Falling Over Sideways

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Then the classroom door opened, and Leigh barged in. Mrs. Selinsky snipped, “Nice of you to join us,” and Leigh snarled back, “I know, right? Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll give you some fashion tips while I’m here.”

  Roughly thirteen seconds later, I was perhaps the unhappiest member of an extremely mismatched group of five. We were supposed to do a pretty simple lab. All we had to accomplish by the end of class was to weigh a bunch of rocks, drop them one by one into a graduated cylinder full of water, and then calculate the density of each rock.

  But of course, the work wasn’t the hard part. Not killing each other was the challenge. Ryder immediately started in on me. He was all, “What’s your audition piece gonna be—‘Three Blind Mice’? ‘Chopsticks’? The C scale?” I tried, as I always did, to ignore him and work on setting up a chart for our results with Regina, who was trying to get to work.

  Leigh was in an unusually foul mood, even for her, and she started taking it out on Christopher. “Hey, Chris, I like your sweatpants. Did they come stained like that, or did you add the stains yourself?”

  It was like watching someone smack a puppy. Christopher just sat there, kind of smiling. He totally didn’t know what to do. Neither did I. First of all, I couldn’t disengage from Ryder, and second of all, Leigh scared me. Not physically, but socially.

  “And the way you pull them way up to your chest like that. I think that look might really catch on.”

  “Leave him alone, Leigh,” Regina said.

  I thought, I was just about to say something. I didn’t really fool myself, though. I mostly just felt a flood of relief. My shirt was stuck to my back with sweat.

  “I’m not bothering him. I’m complimenting him. You don’t mind, do you, Chris?”

  “My name is not Chris. It is Christopher.”

  “Oh, sweetie. I was just giving you a nickname because you’re my friend. Don’t you want to be my friend?” She was talking in a sort of flirty voice. She even leaned in to touch him.

  Big mistake.

  “Don’t touch me. I don’t like touching. No touching!” Christopher closed his eyes and began to rock forward and back. Regina stepped between Leigh and Christopher and hissed in Leigh’s face, “Get on the other side of the table, you dumb little—”

  And then Mrs. Selinsky was there. “Miss Chavez, what are you doing? Are you a troublemaker like your brother?”

  “I don’t know,” Regina shot back. “Are you a troublemaker like your daughter?”

  We didn’t manage to figure out the density of our rocks. It was basically a miracle that nobody started throwing them around the room.

  I really didn’t want to get cut from jazz band, so I went to Mrs. Jones and asked her what I should do to practice for the auditions. She told me that the best thing I could do was work on sight-reading, tone, and fluency. I asked how to do that, and she handed me a huge book called The Big Book of Pop Songs for Alto Sax.

  You had to kind of admire the creative title job, there.

  Mrs. Jones told me that if I just learned to play as many different songs as possible, I would be preparing myself for the audition.

  “This will get some tunes under your fingers. The more tunes you know, the better you’ll play. Besides, you’re depressed, Claire. Remember? You need to connect with the joy of making music again!”

  I took the book, but inside I was still screaming, I’m not depressed!

  A few nights later, Mom had to run to the store, and Matthew was studying, so I was alone with Dad. I had already talked to him about everything I could think of, and he had responded by blurting various random nonsense words. It was still early, and I was bored, so I took out my sax and the new songbook and started playing.

  Dad sat up straighter than he had in weeks, and looked right at me. You know how your parents sometimes tell you they’re listening, but they’re not actually listening? Maybe they’re checking email, or texting, or paying bills, or writing something on a Post-it for your other parent, even as they insist you have their total, undivided attention?

  Well, having a stroke does not generally improve the parental ability to focus. But apparently, certain music does.

  My father had always loved 1960s music, and the first hundred or so songs in the book were all from that time. After a few songs, I could have sworn I heard him humming along, but then I thought it was probably my imagination. I stopped playing to see whether I was crazy.

  As soon as I took the horn away from my lips, Dad pointed frantically at the book and grunted something that sounded like “Mo-ah mook!” I quickly started playing again, and by the end of that tune, I realized what he had been trying to say: “More music!”

  The sixth song in the book was “Octopus’s Garden” by the Beatles. Dad had always sung that one to me when I was little, and I could vividly remember wondering how a garden could grow under the sea. My lips were getting extremely fatigued, but I decided to try to get through it for him.

  Dad started humming right away. By the second verse, he was tapping his good foot. By the third, he was banging his left hand against the arm of the sofa. A flicker of shadow on the wall behind him caught my eye, and I looked up from the page for a moment and saw that Matthew was standing at the top of the steps, smiling.

  When I got to the end, Dad started singing the last line, over and over.

  I took my mouthpiece away from my lips and sat there, stunned. Dad smiled and clapped. The clapping didn’t work quite right, because his right hand was too floppy, but the intent was clear.

  Matthew cleared his throat and said, “See? Toldja he missed you. Nice job, Piggy.”

  Mom was pretty excited about Dad’s musical breakthrough—so excited that she called the neurologist right away for an appointment. She thought this was going to be a major miracle and that Dad was about to start talking in complete, perfect sentences any minute.

