I'm Not Your Other Half: A Cooney Classic Romance

  I had kept plenty of statistics. More for something to do than for any future purpose. But the notebook that Annie and I kept in the desk drawer had all that. I’d just have to add it up. Make lists.

  “I’ll want you in here Thursday morning at eight-thirty. You don’t have a conflicting class, do you?”

  Of course I had a conflicting class. Thursday is a school day. Counting on my she’s a brain and this is good publicity status, I said, “No problem. I’ll be there at eight-thirty.”

  “Splendid.” She left the phone without saying goodbye, and since it was my third time with her, I knew enough not to hang up myself. The metallic-voiced secretary would come on with instructions. “Miss MacKendrick? We’d advise wearing bright clothing, some eye makeup, but no more than you usually wear, and get here at quarter after eight rather than eight-thirty. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Splendid,” said the voice in puny imitation of Lacy.

  And it was. There’s nothing like being sought after for television to make you feel good!

  Michael drove me into the city to see Kit again.

  He was very careful. He was careful driving in city traffic; he was careful to keep the radio tuned to my favorite station; and he was careful to discuss Kit, the whole Kit and nothing but Kit. No way was he going to have me accuse him of being unfeeling this time.

  Of course, this time I wanted to talk about us, not Kit. What was there to say about her now, that we had not already said? A little girl still comatose—nearly a month now—no more signs of life than before—no improvements whatsoever. Two weeping parents, tears still coming from ducts that must be wearing thin from overuse.

  I was not sure why I kept going in to see her. Because that’s what it was, really. I saw her. I didn’t speak to her, comfort her, or give her anything. Nor did she give me anything. I just walked in and looked at her for a while. Sometimes I felt like a spectator at the hockey game—waiting for my share of the action. Don’t die while I’m here, Kit, I would think, watching the pitiful slight movement under the sheets that passed for breathing.

  Michael wasn’t on the list of allowed visitors. I stood alone in Kit’s room, watching the liquid drop from the I.V. bottle and seep slowly into her veins. Her nose was filled with tubes, and her mouth was slack. The missing teeth had grown in. The teeth had kept right on growing, no matter that Kit wasn’t around to be aware of it, and filled in the gaps. She looked strangely older lying there without her baby gaps. Please God let her play with Barbie Dolls again, I thought. Or let her be a scientist.

  What are You up to, God? What’s Your theory here?

  But no answers came.

  I went back to the ugly waiting room to get Michael. He was leafing through a seven-month-old Time Magazine. Across from him was Mrs. Lipton. She shocked me. Like Kit, she had aged. But unlike Kit, she looked like a hag. This is the mother of a newborn infant? I thought, remembering little Jonathan. She looks like a great-grandmother. “Hello, Mrs. Lipton,” I said.

  “Oh, Fraser!” she cried. And I mean cried. Even a single syllable turned to tears for her.

  And once again the same things poured out of her. Not so much about Kit, because she had said it all, but about the money. “We can’t afford it, Fraser. We can’t come again till next Saturday. I can’t pay a baby-sitter any more, and I used up the last dollar in our savings account. I literally don’t have another cent until Jack’s payday next Friday.”

  I’m not good at comforting people. I don’t know what to say to them. I felt despicable having money when she didn’t. But what could I do? Open my purse, hand her my ten dollars left from the florist and say, here, come tomorrow with this?

  I opened my purse and gave her the ten dollars left from the florist and said, “Here. Come with this.”

  “Oh, no, Fraser. Absolutely not. We can’t go begging. If I had realized how you would react, I wouldn’t have said these things. Now listen, honey, enough of my problems. You tell me about Toybrary. How’s it going these days?” She managed a reasonable facsimile of a smile, so I gave her one in exchange, furtively tucking the ten dollars back in my bag. “It’s great. I’ve almost talked two sophomore girls into taking it over for me, and next week I’m going to be on Lacy Buckley’s show talking about what the first year has been like.”

  “How exciting,” exclaimed Mrs. Lipton. “You’ve been on television before. I know, because Kit saw you one morning when she was home with the flu. What’s it like?”

