Which didn't stop Lisa from glancing around as though searching for a nearby stray chair which she could invite him to pull up. I brought my foot down hard on hers.
"Hi, Julian," I answered, about two beats after all the others had already said hi, and at just about the same time Lisa cried, "Ow!" Then, since he'd asked and might use my not answering as an excuse to hang around, I said, "I'm feeling much better."
Fortunately, though he'd glanced at Lisa at her outcry, he didn't inquire into the state of her well-being.
I was smiling and nodding like an idiot, but he wasn't moving on. I added, "Thanks." Then, indicating the others, I said, "Support group." What did it take for this guy to catch a hint? "Girls support group." I was still smiling like someone without a brain in her head, and nodding like one of those bobble-head dashboard ornaments.
Lisa was scowling and rubbing her foot, and the others—even the ones I wasn't within kicking range of—had caught on not to say anything. They just grinned at Julian, not looking that much more intelligent than me.
"Okay," he finally said. "Good. Well ... see you."
"See you," we all chanted, except for Lisa, who was still sulking.
He finally carried his tray over to the guys he usually sat with.
"What was that all about?" Shelley asked. "I thought you liked the looks of him."
"I changed my mind," I explained, sounding sharper than I'd intended.
Shelley raised her eyebrows at me.
Nancy Jean said, "He's not bad. We wouldn't make fun of you if you liked him."
Anna said, "Not the way we would if you liked ... say..." She paused as though to consider, but finished in a tone of self-satisfied glee: "Nicholas Bonafini!"
"Nicholas Bonafini was hot in kindergarten," I protested over their laughter. Anna and Nancy Jean and Lisa had gone to a different elementary school and had never seen him in his prime. I added, "And that's the last time I share anything private with any of you."
We were all laughing, even Lisa now that she'd gotten sidetracked from my—as far as she could tell—unwarranted attack on her toes. And I knew they were good and faithful friends and that they would not treat any serious mental disorder on my part as lightly as they would treat a kindergarten crush on a guy who hadn't aged gracefully.
But I couldn't tell them about what I'd been seeing. I couldn't have any of them try on the glasses to see if they worked for everyone, or just me.
Because I was suddenly afraid of Julian York and Tiffanie Mills. They knew I knew their secret. Well, obviously not all of it, but certainly what had to be an important part of it. Having my friends put on those secret-revealing glasses might put them in danger, too.
I might not have the nerve to talk back to a teacher, but I'm not such a coward that I'd endanger my friends.
NEITHER JULIAN nor Tiffanie made any further attempts to talk to me that afternoon. Of course, that could have been because I kept myself surrounded by people.
Or it could have meant, I realized as I got on the bus to go home and noticed Julian—sitting in the back, casually reading a paperback—that they could afford to wait. Julian lived only one street over from me. He knew which was my house.
While I was worrying about that, Tiffanie—who normally rides a different bus—got on ours, in all her wrinkled, sagging, spotted croniness. "I have a note from my mother," she said, waving a sheet of paper at the driver. "I'm supposed to go to my aunt's house, so you can drop me off on the corner of Highland Avenue and Meadowbrook."
Oh, what a coincidence: Julian's stop. And how far is that, again, from where I live? Oh yeah. One block away.
Check the handwriting! I wanted to scream at the driver. Her mother never wrote that!
Then I thought, Her mother? And I wondered what kind of mother does a hundred-year-old crone have?
That thought was so bad, I had to look at her over the tops of my glasses.
The driver, who'd no doubt lost a good deal of his morning giving the police his accident report, wasn't in the mood for chatting. He didn't even glance at the note and waved her on.
Tiffanie greeted various friends as she walked down the aisle. "Hey, Lilly. How's it going, Hannah? Hiya, Wendy. I didn't know you rode this bus."
Yeah, right.
And because Shelley was staying after school—Wednesdays she works on the school paper—there was an empty seat next to me. Tiffanie plunked herself down, flashing a big, yellow-toothed grin.
They were going to follow me home, I knew it. To do what? I had no idea—I just knew that these two had something to hide, and I didn't want to find out how desperate they were to keep their true appearances secret. And I wouldn't even have the theoretical help of my wicked stepsister to protect me because she was meeting Mom at the nursing home.
Except that that thought was a help.
"Stop!" I shouted as the bus driver closed the doors and started to pull out of his parking space.
We'd traveled about two feet, and he slammed on the brake so hard, I had no doubt that he'd mentally flashed back to the scene this morning: the car striking down the woman in the crosswalk.
I scrambled to my feet and over Tiffanie, who couldn't very well tackle me in front of about forty witnesses. I was talking as I made my way to the front of the bus: "I forgot. I'm supposed to get on bus seventy-four ninety to go to the nursing home to visit my grandmother."
From his expression, I'm pretty sure the driver was considering telling me, Tough luck.
I said, "She's not doing well."
Which was true enough, but then she hadn't been doing well for the last year.
I couldn't believe I was announcing personal stuff for the entire busload of kids to hear.
The driver said, "Then you should have gone directly to bus seventy-four ninety."
