The Big Shuffle (11 page)

“Okay,” I say. “See you later.”

“I left Brandt's number on the kitchen counter.”

“Brandt? You're going to visit him in Massachusetts?
Now?”

“I'm moving there. We're going to live together.”

“You're
what!”
I shout. “No way!”

“You left home when you were fifteen,” says Louise.

“That was
different.”
Only it was and it wasn't. I try another tactic. “Mom will kill you!”

“Mom is gone,” she says as she walks away, no longer sounding angry, but more like a robot.

I finish dressing the twins just in time to see a cab pull up and Louise heading out with two stuffed garbage bags, the customary Palmer luggage set. I follow her with an unknown twin in each arm. Lillian has by now managed to throw every toy out of her playpen and is demanding that I fetch them for her.

Louise opens the front door and I stand there speechless. What am I supposed to say—that she can't leave me in this situation, what about school, what about
money
? Then I truly will be acting like Mom and Dad and her actions will be even
more justified. Besides, I don't completely blame her for generating an exit strategy. Deep down I realize that if I had an out I just might take it, too.

Only Louise can get away with this. It's hard to explain, but because she's beautiful, it's as if her good looks make her extremely fragile, to the point they're actually some sort of a
handicap
, and thus people act as if she needs extra help to navigate the world. Whereas the more plain-faced among us are always expected to be strong and to sacrifice.

This has always been the case, at least in our house. If Louise didn't want to eat dinner or attend a skating lesson, it was fine. If the rest of us tried to wriggle out of something, we heard about wasted money and the need to “start what we finish.” If you were ever to point out this child-rearing protocol discrepancy to my parents, they'd completely deny it. I suppose it's true what they say: that every child is born into a different house.

As the taxi pulls out of the driveway and speeds down the street the red taillights become smaller. A light snow begins to fall and low dark clouds move quickly toward us from the west, another storm on the way. It crosses my mind that luck is a lot like the weather and sometimes for no apparent reason it turns really bad.

T
HE LAUNDRY ROOM IS IN THE BACK CORNER OF THE BASEMENT, A
dimly lit concrete bunker with piles of clothes reaching almost to the ceiling, and particularly attractive to spiders of the daddylonglegs variety.

Mom has a system where she washes about three loads every day, from six different categories—baby clothes, boys’ coloreds, boys’ whites, girls’ coloreds, girls’ whites, and then a mishmash pile of sheets, towels, washcloths, bibs, and baby blankets. If one of the kids is sick and Mom gets a few days behind, it's almost necessary to go in there with a miner's hat and a steam shovel.

The next three hours disappear in a flurry of cleaning, vacuuming, and throwing away decaying fruit.

As I finish giving Lillian and the twins lunch, Eric returns home from the hospital with Aunt Lala and Uncle Lenny. “Did you give Teddy some lunch money? After you left I realized he didn't have anything to eat.”

“He stayed at the hospital,” says Eric. “We agreed that he'd come home with you. There's a cafeteria and some vending machines.”

“Is Mom better?” I ask hopefully Though better than what

I'm not exactly sure. I haven't seen her since leaving for school at the beginning of the year.

“Still the same,” says Eric. “She doesn't respond. I mean, I know that she sees us, and I'm pretty sure she recognizes us, but she doesn't say anything.”

“Then what is Teddy wanting to stay there for?”

“To be honest, it's a good thing he came along,” says Eric. “After the first ten minutes of trying to pretend that everything is fine, the rest of us ran out of steam and sat there in silence or talked with one another. But Teddy just prattles on as if Mom understands every word he's saying.”

So much for my plan to ask Mom about the age mystery— why her birth certificate makes her two years
younger
than we've always believed her to be.

“Well, the big excitement around here since you left is that Louise left for Boston. She's going to live with Brandt.” In the old days I might actually have enjoyed the shock value of dropping such a bomb. But not anymore. We've had enough surprises for one week.

“With Brandt!” shouts Eric.

“Yes.” My voice is calm. I'm too overwhelmed to get wound up about anything.

“And you let her just
leave?”

