Nest (11 page)

“Me neither.” I close my eyes. “I can’t see her.”

“Me neither,” Joey says.

“I guess we’re breaking the rules.”

“And we’re rude and noisy and lousy little turds,” Joey says, opening his eyes. He looks at me and smiles. “Rude and noisy and lousy little turds! Rude and noisy and lousy little turds!” he chants, jumping up and down. “Sing it loud and sing it proud!” he yells. “Rude and noisy and lousy little turds! Rude and noisy and lousy little turds!” We jump together. We jump until our faces are red. We jump until our hearts are pounding. We jump until Miss Gallagher has called us two more times.

“Okay, okay, here we come,” Joey whispers. He’s taking loud breaths while he carefully packs his lunch back in his lunch bag, then shakes off his sweater and ties it around his waist. I pack up, too. We walk back slowly, even though we know we should be rushing, even though we might get in trouble.

“Hear that?” I say, grabbing Joey’s arm.

“What?” He stops walking and freezes, just like I want him to.

“There!” I say.
“Ah-ooo, ah-ooo.”

Joey tips his head to the side. He closes his eyes.

“It’s a common eider. A female,” I whisper. “They make pillows and quilts out of their feathers.”

We stand still together. Joey keeps his eyes closed, and I don’t let go of his arm.

Ah-ooo. Ah-ooo
. The duck calls even louder.

“Cool,” Joey says, opening his eyes. He’s smiling like he’s really happy. Then he shakes his head hard and says, “Wait a second. How?”

“How what?”

“How do they do it? How do they get the feathers?” Suddenly he looks mad. He’s staring at me like I’ve done something wrong.

I let go of his arm. “They don’t hurt the ducks. They just collect the feathers from the nests after the ducklings have moved out.”

“Cool,” Joey says.

When we’re back at the maple tree that Sean had to sit under, Joey smiles at me and says, “Say it, don’t spray it!” Then he runs ahead to the bus, where everyone is lining up. I take my time and am the last one in line, which really doesn’t matter at all, because Dawn always saves me a seat.

When I get home from school, something is different. I feel it when I open the front door. No ice-blue quiet. Just a crackling sound that I can’t figure out. I walk into the living room and look on the couch. Mom’s not there.

“Mom?”

No answer.

“Mommy?”

No answer.

I check the kitchen table to see if there’s a note for me. No note.

I walk upstairs. The crackle is a little louder. I check Mom and Dad’s bedroom, but it’s empty. I knock on Rachel’s closed door, even though she’s supposed to be at chorus practice. She doesn’t yell, “Come in!” The bathroom door is open just a crack. I push it with my foot. Rachel’s sitting on the counter by the sink, staring at the mirror. She has something silver in her hand, and she’s poking at her face with it. The radio’s on, but it’s just playing crackle. I guess she doesn’t notice.

“Rach?”

“What?” She doesn’t turn to look at me. She doesn’t stop whatever she’s doing.

I walk into the room and sit down on the toilet. Tweezers. She’s pulling out her eyebrow hairs.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m plucking my eyebrows,” she says. “Giving them some shape.” She’s humming to herself.

“What’s up with the radio?” I ask.

“Oh,” she says, “I forgot. I was trying to get this cool station that Genevieve and I listen to at her house, but I couldn’t get it to tune in.”

She plucks. I watch. The radio crackles.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask.

“I’m supposed to be at chorus practice,” she says.

“I know.”

“Dad called my school and told them to tell me to come home so that you wouldn’t be all by yourself.” Rachel plucks a hair and squeezes her mouth tight like she’s sucking on a SweeTART.

“Where’s Mom?” I ask again. There’s a cold rock in my chest. Rachel hasn’t looked at me once.

Rachel shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything.

“Rach,” I say, “did she fall down again? Did her MS flare up? Did she have to go to the hospital?”

“Well …” Rachel puts down the tweezers. She turns off the radio. She runs her fingers through her hair. I can see her brown eyes, Mom’s eyes, in the mirror. She’s looking at herself, not at me. “Let’s see. Number one, no. Number two, no. Number three, yes.”

