“Settle down!” Jeannie told them. “Pat’s still asleep.” Pat would be heading back to school at the local junior college in a few weeks. He was studying to be an air traffic controller. “What the heck is all the ruckus?”
“He says don’t be nervous!” Maureen sneered.
“Don’t call your father ‘he,’ Maureen O’Malley,” Jeannie snapped.
“Don’t let him tell me I’ll be jus fine. Just fine! I won’t ever be fine! Deal!” She grabbed her cane and stomped into the kitchen.
“I just worry because kids are so cruel,” Bill said.
“We can’t protect her,” Jeannie said. “She knew this was coming. The state would have let us homeschool her. This is what she wanted. She should have worn her seat belt.”
“I heard that!” Maureen shrieked. They heard a plate hit the floor with a sharp clang, like a bell breaking. Then another. And before they could grab her hands, another.
“Stop it!” Jeannie told Maureen. “That’s my only full set. We’ll have to replace that!”
“Too bad can’t replace me!”
“Maury,” her father began.
“I didn’t wear my seat belt because it was broken! It was broken and I didn’t want to tell! Why did you get me no car with an air bag? Too cheap? Not too cheap for Tom and Henry and Pat and Jack! Every soccer camp! Out in California! All for your athletics! Your athletes! What about me? You send me out in a cheap, busted, rusted. Broken car with a broken belt!”
“I didn’t know,” Jeannie said.
“Don’t you think we’ve thought about that a million times? And suffered about that? Don’t you think we know we were idiots for thinking, Well, she’s just driving to school and back; we don’t have to get her a car until she’s in college? Don’t you know we feel responsible?” Bill asked.
“You think I’m respondable! Responsible! I heard you, Mom! You said I should have worn my seat belt! I always wear my seat belt! Always!” Tears were running down Maureen’s face and her nose was leaking.
“Go run,” Jeannie told Bill, and he literally ran for the door.
“Maury, if you keep this up, you’re going to have to miss the first day. Do you want that?”
“You blame me?”
“No! I blame us, so I say stupid things,” Jeannie told her. “Listen. I didn’t know until now that the seat belt was broken. And if I didn’t think I would cut my feet to shreds on the broken dishes, I would puke in that sink. As it is, I’ll go in the bathroom.”
Maureen sat down. Then she got up, and, using the broom as a cane, began awkwardly sweeping up the pieces of smashed crockery. When her mother emerged from the hall bathroom, Maureen said, “I’m sorry.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be. Yes, we were cheap. On the other hand, you should have told us. Don’t shake your head. Do you think we wouldn’t have done something about it? Do you think we really care more about the boys than you?”
“No,” Maureen said.
“Go fix your makeup.”
“Okay. Will you get it?”
“It’s upstairs. Go up and put it on!”
“You suck,” Maureen said, and then slapped her hands over her mouth. “Mom, I’m sorry.” Fresh tears erupted. “I didn’t meant that.”
“Just go upstairs and put on your makeup. I know you didn’t mean it. I’ll make your breakfast, Maureen. And when you get your adaptive license, we’ll find a way to get you a car that is as safe as…We’ll buy it new if we have to. We were wrong.” Jeannie began to cry, quietly, intensely. “We were wrong.”
“Mom,” Maureen whispered.
“Go put on your makeup and let’s try to save this day.”
But it didn’t need saving.
Maureen learned to find her classes. She learned to read the aide’s clear, bold handwriting. Everyone she met, even if she didn’t recognize him or her, was kind. Her locker was decorated with black-and-gold streamers and a poster that read WELCOME PRINCESSA! Danny was waiting for her at the end of the day and slapped five with her as soon as she got into the car.
But that was only the first day.
corridors
The aide didn’t follow her into the bathroom. But someone was smoking in there, and not a cig.
Potheads usually crossed the street to toke up. What was the matter with whoever this was?
“Is that weed?” Maureen asked Molly.
“Don’t talk about it,” Molly told Maureen quickly.
The girl who came barreling out of the stall was huge and dripping in black and chains. “Who said that?” she asked. “Oh. Gimpo. I don’t punch out the handicapped. I just tell them to keep their mouths shut.”
