Before My Eyes (20 page)

“Maybe I should go?” I ask.

“Go. Am I holding you here?”

She straightens up. King whimpers at her feet. “I don't need you or anybody, thinking they're going to save me, even if you kind of did save me. I know Izzy appreciates your rescue attempt, and so do I. I do. How about that?”

“Attempt?”

She undoes her ponytail, shaking all of her hair. I lose her face. This girl just isn't for me, so why do I want her at my party? School starts Wednesday, first game of the season is next weekend. I don't have time for her. She pushes her hair from her eyes. I start pacing and talking. “Hey, I've got to admit, you're not my type. I mean, you're not like the other girls I usually like. Not like the girls I know, I mean. Not like the ones on the beach, or in my high school. You're not pretty. I've got to admit, in your own way, you are but—”

She flinches. Her shoulders straighten. The moonlight flickers against her face.

I search the sky, wishing a star would just fall on me and end my misery. The Big Dipper is lost behind the clouds.

“Anything else you want to add, Max?”

“You're different is what I mean.”

“Some guys like ‘different.'”

I look up at her at the top of the stairs. Claire is something other than pretty. I need to say this to her but somehow I've said too much already. She steps down to the grass with me.

“Why did you invite me to your party?” she asks.

More questions. King flops down at her bare feet.

“Let me get this straight, you invite me to your party, but I'm not your type? In fact, I'm not pretty, isn't that what you just said?”

“I didn't mean to say that.”

“But you did, didn't you?”

“You can't just answer a question. You answer a question with a question a lot.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do.”

Wings beat through the trees. A flock of sparrows appears and aims for the moon. “I don't think I can come anyway, how about that?”

“Don't come then,” I respond. “Don't do me any favors.”

“That's interesting. I owe you, don't I? A thank-you?” She looks, not like she wants me to admire or praise her, but to join her in something, something that she finds odd or something that even in the calm eye of a storm will tell us more about ourselves. A smile plays on her lips. Maybe she just finds me diving into the ocean after her delusional. I'm crazy and it's funny to her. Or maybe she thinks I'm desperate. Well, I'm not. I don't need her at my party. Still, what do I need to do to prove to her that I'm—that I am what? Not a guy who tells girls that they aren't pretty?

“How about this: if my father comes home, maybe I'll go. Sound okay to you?” I don't know why she is smiling at me—looking warm, wet-lipped, eager for my response when I don't have one.

After a while of just standing there, I ask, “Where is he? Your father?”

The look and smile drop away.

“What about your mom?”

She shrugs into herself.

I continue with a sudden earnestness and urgency, which is not me at all. I don't do “earnest,” but I try. “I can actually make myself very presentable. And I'm a state senator's son.”

“They aren't home, and if they were, they wouldn't care that you are a state senator's son. How about that?” She doesn't want an answer from me and it's as if she's challenging me to ask her another question. I want to keep her outside so I'm hurting my brain for a retort or at least a question. But I don't get her. I don't understand her at all. I don't even know why I want to keep her outside and maybe that's what I should ask her. Do other guys need to be as careful with you as I am? Before I can ask anything she is through the grass and back at her front door. She turns to enter her home.

I whistle for King. I still have his leash in my hand, but I want him at my side. He isn't pleased to be leaving. I don't know why I came. I don't plan on returning.

Claire snaps on a bright light inside the house. Moths flitter around her. She raises her hand in a wave. I realize, after a second or two of gazing at her, not knowing what I want to do next, that she is waiting, with that look of hers, for me to signal back. So I raise my hand—my chest pounds as hard as it did when we were in the ocean together—and I return her gesture. She slips into the light. The click of the lock is sure and final. Yet for some reason, I'm smiling in the dark.

I run King home. I let him race at top speed, and he is happy.

Claire

Sunday, 10:00
A.M
.

Blink my eyes. Taste the morning stale in my mouth. Rubbing my arms doesn't help.
Don't cry. Don't cry. You've done enough crying since your mother's stroke.
I don't know why I'm crying again. A dream. I had another dream. I was a small bird sailing over the sea. Not a sea gull, but a simple sparrow. Sea spray glistened on my wings. I could follow the sun and know which way I should go. I could fly anywhere. I want to go back into that dream.

