Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye

  After a few moments, Mal said tentatively, “Claudia? I —”

  “Be quiet,” I said softly. “I don’t want to talk about Mimi.”

  “But on the night before her funeral —” Mal persisted.

  “Be quiet! I just told you I don’t want to talk about her.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Claud,” said Kristy, “this may not be the right time to bring this up, but that never stopped me before.” Kristy tried to sound light, but nobody laughed.

  “Bring what up?” I said testily. “It better not have anything to do with Mimi.”

  “Well, it doesn’t … exactly.”

  Even I was disappointed when the phone rang right then. My phone is a blessing and a curse. Sometimes we’re saved by it, sometimes it can be so inconvenient.

  A job was arranged for Kristy, the phone rang twice more, and afternoon jobs were lined up for Jessi and Mal.

  Then Kristy picked up where she’d left off. “What I want to say, Claud, is more about Corrie than about Mimi. I know you’re filling up a hole in Corrie’s life. But I think she’s doing the same for you.”

  After a long pause, I whispered, “Mimi’s hole?”

  Kristy nodded. “And you have to watch it when you let someone fill a hole. Especially when it’s being filled by a kid like Corrie. I don’t really believe you’d do this, but just think over what I’m going to say: Don’t drop Corrie. You’re going to start feeling better, Claud, and when you do, you won’t need Corrie as much. So don’t — don’t just drop her.”

  I was about to protest when Kristy went on, “I don’t think you’ll do that, though. I think you and Corrie are good for each other and just happen to need each other right now. I think each of you can help the other one get stronger. Be careful, that’s all. Everyone says little kids don’t break, but they do. Inside. I broke when my father walked out on us.”

  I gulped and nodded, thinking that I felt pretty broken myself. But I saw Kristy’s point and told her so.

  Kristy may be a loudmouth. She may be bossy sometimes. But I think she understands kids better than any of the rest of us does.

  The meeting ended then, and my friends left club headquarters solemnly.

  A week passed. My grades were dropping.

  My grades aren’t too good to begin with, but they’re pretty stable. Your average C work with an occasional B or D thrown in. I’ve been known to fail tests.

  But when I dropped to a solid D average, no one seemed surprised or even said anything. And that surprised me. Ordinarily, my parents would have hit the roof, and my teachers would have called me in for conferences. They’d have said things like, “We know you can do better. You’re a smart girl. You have a high I.Q.” (That’s true. I do.) Or, “We know you can do better. You’re Janine’s sister.” That was the killer. It was also the point. I’m Janine’s sister, not Janine.

  Anyway, except for feeling tired all the time, I wasn’t sure why my grades had gone down. I did my homework more often than usual. I read all the chapters that were assigned to us. But I’ll admit that it was hard to concentrate. Maybe that was because suddenly it had become hard not to think about Mimi. For awhile, I tried to shut her out of my mind. Now I couldn’t. But why didn’t someone say something to me? Why did they let my grades slide? Just because Mimi had died? Mimi would have wanted me to do well in school, if I could.

  I was angry at my teachers and my parents.

  At least Dorrie and Ashley and my other classmates were speaking to me again. But they wouldn’t talk about Mimi, which was funny, because now I wanted to talk about her. Now if Mallory had said, “Remember the time when Mimi …” I would have been all ears.

  But I did find some sympathy cards slipped into my locker at school, and in our mailbox at home, from my classmates. Mostly, they were flowery cards with printed messages inside that said things like: I share your sorrow and extend my sympathy. Or: What you have once cherished you will never lose. Or even poems like: Sometimes words just aren’t enough, but I want you to know, da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-da da-doe. (You know what I mean.) And then Dorrie or Ashley or whoever would sign her name (or his name) under the message.

  I guess it’s hard to know what to do when someone dies. I tried to think what I would do if, for instance, Kristy’s mother or grandmother or someone close to her died. I would talk to her and hug her — if that was what she wanted. But if Dorrie’s mother died I would send her a card and sign my name. Maybe it depends on how well you know the person.

  Saturday mornings. I looked forward to them thirstily. They were oases in my desert. The kids and their puppets kept me going.

