Every weekend while I was in elementary school, one of my parents drove Laura and me to St. John's, our local Catholic school right in downtown Daring. Sometimes, if Max dropped us off, he'd wait for us in the local diner, where he read the paper, prepared his classes, and drank coffee until returning to pick us up three hours later. And if Cate drove, she went to the library, ran errands, and once a month had her shoulder-length auburn hair trimmed at Sheryl Hansen's mother's beauty salon, the Right Cut.
The one good thing about catechism was that we weren't assigned seats like in regular school. Laura and I always sat next to each other. I couldn't get over how neat and tidy Catholic classrooms were — the blackboards washed, the erasers free from chalk dust, and all the desks in straight, uniform rows. A wooden crucifix hung at the front of the room, right next to the American flag. Every Saturday Laura and I sat at a different pair of desks and always sneaked a peek inside, lifting up the desktops and surveying the treasures beneath. Each desk was unique to the boy or girl assigned to it on weekdays — a collection of colorful pencils and erasers of all shapes and sizes, a multicolored ring, a handful of jacks, a pair of soiled sweat socks, stacks of baseball cards, the crumpled balls of returned test papers. From our very first catechism class, we were told repeatedly to leave the desks as they were, and never to take anything that didn't belong to us. But each Saturday, without fail, we learned that some parochial student had reported something missing the week before. Then the "it's a sin to steal" lecture, which we knew by heart, took up the first half hour of class.
"Why leave anything good in your desk if you don't want it taken?" a boy named Darryl Clark whispered from the back of the room, just loud enough for all of us to hear.
Laughter erupted, and he was made to stand outside the door of the classroom for the next twenty minutes. I thought it was an unfair punishment but was smart enough to keep my mouth shut in front of Sister Agnes, who was one step away from retirement and didn't put up with anything.
Each week we studied a chapter from our catechism book. And each year the cover changed color as we advanced. During the fourth grade, the cover was periwinkle blue, and we had to answer all the questions at the end of the assigned chapter before our class. Usually I wrote out the answers on Friday evening, so Laura could copy them from me on our way to class, holding her book low and steady on her lap so my parents couldn't see what she was doing. In turn, she brought Sweet Tarts, Twinkies, and Hostess cupcakes to share with me during our breaks.
"Here," Laura said one morning, "I brought you an extra cupcake." She handed it to me, and I broke it in two, keeping one half and giving the other back to her. Even at the age of nine, we looked after each other.
"So what did you two learn today?" I remember Cate asking when she came to pick us up one morning. The good thing about
Max picking us up was all he ever asked was "Are you two hungry?"
"We studied the commandments," I answered, already feeling anxious. "We're supposed to have them all memorized by next week."
Cate smiled and glanced toward the backseat. "I can help you with memorizing them."
Laura yawned, leaned over to me, and whispered, "Do you think we'll be home in time to see American Bandstand?" She swept her blond hair out of her eyes. She was taller than I, by several inches, and long-legged as a wild colt. If I hadn't loved her as much as I did, I might have been jealous.
But that fourth-grade year, we were both in love with the Monkees, who were singing on the show that Saturday. I glanced down at my watch to see if we'd catch the last half, the important part, when most of the popular bands came on. It was already decided that I would one day be Mrs. Davy Jones and Laura would be Mrs. Peter Tork and we'd live next door to each other in our big houses with swimming pools and tennis courts. The walls of our rooms were cluttered with foldout posters of them, cut from the teen magazines we bought with our weekly allowances.
"Hope so," I whispered back.
"So what are some of the commandments?" Cate glanced back at us again in her rearview mirror.
"Thou shall not kill," I said, remembering Ricky Hamilton yelling it out in the classroom when Sister Agnes asked who knew any of the commandments.
"Good idea," Cate said.
"Honor thy father and thy mother," I quickly added.
I could see my mother's smile in the mirror. "I really like that one."
"Thou shall not commit adult...adulthood?" I looked at Laura, but she only shrugged her shoulders.