  So I told her what it was like. The huge cameras, big as washing machines on movable pedestals, and the great cables lying on the floors. The peculiar fake two-sided room in the middle of an area as large as a school gym. How Lacy sat in a comfy rocking chair with a good back, and her guest sat on fat ploppy upholstered seats, where they sank in so deep they were trapped and couldn’t escape any of Lacy’s questions, ever.

  “I feel so cheered talking to you, Fraser,” said Mrs. Lipton, and she looked cheered. I could even see a little of Kit in her; some of the verve. “Now you have a good time on that show and wear something green, like you have on today. Green is such a good color for you.” She stretched up to kiss my cheek and walked briskly down the hall to visit her daughter.

  I was glad she was cheered. I myself felt drained. It was as if the act of cheering Mrs. Lipton had sucked the cheer out of me. I stood limply, thinking of nothing, just recuperating.

  “You didn’t tell me you were going to be on TV.”

  I had forgotten Michael. I turned, jarred. “Oh,” I said.

  “Yes. Oh. It’s me. Michael Hollander. Remember? The guy who drove you here?”

  “Don’t let’s fight.” I said tiredly, reaching for my jacket and walking toward the exit.

  He caught up with me. “I wasn’t fighting, Fraser. I was just mentioning that you didn’t mention being on television to me. It’s pretty important. I would have thought you’d tell me about it when we were driving in.”

  I pressed the elevator button. It was very large, a translucent white, shaped like an obese arrow, for people who can’t read UP or DOWN. I’m one, I thought. I’m so tired I need that arrow to be sure where I’m going.

  You find the perfect man, I thought, but now you cease to be the perfect woman. You become a shaving off his stick. You eat his candy, play his games. He sweeps you away. If you’re Lynn, you take up sailing. If you’re Mom, you take up genealogy, surrender Needle N Thread. If you’re Annie, you take up sports, surrender violin. If you’re Judith you take up stamps, surrender owl prowls.

  “Michael,” I said.

  The elevator door opened. We got in. There was a technician leaning against the back, holding a tray full of vials of blood.

  “What?” said Michael. He pushed the ground-floor button.

  “I think we should break up.”

  Michael froze. He didn’t close his eyes, the way I expected. He didn’t look angry or upset. He simply became stiff. He turned very slowly toward me, as if some military officer had given an order to attention. He said absolutely nothing and didn’t look as if he planned on saying anything.

  The doors opened at the ground floor. We got out. The technician stayed in and the doors closed.

  I put on my jacket. Michael helped me with the left sleeve. I dropped my purse and Michael picked it up. “Thank you,” I said. I got to the door first and pushed it part way; Michael pushed it the rest. We walked silently across the large lot to where we had parked Judith’s Datsun. “I’ll pay the parking fee,” I said, retrieving the ticket from the dashboard. We weren’t staying all day like Mrs. Lipton; our fee was the minimum $2.50. Michael took the money and handed it to the gatekeeper.

  When we were out of the city, on the Interstate, he said, “Is Kit any better?”

  “No change, really.”

  “Her parents sure have financial troubles.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was nice of you to offer to help.”

  I shrugged. “I guess it was ru
de. She couldn’t take charity like that. Not face to face.”

  We didn’t talk during the rest of the drive. When we got there, Ben’s car was parked out front. Everybody was home. “Thanks for driving me,” I said. My stomach hurt again. I didn’t want to cry in front of Michael either. I wanted to save it for later. In my bedroom, under the covers, in the comfort of my pillowcase.

  He said, “You definitely want to break up?” His voice was cramped, as if he weren’t getting enough air.

  I have to give him a reason, I thought. I can’t just give him his marching orders. It isn’t nice. But what do I tell him? Michael, you drown me? Michael, sometimes I can’t bear the sight of you? Michael, I detest all your hobbies? I said, “It isn’t you, Michael.”

  “Then who is it?”

  Oh, God. Now he thought I had some other, better boy stashed away. When I was beginning to wonder how I would ever get along with any boy. Ever. “No one,” I said. “I mean, me. It’s me. There’s something wrong with me.”