“She had to go to the hospital? Mom is in the hospital?” The rock in my chest makes it hard to breathe.

Rachel sighs. She swings her legs over the end of the counter so that she’s facing me. She looks mad. Her mouth is short and straight, like a dash, which I just learned is what you use to connect two words together.

“Yes, Naomi,” she says. “Mom’s in the hospital. But not just any hospital. The loony bin. The nuthouse. Our mom is in the nuthouse in Boston.” Rachel tips her head to the side and gives me the angriest fakey smile I’ve ever seen. “Any more questions?”

I shake my head no. The rock is so heavy inside
me that I can’t stand up. I’m stuck here on the toilet, because I can’t stand up.

“Do you want to know what I think?” Rachel says. Her hands are tight fists. She’s kicking her feet against the cabinet. “I think this is friggin’ unbelievable. I think this friggin’ sucks.” Then she jumps off the counter, storms out of the bathroom, and slams the door.

I wait and wait on the toilet for Rachel to come back and say that she’s really sorry and being in adolescence is hard and everything is going to be okay and do I want to come into her room with her and dance on her orange rug to “Sugar Sugar” while we wait for Dad to call and tell us that Mom’s fine now, her depression after getting her MS diagnosis has finally lifted. I want Rachel to tell me that Dad said they’ll be coming home tomorrow and we’ll have stuffed clams as a treat for dinner, but she doesn’t.

It’s cold out and even Dad’s down coconut jacket doesn’t keep me from shivering. There are two herring gulls standing by the edge of the water, and they look cold, too, all plumped up and huddled together. I didn’t bring my binocs, since my hands will get too cold without gloves and Mom hasn’t brought the winter clothes down from the attic yet and I sure as heck wasn’t going to ask Rachel to help me find them up
there, since she was still all mad when I finally left the bathroom.

I lean against my tree and look out at the water. It’s nearly winter, so the water’s gray.

I wonder how long a person stays in a nuthouse.

I wonder if a daughter can visit a mother in a nuthouse.

Suddenly I have a good idea. I don’t see anything but pitch pine and scrub oaks and cattails and dried-out sea lavender, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t here. A lady like her might be an expert hider, since she believes in peace and quiet.

“Hello? Lady? Any chance you’re here?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Listen, lady, I don’t want to step on your privacy. I just have two important questions for you.”

I look carefully to see if anything moves to give her away, like a branch or a clump of marsh grass. It’s a little tricky, since there’s a breeze, like always. It’s hard to know what’s what.

“I’m sure you’d like to help me if you can.” I give her some time. I don’t want to rush her. “I mean, after shooing me away from my own special spot.”

I stand still. I wait, even though I’m freezing my head off.

I walk down to the water. I walk over to the lavender.

“Lady?”

Nothing.

On my way back to my tree, I see something on the ground right near the trunk. A nest. A red-winged blackbird nest. I can tell because it’s woven really neatly, like a perfect basket, and lined with sandy mud. Usually the female hides her nest in the cattails or rushes to keep her babies safe. I pick the nest up. There are pieces of dry grass inside, even though this isn’t nesting season. I poke my finger around in the grass.

“Look, lady. A red-winged blackbird nest. If you come closer, I’ll show it to you. It can be our secret.” I hold the nest out.

She doesn’t say anything. She’s too scared to come see.

“Okay then, listen. I’ll leave the nest right here where I found it. And now I’m going to walk home. We’re having some trouble in our family. You can come take a look at the nest at your earliest convenience.” I put the nest back exactly where I found it. I slowly turn around in a circle, so that wherever she’s hiding, she’ll see me wave good-bye.

From the outside, our house looks warm and cozy. Rachel’s turned on all of the downstairs lights, and they make the windows glow yellow.

“Hi, Rach!” I shout when I come in the back door, like everything’s normal, but she can’t hear me, since
she’s got Dad’s stereo turned up really loud. The rule is that we’re not allowed to use Dad’s stereo unless we ask permission, but I guess the rules don’t matter when Mom’s in the nuthouse. The music’s so loud I wonder if the Morells can hear it.

