“God, I’m glad I took a chance and wrote you!” he said.
“God, I’m glad you did, too!” Lucille said playfully, but really very seriously. She took another bite of food and then she said, “You know, Frank, when we were going out, I was always afraid to eat in front of you. I didn’t want to seem unladylike. We girls used to talk about what was the best thing to eat that wouldn’t make us spill or slurp or drop things off our fork. Or worst of all, get garlic on our breath!”
“I guess you wouldn’t have picked spaghetti and meatballs,” Frank said.
And then a little red sliver of devil came into Lucille and she made a really loud sound, slurping her pasta off the fork. Zluuuurrrp!
They both laughed and then Frank did it, too, and little flecks of sauce landed on his face like freckles and the other diners looked at them, which only made them laugh harder, and then Frank blew bubbles with a straw in his water.
In one more week, on June 1, she’s going to ask him to move out of his daughter’s house and stay with her. Not for that. Just so they can see how it goes, being together. Finally.
—
At lunchtime, Maddy leaves school and goes to the cemetery, as usual. But this time she goes to a new area; she doesn’t want to run into that old man, Arthur. No. Not Arthur, Truluv. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone, even him.
She settles herself at the base of a willow tree, where no one will see her. It’s pretty here, the willow tree, a little pond off in the distance. She wonders who would ask to be buried by the pond. Actually, she would. She would like to be buried by water, so then there would be earth, air, and water all around her. Only thing missing would be fire. Maybe she could have an eternal flame, ha ha.
She takes in a deep breath. Great day, so far. She got a D on her math test and the teacher wrote at the top in red: Maddy, you must do better! And she has to admit it, she might as well admit it, it hurts more to deny it than to admit it: she still loves Anderson. She’s not getting over him. Today, especially, her insides felt filled with ground glass. She guesses she thought he didn’t mean it. She guesses she thought he’d come back. Last night she kissed her pillow like it was him because she misses kissing him so much. He was such a good kisser. Soft lips, and he used to pull at her tongue a little with his mouth, just a little sucking feeling that drove her wild. He put his finger inside her because she was still a virgin, no surprise there, who would want her? But Anderson did. They had been working up to the real thing, which Anderson said they could do once she was eighteen. One time, when they were naked, he came on her. And guess what. She treasured it. He got all panicky and said, “Wait, wait, let me wipe that off,” and jumped up for his T-shirt, but she treasured it. A live part of him on her. She hates him but she misses him, and even when you hate someone you can still love them, she’s proof of that.
Plus, she just had another incident. She’s supposed to go and talk to the counselor when an incident occurs. Right. That’ll help.
She was sitting in class and doodling, listening to Mr. Lyons talk about Langston Hughes. Nobody in class had heard of him but Maddy, and she wasn’t about to raise her hand and admit it. Mr. Lyons asked if anyone had heard the simile “like a raisin in the sun.” A few hands shot up fast; okay, big deal, they knew about the play. So Mr. Lyons talked about the play and then he was starting to dissect Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” and Maddy was interested, as she always was when they talked about poetry, it made her forget everything else, every time. But then Scott Bredeman, who sat across from her, whispered her name. She didn’t look over at first, she was pretty sure no good could come of it. But he was new, he had only been there for a week, so maybe it was okay. She looked over at him and he handed her a note, put his finger to his lips, smiled at her. He had a nice smile, big dimples. He returned his attention to Mr. Lyons, and Maddy opened the note:
Your blouse is open.
She looked down. Sure enough, a button halfway down had come undone and her blouse was gaping open. Her face colored, and she quickly buttoned herself up. She stared straight ahead, listening to Mr. Lyons, but she was thinking that it was nice of Scott to tell her. He had done something nice for her.
She turned her head slightly to study him. Not only was he good-looking, he just looked like a kind person. Maybe she could have a friendship with him, and in that way start over. Maybe if he liked her, another kid would, and then another. Maybe they’d all eat lunch together eventually, and the horrible treatment she’d endured for so long would lessen, then stop. But how to start?
On the same piece of paper, she wrote, in what she hoped was a casual-looking script, Where did you move here from?
