All This Heavenly Glory (15 page)

and, if relative eventually dies,

Details of freaky last moments such as:

just happening to be in town when it happens

how it happened right after a holiday or your birthday and
how it seems like they “waited” for you to get there

dog appearing to look sad when you come back without
deceased relative/friend

sense of god and/or deceased relative/friend being present
such as curtains suddenly blowing even though the window’s closed, hearing something come out of your own mouth that deceased
relative/friend might say

And then some more about:

the duration and quality of the crying and possibly creating a
little museum/shrine in your house to them and then scaling back a little later when it seems a little morbid and then a lot
of missing the person all the time and/or forever.

The character details will always be different, but the rest has only so many variables and in this case begins with Charlotte
wondering why this is happening to her, with Charlotte realizing kind of late in the game that the cancer part of the story
is not in fact happening to her, with Charlotte remembering kind of a lot of good things about her mom (see gratitude list
above) and that the reason she hadn’t encouraged her to be a singer or a filmmaker or whatever she wanted to be was because
she had struggled so much herself, and because her success didn’t fix her like she thought it would, and because she wanted
something easier for Charlotte. Which ends with Charlotte realizing her mom did the best she could with the information available
to her at the time (more or less one copy each of Dr. Spock and
I’m OK—You’re OK
) and making efforts to appreciate her mom while she’s still around. Which gets back to Todd insofar as he somehow is able
to convince her that she doesn’t have to have a job, or an apartment, or a friend even, anything that seems like a reason
that most people might move somewhere, that she should trust her feeling and just go, even though he’d really rather see her
move to someplace that doesn’t have electricity. At this moment Charlotte wishes more than anything that she could just float
right out of Todd’s bitter little universe into someplace where things don’t hurt with such a spectacular constancy, and after
her mom is pronounced cancer-free (another story entirely because although there are a few decent years where this seems true,
it will later be clear that the cancer was not free but in captivity at an unknown location), Charlotte decides to just go.
The bonus here is that her mom is pretty cool about it now, because she knows that detours out of town, lengthy cancer stories,
lengthy insane boyfriend stories, and crazy road trips sometimes add up to something, even if it’s as simple as knowing when
to come home and in Charlotte’s case realizing that she could actually live someplace where she had to drive, someplace that
might be home, someplace like let’s just say Chicago, which has been haunting her like an old boyfriend ever since she left.

T
HE GIRLS MEET in seventh-grade French. Technically, they’ve already met, the year before when they were both new, but they were in different
homerooms and Jenna was absent a lot, prompting much gossip and speculation about mono. So it might be more accurate to say
that the girls are thrown together in seventh-grade French, where Charlotte Anne is doing marginally better than Jenna (the
fact is, it’s the beginning of the year and she’s coasting on a stellar accent), and Madame Goldstein suggests they study
together after school.

Jenna Ritter doesn’t know what to think about C.A. Byers and is mostly concerned that this need for academic help will only
serve to elongate the shadow cast by her older brother, Eric, destined to discover a miracle cure for like, everything.

Charlotte Anne thinks this is a really, really bad idea.

Charlotte Anne is not a big fan of Jenna Ritter.

Charlotte Anne thinks Jenna Ritter doesn’t
have it together.

Charlotte Anne Byers, age twelve, has a big thing about
having it together.
(Charlotte Anne’s mother does a lot of talking about people having it together, and how great it is that her daughter has
it together since she says
please
and
thank you
and doesn’t do drugs, which is all well and good, except for that a) there’s plenty of time and b) this doesn’t account for
all the other ways one might not have it together, especially when they sort of appear to have it together on the outside
but on the inside seriously don’t, or are perhaps currently establishing the foundations for how they will not have it together
in the future.) Lots of kids in their grade don’t have it together at all, mostly in the form of them smoking pot in Central
Park after school (a social group identified as “parkies”) and having sex with whoever, which Charlotte Anne thinks is both
disgusting and indicative of severe mental troubles. Charlotte Anne’s assessment of Jenna’s severe mental troubles is based
not on drug use but on her mysterious sixth-grade absence (which C.A. does not attribute to mono at all but speculates that
Jenna
just didn’t feel like it,
which gets off onto another tangent because sixth was Charlotte Anne’s first year in private school, and she’d come into
the school with some very fixed ideas about snobbery, namely that rich kids, which she was not, kind of get to do what they
want, which includes not going to school if they just don’t feel like it, which in Jenna’s case was not in fact what was going
on, even though Charlotte Anne was sort of on the right track at least insofar as Jenna was probably mildly depressed). This
plus Jenna’s habit of wearing the same outfit (a long-sleeve maroon Lacoste shirt and a knitted cap) pretty much every day
causes Charlotte Anne to diagnose Jenna with an advanced type of hang-up that she doesn’t think she wants to know more about.
An argument could be made that Jenna is still at the fashion advantage, as Charlotte Anne, who wears different clothes every
day, is not wearing anything especially cool, which equals any of the following:

a) anything as nondescript as Jenna’s outfit (more passable than cool, since her Lacoste shirt is regarded as sort of a classic,
and therefore neutral, although Charlotte Anne is not the only one who notices that Jenna repeats)

b) a tight, ideally pale blue t-shirt with rhinestones on it that spell out something like
HOLLYWOOD
or
FOXY

c) a t-shirt (any color) bearing the Pandemonium Boutique logo of a giant Charlie Chaplin head

d) a worn-in college t-shirt, any color, preferably from an Ivy League

e) kneesocks, with everything

and

f) Cork-Ease (pron.
corkies
) “Buffalo” sandals, in tan (thick suede cork-soled wedgies with straps that crisscross in the front).