“Fat Butt,” Maureen said.
“Maury, no!” Molly whispered.
“She is. She called me Gimp,” Maureen said. “Don’t you call me Gimp, Fat Butt.”
“You asked for it now, Mental Girl.”
“I’m not metal. I mean, mental,” Maureen said. Her bad leg was quivering, shaking like Elvis’s. She leaned on the sink.
Molly took her arm. “Maury, let’s go,” she said quietly. “Let’s go to lunch.”
“I…will not let her call me that.”
“What are you going to do?” The huge girl leered at her. She put her face up close to Maureen’s, bending over, fat rolling over her too-tight waistband. She reeked of weed and cheesy perfume. “Drool on me? Hit me with your stick?”
“Yeah,” Maureen said softly; and when the girl wheeled away, Maury put out her cane and tripped her.
“She’s gonna kill us now,” Molly said with a resigned sigh. The huge girl started to get up, her black nails clenched. But just as she did, another girl all in black burst through the bathroom door.
“Anna! What the hell are you doing down there?”
“Uh, Lily, I’m looking at my twenty-dollar stockings ruined by the Killer Gimp here!”
“I’m not fall. I’m didn’t fall on the floor,” Maureen said.
Anna’s friend glanced back and forth between them.
“Uh, what? Oh, I know you. You’re the crash girl. Don’t pay attention to Anna. She’s pissed off because she got dumped by her boyfriend. Did she get on your case? Anna, don’t you know who she is? How could you pick on a girl that’s handicapped?” Lily had piercings in every available flap of skin and wore combat boots with fishnets. But she somehow managed to maintain a sense of sweetness.
Anna howled. “She’s the one who tripped me. Look, my leg is swelling up. I’m not going to be able to walk. Look at that bruise!” Molly was astonished that a faculty member hadn’t stormed into the bathroom and handed out detentions all around by now.
“Now you know how it feels,” Maureen said quietly. Anna stood up and glared down at her. Her voice suddenly went as soft as a child’s. Maureen could hear the child Anna had been.
“Does it hurt? I thought it was your brain that was screwed up. You don’t have brain pain.”
“It hurts all the time,” Maureen said. “It hurts every day.”
“I was going to put a joint in your locker. And I still might, if you piss me off again. But it must suck to have it hurt all the time. And it sucks you lost your friend.”
“It sucks big-time,” Maureen said.
“I’m gonna starve,” Molly put in.
“We can go. Will you let us. Let. Get. Let. No. Will you let us pass?” Maureen asked.
Anna moved her bulk aside. “I never had anybody talk back to me.”
“She served you,” said Lily.
As they made their way into the steaming sea of the commons, Molly said, “You are my new hero.”
Maureen got through September on the compassion of her teachers, who were amazed she was there at all. But as weeks passed, the academic part of school was more daunting than the social part. That was not what Maureen had expected. School had always come easily to her. She once did Bridget’s English papers and her own in an hour. Math was her best subject.
Now, math looked to her
the way musical notes used to look. They had signed her up for Algebra I, but she spent hours on the homework with her tutor, Lauren, and got a D on the first quiz.
“It’s passing,” Lauren told her that night at the O’Malley house.
“What am I going to do on the ACT?” Maureen asked.
“That’s not until a year from now,” said Lauren. “And you haven’t lost any of your language stuff. What about the paper you did on Monster? I wrote it down, and it’s good.”
“That’s because I had already read the novel last year,” Maureen told her. “How am I going to write about some book about guys carrying stuff in Vietnam? Or a lady who had a kidnapped kid? I still had a whole brain then, and apparently this novel got stuck in the part that’s left. And what if I do okay, I get an eleven or twelve on my ACT? Where am I going to go? Cupcake State? What am I going to plagiarize? Major? Pledge? Major in?”
“Probably not math,” Lauren admitted.
“But what?”
“English. Maybe…music.”
“Oh please.”