She passed him the note, and he read it. He thought for a moment, while her heart hammered in her chest, then wrote something and passed the note back. Not interested, okay?
She sat there. Sat there some more, a black ache expanding inside her. So he knew. Already, he’d been enlisted on the side of the Others. He had been told what everyone but her seems to know about her. He had also straightened his posture and moved slightly to the right in his seat, so that his back was toward her to the extent that it could be.
She looked straight ahead at all the other kids in the class. All those backs of heads holding nothing like what was in her head now, which was this: there is a scent the hounds get excited by, and the fox can’t separate that scent from itself.
She slipped the note into her backpack. Couldn’t leave it there. But it defiled her backpack. Her day. Her life.
When the bell rang, Mr. Lyons called over to her, “Miss Harris! Hang on for a second.” And then after all the kids had filed out (Scott Bredeman looking a tiny bit worried, she was happy to see), Maddy went up to Mr. Lyons and he leaned against the edge of his desk, his arms crossed, and asked her, “What did that boy write to you?”
So he’d seen it. He saw everything.
“Nothing,” she said.
Mr. Lyons waited.
“Nothing,” Maddy said. “Just…the usual.” She shrugged.
“Come with me,” Mr. Lyons said, but Maddy said no. She knew he would bring her to the counselor or the principal. She told him she had to meet someone for lunch. Mr. Lyons said okay, doubtfully, and then he said, “Maddy, I just want you to know that it’ll get better. Truly it will.”
“Oh, I know,” she said, and she smiled at him, which cost her. It cost her.
Now she sits under the willow tree and for the millionth time wonders why her. Why? She never did anything to any of them. There was an incident in sixth grade when a girl came up to her at recess and asked her if it was true her mother was dead. And when Maddy said yes, the girl’s expression changed to one of guarded horror and she walked off to whisper in another girl’s ear. Maddy yelled, “It’s not contagious!” The girls made big eyes at her, then wandered off, hand in hand.
But even before that she’d been seen as weird. Not picked on in the way she is now, but weird. She supposes she is a little weird: she’s quiet, certainly; she has different tastes and predilections than most people her age, but she’s not like Carla Casella, who is in three of her classes. Carla wears white ankle socks every day and a little bell around her neck and she sits in the very front of every classroom and yells out answers without being called on. She chews with her mouth open so dramatically you think it’s a joke and she gets a ride to and from school with a father who looks like a bigger nerd than she is. Nobody bothers Carla. They don’t include her, but they don’t bother her. Fred Kaufman carries a briefcase to school, he has a little thermos of coffee in there, he wears bow ties, he chooses to be alone rather than hang out with anyone, and everybody thinks he’s the coolest thing.
Why do they pick on her?
One of the things Maddy has of her mother’s is a collection of Tori Amos CDs. Maddy listens to those CDs a lot, and she’s read about Tori. She draws comfort from a quote she read that was attributed to the singer: “What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chines
e torture comes close.”
But of course, it’s not just the girls. The boys have joined in in a way that’s more desultory but every bit as constant. Every bit as determined-seeming. Maddy doesn’t know what they’re fixed on unless it’s what someone wrote on her Facebook page before she took it down: Die, and you’ll be popular.
Maddy has read that the inspiration for Tori Amos’s song “Cornflake Girl” came from the idea of a cornflake girl as compared to a raisin girl. Raisin girls, rare, different, are much harder to find. The first line of the song is “Never was a cornflake girl…” Tori embraces her differentness, but Maddy doesn’t have the strength Tori seems to have. Maddy wants to belong. She wants them to stop picking on her. She has thought and thought about how she might change things, she has tried to come up with solutions—funny, creative, tough, plainspoken, and sincere—but she has not been able to change anything. This amped-up abuse has been going on since junior year. She thought they’d forget about it over the summer, but they didn’t forget about it; it’s worse this year. Last time she went to the girls’ bathroom, somebody threw a used tampon over the wall of the stall. She saw it come sailing over and then she heard some laughter and then she watched some feet walk quickly out. At least it didn’t get on her. She used a big bunch of toilet paper to pick it up and tossed it in the toilet, flushed it. No point in the janitor having to do it. She came out of the stall and washed her hands and did not look at herself in the mirror and then she went to her next class. She’s been off Facebook for months but they still find their ways. Last week after gym class, she went to put on her shoes and found lipstick smeared all over the soles.
