A Blue So Dark (22 page)

"Mom'll never go for this," I say.

"Oh, yes, she will. She's not exactly capable of arguing right now, anyway. And when she is-" Nell shakes her head. "I may have been out of the picture awhile, but I've known her a very long time, Aura. I'm going to make her see things my way. This time, I'm not going to slink away."

I stare into Nell's cloudless blue eyes, not wanting to scream for the first time in what feels like forever. Is it possible? I start to wonder. Do things really work out in the end? I get the weird feeling that maybe, even in the midst of a psychotic break, Mom was right about something. Maybe we do pedal the earth with our feet-and maybe, just maybe, mine have made the whole world start to turn around.

Many family members of the clinically cuckoo say they wish they d known that feelings of shame and guilt were normal.

'm very disappointed in your behavior as of late, Aura," Fritz says as soon as Nell and I step into her office that looks, this morning, like the inside of a cheerleader's bedroom after a slumber party: pom-poms all over the floor, red and white cheering sneakers on top of her filing cabinet, and about fifty soda cans strewn all over her desk and the chairs. The only difference between this scene and a real cheerleader's bedroom is that the cans don't say diet all down the sides. A giant banner stretched across the length of her office screams CONGRATS CRESTVIEW!

FIRST PLACE IN SQUAD SHOWDOWN 8 YRS. INA ROW!

At least someone had an oh-so happy-dappy weekend.

"Ve-wy disappointed, Auwa," Fritz says, this time around an extra large bite of her breakfast biscuit. She balls up the McDonald's wrapper and tosses it toward the trash can for a three-pointer. She misses.

She slurps the last watery drops out of an enormous plastic cup-the kind you can pick up at any Kum & Goand instantly, I'm thinking about home. Because there are about a hundred of those cups in my kitchen cabinets. I guess some people really do have matching juice glass sets, but Mom and I are more like gas station plastic freebies we rinse out and reuse.

God, I miss her.

"Sorry," Fritz says to Nell, once she finally swallows her enormous ball of McCud. "Just finishing up breakfast." She grabs her second Big Gulp of Dr Pepper and starts sucking away at the straw to wash it all down. Glares at me so hard that I swear I can actually see the grease from her last three Egg McMuffins (the wrappers are all balled up on her desk) slide right into her frown wrinkles.

As any of the cheerleaders that Mrs. Fritz sponsors would say, Ick.

"Leaving campus again with no permission," Fritz chastises. "Taking a non-excused extended absence."

I'm already uncomfortable, because Nell has insisted that I not wear my jeans, like I wanted. She's given me a pair of green plaid slacks and an enormous red jasper neck lace, declaring all the while that green and red are, in fact, complimentary colors and go perfectly well together (What's the matter with you? You should know this. Didn't your mother the painter teach you anything at all?), and telling me that I should never approach any kind of superior looking like a little piece of fluff.

"Fluff gets flicked off of the lapel of a suit jacket," Nell told me. "Don't get flicked away, Aura."

I catch my reflection in the glass panel in Fritz's door, surprised again at how nicely my hips fill out Nell's pants. And I actually like the way her blouse fits my cantaloupe-sized boobs. It crosses my mind that maybe I really wouldn't mind tossing all my oversized hoodies, but I still feel a little silly in the getup. Like I'm a little miniature Nell-all I need to do is bleach my hair stark white and we'd be twins.

And here Fritz is, glaring at me like the fluff Nell warned me not to be. I want to say, See? I could have worn my silly old jeans for this shit, but I don't. I slump down into a chair and think, Great. Here we go, here we go ...

"Excuse me?" Nell snaps. "You're disappointed in her?"

Her tone makes me slide right back up, a smile slowly spreading across my cheeks. Well, well, well. What do we have here ...

"Do you have any idea what this girl has been through in the past few weeks?" Nell asks. "Have you any idea what she's been through these past sixteen years?"

Fritz gulps. "Ms.-Ms. Ambrose."

"Zellers," Nell corrects. "Aura's grandmother."

"School policy dictates that I deal only with a guardian or parent-"

"I am the guardian," Nell says.

"But why-where-why-" Fritz stammers.

"Because her mother has been committed to a shortterm care facility."

"Committed?"

Nell nods. "For schizophrenia."

"For-what?" Fritz asks, picking up a heap of manila folders to expose an entire Pizza Hut box. "What? What?"

"Don't tell me you weren't aware of her mother's condition," Nell snaps. "She was diagnosed back in 1988."

"No-this sort of thing-not as though Aura has the condition herself-our concern-not parental afflictions-" Fritz blubbers.

"It should be in her permanent record, shouldn't it?" Nell asks.

