Alice Hoffman, page 8
“Come on,” Laurel says to Stella. “Don’t you dare go in there. ”
Stella is poised near the path leading to the pond, ready to run off through the brambles and weeds so she can hunt for turtles and geese.
Laurel crouches down. She stubs out her cigarette and claps her hands, then makes the hissing sound her cat usually responds to. Stella looks over haughtily, then jumps off the bank and walks down the road, ahead of Laurel. All the way home, Laurel thinks about Polly. She thinks of Polly putting in a new roll of film and mentioning a daughter, whose name Laurel has forgotten. A dancer, she thinks she remembers Polly saying, or a gymnast.
Polly, who had never divulged anything about her personal life before, had said to Laurel, “My daughter would love your hair. She wants to grow it till it’s as long as yours.”
Laurel turns off the road into her driveway. Here, the ferns and maples give way to sea grass and sea lavender and reeds. The sight of the plastic lawn -furniture set out on the deck makes Laurel’s throat grow tight with longing. She realizes that Betsy Stafford is wrong. She has not lost the knack.
She has simply grown tired of talking with the dead.
All that weekend Charlie tries to phone Sevrin. Each time he’s told that Sevrin isn’t home. Charlie checks out their stomping grounds. The Pizza Hut at the edge of the common, the basketball courts behind the school, the soda fountain at the drugstore. He goes back to the pond every day, snapping photographs each time there’s a ripple in the water; and he waits there for hours, but Sevrin doesn’t arrive. Finally, on Sunday, Charlie phones Sevrin at suppertime and is told by his mother that he’s not in. Charlie knows Sevrin never misses dinner.
. “Are the newts all right?” Charlie asks, not caring if he gives their secret experiment away, but Betsy hangs up before he can find out the answer.
“She doesn’t want Sevrin to see Charlie,” Polly says to Ivan when they’re alone. It’s dusk and she can see Charlie outside, keeping an eye on the empty street in the hope that Sevrin will appear on his bike.
“That’s paranoid,” Ivan says. “We have better things to worry about.”
They are meeting with the members of the school board tomorrow night, and they’re particularly wary because the meeting was called only hours after Ivan, thinking he was doing what was best for Amanda, notified the board of Amanda’s illness. This is the kind of news that travels fast, with the speed of hysteria.
“Oh, God, yes,” Polly says bitterly. “We certainly do have better things to worry about. We have enough to worry about for the rest of our lives.”
“Stop it,” Ivan says to her. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“That bitch,” Polly says.
Ivan stirs a spoonful of sugar into his coffee. They can hear Madonna singing “True Blue” down in the basement, where Amanda and Jessie are practicing forward tolls. It is all Polly can do not to run downstairs and rip the tape out of the cassette player. She is terrified that Amanda may do something that will hurt her; even practicing forward rolls seems too dangerous.
“That absolute bitch,” Polly says of Betsy Stafford.
Ivan reaches to take Polly’s hand, but she moves away as if she’d been burned. Ivan cannot bear his loneliness, and he knows Polly cannot bear hers much longer.
“Talk to me,” he says to Polly when she starts to cry.
“There’s nothing to say,” Polly tells him.
She drinks her coffee, though it is cold. She can’t turn to Ivan because if she did she would have to see how hurt he is. She can’t look at Charlie, sitting out on the steps, waiting for a friend who will never appear. She can’t listen to Madonna singing over and over again, “True love, oh baby,” when she knows that her daughter will never stand in the dark on a summer night and, more aware of her own heart beating than of the mosquitoes circling the porch light, lean her head upward, toward her first kiss.
Linda Gleason, who has curly red hair that cannot be tamed by headbands and silver clips, has been the principal of the Cheshire School for two years. Everyone loves her, not only the teachers and the parents but the students as well. She has an enormous amount of energy, and she loves the kids, even the wild ones, who are sent regularly to her office for misbehaving. Tonight she’s got a smile on her face, but her skin looks white; it seems to be drawn too tightly over her bones. She begins the meeting by introducing Ed Reardon. Most of the people in the room know Ed, he’s their kids’ doctor, but when he gives his short, prepared talk about AIDS, there’s suddenly a chill in the room. Polly wishes she had worn a sweater, and she hopes that Amanda and Charlie are wearing warm pajamas. She worries about leaving the children home alone, but they insist they’re too old for babysitters.
