2. She is “under observation,” which means the doctors are watching her every move to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself. Which is what happens, I guess, when you swallow a bottle of pills. People read you loud and clear.
3. She can’t have any visitors. She is too “emotionally fragile.”
That is all my father will tell me except for Don’t worry, Anna, your mother is going to be fine. Well, how does he know she’s going to be fine? He’s not a doctor. He’s not even her husband anymore. What does he know about anything?
* * *
Six o’clock and my father is home. He is standing in the driveway, talking on his phone. I watch him from the window for a while, then go out to tell him it’s dinnertime. He nods but doesn’t stop talking. “Jim,” he says, “I’m telling you. Rigoris is the next Viagra … How do I know? Because I know.”
He rolls his eyes at me like we’re sharing a joke. Which we are not. I have tried to joke with my father in the past, telling knock-knocks or riddles I think are funny, but he never laughs as hard as I do. Our humor just misses.
“Uh-huh.” My father is nodding. “Well, Jim, that is what I would call a paradigm shift.”
Paradigm shift. Benchmarking. Value added. He might as well be speaking Hindi. He is still at it when Marnie steps out on the porch looking completely different. Instead of the sweatshirt, she has on a lime-green sundress and high strappy sandals. Instead of the braids, her hair is loose and wavy around her shoulders. As soon as my father sees her he hangs up. Just like that, he’s done with Jim.
“Babe,” he says, staring her up and down. “Wow.”
“This old thing?” she says, pouting like a model.
Marnie holds so much power. She flicks a switch in my father like nothing I have ever seen. It is a pure mystery how she does it. Once I tried walking down the hall like her, chest pushed out, hips swaying side to side. I waited for the boys to notice. Nothing, except for Kevin Callahan practically slamming me into a locker. “Watch where you’re going,” he said, like it was my fault.
Marnie walks inside first, followed by my father, then me. It is just the three of us for dinner. Jane is asleep in her bassinet, resting up for a night of screaming ahead. Which I think is the worst kind of planning, but I am not the mother.
I sit at the dining room table, napkin in lap and hands on napkin. I look to see what Marnie has made. Burgers. Good. It is hard to mess up burgers. Then I take a bite and realize I am dead wrong.
“They’re black bean!” Marnie announces.
I watch my father lift his burger to his mouth and chew. And chew. And chew several more times before he finally takes a gulp of water.
“Oh no,” Marnie says, looking at him. Her green eyes are wide, spiky with mascara. “You don’t like it.”
My father shakes his head. “It’s great.”
“You hate it.”
“Babe, I was just surprised. I thought it was beef.”
“Red meat contains carnitine, which can damage your heart. It increases your risk of type two diabetes.” Marnie’s voice is getting higher. “It puts stress on your colon and your brain!”
Here is where I should tell you that my father loves burgers. Every Wednesday when he takes me to Denny’s—the divorced dads’ restaurant of choice—he gets the same thing: the Bacon Slamburger with cheese fries. But does he admit that now? No. My father gets up and walks around the table. He wraps his arms around Marnie and kisses her, full on, as though they are alone and his thirteen-year-old daughter is at a sleepover.
I take this opportunity to spit black beans into my napkin.
After the make-out session ends and Marnie is calm, my father gestures to the table. “Who needs red meat?… Am I right, Anna?”
I do what I am supposed to do: nod.
Marnie smiles and says there’s rice pudding for dessert. Made with almond milk and sweetened with real maple syrup.
“Rice pudding?” my father repeats. Then, like I’m deaf, “Did you hear that, Anna? Rice pudding with real maple syrup!”
I know he is trying to make Marnie feel better, but please. “Wow,” I say, going for sarcasm, but my voice is so low no one notices.
Marnie stands up like she is on a mission, serving out broccoli (organic!) and mushrooms (full of potassium!). When I take my next bite, I force my lips smile-ward. Almost as good as the Shelby Horner cafeteria!