Fritz scrambles to her feet and rushes to a beat-up metal filing cabinet. She opens a drawer (which I half expect to be full of crushed KFC buckets) and pulls out a file. She carries it to her desk, her pantyhose-packed thighs zipping against the material of her businesswoman skirt, and opens it up. "No-see here? On the first day of school, when asked to fill out her in-case-of-emergency card, Aura didn't indicate-"

Nell shoots me a glare. I shrug. Why would I think it was any of their business? Why would I want the faculty's busybody noses stuck so far up in my face, I could see the black hairs poking out their nostrils?

"Aura has actually been her mother's primary caregiver since her parents' divorce three years ago," Nell sighs. "I regret that I wasn't there to help, I'll admit that. But I'm here now. And at least Iwas there when Aura reached out. It's my understanding that Aura was in this very office talking to you when her mother's condition was deteriorating. You have a very bright student in your office-a student who is suddenly cutting class-"

"Yes, but Aura began to make it something of a habit, leaving school grounds. On several different occasions-"

"My dear woman," Nell says (and I love that she's tossed such a condescending dear at Fritz, I love it, I love it), "it seems to me that you had ample opportunity to find out what was going on in Aura's home. Why was there no attempt to contact Mr. Ambrose? Hmm? A call from your office surely would have alerted Aura's father that there was a problem. Perhaps, if you had placed that simple phone call, Aura's mother would not have reached the point of needing hospitalization."

Fritz just gulps and-I wish I had a camera-folds her hands over her desktop and nods.

"I believe that it's high time you started digging a little deeper to find out what's going on with some of your students," Nell says. "It shouldn't be that much work; you only have to deal with last names beginning with A, B, or C-and eat all day, apparently."

Fritz flinches.

"I want an office runner sent right this minute to collect the assignments Aura's missed the past few days. She will start back to class full time tomorrow morning. With," she adds, tossing a look my way, "a good portion if not the vast majority of her assignments completed."

Fritz just works her mouth like she's dying for another gulp of her Dr Pepper, but is afraid to reach for it in front of Nell. Instead, she jumps to her feet and races into the attendance office to find a student worker who will walk my class schedule and bring down my assignments, every last one. As she moves through the hallway outside, I can hear her huffing and puffing, surely because she hasn't had this much exercise in centuries.

Nell rolls her eyes at me. "Incompetent cow," she mutters.

And in that moment, I begin to fall head over heels in love with Nell Zellers.

Schizophrenia is not a preventable disease. It is a bullet traveling from an already fired gun.

e have to haul Nell's elliptical trainer through the back door in four different pieces, the damn thing's so heavy. But the trainer's not the only thing I get stuck lugging in. Nell brings her favorite saucepans and her framed Diego Rivera signed print and about nine tons of clothes. Sweaters, jackets, slacks galore. And heels-red, blue, tweed, patent, suede, toeless. I'm about to tease herWho do you think you are, Imelda Marcos? But she seems so serious about needing it all, I just head back out to her Toyota, wondering how so much crap could have fit into such a tiny little car.

Nell makes a special trip back to her house for her cockatiel and puts him right in the kitchen, where the sunlight is the warmest.

"There you go, Cockamamie," she says, smiling at her pet, which has a bright yellow head and an orange spot on his cheek like he's blushing. "Talk too much, and it's only three steps to the oven."

"I'll roast ya," Cockamamie whistles in a high-pitched slur. "Roast ya."

The whole scene makes me laugh. But while Nell's standing there, talking to the bird, I suddenly see themall those broken pieces of fishing line, dangling from the ceiling, glistening like slender icicles in the sunlight. I think of the missing mermaids, still wrapped up in a blanket in the trunk of the Tempo. And Florida-I could practically pass out, the fumes from the memory of that vacation are so strong. There it is, the burn of salt water up my nose, and Mom saying, "We'll take them. All of them. We're just alike, me and Aura..."

What's wrong with me? How can I be standing here laughing like everything is hunky-dory, a-okay? How selfish can one jerk really be?

I have no idea what they're doing to her, my mother. I mean, Nell says she put Mom in a home-but like what? Like a nursing home, where old people are allowed to sit in their piss and shit and grow bedsores and beg for a sip of water? That kind of home?

I want to puke or scream or pass out or die. Instead, I excuse myself and head back toward my bedroom. I do, after all, have roughly forty-three million hours of homework to finish-and the entirety of The Scarlet Letter to read. Criminy.

