Nobody's Family is Going to Change (22 page)

I don't think we're even in the same conversation, thought Emma. What is she talking about, red lights?

“Mama, I saw you help Willie. Will you help me now?”

“Oh, darling, certainly. What can I help you with?”

“I want you to tell Dad that I want to be a lawyer.”

“Emma, you can't be a lawyer at eleven.”

“I am aware of that,” said Emma, getting another surprised look from Mrs. Sheridan. “He could help me, though. He could teach me. He could give me a head start over everybody else. He could show me how to look up precedents, he could explain things to me. He could stop acting like he's acting.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You do too know what I mean. He hates me.”

“Oh, darling, how absurd. Your father loves you.” Emma shook her head. There was no way around their crazy thinking. They think what they like to think, and what they don't like to think they just don't think that.

“In other words, you helped Willie, but you won't help me?”

“Honey, I'll help you in any way I can. This thing with Willie is something entirely different. It was just a matter of a misunderstanding with your father, and it's been cleared up.”

“A misunderstanding!” Emma clapped her hand to her head.

“Don't get agitated,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

“But can't you see that it's all the same thing? Willie wants to do a girl's thing, and I want to do a boy's thing, and our father hates both of us.”

“That is absolutely absurd. Dancing is not a girl's thing, as you call it—although being a lawyer, I guess you're right, that is a boy's thing. I agree with your father. I don't think you'll be happy that way either, and I think you should stop all this nonsense. Just stop thinking about it.”

“You're in the Middle Ages.” Emma stood up and walked around. She didn't want to look at her mother.

“I may very well be in the Middle Ages, as you say, I don't care about that. I know that I've been very happy being a wife and raising you two. I don't go along with this liberation thing all the way. I think a lot of women are happy doing what they're doing, and that if anything is making them unhappy, it's all this agitation about women not being fullfilled if they don't have a career. I think that's true for some women, but not for others.”

Emma stopped walking. “How about me? I'm not going to be happy being a wife.”

“Emma, nobody is doing anything to you. Nobody is
making you get married at eleven.” Mrs. Sheridan looked arch. “I doubt that anybody has even asked you!” Emma felt, suddenly, like a huge lump of clay, ungainly, unattractive, in fact, ugly. She sat down. She fell into despair.

“I think you kids these days get yourselves all worked up over nothing.”

I have to hold on to this train of thought, Emma said to herself, feeling mush-brained. Why had it all seemed so clear before
she
came into the room?

“He is too doing something to me,” she said loudly, everything coming back to her. “He's ruining what I think of myself!”

“What are you talking about?”

“And you are too! You both make me feel like I'm a big lump that doesn't know what I'm talking about, and I do! I do know what I'm talking about!”

“What
are
you talking about?” repeated Mrs. Sheridan.

“I'm talking about me and what I think of myself. I think I'm some big fat loser.”

“Oh, so it's what you think of yourself, so we're not doing anything. You're doing it to yourself!”

Boy, thought Emma, that takes the cake. Anything to get them off the hook. Anything to make them look good.
They're not going to change
came insistently into her brain like a sad tune. They're not going to change, I have to change; they're not going to change, I have to change; like a hurdy-gurdy played for a monkey on a summer afternoon.

“Forget it,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“I said never mind.”

“I think you should give some thought to what I've said tonight. I think you're thinking about a lot of things you don't have any business thinking about at eleven years old. I think you ought to do your homework and get to sleep. You're very overwrought tonight. Do you have your period?”

“No.” Emma covered her eyes. If there was one thing she hated to talk about or even think about, it was that.

“Couldn't you see”—Emma took one last desperate chance—“couldn't you see tonight that he even hated
you?
”

“No. Your father doesn't hate me.” Mrs. Sheridan smiled. She put her hand on her daughter's head. “Is that what's bothering you? Do you think he hates me? Well, I can see why you're upset. Did you worry we might get a divorce?”

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Emma. Her mother was way off the track.

“Don't talk like that. Now, was that what was bothering you? Well, I'll tell you something, Emma. Your father may be just the slightest bit upset, but that's temporary and it doesn't upset me, it doesn't even upset Willie. The person it seems to be upsetting the most is you. I think that's because you're getting the wrong things in your head about this. It doesn't mean divorce. It doesn't mean your father hates me. It doesn't mean your father hates you. It doesn't mean any of those things.”

“Okay,” said Emma wearily.

“What's that?”

“Okay, okay.” There was no point in talking about it any longer, because no matter how long she talked, there wouldn't be anyone to understand her.

She thought of Goldin. Goldin would understand her, so would Saunders. Ketchum was another matter. Ketchum looked as though she had such a hard time just getting through the day that understanding would be beyond her.

Emma sat, silently laughing at Ketchum. Her shoulders were shaking.

“Are you crying?” asked her mother.

“What? No,” said Emma, still shaking. “I'm laughing.”

“What are you laughing at?” asked her mother with somewhat exaggerated politeness.

“I'm laughing at how silly I am,” said Emma.

“I think that's a good, positive attitude,” said her mother. “I'm glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor.” She opened the door. “If you want to talk to me again about this, Emma, please know that you can at any time.”

Emma's shoulders started shaking again. Her mother didn't seem to notice, because she went out and shut the door without saying anything further.

“I'm silly because I've been talking to the wrong people,” said Emma aloud to the empty room.

