Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye

  “No!” cried Mimi. “All wrong!”

  “What is wrong with it?” I asked testily.

  Mimi couldn’t find the words to explain.

  I grabbed up the tray and huffed out of the room with it.

  “Sorry, my Claudia,” Mimi called after me in a small voice.

  I didn’t answer.

  On Friday, right before a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club, Mimi asked me to help her to the bathroom. When she was back in bed, she asked for a glass of water. Then, as my friends started to arrive, she said, “Bored. Newspaper?”

  It was 5:35. Upstairs, Kristy was waiting for me impatiently. I was sure of it. So I gathered up a stack of magazines and newspapers and threw them on the foot of Mimi’s bed.

  “Anything else?” I asked rudely.

  Mimi’s gentle eyes filled with tears. She shook her head.

  Of course I felt terrible. But I had to go upstairs to the meeting.

  “Mimi, I’m sorry,” I told her, and fled from her room.

  And I was sorry. Very sorry.

  I was also sick and tired of being Mimi’s maid.

  I think that Friday, for me, was the lowest point of Mimi’s illness.

  It had been awful and scary to see her being loaded onto a stretcher in our dining room, or to see her with bags of blood flowing into her arms, but what I did to her that Friday afternoon was unforgivable. I apologized to her three different times after dinner that night, but I felt only a little better.

  Luckily, I have learned that sometimes really awful things are followed by really wonderful things. And guess what — Friday was followed by Saturday (duh), which was the day of the first art class that Mary Anne and I gave. And the art class was wonderful!

  Here’s who had signed up for it: Corrie Addison (of course), Myriah and Gabbie Perkins, Jamie Newton, Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold (twins!), and Matt Braddock, this wonderful little boy whom Jessi sits for a lot who’s totally deaf. We love him to bits, but he and the others, put together, made up an odd class. Mary Anne and I would be teaching five girls and two boys, including twins and a deaf child, ranging in age from two and a half (Gabbie) to nine (Corrie).

  Mary Anne and I had decided to hold the art classes in my basement. “That makes the most sense,” I said. “All my materials are right upstairs in my room. And Mom said we could use that big utility table down there if we spread newspapers over it and under it. And we have those folding chairs the kids can sit on.”

  “Perfect,” agreed Mary Anne. “Plus, your basement is finished. It’s carpeted and heated. Ours is just a dark, old, cold basement with a cement floor that leaks when it rains.” Mary Anne paused. “What should we do with the kids at their first lesson?”

  “Experiment with paper, paint, and water, I think,” I replied. “That’s something anyone can do. You know, we’ll just let Gabbie mess around. The older kids might want to make watercolor scenes on damp paper. Or do other things. I think the class should be fun and relaxed. We shouldn’t tell the kids every little thing to do. We’ll let them be creative.”

  Mary Anne nodded. “Okay,” she replied.

  * * *

  Our art class was to be held from eleven o’clock to twelve-thirty each Saturday. I was sure, on that first day, that Mary Anne would get nervous and that she would arrive long before anyone else, especially since she lives right across the street.

  But Corrie rang our bell first. It was only 10:45. By the time I opened our front door, Mrs. Addison’s car was halfway down the driveway.

  “You must be Corrie,” I said to the little girl standing on our front steps.

  She nodded shyly. Corrie was very pretty, with brownish-blonde hair cut straight across her forehead in bangs, and straight around her shoulders below. Her eyes were framed by long, dark lashes. She was small for her age and had no color at all in her cheeks.

  She didn’t smile, either. Just nodded and stepped inside when I held the door open for her. “Sorry I’m early,” she said in a voice so soft I could barely hear it.

  “Hey, no problem,” I told her. “Listen, I’m Claudia, and I’m going to be one of your teachers. Your other teacher will be Mary Anne. She’ll be here soon.”

  I took Corrie down to the basement. As it turned out, it was a good thing her mother had dropped her off early. By the time Mary Anne and the other kids arrived, Corrie and I had had a chance to talk, she’d chosen a place for herself at the table, and she knew what the day’s art project was. She seemed to need to be sure of things in order to feel comfortable.

