Monday I Love You Page 5

  After the cutting, my mother didn’t like William anymore. “He’s too pretty for a boy … and too wild, cutting you like that. It’s a disgrace.”

  William too pretty? How could that be? He was William. Everything he did astonished and delighted me. I had never had such a friend.

  “What a beautiful child,” I heard people say as William and I raced by, barefooted, hand in hand, in hot pursuit of sunshine and sea and saltwater taffy. “What a perfectly beautiful child.”

  At first, I stopped and smiled at them, thinking they spoke about both of us. William and me. Then I became aware that their faces turned toward William, away from me. They smiled at him, patted his rosy cheeks.

  “He’s my brother,” I told them proudly. William swung my hand and grinned at me, nodding. “She’s my sister,” he said, pleased at our playacting. Then we spun in wide circles, and the sand hid between our toes and we were completely, utterly happy.

  I won a straw hat at a penny pitching booth on the boardwalk that summer. It had a blue band and was too big for me. I had to keep my hand on it whenever I went walking. The wind from the ocean wanted that hat in the worst way. Every night I watched my father put on his black bow tie and suit. Then he’d brush his hair and put such a straight part in it it looked as if it was made with an ax. My father wore after-shave lotion that my mother said made him smell like a fruit. She didn’t say what fruit. I sniffed at him and decided he smelled like a cherry, but William said he smelled more like an apple.

  It was my best summer. I wished my father could’ve gone on being a croupier, but he was let go because business at the casino was down. That’s what he said, anyway. William and I saw an old man skateboarding down the boardwalk. I thought it might be the same old man who’d rescued William, but William said it wasn’t. The man who rescued him, William said, had yellow hair and wore two big gold rings on each hand. I think he was wrong. We waited to see if the man on the skateboard would stop so we could see if he had gold rings on as well as yellow hair, but he just kept moving fast, until one day he tripped over a runaway cat and went flying and broke all his bones and never went skateboarding again. We heard all sorts of stories.

  My cut finally healed. I had a big V right where my thumb went out. William didn’t have anything. His cut was all gone. He was very sad about that. He said he’d send me a postcard. William and his mother and Alfie were going to try their luck in Florida. My mother wrote our address down on a piece of paper, which I gave to William. But I never heard from him.

  It was that summer of my friendship with William that made me half conscious of the fact that I was not an appealing child. I knew that from the way they looked at William, their faces all open and joyful, and the way they looked at me.

  I tried. God knows I tried. But even with ribbons plaited in my newly washed hair, a smile on my face and red sandals my mother bought me on my feet, I lacked the special quality that makes a child appealing. Over the years, I told myself, things might change, I might develop this quality; but now I know this is not so. Nor will it ever be.

  I am the sort who’s always chosen last, the wallflower, though I do not dance. In this life there are winners and losers. I’m a loser. If I could do anything to change this, I would. But I am powerless. There is nothing to do but accept it and get on with my life.

  10

  In the morning my head felt as if it was filled with rocks. My eyes seemed stuck together with Scotch tape, my face as sticky as if I’d eaten a Hershey bar while I was sleeping. I considered playing dead. You read about people having little strokes, little heart attacks no one even knows they’ve had until their personality changes drastically. Or they start mumbling and can’t even remember their own name. Or what day of the week it is, or even the year. Or they forget words for simple things, like “fork” or “soap.”

  I’d read about a disease that makes people age prematurely. There were pictures showing ten-year-olds who looked like senior citizens. Or twelve-year-olds who looked in their eighties. It was terrible, tragic. I decided maybe that’s what ailed me. There was nothing young or charming or spirited about me. I might as well be a hundred as fifteen. I walked old, talked old, thought old.

  I ran my hands over my face, searching for wrinkles; big dark moles sprung up in the night when my eyes were closed. Sunken cheeks on account of my teeth were all gone. The only part of me that might pass for young was my mouth. I had a really nice mouth. Even I had to admit that. It was well shaped and sort of curly at the ends. And naturally red. When I smiled, my mother kept telling me, I had a glow. Estelle said she thought my ears were nicer than my mouth. Estelle and I sometimes dissected each other, good points against bad. I told Estelle she had nice hair. Privately I thought if Estelle’s mother didn’t lay off with the elaborate hairdos, Estelle was headed for trouble.