My geometry book's spread open on my bed, and I'm giving the first problem what feels like the fiftieth try when I hear it-this rattle. It's unmistakable, you know? Rattlebang, clunkerty-clunk. I raise my head to look out my window that is still engulfed by the same awful garden of crazy flowers that have swirled across my bedroom walls for years. Sure enough, on the street beyond the glass, there it is, a red p.o.s. with blue fenders.

Janny Jamison.

I try to turn back to my proof, reading and re-reading the lesson. (Jeez. Surely somebody's written a math book that can explain triangles in English. I mean, they're triangles. Why are they suddenly so difficult?) But, rattle-bang, clunkerty-clunk, the engine starts to grow louder, closer.

"Doesn't she have anything better to do?" I mumble as I crane my neck. While I'm staring out my window, she passes by again. But even as I ask it, I'm not annoyed. Seeing her circling through my neighborhood makes my heart overflow. When I touch the corner of my eye, my fingertip turns wet.

"Who the hell is that?" Nell asks, stomping into my room and pressing her face against my window. "You don't have a stalker, do you?"

"You never left," I blurt as Nell squints at the street. "You could have left town when Mom moved out, gotten away from everything that hurt, but you didn't."

Nell gets this horrified look, like I've just accused her of trying to kill Mom with her bare hands. "Some thingssome things you just always are," she says quietly. "No matter how much time's passed. No matter how pissed you've been, how disappointed. I'll always be her mother."

I nod as the clunkerty-clunk comes back again, for the four millionth time.

The p.o.s. pauses, idling at the curb. But Janny-she's not just driving by for something to do. She's not driving to soothe her son. Janny's come because she doesn't know any of it-doesn't know about the red and blue swirling ambulance lights or that I talked to Fritz earlier that morning or that I practically gave myself a hernia hauling all my grandmother's shit into my house. Janny thinks that Mom is still here. Janny's come to help me.

"That's no stalker," I finally tell Nell, who's glaring through the window. "That's actually-" I almost choke on the words. "It's my best friend." I stand and hurry through my bedroom door. And Nell is curious, or still a little worried, maybe, so she follows at my heels. But she stays on the porch as I run across the front lawn.

"Janny," I call out, waving as the p.o.s. starts to take off again. "Janny!"

She slams the brakes, which are apparently wearing out, because the car skids into the middle of the road. She sticks her head out of the driver's side window as I step off the curb. Her motherly concern gets a watercolor smear of annoyance on it, and I figure that's because she's just remembered the last time we actually spoke.

I stop just short of her window, hide my hands as I cross my arms over my chest. Wish, for a minute, I could shove my whole stupid face down one of the pockets of the Nell-style slacks I'm still wearing.

"She's okay," I manage.

"Yeah, but for how long?" The way she screws her face up, you'd think her words tasted like a fistful of raw red onion.

"She's in a hospital, actually," I say. "Professional help galore. Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Okay."

"I don't really know what you mean," Janny says, pushing some greasy, flyaway hairs from her eyes.

"You really did move out? From your parents' place?"

She hesitates, nods her head slowly. "We were at each other's throats so bad, I'm actually not sure if I stormed out or they kicked me out." She shrugs. "I've got an apartment behind the Kum & Go. It's not the Shangri-la, but it's all right."

"Is Ace helping at all? At least sending money, or something?"

She frowns. "What are you, retarded?"

"What about work?"

Janny rolls her eyes. "Who made you the chief of the baby police? I shampoo hair at Super Cuts, all right? Woman downstairs from me has a kid, too. We stagger our schedules so we can sit for each other."

I stare at her hands, already red and broken-out from washing hair all day long. Glance through the back window at the baby sleeping soundly.

"What happens when she moves, your neighbor? What happens when you can't juggle schedules?" I ask. "You need your diploma."

She snorts out a laugh. "I need a lot of things. To win the lottery, for starters."

"If I help you look after your kid-" I start, inching my toes closer to the car.

"Ethan," Janny corrects. "And I don't need a sitter, you know. I'm fine."

"No, that's not-If I help you study, would you get your GED?"

"Why?"

Because, I want to tell her, the whole time we've been friends, I've always been the one who was drowning. The one asking you to keep my head above water. You were never afraid of the ocean.

"I think maybe our friendship was a little one-sided," I say. "I think you were there for me for a long time, and when you needed somebody, I was AWOL."

Janny tilts her head; a ray of midmorning sun washes the shadows off her face. "What the hell, Ambrose?" she asks through that pit-bull expression of hers. "You come out to my car to write some schmaltzy-paltzy Hallmark card?"

I narrow my eyes at her. "Maybe I did, you dumb-ass," I say, which gets her to smile.

She puts her head down on the steering wheel and laughs. It's a good sound. Pretty-like piano music.