Nest (20 page)

“C’mon, Chirp. Come help me with dinner,” Dad says. “Let’s give Mom and Rachel a minute alone together.”

The kitchen is summery warm because Dad’s been heating up the stuffed clams from Flanagan’s Market, which are the best thing in the world, because you eat the hot, buttery clam stuffing right out of the clamshells with your fork.

“Whew! It’s a scorcher,” I say, fanning myself with my hand, and Dad laughs like I’m the funniest quahog on the Cape. While he makes a salad, I finally get to set the table with four of everything. I put the
last glass on the table, and then I yell, “Mom, time for dinner!” much louder than I need to. The words feel round and full and perfect in my mouth.

Joey needs a pencil. I’m holding one out to him, but he’s ignoring me.

“Hey, guys, a pencil? C’mon, please?”

He’s talking quietly so Miss Gallagher won’t hear him and give him a lecture about the importance of coming to school prepared with all of your supplies, because what grown-up would go to work without his briefcase or tape measure or what-have-you?

“Joey, here!” I wave the pencil right in front of his face. He has a purple bruise the size of a quarter below his eye. He turns away from me and then twists around in his seat to catch a pencil from Tommy, who tosses it from the very last row.

“Thanks, Tommy, my man,” Joey says.

My face is burning hot, and I want to write Joey a note and explain what happened yesterday, but Miss Gallagher is walking through the rows of seats, handing out lined paper for our spelling test.

“Eyes on your own paper. I’m ready to begin,” Miss Gallagher says, and suddenly everyone has ants in their pants and you can hear the rustle of clothes and the thump of books and the squeak of chairs
being shifted around in. The test is as easy as always, with words that I could spell in first grade, like
blanket
and
brook
.

Joey does fine for a while, but when we get to
jewel
, he hunches over his paper and sighs really loud. Then his ears turn red. Then he starts erasing so hard that bits of eraser fluff drift to the floor like pink snow and I bet he’s going to erase right through the paper. I stare at him until he looks up.

“Cowabunga,” I whisper. He doesn’t whisper back
Bowacunga
. He just glares at me like he wishes I would melt away like the wicked witch in
The Wizard of Oz
.

At lunch I wait until he’s alone by the trash can in the multipurpose room, which is where we’re
still
eating, because the grown-ups think it’s too cold to eat outside, even though all the snow is melted and you can’t see your breath except first thing in the morning.

“Hey,” I say.

“Eww,” he says, looking around. “What’s that smell? And I’m not talking about the garbage.” Then he walks away really fast, like he’s scared the stink will kill him.

“Why won’t you let me just tell you what happened?” I yell after him.

“Did someone say something?” he yells back. “Nope. I guess not,” and then he sits back down at his table and laughs his head off with Sean.

Even though Joey’s put a cold rock in my chest,
it’s not the worst afternoon, because (a) I get 100 percent on the spelling test, which Miss Gallagher hands back after lunch, and (b) I can pick any living creature I want for my science report, and in addition to a brief written description, Miss Gallagher expects us to use our creative talents and show her how we can reach for the sky, so I think I might choose the red-throated loon and choreograph a dance that shows how they leap into flight from land or water, which is a unique characteristic.

The bad news is that on the bus ride home, Joey yells, “Whoever thinks people who don’t celebrate Christmas are big fat Scrooges, raise your hand,” and almost everyone does, except Dawn, who looks confused.

“Why’s Joey talking about Christmas when it’s not that long after Valentine’s Day?” she whispers to me, and I want to tell her that he’s just trying to be mean to me, since he knows I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas, but there’s way too much to explain. The good news is that I’m on my way home, and home is a whole new barrel of fish now that Mom’s there and waiting for me.

Two Oreos and a glass of milk at my place at the kitchen table, just like the olden days, but where’s Mom? I want her to be sitting by the window with the sun on her cheek. I want her to say
Tell me about
your day, honey
, and I’ll list all the mean things that Joey did, and she’ll cluck her tongue and say something funny like
Let’s put peanut butter on his head and see what the squirrels do
. I gulp down the milk, grab the cookies, and follow the thumping noise upstairs. The attic steps are pulled down in the middle of the hallway.