  The excuse felt all right. It was always all right to take the blame. My mother did it all the time. No matter that Dad was driving us crazy, she made herself look dumb in order to stop it. She never blamed him. “There really isn’t any reason, Michael. It’s just me. I don’t think I get along with people very well. I think I’m selfish.” I ran myself down for a while, until I no longer felt I was throwing Michael away. I felt like a rotten person who didn’t deserve Michael.

  When I was finally able to look at him, his eyes were fixed on Ben’s car. “Okay,” he said.

  We had spent six months of our lives with each other. Inseparable, sharing our lives, our hours, our activities. Okay, you want to break up? Okay. It’s all the same to me.

  “But thank you,” I said. I couldn’t quite make myself get out of the car, and yet I wanted to fly, to run, to be away from him before I changed my mind and submitted again.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, giving me a tight smile, ducking his head in a way that reminded me strangely of Annie, and my tears began. I got out of the car quickly before they showed on my cheeks.

  Chapter 10

  “THE MOST POPULAR TOYS are different for boys and girls,” I said into Lacy’s eyes. They tell you to look at the interviewer and never at the camera. It’s quite hard to do when three massive cameras are bearing down on you. “Boys tend to like things that move. Cars, trucks, tanks, weapons. Girls …”

  Lacy dislikes anything that claims boys and girls are different. I can’t imagine why. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that boys and girls are very different. She cut me off and changed subjects. “Is there much call for the really large objects?” she said. “The five-foot Teddy bear? The log cabin?”

  “Oh, yes. In fact, we took reserves on the log cabin and we’re booked right through September.”

  How do you pick up a log cabin? said Michael. I’m a weight lifter and I’d be hard-pressed to pick up a log cabin.

  “And do the toys with many pieces—the Legos, the knights-and-castles sets—usually come back with every piece?” asked Lacy.

  “We’ve never had any trouble with missing pieces. The children hate borrowing anything with a piece missing so they’re very careful to bring it back with every item in its proper place.”

  I had found two girls to take over Toybrary. Ginny and Leigh. Sophomores. I didn’t like them much. They made it clear they were only doing Toybrary in order to have something terrific to put on their college applications. They didn’t care much about kids or about toys; they just wanted an activity.

  I answered two more questions. It was my third time with her, my fifth time on television. I was much more relaxed. There’s no audience. Just me and Lacy, invisible cameramen and women, and a whole staff of people at lights and microphones and desks and headsets.

  I thought, But I’m no different from Ginny and Leigh. Why did I do Toybrary? Just for something to do. Just because the idea came and I was there.

  “So what plans are ahead for you now, Fraser?” said Lacy, beaming. “What activity—what fascinating thing are you going to arrange now?”

  The strangest thing happened.

  I began telling her something I had not had a single thought about until that moment. Not once had these thoughts gone through my conscious mind. And yet there they were—formed, ready, articulate, prepared. I wondered if Kit’s mind was at work, too, in some inner recess medical science was ignorant about.

  “I’m starting the Kit Lipton Fund,” I said. “Kit is a seven-year-old girl from Chapman who came every week to Toybrary. She was a pretty little kid, brown hair, crooked teeth, and we liked her a lot because she was so thrilled with everything she took out. Kit got a lot of excitement out of life and it was fun to be around her. She sparkled.”

  Lacy hasn’t been on television for twenty years without learning to recognize a cue line. She leaned forward, looking concerned. “What happened to Kit, Fraser?”

  “She fell down the stairs. A perfectly ordinary tumble, except that she’s been in a coma for weeks now. Her parents have medical insurance to cover her expenses, but they have no money to cover their own. They can’t even visit her now, because they have no savings left to pay city parking fees and baby-sitters and gasoline.”

  “This is terrible,” said Lacy, who loved it. She turned away from me, lifting her chin and looking very serious. “We’ll be back in two minutes,” she said to absolutely nobody, “and Fraser will tell us what she’s going to do about the tragic plight of the Lofting family.”

  There were calls and shouts from beyond the circle of lights in our false room as they left time for advertisement. “Lipton,” I said. “The family name is Lipton.”

