Phyllis didn’t have a name for the muscle in her foot. With Ralph, Phyllis could move something called a sensor that was taped to her thigh, and that’s how she swiveled the mirrors. She was doing that to get a better view of The Martian Chronicles box.
“It’s just a landscape really, kind of like a country in The Martian Chronicles, but I just call it the Beautiful Place.”
“Oh, my goodness, it is beautiful.”
“It’s just like the way Ray Bradbury, the author, described the ancient city. I made it from rose quartz and crystal pieces that I got at a rock shop on our trip out west, summer before last.”
“And what are those figures? How did you make them?”
“I molded them out of this kind of clear Plasticine stuff, and you see, I put little gold beads in for their eyes, ’cause Ray Bradbury said that the Martians had transparent bodies and eyes like gold coins and that the stars could shine through them.”
“The stars could shine through them. How lovely.”
She closed her eyes for a minute as if she were trying to hold on to this image, an image in her mind’s eye and not a reflection in the mirror.
Mrs. Keller had come out, and unlike Mr. Keller, seemed to find the box genuinely clever. She also asked me a lot about the kinds of books I liked to read. Mrs. Keller taught English literature at a local college, so she knew a lot about books. She was so nice and friendly that I just thought I would ask her about that poem I first heard her reading.
“Now, what poem was that, dear?”
I couldn’t remember all the words, but then I remembered the word I didn’t know: casement. “It’s something about some lady standing at a casement and waving her hand and —”
“Oh!” Mrs. Keller clapped her hands together. “‘The Lady of Shalott.’ A lovely poem.”
“My poem,” Phyllis said softly.
Mrs. Keller ran inside to get the poem and came out and read it. I couldn’t believe it, but honestly it was the saddest, most horrible poem I had ever heard. It was about a lovely lady who lived in a tower under a terrible curse.
“There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving thro’ a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls
Pass onward from Shalott.”
I felt a kind of panic begin to well up inside of me. This was too much like Phyllis. The mirror that hangs there all the year. Substitute iron lung for tower. The Lady of Shalott was cursed in the same way — to only see life through a mirror while she wove some dumb tapestry. Then she dies when she leaves her mirror prison and the loom and looks directly at life. I couldn’t believe that this was Phyllis’s poem, or her favorite poem. Phyllis turned her head toward me after her mother had finished reading the poem. I could see a rub mark just above the rubber-ringed collar that sealed her into the iron lung. But our eyes only met in the mirror. I dared not look at her.
“That’s your favorite poem?” I asked softly.
“It’s my poem,” she whispered.
“Well, Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote it, and Phyllis is a romantic. Loves the romantic poets just as I do. That’s what I teach at Butler College: romantic poetry and Victorian literature. Look at this.” She bustled over to a box and got out an embroidery hoop and brought it over to me. “Phyllis bought me this for my birthday. She had Sally order it from a catalog.”
It was a needlepoint picture of the Lady of Shalott weaving in front of her mirror! This was absolutely sick! I didn’t understand why Mrs. Keller didn’t understand. I got it, and I was only eleven years old. Was she just being blind on purpose? Or was this some stupid way of not simply trying to make the best of a rotten situation but trying to lie about it? Turn it into something else. Something beautiful and romantic.
There was nothing romantic about “The Lady of Shalott”— poem or needlepoint. I looked at Phyllis again in the mirror. She was looking at her mother now. It was then that I knew that Phyllis had lied. I wondered what else she lied about. How much lying did Phyllis have to do? This was not only not her favorite poem; she hated it. But she would never tell her mother, just as she would never tell her father that it was not fine that the double-reading mirror with the patent pending would be named the Phyllis. I realized that the entire Keller family was caught up in some strange web of lies, and there was nothing magical about it. However, not only were the Kellers caught up, but maybe even Emmett. They all had their games going with Phyllis: poems, patented inventions, mechanical problem-solving. You name it. But I had no games.
Although I hated the poem, I was fascinated by it at the same time. I have to admit that I was sometimes drawn to things that would scare me, like horror movies. Emmett had a book of monsters. It really scared me when I was little, but sometimes I would go into his room and I would dare myself to look at it, look at the very scariest monster. It was as if I had to try to master my worst fears. It was the same with “The Lady of Shalott.” I dared myself to read it. I asked if I could borrow the book with the poem in it. But maybe it was more than just daring myself or mastering a fear. Maybe I thought in an odd way it would be a key to understanding Phyllis. But in truth it made Phyllis even more mysterious than ever, and I sensed some sort of danger. I wasn’t quite sure what the danger was, but it was there, and it seemed important that I try to understand it — for Phyllis’s sake, for my sake, and for Emmett’s sake. From all my reading about the polio virus, I knew that polio victims like Phyllis were not infectious. And yet I felt vulnerable. It was as if an even stealthier virus were lurking. Phyllis’s small world had turned things upside down. She was supposed to be the victim, not us. After all, I was a builder of small worlds. I manipulated them. Not the reverse. I was determined to help Phyllis, but I would not be her fool. I was going to find out everything I could about people who had managed to live outside iron lungs, escaped the tyranny of the beast on which they were dependent for every breath.