“I didn’t say you were going to be a performance major. But theory. Teaching. The history of music. It’s what you love. There’ll be someone like me there to scribe for you. You’re getting better at using the keyboard.”
“I only email Molly and Danny. And Zoe, the girl from the hospital. Otherwise nobody could read it. I don’t even use punctuation.”
“Clue up. Nobody your age does.”
“Still.”
“You could get a scholarship for people who are handicapped.”
“Yeah. I could have got a scholarship for people who weren’t.”
“Let’s do some algebra, kid. I could have been a national-type skier, but I blew out my knee. You’re not the only one in the world who has stuff they regret,” Lauren said.
“I’d rather blow out my knee than my brain,” Maury murmured.
“So would I,” said Lauren.
“Why don’t you just get out?”
“Your parents are paying me,” Lauren said.
They both laughed.
By November, math was harder, murderously complicated; and Maureen begged to drop it.
“No,” Bill said.
“Don’t tell me no, Dad,” Maureen said.
“You have to do it.”
“Why? Do I have to be like one of your mat rats? Do I have to prove I can go through the pain for the gain? Well, screw that! I’m quitting and that’s it. In fact, I’m going to get my GED.”
“Go ahead,” Bill said. “You’ll always know you could have made it. You’ll face life like a loser!”
“No!” Maureen screamed.
“You will,” Bill said quietly. “I’m not saying every kid who drops out is a loser. There are a lot of reasons to drop out. You don’t get the help you need. Your parents don’t give you support. Your home life is violent or abusive. But what’s your excuse?”
“Uh, holes in my brain?”
“Maureen, I have students in my PE classes who have bigger holes in their brains, and they were born with them. I have students who get by on sheer guts. You’re smart and you’re pretty. Okay, so you drag your foot. But I know my daughter. Or I knew my daughter. And she wasn’t a quitter.”
“That was your ex-daughter.”
“Okay,” said Bill. “Quit.”
“Okay,” Maureen said, “I will.” She swept her folder and both of their teacups off the table to the floor. “Fine.” She marched toward the stairs.
“Don’t forget your cane, poor little crippled girl!” Bill called. “You don’t use it half the time, you know. You only remember to use it when you get upset. You use it like a security blanket.”
“I hate you,” Maureen shouted.
“Shut it, Maury!” Patrick yelled from upstairs. “Some of us have to study!”
“I hate you, too!” she yelled, making her way up the stairs, again forgetting her cane.
When she got into her room, she threw herself on the bed. Bill followed her.
“Did I hear you, you know? Knock?”
“I didn’t knock.” Maureen’s door no longer had a lock, because her parents feared that if she used it—consciously or without realizing it—they might not be able to get to her if she were hurt. “I came to tell you that you aren’t dropping math. And you aren’t dropping out. And the next time you tell me you hate me, I’m going to ground your butt to this room until you forget what it looks like outside. No more watching your precious Danny wrestle. No more walking around like you’re a character out of an opera. Time to shape up.”
“Get out!” Maureen yelled, throwing her lamp at the door.
“When you’re done cleaning that up, you can go down and clean up the kitchen floor,” her father said. “Good night.”
And in the morning, Maureen did pick up the shards. The cane went into her locker until after lunch, when she got tired. And though Maureen threw her binders against the wall or sat staring at the ceiling and refusing to do anything that required lifting a pencil, Lauren the tutor refused to give up either.
During midterms, Maureen sweated through two layers as she took her exams in a quiet room with her aide. She passed algebra with a C. She got an A in English and Bs in history and biology.
One night Steve Collins knocked, unannounced, at the door. After making sure she was dressed and didn’t have spaghetti sauce on her face, Maureen answered. The doctor leaned against the door frame. “Maureen?” he gasped. “They told me, but I had to see for myself.”
“What?” she asked. She remembered this voice but had never seen this face.
“I’m Dr. Collins. I worked on you that night in the ED.”
“Well, hi. I guess I owe you thanks,” Maureen said. “So, thanks. I’m semifreezing. Cold. Mold. Cold. Chills. Sorry. You can come in. My mom is just upstairs folding laundry.”
