Outside In (11 page)

I felt as if I were falling. I reached out for the nearest column and leaned, my cheek against the white stone. It was cold, like the marble rail of the altar in church, but rougher, huger. It could hide anything, I thought, anybody. Strangers. Assassins. People with guns: soldiers, or rioters, or others. This city seemed like headquarters for that kind of thing.

I dashed into the shadow behind the next column and stood still, listening and watching for movement around me. In an instant I had decided that it would be better to be invisible in the dark. I could, if necessary, make it back to the bright side of the memorial again, as long as no one appeared from the other side of one of the enormous pillars to grab me.

I spied into the light and sensed emptiness in the darkness before I dashed across the step into the black shelter of the next column. I was sure someone was behind me, seeking me out in this place hundreds of miles from home.

Column by column—and there was one for every state, or something like that (nobody who built anything in Washington ever used a number of anything just because it made sense, but always because it stood for something)—I felt my way around the corner to the side of the building.

“Chérie!” Aimée was calling, but I could hardly reveal my position while I was still in danger.

“Chérie!” That was Dad. I tiptoed silently between the stone giants, keeping my breath in my throat, all the way to the corner.

“Chérie!” That was Aimée crying, the little weentzer. But for once I knew how she felt: as if the world were out of control.

“Chérie,
now!”
And Mom.

I could almost hear Mom saying, “For goodness’ sake, Chérie. It’s been a long enough day. Don’t get Aimée worked up now.”

But Aimée didn’t know what it meant to be worked up if it was just me she was frightened about. I was out here in the dark, ten inches away from the bright, wide, wild world. I knew what it was to be afraid. Arlington was up there on the hill, the eternal flame big enough to see from here, and why? So nobody would be able to forget presidents shot a hundred years apart? I hid my face behind one of Lincoln’s pillars.

This place made me cry, this whole city of important dead people. It didn’t make me feel proud, the way Dad said it should, but terrified. My parents accepted all those crosses on the hillside so easily, it seemed, sniffed their noses and bowed or nodded or shook their heads. Why didn’t they scream and cry and run away, the way I thought they ought to, the way I wanted to?

I wanted to pinch myself, bring myself back to normal. It’s Aimée who’s afraid of the dark, not me. I’m the one who’s comfortable when it’s pitch-black, slipping safely through the shadows.

I burst into the light and yelled, “Boo!” scaring Aimée and the rest of my family and not a few other visitors of Lincoln.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Dad scolded. He
hauled me aside. “I don’t know what your problem is lately, Chérie—”

Aimée looked into my wet eyes and said, “Are you crying?”

“It’s just sweat,” I said, pushing her away “I was running.”

“Running?” Dad said. “Why?”

Mom put her arms around my shoulders from behind me, crossed her arms over my chest, her cheek against mine, her hard stomach pressing my back, giving Dad some look that made him stop.

“It’s all right,” she said into my ear. She must have felt the sweat, heard me sniff up tears. “You’d be crazy if you didn’t feel this way, Chérie.”

“What way?” I said. I pulled away from her arms. “Are we leaving, or what?”

I
T HAD BEEN A LONG COUPLE OF DAYS.
Ever since we’d gotten home from Washington Monday night, Mom had been cleaning up. She moved things around; she threw things out. Pretty soon I got the hint that it was happening because Mom was determined to sell the house after all.

I was working on elf things on my bedroom floor when I heard her exasperated sigh. “Chérie,” she said, “all these little boxes of junk have got to go into the attic.”

“It’s not junk,” I said. She nodded and went away.

I didn’t move anything just yet. I’d wait until she made me. At the moment Mom was more focused on the downstairs. Good. It would be a relief to get out of here and go back to school.

The very first day of eighth grade was the first time I’d walked alone anywhere farther than the corner since Wendy Boland had disappeared. In the morning I could hear Dave and Pete behind me, at least until the corner of Chauncey Road, when Pete turned left for the high school. I thought Dave might run to catch up with me then, but I was wrong.

