The Watchung Hills Children’s Home, a big white house, sat on a hill surrounded by tall trees. The azaleas were in bloom. The grass was very green.
Inside, the halls were filled with music and children’s laughter.
Corinne stopped outside Room 218. She knocked on the door before turning the knob. “Everyone decent?” She didn’t wait for a reply.
Miri hung back, anxious, not sure what she’d find inside the room.
“Nat…look who’s here!” Corinne called, stepping back to make room for Miri. “I’ll leave you two alone to catch up,” she said brightly, as if there were nothing unusual about Miri visiting Natalie in this place. Then she disappeared.
From the look on Natalie’s face, first surprise, then anger followed by disgust or maybe embarrassment, Miri could see Natalie didn’t want her there any more than she wanted to be there.
“Hi,” Miri said, trying to make her voice sound as bright as Corinne’s.
“Hi.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“I’m alive, if that’s what you mean.” Natalie’s voice had an edge to it.
In the other bed someone was sleeping. She had the covers pulled up so high almost her whole head and face were covered. One arm lay outstretched, attached to tubes.
Natalie was wearing regular clothes—dungarees, a shirt and a bulky cardigan sweater. She didn’t look any different to Miri than she had that day she went cuckoo in the basement. Well, maybe a little better than that, but not much.
“You were there that day, right?” Natalie asked.
“Which day?”
“That day I went to the hospital.”
“Oh, that day.”
“You’ll never believe who my nurse was.”
“Who?”
“Phyllis Kirk’s mother.”
“Phyllis Kirk, the actress?”
“Yes, isn’t that something? And she told me Phyllis is up for a big part in a Vincent Price movie. And it’s going to be in 3-D.”
“What does that mean?” Miri asked.
“I’m not sure.”
Now the figure in the other bed sat up. She was so thin Miri was sure she’d been in a concentration camp. Next to her Natalie seemed almost healthy. Natalie, at least, had some color in her cheeks.
The skeleton said, “You have to wear special glasses and it looks like things are jumping out at you.”
“How do you know?” Miri asked.
The girl shrugged.
“Lulu knows a lot,” Natalie said.
So, the skeleton had a name.
“How come they let you see a friend?” Lulu asked Natalie.
“I don’t know,” Natalie said.
“Friends can make you feel worse about yourself,” Lulu said.
“I don’t want to do that,” Miri told her.
“You don’t want to, but you might anyway.”
“Should I go?” Miri asked, hoping the answer was yes.
“Why don’t you just shut up for once, Lulu?” Natalie said.
Lulu laughed. “So are you from Plane Crash City, too?” she asked Miri, swooping her free arm around like a plane taking off, then coming straight down, onto her bed. “Boom!”
“Come on.” Natalie grabbed Miri by the sleeve and pulled her out of the room, then down the hall to a sunroom, where other kids had visitors, too. Many of the kids had braces on their legs. Some had crutches. Others were in wheelchairs, their legs straight out in plaster casts. “They had polio,” Natalie explained. “They’re learning to walk again. If you want milk and cookies they’re on a table over there.” She pointed across the room.
“What about you?”
“I don’t drink milk or eat cookies.”
“Okay.” Miri helped herself to two shortbread cookies and a small cup of milk.
She sat down on a sofa next to Natalie.
“My hair is growing back.” Natalie said.
“I didn’t know you cut it.”
“I didn’t. It was falling out. From my condition.”
Miri was dying to ask, What condition? But she was trying to act ordinary, like it was just another day. “It looks good. Like always.”
“Lulu and I are the only freaks here. We didn’t have polio, and we don’t have cerebral palsy. What’s happening at school?”
Wait—what do you mean freaks? Miri wanted to ask. Instead she said, “School…you know…the usual, except I was almost expelled.”
“You, Goody Two-Shoes? What’d you do?”
“Wrote a story for the paper Mr. Royer didn’t like, so I handed it out on my own.” And I’m not Goody Two-Shoes, she wanted to add, but didn’t. “The chorus is practicing for graduation. We’re singing ‘Younger Than Springtime.’ ”
“I hate that song.”
“It’s pretty sappy.”
“What about you…are you still in love with Mason?”
“We’re still the same.”
“Why won’t you admit you’re in love?”
Miri didn’t answer. Didn’t say she was afraid to call it love, although it was love, and not puppy love, either. It was something much deeper now. Last week, in Irene’s basement, she took his hand and placed it on her breast. It bothered her that he never tried to get to second base, never mind third. Why didn’t he want to go any further with her? As an experiment she pulled her sweater over her head. His hands on her naked back were almost more than she could stand. But she didn’t stop there. She reached around and unhooked her bra, showing him her breasts. Neither one of them spoke for the longest time. Then he said, “What are you doing?”
“I want you to touch me.” She took his hands and placed them on her perfect A-cup breasts.
She could hear his breath quicken as he ran his hands over them. And she felt something, too, something down there, the way she did at night in her bed when she touched herself.
“It’s not a good idea,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, kissing him.
“Suppose I can’t stop?”
“I’ll stop you.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I just wanted to make sure…”
“What?”