* * *
I am in bed when I hear something. A soft moaning. The baby, I think. No. It’s not that. The wind? It’s not that either. The sound gets louder and louder and I know, suddenly, what it is. Marnie and my father, doing what couples do in the dark. I know because when Dani and I were friends we used to watch this movie her parents kept hidden in their room. 9½ Weeks. It tells you everything you need to know about sex, even if you are not old enough to know it.
Oh, this is too mortifying for words. Worse than Jane screaming at the top of her lungs. Worse than my mom crying in the bathroom, running water so I won’t hear.
Thoughts flicker through my head like sparks. What if Marnie gets pregnant again? What if they need this room for the new baby? What if my mom never gets out of the hospital and the bank takes our house? Where will I go?
The questions hurt to think about, and the answers hurt more. I breathe and breathe. Even though I have never touched a cigarette, I repeat the quit-smoking mantra in my head. Mind over matter, mind over matter. You have the power, you have the power. Over and over, until I fall asleep.
CHAPTER
3
THE NEXT MORNING, Sarabeth Mueller flags me down. All week she has been doing this, saving a seat for me on the bus. It is worse than sitting alone, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I take off my backpack, rest it in my lap.
“Hi, Anna.”
“Hi,” I say.
Sarabeth Mueller is so pale you can see her veins. Practically everything about her is see-through. Skin, hair, fingernails, eyebrows. There is a pink ribbon of scalp where she parts her hair. Once, when we were on a class trip to the beach, I saw her squirt sunscreen on it.
“Want to know what I’m doing this weekend?”
“Okay.”
I do not want to know what Sarabeth Mueller is doing this weekend. I am sure it has something to do with dolls. In sixth grade, she had a birthday party and we spent the entire time in her bedroom drinking tea and looking at her dolls. She had about a million of them, all dressed up and staring down at us from shelves.
Sarabeth adjusts the hem of her skirt. “Ever hear of Irish step dancing?”
“Um. I don’t think so.”
“Well, it’s a traditional performance dance that originated in Ireland. I’ve been doing it since I was four. Saturday I have a competition.”
“Cool.”
I am lying so bad. I know exactly what Sarabeth is talking about because in seventh grade there was this talent show and she got up onstage and danced for the whole school. It was the craziest thing. Little Sarabeth Mueller, all alone with her white toothpick legs and her big black clogs, going like sixty. The ninth-grade boys had a field day. Dani and I sat in the back of the auditorium, the only ones not laughing.
Of course, that was last year. Now if there were a talent show, Dani would be front and center. She would be up onstage with Jessa Bell and Whitney Anderson and all those girls, shimmying around in her tube top and platform heels, making the ninth-grade boys whistle. And you’d still find me in the back of the auditorium, not laughing.
“So,” Sarabeth says now, “how long will your mom be out of town?”
This is what I told her my first day on the bus, and it’s not exactly a lie. My mother is out of town. “Not long,” I say.
“Do you like staying at your dad’s?”
I shrug. “It’s okay.”
“When did they get divorced?”
“A year ago.” I am chewing on my thumbnail. I am squinting out the window, hoping we’re close to school, but we’re not.
“T
hat’s tough,” Sarabeth says. “My grandparents are divorced. Both sets. If you ever need someone to talk to…”
“Okay.”
I don’t know why I’m saying okay. I don’t even know if Sarabeth means I can talk to her or to her divorced grandparents. All I know is I need one of those school bus emergency drills. The driver presses a button and an escape hatch opens. He doesn’t even have to slow down. I’ll just jump.
* * *
“The sum of the angles is … uh … ninety degrees,” I tell Ms. Baer-Leighton.
Ms. Baer-Leighton is drinking something brown out of a Poland Spring bottle. She takes a swallow and nods. “Yes.”
I fiddle with my protractor. “So that means they’re … uh … complementary angles?”
“Is that your final answer?”
Oh, I hate math so much. No teacher but Ms. Baer-Leighton makes you stand up in the middle of class like this, stuttering like an idiot while laser-beam eyes shoot holes in your back.
“No,” I say. “Supplementary.”
Behind me, someone sniggers.