  There weren’t enough good points between me and Estelle combined, though, to make one halfway decent-looking person. That was the truth of it.

  “Grace.” My mother breathed through the keyhole. “Time to get up.”

  I made a noise so she’d know I’d heard. Suppose I said I wasn’t going to get up? Suppose I said I was afraid to leave the house? That from here on in I was housebound. Agoraphobia, they call it. Fear of open spaces. A terrible thing and very real. Lots of people, I’d read, suffered from it. There didn’t seem to be any cure. If you had agoraphobia, you sat in your house all day huddled in a shawl, peering from behind the curtains at the postman, the United Parcel truck, the paperboy who always threw the paper under the hedge or into the neighbor’s yard. You got somebody to go to the grocery store to get your groceries. You got a friend to take your books back to the library and get out some more books. They were never books you cared about reading, but you were in no position to be choosy. You were anchored to your house forever more.

  I tried to imagine what it would be like. I would never have to go to school again, never have to see Ashley or Charlie Oates. They’d send home my lessons and my exams, and I’d never have to go to the girls’ room again. Never be shoved and whispered at by a ferret-faced little creep in a black leather jacket who never had a girl so much as say hi to him. No more fat mama stuff for me.

  Estelle would come to report the school news to me when she brought my homework over. Dr. Gleason would have to come to the house to fill my teeth. My mother would trudge over to Ware’s and buy me a pair of jeans from the women’s department where they specialized in large sizes. And she’d splurge and buy me two pairs of pink panties with elastic around the waist and legs, panties that when I took them off you could still see where they’d been on account of the elastic tracks printed on my flesh.

  I lay very still, watching my chest move up and down, wondering if it was possible to turn my life around. The way they keep telling you. Make Your Life Happen. Gain Control of Your Life. This Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life. Blah, blah, blah.

  “Grace. Dear. It’s getting late.”

  If I sealed off my keyhole, how would my mother and I communicate? Maybe we’d write each other notes, which we’d leave on the kitchen table. And when my father came home from time to time, he’d read them silently, stooping a little over the table, looking over his shoulder now and then as if he was doing something secret and forbidden.

  If I never left the house, I decided, I’d be as good as dead. Which wouldn’t be a tremendous change from what I was right now. Still, there were certain things—flowers, the look of the sky when it was filled with clumps of little clouds bundled together in one corner, like sheep in a pasture. Children, the way they move, the way their mittens dangle at the end of strings stuffed up their sleeves. I wouldn’t want never to go outside. It would be very boring, for one thing.

  I got out of bed slowly, and padded over to the mirror, a glutton for punishment. Avoiding a full-face confrontation, I turned sideways and looked at myself over my shoulder.

  Sometimes I’m so gross I even gross myself out.

  When I a
rrived at the breakfast table the radio was still on. Had it been on all night, I wondered? My mother listened intently to the rehash the announcer was dishing out, as if she were hearing it for the first time.

  “This man is probably armed and considered dangerous,” the announcer said excitedly. “He is thought to be the same man who escaped from the state prison over in Torry last week and is now wanted for questioning in connection with the assault and attempted rape of two high school girls in Crawford county last year. Police have issued a warning to all citizens against opening their doors to strangers, as well as against picking up hitchhikers. The man is a white male, six feet tall, in his late teens or early twenties, wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots. He has black hair and a mustache. He is, I repeat, thought to be armed and dangerous.”

  “Those guys give me a pain,” I said. “They think they’re Laurence Olivier or something. How about the poor guy at the gas station? How’s he doing?”

  As if he’d heard me and was answering, the announcer said solemnly, “The gas-station attendant was taken to Overland Hospital, where he is reported to be in critical condition.”