Probably in every school this happens to someone. In her school, she’s the one. And the winner is: Maddy Harris! And here’s how it works: When she says her own name in her mind, she, too, feels a revulsion. They have persuaded her onto their side, though they do not let her belong with them. In this way, she does belong with them.
She walks over to a nearby grave. Anna Marie Dorset. Born 1922. Died 2000. She lies on the grave and closes her eyes. Birds sing.
She wonders what her funeral would be like, if she died now. She wonders if her father would say the eulogy. Who else would say anything? But what would her father say? What could he say? If he were honest, he’d say just four words: I never knew her.
Maddy feels something crawling up her face and sits up, brushes it away. An ant. They’re amazing creatures, not everyone knows how amazing they are. They can carry fifty times their own weight.
She leans over the grave of Anna Marie. Tries to “get” something like Truluv does. But she doesn’t get anything.
Here’s what Maddy gets: the meaning of her favorite Langston Hughes poem, called “Suicide’s Note.” It’s about someone understanding that something wants him, even if it’s only death. It’s about that person’s calm acceptance of the river’s request for a kiss, his feeling that now, as ever, is as good a time as any to leave.
It’s time to go back. She walks slowly toward school, carrying her backpack and fifty times her own weight.
Soldier ants plug entrances to their nests so invaders can’t get in. She isn’t a soldier ant. Nor does she have one, anymore. “Will you come to my graduation?” she’d asked Anderson, and he’d looked pained. But then he’d said, “Yeah. Sure.” And he’d kissed her like she was the cutest thing.
—
For the next three days, nothing but rain. Rain, thunder, lightning, the works. Arthur has stood resolutely at the bus stop every day, his umbrella pretty much useless against the sideways-blowing rain. Today when he awakens, it’s still raining. BOOM! goes the thunder. Nola was always afraid of thunder, it sometimes even made her cry and say, “Oh, stop!” Gordon is afraid, too, but he won’t admit it. He follows Arthur into whatever room he goes to, and if Arthur turns to look at him, he sniffs elaborately at a dust ball, at the edge of a carpet, along the bottoms of the kitchen cabinets. Or he rolls on his back and stares at Arthur through green slits.
Today Arthur would like to stay in all day and listen to his Dinah Shore tapes, but a man has to do what a man has to do. When he thinks of the harsh winter days he spent beside Nola’s grave when the wind seemed like it was going to yank the trees right out of the ground and the cold reddened his cheeks and nose, rain seems like nothing.
But by the time Arthur showers, dresses, and eats a breakfast of an English muffin with sardines (definitely not the taste he was hoping for), the rain has finally stopped. The sun has come out in a way that seems indifferent, defensive, as if nothing at all has happened in its absence. Puddles are still deep enough for ducks, and all the branches that fell haven’t been cleared away, but the sky is clear.
He spends a longer time than usual at the cemetery—he falls asleep, if the truth be told, but even in sleep he has Nola on his mind. He’s stiff in the shoulders and the knees and the neck when he walks to the bus stop to go home; he hopes a hot shower will help.
When he comes up onto his porch, he sees a small cardboard box at the door. Inside are five cans of that fancy cat food in ads where the cat eats out of a crystal goblet with a tiara on its head. There’s also a piece of paper, folded over, Truluv written on it in a backhand script, purple ink.
He looks inside the note. There’s a photo of Gordon, looking as handsome as can be, looking like King Tut, especially since she has Photoshopped a crown on his head. What the kids can’t do with those computers! He’s seen what look like four-year-olds seated at little computer screens at the library, intent on their business as air traffic controllers.
So Maddy was here! But when did she take that photo? When she was at his house, he didn’t see her take any photos. Such a wonderfully strange girl.
Beneath Gordon’s image, she has written: Maybe I’ll see you at the cemetery tomorrow. It will be my birthday.