  The puppets were almost done.

  In fact, on one particular Saturday, everyone was due to finish their puppets during class, except for Marilyn and Carolyn, who had already finished theirs. The other kids were just putting on the last touches, such as hair.

  I watched Corrie solemnly glue yellow yarn to the top of Nancy Drew’s head. I watched Jamie glue antennae to his space monster. I watched Gabbie just decorate and decorate her doll. I could tell her puppet wouldn’t be finished until class was over because she could always think of one more thing to add. She kept exclaiming, “Oh! I’ll put these sparkly things on her dress!” Or, “She needs barrettes in her hair. Mary Anne Spier, can you please help me make barrettes?”

  Meanwhile, the twins made collages with the materials the other kids were using on their puppets. While they worked, Marilyn announced, “We know a good joke.” She was speaking for herself and her sister.

  “Yeah,” said Carolyn. “And since there are two of us, we can tell it better. See, once there were these two brothers and their names were Trouble and Shut Up. And one day they went downtown to go shopping and Trouble got lost. Shut Up was scared so he went looking for a policeman, and this is what happened. I’m going to play the part of Shut Up and Marilyn will be the policeman.”

  “I always have to be the policeman,” complained Marilyn.

  “That’s because you’re good at it,” Carolyn told her.

  Marilyn looked like she wanted to protest, but Carolyn said, “Come on. Let’s finish the joke.”

  “Okay,” agreed Marilyn sulkily.

  The rest of the joke went like this:

  Carolyn: “Oh, Mr. Policeman! Mr. Policeman!”

  Marilyn: “What’s the matter, little boy?”

  Carolyn, pretending to cry: “I lost my brother and I can’t find him.”

  Marilyn: “What’s your name?”

  Carolyn: “Shut Up.”

  Marilyn: “Are you looking for trouble?”

  Carolyn: “Yes, I just told you that.”

  I think there must have been more to the joke, but the twins stopped telling it because the other kids were laughing so hard, and anyway it was time to clean up. As we put things away, I kept hearing Jamie and Myriah giggle and murmur things like, “Are you looking for TROUBLE?!!”

  Half an hour later the kids and their puppets and collages were gone. Except for Corrie and Nancy Drew. Corrie and I sat on our stoop as usual. Time went by. So much time, in fact, that Mary Anne returned from walking Jamie and the Perkins girls home, and joined us on the stoop.

  “What are you going to do with Nancy Drew?” Mary Anne asked Corrie.

  Corrie glanced at me and smiled. “Give it to my mom,” she replied. “She will be so, so pleased. It will be a special present for her, and she will see that I did well in art. That way, I can make her happy.”

  “I hope you like the puppet, too,” said Mary Anne.

  “Oh, I do,” Corrie told her hastily. “But this is for Mommy. I can show her how much I love her.”

  At that moment, I heard our front door open behind us.

  “Claudia?” It was Janine. “Your phone was ringing upstairs, so I answered it. It’s Mrs. Addison. She wants to talk to you.”

  “Thanks, Janine,” I said, glancing at Mary Anne. The two of us exchanged a look that plainly said, “What n
ow?” which I hoped Corrie didn’t see. Corrie was probably thinking, What now? herself, though.

  Janine stepped outside to sit with Corrie and Mary Anne, and I dashed up to my room. I picked up the receiver, which Janine had placed on the bed.

  “Hello? Mrs. Addison?” I said.

  “Hi, Claudia. Sorry to do this to you. I’m running late, as you can see.”

  “Yes. Corrie is waiting for you,” I said pointedly.

  “Well, the thing is, I’ve been held up doing my errands.” (She did sound like she was calling from a pay phone on the street.) “My bracelet won’t be ready at the jewelry store for another half an hour, and the man at the laundry is running late, too.” (What a tragedy, I thought.) “So I was wondering if you’d keep Corrie for another hour or so, dear. I’ll pay you whatever the rate is for an unexpected call like this.”