“Mom?” I call up into the rectangle hole in the hallway ceiling.

“Come on up, honey,” Mom calls down.

The attic smells great, like old record jackets. I climb the stairs carefully. I don’t know how Mom managed it with her draggy leg and tired body. She’s kneeling in front of the black steamer trunk. I want to hug her, but she isn’t standing up. I want to look at her face to make sure it still looks normal, but her back is to me, and there’s no room to walk in front of her because of all of our stuff that’s piled up.

“There’s so much to do, Chirp,” Mom says. “I’ve got an awful lot to catch up on. Annie spent the morning visiting, because Dad thinks I shouldn’t be alone, but I really could have used that time to organize.” She turns around and gives me a blink of a smile that’s more nervous than happy. Her face is sweaty. She opens the lid of the trunk. “Usually I would have brought all of the winter clothes down between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Usually I would have made sure we had plenty of warm things.” She looks into
the trunk and sighs. “I guess Dad must have taken care of that.”

Mom pulls out a hat I’ve never seen. It’s the color of canned peas with a scraggly yellow pom-pom that reminds me of a cat toy.

“Do you need a warm hat?” she asks, lifting it in the air.

“I’ve been wearing my purple one,” I say.

“Right. Of course you have. You’re all set.”

She closes the trunk lid. She pulls over a cardboard box.

“Do we need anything in here?” she mumbles to herself, staring at the box like she has X-ray vision. “There must be something that we need.”

I wonder if she’s going to ask me about my day. I wonder if she’s going to ask me about my last 106 days, which is how long she’s been gone.

“Extra scarves,” she says, lifting a flap on the box and peeking in. “Actually,
extra
extra scarves.” She pulls out a red-and-orange-striped scarf and a green plaid scarf. “I guess you couldn’t use either of these? It’s a little late in the season to be bringing down more clothes. You’ve been warm enough?”

“I’ve been fine.”

Mom dangles the scarves in the air. “I guess I have to face the fact that this winter has pretty much come and gone while I’ve been holed up at that place.” She looks around at all our stuff, the stack of suitcases,
the pile of
National Geographic
s, the picnic basket on the shelf next to the butterfly box, as if she thinks maybe she’ll find this winter if she just looks hard enough. Then she shakes her head like she’s disappointed and stuffs the scarves back in the box. “Okay,” she says, “I guess we should just head down. I guess there’s not much for me to do up here at this point.”

I go down the steps first. I have to go backward, since they’re so steep and narrow. It’s Mom’s turn after me, and I watch her have a hard time with her draggy leg. She gives it a little push with her hand to keep it moving along. I try not to watch, since it seems kind of private, like adjusting your underpants when they get stuck in your crack.

“I’ve got to get back into shape,” Mom says when she’s all the way down the steps. “I’ve got to do better. I’ve just been sitting around doing nothing.” Mom’s talking too fast. She’s squeezing her hands together. “Just sitting around, day after day.”

“Dad says you’ve been working on your mental health.”

Mom’s not listening. “I’ve got to do better. I’ve got to do much better.”

“But, Mom,” I say, “Dad says you’ve been trying hard. You even let them give you electricity treatments so you could come home and settle back in with us.”

“Oh, Chirp,” Mom says, turning to look at me. “Oh, my girl.” She tucks my hair behind my ear. She kisses my cheek. “I’m going to make good changes, Snap Pea.”

“I know, Mom,” I say, but I’m not really sure what she means.

“If I can’t dance anymore, I’ll figure out something else to do. Marcy told me yesterday that I have to start off slow. She said it would be a big adjustment. The first step is to make a list of things I know I can accomplish.” Mom is talking too fast again. “Marcy said to cross things off my list so I can notice my progress.”

I don’t want to hear about Marcy.

