Among Friends

by Caroline B. Cooney

  My heart was pounding harder than language lab could ever make it do. I wanted to take a break from flirting with him and race through the halls and find Emily and Hill and tell them all the details.

  And then I remembered. The last thing Emily and Hillary wanted to know was that I had triumphed yet again.

  Paul and I went back to the German. We translated another paragraph. When we flipped to the back of the book to check an unknown word, my hand brushed against Paul Classified’s.

  I took a deep breath. I had not known how scary it would be actually to ask the question. “Would you like to go with me to Jared and Ansley’s party, Paul?”

  His eyes stayed on the index. His hand lay flat on the pages. His face went back to its shuttered look: the one where I no longer know if he’s handsome or plain, interesting or dull. “I’m sorry, Jennie,” he said. “My family has plans. I can’t make it. But thank you for asking me.”

  How do you know they have plans? I didn’t tell you what day the party is.

  Paul Classified went on translating, as if it mattered.

  How could he have turned me down?

  How could he have wanted to hear my pageant three times but not want to go out with me?

  The pounding in my heart got worse because I wanted to run away. But I had to sit there, being exactly like Paul R. Smith. Being nothing important to anyone.

  I can’t tell Em and Hill about the good things in my life. I have too many. They’re jealous. But I can share the bad things. They’d like that. I can tell them Paul Classified turned me down, and that will make them happy.

  But what a price to pay!

  Is that what life requires?

  You can have two friends again, kid, as long as you agree not to get Paul.

  McDonald’s.

  Now if that isn’t a normal everyday unthreatening place, what is? You wouldn’t think your life could collapse at a McDonald’s. I even chose the one in Stamford so we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew.

  Wrong. Emily has a job there. Emily got our order.

  Of course Mom could not have looked worse. She went to her new job today, but she didn’t dress right, and there are terrible circles under her eyes, and I couldn’t talk her into putting on makeup or brushing her hair. I wanted to tell Emily—Mom didn’t used to look like this! She used to be pretty and she used to laugh.

  Emily was all bright and cheerful, of course: partly McDonald’s behavior to customers, and partly Emily. She beamed at us. Her hair was pretty: soft, cloudy. I thought that after I paid for the hamburgers I would tell her that. Emily said, “Hi, Paul. Is this your Mom? Hi, Mrs. Smith.”

  My mother started crying.

  Right there at the McDonald’s.

  Patrons six deep at five lines, and my mother is sobbing on the counter.

  Emily looked at my mother in horror, and then at me.

  I closed my eyes for a minute to get strength. I didn’t get any. “Mom, pull yourself together,” I whispered. Please God, please let her stop crying. I can’t even take this at home, how can I take it in front of fifty people at McDonald’s?

  My mother just shook her head and kept on sobbing. She didn’t make a whole lot of noise, but she went limp, as if she planned to take a nap on top of the brown tray where Emily had put a Christmas placemat.

  We had to get out of there. “Mom, let’s go back to the car,” I said, trying not to scream, because if Mom panicked it would just get worse.

  People were staring at us. “Is she having a fit or something?” demanded a fat woman next to us, pulling away in case it was catching. The line we were in dissolved. Customers moved to other registers. People who were afraid of fits looked away, and people who weren’t stared as hard as they could.

  The manager came scurrying out. “Can I help you, ma’am?” My mother just lay there. By now nobody was talking, not the customers, not the McDonald’s crew, and most of all not me. The manager was about eighteen years old and terrified of women collapsing on his counters.

  By now I knew that if I was going to move my mother, I’d have to pick her up. I’m trying to stay in control, right? I’m trying not to yell at her or at the strangers around us, I’m trying to get her out of there. She’s not doing anything but sobbing. All of a sudden I know I’m going to fall apart, too. I can’t think or move.

  Emily said to the manager, “Steve, take my register.” She came around, put an arm under my mother, and said to me, “Let’s get her into the ladies’ room, Paul.” All I could think of was that Emily would have to go into the ladies’ room with her—for a whole minute, maybe two, I would not have to be responsible. We got out of line and staggered to a table back by the restrooms, folding my mother into one of those plastic chairs. I held Mom up by the shoulders while Emily knelt on the other side and rubbed Mom’s hands. All I wanted to do was go home forever.

  “Do you want me to call an ambulance?” asked Emily quietly.

  An ambulance? It wasn’t like Mom was bleeding or anything.

  Emily kept supporting my mother, but she put her hand on mine. It was warm, and large, and her fingers were fingers that work hard: not elegant, not pretty, but strong. “My father used to be drunk all the time,” she said. Her voice was very calm, as if she had done this for years. After her next sentence I knew she had. “We used to have to go to the railroad station and scrape him up off the parking lot into the back seat.”

  “She’s not drunk,” I managed to say. “She’s having a nervous breakdown.”

  “Oh, Paul,” said Emily, and her eyes filled with tears. Tears for me. I picked up the saltshaker with my free hand and felt the hard edges of it. “Listen, Paul, with my father the only thing that worked was to get him into an institution. You can’t be responsible. It’ll kill you.”

  “I have to be responsible,” I said. “There isn’t anyone else.” I tried to crush the saltshaker in my hand but I couldn’t quite do it. If my father had been around I would have crushed him, but I couldn’t do that, either.