In the afternoon no one else was walking my way at all. In the mile from school to home, I saw two green station wagons. I wondered where Wendy was, maybe pushed down in the backseat while that man in the fishing hat drove by, or that woman with her white dog. They didn’t look much like kidnappers, my mind knew. Still, my heart pounded until I made it to our porch steps. Home free.

I could hear the vacuum cleaner going,
in the basement.
(Who vacuums the basement?) My papers were waiting on the porch. I saw the word
Washington
in the headline and flipped the papers over quickly, refusing to read a word about that place. I set off to deliver them on Reshna.

When I came home again, Aimée and Pammy were sitting on the front steps, collapsed from the strain of school. I collapsed with them. It was hot, and they were still wearing their St. John Vianney’s lower school jumpers and knee socks. Pammy had put Aimée’s hair up in a bun, and when Aimée reached over to tie my braids in a knot on top of my head, I didn’t protest.

We didn’t notice anyone was coming until Faux Pas appeared at our knees. Then Aunt Bonnie came along, too. She sat between Aimée and me, wiggling her hips to move us apart, and held out her hand, fist closed. “Guess what I’ve been doing?” She uncurled her hand, lifting it toward our faces, away from Faux Pas’s nosy nose.

It was a chair, tiny and perfect and curved and curled, like the ones in the fancy pink ice-cream parlor in Westport. It had a heart-shaped wire back and little swirly legs and a cushion made of a tiny circle of rose velvet.

“Aww. Who’s going to sit on that?” Mom’s pink, damp face appeared over my shoulder, her hair falling out of its twist.

“What’s it made of?” I asked.

“Can I have it?” asked Aimée.

“Look closely,” said Aunt Bonnie, holding it up.

I picked up the chair and studied it, turning it around and around. “A bottle cap?” I asked.

“It’s the little metal thingamabob that goes over a champagne cork,” Mom said.

“Yes,” said Aunt Bonnie. “I don’t know when I’ll see another champagne bottle now, so I thought I’d make the best of it.”

Mom smiled a sad little smile at her friend.

“Eighteen years,” said Aunt Bonnie. “Can you believe it?”

“Is it your anniversary?” I asked. “That’s long.”

“Knock on wood.” Aunt Bonnie knocked on my head.

Aimée went inside and got one of her elves, a lady elf in a green tulle dress. She sat the elf on the chair and set the chair on the porch rail. Then she looked hopefully up at Aunt Bonnie.

“Not this one, my love,” was the answer. “You make your own.”

Mom and Aunt Bonnie and we kids went into the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, opened some sodas, found gardening wire and fabric, and went to work making little chairs out of the soda caps.

Aimée was playing silverware school, making all the forks be girls, boys be knives, and spoons be nuns. She made a soup spoon walk on its pointed handle bottom. “Aimée Witkowski,” she made the spoon-nun say to a fork-girl. “Please name the four Beatles.”

“Um. Um…um. John?”

“That is correct, Miss Witkowski. Go to the head of the class!” The fork-girl strutted into the drawer.

From the dining room the murmur of voices had grown
loud enough so we could hear the conversation. “Chérie’s too old to share a room,” Mom was saying. Aimée raised her eyebrows at me.

“It won’t kill her,” Dad said. I made an ugly face at Aimée.

“Paul?” Aimée resumed her game with a new fork-student.

“Very good!” The spoon-nun replied.

“Both the rooms are too small for two anyway. Once the baby’s out of the crib—”

“What’s wrong with bunks?” Dad asked. Aimée’s eyes lit up.

“We need a new house, not bunk beds. Look at this place!”

I looked around our kitchen: red counter, white curtains with red ball fringe. Go somewhere else: That was what Mom was saying.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Every room is full. Toys, work stuff, books, hi-fi things.”

“What do you expect with three kids, Buckingham Palace?”

“No! Pat, don’t talk to me like that. I just want a little extra room. We can do it, you know. I’ve been looking at the money.”