  “Got it,” said Lacy. She called to the producer. “Who’s my next scheduled guest, Veronica?”

  “Hinson Tremont, to talk about Alzheimer’s Disease,” said the invisible Veronica.

  “Cut him. Put him on another day. I’m running with this.”

  “Good idea,” said Veronica. “Be sure to tell the viewers we’ll keep them posted on the amount of money that comes in and we’ll give credit on the air if they want it. They always like that.”

  “How many minutes?” I said nervously.

  “Three. Can you handle it?”

  I looked at the large clock on the wall beyond Lacy; its flat red second hand rushing through the advertising time. Three minutes to talk on a subject I had never considered.

  Or had I?

  After all, back when we decided to have a school-wide tag sale and I drew the appliance booth, there had been plenty of fund-raising suggestions that we had rejected. I sat very still, forcing myself to remember the ideas; to sift through all the possible unique ways of raising money that Mrs. Simms, the class adviser, had in her folder. She cuts them from Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Seventeen and Weekly Reader.

  “Okay,” yelled Veronica invisibly.

  “Welcome back,” said Lacy, looking firmly, but sadly into the camera. She ran through the Kit situation again and turned back to me. “So what means will you utilize, Fraser, to get enough money to enable the Liptons to visit their daughter every day?”

  “I think we’ll have a mile of pennies,” I said. “If everybody in Chapman donates their pennies, we can put together a mile.”

  “My goodness,” said Lacy. “How much money is a mile of pennies?”

  “I think it’s over $800,” I said. “I’ll let you know when we make the 5,280th foot, Lacy.” I was sure that was it. We had discarded the idea because we were aiming to make fifteen hundred dollars.

  “And if that doesn’t pull in all the money you need?” said Lacy.

  “We’ll have a road rally with clues,” I told her. “We’ll have an entrance fee for drivers and passengers. We’ll get the businessmen of Chapman to offer prizes. I’ll ask the Chapman Savings Bank to act as trustees of the fund, and I think we can help the Liptons and have a lot of fun doing it.”

  “Fraser, what marvelous
ideas,” said Lacy throatily. She turned back to the cameras and began to give a sermon on youth today, how misjudged they are, because look at Fraser MacKendrick, a fine upstanding example of what our young people can do.

  They can fake, I thought. What have I gotten myself into? On television, declaring I’ll raise enough money with a mile of pennies and a road rally to help the Liptons?

  Veronica, who turned out to be very young and stocky in blue jeans and a sweatshirt that said “Bronte Sisters,” waved me off the set and escorted the man on Alzheimer’s Disease in after all. I walked very slowly out of the studio. I went past the people who were always on the phone, as if their ears came complete with dial tone, and the whole concept sped through me.

  I’ll need permissions, I thought—school, bank, P.T.A., class advisers. Find someone who’s done a road rally. I read about one in Wickfield once. Track that down. Figure out how to advertise for the penny mile. Figure out how to display it for progress reports. Get a committee for each. Who’ll help? Smedes will. Connie will.

  “I can’t believe it,” said Annie. Of course, we were on the phone. Sometimes I loathe Alexander Graham Bell. What right did he have to make people communicate on wires, when they need faces and gestures and intimacy?

  “Well, it’s true,” I said. “Smedes already called and so did Julie and Connie and even Susannah, because she and Matt broke up.”

  “Wow,” said Annie. “I knew the powers of gossip were strong, but I didn’t think word would spread that fast. But what on earth happened, Fraser? I was absolutely floored when Price told me. I can’t understand it at all.”

  “Understand what?” I said. I flipped through my notebooks. I had a dozen more calls to make that night and forms to fill out for the bank that had agreed to keep the money for us. “You know what’s really terrific, Annie? The Boys’ Athletic Association agreed to run the road rally. I don’t have to do any work on that at all. They’ve always wanted to have one and, I guess, never had the impetus to do all the work. Tim Morgan and Dick Biaggio stopped me in the hall and offered to do it for Kit. It’s so wonderful, Annie. I didn’t know there were so many good kids at Chapman High until this week.”