All-Season Edie (11 page)

Still, I slowly got better. My temperature came down and I was finally able to explain coherently about the various ancient gods in the mall. I reassured Mom that I knew they weren't really gods (just as the witches had not really been witches), though they had certainly seemed like gods at the time. Mom seemed to understand. Even Dexter listened to me with unusual attention and refrained from making fun of me. When I quietly pointed this out to Mom, after Dex had gone for one of her sessions in the bathroom, Mom told me I had really been pretty sick and had given everyone Quite A Scare. No one ever asked me what I meant about Grandpa being in the underworld, which made me kind of glad. In the end I just signed my name to the card our whole family sent, to go with a collection of old records Dad found in an antique store. They were a kind of music called swing that Dad said Grandpa loved and would help him remember good times. So I'm not the only one who thinks about these things.

By Christmas morning even my voice is back to normal and all I am is tired. So gift giving, this year, is a staid and proper affair. Gifts are unwrapped decorously, one by one, exclaimed over, and the paper refolded for next year before the next gift is handed out. My favorite gift comes from Dex. This in itself is not all that unusual since—whatever her other faults— Dexter gives considerate presents. But this year, when she hands me a plain envelope, quite small, with just a little drawing of holly in one corner, at first I'm disappointed. What can something as small as my hand and as flat as a sheet of paper possibly contain?

It turns out to contain exactly that: a sheet of paper. Specifically, it's a coupon for a free drink at the coffee shop in the mall.

“What's a lat?” I ask.

“Latt
ay
,” Dex says, watching my face to see if I like it. “It's spelled l-a-t-t-e. You pronounce the ‘e' like an ‘a.' It's coffee with milk, like I always get. You said you wanted to try one like mine next time.”

I smile, and Dexter smiles too. Then we go back to ignoring each other because that's less embarrassing.

“I almost forgot,” Mom says later, when she's tidying up the last of the ribbons and cards and wrap. “This came for you while you were sick.”

It's a Christmas card, still in a sealed envelope, with my name and address and a stamp, meaning it's real mail. I don't get much real mail, except for postcards when Grandma and Grandpa go on holiday.

“Who's it from?” Dexter asks.

I look at the return address. “Robert!” I say.

Dex and Mom look blank.

“You remember,” I tell Mom. “In the summer, at the lake. We caught the fish.” Then Mom remembers too, but Dex, of course, doesn't know who we're talking about and makes fun of me for getting a card from a boy. As if Robert was what Dex would think of as a boy. Ridiculous.

The card shows a reindeer trying to change the burnt-out red light bulb in his nose while the other reindeer stand around the sleigh, frowning impatiently and tapping their hooves on their hips.

Dear Edie
, the card says.
Well, it is Christmas I guess so here is a card. I hope you remember me. If you saw me you might not recognize me anymore. My mom makes me go to Weight Watchers now and I lost twenty pounds. I'm not allowed to eat Christmas treats, only turkey and salad. If you could eat a sugar cookie and think of me, I guess I would like that. Maybe some time you could go to the planetarium and come to my house after. If you can't remember who I am, remember the fish? Well, this is certainly the worst Christmas ever. I hope yours is better. Maybe I'll see you again next summer. Your friend, Robert.

“I want a cookie,” I say and add loyally, “Stupid Christmas.”

I fall asleep on the couch then and have a half-dream, half-memory of the time Grandpa took me to the planetarium, just him and me. It was only last year, when he could still drive the car and remember the names of things and teach me about the stars. We sat in the chairs that tipped way back and held hands while the lights went out, and then Grandpa said, “Open your eyes, Albert, this is the best part.” I opened my eyes and saw the stars come on one by one, until thousands of tiny lights prickled against the black velvet of the night sky. A man's deep voice came on over the loudspeaker to explain how the ancients believed that stars were the souls of people who had died and gone to the next world. Grandpa held my hand through the whole show, even after I stopped being afraid.

Dancing with Mean Megan

The phone rings in the middle of the night, and after a few minutes it rings again. Dad, who is dreaming of sitting in a deck chair with a newspaper while Dexter and I shriek and laugh together down by the lake, hears it and wakes. Mom, who is dreaming of the house she grew up in, in St. John's, and the smell of pumpkin pie, hears it and thinks, It's a wrong number, let the answering machine get it. Dexter, who is dreaming a complicated whirling dream with colors and flavors and smells, all pink and purple and fruity, with sparkly clothes and music and dancing, hears it and moans and rolls over and tries to burrow back into her dream. I, who have been dreaming comfortable Edie dreams of dark rainy afternoons at home with books and cats and cheese sandwiches, hear it faintest of all and am asleep again before I even know I've woken.

Only Dad gets out of bed.

At the breakfast table, Dexter sits alone. She's set two places. When I sit at my chair, she coaxes a crumpet from the toaster with a fork and puts it on my plate.

“OH MY GOD,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “You're making my breakfast.”

“I'm in charge,” Dexter says.

Normally I would dispute this kind of claim loudly and lengthily, appealing to Mom, and Dad too if he hadn't already left for work. But there's an eerie quiet to the house this morning, and Dexter has not automatically told me to shut up, which is bizarre. She also looks tired, more tired than her normal just-rolled-outof-bed tired, and her mouth is a bit raisiny, like Mom's gets when she's worried or annoyed.

“Where's Mom?” I ask.

“They had to go to the hospital,” Dexter says. “We have to get ourselves ready for school.”

I look up at the kitchen clock, at the big slice of pie the hands make—quarter to eight—and the second hand sweeping so slowly you have time to think about every single second and the eternity of space in between.

Mom sits at the kitchen table. Her face is white with tiredness, but her voice is still the same. When I got home from school and saw her face, I was afraid everything might somehow have changed.