  “Well, I —” I began. Luckily, I was free. But what if I hadn’t been? This was pretty pushy of Mrs. Addison. As it was, I’d planned to do some homework that afternoon and finish up a project for my pottery class.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Mrs. Addison breathily, before I could tell her any of those things. “Tell Corrie I’ll be along. Thanks a million. ’Bye!” She hung up.

  Oh, brother, I thought. Now I’ve got to go downstairs and give Corrie this news. I walked slowly to the front door, opened it slowly, and sat down slowly when Corrie, Janine, and Mary Anne squished aside to make room for me.

  “Corrie,” I said, deciding just to come out and say it, “your mom’s running late. She asked me to watch you for another hour or so while she finishes her errands. So why don’t you come inside and we’ll have some lunch? I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry. Then I’ll show you all the art stuff up in my room.”

  I just kept talking away as Corrie’s face fell. Mary Anne and Janine played along with me nicely, though.

  Mary Anne stood up and stretched, as if she heard stories like this every day. Then she said, “I guess I better be going. I’m getting hungry myself. See you next Saturday, Corrie.” Then she ran across the street to her house.

  And Janine said, “We’ve got peanut butter and jelly, Corrie. And tunafish, I think. Let’s go make sandwiches. Maybe Mom and Dad will let us fix chocolate milk shakes in the blender.”

  I was surprised. Janine planned to stick with us? Usually she’s stuck to her computer. But, I suddenly realized, she hadn’t been quite so stuck to it since Mimi had died. She’d spent more time with me. She knew about my stop-action painting, my pottery class, the D I’d gotten on a math quiz, and even where the portrait of Mimi was stashed.

  Janine and I rose, and Corrie reluctantly followed us into the house, clutching Nancy Drew. We made sandwiches and milk shakes, and Mom and Dad knew enough to let the three of us eat alone. People can practically see how timid Corrie is.

  All during lunch, poor Corrie kept saying things like, “Where’s Daddy, I wonder?” and, “Who’s watching Sean?” and, “Do you think Mommy will pick up Sean or me first?”

  When Mrs. Addison finally did arrive (she honked her car horn from the street more than two hours later), Corrie looked at me tearfully, thanked me for making milk shakes, and handed me Nancy Drew.

  “Here. You take her,” she said. “I don’t want Mommy to have her after all. I want you to have her.”

  Whoa, I thought as I watched the Addisons drive away. As terrible as I felt about Mimi, I realized one good thing. Mimi was gone, but I’d known her love. I was lucky.

  It must, I decided, be awfully difficult to be Corrie Addison.

  After Corrie left, I went to my room and tried to catch up on some of the things I was behind on, and to do over some of the things I’d done poorly in the first place. For most of the afternoon I felt like Mimi was watching me, and that was a good feeling. It was as if she were sitting next to me, patiently helping me, just like she used to do. She would say, “No, look at problem again, my Claudia. Read carefully. Slow down. You can find answer.”

  Sometimes — not often, but sometimes — she used to climb the steps to the second floor, sit in my room, and watch me work on a painting, a collage, a sculpture, a piece of jewelry. Those times she never said anything. She just watched, and occasionally nodded or smiled. Maybe right now she was thinking about the Muses. Maybe Mimi would become my own personal Muse. Whatever she was, it was nice having her with me. I felt as if she hadn’t left us after all.

  Our family ate dinner together that night, and I wondered whether the Addisons were doing the same thing, or if Corrie and Sean were eating alone while their parents got dressed to go to a fancy party or something.

  When dinner was over, Dad and I cleaned up the kitchen, Mom took the newspaper into the living room, and Janine disappeared, maybe to work on her computer. But those days, who knew? When the kitchen was clean, I left it to go back to my homework. On the way to the stairs, I passed Mimi’s bedroom.

  The door was open. The light was on. And Janine was sitting on Mimi’s bed with the contents of Mimi’s jewelry box spilled in front of her.

  I was shocked. None of us had been able to go into Mimi’s room since the morning she’d died and I’d closed the door.

  “We’ll give her clothes and things away to charities — to the Salvation Army, maybe — someday soon,” Mom kept saying. “Then we’ll turn this into a nice guest bedroom.”

  But no one had opened Mimi’s door. We couldn’t do it.