“What was I supposed to do? Throw Lillian's potty seat around her neck and tie her to the playpen?”

“This is just great,” says Eric. “What about school?”

“They have schools up there,” I state the obvious, though not in a sarcastic way.

“What about
you?”
he asks. “You can't possibly manage all this by yourself.” He collapses into a kitchen chair and exhales like a bear. “That's it—I can't go back to school this afternoon!”

I crumple into the chair across from him. “You have to go
back, for a lot of reasons. If Mom doesn't get better I don't know how we're all going to afford to live past next year. The checking account is down to nothing. Ten thousand is owed to the credit union and there's forty-three thousand left to pay on the house!” I've found that suddenly I do have the energy to become agitated.

“Well you can't take care of seven kids by yourself!” says Eric.

There's a crash in the next room followed by the sound of glass splintering. This serves to indicate that Lillian, who tends to operate on the theory of sustained attack, has thrown a toy out of the playpen and managed to lodge a direct hit. I know right away it was the picture of Mom and Dad that I was looking at the other night and forgot to put back on the mantelpiece. Because the house is completely childproof—compliments of the children themselves—anything the least bit fragile was either broken or stored away a long time ago, except for Mom's decoupage projects. We have plenty of backups if those get ruined.

“Aunt Lala is making her reservations to go home as we speak,” says Eric. “Uncle Fred called her cell phone while we were in the car. Our cousin Marci dyed her hair purple and is threatening to get a tattoo.”

“Let's face it Eric, Louise wasn't exactly a huge help to begin with. When she's not at school or cheerleading, Louise is off with her friends. She's always despised baby-sitting. You know that. And … and …”

“And what?” asks Eric.

Only his frustration at this recent turn of household events keeps me from saying it—that maybe it's better, at least for her. And that if Louise were a boy we might not even be having this discussion: Would a brother be expected to completely change his life in order to help care for younger siblings?

“Dad would kill her if he were here.” Eric states the obvious. “Living with some guy and she's not even sixteen.”

“Three more weeks,” I say. “Besides, from the conversations I've overheard it's safe to say that Brandt's more interested in string theory than sex.”

“Well, Mom is going to have a fit about this when she's better, and I only hope she doesn't blame us,” continues Eric. “Don't say anything when you go to visit her!”

“I won't. But I'd better leave now if you're going to catch the bus at four. I mean, Aunt Lala …” I roll my eyes to indicate that she's not exactly able to keep track of the entire brood on her own. And we don't even bother to mention big gruff Uncle Lenny in the context of child care. He drinks three beers with every meal, which is apparently nothing, because according to Uncle Lenny, every sailor in Admiral Nelson's navy was issued eight pints of beer a day
by law.
The moment Uncle Lenny drains a can he crushes it in his hand like a Dixie cup, shouts, “Tide's gone out!,” and pops open another. Meantime he tells the kids to eat their broccoli because “it will help to grow hair on their chests like stalks of rhubarb.” In fact, with that wild white mane and walrus whiskers I'm surprised they didn't try to keep
him
at Dalewood. Retired seaman or local madman? A close call on the basis of looks alone. And when he starts talking about cooking up some snake and pygmy pie for lunch, it's anybody's guess.

“I'll be back in time to take you to the bus station.” I grab my coat and keys. Darn it, I was hoping Louise could stay with the kids this afternoon so I could pick up my car at school. There are probably a hundred parking tickets stacked under the windshield wiper by now. Maybe Bernard and I can make a quick trip to get it over the weekend.

“Is there anything to eat?” asks Eric. He's bulked up even
more during his second year on the football team, if that's possible, and eats four huge meals a day.

“Bernard and the church ladies left lots of food in the refrigerator.”

He grunts in acknowledgment of this statement. And suddenly I feel as if we're some old married couple complaining about the kids and wondering what's for lunch.