“The first rule of mathematics”—Ms. Baer-Leighton swishes her bottle around and around—“as in life, is to trust your instincts.” She takes a sip. Whatever she is drinking matches her sawed-off haircut. Also her scarf, dress, and practical pumps. Brown, brown, brown.
Your clothes tell a lot about you, Dani said once. Jean-on-jean is a message you don’t want to send. Try a pop of color. Accessorize.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Anna?” Ms. Baer-Leighton is looking at me, forehead shining in the light.
“Yes,” I say.
She raises a fist in the air. “Confidence!”
I sit down at my desk, die a little.
* * *
In English Mr. Pfaff gives everyone a sheet of lined paper and tells us to freewrite for ten minutes. It’s his favorite thing, freewriting. Every class he makes us freewrite, and every time my brain freezes and I can barely eke out two sentences. Sometimes I wonder if he is doing it just to torture me.
Today our prompt is “morning madness.” What I really want to write is I am mad this morning because I am being forced to freewrite, but I know this is not what Mr. Pfaff is looking for. So I stare at my paper and think of all the other things I could tell him.
1. I am mad this morning because I heard my father and stepmother doing it last night and was too mortified to look them in the eye at breakfast.
2. I am mad this morning because I have to ride this new bus and Dani’s not on it, not that she would be sitting with me anyway, but now I have to sit with Sarabeth Mueller.
3. I am mad this morning because my mom is in the psychiatric ward, also known as the madhouse. Get it? MADhouse?
Of course, there are a lot of reasons why my mother ended up in the hospital, most of which have nothing to do with me. But I am the daughter. I was there and I should have seen it coming. Because there are always signs. The way her voice sounds, or little shifts in her behavior, like forgetting to brush her teeth. Red flags. But in a way, I ignored them. I’m not good with impending disaster. I’d be the one in the middle of the tornado saying, “Don’t worry, Dorothy and Toto. Really. It’s just a breeze.” I am the one who, instead of writing down all the bad thoughts in my head, will chew on my pencil and keep my paper clean.
Ten minutes later, Mr. Pfaff is looking over my shoulder, petting his goatee. When he talks, he lowers his voice, but it really isn’t low at all. It’s more like an announcement to the whole class.
“You can’t think of anything to write?”
I shake my head. I can feel Dani looking at me but stare straight ahead.
“Nothing at all?”
I sink down lower in my seat.
“Why don’t you stop by and see me after school and we’ll talk about it?”
I nod, as though I am agreeing.
He smiles, as though he believes me.
It’s official. I now hate English more than I hate math.
* * *
Since Keesha moved and Dani ditched me, I have no one to sit with at lunch. So I have been sitting at this random table with Sarabeth Mueller. Also Chloe Hartman and Nicole Dodd, who are obsessed with witches, and Shawna Wendall, who actually looks like a witch. I think it has something to do with her eyebrows, which she plucks bald and then draws over with black pencil so they’re dagger-like points. Then there’s this girl who just moved here from Texas. Her name is Reese and she barely says a word. She has the same three things every day without fail: sesame bagel, banana, milk. Which would bore my taste buds practically to death, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
Across from me, Sarabeth Mueller has a carrot in her mouth and a pen in her hand and is scribbling away in a spiral notebook. Whatever she is writing she sure looks jazzed about, ignoring the argument heating up between Chloe and Nicole. Not that it’s so fascinating. I’ve never read the Complete Book of Witchcraft, and I really don’t care if it’s better or worse than Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.
I glance over at Jessa Bell’s table, where Dani now resides. She looks completely at home there, eating Cheez Doodles, flipping her ponytail, smiling. I actually watch her do all three at once, a skill I never knew existed. If there were a talent show tonight, Dani would win.
“What’s with all the ponytail flipping?” I would ask her if we were still friends. “Are you swatting flies?” Then, “Is Cheez Doodle dust the new manicure?” And Dani would laugh. My questions would be sarcastic, but she would know I was joking because best friends always know. They read each other’s mind. They finish each other’s sentences. That’s how it was for me and Dani, before she morphed into someone I don’t know.