She saw herself in full-dress uniform addressing her troops. Saunders' uniform was quite gaudy. Goldin's was exactly like Saunders'. Ketchum had on a uniform too big for her, its hat covering her eyes completely.

“Troops!” shouted Emma in her head. “
We
are the only ones who can change! Change is with
us!
”

Ketchum saluted, tripped, and fell over.

“Rats,” said Emma. “Male images. I'm sick of male images, armies, uniforms, salutes, kowtowing. I'm sick of males altogether.”

She thought of herself actually calling Saunders and arranging a meeting after school.

I know I'm right, she thought. I hope they agree with me, because, if they don't, I'll have to do it all myself.

“I looked up the word in the dictionary,” said Emma. She was holding the piece of paper on which she had written the definition. The wind from the river flipped it a little as she talked. Saunders, Goldin, and Ketchum faced her, listening.

“Here it is,” she said, “and I think it's a good word to describe what I'm talking about.”

“Changeling?” said Saunders. “I thought it meant some kid in an Irish fairy tale, stolen away by the leprechauns.”

“I guess that's what they mean in this first definition,” said Emma. “What I mean is, somebody who is young and somebody who changes.”

They'd been sitting on the bench for over an hour. Emma had felt completely inarticulate when she began to talk to them about her idea. She didn't know what it
was about ideas, but they could seem so simple when they came to you as a feeling, then when you tried to put them into words and tell someone else, they seemed impossibly complicated.

“I mean that nobody's family is going to change. This means if we don't want to go on feeling the way we're feeling, then
we
have to change.”

“I get it, sort of,” said Goldin.

“But, you know, it sounded like the Children's Army does change things.” Saunders seemed puzzled; not angry, just confused.

“It doesn't really change anything. I mean, do you really believe, like take a kid whose father is beating him up, and the committee comes in and everything, and this guy, the father, says he'll change. Do you really believe he doesn't swat that kid the minute the committee leaves the house?”

“No,” said Saunders. “That's why, in bad cases like that, they get the kid removed. They get him some other place to live.”

“Exactly,” said Emma.

Everybody looked at her. “Clear as mud,” said Saunders. “What are you saying?”

“I'm saying fathers don't change and mothers don't change. It's up to us to change.” Emma had said it as well as she could. She couldn't think of any other way to say it.

Ketchum was nodding slowly. “Mine won't change,” she said.

“I never thought about it,” said Saunders.

There she goes again, thought Emma. If she didn't think of it, it annoys her. She's only enchanted by her own mind.

“My father certainly won't change,” said Goldin.

“Read the definition,” said Saunders, playing for time.

“Okay, but it really doesn't apply. I don't know why I brought it. I mean, I just like the word because I think it describes somebody young changing.” Saunders had gotten everybody interested in the definition now, so there was nothing for Emma to do but read it.

“Changeling, noun,” read Emma. “Definition 1 is a child surreptitiously or unintentionally substituted for another. Definition 2a is archaic, and is a disloyal person.” Emma looked around.

“What's definition 2b?” asked Saunders.

“Oh, nothing. It means nothing,” said Emma.

Saunders grabbed the piece of paper. “Definition 2b is an imbecile,” she read aloud. She laughed, a great big laugh.

Goldin covered her face and Ketchum squealed off into a series of high giggles that finally had everybody turned in her direction.

“Oh, for God's sake,” said Emma. “I told you guys this didn't mean anything.” She felt despondent. Why was she trying this, anyway? These goons would never understand what she was talking about. They were still laughing. “Listen, to hell with it. I mean, I'm going to do it, but you guys can do what you want.”

They stopped laughing. “I think this all sounds good,” said Goldin. Saunders turned to her in surprise. “I think
about my father and I know he's never going to change.” She looked straight into Emma's eyes. “I don't understand how
I'm
supposed to, that's all.”

“I meant that we—I thought that if we—” Emma stopped. Damn it, it was embarrassing. “I thought we could try and help each other.”

There was silence. Emma wanted to grab back every word and run out of the park. She never wanted to see these girls again. Obviously, she had made a fool of herself.

Saunders nodded. “Like a consciousness-raising group?”

Emma nodded. Was it possible they understood? Goldin and Ketchum were nodding too. “I see it,” said Goldin. “But I don't see how to change.”

“I don't either,” said Ketchum in a woeful voice. Emma figured she was seeing herself face to face with her uncle of an afternoon.

“Well, for instance, your uncle,” said Emma. Ketchum jumped. “Say he comes to the door.”

Ketchum seemed about to jump out of her skin at the thought.

“What does he say he's come there for?” asked Emma.

“He says he'll just wait for my mother to come home from work,” said Ketchum in a quavering voice.

“Okay, so you leave,” said Emma.

“Where would I go?” asked Ketchum.

“That's not the point. He's not going to follow you, is he? I mean, he's said he's come there to wait, so he won't come with you, because that would make a liar out of him.
So it doesn't matter where you go. Come to my house if you want to.” Emma felt exhilarated. The whole thing was much easier to explain when you had examples.

Ketchum smiled broadly. Her braces glinted in the sun.

“What about my father?” asked Goldin.

“Your father,” said Saunders, “is a lost cause. He thinks those boys are great and he's never going to think you're anything, because you're a girl.”

“Well,” said Goldin, “I can't change that.”