Smiles to Go (16 page)

Also on the floor, a coloring book.
Let’s Be Bears.
I picked it up, paged through it. She gets colors all wrong. Green sky. Blue bears. Even at her age I made my skies blue. There has never been a time when I didn’t know the sky is blue, the grass is green, bears are brown.

I heard something outside. I went to the window. It was Korbet. He must have been staying home from kindergarten today. He pedaled his orange fish back and forth in front of our house. He pedaled furiously, hunched over. Back and forth…back and forth…

It was like he was trying to make her well. He figured if he pedaled hard enough, long enough, she would be OK, she’d come home.

I drifted around the house. Empty.
Helpless. I wished there were an orange fish I could pedal furiously.

I heard her voice in distant rooms…

Where’s the party?

In yer dreams, lugnut!

Daddy! I’m bleeding!

I’m a big kid!

Mischief Night!

Bob, you smell bad.

I stood in the kitchen, and it was that September Saturday morning again. The smell of strawberries. Tabby saying, “Riley picked his nose.” Tabby answering the phone. Tabby saying, “Phooey!” Tabby jabbing the phone in my face: “For
yyew
.” Mi-Su: “Quick!” The voice on the radio. The proton dead. Tabby…Tabby dropping slices of sweet potato in the toaster…Tabby climbing onto the counter…

I sat on the counter. I said the words:

“Riley—”

“Picked—”

“His—”

“Nose!”

And jumped to the floor. Dishes rattled.

It was all I could think of to do. Since she couldn’t be her, I’d be her.

I got my own secret stash of black jelly beans from my bedroom closet. I dropped them into a wastebasket one by one:

plink

plink

plink

I yelled, “Mischief Night!”

I dumped a pile of Lucky Charms onto the living room carpet.

I let the vacuum cleaner run in the closet.

I turned on every faucet in the house.

The phone rang. I picked it up—“Barney’s Saloon”—and slammed it back down.

I went to my room, turned my trophy around.

The phone rang. I picked it up—“Barney’s Saloon”—slammed it back down.

I went up to the dormer. I stood before the wedding gifts. I closed my eyes. I saw her in the ICU, so small in the bed, the tubes, the bags, the contraptions…I tore open a gift. Silvery wrappings, silver ribbons flew. Downstairs the phone was ringing. I tore open
more gifts. Here were towels, thin little towels, lacy borders. A blue teakettle, white speckles, tin, I think. Two glasses, stemmed, tulip shaped. A wooden tray, little carved angels facing each other from the handle holes. A set of wooden salad bowls. A pillow, with red and blue stitching: “Home, Sweet Home.” Picture albums, black pages. A fancy, brassy mantle clock.

In one of the boxes, an envelope. It said “Betsy.” Not Margaret. All my life I’ve known my great-grandmother as Margaret. But it wasn’t. It was Betsy. They called her Betsy. She called herself Betsy. And that made all the difference. I ran to the telescope. Crazy, I know, but…why not? I looked through the eyepiece, turned the focus knob…yes…there…1930…I saw them, Betsy and Andrew Tuppence, dashing down to the pier, the huge ship foghorning
Hurry! Hurry!
Her shoes in her hands, wedding dress flashing white, a swan taking off, Andrew calling “
Wait!”
the two of them laughing…laughing…all the way to Africa…

I went downstairs, passed the ringing phone, picked up—“Phooey!”—slammed down, went outside. Korbet was pedaling in slow motion now, exhausted. Tear tracks stained his cheeks. He looked at me as if I could fix things. I turned away.

There was really only one place left to go, one thing left to do. I pulled Black Viper out of the bush. I didn’t ride it, I carried it by one wheel. The streets were deserted—of people, not flowers. Lots of flowers. A pretty, peopleless day in May.

For the second time in the past year I stood at the top of Dead Man’s Hill, one foot on Black Viper, one on the ground. It had been hard to imagine BT standing here, ready to go down. It was impossible to imagine Tabby. Was she thinking:
I hate Will. He made me miss my ice cream.
Was she thinking:
I’ll show ’em all.
Was she thinking:
Mischief Night!