Dani catches me looking and I squint, pretending to read the clock over her head. I shift my gaze back to my own table, where Chloe and Nicole are still arguing, Reese is picking all the sesame seeds off her bagel, and Sarabeth is scribbling away.
“Done!” Sarabeth says, suddenly shutting the notebook and tucking the pen behind her ear.
“With what?” Shawna says, looking annoyed. Shawna always looks annoyed.
Sarabeth smiles mysteriously. “Just a little something I’ve been working on … All will be revealed in time.”
Shawna looks more annoyed. Chloe tells Nicole she doesn’t know crap about Wiccan literature. Reese begins tossing sesame seeds into her mouth, one at a time, like some kind of performing seal.
I can’t believe this is my table.
* * *
Again, the Dynamic Duo is waiting on the porch when I get home from school. Marnie is holding an envelope.
“This came for you,” she says, shifting Jane on her hip so she can hand it to me.
I see my mom’s spidery handwriting and instantly feel sick. The way you do when you’re in an elevator and it shoots to the thirtieth floor, leaving your stomach in the lobby.
“Anna—” Marnie starts to say, but I cut her off.
“I’m going upstairs.”
“Okay.” She reaches past me to open the door.
I have hands, I want to say.
“Jane and I will fix you a snack,” she tells me. “Okay? Just come down when you’re ready.”
I nod, heading for the stairs. There’s a carpet runner, maroon and green paisley, that’s supposed to keep people from slipping, but it is so ugly you could slip just trying not to look at it. In my house, the stairs are polished wood, same as the floors. My mom likes natural lines, clean surfaces. Which is ironic when I think about her bedroom that day. Clothes everywhere, when she likes them neatly folded. Bed rumpled, when she likes it made. That day, the air had an unwashed smell. Sour. It makes me mad to think about. Why couldn’t she just get up and take a shower? Put on deodorant and go to work like a normal parent?
* * *
I stand in my father’s guest room, staring at the envelope. Frances Collette, Butler Hospital. “Eff you,” I whisper. I should feel guilty, but I don’t. Especially when I take the let
ter out and read it.
Hi honey. It’s me.
I haven’t been a very good mother. I wish I could promise you that when I get out everything will be different, but I don’t know if it will. All I can say is I’m sorry.
—Mom
It is so lame it’s comical. I try to laugh, but the sound gets caught in my throat. It stays there all night, like a hair ball caught in a drain.
CHAPTER
4
MY MOTHER HATES DOCTORS. This is my first thought in the morning. My mother hates doctors and she’s stuck in the hospital. It’s like a joke without a punch line. I stare at the ceiling, remembering one time she had strep throat. How old was I? Six? Seven? Anyway, instead of calling the doctor, she tried all these home remedies: gargling with salt water, raw honey, cayenne pepper. Nothing worked. Finally, my father realized how sick she was, and somehow, because he is a pharmaceutical rep, he was able to get my mother antibiotics without her having to go to a doctor’s office.
He used to love her. This is my next thought. I know for a fact he loved her, at least when I was younger, before they started fighting. They had fun together. I remember one night in third grade I had a bad dream and I went into their room, but the bed was empty. So I went downstairs and there they were, dancing in the kitchen. No music, just my mom singing and my dad smiling and their two bodies swaying like blades of grass in the wind. And when my mom saw me, she grabbed my hand and said, “Dance with us, Anna.” And I did. I know that sounds weird, but I did. I danced in the kitchen with my parents. Because that’s how it was. Mom, Dad, and Anna, the Three Musketeers. The Three Amigos. For twelve whole years, that’s how it was.
We used to be a family. This is my third thought, the most pathetic of all. We stopped being a family so fast my head is still spinning.
One minute you are eating Cheerios like a normal, happy kid. The next your parents are sitting down at the table with their coffee, saying, “Honey, we have something to tell you.”
They are getting a divorce, they say. It’s been in the works for a while. (Which is code for everything has already been decided. Lawyers have been met with. Custody has been arranged. They’re just waiting for the paperwork.)