Cate laughed. "You better start studying. You two don't want to flunk catechism!"
When Cate looked back at the road and fidgeted with the car radio to get the news, Laura nudged me and reached into her backpack. She smiled, showing all her perfectly straight teeth, and took out two new red and blue pencils for me to see, then whispered in my ear, "Thou shall not steal."
We looked at each other and tried to keep from laughing out loud. But mine was a nervous laugh, the kind of camouflage that erupts when you're too surprised to know what to say. Inside, my stomach had knotted up. Until now Laura had always been the adventurous one, but she'd never broken any of the Ten Commandments. I wondered what all this would mean. Would she burn in hell for stealing? Would I, for knowing and not saying anything? I lived with these questions for a week and prayed that Laura wouldn't do it again. And for the rest of the year, there were no more "it's a sin to steal" lectures from Sister Agnes. Instead we learned that God was all-forgiving. But I knew now that he would never answer Laura's prayers about becoming Mrs. Peter Tork.
A letter from Laura now sits unanswered on the desk. She hasn't returned to Daring since her parents died in a terrible train accident over ten years ago. I haven't seen my godchildren, Josephine and Camille, since then either — not since they were babies — which was more my choice than Laura's. What's the point of disrupting everyone's lives now?
Instead of visiting, Laura keeps me up-to-date with pictures. I see the girls growing up year by year in grinning photos — the missing teeth; the baby fat one year that's gone the next; the long and short hairstyles; the bright eyes and soft, unblemished skin of youth. An array of birthday and Christmas cards, crayon drawings, and scribbled letters has arrived over the years; Laura makes sure of that. "Dear Godmother Hana," they begin.
"That makes me their god-grandmother," my mother said to me the other morning. She was standing in front of the refrigerator door holding a carton of nonfat milk in her hand, staring at the latest letters, photos, and drawings held up by colorful red, green, and blue magnets. I could see by the smile on her face that the idea pleased her.
"Guess so." I laughed.
"Sweet things," she added, tapping lightly on a photo of the girls, eleven and thirteen now, dressed as ski bunnies in Vermont over the Christmas holidays.
"They're the closest you'll ever come to grandchildren," I said, regretting the words as soon as I spoke them.
"It's close enough for me." My mother brought the carton to the table. She pushed a strand of her gray-streaked hair away from her face and poured some milk into her coffee.
"I didn't mean to sound bitchy." I sipped my orange juice slowly.
My mother laughed. "I know," she said glancing at me. "It didn't sound too bitchy."
"I'm not only getting old but cranky, too." I laughed.
"That makes two of us," she added.
I shook my head. "Never you," I said.
As I reached again for my glass of juice, my hand began to tremble. Quickly, I pulled it back and ran my fingers through my thin wisps of hair. Lately, the tremors have been occurring more often, and I don't want my mother to know just yet. One more thing for her to deal with, soon enough.
But, as always, my mother saved the moment. "As god-grandmother, I have a request to make," she said, then swallowed a mouthful of coffee. "Do you think Laura could give me a god-grandson?"
I looked up at her and caught her eyes, gleaming with mischief, as we both broke out in laughter.
I was sixteen when I first asked to see photos of Werner's syndrome patients, the hawk-like nose, gray, thin hair, the ulcers and cataracts. I asked Dr. Truman if I could keep one of the photos and tacked it up on my bedroom wall. For weeks I said little and kept the photo to myself, studying it. I knew my parents were worried, but Miles was always there to reassure them. "Give her time. It would be a shock for anyone to see." He knew I would have to work it out on my own. One night when Cate came to say good night, I lay in bed perfectly still at first, pretending to be asleep. She lingered in the doorway and didn't say a word, simply stood there as if she were frozen in place.
She had just stepped back and was about to close my room door when I said, "The photo. That might be me in twenty years."
Cate stepped back into my room and came to my bed. "And it might not be," she answered.