I shiver. I yank off the comforter. Time to get dressed. Time for Izzy to get up. Time for my father—if he's home, but he must be home by now—I can talk with him about what we need to do once school starts. I resist the urge to shout out for him. I don't want to scare Izzy if he's not home. If he's not home, I'll go to the rehab center with Izzy and—I'll do what? What if he's not there? What will I say to my mother? What I need is a shower. I hurry into the bathroom and turn the water on as hot as it will go, plunge in. Pull my fingers through the morning knots. Douse them with conditioner. Drop my head back into the steaming water. I don't want to think of Izzy, or my father, or anything for five minutes, not even Max and his invitation. Of course, I can't go. I have responsibilities.

My fingertips dig into my scalp. The scalding water churns my skin red and raw. Cut the water off. Step out of the shower. Izzy calls me, pounding through the house. My skin prickles.

“Coming,” I whisper to the locked bathroom door.

“Claire!”

“I'm coming.”

The mirror is fogged over.

The other voice, Max's voice, filters in.
You're not pretty
.

I want to scream.

But he wants you to come to his party. Or was he just asking you because he felt sorry for you?
You're not pretty,
isn't that what he said?

“Claire!”

You're not pretty.

“Claire!”

You're not
—

I face the mirror. Wet hair hangs down around my waist. My lips are my mother's lips. My eyes are her eyes. I've spent months not looking at myself in the mirror, not wanting to see her, or the her from before.

“Claire!” Izzy shouts even louder, jumping up and down. “You've got to come.”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, I am dressed in semi-clean shorts and a tank top, reaffirming to myself that I am not going to Max's party tonight, no way, absolutely not. Why am I smelling pancakes cooking? I guess my father
is
home. He's making pancakes like he used to on Sundays before the stroke, probably to make up for practically disappearing on us. The buttery smell smokes down the hallway. I'm annoyed and relieved. I'm going to tell him that he's been acting in a way that is unacceptable. You can't just go off and abandon your seventeen-year-old with your six-year-old, no matter how responsible both are—you can't just leave them. Things could happen. I laugh at myself—nothing happened—nothing ever happens to me. I pivot away from the mirror. I can't bear to look at myself.

Of course, Izzy is giving a speech to our father about what
did
happen. All the way in my bedroom, I can hear her racing on about going-to-the-beach-and-seeing-Max-and-swimming-in-the-waves-and-Claire-swimming—and there were other big kids there too—what were there names again? One was Barkley—like the doggie on
Sesame Street
— And guess what? Do you know I'm starting first grade next week? Do you know—? Izzy broke her promise to me. She's telling him everything. I can't believe this. I can't trust her with anything.

Pancakes pop and sizzle. Izzy laughs. My father coughs, burly, nervous. I want to go back to sleep, back to dreams, dreams of flying again. A woman laughs, sputters. My stomach hurts, my head, too. I have to lie down. I can't possibly eat. I do want to know where my father's been, but then again, I don't care. He's back. I don't have to take care of Izzy every minute of the day.

I should be thinking about school starting on Wednesday, senior year, or my poetry, or even Max—no, I mean Brent. I should be thinking about Brent. He went to North Lakeshore, didn't he say that? Maybe he knows Max. But he's a few years older, so I'm sure he doesn't.
You're not pretty.
I shake Max's voice out of my head. I'd rather think about Brent. I don't need a stupid kid like Max in my life. I wipe my palms down my shorts. Should have put on a clean pair. I feel like I'm dredging the bottom of the sea. I must need more sleep, even though I slept twelve or thirteen hours. What time is it? The clock's in the kitchen. If I want to know what time it is I have to go in there.

“Who wants pancakes?” shouts my father, in a voice I haven't heard in a long time, happy, loud, boastful—it's his “I've done something good” voice.

“Me. Me. Me,” shrieks Izzy.

