Chasing Orion (24 page)

“I’m not following this,” my dad said.

“In our old neighborhood, no one had anything worth stealing. People have fancy jewelry in this neighborhood.”

“Now, how do you know that?” my mom said.

“I do. Mrs. Keller has a diamond necklace and matching diamond earrings. She lets Phyllis wear them sometimes — the earrings. Not the necklace.” Actually I thought it was kind of sick the way Mrs. Keller did that.

“Can’t Emmett come back over here?” I whined.

“Be reasonable, Georgie. Emmett is all that poor girl has.”

That’s just the problem,
I wanted to scream, and boy did Phyllis have him.
He’s the one!
The words crashed in my brain.

“Look, if I stay right here in the living room with my hand on the phone and all the lights on . . .”

“Put a button on it, Georgie. Get your homework and get over to Phyllis’s.” My dad spoke very sharply, which he rarely did. I knew I had hit the wall when he spoke this way.

So I went over. It was chilly, but not that chilly for early December, and when I came up those steps, I felt as if I were getting caught in a small world not made by me but by Phyllis. Those flashes of light as the mirrors moved around were like the silk threads of the spider’s web spinning out into the night, capturing my reflection so quickly. But I saw it this time. I saw Emmett’s hand pop out of the port by Phyllis’s leg.

“Welcome, Saint Georgie,” Phyllis said. It had kind of started to make my skin crawl when she called me this.

“Hi, Georgie,” Emmett said. He was blushing.

“Guess what we’re waiting for?” Phyllis asked.

“Pizza, I hope.”

“Epsilon. We should have a fair shot at it, your brother says. No clouds.”

Emmett had started fiddling with the scope. He looked up and pointed west of the Dipper to Epsilon. I could see it now without the scope.

“Flame rose,” Phyllis said softly into the darkness.

They began talking, the two of them. It seemed like code again to me, but laced with all these flirty remarks of Phyllis’s, and Emmett was all moony-faced and googly-eyed. He was hardly looking at the sky, just at Phyllis again, the namer of colors. Had he given up on the secrets of the Square of Pegasus? Did he really not want to know anything anymore? Was ignorance really bliss for Emmett? Finally I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. “I’m cold. I’m going inside,” I announced.

“Mom’s made some hot chocolate,” Phyllis said. “That’ll warm you up.”

When I went inside, Mrs. Keller was sitting in a rocking chair doing needlepoint and watching
I Love Lucy.
“Georgie, my goodness, I think you’ve shot up two inches in the past week.”

“Uh, Phyllis said there was some hot chocolate.”

“Yes, in the kitchen, and if you want to join me in here and watch television, I’d love it. This is a very funny Lucy show.”

It was the commercial break when I came back. “My mom loves Lucille Ball, too,” I said.

“She is simply hysterical. Look at that wonderful face.” She nodded toward the television as the show came back on. Lucy was up to her old tricks. She was trying to get into Desi’s nightclub act. She and her best friend, Ethel, were dressed in disguise. Lucy was even wearing a mustache. She was dancing around on the stage, trying to sound Spanish and doing her best to hog the stage from Desi, who had not yet recognized her.

When the show was over, Mrs. Keller said something about how she had seen Lucille Ball in person one time and that she had the reddest hair imaginable. “You’ll see when we get color TV.”

“Are you getting it soon?”

“Well, Don thinks certainly within the year.”

This was an eerie echo of the time when I was trying on lipstick and Phyllis had made that weird joke about not holding her breath for color television.

Mrs. Keller looked over at me. I felt I had to say something quick. I might have been looking a little strange or something.

“What are you making?” I said, getting up and walking over to look at the needlepoint.

“A throw-pillow cover. Know what it is?”

I looked down at the square in the frame. There was a beautiful girl with what would be long hair when it was stitched in, and she was sitting at a loom. In front of her was a mirror. I swallowed as a queasiness welled up in the back of my throat. “It’s that poem lady.”

“Yes, dear, the Lady of Shalott.” She looked up at me.

“The same one she gave you for your birthday?”

“No, I finished that one. This is a new one she gave me. She never stops thinking of sweet things, such a dear girl.”
That is not the point,
I wanted to scream.
Why would Phyllis get you this picture all the time? The same one? Why this one? Is this some sort of bad joke?

“Dr. Keller,” she continued, “is actually working right now on a new device that would allow Phyllis to do needlepoint, too. A kind of special needle that could be held in her mouth.”

“Does she like to needlepoint?” I asked.

Mrs. Keller turned around and cocked her head and looked at me as if I had said the most curious thing imaginable. “Well, my goodness, who’s to know, except it would be such a nice way to pass the time.”

Pass the time to what?

I snuck back to our house without telling Emmett. He seemed kind of annoyed when he got home. “How come you’re acting so weird these days, Georgie?”

“I don’t know. I’ll be OK.”

“Phyllis noticed it, too.”

“She did?”

“Yes, she sent a note for you.”

“She typed it with that tongue thing?”

“Yes.” He handed me a piece of powder-blue paper. It was Phyllis’s stationery and it had her name inscribed in white at the top.

I tucked the note into my pocket. It was strange. A few months ago, I would have been thrilled at the prospect of visiting Phyllis for girl talk. But nothing had been quite the same for a while. Since the spider dream, I had to admit I had grown fearful of Phyllis. I had to keep reminding myself how completely empty her life was, and when I did this, it was almost like a free fall through space for me. I was overwhelmed and, yes, ashamed that I had given in to my fears.