Rachel’s sitting on the living room couch with scraps of fabric all around her and a pair of ratty old jeans on her lap. She looks up when I come in.

“I’ll make us popcorn if you thread the needle,” she yells. I nod, and she gets up and I sit down. I wonder if the Morells will call the police on us, like we did on them last April when Mr. and Mrs. Morell were out of town and Vinnie and Donny threw a party and Dad politely asked them to turn their music down since it was way past midnight and they said, “Of course, Doc,” and then turned it up even louder and threw a beer can against our beech tree.

“We will not let ourselves be intimidated,” Dad said, but I could tell he already was, because his hands were shaking just a little bit and he looked like he wanted to hide in the basement behind the furnace, which is my favorite spot for hide-and-seek.

If the police come to our door and discover that Rachel and I are here at night without our parents again and our music’s too loud and our dinner is popcorn, maybe they’ll wonder if we’d be better off in a foster home, and when Mom and Dad walk in the front door the house will be empty, because we’ve been carted away, and Mom will be absolutely beside herself with
worry and heartache, and they’ll have to turn right back around and return Mom to the nuthouse before she even takes off her coat.

I’m scared to turn the stereo down, because I really don’t want Rachel mad at me, but I do it anyway. When she walks in, though, she just says, “Thanks, Chirpie,” and puts a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. She reaches her hand out for the threaded needle, but suddenly I don’t want to give it to her. I didn’t want her mad at me, but now I’m mad at her.

“Why did you stay in that smoky room with all of those weird grown-ups?” I ask.

“What?”

“I had to walk home by myself, and stuff can happen to girls alone at night, especially on Halloween, and you should know that!”

“Oh, Chirp,” Rachel says, but I interrupt her before she can say anything else.

“Things can happen, and things
did
happen, and things are
still
happening!” I don’t want to be, but I’m crying.

“You’re right, Chirpie,” Rachel says, sitting down really close to me on the couch. “Everything’s all messed up.” She’s pulling the fabric scraps onto her lap, like they’re fall leaves she wishes would bury her. I pull some onto my lap, too. Purple corduroy. Red-checked cotton. Soft velour the color of melted margarine. Neither of us says anything. We just sit until
the record ends and the arm of the stereo lifts up and the turntable stops spinning.

“When’s Mom coming home?” I ask.

My sister shrugs. The quiet between us makes the air feel thick, like someone’s thrown a wool blanket over my head. Rachel grabs a pair of scissors off the coffee table and cuts a square out of some bright green paisley. I hand her the needle, but she puts it down on top of the paisley patch and says, “First, I want to teach you something.” She gets up, takes the record off the stereo, and sticks a new record on.

“Listen to this,” she says. “It tells you all you need to know about really digging a guy. I mean, like, actually
wanting
him.” Dylan starts singing,
Lay, lady, lay, lay across my big brass bed
, all sweet and croaky, and Rachel closes her eyes, so I close my eyes, too. When the song is over, we open our eyes and eat popcorn with lots of salt while she sews the green paisley patch on some jeans for Bruce Clarkman, who is the boy I have to not ask too many questions about and promise not to tell anyone she really, really digs.

“I
THINK THIS WILL HELP
keep us on track until Mom comes home,” Dad says. He’s holding up a round piece of red poster board the size of a 45. Inside it a smaller circle’s attached with
Naomi
and
Rachel
written on it in Magic Marker in Dad’s very neat handwriting.

“It’s a chore wheel. See?” Dad spins the inside circle and our names line up with a list of jobs like
Empty the dishwasher
and
Cook dinner Monday, Wednesday, Friday
. “If you girls rotate this every Sunday night and I stay on top of the food shopping and laundry, we should be in fine shape. And Clara’s planning to organize Mom’s friends from the Saltwater Dance Brigade to drop off dinners, too, sometimes, to help us out.”