Linda Gleason and the superintendent of schools, a flushed-looking man named Scott Henry, go over the Massachusetts Board of Education’s AIDS policy&mdashchildren whose physicians deem them well enough to go to school may, others must be provided with a tutor&mdashuntil a board member named Mike Shepard interrupts.
“If you’re saying this child is going to continue going to school, all I can tell you is that we’re going to have big troubles. Parents are not going to sit still for this.”
If Polly had more courage, she would say what she’s thinking. Sit still for what? My daughter dying?
Under the table, Ivan takes Polly’s hand. Polly doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t close her fingers around his. She wonders if Ivan remembers that Mike Shepard runs the contracting company that put a new roof on their house.
The school board members ask Ed Reardon what will happen if Amanda cuts herself and bleeds on another child; they want to know if her saliva is dangerous. Not one of them is really listening when Ed explains that siblings of children with AIDS have shared toothbrushes and not come down with the virus. They don’t hear him when he insists their children are more likely to be run down by a truck in their own backyard than to contract AIDS from Amanda. Now Polly knows why she, Ivan, and Ed Reardon have all chosen to sit together on one side of the table. The accused.
“I think time will tell whether or not this little girl will be best served by having a tutor at home,” Scott Henry, the superintendent, says.
That’s when Polly pushes her chair away from the table and gets up. Ivan turns to her, concerned, but Polly walks out of the room without looking at him. She keeps walking until she finds the door marked GIRLS. Inside, everything is small: the basins, the toilets, the water fountains. Polly bends over one of the basins and vomits. She hears the door open behind her, but she vomits again.
“Keep your head down so you won’t get dizzy,” Linda Gleason says.
Linda runs water in another basin and dampens some paper towels, which she hands to Polly. Polly wipes her face. She has soiled her blouse, and as she tries to clean it off with the paper towels her hands shake.
“Damn it,” Polly says.
Linda Gleason takes out a cigarette and lights it. “This is against the rules,” she tells Polly. “Don’t tell anyone the principal has three cigarettes a day.”
Polly sits down on the rim of the basin, not caring if her skirt gets wet.
“They’re afraid,” Linda Gleason says. “They’ll do anything to protect their children. How would you feel if your healthy child sat next to someone with AIDS in class? You’d worry that the scientists were wrong, that they’d discover the virus was much more communicable than they’d thought.”
“I’d have pity on that sick child!” Polly says. “I wouldn’t be afraid of a little girl!”
“You’d think about the possibilities of infection, no matter how irrational. Look, it’s your child, your healthy child sitting there. You’d have to be an angel and not a mother if you didn’t worry. And that’s how many of the parents will feel.”
Polly and Linda Gleason look at each other.
“Whose side are you on?” Polly asks.
“I’m on the side of my students,” Linda Gleason says.
“I see,” Polly says.
“And Amanda’s one of my students.” , Polly wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “What are you, an angel or a principal?”
“Both,” Linda Gleason says.
“She’s staying,” Polly says. “I don’t care if she’s the only student in the school, she’s staying. I’m not going to take that away from her, too.”
Linda Gleason finishes her cigarette, then runs it under the water and tosses the butt in the wastebas-ket. They go out of the girls’ room together, and as they walk back to the administration office they pass a first-grade art board that the teacher has already decorated with pumpkins and falling leaves.
Don’t let it ever be October, Polly thinks to herself. Go backward, through August, July, June, May, and April. We don’t care if we ever see autumn again.
By the time Linda Gleason gets home it is almost midnight. Her children, a ten-year-old named Kristy and seven-year-old Sam, have long been asleep. Her husband, Martin, is watching The Tonight Show in bed, trying to force himself to wait up for her.