She’ll be eighteen, he remembers. He’ll bring her a present. Something special.
“Gordon?” he calls, when he lets himself inside. “Gordon!” No sign of him. “Gordon!”
The hell with him. Arthur sets the box down and then sees the cat, just off to the side, not one foot away, staring at him.
“You couldn’t walk over?” Arthur says. “You couldn’t take two steps?”
Gordon blinks.
Arthur points to the box. “You know what’s in there? You won’t believe what’s in there.” His chest seizes up suddenly and he begins coughing so spectacularly that Gordon runs away. Arthur makes his way upstairs, coughing all the while. Yes, a hot shower, that’s what he needs. Pronto.
Arthur’s shower is brief, but he thinks maybe it helped. He puts on his pajamas, even if it is only five o’clock, and comes downstairs to open up a can of something for dinner. He thinks he has some of that O spaghetti; it’s not too bad if you add a lot of cheese. He’s got a hot dog or two. An apple.
He opens the drawer for the can opener and sees Mr. and Mrs. Hamburger. “Bingo,” he says. “Happy birthday to you.”
Somewhere in the house, there’s wrapping paper. Nola always said half the gift was the wrapping, and she knocked herself out in that regard. Once she wrapped a coat for her mother and Arthur told her the gift looked like an entry for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Nola said, and he said, “I meant it as one!” Though that wasn’t precisely true.
He thinks maybe the wrapping paper is in the back of her closet. He thinks he remembers her always going there to get it.
He washes off the figures with a little Comet cleanser until they look almost new. Nothing he can do about the way the rubber has yellowed, but at least there are no crumbs stuck in the corners of their smiles, or in the latch of Mrs. Hamburger’s purse.
He heads upstairs for the wrapping paper and suddenly stops. He clutches at the railing with one hand, at his chest with the other, and then he lowers himself down on the step to catch his breath. Well, that’s new. And here comes Gordon, who likes nothing
more than to gaze impassively upon another’s suffering, that of mice or men. He smiles at his own joke. He’ll have to tell Maddy that one. He scratches the top of the cat’s head, and Gordon closes his eyes and stretches his neck up at an improbable angle in pleasure. If Arthur came upon the cat lying on the floor that way, he’d think Gordon had broken his neck. People think cats aren’t entertaining, but they are.
After a moment, Arthur gets up again and goes into Nola’s closet, which he has yet to empty and why should he, he doesn’t think he will ever remove a single thing from there, not the dresses, not the skirts or blouses, not the scarves or the hats or the shoes or the purses. Not the little beaded black coin purse she used when her back was bothering her too much to carry a regular purse. On the right kind of day, he can still smell her in that closet.
He sees that he was right, there in the back of the closet are plastic bins holding wrapping paper and ribbon. He finds a package of paper with lilacs on it, big bouquets of lilacs, and there’s some purple ribbon wrapped up right with the paper. Couldn’t be easier! He brings the supplies downstairs and wraps the figurines, and then has to sit at the kitchen table to catch his breath again. He’s disappointed at the way the gift looks, all lumpy and bumpy and the tape showing; Nola would never let the tape show, but he has no idea how to do that. The ribbon is pretty but the bow is nothing elaborate. Maybe he’ll tape a purple rose on it tomorrow before he takes it over to the cemetery. He grows a variety called Amnesia, maybe it’ll help Maddy forget her troubles. He also has a darker purple one called Moody Blue, she might like that one even better. After dinner, he’ll make her a card and sign it, Your friends, Truluv and Gordon.
But then he decides to skip dinner. He’s not hungry. What he is is exhausted. He makes his way back upstairs, then realizes he hasn’t fed Gordon. And so he comes back down. And then goes back up. He’ll tell Maddy that Gordon devoured that cat food. That’s what he’ll tell her, though what happened is that the cat sniffed it and then walked away from it. Sat expectantly a distance away as if he were saying, What else you got? Well, the cat had to get fed. He had to eat. Arthur gave him a hot dog. He couldn’t get mad at him. They were alike, he and Gordon. Fancy food didn’t impress them.