At Risk (3 page)

There’s a seance today, which Polly is missing, but it’s worth it. She has been photographing seances—what Laurel Smith calls readings—since June, and so far not one spirit has appeared on film. Polly has tried slower shutter speeds and faster film, she has switched from color to black-and-whitc. Some of the photographs, though ghost free, are remarkable. In several Laurel Smith, who is a few years younger than Polly, is completely unrecognizable. There’s a photograph in which she looks like an old, dark woman and another in which she doesn’t appear to be more than a child, with her heavy, pale hair fanned out behind her as though dripping with water. The one photograph Polly had found herself going back to again and again was taken during a reading in which Laurel had contacted a client’s husband who was killed in a car crash. Without a doubt, in that photograph, there is a scar along Laurel Smith’s forehead.

“Either she’s a great actress,” Polly once told Betsy Stafford, “or something real is going on here.”

Betsy, who is much more of a cynic than Polly, had smiled and said, “You’ll have to wait and read the book to find out the answer.” Even after she’d seen some of the photographs, Betsy had refused to admit that Laurel might be anything but a charlatan. “Let’s just accept Laurel for what she is,” Betsy insisted. “A nut.”

Polly will always be grateful to Betsy because Betsy is the one who pulled Polly out of her indecision about whether or not to become a professional, an act for which there will never be enough thanks. Their first collaboration—an activity book for preschoolers—was begun after the two women met through their sons, both in the same nursery school. Charlie and Sevrin have remained best friends, yet the relationship between their mothers remains professional by choice, even though Polly knows, via Charlie, all sorts of odd and intimate details about Betsy’s life she might otherwise not know: That she allows the sugary breakfast cereals Polly frowns on. That Betsy’s husband, Frank, an attorney who commutes into Boston, often does not get home until past nine and when he and Betsy fight they don’t bother to close the bedroom door. They curse when they fight, loudly. Charlie’s told her so.

Polly admits to being the passive partner. Betsy is the one who writes the proposals, then goes out and gets the book contracts, and afterward hires Polly. So perhaps it is not a partnership at all, except that it feels like one. Particularly since their last book, an in-depth study of coping with death, is a choice Polly herself would have never made. She almost turned down the project, but the fee was too seductive, enough to pay for gymnastics camp and orthodontists and hamster cages for years to come. After photographing her first terminal patient, Polly spent half an hour throwing up by the side of the road. It never got easier, whether the sessions were in a hospital, a hospice, or the subject’s home. Only two of the people she photographed have not yet died, an elderly woman with cancer and a young man in Boston with an inoperable tumor at the base of his skull. Both write to Polly occasionally, and she always writes back, but she never looks at the finished book, though it is the project that allowed her to say no, now and forever, to photographing birthday parties and weddings.

The book about Laurel Smith was supposed to cheer them up. A lighter book, it was to be a mild debunking. It has not turned out that way. Laurel looks more like a librarian than a medium and, seances aside, her behavior is extremely sensible. She has long blond hair like Amanda’s, and deep-set gray eyes. She never bothers with makeup, and Polly has never seen her wear any jewelry other than two rings, one a small pearl set in gold, the other a thin silver band. Though her clients seem willing to pay any amount necessary to reach the spirits they long to contact, Laurel never changes her fee. No matter how rich her client, she always charges two hundred dollars for a reading. Betsy, who unbeknownst to Laurel has been researching her background and discovered a small trust fund left to Laurel by her parents, doesn’t give Laurel any credit for generosity. But Polly is not so quick to judge her. There have been times, inside Laurel’s cottage, when Polly has found herself believing in an afterlife. She tells herself it is the powerful conviction of Laurel’s clients, all so desperately convinced whoever they have loved and lost can be reached, that affects her. Or it is the place itself, the movement of reeds and cattails in the marsh, the way the light falls and is caught inside the pearl Laurel wears on her finger.

By the time Polly drives into the parking lot at the elementary school, the heat has begun to drift up from the asphalt in snaky waves. The glass windows along the gym look smoky and dark, making the place seem empty, but it’s just an illusion. The windows have been treated to keep out the sun; on the other side of the glass, the gym is already filling up with parents. Polly knows she can’t stop Amanda from becoming a teenager, but she’s thankful that the combined high school and junior high is on the other side of town, so that Amanda will be protected from mixing with high school students for another year.