Still I had a feeling, no more than a feeling — I knew that she was manipulating Emmett to do something really bad, like maybe help her die. And when I thought of that, I have to admit that I came close to actually hating Phyllis. But I just wasn’t really sure about how she would get Emmett to do it. Hating would not solve that mystery. It was kind of a relief not to even think about hating anymore. My job was to save not Phyllis, but Emmett. I had told him of my fears that night, and he had blown them off as if they were nothing. I somehow had to figure out when Phyllis planned to do this terrible thing and then I would some way, somehow stop it. I just had to figure out when this might happen. I wasn’t Saint Georgie anymore. I wasn’t the knight in the Lady of Shalott, ready to smash mirrors. The only person I really wanted to release into the real world was my own brother, Emmett.

“I think a French twist, and then put the clip to the side that way,” Sally was saying as Mrs. Keller arranged a sparkling flower-shaped clip in Phyllis’s hair. On a small table beside her was a pile of jewels, the very ones I had mentioned to my mother, the diamond earrings, and now a diamond hair clip. She and Sally the nurse were fussing with Phyllis’s hair.

“I’m not sure,” Roslyn Keller said. “You know, I saw a picture of Grace Kelly, who I think looks so much like Phyllis —”

“Just like her exactly.” Phyllis laughed and then flicked the mirrors. A fleeting expression of worry crossed her mother’s face.

“Hi, Georgie,” Phyllis said.

“Oh, hi, Georgie.” Mrs. Keller nodded to me, then continued fussing with Phyllis’s hair.

“Yes, definitely the hair down with the clip in the side. I’ll look just like her. And the earrings, Mom, don’t forget the earrings.” I was getting a queasy feeling in my stomach. Was this the girl talk I had been invited over for? Her mother clamped an earring to each ear. Sally cooed. It was as if they were playing with a doll. It was revolting. The diamonds sparkled almost fiendishly above the high, tight rubber collar that gripped Phyllis’s neck. Mrs. Keller stepped back to admire her handiwork. “There, pretty as a picture. Should I take one?”

“Oh, of course, by all means!” Phyllis said. Her mother looked confused.

But I suddenly had another picture in my mind. That of Phyllis when they tried to wean her. I imagined teeny little diamond bracelets on those withered legs, a necklace draping over her arched back. The face contorted into a horrendous agony, and her ears sparkling with the diamond earrings.

“Look how pretty you are, Phyllis!”

Phyllis just smiled and let them play with her. But I could hardly stand it. I made an excuse and went to the bathroom. I prayed that by the time I came out, they would be finished with their doll play. Was I the only adult here? The only one who had outgrown dolls?

When I came out of the bathroom, Mrs. Keller was in the kitchen. So I went in.

“Yes, Georgie?” she said. My heart was thumping. I had never in my life really questioned an adult in this way. This wasn’t like begging for something from my parents that I wanted and they didn’t want me to have. It wasn’t arguing with a teacher over a grade, which I had also been known to do. This was different. My bottom lip had begun to tremble.

“My goodness, Georgie, you look as if you are about to cry.”
Some Saint Georgie!
I thought. It took all my willpower not to cry. “Come sit down, dear, here at the table. Can I get you something?”

“Mrs. Keller.” My voice cracked. She looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you do this?”

“Do what, Georgie?”

“Do this to Phyllis.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you are talking about.”

I don’t think she did. “Why do you dress her up like she’s some sort of doll?”

A shocked look swept through Roslyn Keller’s eyes. “Why, Georgie!”

“Why do you want Dr. Keller to invent some contraption so she can needlepoint? Why do you just see her as only part of this horrible machine?”

I expected her to be mad at me. But she just shut her eyes tight for several seconds as if summoning up the strength to answer me. “But that is what she is, Georgie. She is just that — part of this machine. This marvelous machine. She must be able to live as fully as possible with her limitations, but the machine offers her —” She paused.

“What?” I said.

“Why, life, Georgie. Life.” Then it seemed as if her jaw became unhinged. Her lower lip began to tremble, and her mouth moved as if trying to shape a word. “It’s so hard.”

I didn’t say anything. I just got up to go back into the other room. Mrs. Keller grabbed my hand. “I know it’s hard for you to understand.”

I shook my head.
No,
I wanted to say.
I understand perfectly. But we just have a different idea about life and so-called life.
But of course I didn’t say any of this.

“That guy’s gigantic.”

“Seven feet,” Dad said.

We were in the Westridge field house. The opposing team had just come onto the court. It was this new player, Cyril James, who had moved to Indianapolis from Kentucky. “How are they ever going to get around him?” I wondered aloud.

“They’ve got Emmett,” Dad said. “And Emmett’s fast. And they’ve got Buzzy Philby and Skeeter. They’ll do fine.”

Emmett just sauntered across the court as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He passed the ball to some of the other guys. Stumbled once. Missed a few shots. All this was typical Emmett in a warm-up. It was almost as if he had to get all the mistakes out of his system before the real playing began.

But he didn’t quite get all the mistakes out. Well, they were not exactly mistakes. He just seemed to be moving differently. His timing seemed off. He wasn’t as fast. By halftime, Buzz Philby had had a bad landing after a layup shot and had to be helped off the court limping. Brian McPhee had fouled out, and Emmett had not once taken command in rebound situations. And Skeeter, according to Dad, was sleepwalking.