I switched on the light next to my bed. "Will you still love me when I look like that?"
She watched me as if she were studying a painting. Then she leaned over to stroke my cheek and kiss me on the forehead. I had yet to have any outward signs of Werner. Then she softly said, "I'd love you if you had three eyes and a horn sticking out of your head."
Then I laughed and reached up to turn off the lamp. "Maybe I will by then."
Laura phones at least once a month. "Can I bring the girls to visit you?" she asked me again last week. "They're old enough to understand."
It suddenly comes to my mind that I've never sent a photo of myself to Laura. Since my college days, I've refused to be photographed. Once, when we were still in high school, I showed Laura the photo of the Werner's syndrome patient that I'd kept. She looked at it for a long time and said, "That'll never be you." And then she changed the subject. Thinking back, I see that it might have been easier to send her yearly Christmas photos showing her Werner's progress and how I have become that person in the photo — all in careful stages — the same way I've watched the girls grow up.
"I'd rather you didn't," I answered without hesitation. "I haven't been feeling too well." That's become my stock answer to her whenever she wants to come and visit. I love her like a sister and I know I'm being selfish, or afraid, or both. I wouldn't know what to say to those beautiful young girls, whose shock I can already see in their eyes as they look me over. And how would it be to see dear Laura in the prime of her life?
But this time Laura calls me on it. "Are you afraid they'll be frightened of you?" Her voice is firm and insistent.
"Wouldn't you, if you were they?"
Laura pauses, then says, "Who could ever be afraid of anyone as kind and sweet as you? Anyway, they know all about Werner, I've told them everything. And Josephine can use a good friend. She's had some tough times lately."
In her letters, Laura had hinted at Josephine's difficulties, nothing dramatic, just the angst of being a teenager, she had written.
"No wonder you're such a good attorney," I finally say.
"The best," Laura says.
"Do they know you've stolen pencils out of poor, unsuspecting Catholic schoolchildren’s desks?"
Laura laughs. "I confessed it, wiped my slate clean."
"You know I love your girls," I say, suddenly feeling tired.
"More the reason you should meet them now. They're your godchildren."
For a split second, I want to give in, to see beautiful Laura, who is my oldest and dearest friend, again. I can hear the desire in her voice to see me, too, and the longing grips at me. But then my fear kicks in. We're all God's children, I want to say, but life doesn't always happen according to plan. What good would it do for the girls to see me now? It would only upset them, a woman who looks old enough to be their great-grandmother. To see them in the heart of youth would just be one more thing I'd have to leave behind. Photos and letters, an occasional drawing and card, it's all I can bear to have right now.
"Hana?" Laura says. "You there?" "Yes, I'm here." I clear my voice. "Maybe you can bring them next month, when I'm not in this wheelchair anymore," I finally say, though I know that even Laura won't ever win this one.
CATE
Growing Up
As a little girl, Hana was filled with so much energy I worried that she'd burn herself out. The first ten years of her life were as normal as any other girl's, though she always seemed to do everything just a bit faster than other children. Skinny and agile, she ran faster and jumped higher; by the time she was three, she was reading words, whole sentences by four. Jumping rope and playing hopscotch and tetherball at recess bored her by the age of eight. At ten, she and Laura, who even then watched over slight Hana protectively, along with their classmates Martha and Jackie, rode their bikes up and down the street, inspired by the ads they'd seen of the movie Easy Rider. They were a gang of bikers, and Hana led the way. "We're making our way across America, just like Daddy did," she said when they stopped in for glasses of orange juice. On weekend sleepovers Laura and Hana immersed themselves in Scrabble and chess games with Max coaching them.
"That's not a word," I heard Laura say one evening as they played Scrabble in the kitchen. They were at the age when they seemed to be spending more time together than apart. I wondered when something might cause a rift between them.
I waited to hear Hana's response. "Sure it is. Arigatō means thank you in Japanese," she said triumphantly. It was a word she'd just learned from her grandparents.
"It's not an English word," Laura protested.