“Do you want to go see if Claire wants one?” he asks.

“I'll go,” says the voice, slowly, the words forced out.

“Don't push yourself,” says my father.

“Let,” says the voice. “Me.”

I freeze. Pancakes are flipped onto plates. More batter is poured—more pops, sizzle. The house is too humid. Smoke from the griddle floats down the hallway. I cough. I'm choking. Everything is fuzzy. I'm underwater and can't breathe.

“This is the best morning of my life,” says Izzy.

“Look, look at this,” says the voice, pausing with each word. “This is what I missed.”

I smell coffee. My stomach flips. I go cold. Palms sweat. I feel sick. Airless. I am at the very bottom of the sea.

Smells trigger memories, images, sounds, of her calling your name and the coffee vapors on your hands. Maybe this morning, your father wanted a cup of coffee. I should go back to bed, pull the covers over my head. If he's home, he can watch Izzy.

“Claire!” screams Izzy. “Claire! Guess what?”

“Quiet, Izzy,” he says. “And you, you sit here.”

My father clears his throat. “Claire?”

I round the corner, hugging the wall. Birds shrill to one another with urgency. Feels like the heat is never going to break, or are the birds warning us that it will break soon, today?

The kitchen is almost the same. The stove and the countertop next to it are a jumble of pancake mix, eggshells, and open milk cartons. The sink is piled high with bowls and dishes. The floor has white powder on it. At the center is the square kitchen table crowded with plates and a plastic jug of real maple syrup and a melting block of butter. Three of the four seats are taken. The fourth is piled high with junk mail and magazines and catalogs. We haven't needed four seats in three months. There's nowhere for me to sit. I don't want to sit anyway. I don't want to move. And she has trouble rising. Her left side sags. She stands with the help of a cane. Her hair is at her nape, streaked with gray. An effort has been made to brush it. But the hair does what it wants, curling and waving. Her hairbrush is on the windowsill next to her chair, next to what I've always thought of as her window.

I yearn to brush my own hair with it. I gather my hair back from my face as if I am revealing something more, but I'm not, only the fact that I have my long hair, and she does not. She sways with the cane.

She says to me in a wavering voice, almost her old voice, “My girl.”

My father watches her struggle to speak. He is wearing the same wrinkled polo shirt he had on the last time I saw him. He must have slept in it. “Isn't this great, Claire?” he says, his eyes on her. “The hospital insisted it wasn't medically necessary for her to be in rehab any longer, especially after the insurance ran out, especially when I couldn't come up with a payment for another month.”

“You were good,” my mother says to him, pausing between each word as if having to jumpstart the syllables. “I will take care. Of us.” She grips the cane until I can see the muscles in her arm. Her skin is white, translucent, the veins reddish-purple. I fear she will fall, but I don't go to her. I can't. I am drowning in the sunlight.

And I think: she will have another stroke. It will happen, this time in front of my father, too. Somehow, she leans on the cane, catches herself, and eases back into a kitchen chair with the carefulness of a very old person or, I guess, someone who had a stroke. My father follows her every move as if ready to leap and catch her.

“Pancakes are burning,” I say, gulping for air.

He tumbles over to the stove and inches down the flame.

“Why didn't you let me know?” I say to him.

“Know what?” he says, trying to flip the burned pancakes, scraping the griddle, sending pieces flying across the stove. Crumbs hit the floor. It is going to be a mess to clean up, for me to clean.

“That she was coming home?” I say, my voice rising in anger. I feel like I'm just keeping my head above the waterline. “Why didn't you tell me? I would have helped. I would made sure everything was in order. The laundry—I didn't get to all the laundry!”

“The house is,” says my mother, “spotless.”

“I wasn't sure, Claire,” says my father, sweating, cutting in between my mother and me. “I was scrambling with the rehab center. I stayed there two nights to make sure I could help take care of your mother. They gave me on-the-job training. But she's here, and I don't care if this is the best thing or not, I'm glad she's home. I'm glad. Aren't you?” He scrapes the pancakes into the overflowing garbage.