Emily For Real (6 page)

Dad's in the backyard filling his bird feeders when I get home. He does this twice a day. “Breakfast and supper,” he says. I like how birds know the routine. It even seems like they know him.

“You're home,” says Dad.

“Yeah.”

“Pretty good day?”

“Not bad,” I say. “I went with a friend of mine, Leo, to see his little sister. She's living at his aunt's now because his mom's an alcoholic.” I don't say anything about hitchhiking. “His sister might have to go live with her father who Leo says is an idiot.”

“Sounds complicated,” says Dad. He pours some black sunflower seeds from his hand into mine.

“It made me feel sad.” I stretch out my arm and hold up my handful of seeds.

“It is sad,” he says.

There's a whir of little wings as a chickadee lands on the tips of my fingers. It grabs a seed and whirs away. I watch it land on a branch and pound the shell to get at the food inside. Then another chickadee lands. Its thin black legs and feet make me think of pencil doodles on a page.

Dad's just standing there, watching the chickadees land on my fingers and take off, land and take off.

“I don't remember you saying anything about someone called Leo,” says Dad.

“He's new at school. We're friend-friends,” I say to make things clear. I toss the rest of the seeds on the grass and put my cold hands into my pockets. Leo's anger rock is still there.

“I see.”

“He can be very funny when he wants to, but a lot of the time he sort of stews.”

“Makes sense with all that's going on with his family.”

“His little sister adores him.”

“That'll probably get him through the complications.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Your mom told me about you and Brian, Emily. I always liked Brian. But whatever reason he has for changing his mind, it's got nothing to do with you…who you are, what you look like, nothing. Who knows what people want? Sometimes even they don't know themselves.” He picks up the bag of seeds and starts toward the house.

I know Dad said all this to make me feel better. And I want to feel better. But now he's got me thinking about how people want stuff. How I want Brian.

But, if he was here, his new girlfriend would be right beside him, holding his hand and saying,
Pardonez-moi
. I feel stupid when I think that what I want in my whole life is just this one certain person. It's making me nuts.

When I wake up in the middle of the night, I get it in my head that I want to go out for a walk again, even though it's cold and dark and deserted out there.

I'm very quiet as I leave the house.

This time I don't stay on our block. I cross at the flashing red lights and walk past our elementary school, down over the hill, and along one of the boulevards with skeleton trees and dark houses.

At the end of the boulevard, I turn up the street where it's not as deserted and quiet because it's a main route from the bridge to downtown. A bus goes by with nobody in it except the driver.

I'm getting cold now. Leo's anger rock is in my hand that's stuffed into my pocket because I didn't, as usual, wear mittens or gloves.

I hear a car slowing down before I notice headlights sliding along the curb beside me. My heart jumps into my throat. I keep walking.

“Hey. Hey. Need a drive?” The voice sounds like a guy maybe my age. “Hey!” He says it louder this time.

The car is right beside me now but I don't look.

“We're just asking if you need a drive. We won't hurt you.”

This just makes things worse because now I know there's more than one person in the car.

A couple other cars go by but no one seems to notice how I'm being harassed by whoever's in this car. I hold Leo's anger rock tightly in my hand. If these guys try anything, at least I have this rock.

I see a house with a wide glassed-in porch and decide to pretend I live there. I go up the steps, put my hand on the doorknob, and turn it. By some miracle, the door opens and I step inside. There are old wicker chairs, empty planters, a snow shovel, and a rake leaning in a corner. The porch isn't heated. Over my shoulder I can see the car moving slowly away.

My heart's pounding. I sit in one of the chairs and try to calm down. There's no sound in the house. Maybe no one's home.

After a while, I look out the window, up and down the street. Maybe the car's waiting somewhere close by. Maybe they know I'm faking living here. I'm wishing I had my cell with me. But then I think I probably wouldn't call Mom and Dad in the middle of the night, anyway, and scare them half to death when they think I'm right down the hall, sleeping in my bed.

Very quietly and slowly, I go outside. I head back the way I came, speeding up a bit when I get to the boulevard and start up the hill. My heart's still pounding as I cross at the flashing red lights and head toward my street.

When I close the front door behind me and gently turn the lock, I'm shivering from the inside out.

Six

Aunt Em arranged for all of us to have lunch at Harmony Hills with Meredith to celebrate her birthday. She's always doing family stuff like this. Once I asked her why she's not living with someone or why she didn't get married, and she said that life gave her a dessert bowl but not a dinner plate. I think she's just content with what she's got: her cat, her job, a couple of friends, and us.

Mom made carrot cake with orange-flavored icing between the two layers and on top. In pink icing it says
Happy Birthday Meredith
with
88
written under that. Toothpicks are keeping the waxed paper up off the icing. If I hold the cake plate in my hands and don't set it down on my lap, I can prevent it from sliding when Dad makes a turn, or falling totally on the floor if he has to come to a sudden stop. Suspension. Dad showed me this trick when we were taking a cake to Aunt Em's for one of their birthdays a hundred years ago.