  And so the lesson began. Mary Anne was afraid it would be a mess, but it wasn’t. It was just plain fun.

  Gabbie Perkins spent most of the morning experimenting with mixing paints in paper cups. She never made a picture. “Look! Look, Claudee Kishi!” she kept exclaiming. “I just made pink!” Or, “I just made … made, um … a mess.” The mess was a greenish-brown color.

  Myriah Perkins worked seriously on a picture of Laura, her baby sister, and Matt worked equally seriously at making inkblots. I showed him how to drop paint on one side of a piece of paper, fold it in half, and wind up with symmetrical designs.

  “Butterflies,” Matt signed to me. (He doesn’t speak. He signs words with his hands.)

  Carolyn and Marilyn spent a lot of the lesson trying to fool Jamie Newton. They kept asking him to guess which one of them was which. They weren’t dressed alike, and they have different haircuts, but they still look similar; and anyway, Jamie couldn’t keep their rhyming names straight.

  “You’re … you’re Marilyn,” he’d say as Carolyn asked, for the fourteenth time, “Who am I?” Finally he began calling both of them Very Lynn, which they didn’t like.

  The twins painted identical pictures of just what you’d expect — a house with four windows, a door, a chimney, a curlicue of smoke rising from the chimney, a strip of blue sky across the top of the paper, and a strip of green grass across the bottom of the paper.

  Jamie, who is four, used his paints to give a lesson on colors and shapes to Gabbie, who already knows her colors and shapes. She tried to be patient, though.

  “You get a J-plus,” Jamie told her when, just to make him keep quiet, Gabbie made a red circle for him.

  Corrie laughed for the first time since she’d arrived.

  All morning I’d been keeping my eye on Corrie’s work. She hadn’t spoken to the other children, and had worked silently and thoughtfully. She was creating an imaginary landscape and I knew that her work was good — awfully good — for a nine-year-old. So I told her that.

  “You know what?” she confided, almost in a whisper. “I like art. I do. I never told Mommy, but I like it. And I don’t like ballet or piano lessons or basketball.” Awhile later, she asked me (always waiting for me to come peer over her shoulder, never calling to me), “Do you know where my mommy is right now? Do you know what she’s doing?”

  I shook my head.

  “My daddy? Or Sean?”

  “Nope. What are they doing?”

  “I don’t know. Well, Sean is at his tuba lesson, but I don’t know about Mommy and Daddy…. I wonder why I’m taking art lessons now, too…. But I like my painting…. When will Mommy be here? I want her to come back.”

  It was hard to keep up with Corrie. I looked at my watch. “Class is over in five minutes,” I announced.

  Corrie smiled.

  We cleaned up the table.

  Mary Anne walked Jamie and the Perkins girls home. Mr. Arnold arrived for the twins, and Haley Braddock, Matt’s older sister, walked over to pick him up. Matt signed “butterfly” to me again with a big grin and waved his paper as he trotted off with Haley.

  Corrie and I were left waiting on my front steps. We waited and waited. Corrie looked abandoned, like an orphan.

  Mrs. Addison finally arrived half an hour late.

  Corrie was the only one who took home a dry painting.

  I don’t know if what Mary Anne wrote is corny — I’m not good at English-class stuf
f like that — but it sure was true. Every kid who had been at the lesson the week before was back. And when Mary Anne and I told them about the puppets and how to make them, you should have heard the excitement:

  “I’m going to make our Cabbage Patch doll,” announced Gabbie.

  “But why? We already have one,” Myriah pointed out. “Caroline Eunice.”

  “Well, we should have two.” Gabbie paused and then said graciously, “You can have the doll for keeps and I’ll take the puppet.” (The doll is Myriah’s anyway.)

  “Okay,” agreed her sister. “And I’m going to make a rabbit.”

  “I’m going to make a witch!” said Marilyn Arnold gleefully.

  “A space monster … grrr!” growled Jamie.

  I had a signing session with Matt to make sure he understood what we were doing, and finally he grinned and signed that he was going to make a baseball player.

  The ideas flew — except from Corrie, who merely looked thoughtful.

