Dia didn't stir. Her jaw was slack and her head rolled back on the chair, but her eyes didn't open. “Hey. Are you okay?”
Polly shook her mother's arm, but nothing happened. “Hey. Dia. Wake up.”
Dia didn't wake up. Her eyes didn't even flutter. Polly's heart began to beat harder. Was Dia breathing? Why -was her head like that?
“Dia? Dia! Wake up, would you? Hey it's me! Are you asleep? Why -won't you wake up?”
Polly now had both of Dias arms and she was shaking them hard. Polly's heart was hammering. What was wrong -with Dia? Why -wasn't she -waking up? “Dia, get up! Get up!” Polly heard the crying in her voice. “Please -wake up!”
She dropped the bag of éclairs. She put her hands on her mother's face. Was she breathing? She -was, -wasn't she?
Polly didn't know -what to do. Should she call a doctor? Should she call 911? Jo's dad -was a doctor. Should she call him? She bolted for the phone, stepping on the éclairs as she -went. With shaking fingers she pressed in Jo's number, but nobody answered.
She clutched the phone, needing to do something -with it. She called Ama. Amas parents -weren't doctors, but Ama -was Ama.
“Hello?”
Polly tried not to sob. “Ama?”
“Polly?”
“Yes,” Polly gasped.
“What's -wrong? Are you okay?”
“My mom is—she -won't -wake up. I don't know -what to do.”
“Oh, my God. Did you call a doctor?”
“No. I tried calling Jo. Her dad—but—” Polly gulped for air. “Should I call nine- one- one?”
“Is she breathing?”
“I think so.”
“But she's unconscious?”
“Yes.”
“Call nine-one-one,” Ama said.
“What if she gets mad?”
“How could she get mad? She's unconscious.”
“You're right.”
“I'm coming over, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“Okay.”
“Polly, you have to hang up first, and then call.”
Polly hung up and called 911. She gave them the information and hung up. She sat at her mother's feet and waited.
Polly and Ama and Jo sat in the hospital waiting room together. Amas dad had gone to get them something to drink. Jo's dad was in the examining room -with the ER doctor. He was doing rounds at the hospital that night, so as soon as Jo called him he came down.
Dr. Napoli had come out once already, early on, and told Polly everything -was okay that Dia could probably go home later that night. He didn't say exactly what the problem -was, but Polly had a pretty good idea of it.
An hour or two later, most of the urgency had leaked out of the night, even though the gigantic red emergency cross glowed through the window.
“You don't have to stay” Polly said to Jo and Ama, but they didn't want to go.
Mr. Botsio brought them Sprites and Fritos and went to move the car. Jo and Ama encouraged Polly to eat.
“You are so skinny, Polly” Jo said. “You look like you haven't eaten all summer.” Jo's face was not admiring but concerned.
Polly glanced down and tried to like how she looked, but it was harder -with them. In their presence, she didn't feel proud of her -weight loss. She felt undersized. Both Jo and Ama had grown this summer. Jo was taller and Ama was stronger. Polly suddenly feared she had fallen out of step, gone the wrong -way as they surged ahead. Polly suddenly knew she didn't want to stay behind. She wanted to go -with them.
While they waited, Jo played songs for Polly on her iPod and Ama drew lines and letters on Polly's back, through her shirt, the way they used to do at sleepovers when they were younger, but she didn't make Polly guess the letters or make words out of them.
Polly felt herself relaxing into the old ways, but at the same time she had the sense that she had come back to them after a long journey. She was the one who'd stayed home this summer, but she wasn't the same girl she had been in June. She'd sensed they had all three changed.
“Hey, Ama, I've been meaning to ask you something.” Polly stretched her feet all the way to the chair in front of her.
“Yeah?”
“Why are you still wearing those gigantic boots?”
At last the ER doctor, a woman in her thirties with faded freckles and dark red hair, appeared, followed by Dr. Napoli. Dr. Napoli gave more reassurances and hugged Polly and went back upstairs to his rounds. The ER doctor introduced herself as Dr. Marks and sat down next to Polly in a plastic waiting- room chair. “Your mom is going to be okay.”
Polly nodded.
Dr. Marks looked at Jo and Ama, who were perched in the next two chairs. She looked again at Polly. “Can -we talk for a minute?”
“Okay.”
“These are your friends, right?”
Polly nodded and so did Jo and Ama.
“We can go if you want,” Ama offered.
“No, I want them to stay,” Polly said.
Dr. Marks pushed up the sleeves of her green hospital smock. “Your mom blacked out because she drank too much. Has that happened before?”
“I could always wake her up before,” Polly said.
Dr. Marks nodded. “Do you and your mom live alone?”
Polly nodded.
“Is your dad … in the picture?”
Polly shook her head.
“I'm recommending to your mom that she go into an alcohol treatment program for twenty- eight days. There's an excellent facility in Virginia, just about an hour from here.”
Polly nodded.
“Is there someone who can stay with you? Or a place you can stay for those four -weeks where you'll feel comfortable?”
