Among Friends (10 page)

People were staring at us. “Is she having a fit or something?” demanded a fat woman next to us, pulling away in case it was catching. The line we were in dissolved. Customers moved to other registers. People who were afraid of fits looked away, and people who weren’t stared as hard as they could.

The manager came scurrying out. “Can I help you,
ma’am?” My mother just lay there. By now nobody was talking, not the customers, not the McDonald’s crew, and most of all not me. The manager was about eighteen years old and terrified of women collapsing on his counters.

By now I knew that if I was going to move my mother, I’d have to pick her up. I’m trying to stay in control, right? I’m trying not to yell at her or at the strangers around us, I’m trying to get her out of there. She’s not doing anything but sobbing. All of a sudden I know I’m going to fall apart, too. I can’t think or move.

Emily said to the manager, “Steve, take my register.” She came around, put an arm under my mother, and said to me, “Let’s get her into the ladies’ room, Paul.” All I could think of was that Emily would have to go into the ladies’ room with her—for a whole minute, maybe two, I would not have to be responsible. We got out of line and staggered to a table back by the restrooms, folding my mother into one of those plastic chairs. I held Mom up by the shoulders while Emily knelt on the other side and rubbed Mom’s hands. All I wanted to do was go home forever.

“Do you want me to call an ambulance?” asked Emily quietly.

An ambulance? It wasn’t like Mom was bleeding or anything.

Emily kept supporting my mother, but she put her hand on mine. It was warm, and large, and her fingers were fingers that work hard: not elegant, not pretty, but strong. “My father used to be drunk all the time,” she said. Her voice was very calm, as if she had done this for years. After her next sentence I knew she had. “We used to have to go to the railroad station and scrape him up off the parking lot into the back seat.”

“She’s not drunk,” I managed to say. “She’s having a nervous breakdown.”

“Oh, Paul,” said Emily, and her eyes filled with tears. Tears for me. I picked up the saltshaker with my free hand and felt the hard edges of it. “Listen, Paul, with my father the only thing that worked was to get him into an institution.
You
can’t be responsible. It’ll kill you.”

“I have to be responsible,” I said. “There isn’t anyone else.” I tried to crush the saltshaker in my hand but I couldn’t quite do it. If my father had been around I would have crushed him, but I couldn’t do that, either.

Emily blew out her breath hard. “Well, I guess I have some of the answers, Paul Classified. I know why you’re thinner. I know why you’re always clamming up. But what they taught us in Al-Anon is, the first step is talking about it.”

“I told you, she isn’t drunk.”

“Paul, I believe you. Anyway, I remember the smell too well. But she looks half dead. You do, too. And I’m serious about the ambulance. Maybe she needs to be in the psychiatric ward at the hospital.”

My mother wasn’t even listening. She could have been a very large rag doll.

“If you get her home like this, then what’ll you do?” said Emily practically.

Her hand was still on mine. It was comforting. But I changed the subject. “What happened to your father, Emily?”

She shrugged. “Mom divorced him, he’s remarried twice, he’s very handsome, you know, very dashing when he’s not on a binge. He really isn’t part of our lives any more. It’s terrible, it still hurts us all. But there you are, these things happen and you have to get past them.”

I couldn’t believe she talked about it. I can’t
stand
talking about it.

“Is that all?” Emily said then. “Is that the secret, Paul? Your mother fell apart?”

I ended up telling her the whole thing. My real mother, my real sister, my real father. Three people abandoning us was too much. “Mom couldn’t take it,” I finished. “Something in her snapped.”

Emily listened, keeping her hand where it was, like a lifeline. “When you say Mom, you mean your stepmother?”

I shrugged. “Only mother I had. Biological doesn’t count.”

But oh, it counted for Candy! She wrote off her whole childhood and walked out the door with a strange person who said, oh by the way, I’m your mother. And Mom, Mom died inside when Candy abandoned us.

I didn’t say that to Emily. But maybe she knew. She told the kid manager to call the ambulance. She went with me to the hospital. She gave me lots of advice I didn’t listen to. She promised not to talk, but what is a promise? Nobody I know ever kept one.