The dining room at Harmony Hills is pleasant. That's Mom's word. Aunt Em refers to it as cheerful. Dad says it gets the job done.

There's a table for the five of us with balloons tied to our chairs and with birthday napkins—all arranged by Aunt Em sometime this morning. Meredith is at the head of the table with Dad on one side of her and Aunt Em on the other. I'm beside Dad and Mom's across from me.

Meredith picks up her napkin and inspects the pattern.

“Those are your birthday napkins,” says Aunt Em cheerfully. “And your balloon says
Happy Birthday
too.” She pulls on the ribbon until the balloon is in front of Meredith.

She smiles at the balloon and then at all of us. “Lovely,” she says.

I notice a table near ours where three ladies are sitting together, each wearing a large, colorful bib. One of them has just said, “My husband died in my arms and I'll never forgive him.”

I'm trying to figure out which one of them said that.

Women in hairnets deliver bowls of corn chowder with a roll and tea or coffee. Aunt Em gets up and ties a green bib on Meredith. Meredith smoothes it down and then looks at her fingernails, which Aunt Em painted bright pink before we all came down to this dining room. Except for not knowing everything that's going on, Meredith is a very gracious lady. She hasn't forgotten about table manners and which spoon is for chowder and which one is for tea. She eats slowly, sipping small spoonfuls.

“How do you like your chowder, Meredith?” asks Aunt Em. “Delicious, isn't it?”

“Not as good as what you used to make, though,” Dad says. “Onions. That's the secret ingredient. You fried your onions first. I remember that.”

“Onions wouldn't agree with most of these elderly people,” says Mom.

“I suppose,” says Dad. “Here, let me do that.” He gently takes the butter from Meredith and pulls the foil off the top. Then he holds the container while she puts some butter on her knife and spreads it across the roll she has divided in two.

I'm mesmerized right now by the fact that the butter is served in those little plastic thingies that probably half the people here can't peel the tops off of. Milk and cream for tea and coffee are in the same type of containers. And sugar is in little packets that have to be ripped open. Is anybody paying attention here?

“My husband died in my arms and I'll never forgive him.”

This time I saw which person was speaking. She's looking at the lady beside her and that lady just shrugged one of her shoulders. It wasn't like shrugging two shoulders which would've meant,
Who knows?
That one-shoulder shrug was like saying,
That's the way it goes.

Corn chowder isn't high on my list of things to eat, but this bowl is small so I manage to finish most of it.

“If you don't want your roll, I'll have it,” Dad says to me. “No sense wasting it.”

He added that bit about wasting food because he knows Mom would be ready to say something about watching his carbs. Which would be a bit pointless considering, that this lunch consists of corn chowder, rolls, and carrot cake. Carb city.

“How old am I?” Meredith is watching Aunt Em light the candles. There are six of them for some illogical reason.

“Eighty-eight!” says Aunt Em enthusiastically because Meredith has just said something that makes sense.

“Oops,” says Meredith with a grin and a twinkle, as if getting to be eighty-eight was some kind of accident. “How old is your father?”

Everyone around the table looks at everyone else.

Dad takes the challenge and says, “Dad'd be eighty-six on his next birthday.”

“Imagine,” says Meredith. “Where is he? Is he at work?”

“No. He's not at work,” says Dad slowly. “He…”

The six candles are flickering and beginning to drip on the icing.

Aunt Em starts singing “Happy Birthday to You” and we join in. The whole dining room sings along, with people turning around to look at our table, where Aunt Em is holding the cake with flickering candles, and five balloons are floating above our heads. Dad and Aunt Em blow out the candles, and everyone gives Meredith a big round of applause.

“…my arms and I'll never forgive him,” I hear as the clapping fades.

When we're driving away from Harmony Hills, Aunt Em says “Oh, my,” inside this huge sigh.

“She's doing all right,” says Dad reassuringly.

“It's not that. I know she's fine. It's just…”

“Memories are the problem,” says Mom. “You have to put those aside and only think of now. She is not the same person she used to be—none of us is, for that matter. But she's contented and comfortable. That's all we need to think of.”

“Easier said than done,” says Aunt Em.

I have to agree with Aunt Em on this one. It's the same with Brian. I can go along for a while, like the past couple of hours, and I don't think about him. But then all of a sudden I remember something, his hair or his eyes or something he did or said, and my throat gets all tight and I have to take a deep breath. It's impossible to only think of now.

“That's a lot of memories to put aside,” says Dad quietly. “Meredith's been part of our lives a long, long time. Hope when I'm in a nursing home and I've lost most of my marbles, someone'll come have lunch with me and then heave a big sigh afterwards, remembering some of the good times.”

I reach forward and scratch the back of Dad's head and say, “I'll come, Dad. And I'll remember stuff.” But I can't even picture Dad in a nursing home. Wearing a bib? No way.

We get all quiet in the car.

“I'm just saying it's a way to cope with the situation,” says Mom. “It's up to yourselves what you do.”

“Emily,” says Dad very seriously. “I have a request.”

“What?”