“Marcy said to make a list. Cross things off. Marcy thinks—”

“I’m choreographing a dance for my science project,” I butt in. “I want to demonstrate how the red-throated loon is able to take off from land
or
water.”

“Oh, that sounds terrific, Chirp,” Mom says, but her voice is thick and heavy, and I feel stupid for talking about dancing. I feel stupid, but still I say, “You know, Rachel said you’d die if you couldn’t keep dancing.” It just pops out.

Mom looks surprised. She shakes her head. “No, sweetie. That’s not my plan.” She smiles with just her mouth, not with her brown-earth eyes, not with her whole pretty face. “This is my plan. First, I’m going to
take a little rest. Then I’m going to tackle cleaning the refrigerator. Then I’ll make a list so I can cross things off of it. There’s an awful lot to do.”

Mom’s never cared about polishing with Lemon Pledge or having a clean refrigerator. She’s never talked about making a list. Or let someone dumb like Marcy tell her what to do.

“Make sure you don’t forget to fold up the stairs,” I say to Mom, even though she’s already almost done doing it. She doesn’t notice that I sound snotty like Rachel. She doesn’t notice that I’m tapping my foot just like the bossy girls who think I’m a dork because I can’t serve the ball over the net in volleyball. Mom smiles her just-mouth smile at me and holds the string and lets the rectangle of wood float up and cover the hole in the ceiling. Unless you pay attention to the string hanging down, you’d never even know that there’s a whole slice of room filled with all kinds of stuff, right above our heads.

“Mom, I’m home!” Rachel yells, bursting through the front door. I’m sitting in the hallway, waiting for her. Her cheeks are pink, so I can tell that she’s been rushing. She’s carrying a bunch of pine branches in her arms. She’s got her peacoat buttoned over her notebook.

“Shhhh, she’s sleeping, Rach,” I say.

“Oh,” she says, dropping the branches on the front
hall rug. “I came straight home so I could see her. I didn’t even go to Genevieve’s house. I mean, I didn’t think she’d be sleeping.”

“When she gets up, she wants to clean the fridge.”

“Clean the fridge? Why?”

“She says she has a lot to do. She says she has to accomplish things.”

Rachel unbuttons her peacoat, tosses it down, sits on it.

“Did she hang out with you when you came home?”

“Sort of. Not really. A little,” I say. “I mean, she was up in the attic. She was worrying about winter clothes.”

“Winter clothes? Winter’s almost over,” Rachel says.

“I know.”

Rachel picks up a pine branch. She shakes her head. She starts to pluck the needles off.

“Maybe we can help her clean the fridge,” I say. “We can be the entertainment. We can put on music and show her our moves.” I start doing the hitchhike with a little twist mixed in.

Rachel stands up like she’s going to dance with me. Then she says, “I don’t know,” and plops back down.

“You don’t know what?”

“Nothing,” Rachel says. She’s playing with the beads on her macramé choker.

“What?”

“Couldn’t she have stayed up until I came home? I mean, she’s been gone
forever
.”

“She was tired. Yesterday was an enormous day. An enormous, gigantic day.”

Rachel shakes her head. She plucks the last few needles off the branch.

“I think maybe I’ll just take off.” She stands up again.

“You just got home.”

“I think I’ll head over to Genevieve’s house.”

“Joey was a jerk today.”

“Tell Mom I’ll be home for dinner.”

Rachel stands up and puts her peacoat back on.

“We can dance in your room, Rach. We can make popcorn with tons of salt.”

“Go ahead and give Mom the branches if you want,” Rachel says. “Put them in the blue vase. You don’t have to say it was my idea.” She looks up the stairs like maybe Mom will suddenly appear right before her very eyes. “I’m out of here,” she says. She steps over the branches, opens the door, and
poof
, she’s gone.

When Dad gets home, he has two surprises: pepperoni pizza for all of us and a bunch of roses the color of butter, just for Mom.

“I thought we’d make all of our lives a bit easier this evening,” Dad says, handing me the pizza box. “Put it in the oven to stay warm, Chirp. You can just leave it in the box, since we’re not actually heating it.”