"No one said it had to be in English." I could see from the smile on Hana's face that she had momentarily outwitted Laura.
I was just about to intervene, to say, "Hana, play fair, " when Laura calmly said, "Okay then, the sky's the limit!" She paused and looked down to study her square tiles. Then one by one she lined them up on the board. "Bonjour, that's French for hello!" They sat back and both laughed out loud.
It was my first real glimpse into the dynamics of their friendships how they motivated and challenged each other, how they weren't about to ever give up.
When her fifth-grade teacher called us about a small inattentiveness problem Hana was having in the classroom. Max wondered if she was bored> since everything came so easily for her, while I just held my breath. We each squeezed into one of the too-small chairs connected to desks and waited.
"I'm sorry to have to ask you to come here." Her teacher, Mrs. Aaron, smiled uncomfortably. She was an older woman with short, wiry gray hair and a solid, sturdy build. "Hana is an extremely bright girl, perhaps too bright for the rest of the class sometimes. She tends to finish her assignments way ahead of the others and then becomes bored."
Max just nodded his head as if he were agreeing with her, then glanced over in my direction. I couldn't help thinking how all classrooms smelled alike — a musty, old books, chalk dust, worn gym clothes smell. On the black chalkboard behind Mrs. Aaron was a list of spelling words for the week — redundant, specific, majestic...I could see Hana closing her eyes and repeating each word aloud before she spelled them, one by one.
"Of course it's because Hana's so bright that she understands what takes the other children a longer time to grasp," Mrs. Aaron continued.
"Is that bad?" Max asked.
"No, of course not, Mr. Murayama." Mrs. Aaron peered down at us, as if we were children in her class. "We are considering having Hana skip a grade and wanted to see how you both felt about it."
"But then she won't be in the same school with all her friends next year," I said. "She'll have to go on to junior high ahead of them."
Mrs. Aaron straightened her back and crossed her arms in front of her chest. I imagined the kids saw this stance quite often, when she wanted to assert her authority. "Hana is small for her age, but it's not as if she would have any trouble adapting socially. I've heard you people are generally quiet and conforming," she said, looking at Max. "But Hana has a mind of her own. I'm sure she'll do fine in seventh grade."
Before I was able to say another word, Max lunged out of the desk chair and stood up. I could see
the small vein pulsing in his forehead. "It's not a question of Hana's social skills, Mrs. Aaron. It's whether she'll be happy leaving her friends or not," he said, an icy reserve in his voice. "We'll think about her skipping a grade and call you."
"I didn't mean to upset you, Mr. Murayama. I just want what's best for Hana."
I stood up. Both of us were taller than Mrs. Aaron, which now gave us the advantage. "We'll call you as soon as we've come to a decision," I said. "Unless you feel my husband may be too quiet and conforming to deal with it!"
Max laughed all the way home. "I knew I married an outspoken Italian for some good reason."
The following year Hana accelerated to seventh grade at Jefferson Junior High School. After talking it over, Max and I felt the final decision was hers to make. She struggled with it for over a week, keeping to herself and talking on the phone to Laura and her other friends. She came to us one evening with her mind made up. "It's what I want to do," she told us. "I'll get to learn a foreign language and take advanced English classes."
"You're okay with leaving your friends behind?" Max asked her.
Hana shrugged. "I don't want to leave Laura, but I can still see her after school and on weekends. This way I'll be able to tell her what to expect when she gets to Jefferson."
"You know it'll be a big change," I added.
Hana hesitated, then nodded. "I think I'm ready for it."
* * *
I called up Lily and worried aloud on the phone. "What if Hana's not ready to go to junior high? What if she misses her friends too much? What if she can't keep up?" I could see Lily leaning against her kitchen counter, most likely rifling through a bowl of those red and yellow cellophane-wrapped butterscotch candies she kept there, letting me rant on.
When I finally took a breath, she made a sucking noise on her piece of candy and said, "What if she actually thrives and enjoys herself?"