It occurred to me that I more than anyone else was the perfect person to help Phyllis. Why? Because I believed in Phyllis in a way no one else did. She filled my imagination with images that were not reflections but what she really was. Her spirit, her beauty, her liveliness. In my dreams she was a cheerleader, a fashion model. This was her reality. She had created a little world in my head. But at the same time, I knew that there was something dangerous. Mirrors had to be shattered, and with the shards, this particular dragon might be slain.
“Oh, you can take the book home, dear,” Mrs. Keller was saying. “I always like to encourage young people to develop good reading habits. You couldn’t do better than Tennyson.”
Or maybe I couldn’t do worse, if she knew my strangely morbid fascination. Even though it was ninety degrees outside and Mom wasn’t home to drive me to the library, I was determined to go and find out everything I could about polio victims who had escaped the clutches of the iron lung.
I went to the library and found precious little about polio victims who had survived outside of iron lungs. But it was a branch library, after all. Mrs. English, the golf-socks-wearing librarian, told me that the main library would have much more information. They had something called microfiche files that you could hunt through. Microfiche was basically photos of newspaper and magazine articles that were projected on a small screen, and you could flip through them really fast. I thought this would be the perfect research expedition for me and Evelyn
. She would be back from the wedding in two days.
So it was the following day that I brought the poetry book back. When I got there, Mrs. Keller and Phyllis and Phyllis’s tutor, who came three days a week, were having tea, Phyllis of course sipping hers through the gigantic straw. Mrs. Keller was working on the needlepoint of the Lady of Shalott, and the tutor, Miss Crenshaw, was admiring it. They were all nattering on about romantic poetry. Mrs. Keller turned to Miss Crenshaw and said, “You know, Georgia here is just a sixth-grader, but she has very sophisticated tastes and a real appreciation of poetry. She loves ‘The Lady of Shalott.’ Don’t you, Georgia? And I gave her a copy of one of my Tennyson books. Do you have a favorite stanza, Georgia?”
“Mother!” Phyllis sighed.
“Well, I only thought maybe she’d like to recite it.”
I felt something grip my stomach and my throat begin to lock. I didn’t have a favorite stanza. I could hardly speak now. Words began to scatter in front of me like little birds struck by a big wind, winging off, tossed and tumbled by the currents. “I-I . . . I . . . c-c-c-can . . . c-can —”
“Mother,” Phyllis said sharply. “I’ll recite you my favorite stanza.” And she began.
“But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot;
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed;
‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.”
My face was caught in the mirrors with Phyllis’s. Hers, I could see, was deathly pale. Our reflected eyes exchanged glances, and for once there was truth in that mirror. I wasn’t sure, but I think in that moment Phyllis might have been envisioning her own funeral. Her death.
Miss Crenshaw soon left, and Mrs. Keller went upstairs to grade term papers.
“Phyllis, I’ve got a question.”
“What’s that, Georgie?”
“Why do you do it?”
Phyllis’s eyes in the mirror slid toward me, wary but comprehending. “You mean play their games? Play my parents’ little games?”
I nodded slowly. “Like your mom said that you found her that needlepoint thing of the Lady of Shalott, but you just pretend to like that poem, don’t you?” Phyllis’s eyes were steady in the mirror. “And all that stuff your father invents for the Creature and puts your name on it. You don’t give a hoot about most of it, do you?”
“Look, Georgie, if there is one thing that sickness does, it makes you old real fast. It makes you old in good ways and bad ways. Grown-ups can be great liars. Kids, well, we’re just pikers compared to adults when it comes to lying. Adults are so good at it that they don’t even know they’re lying. Lying is all my parents have now. Lying about me, lying about my so-called life. It’s very important that they think I’m sort of, well, if not happy, content in a way. That is the only way they can vaguely even approach not going crazy. That is all we’ve got, Georgie — the pretense of contentment. It keeps the devils away.”
“The devils?” I said softly, but she didn’t answer.
She just said, “I’m very grown-up now. Very adult.”
“What about Emmett? Do you lie to him?”
“No, Emmett lies to me.”
“I know,” I said in barely a whisper.
“I know you know, Georgie.”
“You do.” She blinked rapidly. It was her way of nodding. She could nod a little, but this was easier.
“I mean I really think he likes you but he’s just scared.”
“I know.” There was another little storm of blinks. “And you don’t lie to me, do you, Georgie?”
“Never!” I said.
“That’s why I’m going to call you Saint Georgie.” Her eyes danced now with delight.