Linda stops in the kitchen, though she can hear the hum of the TV and knows Martin’s awake. Peepers, their cat, rubs against her legs when she opens the refrigerator. She finds a beer, gets out a container ‘of chopped chicken liver, then some crackers from the bread box and throws it all onto a tray, which she carries into the bedroom.
“Hi,” Martin says groggily. He sits up in bed and surveys the collection of food. “Are you pregnant?” he asks.
“Don’t talk to me,” Linda says. She sits on the edge of the bed and tears open the package of crackers.
Martin slides over next to her. “That bad?”
Linda rolls her eyes and realizes she’s forgotten a knife. She scoops out some chopped liver with her finger and smears it on a cracker. Then she is revolted. It’s not that she’s hungry, she’s sick to her stomach.
“Which kid is it?” Martin says.
“Amanda Farrell,” Linda tells him. “She’s going into sixth grade. Top gymnast.”
Martin doesn’t remember hearing -Linda talk about this student before,- she usually brings home stories about the ones in trouble.
“The school board’s going to raise hell,” Linda says. “I’ve got calls in to principals in Connecticut and New Jersey who’ve gone through this.”
“You’ll do the right thing,” Martin says.
Linda is filled with love, for him; he has such faith not only in her but in goodness. She gets up and puts the tray of food on top of the dresser. If the cat does not get to it, it will still be there for her to put away in the morning.
“What if there is no right thing to do?” she asks when she gets into bed beside him,
“You’ll invent it,” Martin assures her.
In the morning, when Linda goes to get the tray on her dresser, she also turns on the radio. That’s how she finds out that several protesters, calling themselves the Community Action Coalition, have begun to distribute fliers warning parents of the consequences of having an AIDS patient in a public elementary school. Linda listens to the words the announcer is saying, but she’s thinking that something must have gone wrong with her hearing; this happens in Florida, it happens far out in the middle of the country where people frighten more easily than they do in Morrow. Linda has always thought of herself as a peacemaker; she’s walked a fine line as principal and she’s done her best to make everyone happy. That will soon be impossible. Whatever decisions she makes from now on will make someone miserable, although who, Linda Gleason wonders, could possibly be more miserable than Amanda’s parents when they switch on the news and discover what’s out there?
Ivan reacts to the protesters the best way he knows how. He throws out the newspaper and unplugs the radio.
“Don’t think about it,” he tells Polly. “Don’t respond to it at all.”
It’s Saturday, and Ivan plans to take them all out to breakfast. They always go to a coffee shop called The Station, which has great home fries and blueberry pancakes, but now Ivan says he wants to try a diner he’s heard about in Gloucester, famous for its French toast. He would never admit to Polly or anyone else that he just has to get out of Morrow, at least for an hour. In Gloucester no one will know them; they’ll be just one more family ordering breakfast, asking for refills of coffee and an extra order of rye toast.
Polly gets dressed, she even puts on some blush, but once the kids are out in the car she tells Ivan she has a headache. She can’t go.
“Don’t stay here alone,” Ivan says at the door.
“I’ll be fine,” Polly tells him. “I’ll do the laundry.”
“Polly, come with us,” Ivan says. He’s begging her for something, and she doesn’t have anything to give him.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Polly says. “Will you just go!”