  The people at the neurology office were so, um, excited that they scheduled the appointment for only three weeks away. Evidently, this news wasn’t so earth-shatteringly awesome to them.

  In the meantime, I kept playing for my father, and found that there were several Beatles songs that made him sing along every time. He hadn’t progressed to actually conversing about octopuses, gardens, twisting and shouting, or what was going to happen when he turned sixty-four, but Mom insisted it was just about to happen. I wasn’t so sure, but at least it seemed to have given her some hope.

  Then one day, she was in such a good mood that she answered the house phone when it rang, which she hadn’t done for weeks. This was unfortunate timing, because the call was from Alanna’s mom, who wanted to know whether we were all coming for Halloween. I was standing right there, which was the worst part. Mom’s end of the discussion went like this:

  “Hello, Susan. Yes, I know the Halloween party is coming up. I had just assumed you knew we weren’t coming.”

  “Well, you know … we still aren’t really getting out at this point.”

  “After David’s stroke.”

  “In September. Oh my God. I just thought … I thought Claire must have told all her friends.” As she said this, Mom gave me a look like, We will discuss this later.

  “No, don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault. No, we don’t need anything. We’re managing. It hasn’t been easy, but my parents and David’s mother have been helping out a lot, and we have home health workers that stop by during the day. And the kids have been great.”

  “He can walk. And he can basically feed himself. But he can’t speak, really. I know. Can you imagine David not being able to speak? David, of all people? It’s like a punishment specifically designed for him. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to … ”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t think so, and she says she’s not, but if you could just watch for any signs of that, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Thanks, we will.”

  “Five o’clock. G
ot it.”

  Then my mother hung up the phone, put her head in her hands, and cried.

  So much for the whole “good mood” thing.

  The next time I had dance, my first session was a private with Miss Laura. I was super nervous about seeing my friends, who shared a break time with me right after the session. As I stretched, I tried extremely hard to clear my mind. One of the other teachers, Miss Amy, always said, “If your thoughts are light, your feet will be light.”

  But Miss Laura was not Miss Amy. She was working with me on a few different combinations for my classes. On this night, I couldn’t even get through one combination without her stopping me to lay on a barrage of criticism. She kept saying things like “Finish your turns, Claire! I wish you could see how great Alanna is at this now. She always finishes her turns. Maybe she can show you after class.” Then, when I went back to try again, I would concentrate on my turns, but she would go, “Extension! I want to see extension. Your arms, your legs—everything should be at full extension! You should ask your friend Katherine for help with this. She has the most lovely extension.”

  In case it wasn’t awful enough having to be in the baby classes while my friends were in the high school group, getting my nose rubbed in all the reasons why I was inferior was kind of the cherry on the crap cake.

  During break, I just wanted to avoid everybody, sit in the corner, and eat my miserable dinner of yogurt and a thermos of instant soup. But of course Alanna and Katherine had to come rushing over and throw their arms around me. It was only my incredibly quick reflexes that saved us all from getting ultrahot, noodly broth all over our dance outfits.

  Which might have been less painful than having to go through the whole “Oh my gosh I’m so sorry about your dad why didn’t you tell us” sobfest that followed. Right in the middle of the lobby. While all the high school girls watched disdainfully from one end, the babies from my classes stared in horror from the other, and a gaggle of assorted dance moms kept sneaking glances and whispering in the middle. We might as well have just set up a Watch the Crying Girls: Only Five Cents! booth at a carnival. At least then we might have earned some nickels.

  By the time I got called in for my next class, I felt like I had been spray-painted with a sticky mixture of hair product, tears, makeup, and, quite possibly, snot.

  I didn’t feel beautiful, and I certainly didn’t feel like a great dancer, but in a strange way, I did kind of feel loved.

  Our Halloween sleepover started out absolutely swell. When my mom dropped me off, there was the awkward part when Katherine’s and Alanna’s moms both hugged me, told me I could come to them if I needed anything—anything—and then shared some kind of deeply significant “Watch out for Claire” eye-contact moment.

  Did these people think I was blind?

  Then there was the costume situation. Alanna was decked out in a Marilyn Monroe outfit, complete with white dress, pearls, and a fake fur coat. Katherine was a black cat, which meant a bodysuit, black leg warmers, a black hat with ears attached, and a black scarf. I was the only moron who didn’t think about the fact that it would be twenty-three degrees and sleeting while we trick-or-treated, so I was sporting my tap-dance costume from last year’s recital, which was made of thin material, had short sleeves, and stopped above my knees. I was supposed to be Rosie the Riveter, but instead I felt like Patty the Popsicle.

  Still, I was determined to have fun, so I set out with a smile plastered on my face and kept it there even as my teeth chattered so hard I thought my braces might come flying off from the vibration. By the time we got back to the house and made it upstairs to Alanna’s room, I could barely force my fingers to unclench from around my candy bag so that we could pour everything out and see what we’d gotten. We had a tradition of lighting a bunch of candles, and then comparing our loot in the dim light.

  That was when the others noticed how cold I was. They wrapped me up in a blanket, and after a while, some feeling came back to my extremities, which was nice. The oddest sensation was in my mouth, which had gotten so cold that I could actually feel the pain from the icy metal of my braces touching me.