“Yes.” Ama spoke up. “She can stay with me.”
“She can stay with me, too,” Jo said.
Dr. Marks nodded. “Dr. Napoli mentioned that as -well. Good, then.” She turned to Polly. Her face -was full of sympathy. “Your mom is going to get better, Polly.”
“Is she?” Polly asked.
“When she -woke up she told me she has a reason, a really important reason, -why she has to get better.”
“What -was that?” Polly asked.
“She said you.”
Jo's eyes felt sore and tired that night, so she took out her contacts and put on her old brown glasses. She'd left her better glasses at the beach.
She brought out her violin from her closet. She opened the case and looked at it, along -with her shoulder rest and the little cardboard box -with her rosin in it. She touched the fine, smooth -wood. She touched a string, but she didn't play.
What would a person like Bryn think of her -with her old brown glasses, bowing away on her violin? Bryn -would think she was the biggest loser in the universe.
She felt grateful that Ama and Polly always seemed to appreciate her playing. They used to love it when she played along -with the top- ten songs on WKYS. She remembered them dutifully attending her recitals twice a year.
Jo didn't play her violin that night, but she put it under her bed before she went to sleep.
And when she slept, she dreamed of their trees, first as they were in their plastic pots, and then later, -when she and Polly and Ama planted them in the woods at the bottom of Pony Hill. She remembered the dirt on her hands, packed under her fingernails.
This was a memory she pushed away in her -waking life. Years later, even though she knew the two things were separate, she had begun to conflate the planting of their trees -with the dirt and shovel at Finn's burial. But in her dream now, she wasn't afraid of the dirt.
In her dream she pictured the roots of her tree growing under the soil. She saw them -winding and circling together -with the roots of the trees on either side, Polly's and Amas trees. She saw them spreading and growing, deeper and -wider under all the places she knew, under her house and the middle school and the 7-Eleven and Amas and Polly's houses. And it seemed to her that there -was a -whole -world u
nder the regular-world she knew, and that the roots of her tree connected to all of it, to the foundations of houses and other roots of flowers and shrubs and trees, even communing -with the worms and the bugs and other underground things.
And finally her roots traveled all the way to the cemetery and they curled and wound around where Finn -was buried and they kept him company under there. Even in her dream she somehow expected that this would be a terrifying image, but it wasn't.
Then the picture in her dream slowly changed and moved up above the ground. Her eyes traveled up to the sky, to the branches and leaves above her, and she suddenly knew that Finn had found company up there too.
The following evening Polly sat in her darkened kitchen with a glass of cold water on the table in front of her. The house was quiet except for her mom upstairs, thumping from suitcase to closet. Dia was packing to go to Virginia the next day. Polly had already packed to go to Amas, and Mr. Botsio had already stopped by to pick up her suitcase and assure Dia how pleased they were to have Polly stay as long as needed.
Polly sat on the chair -with her knees up, her arms wrapped around her legs. She didn't look down -when her mom came into the kitchen to survey the contents of the refrigerator. She watched Dia study the bottles of wine and tonic and close the door -without taking anything.
“You want a cookie?” Polly asked. Jo had baked three dozen chocolate chip cookies and brought them over wrapped in tinfoil that morning.
“Yes. Thanks.”
As Polly -watched her mother eat cookies, she didn't feel like she had to observe the bargain of not asking anymore.
“Hey Dia?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you something?”
Her mother opened the refrigerator again and got herself a glass of milk. “Okay” she said a little warily. She had a right to be wary.
“Where is all your stuff?”
Her mother gave her a look, -wondering if it -was -worth it to act like she didn't understand. It -wasn't. “At the studio, you mean? My-work?”
“Yes.”
“A lot of the old stuff-was sold or packed away.”
“And the new stuff?”
Polly's mother put one palm against the steel refrigerator door. She turned her head away.
“You haven't been making any,” Polly guessed.
“Not much. Not for a-while.”
“Why not?”
Dias face, -when it turned back, -was sad but not hard. “I lost the idea of being an artist, I think,” she said slowly. “I used to think those trees I made out of the metal junk were clever and beautiful, and the collectors did too. Then I stopped liking them. I tried to make other things, but nobody seems to want anything else from me. My career started to feel like it belonged to someone else.”
“Why did you stop liking them?” Polly asked.
Her mother thought about that for a moment. “Because … because they seem disrespectful, I guess. To trees.”
Polly nodded. She understood. She thought to ask, Then why do you always go to your studio? But it would have been a fake question in that she already knew the answer. Her mother -would say she went there to find the idea she'd lost. Polly knew that was the real reason, but she also knew that there was a realer reason.
Polly was always wanting her mother, always needing her. She was always wanting one more thing than she got. She was always left disappointed, always wanting, never having. The not having only made the wanting more ravenous and harder to satisfy. She acted like a baby, hoping to get her mother to act like a mother, even though it never -worked. Polly knew her mother -went to her studio to hide.
“It must be hard for you to understand,” her mother said.
Polly nodded. It -was and it -wasn't.
Her mother turned her face away again. “But try not to judge me too much until you are older and know more things.”