“This is amazing,” Dr. Collins said, stomping the dusting of new snow off his shoes.
“What?”
“You’re like it never happened.”
Maureen said, “Uh, no. You’d have to look inside. I got a mercy C in algebra.”
“Maureen,” said Dr. Collins. “No one as sick as you ever comes back this far. Lots of kids don’t even pass algebra with all their cognitive faculties intact.” He paused. “Can I see your mom?”
Maureen called; and Jeannie came tripping downstairs, trying to poke her flat hair into some sort of order.
“Hi,” she said. “Long time no see. We go to the hospital once a week still, but they’re telling us she’s on her own after the first of the year….”
“She’s amazing,” Dr. Collins said.
“We think she is.”
“Lots of luck here.”
“Lots of hard work,” Jeannie told him. “She fought.”
“Would you mind…do you have a job?” Dr. Collins asked Maureen.
“Yes, I am a ballerina,” Maureen joked. “No. It takes all I have just to keep up with my school and piano. I go out one night a week.”
“You play piano?”
“A lot of people play piano,” said Maureen. “I didn’t. I don’t. I didn’t. Don’t. I don’t play very well.”
“Actually, she does,” her mother put in.
“We have a series at the hospital, of inspirational speakers. I don’t know what they pay. Maybe two thousand? Three thousand? Would you be interested in speaking for us sometime?”
“No,” Maureen said. “No thank you.”
“Yes, she would,” Jeannie said.
“When you guys decide, call me,” Dr. Collins told them, holding out a card. “I am so pleased and happy to see you, Maureen.” He glanced across the street. “How are they doing?”
“Well, better,” said Jeannie, her chin lifting as she lied. “It’s taking Kitt a while. But I see them going out now, more often. The girls are doing well. Bill and Mike talk.”
“Please give them my regards,” Dr. Collins said.
“I will,” sa
id Jeannie. In fact, each time she spoke to Kitt, Kitt seemed frightened of her, as though she wanted to run back into the closed, dark confines of her beautiful tomb.
Later, as they were doing her exercises, Maureen slammed her leg down and said, “I am not giving a speech.”
Jeannie pushed the leg back up and said, “Yes you are. It’s time you did something.”
Maureen said, “Something? What do you think every day is like for me, Mom? I’m not doing a speech! It could be for a million dollars and I wouldn’t do it.”
“You’re scared then,” Jeannine said, helping Maureen stretch her other leg. “I get it.”
“You think? Wouldn’t you be?”
“You don’t think you owe it to Bridget and Danny and yourself, and Lorelei and Shannon and Dr. Park and other kids like you.”
“Good grief. Goody. Good guilt, Mom. But that would still be a no.”
That day, puzzling over whether or not to take Dr. Collins up on his offer, Maureen walked away from the toaster oven. The kitchen cabinets were scorched by the time she turned back, the smoke alarm screaming.
But nobody got mad at her.
Nobody got mad at her when the dog walked through the open paint she left on the floor when she tried to paint over the scorched places on the cabinets.
Everyone understood. She did owe them something.
On January 30, with her parents, brothers, Danny, Molly, Britney, Leland, and Lily-the-Goth in the hospital auditorium, Maureen told her story simply and sweetly. She had written everything on cards and rehearsed in front of the mirror until the words were like low fences she could clear easily. She described her outbursts of temper, her shame at wetting herself in church, her tantrums, her baby steps toward normality, her agonized loneliness for Bridget. She told the truth. She didn’t leave out the ugliness and the pain, the endless hours of squeezing the slingshot until the night—just two months previously—she felt the two handles click together for the first time.
“I stand here because I was loved,” she said. “I am not a hero. The doctors are heroes. The nurses are more heroes.” A ripple of laughter widened in the room. Lorelei felt her eyes well up. “But I owed it to my parents to be as good as I could be. I left this place thinking I would never walk unaided again, or live alone or go to school. And I will do those things. I wanted to give up. I can’t tell you the times I told my parents I hated them for pushing me. But they never felt sorry for me or themselves. My boyfriend and my friends didn’t feel sorry for me. And so how could I?”