I
T'S ONE OF THOSE BRILLIANTLY SUNNY WINTER AFTERNOONS, THE
kind where people oftentimes can't make out the color of the traffic lights, and so you have to be extra careful at intersections, especially since they're already banked with four feet of snow. Everything glistens as the snow begins to melt, and when the temperature drops tonight the roads and sidewalks will turn to a sheet of ice. No doubt tomorrow will be a perfect day for breaking hips, just like the first big storm always means Heart Attack City as overzealous retirees head outside with their shovels.

I don't know if it's the bright white landscape or because it's the first time in days I'm completely alone that the ride has such a surreal feeling. Or if it's the fact that I'm going to visit my mother in a mental hospital for the first time. Last I saw her she was taking down the Christmas decorations and fretting that the tree had become so dry it would set the house on fire.

The grounds at Dalewood are attractively landscaped around some very old oak and maple trees with plenty of benches, walkways, and even a duck pond. The main structure is dark gray stone with small windows, rather than the red or white brick of a modern hospital, and unfortunately on a dreary
day this serves to give the place more than the suggestion of being a haunted house. In fact, you could go so far as to say that in a thunderstorm it wouldn't exactly be ruled out as a location for shooting
Jane Eyre
or
Wuthering Heights.

A young man at a school-style desk signs me in, hands me a visitor's pass, and points in the direction of room 232. The corridors are painted an institutional pale green and chrome bars line the walls. The old building has some nice touches, like wood molding along the ceilings and cornice pieces. Pleasant paintings are arranged on the walls, with little gold plaques indicating that the pieces were a donation from someone, which is clearly not your typical doctor's office crap.

Several people shuffle down the hall wearing their own bathrobes. A young woman in a white blouse, white pants, and white clogs pushes a man in a wheelchair. None of the doors are closed, and so I can hear televisions inside the rooms. The place smells like a combination of disinfectant and your grandmother's parlor on a rainy day.

Before reaching Mom's room I hear the chirpy young voice of Teddy. From outside the door I can see them sitting side by side on the edge of Mom's bed going through a stack of photos. “That's Lillian's christening party, do you remember, you made peanut butter cookies with M&M's in them? And when it started to rain we had to move everything into the garage.”

“Hi, guys!” When I go around the side of the bed to kiss Mom hello, I'm startled to find her normally cheerful face is practically vacant. The bright brown eyes that always gave off a warm light have turned melancholy, while her head is bent forward slightly and her shoulders are drawn together as if she's trying not to be noticed.

“Hi, Hallie,” says Teddy, the spokesperson for the duo. “We're looking at some photos from Lillian's christening. We
just finished the ones of you and Craig going to the prom. You look pretty funny in a dress.”

Meantime Mom is staring straight ahead, not at the photos but not out the window either. She's expressionless. Or perhaps exhausted from grief.

“So Mom … how are you?” I ask.

Only Teddy quickly shoots me a look as if I've used the wrong fork at a White House dinner party.

Mom doesn't respond, or even look up, and so I don't know what difference it makes.

Teddy points to another photograph. “This is Christmas last year and I got a new bike.”

I'm so stunned by what's happening that I just stand there like a patient myself and watch the photo session continue. Eric hadn't prepared me for this! Mom is completely listless. She doesn't talk or move. How does she eat? What does she do all day? Where did she
go?

And what about Teddy? He's perfectly fine sitting here for hours talking to a mute woman in her robe and slippers? Teddy was definitely a strange twelve-year-old, no doubt about it. He'd ask a teacher or a person at church his or her age and then say, “Do you ever wonder if the happiest time in your life has already passed?” or “Do you ever think about how long you'll live?” Teddy hardly uttered a word until he was eight years old, and ever since then it's only been the
big
questions.

A part of me feels like shaking her out of this trance. When I was in sociology class last semester we took personality tests and I came out as a full-blown “activist.” This basically means that when I'm upset, excited, or worried, I have to do something.

Suddenly I feel as if I'm going to lose it. “Teddy, we need to go because Eric has to catch the bus.”

“Why don't you just pick me up after dinner?” Teddy calmly asks.

“Because Louise,” whoops, I stop myself before letting that cat out of the bag, though I don't even know if Mom understands anything we're saying. “Because it's too complicated with all the kids. Come on. Get your coat.”