"Sorry," I said. Maybe my real desperation made me sound pathetic. Maybe he was so relieved that he hadn't been about to run someone over that he figured nothing else was important. He put the bus in park and opened the doors. "Cross the parking lot carefully," he said, the emphasis making his tone more hostile than the words should have sounded.
"Thank you," I said. I went down the stairs, and heard the hiss as the doors closed behind me. I was pretty sure neither Tiffanie nor Julian had followed. What could they do? Tiffanie admit that her note was forged? Julian claim that he, too, was supposed to visit an elderly relative, though he had no longstanding dispensation from the office?
But I turned just to make sure.
Only me out there on the pavement.
I waved at my driver, who jerked his thumb backward down the line of buses that were waiting for him before they could go anywhere. So that I wouldn't be walking while buses were moving, he didn't start until I'd reached number 7490, the fifth bus in line, and tapped on the door for that driver to open up and let me in.
"Having trouble making your mind up?" 7490's driver asked.
I figured she didn't really want an answer, so I simply started down the aisle.
"Hey!" the driver called. "I need a note."
Why do some adults feel they have to treat us like we're little kids trying to get away with something?
Not, of course, that I wasn't trying to get away with something. But still...
"There's a standing order for me to be able to visit my grandmother at Westfall Nursing Home," I said.
The driver looked at me as though I was asking her for money.
"I've been on this bus before." When was the last time? April? No, it had to be before spring break.
From a quarter of the way down the aisle, Gia called, "She's my sister. There's a note for both of us on file in the office." Pretty helpful, for a wicked stepsister.
Maybe the driver remembered that I, too, did occasionally ride this bus, though not as regularly as Gia, or maybe she just didn't really care and had only been giving me a hard time out of force of habit. In any case she said, "Find a seat," and almost simultaneously closed the door and pulled out into
traffic.
I staggered down the aisle, holding on to the backs of seats to keep from ending up in anyone's lap.
"Thanks," I muttered as I passed Gia.
She was sitting next to Kaylee Shipperd, the two of them with their heads bent over a teen magazine survey. Gia grunted at me, but didn't ask why I'd changed my mind about visiting Nana. Kaylee never looked up.
The only empty seat was way in the back of the bus, next to this big, ugly upperclassman who'd taken off his shoes and was sitting sideways with his bare feet on the seat.
"Do you mind?" I had to ask.
He sighed loudly before taking his feet down, leaving sweaty little prints behind. And he never did put his shoes back on.
9. Escape to the Nursing Home
Gia and I got off the bus at Westfall Nursing Home, and I would have defied anybody watching us to guess we knew each other. The day being so nice, we encountered various old folk making their way—mostly via wheelchair, walker, or cane—round the drive and the paths of the front garden, or sitting on the front porch. There was a backyard enclosed by a high brick wall for those residents who needed supervision, those who were more easily confused and apt to wander off and not remember how to get back.
In theory, Nana was a backyard resident, though in truth she didn't have much interest in going outside, much less wandering off, regardless of the weather. It was hard to tell what she was interested in since she'd pretty much stopped talking back before Christmas. Still, a few of the aides would periodically plunk her down in a wheelchair and take her for a spin around the grounds.
One or two of the residents on the porch looked familiar and some nodded or said hello as we approached. One of the ladies called out, "Hello, Gia. Brought your little sister today?" even though I am only two and a half months younger, which—statistically speaking—doesn't count as younger at all.
Gia took the opportunity to make herself at home with them, chatting, adjusting lap blankets—old people love their lap blankets, even come August—examining and exclaiming over a scarf one of them was knitting, studying a Scrabble board and providing one of the players with a twenty-seven-point word. (Demure. What kind of fifteen-year-old thinks up the word demure?)
My feeling was that old people are kind of spooky—I mean you can hardly tell what some of them are saying because they've had strokes or they don't have their teeth. And they ask you questions, and you have no idea what they're talking about, and they tell you to speak up, speak clearly, stop mumbling.
But Gia, with her plans to go into geriatric medicine, knew what to say to them. And they loved her for it. She promised that if she was still around when Wheel of Fortune came on, she'd sit in the lobby with them and watch.
I, meanwhile, just stood there and smiled a lot, while they sat there and thought Gia had an idiot for a sister.
What if, I worried, my glasses make me see something I don't want to see? If ever there was a place that was going to be haunted, it would be a nursing home. If someone started talking to me, I'd have to make sure he was really there before I answered. Some of them looked nearly as old as Tiffanie, but they did whether I looked at them through the lenses or over.
Finally Gia told the people on the porch she was going in to see "our" grandmother. (Not YOUR grandmother, I thought, though she probably just figured that was easier than explaining.)
"She's a lucky woman to have two such beautiful and attentive granddaughters," one of the women said.
Yeah, lucky. She didn't even recognize us anymore.
And Gia was both the beautiful and the attentive one.
Nana's room is on the fifth floor, and that's where we found her. She was sitting up in a chair that faced the window, which looked out over the north end of Highland Park across the street, where the lilacs were in full bloom. Her expression appeared alert and intent. But I'd been here other times when she wore the same expression facing the wall.
Her roommate turned her head, though, and her eyes above the oxygen mask followed us.
