Nest (10 page)

I
CE-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.