He lets the screen door slam. Polly waits until she’s certain he won’t come back; then she goes around to every window and pulls down the shades or draws the curtains. She can’t stop thinking about wasted time. She wants to scoop up all the hours teenage suicides give up and claim them for Amanda. The telephone rings, and Polly lets it go on ringing. It is probably that horrible group who want to keep Amanda out of school, or her father, who’s been driving her insane. Al wants to come up with Claire for a weekend, a couple of days, maybe’ a few weeks. While Polly is dragging Amanda to the hospital for blood tests, Al will shoot a few baskets with Charlie,- Claire will cook a stew. It’s the last thing in the world Polly wants. She’s always on guard when her parents visit&mdashif she weren’t she might tell them what she thought of them&mdashand she doesn’t have the energy to keep up her guard. If Claire and Al came up to stay, the children would know how bad things really are, and Polly will do just about anything to make their lives appear normal. She plans each meal for high nutritional value, carefully gauging how much Amanda eats of her lamb chop, her broccoli, her butterscotch pudding. She tells the children their rooms are a mess, when she no longer cares at all, and insists they pick up after themselves. She reminds Charlie to take out the garbage, and she always stacks the supper dishes so Amanda can load the dishwasher. But all the time she’s following their daily routine, what she’d like to do is hide both of her children and build a wall of cinderblocks around them so nothing can harm them.
The phone continues to ring, and Polly looks at it, imagining that it might explode. There’s no one she wants to speak to, but the ringing drives her mad. What if it’s Ed Reardon? What if he’s discovered that Amanda’s blood sample was mismarked at the lab and it’s someone else’s child who has tested positive? Polly picks up the phone and knows in an instant that she’s made a mistake.
Her father.
“We want to come up for a visit this week,” Al says.
He acts as though they haven’t been through this a dozen times before.
“Daddy,” Polly says tiredly. ,
“Your mother can pack a suitcase, including wrapping everything in tissue paper, in ten minutes flat.”
This is no idle threat, Polly has seen her mother doit.
“Absolutely not,” Polly says.
“Next weekend,” Al says. “Well drive up Friday night.”
“I’m going to hang up on you,” Polly tells him.
“What have you got against us?” Al says. “What did we do to you that was so terrible?”
“Nothing,” Polly says. “Look, I don’t want Mom to be upset.” .
It’s nowhere near the truth and Al knows it; he laughs in a peculiar, dark way. Ever since her mother took him back, Polly has not trusted Claire to be anything but weak. That’s exactly what they don’t need now, a weak old woman crying in their kitchen.
“She’s our granddaughter,” Al says. “You can’t stop us from helping.”
“You ,do what you like,” Polly says tightly. “You always have.”
After she hangs up on her father, Polly starts to cry. When she was a child she didn’t believe in bad luck. She thought her childhood was rotten because her parents didn’t love her, and she couldn’t wait to get out of their clutches. She was all wrong about luck, she sees that now, and it’s frightening to think what else she may have been wrong about. When her parents come to visit she knows Claire will dust the night table in the guest room and then she’ll set out the framed family photographs she always carries in her suitcase. There’ll be a green garbage bag filled with the tissue paper she’s used to pack Al’s sweaters and shoes. The children will be delighted to see their grandparents, they always are. Polly cannot believe that Al and Claire lavished one-tenth of the attention on her that they give to Amanda and Charlie, but then quite suddenly, she thinks about the velvet cloche Claire made for her. Every stitch was done by hand, small stitches no one would ever see. It took a long time to make something so perfect, longer than Polly would ever have imagined.
That night, after the children are in bed, Ivan spreads his work out on the coffee table and starts to go over his lecture. He can hear Polly cleaning up in the kitchen,- he can hear the tap water running and the occasional clinking of dishes against each other. Ivan leans back against the couch and lets his arms go limp. There’s no point in going over his work; all he can think about is blood and bones and antibodies. He’s not going to Florida, and he’ll never deliver his paper. He goes into the kitchen to tell Polly, but when he gets to the doorway he sees that she’s not really rinsing off the dishes, she’s just standing there, letting the water run so he’ll think she’s cleaning up. So he’ll leave her alone. That’s what she wants.
Ivan goes back through the living room; he grabs his jacket and his car keys and keeps on going, through the front door, which they never use. When he starts the Karmann-Ghia, smoke pours out of the exhaust pipe and the engine rumbles. Just above the sink, where Polly is standing, there is a window. She can see Ivan warming up the car,- she could stop him if she wanted to, at least ask him where he’s going to. But she doesn’t, she doesn’t even try.