“You are?”
“Yes, ma’am!” She paused. “See, when you brought over your small world, Saint George and the Dragon, I kind of knew right then when I saw that little knight with tinfoil armor and his little sword raised that you were going to help me.”
Maybe I should have been complimented, but instead I sensed something dangerous again. It’s just a tinfoil sword, I wanted to say. Tinfoil. Not real. You’re the one in the shining armor, I wanted to say, and I’m going to have to smash those mirrors before slaying any beast.
“You’re right about Emmett,” she continued. “He’s scared to show his feelings. He’s hiding behind all that science he knows. It’s easier for him to talk to my dad.”
This was dangerous territory. I couldn’t help but think about what Evelyn and I saw that night when we had spied.
She narrowed her eyes. They became kind of smoky. “I know guys.”
The Trunk was what I called the Central Indianapolis Library. Everyone else called it the Central Branch. I thought it was absolutely stupid to call the main library a branch. Anyway, the Trunk down on East St. Clair Street was as different from any branch as could be, especially El Rancho. It was limestone, but a darker one, maybe dark from age, and inside there was lots of marble. Shadows and dark cool stone. It wasn’t air-conditioned, either. Nevertheless it was tens of degrees cooler on the inside than any non-air-conditioned building you could imagine. Evelyn and I had settled at two microfiche machines, and the reference librarian, who reminded me of a dried twig, had shown us how to work them. She was nice enough, but she didn’t offer lemonade like Golf Socks at El Rancho. She wore old-lady shoes that clacked on the marble floors.
You had to get the hang of moving the microfiche dial because stuff slid by so fast. Evelyn also had requested the New England Journal of Medicine. This was a publication for doctors that she said her mom and dad swore by. So after maybe a quarter of an hour of trying to get something off the microfiche, she started looking through the journals.
She sighed deeply. “What?” I asked.
“This is really depressing. It says here in this article by Dr. Samuel Gluckmeir that the longer people stay in an iron lung, the harder it is to wean them.”
“Wean?”
“Yeah, take them out of it. Let them breathe on their own.” Wean seemed like a really peculiar word to use. My grandfather talked about weaning farm animals from mother’s milk all the time, but weaning from a machine’s air . . .
“It’s like,” Evelyn continued, “their muscles have atrophied.”
“Atrophied?”
“Grown useless. So how long has Phyllis been in an iron lung?”
This caught me by surprise because I wasn’t even sure. “Gee, I don’t really know for certain.”
“Well, the patients who have the most success, it seems to say here, have been in it for a week or less.”
Oh, God, I thought. This wasn’t Phyllis. I had known her almost a month now. “I’m pretty sure she’s been in there maybe a year or more.”
I went back to the microfiche. A picture flashed by. “Whoa!”
“What is it?” Evelyn asked.
“Just a second, I have to back up.” I moved the dial slowly in itty-bitty little turns. There was a grainy photograph of a man in a huge rocking chair. He was actually smiling. The caption read, “Rodger Mills in his rocking bed.” It went on to explain the principle of the bed, which was that when a patient’s head was up and his feet were down, the internal organs were pulled by gravity. When this happened, the diaphragm was pulled with them, and this sucked air into the patient’s lungs. Then when the bed rocked back to the reverse position, air was forced out of the lungs.
“Does it say how long he was in an iron lung before they put him in the bed?” Evelyn asked.
“No, but it says that he spends ‘extended periods of time’ out of the iron lung.” I read on a bit. “Oh, wow! Get this. It says here that since polio does not affect the sensory nerves, but only the nerves that control voluntary muscles, people like Rodger and his wife, Minerva —
Minerva, what a name! Anyhow, Rodger and Minerva can have a healthy, but modified, physical relationship.”
“That means sex!” Evelyn said.
“Duh, I know that!”
The rocking bed, I felt, offered some kind of hope. But I wasn’t exactly sure how I was supposed to bring this up. Also there were some things I really wanted to know, since even the rocking bed didn’t work all that well with people who had been in an iron lung a really long time. But how to ask Phyllis? And then there was the other problem. Phyllis had originally wanted me to help her, but in a much different way. Saint Georgie or not, after Evelyn and I witnessed Phyllis and Emmett on our spying expedition, I wasn’t so sure that Phyllis had need of my Cupid services. However, I also sensed that she still wanted me to somehow back her up in the relationship. Or maybe it was to act as a go-between. Maybe I was just supposed to monitor Emmett’s feelings and tell her. So if I wasn’t Cupid and not Saint George, did monitoring Emmett’s feelings make me a spy of some sort? Although I had spied on them that night, going from saint to spy was a hard transition. It wasn’t quite the noble role I had imagined. I thought again of the shattered mirrors and the shards with which a dragon could be slain. Maybe there was a saint who smashed mirrors, the scourge of Shalott but nonetheless a savior?