“I'll try,” Polly said.
Dia sat down at the table across from her.
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?” Polly asked.
“Yes. And a little bit excited, believe it or not. I am ready for something new.”
“I hope it works,” Polly said.
“I am really going to try, Pollywog.”
Polly nodded. “Hey, Dia?”
“Yeah.”
“I need to get braces. I should have gotten them a long time ago.”
Dia thought about this. “You're probably right.”
“I can go to Jo's orthodontist, I guess, but I don't think I can babysit enough to pay for it.”
“You don't have to worry about that.”
“I don't?” Polly's mother hadn't sold a sculpture in a long time. Now that she knew the reason, Polly was even more -worried about money than before. “Can you afford it?”
“You can.”
“No, I can't. I blew it all on that stupid model compe tition.”
“You have a lot of money in the bank,” Dia said. She reached over and took a sip of Polly's water.
“What do you mean? What bank?”
“My father -was a businessman. You probably didn't know that because I never told you, but he was a big executive at a car company. He died two years ago and he didn't have any other kids and he couldn't stand me, so he left the money to you.”
“He left it to me?”
“Yes. The money and a big house in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.”
“He left me his house?” Polly was incredulous. “He never even met me.”
“He did once. When you were a toddler.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He thought you were enchanting. That's the word he used.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Wow.”
“I know. He said you were the best thing I ever made. Of course, he was singing a different tune when I -was pregnant with you at nineteen and there was no apparent dad around for him to shoot.”
“Wow,” Polly said again.
Dia rested her chin in her hand. Her cheeks were pink and she looked young to Polly.
“Does it have a pool?”
“What?”
“The house in Michigan.”
Dia shook her head, but she looked like she might laugh. “Yes.”
“Can I go there?”
“Not with me, you can't. I hate that place,” Dia said. “We should really sell it. Maybe that's what we'll do when I get back.”
“Why didn't you tell me any of this before?”
Dia shrugged. “It's all pretty heavy. I thought I'd wait until you were older.”
“So then -why are you telling me now?”
Dia tapped her fingertips against Polly's wrist. “Because you seem … older.”
Ama was happy to be home. She was happy to eat her mother's food and be hugged and kissed and fussed over.
“We're proud of you,” her dad had said to her seriously at breakfast on her first morning back.
“For -what?” Ama asked. She hadn't even told them that she'd gotten an A in the course.
“For staying and finishing -when you wanted to come home,” he'd said.
Ama let Bob sleep in her bed with her the first two nights she was home, just the way Esi used to do for her -when she'd first come back from one of her long trips. While Bob lay next to her in the dark Ama told him stories about hiking and climbing and rappelling. She told him how beautiful it was in the mountains and how a river looks from -way up high. She even told him about rolling down a hill in her sleep and getting attacked by fire ants and getting lost in the woods for an entire day. But now she told it like it was an adventure, not an ordeal. That was how she would remember it.
“When you get to be in high school,” she whispered to her little brother in the dark, “you can't just spend all your time at the library and at school, you know. I'm going to make sure. You're going to go on a wilderness trip like me. You may not love it while it's happening, but I promise you -will love it when it's over.”
&n
bsp; After her mother -went back upstairs to finish packing, Polly's eyes wandered to the open pantry and she felt hungry. The light was on in the tiny room, guiding her eyes to the things she used to love and take comfort in—Honey Bunches of Oats, graham crackers, caramel sauce on a teaspoon, eaten straight out of the jar. If you were what you ate, then Polly was still in the pantry.
Polly pictured bits of herself in all the things she would have eaten but hadn't. She was in the cereal boxes, in the bread drawer, in the peanut butter jar, in the refrigerator, floating in the milk carton. In Jo's plate of cookies sitting on the counter.
Polly didn't want to be scattered around the kitchen anymore. She wanted to gather herself back up again. She didn't want to be flat anymore or send herself around the world. She wanted to be with her friends. She wanted to be full.
Ama woke up in the morning four days before the start of school and looked at the other twin bed in her room. Esi used to sleep there long ago, but for the last few days it had become Polly's. As usual, Polly had woken earlier and had made the bed. She was probably playing with Bob in the kitchen. As glad as Ama and her parents were to have Polly around, nobody was happier than Bob.
Ama was excited because they were going to Staples to shop for school supplies. She was an unrepentant dork in how much she loved school supplies, but it made her feel better that Polly, who wasn't a grade grubber, loved them too. When Ama looked at the calendar, she thought of something else.
She padded into the kitchen in her nightshirt and socks. Polly and Bob were playing Uno. “Do you know what day it is?” Ama asked Polly.
Polly looked up from the cards. “Um. No.”
“September first.”
Polly understood what it meant. Ama went back to her room to get dressed and Polly came in after she'd finished her card game.
“What do you want to do?” Polly asked.
“Should we call, do you think?”
“We could.”
“It's still pretty early” Ama said.
Polly started putting on her socks and shoes and Ama did too. Now that they had thought of it, they couldn't really think about much else.