Amanda gets out of the car, carrying her pink nylon gym bag like a professional, slinging it over her arm, hardly noticing its weight. Strands of her hair have slipped out of the elastic band that holds her ponytail. This is the last meet of the summer, and Amanda is excited about her best three events: floor exercise, the balance beam, and vaulting. In her bag she has her cassette ready, Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like the Wolf,” Amanda is sweating too much; the heat is bothering her, or maybe she’s more nervous than she’d thought. When she woke up this morning her sheets were drenched with sweat. She wants to win this meet. She doesn’t mention the Olympics anymore because people like her parents get sappy, patronizing looks on their faces when she does. She knows hundreds of other girls dream of going to Texas and having Bela Karolyi as their coach, but Amanda is actually saving her money. All she wants is one audition. If he tells her she’s not good enough, she’ll have to accept it.

()f course the truth is, she can’t imagine him telling her that.

“Knock them dead,” Polly tells her when they reach the door to the school. She hugs Amanda tightly, and when Amanda runs off to the locker room, Polly and Charlie head over to the gym. Charlie continues to read as he walks up the bleachers; it drives Polly crazy that he doesn’t watch where he’s going, but she bites her tongue. She’s learned to save her reprimands, to dole them out carefully, in the hopes that they might actually count for something.

When they find a place in the bleachers, Charlie takes off his backpack and sits down, then unzips the backpack and gets out another dinosaur book. He is a
Tyrannosaurus rex
devotee. He can tell you how long a tyrannosaurus’s teeth measured and exactly where paleontologists have gathered his remains. Charlie is a lot like his father was at that age. Ivan always says that the sure sign of a budding scientist is that he carries books everywhere he goes so he won’t have to be bored by people.

“Polly, I’m hearing strange things about you.”

It is Evelyn Crowley’s mother, Fran. The Crowleys live across the street from the Farrells, and Evelyn is one of Cheshire’s top competitors, especially in the uneven parallel bars, around which she throws her small body with a vengeance. Fran sits down next to Polly. “The occult?” Fran says.

Outside, the temperature hovers around ninety, but here in the gym it’s at least five degrees hotter, and the competition hasn’t even started. Polly hopes Fran will think her face is flushed with heat, not embarrassment.

“If you mean I’m photographing Laurel Smith, you’re right,” Polly says, more coolly than she means to. “It’s pretty darned occult,” she adds with a laugh.

“I wish I had had the sort of dedication these girls have when I was young.” Fran says as the locker-room doors are swung open.

“Maybe they’re just stupid,” Charlie says without looking up from his book.

Polly and Fran have been friends for years—which is probably why Amanda and Evelyn can’t stand each other—but Polly doesn’t mind that Charlie has insulted her, she isn’t even bothered by the fact that Charlie is clearly more interested in extinct reptiles than in his sister’s success. The girls have begun to file in from the locker room, and Polly can’t help it, she’s nervous. There are fifteen gymnasts from Amanda’s program, another fifteen from a school in Gloucester. In their leotards, the girls seem awkward and uncomfortable as the onlookers cheer. Amanda is easy to spot because she is the blondest and, at five feet two, one of the tallest. Some of the girls smile when they spy a parent in the audience, but Amanda, always conscious of her braces, keeps her mouth firmly closed. Polly knows Amanda hopes she won’t grow any more; the smaller the gymnast is, the better her chances of staying in the sport. Amanda is second in line to vault the horse and she does so easily, with real power and grace. Polly claps her hands so hard they hurt.

“Don’t embarrass her, Mom,” Charlie tells her.

Amanda is less sure of herself on the uneven parallel bars, but certainly she’s better than most. One poor girl falls at the very start of her routine, and she falls hard, turning one of her ankles so badly she can’t continue. Even Charlie looks up when she lurches out of the gym in tears. Polly is thankful that it’s somebody else’s daughter who’s fallen and not hers, and then is disturbed by how much she feels like a stage mother. She realizes that her fists are clenched. A square of sunlight from the highest window in the gym settles on the polished wooden floor. Polly unclenches her fists when Amanda finishes her routine on the balance beam. She has gotten the highest score so far, but afterward Amanda sits down near a pile of mats and the coach kneels down beside her. Polly worries that something is wrong, but soon Amanda gets up and goes over to her team, where she waits for her last event, her best: floor exercise.