“Grandpa's stable,” Mom says. “That means he's not getting any worse. Grandma is with him now.”

Mom and I are alone in the kitchen, sitting on the bench in the kitchen nook; my car pool got home before Dexter's. I snuggle right up against Mom and hook my arm through hers.

“How was school?” Mom says, so I tell her about this month's volunteer time: helping the grade twos make Valentines with red construction paper and fat colored markers and scissors and glitter glue.

“You could make a special get-well Valentine for Grandpa,” Mom says. That's what I'm doing when Dexter gets home and Mom goes into her bedroom with her to tell her the news about Grandpa, closing the door behind her because there's no need to distract me from my project, Mom says.

Dexter is crying. Her eyes and nose are red and her shoulders are shaking, but she doesn't make any sound. “Ssh,” Mom says, over and over. We're sitting in the kitchen all together now. Dexter burst out of her bedroom and ran to the bathroom, startling me. She slammed the door behind her and blew her nose and flushed the toilet about a hundred times while Mom stood outside, talking to her in a low voice. When she came out, Mom led her into the kitchen and sat her down on the bench next to me. Mom put milk in a pan on the stove for hot chocolate while Dexter snuffled and shivered and tried to calm down. I feel my own face trying to cry too, even though my brain doesn't want to. Wordlessly I pass my sister my last uncut piece of red construction paper and some other supplies, and after a minute Dexter folds the piece into smaller and smaller squares and starts to chop at it with her scissors. I'm about to complain to Mom that I was just trying to be nice and Dexter is ruining my very last piece of good paper when I realize she's treating her Valentine heart like a snowflake, cutting tiny decorations into the folds. When she opens it out she'll have something very beautiful and lacy and perfect and terribly, terribly fragile.

“Please,” Dexter says. “Please,” I say.

“Help me, Jamie,” Mom says to Dad in the private adult voice that excludes Dex and me even though we're all in the same room.

“It's all right,” Dad says to her in the same voice, and then in his normal voice he says, “Mom doesn't want the two of you to get upset. But I know Grandma and Grandpa would both like to see you very much. Only you have to remember it's only for a very short visit because Grandpa gets tired very quickly. He won't be able to talk to you but he'll know you're there, and that will make him feel much better. But you have to be on your best behavior in the hospital. No fighting with each other or loud voices or bouncing around.”

“I never bounce around!” I say indignantly, because he's looking especially at me for this last part.

“Get your coats then, quickly,” Mom says, and Dexter and I rush to get our coats and shoes while our parents, already dressed to go out, wait by the front door. Dad has the car keys in his hand, and Mom has our homemade Valentines in one of the big mustard-yellow envelopes Dad uses for work.

Grandpa lies in a room that has three other beds. Two of them are empty; the third one has a curtain like a shower curtain drawn all the way around it so we can't see who's inside. Grandpa has a needle attached to a plastic tube taped to his arm, and he wears pale blue hospital pajamas with short sleeves that stick out from his shoulders like awkward little wings. The skin on his face looks like clay someone has pushed all out of place. His mouth won't close, and he looks angry. His eyes follow us, but he doesn't talk. The only noise he makes is when Dad shows him our Valentines and then puts them on the bedside table, where Grandpa can't see them. He makes a moaning noise and jerks his head until Dad puts the cards on his chest, tucked under the arm without the tube, and then he quietens down again.

Grandma thanks us for the lovely cards; she says she knows that's what Grandpa is thinking. Dad tries to persuade her to go down to the cafeteria to get a coffee and a sandwich, but she won't go. In the end, Dad goes down himself and comes back with the coffee in a paper cup and the sandwich in cardboard and cling-wrap and sets them by Grandma's chair. They're still sitting there when visiting hours end and it's time for us to leave.

“Tae kwon do?” Mom asks, her pen poised over the rec center catalog. “Beading?” Dexter and I are picking our spring activities. Or, rather, I'm picking while Dexter sits with us doing her math homework, since Dexter always chooses the same activity: Advanced Ballet.

I shake my head and look at the window. Valentine's Day is over and Easter is still far, far away. Grandpa is still in hospital, but he's too sick for any visitors except for Grandma and Dad, who goes every evening after work and comes home after my bedtime. Rain runs down the windows, making blurred swoops on the glass. Beyond the window the sky is gray and the trees waver like kelp in an aquarium.

“Poetry?” Mom turns a page. “Yoga? Popcorn Crafts and Fun?”

“Dance,” I say.

Mom's and Dexter's heads snap up like they're puppets whose head-strings have been jerked.

“What?” Mom says, which is so unusual she even corrects herself. “Pardon?”

“Dance,” I say.

“You hate dance,” Dexter says.

“You tried once, remember?” Mom says more gently. “With Madame Elenskaya? You didn't like it at all.”

This is true. I tried Beginner Ballet about half a million years ago, when I was five and really wanted a pink tulle skirt like Dexter's. I went through a phase, believe it or not, of wanting to be like Dex in every way. But there was no tutu in Beginner Ballet, only gym clothes, shorts and T-shirts, and bare feet. I thought the barre was a monkey bar, which didn't endear me to Madame Elenskaya. We had a further difference of opinion about exactly how many times a person should be made to do second position before she was good enough to move on to third. So I dropped out after a couple of weeks, and my fascination with all things Dex waned from that moment.

“Dance,” I say.

“Not ballet,” Dexter says urgently, speaking only to Mom now. “Please, Mom, not ballet. She'll embarrass me.”

“What kind of dance?” Mom says.

I don't know.

“Mommy!” Dexter yells. “You're not listening to me!” She's almost in tears.

“You can't choose!” I yell suddenly. “It's my spring activity!” I feel close to tears also. We stare at each other, startled and confused. Tears come quickly these days.