  “Corrie?” I said after awhile. “Do you know what you’d like to make?”

  “Nancy Drew,” she whispered.

  “Really? Nancy Drew?” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “You like Nancy Drew?”

  “Yes!” said Corrie, in the most enthusiastic voice I’d ever heard her use. “You like her, too?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Nancy Drews are my favorite books.”

  Corrie beamed. And it was then that both Mary Anne and I realized that some sort of bond was growing between Corrie and me. A bond like the one my friend Stacey used to have with Charlotte Johanssen, a kid our club sits for a lot.

  So, with the kids’ ideas flowing, Mary Anne helped me set out bowls of water, strips of newspaper we’d cut up the evening before, a jar of flour, and a big tin for dipping the strips into the papier-mâché once it was made.

  Then we handed each child a balloon.

  “Baby balloons,” Gabbie noted.

  “She means they’re not blown up,” Myriah interpreted for us.

  “What are they for?” asked Carolyn Arnold.

  “Those balloons — after we blow them up — will be the puppets’ heads. Well, the forms for the heads,” I said. “Then we’ll cover them with papier-mâché, then —”

  “Claudia! My Claudia!” called a voice.

  It was Mimi. She was standing at the top of the steps to the basement. What was she doing there? She wasn’t even supposed to be out of bed.

  “Mimi!” I called back. “Don’t try to come down the stairs.” Where was the rest of my family? I knew Mom was at the grocery store. But what about Dad and Janine? Why weren’t they keeping an eye on Mimi?

  “Don’t come down,” I said again, but it was too late. Mimi was already halfway down the stairs, and not even holding onto the banister. Had she simply forgotten how teetery she could be?

  “Why can’t she come down?” asked Myriah.

  There was no time to answer her question. Mary Anne was dashing up the staircase to Mimi.

  It seemed easier to help her the rest of the way down than to try to turn her around and get her back upstairs. So that’s what Mary Anne did in her gentle, understanding way. She led Mimi to the art class.

  “Claudia and I are giving art lessons,” she said. “The kids are making puppets.”

  “I’m going to make a … grrr … monster!” said Jamie.

  I took over with Mimi and walked her around the table. “We’re making papier-mâché,” I told her.

  “See,” said Mimi, nodding wisely.

  Since Mimi seemed okay, and the kids who knew her well — Myriah, Gabbie, and Jamie — liked her a lot, I decided it would be okay to let her stay for the class.

  “I’ll get you a seat, Mimi,” I said, eyeing a lawn chair that was folded up in a corner of the basement.

  I was struggling to pull the chair out from between the wall and a bicycle, when I heard Mary Anne scream.

  I spun around.

  Mimi was slithering to the floor at the foot of the stairs. She had fainted again. Luckily she didn’t hit her head or anything. The kids looked on in horror, especially Corrie, who kept glancing from Mimi to me. I think she knew somehow that Mimi and I were very close.

  And Jamie cried, “Mimi!” and ran to her.

  But Mary Anne caught him in her arms and held him in a bear hug for a few seconds to keep him from going near her.

  Everything was happening at once. Mary Anne put Corrie, the oldest of the kids, in charge of Jamie. Then she ran to Mimi’s side while I dashed upstairs to find my father. As I reached the top step, I could hear Mary Anne say, “Corrie, can you be my helper and take all the kids over to the other side of the room? Ask Jamie to teach you guys his funny song about the big, blue frog. Myriah, you help sign to Matt, or he won’t understand.”

  It was amazing. Every kid followed every direction. I know because they were singing and signing, “I’m in love with a big, blue frog,” when I came back down to the basement with my father.

  I had found him in the garage, cleaning up an oil leak from one of our cars. He’d had no idea that Mimi was out of bed, much less dressed and in the basement.

  When I found him, I’d cried, “Dad! Dad!” (In my panic, I think I might even have called him “Daddy” like I used to do when I was little.) “Come quick! Right now! Mimi’s in the basement and she fainted again.”

  Dad jumped up in a flash, leaving the oily rag on the floor of the garage. He took the steps down to the basement two at a time, something I’d never seen him do before. When he knelt by Mimi’s side (she was still out cold) he began giving orders.