  That didn’t go away until Alanna’s mom came up with cups of warm cider. I swished my first sip around my mouth until my wires were all heated up. I know—weird, right?

  Then I took stock of my candy situation, and wanted to throw a crying fit like a little kid. I couldn’t eat a single freaking thing on that floor. Everything had caramel, peanuts, crunchy this, extra-gooey that—an orthodontic nightmare. The candy was so useless to me for eating purposes, I might as well have just gone door to door asking Alanna’s neighbors for razor blades and bottles of expired medication.

  I was tempted to go back out and ask for those once Alanna and Katherine started chowing down on the candy I couldn’t eat, while gossiping about the girls I didn’t know in the class I wasn’t allowed to attend. It was like I wasn’t even in the room.

  Katherine said, “Alanna, could you believe it when Janna texted Jeff a dinner order in the middle of class?”

  I said, “Uh, who’s Jeff?”

  Alanna said, “Her boyfriend. I KNOW! And then HE ACTUALLY CAME WITH THE FOOD! She’s always doing stuff like that. It’s exactly like Madison always says.”

  And then they both chanted at the exact same time, in the exact same singsongy voice: “If Janna texted Jeff to stop breathing right now, he’d text back three minutes later and ask for permission to die.”

  I just kind of sat there, like, Wow, this would be so super funny if I … umm … knew or cared about any of these people. The torment went on and on, until suddenly Katherine noticed that I hadn’t said anything in a while.

  And that I was tearing the wrapper of the one candy I could eat (a plain chocolate bar) into smaller and smaller pieces.

  And that I was chewing on my hair, which I only do when I am really upset.

  And, okay, there might have been some small amount of leakage emitting from the inside corners of my eye areas.

  “Claire?” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

  I wanted to scream, Am I all right? Do I look all right? Would you be all right if you couldn’t dance, you couldn’t play your instrument, everyone at your school hated you, your friends pitied you, and your father lost his ability to do—oh, I don’t know—basically everything?

  But I thought that might sound too dramatic, so I just cleared my throat and said, “I’m fine. It’s just, uh, the candle smell. I must be allergic. Are these candles floral scented or something?”

  Because, you know, a lot of times the symptoms of allergic reaction include teary eyes and blatant psychosis.

  Alanna and Katherine gave each other the same look their moms had exchanged earlier, and then Katherine said she had to go to the bathroom. Ah, I get it, I thought. She’s going to go tell the mothers I’m depressed. But I am not depressed—I’m mad! Why can’t anybody tell the difference around here?

  I went with my parents to my father’s neurologist appointment. Mom insisted I had to come and bring my sax, in case the doctor needed to see Dad’s singing. I was like, Yeah, I’m sure you can’t just say he’s been belting out “Yellow Submarine” every night. The quality of his Ringo Starr impression might be of extreme diagnostic importance. With a cane and some help from Mom, Dad was able to walk out to the car, which was great. I was shocked to realize that I hadn’t actually been in a car with him since the ride home from the hospital.

  I couldn’t stand being trapped in the house for a long weekend. I wondered what a couple of months, mostly in one room, would feel like. Mom had been trying for a while to get Dad out of the house, but he kept refusing to go anywhere. It was terrible. The whole thing made me want to reach out, hold my father’s hand, and never let go.

  Once, when I was in kindergarten, I had the flu and missed a few days of school. I remembered two things about it quite vividly. The first was throwing up while my father held my hair away from my face. His hand had been cool against my
cheek, and then, when he handed me a cup of water to wash my mouth out, he had brushed the backs of his fingers against my forehead.

  The second was that I slept a lot, but whenever I was awake, my dad was there to entertain me. We played with my ponies, cuddled up and watched movies, read together, and drew pictures. We even made a blanket fort that took up the entire living room. When my mom got home from work at the end of the third day, she asked how things were going, and I said, “Excellent! I think Daddy should be my teacher from now on!”

  Mom and Dad had looked at each other all mushily, and I had covered my eyes in case they were going to kiss.

  The point is, the memory made me realize how much more I owed my father. I vowed that, as long as he was semi-helpless, I was going to make his life better.

  We were in the waiting room for forty-five minutes, which is an extremely long time to sit with a person who can’t hold a normal conversation, although my dad seemed to be pretty delighted by the madcap excitement of the twenty-four-hour news channel, which was blaring from a TV in one corner. From what I could tell, something had blown up in the Middle East, there was extreme weather somewhere else, something big had happened in the stock market, lots of earthquake refugees looked extremely miserable in a muddy place, and the president’s office was going to make a major announcement about something-something soon.

  It was hard to get the details, because Dad kept poking my arm and saying, “Portant! Portant!” Mom felt that this was yet another sign of massive communication-related progress.

  The doctor was less impressed, although at least he didn’t make me run out to the car for my saxophone. He said it was an “established phenomenon” for people with left-hemisphere strokes to be able to sing songs they had known well before, even when they couldn’t speak with much coherency otherwise.

  Mom asked, “But isn’t this a sign of progress?”