  “Well.” My mother’s eyes sparkled. “Who would think? Right in our own backyard. You never know. Things that go on.” She shook her head. Then, “Why don’t you wear that pretty blue blouse I bought you?” she asked me, and I knew from the way her eyes narrowed at me that she hated my Hawaiian print shirt with the long tails that hung out and concealed a good part of me. Tough. I was the one who was wearing it, not her.

  When the telephone rang, I jumped. My mother stayed where she was.

  “Answer it, will you, Grace? My hands are all wet,” she said, running her hands under the cold water. I shook my head. She let it ring some more, then grabbed up the receiver and said “Yes?” into it in a feisty way.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” she said. Who did she think she was anyway, an executive secretary?

  “It’s that Doris Brown.” She held out the receiver. “I wish she wouldn’t call so early in the morning. Mornings are so frantic around here.”

  I looked around our kitchen. It seemed pretty calm to me.

  “Hello, Doris,” I said, holding the receiver a little away from myself, in case it wasn’t really Doris but someone masquerading as Doris.

  “Grace. Can you sit tonight? Sorry for short notice. Got to get away for some R and R. Hope you’re not busy.”

  Over the telephone Doris talked in shorthand. The thing I liked about her was she always called at the last minute, always apologized for doing so and always said, “Hope you’re not busy.” As if I ever was. I loved Doris for saying that.

  I said five-thirty would be fine. “Plan to spend the night.” She always said that too. “I’ll probably be late. May spend the night with my girl friend. You know how it is.”

  “Sure,” I said, not knowing how it was but willing to buy anything Doris said.

  “Peachy,” said Doris, signing off.

  “She wants me to sit tonight,” I told my mother. “I’ll spend the night, because she’s going to be very late.” Well, I sure was in demand as a baby-sitter, anyway, I thought. First Govoni, now Doris.

  My mother screwed up her face so she looked as if she might be hurting.

  “I don’t like you sitting off there, no neighbors or anything, alone and all,” she said. “And now this,” she waved at the radio. “This wild man on the loose. God knows what he’s capable of. Anything. Everything. Most likely he’s a pervert, too.” She chewed her lip excitedly. “He’s probably spaced out of his mind, snorting cocaine or something. You really shouldn’t be alone out there. It’s dangerous.” My mother willed me to look at her.

  I refused. As a matter of fact, I had been scared badly once or twice while baby-sitting at the Browns’, by strange noises outside or loud bangs from a passing car, sounds that sounded like gunshots. But I’d have to be put on a rack to admit that to her now. One word of apprehension from me, and my mother would say, “Call her up and tell her I said NO.” And I liked baby-sitting for Buster Brown. I liked the money I earned too. So I kept quiet and smiled patronizingly at my mother’s anxieties.

  “I won’t be alone. The baby will be with me. We might play some cards.” I should’ve known better than to joke with my mother. She has no sense of humor. None at all. Her lips never even twitched.

  “You never know. I don’t like it. You’re too young to be out there all night by yourself.”

  She never listened to me. Nobody did. I shrugged and got out the vinyl overnight bag my father had won in a crap game. He won the strangest things. Once he brought home a roasting chicken he said he’d won in a poker game.

  I had no intention of going to school. I planned to go to the library, wait for the doors to open, then sit down at one of the big, shiny tables, take out my yellow lined pad and a handful of sharpened pencils and go to work. If anyone asked, I’d say I was working on a school project. Lots of research was needed. Mrs. Quick, the librarian, was kind to me. To others, she was curt and brisk, but once she’d asked me if I’d got a good mark on my last paper, and did I want a cup of tea.

  I put my nightgown into the bag, as well as my toothbrush and my Ace bandage. Sometimes, when I had a free moment, I practiced binding myself with the bandage. The way they did in the nineteen twenties. When bosoms were out and the fashion was to be flat chested. So women bound their breasts the way Chinese women bound their feet, so they’d be small and useless.