“That you like me that way.” She put her bra back on, pulled on her sweater.
“And now?” he asked.
“Now I know you do.”
She couldn’t tell Natalie or anyone how much she cared. Probably Rusty once loved Mike Monsky, or thought she had. And look how that ended.
“What are the girls saying about me?” Natalie asked, bringing Miri back to the moment.
“They hope you’ll get better soon.”
“What do they think is wrong with me?”
“None of us knows what’s wrong.”
“Do they laugh when they talk about me?”
“No! Why would they laugh?” She would never say that they hardly ever talked about her. She was as removed from their lives as Robo, living in her new house in Millburn. Even more removed.
“Because it’s funny, isn’t it? I didn’t even see the crashes, but here I am. My mother says I’m just very sensitive. Do you think I’m sensitive?”
“I guess. What about Ruby? What does she think?”
“She abandoned me a while back. Didn’t even say goodbye. Didn’t even say I’d be okay without her.”
“Are you…okay without her?”
“What you see is what you get.”
“Why are you talking in riddles?”
“That’s not a riddle. A riddle would be more like, What’s soft and mushy and gray all over?”
Miri didn’t have a clue. “I give up.”
“Natalie’s messed-up brain. Get it?”
Miri was growing more uncomfortable by the minute. How long did Corinne expect her to stay here?
“Did you hear?” Natalie said. “My father wants us to move to Nevada. To someplace called Las Vegas.”
“Nevada! But that’s so far away, isn’t it?”
“Only two thousand, five hundred miles. It takes five days to drive there. Some people fly. You have to make two or three stops. My mother swears she’ll never go. They hate each other.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Ever since the crash that killed Mrs. Barnes’s son, all they do is fight.”
“But New Year’s Eve…the party, the diamond earrings…”
“All an act. God forbid Corinne’s friends think there’s trouble in paradise. One time she slapped his face at a party.”
“No.”
“She accused him of flirting with one of her friends. I found out from listening in on a phone call between my mother and Ceil Rubin. ‘We all understand,’ Ceil said. Then my mother started crying and I hung up the extension. That’s one good thing about being here. I don’t have to listen to them arguing. They never visit at the same time unless the doctors say they have to. Sometimes I think it would be fun to live in Nevada. No plane crashes. I’d have my own horse.”
“But where would you go to school?”
“They have schools. At least I think they do. I’d go anywhere to get out of this place. But first I have to eat.” She jumped up and grabbed a banana from the snack table. “I’ve been eating bananas without throwing up. Next is sweet potatoes. Did you know sweet potatoes are a perfect food? All the vitamins and minerals you could want wrapped into one tuber. Come on, let’s go…” She grabbed Miri’s hand and led her down the hall, back to her room. “I’ve been studying food groups in science. My tutor—did you know I have a tutor?”
“No.”
“She graduated from Teachers College at Columbia. She’s Lulu’s tutor, too.” Natalie pushed open the door to her room. “The trouble with Lulu is she wants to die. I don’t want to die. I really don’t.”
Miri reached for Natalie’s hand and for just a moment Natalie looked right into her eyes. “Will you miss me if I go?”
“You know I will.” Did she mean die or move to Nevada?
Lulu said, “If I wanted to die that badly I’d be dead by now, Goldilocks.”
“She pulls out her tubes,” Natalie said. “She tricks the nurses. You know what she has? It’s called anorexia nervosa.”
“You have it, too, cutie pie.” Lulu looked at Miri and pointed a finger at Natalie. “She has it, too.”
“You never know if she’s telling the truth or lying,” Natalie said with a nod toward Lulu. “You can’t believe anything she says. If she croaks I just hope she does it when I’m not around.”
“I’ll remember that, Golden One.”
“See this banana,” Natalie said to Miri, as she began to peel back the skin.
“Don’t eat that in front of me or I’ll vomit,” Lulu said.
“She can’t even look at food.”
“I can if it’s a picture in a magazine. Just not the real stuff. Not the smelly stuff.”
“I have to go outside to eat a banana,” Natalie said. “Banana!” she shouted, wagging it in front of Lulu.
Lulu gagged and reached for her call button. A nurse came into the room. “What now, Lulu?”
“She made me gag.”
“I didn’t make her gag,” Natalie said. “I showed her the banana, that’s all.”
Miri snuck a look at her watch. She wanted to get out of there in the worst way.
“I think your mother is waiting for me,” she told Natalie. She picked up the gift-wrapped copy of Seventeenth Summer from the chair where she’d set it down earlier and handed it to Natalie. “I brought this for you.”
“I hope it’s not chocolates.”
“It’s a book.”
“Let’s see,” Lulu said as Natalie tore the paper off Miri’s gift. “Seventeenth Summer…how sweet. Are you in love with her?” Lulu asked Miri.
“Don’t answer that!” Natalie said. Then, quietly, she told Miri, “I already read it.”
“I know,” Miri said. “We read it together. I just thought…I thought…”
Lulu started singing, “Be my love…”
“Shut up, Lulu!” Natalie said.
“I’ve got to go,” Miri said.