  “Claudia, call the paramedics, then find your sister. Mary Anne, take the children home.”

  He might have sounded cross, but he wasn’t. Not really. Just a little panicky.

  Mary Anne wisely led the kids out our back basement steps to our side yard. This turned out to be a good decision for two reasons. One, the children didn’t have to step over Mimi. Two, they were so fascinated by climbing the flight of dank cement steps, watching Mary Anne push apart the heavy double doors, and emerging into our yard, that they nearly forgot about Mimi.

  For the next half hour or so, two things were going on at once. Mary Anne was dealing with the children, and I was dealing with Mimi. I’ll tell you what was going on with Mimi first.

  I did just what Dad had told me to do. I ran to the phone in the kitchen and called the paramedics. I was getting pretty good at that. Then I ran through the house, shouting, “Janine! Janine! JANINE!”

  “What?” she called. Her voice came from upstairs. She was probably in her room, working on that computer of hers.

  “Come downstairs! Mimi’s sick again! The ambulance is on its way!”

  Sometimes you can’t pry Janine away from her computer with a crowbar, but when I told her about Mimi, she came flying out of her room as fast as Dad had left the oil leak in the garage. Then we raced to Mimi.

  When Dad saw us coming he said briskly, “You two stay with her, I’ll go wait for the ambulance. I think I’ll tell the paramedics to use the stairs Mary Anne and the kids used. It’ll be easier.”

  Janine and I stayed with Mimi. I covered her with a blanket that was folded up on the washing machine, and we held her hands and talked to her, just in case she could hear us.

  When the paramedics arrived, they lifted her gently onto the stretcher and carried her up the stairs. I kept waiting for the stretcher to tilt and Mimi to slide off, but somehow the men kept it level.

  Meanwhile, Mary Anne and all the children had walked first to Jamie’s house and dropped him off, explaining to his parents what had happened. Then they walked back to our neighborhood, where they took Myriah and Gabbie home. Finally, Mary Anne waited outside her house with the remaining kids. It was about time for them to be picked up, and since Mary Anne was just across the street from us, she knew that the parents (or Haley Braddock) would see the children at her house and not come bother us.

  However, the children saw the paramedics
carry Mimi around from the back of my house and into the ambulance. Mary Anne was glad Jamie and the Perkins girls were at their houses, because they would have been upset. The Arnold twins and Matt were merely curious. But Corrie began to cry.

  Mary Anne put her arm around her. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

  Corrie cried harder. “Claudia must be very sad,” she replied.

  And Mary Anne thought again that Corrie seemed to be getting awfully attached to me. She had plenty of time to think about it, too, because it was a good forty-five minutes later, long after the ambulance had left, and Marilyn, Carolyn, and Matt had been picked up, that Mrs. Addison finally arrived.

  Mary Anne considered discussing Corrie’s and my relationship with me — but not then. Only when things got better. She knew I had plenty to worry about besides Corrie.

  Guess who rode to the hospital in the ambulance with Mimi? I did. Dad decided to take the car, and Janine stayed behind so she could tell our mother what had happened as soon as Mom came home. Janine offered to go with Mimi, but I really wanted to and there was no time for arguing.

  I’ve been in an ambulance before. The last time, I was the patient. I had broken my leg badly. But this time, I was just a passenger. Sometimes the paramedics make the passenger ride up front next to the driver. Sometimes you can beg to sit in back with the patient, which is what I did, and again, no one took the time to argue with me.

  I sat on a ledge across from two paramedics, Mimi on the stretcher between us. While the attendants took her blood pressure and stuff, I just kept holding Mimi’s hand and talking to her.

  About halfway to the hospital, Mimi woke up and realized what was going on. She was so embarrassed that she tried to make up for it by acting like a grand lady.

  “Do I not know father?” she said to one of the attendants. “The honorable Mr…. Mr…. um …”

  “I — I don’t think so,” replied the man. He fiddled with the gauge on the blood pressure instrument.

  “But sure. Yes. Live Bradford Court years long ago.”