  I’d discovered it was difficult to bind yourself. But there was no one I could ask to help. If I asked Estelle, she’d let it slip. “Grace Schmitt binds her boobs with an Ace bandage,” Estelle would say to anyone who’d listen. Loose lips sink ships, Estelle. Keep your big blabbermouth shut, why don’t you. But Estelle couldn’t. She was incapable of keeping her mouth shut. And, as she was my only friend, I’d have to learn to bind myself.

  I put my sunglasses in my pocket. I’d bought the biggest, roundest sunglasses I could find. They covered half my face. I liked to think they made me invisible. If you can’t see a person’s eyes, you can’t really see the person. The lenses were pale blue. I hoped they lent me an air of mystery, as if I were a big superstar or a photojournalist.

  “I’m off,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  Fuzzy slippers slapping as she crossed to the sink, my mother didn’t answer. I let myself out and stood quietly behind some bushes as the school bus stopped for pickup and thundered past. Then I set out, walking purposefully. I tried to walk as if I was thin; feet stepping high, stomach in, shoulders back. Light as a feather. There are always ways to deceive yourself.

  A red Subaru pulled up beside me. I knew it was Govoni. I didn’t feel like talking to anybody, but I had to stop. It would’ve been rude not to.

  “Hop in,” Ms. Govoni said. “I’m going your way.”

  “I’m headed for the library,” I said, feeling blood rush to my face. “I have this paper I have to write. And research. I’m not going to school today.” If she didn’t like it, she could lump it, I decided.

  “Okay. I’ll drop you off there, then.” She patted the seat. “Just push the mess out of your way.” The seat was littered with candy wrappers, broken crayons and some plastic ears and noses from Mr. Potato Head. It probably was like that the other time I’d been in the car, but I hadn’t noticed.

  “It wouldn’t take a detective to decide there were kids in this family,” Ms. Govoni said. “They leave their trademarks everywhere.”

  “I didn’t know you had a kid,” I said. “Until you called, that is.”

  “Two,” she said. “A boy and a girl.”

  “That’s nice.” What about the stories that said Ms. Govoni liked girls better than boys?

  “Which do you like better?” I asked. “Girls or boys?”

  “It’s a toss-up,” she said. “They’re both young and pesky. When they get older and much peskier, maybe I’ll make up my mind. It’s nice having both.”

  It wasn
’t like driving with Estelle. Ms. Govoni kept her eyes on the road at all times, except when we were stopped at a red light.

  “I’m glad I ran into you, Grace,” Ms. Govoni said, frowning at her windshield. “I expect you’re going through a bad patch right now.” Little did she know.

  “I’ve been through some myself. It’s no fun. But I’ll put my money on you. You’ll survive, maybe even be stronger because of it. If you want to talk, remember, I’m a good listener. Best thing about me is, I never tell. My mother used to call me old zipper mouth.”

  We pulled up in front of the library. She turned to look at me, and I noticed how dark and kind her eyes were. How filled with compassion they were. Then, because I was embarrassed, because of what she knew about me, what I’d told her about Ashley in the girls’ room, I said, to fill the empty space with words, “What does your husband do?”

  Asinine question.

  “I don’t have one,” she said.

  “Oh.” Again I felt the blood rush to my face. “Well. Thanks for the ride. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not. Remember.” She grinned and looked younger, and I thought she probably didn’t grin often. “Tell it to old zipper mouth and you can’t go wrong. See you tomorrow, then. Thanks, Grace.”

  I got out and stood on the sidewalk, watching her battered little wagon pull out into traffic.

  A bad patch. I wondered what a good patch was like. Wondered if I’d ever know.

  Thanks for what?

  11

  When I was ten, just before I started getting breasts, my mother left home. It wasn’t the first time and it probably won’t be the last. It’s the time I remember the best, though.

  “She’ll be back, hon. You wait and see. I know her. She’ll be back before you can say Jack Robinson. Don’t you worry.” As he spoke, my father’s foot moved agitatedly, keeping time with his words. “Ladies sometimes have to spread their wings, see if they can still fly. Take off.” He winked at me and I turned my eyes away from his long, sad face.