“When I'm in the nursing home, I want you to remember the time your mom decided to touch up the paint on those yellow lawn chairs and then didn't put the top back on the can of paint tight enough.”

“And you shook it to mix the paint up and it spilled and splashed all over the place. Well, mostly all over you. Your hair, your face—”

“You stank of paint remover for days!” says Aunt Em, laughing.

“That's the last paint job your mom ever did.”

“I was ever allowed to do,” says Mom.

“Oh, look,” I say. “It's snowing.”

Small flakes are falling gently down. I love the first snowfall. It always makes me feel quiet and calm and sort of excited all at once. Like something magical's happening even though snow falling down is the most ordinary thing.

“Old man winter,” says Dad.

I sit back and look out at the snow, trying to make this feeling last.

When I woke up last night, I got out of bed and looked out my window at the quiet, white street. It had stopped snowing and there wasn't much on the ground, but it was enough that there were tracks where a car had stopped at the corner and turned. Part of me wanted to go out and leave my boot tracks all along the deserted sidewalk. But I crawled back into bed and went to sleep again.

This morning Leo's on the bus with his guitar in that black case on the seat beside him. I can take a hint. He's looking out the window as if there's something important happening out there. I can take two hints.

I sit a few seats in front of him and slouch down. I'm tired. Not exhausted, but tired of stuff that's going on. I'm tired of Brian and his Montreal girlfriend and the fact that he'll be back home for Christmas in a few weeks and I'll have to deal with that. I'm tired of going to school and listening to people talking about applying to universities or keeping marks up for scholarships or living in dorms next year or finding apartments. I'm tired of Leo back there on this bus, sitting beside his guitar so there's no room for me because he's mad about what I said about how his anger's going to explode.

The anger rock is still here in my pocket. I like how it feels in my hand. Even though I can't see the little sparkly bits, I know they're there. No way I would've thrown this rock at whoever those loser guys were the other night. Not unless I was sure I could go back and find it again.

When the bus stops I go out the front door, because I know Leo will be going out the back. I'm curious about why he brought his guitar to school, but I'm not asking him about it. Or anything else.

Jenn's at her locker and Ronny's nowhere in sight.

***

“Hey!” she says with a big grin. “Emily! Hi!”

“What's with the cheerleading?” I say.

“Cheerleading?”

“Never mind. Where's Ronny?”

“Flu.”

“Flew where?”

“Very funny,” she says with an even wider grin. “I said flu. As in cold and flu. He's staying home. So what's new with you? I've seen you hanging around with that Leo guy.”

“He's not my boyfriend.”

“I didn't say he was. I'm just saying I saw you.”

“It's the way you said it.”

“What way?”

“You know what I mean. Stop playing brain-dead.”

“You're in some awful mood.”

“Yeah.” By now I've taken what I need from my locker and all I want to do is get to class. It's English, speaking of Leo. Fun and games. “Well, gotta go. See ya.”

“Wait a minute, Emily. Just because we haven't been hanging out doesn't mean we're not friends anymore.”

“But that's what friends do, Jenn. They hang out. At least once in a while.” Now I sound like a simpering kid when really it doesn't matter to me that I'm not hanging out with Jenn. I've got too much on my mind. “I didn't mean that the way it sounded,” I say. “I've just got a lot on my mind.”

“Meaning Brian?”

“Not just him.”

“Look, how about we go somewhere at lunch. Grab something to eat.”

“I brought a salad.”

“Come on, Emily.”

The bell for first class cuts off our conversation, so I just say, “Okay.”

“Great,” she says. “Meet you here at twelve.”

I get to English class and stop dead in my tracks. Leo's sitting by himself at his usual table over by the window, but he's strumming his guitar. What's up with this?

Mr. Canning's checking off names in his register as everyone comes into the room. The late bell goes and he closes the classroom door. Then he announces that he has given Leo permission to present the
Romeo and Juliet
project he missed. “Leo tells me he has written a piece of music for solo guitar to reflect the soundscape of Shakespeare's play,” he says.

Cory is slouched down in his chair. His eyes are closed and his arms are folded across his chest. If he was allowed to wear his hat in class, it'd be pulled down over his face right now.

But I'm curious about what Leo's about to do. I didn't know he could write music.

He picks up the round stool that Mr. Canning usually sits on when he's talking at us and places it at the front of the class. He sits on the edge of the stool and tucks the heel of his boot onto a rung. Then he strums a couple of times and twists a knob or two on the neck of the guitar.

“
Romeo and Juliet
is a play that's like a river,” he says, looking down at his guitar. Then he looks up at us and says, “Sometimes it flows along, no problem, and other times it hits rocks and boulders and cra—stuff like that, and things get rough. There's emotions too. Rivalry. Love. First falling in love and then being in love. Then anger and fear and confusion and despair. For this project I translated all that into musical notes. So here it is.”

I'm listening and I'm amazed. I can hear the river, just like he said. And I can picture scenes from the play like it's a movie and Leo's guitar is the music in the background. I close my eyes so this classroom disappears but the music keeps going. I'm mesmerized.