  Now Janine was in there, pawing through Mimi’s most precious things.

  She looked up and saw me hovering in the doorway. “Oh, Claudia,” she said. “Come here. Look at this pin.” She held it out to me. “I think Mimi would want you to have it since she gave me her earrings.”

  I glanced briefly at the pin. It was a simple circle of pearls set on a ring of gold. It was not my kind of jewelry at all. But that wasn’t the point.

  “What are you doing in here?” I said with a gasp.

  Janine sighed. “I knew you would ask,” she replied. “It’s time somebody did this. Look. Here’s a ring I know Mimi wanted Mom to have. And here’s a bar pin. Ooh, I bet Dad could have it made into a tie tack. Wow, look at this pin…. Oh, I remember this bracelet. Mimi wore it to my eighth-grade graduation.”

  Janine was holding up one piece of jewelry after another. The clincher was when she found a pair of gold earrings and made a grab for them. “Wow! Here are the flower earrings. I’d forgotten about these. I always wanted them, ever since I was little. They’d look great with my white sweater.”

  Ha! Who was Janine kidding? She doesn’t care how she looks. Even Kristy pays more attention to what she wears than Janine does.

  I exploded. “Oh, my lord, Janine. How could you do this? How could you?” I didn’t give my sister a chance to answer me. I plowed right ahead. “Mimi’s hardly been gone at all and here you are picking through her things like someone with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “You’re mixing your metaphors,” said Janine through clenched teeth.

  I ignored her. “You’re like those awful people in A Christmas Carol who wait until Mr. Scrooge is just barely dead and then they go through his room and steal all his stuff, even the rings from his bed curtains, and sell them for practically nothing,” I told her.

  “I do not,” said Janine haughtily, “have plans to sell Mimi’s things. I just thought Mimi would want us to have them. Peaches and Russ, too.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should be doing this,” I shouted. My voice was getting louder and louder, but I couldn’t help it. “Why would anyone want Mimi’s dumb old stuff anyway? I hate Mimi. I hate her!”

  “Hey, hey, what’s going on in here?” cried Mom.

  She and Dad had appeared behind me in the hallway. I’m sure, from the way I’d been screaming, that they’d expected to find me murdering Janine. As it was, they were pretty surprised just to see Mimi’s room lit up, and my sister on the bed in front of the open jewelry box.

  “Nothing,” I replied.
>
  Needless to say, my parents didn’t believe me.

  “Into the living room for a family conference,” said Dad.

  We gathered in the living room. As we were sitting down, I saw Janine stuff something in the pocket of her skirt.

  “All right,” my mother began. “Would somebody please explain what was going on?”

  Janine told Mom and Dad about the jewelry box, and Mom just looked sort of sad and said that we should have had the courage to go into Mimi’s room long ago. I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it again.

  After a moment of silence, Dad said gently, “Claudia? Is there anything you’d like to tell us? Your mother and I did hear you say that you hate Mimi. Um …”

  I could see how uncomfortable he was, so I started talking. “Well,” I said, “I didn’t realize it at first. I mean, I didn’t realize it until right now, but I’m — I’m sort of mad at Mimi.” My voice had grown so soft that my family had to lean forward to hear me.

  “Why?” asked Mom.

  “Because …” (I was just figuring this out), “because she left us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that she wasn’t really sick. She was getting better. She was going to come home from the hospital — and then she died. It’s like she just gave up. Like she didn’t even care about us enough to stay around awhile longer.” There. I’d said it. Even though I hadn’t known it, I’d been carrying around that big, bad secret — and I’d finally let it out. No wonder I’d felt so tired lately. Keeping bad secrets takes a lot of energy. “I tried not to be mad at Mimi,” I assured my parents and sister, remembering how comforted I’d felt that afternoon, feeling that Mimi was near me. “I really tried. Plus, how could I be mad at her when she should have been mad at me?”

  Everyone looked puzzled again, so I had to explain about the horrible things I’d done that I felt guilty over. “I bet she thought she was a nuisance,” I said. And then with horror I added, “Maybe that was why she wanted to die. So she wouldn’t have to be a nuisance to us anymore.”