I looked over the town. I could see my neighborhood, my roof. Mi-Su’s was blocked
by trees. There was BT’s house. Smedley Park. The clock tower on the Brimley Building. Still couldn’t make out the time from there. I wondered if they’d ever fix it, or would BT’s little stunt last forever? Were the lives of the townspeople changing in slight, unnoticed ways because the clock that looms over them every day is wrong? I looked at the watch strapped to my wrist, the second hand perfectly ticking off the seconds of my life, the dying of protons, the slow, silent, unfeelable passing of the cosmos, and suddenly I knew exactly what Tabby had been thinking. She was thinking:
I’m scared
. The world blurred. Tears poured. God! She was scared to death. She was shaking. And
still
she did it. She’s so little she can’t even tell time, and she did it, she pushed off…I could hear her screaming, and Black Viper couldn’t hold, Black Viper was flying…and I felt her foot on the board next to mine, her brave little foot holding, holding, and her voice came whispering:
…see me…see me…

I kicked Black Viper down the hill and walked away.

“Where
were
you?”

My mother marched across the ICU, met me at the nurses’ station. She was mad.

“Around,” I said.

“We called you at school, at home.”

I felt a chill. I looked over her shoulder. Tabby was still in the bed, my father staring down at her. But something was different.

I looked at my mother. “They’re bringing her out of it,” she said. “We wanted you to be here.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s waking up.”

“She’s OK?”

“We don’t know yet. They do it gradually. The doctor says so far, so good.”

“That’s what he always says.”

She nodded, chuckled. She hugged me. She whispered, “She spoke. Her eyes were closed but she said something.”

I was afraid to ask. “What?”

Her voice trembled in my ear: “See me…”

I was drowning in white light.

“Afternoon, Will,” said the tiny doctor. His white coat fell almost to his shoes. “No school today?”

“Not for me.”

He touched my arm. He was fooling with ventilator settings. “She’s almost weaned off now. She seems to be breathing fine on her own, but we’ll keep the ventilator handy just in case. Sedation is very light now.”

“So far so good,” I said.

“Exactly.”

The doctor checked a drip bag and walked out.

My mother sat on the edge of the bed. She took Tabby’s hand. She brought it to her lips, kissed it. I sat beside her. She gave me a faint smile. She placed Tabby’s hand in mine. She moved so I could slide closer. My sister’s hand was so small in mine. I wiggled each of her fingers. I looked at her face, her eyes. I bent down. Her ear was so small. I whispered, “I love you, Tabby.” There was no movement of her eyes, no flutter of eyelids, no twitch of the
lips. I knelt at the bedside. I whispered. “I tore open the wedding gifts. Beat you to it. Don’t tell Mom. And guess what? They called great-grandmom Betsy.” I told her everything. I told her I’d take her to Purple Cow for ice cream. I told her I threw Black Viper away but I’ll buy her her own skateboard and she can ride it anytime she wants as long as I’m there and it’s not down Dead Man’s Hill. I told her we’ll go to star parties and I’ll take a thermos of hot chocolate and she can have half. I’ll sneak her a cup of coffee. I told her Mi-Su and BT said hello. I even put in a good word for Korbet. I went on and on, and her eyes were still and, thinking back, I don’t know when it started, but all of a sudden I was aware of my hand, and I looked, and her fingers were curled around my thumb and they were squeezing.

FIRST DAY

R
oosevelt Elementary. Lobby. It’s a madhouse. I haven’t been in here since I graduated. Folding chairs have been set up, the gym has become an auditorium, and the parents are out there in their seats, waiting for their little darlings to come marching in.

Every kid about to start first grade tomorrow is here, and every one of them is jabbering. I can’t believe what a big deal this is to them. Was I this excited when I passed the pebble? That’s what they call it: Passing the Pebble. I still have mine. It’s the size of a marble, painted
blue. My mother kept it these past ten years. She gave it to me this morning. You might have thought she was giving me a diamond. It’s OK if you’ve lost your blue pebble; the principal hovering around here will give you one. But it’s best if you still have yours from your own First Day, because the idea is to pass the pebble from one generation to the next. You walk down the aisle with your new first grader, there’s a ceremony on stage, and then the big finale when the high schoolers pass the pebbles to the first graders and everybody goes bonkers and the mothers cry.

Tabby jabbers, jabbers. To look at her, to listen to her, you’d never guess where she was four months ago. Once she came to, there was no shutting her up. The doctor made a joke: “Would you like me to put her back under again?” Today she wears something I’ve hardly ever seen her in: a dress. It’s green. It doesn’t quite match her eyes. Only one thing does. It finally came to me about a month ago. I was in the dormer when I smelled it drifting up two flights of stairs: pie. And suddenly I knew where I had seen her eye color before, in the
kitchen, my mother slicing Granny Smith apples. And the sweet apple oven cloud carried the only poem that’s ever visited me:

She jabbers at all the other firsties. She jabbers at Mi-Su, who will walk Korbet down the aisle. And—glory be!—she even jabbers at Korbet, and you can see the kid is in Heaven. She jabbers at BT, who will be the only high schooler taking two kids, his twin sisters, the chipmunks. For once they’re almost still. Tabby doesn’t say a word to me. She doesn’t have to. Through all the jabbering she’s got her hand wrapped around my finger. Even though it’s not time yet. She hasn’t let go since we left the house.

