let go of his arm.
Ah-ooo. Ah-ooo. The duck calls even louder.
“Cool,” Joey says, opening his eyes. He’s smiling like he’s really happy. Then he shakes his head hard and says, “Wait a second. How?”
“How what?”
“How do they do it? How do they get the feathers?” Suddenly he looks mad. He’s staring at me like I’ve done something wrong.
I let go of his arm. “They don’t hurt the ducks. They just collect the feathers from the nests after the ducklings have moved out.”
“Cool,” Joey says.
When we’re back at the maple tree that Sean had to sit under, Joey smiles at me and says, “Say it, don’t spray it!” Then he runs ahead to the bus, where everyone is lining up. I take my time and am the last one in line, which really doesn’t matter at all, because Dawn always saves me a seat.
When I get home from school, something is different. I feel it when I open the front door. No ice-blue quiet. Just a crackling sound that I can’t figure out. I walk into the living room and look on the couch. Mom’s not there.
“Mom?”
No answer.
“Mommy?”
No answer.
I check the kitchen table to see if there’s a note for me. No note.
I walk upstairs. The crackle is a little louder. I check Mom and Dad’s bedroom, but it’s empty. I knock on Rachel’s closed door, even though she’s supposed to be at chorus practice. She doesn’t yell, “Come in!” The bathroom door is open just a crack. I push it with my foot. Rachel’s sitting on the counter by the sink, staring at the mirror. She has something silver in her hand, and she’s poking at her face with it. The radio’s on, but it’s just playing crackle. I guess she doesn’t notice.
“Rach?”
“What?” She doesn’t turn to look at me. She doesn’t stop whatever she’s doing.
I walk into the room and sit down on the toilet. Tweezers. She’s pulling out her eyebrow hairs.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m plucking my eyebrows,” she says. “Giving them some shape.” She’s humming to herself.
“What’s up with the radio?” I ask.
“Oh,” she says, “I forgot. I was trying to get this cool station that Genevieve and I listen to at her house, but I couldn’t get it to tune in.”
She plucks. I watch. The radio crackles.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask.
“I’m supposed to be at chorus practice,” she says.
“I know.”
“Dad called my school and told them to tell me to come home so that you wouldn’t be all by yourself.” Rachel plucks a hair and squeezes her mouth tight like she’s sucking on a SweeTART.
“Where’s Mom?” I ask again. There’s a cold rock in my chest. Rachel hasn’t looked at me once.
Rachel shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything.
“Rach,” I say, “did she fall down again? Did her MS flare up? Did she have to go to the hospital?”
“Well …” Rachel puts down the tweezers. She turns off the radio. She runs her fingers through her hair. I can see her brown eyes, Mom’s eyes, in the mirror. She’s looking at herself, not at me. “Let’s see. Number one, no. Number two, no. Number three, yes.”
“She had to go to the hospital? Mom is in the hospital?” The rock in my chest makes it hard to breathe.
Rachel sighs. She swings her legs over the end of the counter so that she’s facing me. She looks mad. Her mouth is short and straight, like a dash, which I just learned is what you use to connect two words together.
“Yes, Naomi,” she says. “Mom’s in the hospital. But not just any hospital. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Our mom is in the nuthouse in Boston.” Rachel tips her head to the side and gives me the angriest fakey smile I’ve ever seen. “Any more questions?”
I shake my head no. The rock is so heavy inside me that I can’t stand up. I’m stuck here on the toilet, because I can’t stand up.
“Do you want to know what I think?” Rachel says. Her hands are tight fists. She’s kicking her feet against the cabinet. “I think this is friggin’ unbelievable. I think this friggin’ sucks.” Then she jumps off the counter, storms out of the bathroom, and slams the door.
I wait and wait on the toilet for Rachel to come back and say that she’s really sorry and being in adolescence is hard and everything is going to be okay and do I want to come into her room with her and dance on her orange rug to “Sugar Sugar” while we wait for Dad to call and tell us that Mom’s fine now, her depression after getting her MS diagnosis has finally lifted. I want Rachel to tell me that Dad said they’ll be coming home tomorrow and we’ll have stuffed clams as a treat for dinner, but she doesn’t.
It’s cold out and even Dad’s down coconut jacket doesn’t keep me from shivering. There are two herring gulls standing by the edge of the water, and they look cold, too, all plumped up and huddled together. I didn’t bring my binocs, since my hands will get too cold without gloves and Mom hasn’t brought the winter clothes down from the attic yet and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask Rachel to help me find them up there, since she was still all mad when I finally left the bathroom.
I lean against my tree and look out at the water. It’s nearly winter, so the water’s gray.
I wonder how long a person stays in a nuthouse.
I wonder if a daughter can visit a mother in a nuthouse.
Suddenly I have a good idea. I don’t see anything but pitch pine and scrub oaks and cattails and dried-out sea lavender, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t here. A lady like her might be an expert hider, since she believes in peace and quiet.