I went home to an empty house. I’d forgotten to get the hamburgers. I was starving. What a great guy you are, I thought. You just checked your mother into the psychiatric ward, and all you can think of is a Big Mac.

That was yesterday.

Today I avoided Emily like the plague.

I couldn’t stand to look at her or think about her.

So I ended up closeted with Jennie Quint.

It was so crazy. Jennie’s flirting, I’m trying to survive; Jennie’s asking me to a New Year’s party, I’m wondering if there will
be
a New Year.

I am, after all, the girl who knows Paul’s secrets.

But it’s just your typical sad sordid suburban secret, and if he’d talked about it all along, it wouldn’t hurt so much and he wouldn’t be so alone.

But what do I do now? It’s Christmas vacation, and we’re off to Killington and Paul is alone. I tried to telephone him. It’s been disconnected. I phoned the hospital to ask after Mrs. Smith, but they wouldn’t give me any information at all. I have to help Paul, and I have to help Mrs. Smith—but I promised I wouldn’t tell.

What is a promise?

How much does it count?

How bad are you if you keep the promise and how bad are you if you break it?

It’s noisy out. Isn’t that odd? Ice clinging to every twig has cracked, dropping through the crust of snow. Shutters tap, branches rasp together, and the wind whistles out of tune behind the shed.

Mrs. Quint was over talking to Jared’s mother. It seems that her dear brilliant special Jennie had a hard holiday. Mrs. Quint is angry at Emily and Hillary for abandoning Jennie, even though Mrs. Quint has never liked Em and Hill. Mrs. Quint feels the world should revolve around her precious Jennie and she is absolutely frosted about this mediocre Christmas.

Jared and I had a perfect holiday. Everybody should spend a winter vacation in Colorado. Got home December 30, threw our bags down and went into New York for the day. We got tickets to
Amahl and the Night Visitors
. It’s kind of sentimental but I like that musical: crippled boy receives miracle when he gives his only possession—his crutch—to the infant King.

I was thinking, though.

You feel sorry for Amahl because he’s pitiful.

If Amahl were perfect—like Jennie—then you wouldn’t care.

Perfect people are on their own.

Two weeks ago I told Dad about
Ye Season, It Was Winter
. Already he wants to see what I’ve gotten accomplished. Sometimes I feel as if I’m under attack.

But I keep producing, I keep working, I keep doing my best. I love doing my best. It makes me feel shiny inside, and breathless.

And I want to talk about it.

I want to call Hillary up and shriek, “Hill! I did it again! And it’s good!” I want to call Emily up and yell, “Em! Wait ’til you read this! I’m brilliant!”

Can you imagine? They’d hang up on me. Then they’d call each other up.
“Do you believe that conceited arrogant blankety blank Jennie Quint?”

But it hardly matters.

They went to Killington the day after Christmas.

Jared and Ansley went to Colorado to ski.

Nobody knows what Paul Classified did. I guess he likes being alone. He certainly has the choice of friends and parties. I can’t imagine that. Why ever on earth would a person choose to be alone? I hate being alone!

Daddy and Mother got worried about me because I was depressed, so we flew out to Chicago to visit Daddy’s college friends for a weekend. Chicago was fun. It looks the way a city should look. Daddy brought tapes of the musical and his old college roommate thinks we can get it published. Mother went wild with excitement and got right to work on the leads he provided.

I would love it—and yet—how could I tell anybody?

They don’t want me to do more, they want me to do less.

The Awesome Threesome went cross-country skiing on the hills beyond Lost Pond. There had been an ice storm, and skiing was crunchy. We were together five hours.

Marching orders from our mothers, actually, because over Christmas vacation we’re not allowed to be mean. I said to my mother, “Did Mrs. Quint tell you to tell us to ask Jennie?” and my mother said, “Are you kidding? Mrs. Quint is thrilled that Jennie is finally out of the threesome. It was holding Jennie back, you know.”

And I said, “So why do Emily and I have to do this?” and my mother said, “Because I felt so guilty at Killington without Jennie that I had a horrible time.”

I rolled my eyes. “You have a horrible time and I have to be nice?” I said. My mother shrugged. “Life isn’t fair,” she reminded me. I rolled my eyes again. “Of course not,” I told her. “After all, we’re talking Jennie here.”