“Our girls are terrific,” Fran says to Polly. And Polly agrees. If she were the judge she’d be hard-pressed to decide between the two. Perhaps that’s why it’s possible for her and Fran to sit together at meets. All along the bleachers other mothers, and a few fathers, are intent on watching only their own daughters.

Charlie’s knees are pulled up to form a table and his book lies open upon them. His hair, cut short, is damp with sweat. Polly thinks she recognizes a drawing of a hadrosaurus. She knows most of the dinosaurs by now, knows which were fierce carnivores and which ate only marsh plants. She would like to put her arm around Charlie, but, knowing he would be mortified, instead rests her hand against his knee. Charlie looks up at her, misreading her cue, ready to leave. Then they both hear the first beats of “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Charlie makes a face.

“Can’t you put that book away?” Polly whispers.

“No,” Charlie says, “I can’t.”

He has read this book dozens of times and is no less interested than he was the first time through. Sometimes his lips move when he reads, and Polly knows he is memorizing facts. When she looks at him, Polly often gets a vision of him as a toddler, solemnly counting stones or beads, content to watch a spider build her web, his nature already so set that his first word, spoken at a pond, was not “mama” or “dada” but “quack.”

Amanda begins her routine with a roundoff, two hack hand springs, and a backflip. Polly, who swims, but is otherwise not athletic, feels that spooky, cold sensation along the back of her neck. Amanda’s feet barely touch the mat. She does a forward roll, then a handstand and full pirouette. There is some scattered applause. The girls on the other team are watching her carefully; it’s a terrific performance and everyone knows it. Polly’s eyes feel hot. When Amanda is through she bows, beautifully. Polly doesn’t give a damn whom she’ll embarrass, she gets to her feet and applauds.

“Not bad,” Charlie admits grudgingly when Polly sits back down,

Polly grins and gives him a shove. When Amanda is announced as the highest scorer, Polly stands again and applauds. Other parents are standing up on the bleachers below her and Polly has to strain to see Amanda, who’s so composed you’d never guess she had won. Amanda bows, then quickly leaves the floor, as though now that the scoring is over, she has no interest in the gym.

“She deserved to win,” Evelyn’s mother tells Polly.

“They were all great,” Polly says, with more generosity than she feels.

Polly aims Charlie toward the door and tells him she’ll meet him out by the car. She greets several parents she knows on the floor, then stops to shake the coach’s hand.

“I can tell you’ve been working them hard, Jack,” Polly says.

“You should be proud of her,” Jack Eagan tells her.

“I am,” Polly says, delighted that at last there is someone with whom she doesn’t have to play down her excitement.

“She picked herself right up after that bad start,” the coach says.

Polly, who didn’t notice a bad start, smiles and heads for the lockers. Tonight they will take Amanda out to dinner to celebrate, maybe to Dexter’s, which has great fried clams and fries. Polly will sneak a call to Ivan so he can stop on the way home and buy flowers; after all her hard work, Amanda deserves to be treated like a champion.

The locker room smells musty and lockers are clanging. Here the gymnasts look more like the little girls they are. One, when she sees Polly, quickly covers her bare, undeveloped chest. Polly walks along the aisles, looking for Amanda. Instead, she sees Evelyn Crowley.

“You had some great routines,” she tells Evelyn.

Evelyn smiles, but Polly can see her disappointment.

“I didn’t practice enough,” Evelyn says.

“Have you seen Amanda?” Polly asks.

Evelyn shrugs. Amanda is probably the last person she wants to see right now.

“Maybe she’s in the showers,” Evelyn says.

Polly walks toward the rear of the locker room. She sees Amanda’s unzipped gym bag hanging in an open locker. Inside there are barrettes and a hairbrush and a necklace made out of tiny plastic beads that look like seed pearls, which Amanda sometimes wears before a meet for good luck.