"Hello, Mrs. Rausch," I said, proud of myself for remembering her name, but thinking, Wow, she's lost so much weight I wouldn't recognize her.
Gia looked at me in horror and whispered, "That's not Mrs. Rausch. Mrs. Rausch died two weeks ago. This is why polite people don't wear sunglasses indoors." She raised her voice above the hiss of the oxygen tank: "Hello, Miss Lysiak."
The figure on the bed gave a feeble wave.
I was just glad the glasses didn't show Mrs. Rausch still lingering in the room.
Gia took Miss Lysiak's hand, thin as a bird's foot and bruised from IV needles, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. She knew this woman for less than two weeks, and already she felt comfortable kissing her.
I moved in to Nana's section of the room. "Hi, Nana," I said.
No reaction.
Self-consciously, I bent over to kiss her cheek, which was dry and papery.
Still no reaction.
For about five seconds.
Then she raised her hand to touch where my lips had grazed her. But she never glanced my way.
Wake up, Nana, I wanted to shout, though she was awake. Snap out of it.
I remembered a time when I'd been four or five, when she'd come running out to the car to greet us on a Sunday visit, me, my mother, and my dad, and she picked me up, tickled my neck with a multitude of extravagant kisses, then twirled me round and round and round until, dizzy, laughing, we'd fallen on our backs onto her front lawn. Then it felt as though we remained still, lying in the fragrant, fresh-mowed grass, while everthing else—the house, the front yard, the apple tree that Papa had planted to celebrate their first wedding anniversary—spun around us.
I threw myself into the armchair and wondered if I should turn on the TV. But Nana was so clearly not interested that it would be obvious I had turned it on for myself.
While Gia talked quietly with Miss Lysiak, I let my gaze wander around the room. On the dresser was Mom and Bill's wedding picture, the two of them looking radiant, flanked by me and Gia, ten years old and sulky about each other and about the uncomfortable and fussy bridesmaid dresses we'd been forced to wear. I remember we'd squabbled right before the photographer called us up onto the altar to take our picture. Gia had recovered her poise and you'd have to know her to know she was mad. Me ... Well, if I'd realized I'd have this picture to look at for the rest of my life, maybe I could have mustered a more agreeable expression.
There were other pictures stuck in the frame of the dresser mirror and scattered around the room, and also a photo album on the nightstand. I knew that periodically Mom would rearrange the pictures, and exchange a new album for the old one. At first, when Nana had been better, the two of them used to look through the albums together, but the last year it had been pretty clear, even to Mom, that Nana wasn't seeing the pictures anymore. Maybe Mom still brought the albums so that the aides, some of whom changed about as often as the seasons, could glimpse what she'd been like before.
I dragged the photo album over onto my lap. It was one of the older ones, with pictures of Nana's parents and her sister, who'd died of polio when she'd been about my age, and a whole bunch of people I didn't know. I flipped to the back where her wedding pictures were. I didn't remember Papa at all; he'd died before I was a year old. I only knew him through Nana's stories. And Nana's stories about Papa had been one of the last things that left her. When my parents were still married, Nana had been fine: living on her own, taking care of the house and yard, organizing the women's guild at her church, visiting as Story Lady at the local library. It was after the divorce, actually after Mom married Bill, that there were the first signs of trouble: Nana kept calling Bill "Eugene." I thought it was funny. I thought she was hinting that she didn't like Mom's new husband, and that was why she called him by my father's name. I wasn't even worried when Nana called me by my Mom's name, Jeannette. Nana would roll her eyes, smack herself on the forehead, and correct herself by saying "Wendy." Until the day when she didn'
t catch on that she'd used the wrong name. Until the day she wouldn't believe me when I said that I wasn't Jeannette.
It had all started when Bill and Gia came into our lives. Thinking about it, I knew that was coincidence; but feelings don't necessarily make sense, and they can be stubborn. It was hard—when I was having a bad day about something or other—not to wonder.
Gia finally finished with Miss Lysiak and came and gave Nana a hug and a kiss. "How are you feeling, Nana?" she asked, giving her a quick little shoulder massage.
No reaction to Gia, either, which was petty of me to gloat over.
Gia kept on. "What a pretty sweater you're wearing. I love the embroidery. Is it one of the ones you made? Wow, look at those tiny stitches, Wendy."
It was one of the ones she'd made. She'd made me one just like it with the tiny blue forget-me-nots along the bottom border. But mine had been made to fit an eight-year-old, and it was given away to the Salvation Army so that another little girl could enjoy it. I wondered if yet another child had it now, or if it was at the bottom of someone's closet, or if it had been thrown away.
Gia plunked herself on the edge of Nana's bed and lifted the photo album away from me. "Oh, I love this album," she said. "This is the one where you were growing up. Here, let's look at it together." She was positioned between the two of us, but Nana continued to look out the window, and I leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
As Gia chattered away about the pictures, I wanted to tell her: She's not like the others. You can't charm her. Not only does she not know who we are, she isn't even aware we're here. You can be as personable as you want, and she won't care. That gave me a certain amount of satisfaction—to know that Nana couldn't be comparing the two of us and liking Gia better.