“Hello? Lady? Any chance you’re here?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Listen, lady, I don’t want to step on your privacy. I just have two important questions for you.”
I look carefully to see if anything moves to give her away, like a branch or a clump of marsh grass. It’s a little tricky, since there’s a breeze, like always. It’s hard to know what’s what.
“I’m sure you’d like to help me if you can.” I give her some time. I don’t want to rush her. “I mean, after shooing me away from my own special spot.”
I stand still. I wait, even though I’m freezing my head off.
I walk down to the water. I walk over to the lavender.
“Lady?”
On my way back to my tree, I see something on the ground right near the trunk. A nest. A red-winged blackbird nest. I can tell because it’s woven really neatly, like a perfect basket, and lined with sandy mud. Usually the female hides her nest in the cattails or rushes to keep her babies safe. I pick the nest up. There are pieces of dry grass inside, even though this isn’t nesting season. I poke my finger around in the grass.
“Look, lady. A red-winged blackbird nest. If you come closer, I’ll show it to you. It can be our secret.” I hold the nest out.
She doesn’t say anything. She’s too scared to come see.
“Okay then, listen. I’ll leave the nest right here where I found it. And now I’m going to walk home. We’re having some trouble in our family. You can come take a look at the nest at your earliest convenience.” I put the nest back exactly where I found it. I slowly turn around in a circle, so that wherever she’s hiding, she’ll see me wave good-bye.
From the outside, our house looks warm and cozy. Rachel’s turned on all of the downstairs lights, and they make the windows glow yellow.
“Hi, Rach!” I shout when I come in the back door, like everything’s normal, but she can’t hear me, since she’s got Dad’s stereo turned up really loud. The rule is that we’re not allowed to use Dad’s stereo unless we ask permission, but I guess the rules don’t matter when Mom’s in the nuthouse. The music’s so loud I wonder if the Morells can hear it.
Rachel’s sitting on the living room couch with scraps of fabric all around her and a pair of ratty old jeans on her lap. She looks up when I come in.
“I’ll make us popcorn if you thread the needle,” she yells. I nod, and she gets up and I sit down. I wonder if the Morells will call the police on us, like we did on them last April when Mr. and Mrs. Morell were out of town and Vinnie and Donny threw a party and Dad politely asked them to turn their music down since it was way past midnight and they said, “Of course, Doc,” and then turned it up even louder and threw a beer can against our beech tree.
“We will not let ourselves be intimidated,” Dad said, but I could tell he already was, because his hands were shaking just a little bit and he looked like he wanted to hide in the basement behind the furnace, which is my favorite spot for hide-and-seek.
If the police come to our door and discover that Rachel and I are here at night without our parents again and our music’s too loud and our dinner is popcorn, maybe they’ll wonder if we’d be better off in a foster home, and when Mom and Dad walk in the front door the house will be empty, because we’ve been carted away, and Mom will be absolutely beside herself with worry and heartache, and they’ll have to turn right back around and return Mom to the nuthouse before she even takes off her coat.
I’m scared to turn the stereo down, because I really don’t want Rachel mad at me, but I do it anyway. When she walks in, though, she just says, “Thanks, Chirpie,” and puts a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. She reaches her hand out for the threaded needle, but suddenly I don’t want to give it to her. I didn’t want her mad at me, but now I’m mad at her.
“Why did you stay in that smoky room with all of those weird grown-ups?” I ask.
“What?”
“I had to walk home by myself, and stuff can happen to girls alone at night, especially on Halloween, and you should know that!”
“Oh, Chirp,” Rachel says, but I interrupt her before she can say anything else.
“Things can happen, and things did happen, and things are still happening!” I don’t want to be, but I’m crying.
“You’re right, Chirpie,” Rachel says, sitting down really close to me on the couch. “Everything’s all messed up.” She’s pulling the fabric scraps onto her lap, like they’re fall leaves she wishes would bury her. I pull some onto my lap, too. Purple corduroy. Red-checked cotton. Soft velour the color of melted margarine. Neither of us says anything. We just sit until the record ends and the arm of the stereo lifts up and the turntable stops spinning.
“When’s Mom coming home?” I ask.
My sister shrugs. The quiet between us makes the air feel thick, like someone’s thrown a wool blanket over my head. Rachel grabs a pair of scissors off the coffee table and cuts a square out of some bright green paisley. I hand her the needle, but she puts it down on top of the paisley patch and says, “First, I want to teach you something.” She gets up, takes the record off the stereo, and sticks a new record on.
“Listen to this,” she says. “It tells you all you need to know about really digging a guy. I mean, like, actually wanting him.” Dylan starts singing, Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed, all sweet and croaky, and Rachel closes her eyes, so I close my eyes, too. When the song is over, we open our eyes and eat popcorn with lots of salt while she sews the green paisley patch on some jeans for Bruce Clarkman, who is the boy I have to not ask too many questions about and promise not to tell anyone she really, really digs.