I peek into the auditorium. My parents and Aunt Nancy are out there somewhere. My mother surprised me with her reaction to the wedding gift disaster—she didn’t seem to care. In fact, the torn paper and ribbons and open boxes are still in a heap as I left them. At least,
that’s what I’m told, because I myself haven’t been up in the dormer since Tabby came home from the hospital. Mom says she’ll get around to cleaning up the mess someday. Or maybe not. She says Betsy and Andrew were probably waiting for someone to come along and rip open the gifts for them.

Mi-Su, BT and I stand here like giants, grinning at each other over this sea of little heads. Tabby’s jabber stitches us together. We say nothing to each other. We don’t need to. During Tabby’s recovery, Mi-Su and BT were at our house every day. They mostly ignored me. BT promised to take Tabby with him next time he does something crazy. And Mi-Su—every Friday throughout the summer she showed up with her toothbrush and at nine o’clock crawled into bed with Tabby for the night.

It was the best summer of my life.

Then last Saturday night a miracle happened. Maybe two. The three of us were having our usual Monopoly and pizza binge. BT bought his usual railroads, but somehow he also wound up owning two hotels on Park
Place. And guess where I landed? Rent: three thousand bucks. Wiped me out. For some reason I found that really funny. As I went to fork over the money, Mi-Su stayed my hand. Her eyebrows went up, her grin went impy: “I could give you a loan.”

I stared at her, at BT. Echoes of all my no-loans-to-BT speeches filled the room. I burst out laughing. We all did.

When we finally calmed down, Mi-Su said, “You finally did it.”

“Did what?”

“You laughed out loud.”

I thought about it. “I guess I did, huh?”

“You did, dude,” said BT.

“You’re becoming positively impulsive,” said Mi-Su.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I feel closer than ever to BT and Mi-Su. Or maybe close isn’t the word—maybe it’s comfortable. I’m OK now with BT and his ways. Not that I’m ready to climb clock towers with him, but I don’t see him as an exotic creature in a zoo anymore. I don’t measure him
against myself. He is who he is, and—president or gas-pumper—he will be who he will be. I wouldn’t want him any other way.

As for Mi-Su and me, well, I don’t know exactly where we’re heading. And I don’t care. I don’t need to know anymore. I don’t need to know who we’re going to be tomorrow or next year or ten years from now. It’s enough to know who we are today, this minute, and who we are right now are two good friends, as good as friends get, smiling at each other across the jabbering little heads and not giving a rat’s lugnut that the world is vanishing one proton at a time.

Music is coming over the PA. Kermit the Frog singing
The Rainbow Connection
. The principal goes, “Shhh!” but the jabbering has already stopped. Little hands grope for big hands. We line up alphabetically according to the firsties’ last names. BT and the twins are toward the front. Then Mi-Su and Korbet. Tabby and I are near the end.

Korbet looks back, panicked. Finally his
eyes land on Tabby. They thumbs-up each other, he turns back, pulls Mi-Su into the auditorium, pumps his fist in the air. The audience is standing, turning toward the aisle. We’re moving. We’ve been told to give each first grader plenty of room, don’t crowd the ones in front of us—they’re the stars.
The Rainbow Connection
recycles. Couple by couple—big kid–little kid, big kid–little kid—the mob is draining from the lobby.

And now it’s us.

We stand at the doorway. I feel the pebble in my pocket. I wait until the two before us are halfway down the aisle. I look down at Tabby. She’s staring straight up at me, serious, waiting. “Ready?” I say. She nods sharply. “Ready.” We step into the brighter lights of the auditorium. We’re walking down the aisle…faces are smiling…faces are smiling and Kermit the Frog is singing and the clock on the Brimley tower is now three hours behind and I haven’t seen a tiny flash in months and Tabby wears a Granny apple dress and a Granny apple ribbon in her hair and shoes and socks of the purest white I’ve ever seen
and she’s squeezing my finger like there’s no tomorrow and she’s here and she’s now and so am I and that’s all there is and I’m walking down the aisle with my sister…

…and I’m walking down the aisle with my sister…

…and I’m walking down the aisle with my sister…

…and I’m walking down the aisle with my sister…