“Sure,” Natalie said. “I don’t blame you.”
—
“HOW DID SHE SEEM?” Corinne asked on the way home.
“She was good.”
“Argumentative? Angry?”
Miri nodded. “A little.”
“That’s better than depressed. She’s eating again. Not a lot. And only a few things. But that’s progress. Green grapes, iceberg lettuce and bananas. Like a chimpanzee.” Corinne gave a sharp laugh. “Oh, god—I don’t know why I said that. Please don’t mention that I said that, about the chimpanzee.”
Miri wanted to say she liked chimpanzees, but she didn’t.
Elizabeth Daily Post
Editorial
REASON HAS ITS LIMITATIONS
APRIL 14—The inflamed mob action which has been taking place in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran and elsewhere should point a major lesson to democratic western policy makers—the futility of placing too much faith in logic and reason when dealing with angry, impassioned peoples. Something similar can be seen even here in a few of the more violent and irrational proposals made to combat Newark Airport Expansion.
30
Steve
On April 15 Steve got an acceptance letter from Syracuse. Phil got in, too. Just the way they’d planned. Instead of celebrating, Steve went down to Williamson Street and walked around where Kathy died, all the time talking to her, trying to explain what was going on. Or maybe he was trying to explain it to himself. How someone his age, someone beautiful, someone he had dreamed about, someone he had kissed, could have stepped onto a plane one January afternoon and be dead an hour and a half later. How could that happen? How could that be real? So, thanks, but no thanks, Syracuse. He was never setting foot on that campus again, never setting foot in that town, in the whole of upstate New York.
Phil was waiting for him when he got home, sitting outside in his car. “I figured you’d come home sooner or later.”
Steve shoehorned himself into Phil’s MG, an early graduation present from his parents. “I’m not going to Syracuse,” Steve told him.
“Me neither,” Phil said. “So which one do you want to go to—Rutgers or Lehigh?”
Steve shrugged.
“I say Lehigh,” Phil said. “Put some distance between us and our families.”
“Okay.”
“We have to send back our forms with a check.”
“Okay.”
“Tomorrow, right?”
“Sure. Tomorrow.”
“I’m counting on you,” Phil said.
“Don’t count on me too much.”
“What do you mean? We’re in this together.”
“I got to go,” Steve said, getting out of Phil’s car.
He supposed by now his mother had told his father he’d gotten into all three schools he’d applied to. But maybe not. Because his mother and father didn’t seem to be speaking these days. Life at home was no fun, to put it mildly. Natalie was lucky she was at that rest home. He hoped she was getting plenty of rest. Because there was nothing restful about living here. Only Fern carried on as if everything were okay. Maybe that was her way of dealing with it. Pretend everything is fine. Same as always. Too bad he couldn’t do that.
Inside, his parents and Fern were waiting for him in the kitchen. “Congratulations!” they called out. Was this a surprise party? Were his friends hiding in the other room? He looked around, but no, it was just the family. What was left of the family. He supposed he should be grateful. A surprise party was the last thing he wanted. Besides, all his friends would be celebrating with their families tonight, except for the ones who didn’t get into their first-choice schools.
“Look at your cake!” Fern sang. “It’s your favorite. All chocolate. From Allen’s Bakery.”
“We’re proud of you, son,” his father said, throwing an arm over his shoulder.
His mother e
mbraced him. “I never doubted you’d do well.”
“Can we eat the cake now?” Fern asked, practically drooling over it.
“After Steve has his supper,” his mother said. “I’ll heat up the plate I saved for you.”
“No, I’ll have cake for my supper,” Steve said, making Fern clap her hands.
His mother started to protest but his father said, “You’re not going to be there next year to make sure he has supper before dessert. You might as well get used to it.”
At which point his mother burst into tears and left the room.
“She’s just emotional about you leaving home,” his father said, trying to reassure him.
“Good Natalie’s not here,” Fern said. “She doesn’t eat cake.”
Elizabeth Daily Post
DESK-FAX SERVICE COMES TO AREA
APRIL 28—Western Union has introduced an electronic service which provides the busy businessman with a push-button telegraph office right on his desk. The device is the Desk-Fax, a machine which sends and receives telegrams by literally taking a picture of them.
Transmission is possible up to nine miles. The quality diminishes over longer distances because of the limitations of telephone lines.
31
Christina
Dr. O seemed tense at the office. Daisy was sweeping up more figurines than usual. Christina kept count of them. One day there were five dwarfs left on the shelf, and the next, only three. A few days later Daisy took her aside. “He can’t decide whether to take the offer to open a practice in Las Vegas or not. His friends are building a modern medical-dental center and they’re begging him to come. If he does, I’m willing to go with him. What about you, Christina—would you consider starting a new life after graduation?”
“You mean move to Las Vegas?”
“If he decides to go.”
“I don’t know. Jack would have to want to go, too.”
“You should tell him there will be great jobs for an electrician out there. Think of all the hotels they’re building.”
“But it’s so far away.”
“It is far away. I can’t deny that.”
“My parents…”
“I know. It’s hard to leave family behind.”