“Nothing’s certain at the plant,” Dad said. “They need more choppers over there, not less. But if we don’t get the orders—”

“Where?” Aimée mouthed at me.

“Vietnam,” I whispered back.

The voices in the dining room suddenly dropped. Aimée gave me a guilty look, and I deliberately banged the cupboard door.

“George?” Aimée resumed the game. “And Davy Jones!”

I laughed. “No, dear, I’m sorry, that isn’t right.” The spoon-nun bowed. “You’ll have to study your Beatles harder next time.”

Aimée grabbed another fork from the drain. “I know! I know!”

“Just look around, Pat!” Mom burst out again. “Look at the dents in the walls! Look at the paint peeling in the bathroom.”

“So take care of it, you’re so good with a paintbrush.”

“Is it Herman, Sister?” said a knife-boy.

“No, Peter, you little jerk! You’ll have to stay after and study!” The spoon jumped up and down on its point.

The dining room door popped open, and Dad came through briskly. “That garbage bucket ready yet, Chérie?”

“Here.” I handed it over, looking up into his brown eyes. He walked out the back door. Outside, the sky was royal blue.

“You girls go get ready for bed,” called Mom.

“Ringo?” said a fork.

“You get a sticker, dear.” Aimée dropped the spoon and fork into the drawer and closed it with her hip.

“You mean a star,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Not a sticker, a star. Ringo Starr, get it?”

Aimée shook her head. “I never know what anybody’s talking about,” she said. She wasn’t talking just about the Beatles.

Every morning I watched the Ascontis’ house. When the front door opened and Aunt Bonnie stood there, telling the boys to get moving, I left, knowing they’d be close behind me.

It wasn’t the greatest strategy. Sometimes I could hear them yelling at each other, and sometimes Pete took a swipe at Dave or knocked his books into the road. Dave ran ahead once when that happened and hooted in my ear, “I’ve come to suck your blood!”

I stopped and stood there and stared at him, my fist raised. Pete walked closer. Dave looked at me and said, “All right, all right!” He grabbed my shoulder and pushed me toward school. He was trying to look tough in front of Pete.

“You keep your hands off me,” I said.

All I could do about Pete was to stay away from him. I didn’t know what his problem was, why he wanted to fight people, whether far away on the other side of the world in Vietnam or here in the park or inside his house. Dave was another story. He’d been my best friend until that day when he’d stood there and let his brother shut Joanie up, when he’d let me fight Pete alone. Even Sandy DeLuna had been braver than Dave that day.

Well, now I needed Dave to walk with. But I sure didn’t intend to talk to him.

“So, how was Washington?” asked Dave.

I noticed that Dave had on new chinos. He must have grown.

“So, Mr. Stone in science, he’s a geek, huh?” asked Dave.

Yep, Dave was taller than I was now, all right. First time ever.

“Do you think your mom’s having a boy or a girl?” asked Dave.

I said nothing. I wished he would just shut up.

“So, what are you doing your oral report on for science?” His feet sure were big. New sneakers, too. Green Converse.

“Hey, Chérie.
Comment ça va?
” He got that from Mom.

Fermez la bouche!
Shut up, Dave! In English or in French!

One day he said, “You know that girl who disappeared?”

I said nothing. The
Bell,
too, had been silent on the subject of Wendy Boland.
POLICE FIRE ON PRAGUE CROWD
. She had gone from the front page to the middle pages to tiny notices to no pages at all. It was as if she had disappeared altogether. And she had.

“Do you think they had a funeral for her?”

I was shocked into looking at him, saw his black eyes looking flatly back at me. “A funeral?”

“Yeah, even though they didn’t find her? Could they have a funeral without a body?”

“Shut up!” I yelled. I took off for school, running.

“Nice going, lover boy!” called Pete.

From then on I rode Reshna.

I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike to school when it rained because Mom was sure I’d skid and fall and a car would hit me. “I know you’re the age when you think nothing could possibly hurt you,” she said, “but I have my fears.”