Charlotte Anne Byers does not have any of these things. In Charlotte Anne’s heavy rotation right now are:

a) a pair of overalls with a bunch of tiny ceramic pins on the front (a duck, a heart, a paintbrush, and a Coke bottle) and
a cluster of diaper pins hanging from the hammer loop (mysteriously, a trend)

b) a longish gingham smock top with patch-front pockets that her mother made

c) a pair of newfangled blue-and-tan saddle shoes with “marshmallow” soles (these go with everything)

d) anklets, also with everything

and

e) in cold weather, a jacket Jenna likes to call Charlotte Anne’s “Big China Coat,” a quilted parka with a Chinese pattern
and bamboo buttons that Charlotte Anne thinks is the greatest thing ever, if admittedly on the puffy side.

Choice
a
doesn’t usually bring her too much grief. Choice
b
regularly results in her being teased for looking like she’s wearing a maternity outfit. Choice
c
she seems to sort of get away with, because saddle shoes are actually in style (fifties nostalgia, due to
American Graffiti and Happy Days,
is in full force), but part of the problem with regard to the saddle shoes, and a general problem Charlotte Anne suffers
from fashion-wise (besides essentially being at the mercy of her mother, who will
certainly not
buy her daughter something
just because the other kids are wearing it
), is that she wants both to fit in and also to have her own style, and so she will occasionally, and in the event that her
mother agrees, purchase the cool item, but in a different color, which is nearly always a mistake, socially, not to mention
that she’s not really a big fan of sandals anyway, and so with regard to the purchase of the navy suede Cork-Ease, although
there will be some grief at home about the sandals after they are later found under a pile of dust bunnies at the back of
Charlotte Anne’s closet, this ends up being one less front on which she’s abused at school, since the sandals give her terrible
blisters on her heels. Kneesocks have never been an option. Charlotte Anne has thick calves. Not a good look with the thick
calves, since they only come three-quarters of the way up and generally don’t stay up anyway. Which is unfortunate, because
anklets, it is widely known, are for babies. (Which of course creates some irony as far as the whole diaper-pin thing is concerned.)

So it should be clear that Charlotte Anne and Jenna are not exactly in “the group” (“the group” being so cool that a single
article suffices as modification where some less cool group might apply an adjective). It’s a small school, and an arty one,
so things could be worse, and there is a tier below them that is steadfastly uncool, comprised of the super-bright kids and
the thoroughly misfit kids. But they’re at a critical juncture here. Charlotte Anne’s friends from sixth grade got into partying
over the summer, which poses a major problem for her having-it-together lifestyle. Jenna used to have one friend from her
building but no other close friends from sixth grade, except maybe her sixth-grade teacher, who openly proclaimed her the
prettiest girl in the grade, which Charlotte Anne finds both creepy and a moral outrage (Charlotte Anne loves to talk about
morals, which she feels there is a severe lack of), but which she also bitterly and secretly resents since it’s not her. Both
girls, in spite of their present state of moderate uncoolness, are actually very pretty—Charlotte Anne, with an all-American
blue eyes/light hair/freckles combo, and Jenna, a more exotic, dark-hair/dark-skinned beauty with a killer smile—but have
such a lack of style that for the time being it goes unrecognized. Charlotte Anne, it might be useful to know, is mystified
by the fact that she is not considered pretty at school, because she’s been walking around since forever thinking she was
pretty much Miss Thing; she was a beautiful child and almost did some modeling (which idea went astray, as Charlotte Anne
was a somewhat sullen little girl and therefore lacked the requisite perkiness needed to sell anything), and no doubt because
of her mother’s daily reminders (fueled by her not having gotten any such reminders when she was a kid) still feels confident
about her looks, to the point where she thinks that any kids unable to recognize this are just wrong. Jenna, on the other
hand, is subject to day-to-day changes insofar as her confidence is concerned, which by and large is dependent on her not
feeling fat, or on some rare occasion, one of the popular girls saying she’s cute when she takes off her hat. Most of seventh
grade is a wash for Jenna feeling very good about her looks due to her having cut her hair very short in an effort to look
like her mother. Most of the seventh-grade girls have not yet advanced their hairstyle beyond long and parted in the middle
(the coolest), long and parted on the side (acceptable), or the occasional and somewhat bold “China Chop,” a bangs-and-chin-length
style that involves a newly popular appliance, the blow-dryer, but which isn’t terribly flattering even on the cutest girls
and takes more time than is currently cool. Charlotte Anne has actually gotten her very long, side-parted (Mom’s insistence)
hair cut just before school started (at Vidal Sassoon, for a splurge) up to her shoulders, which is acceptable, if a bit triangular,
which will be a lifelong problem as Charlotte Anne has naturally thick hair, which, when shorter, leans to the triangular
shape.