  Emily blew out her breath hard. “Well, I guess I have some of the answers, Paul Classified. I know why you’re thinner. I know why you’re always clamming up. But what they taught us in Al-Anon is, the first step is talking about it.”

  “I told you, she isn’t drunk.”

  “Paul, I believe you. Anyway, I remember the smell too well. But she looks half dead. You do, too. And I’m serious about the ambulance. Maybe she needs to be in the psychiatric ward at the hospital.”

  My mother wasn’t even listening. She could have been a very large rag doll.

  “If you get her home like this, then what’ll you do?” said Emily practically.

  Her hand was still on mine. It was comforting. But I changed the subject. “What happened to your father, Emily?”

  She shrugged. “Mom divorced him, he’s remarried twice, he’s very handsome, you know, very dashing when he’s not on a binge. He really isn’t part of our lives any more. It’s terrible, it still hurts us all. But there you are, these things happen and you have to get past them.”

  I couldn’t believe she talked about it. I can’t stand talking about it.

  “Is that all?” Emily said then. “Is that the secret, Paul? Your mother fell apart?”

  I ended up telling her the whole thing. My real mother, my real sister, my real father. Three people abandoning us was too much. “Mom couldn’t take it,” I finished. “Something in her snapped.”

  Emily listened, keeping her hand where it was, like a lifeline. “When you say Mom, you mean your stepmother?”

  I shrugged. “Only mother I had. Biological doesn’t count.”

  But oh, it counted for Candy! She wrote off her whole childhood and walked out the door with a strange person who said, oh by the way, I’m your mother. And Mom, Mom died inside when Candy abandoned us.

  I didn’t say that to Emily. But maybe she knew. She told the kid manager to call the ambulance. She went with me to the hospital. She gave me lots of advice I didn’
t listen to. She promised not to talk, but what is a promise? Nobody I know ever kept one.

  I went home to an empty house. I’d forgotten to get the hamburgers. I was starving. What a great guy you are, I thought. You just checked your mother into the psychiatric ward, and all you can think of is a Big Mac.

  That was yesterday.

  Today I avoided Emily like the plague.

  I couldn’t stand to look at her or think about her.

  So I ended up closeted with Jennie Quint.

  It was so crazy. Jennie’s flirting, I’m trying to survive; Jennie’s asking me to a New Year’s party, I’m wondering if there will be a New Year.

  I am, after all, the girl who knows Paul’s secrets.

  But it’s just your typical sad sordid suburban secret, and if he’d talked about it all along, it wouldn’t hurt so much and he wouldn’t be so alone.

  But what do I do now? It’s Christmas vacation, and we’re off to Killington and Paul is alone. I tried to telephone him. It’s been disconnected. I phoned the hospital to ask after Mrs. Smith, but they wouldn’t give me any information at all. I have to help Paul, and I have to help Mrs. Smith—but I promised I wouldn’t tell.

  What is a promise?

  How much does it count?

  How bad are you if you keep the promise and how bad are you if you break it?

  It’s noisy out. Isn’t that odd? Ice clinging to every twig has cracked, dropping through the crust of snow. Shutters tap, branches rasp together, and the wind whistles out of tune behind the shed.

  Mrs. Quint was over talking to Jared’s mother. It seems that her dear brilliant special Jennie had a hard holiday. Mrs. Quint is angry at Emily and Hillary for abandoning Jennie, even though Mrs. Quint has never liked Em and Hill. Mrs. Quint feels the world should revolve around her precious Jennie and she is absolutely frosted about this mediocre Christmas.

  Jared and I had a perfect holiday. Everybody should spend a winter vacation in Colorado. Got home December 30, threw our bags down and went into New York for the day. We got tickets to Amahl and the Night Visitors. It’s kind of sentimental but I like that musical: crippled boy receives miracle when he gives his only possession—his crutch—to the infant King.

  I was thinking, though.

  You feel sorry for Amahl because he’s pitiful.

  If Amahl were perfect—like Jennie—then you wouldn’t care.

  Perfect people are on their own.

  Two weeks ago I told Dad about Ye Season, It Was Winter. Already he wants to see what I’ve gotten accomplished. Sometimes I feel as if I’m under attack.

  But I keep producing, I keep working, I keep doing my best. I love doing my best. It makes me feel shiny inside, and breathless.

  And I want to talk about it.

  I want to call Hillary up and shriek, “Hill! I did it again! And it’s good!” I want to call Emily up and yell, “Em! Wait ’til you read this! I’m brilliant!”

  Can you imagine? They’d hang up on me. Then they’d call each other up. “Do you believe that conceited arrogant blankety blank Jennie Quint?”

  But it hardly matters.

  They went to Killington the day after Christmas.

  Jared and Ansley went to Colorado to ski.

  Nobody knows what Paul Classified did. I guess he likes being alone. He certainly has the choice of friends and parties. I can’t imagine that. Why ever on earth would a person choose to be alone? I hate being alone!

  Daddy and Mother got worried about me because I was depressed, so we flew out to Chicago to visit Daddy’s college friends for a weekend. Chicago was fun. It looks the way a city should look. Daddy brought tapes of the musical and his old college roommate thinks we can get it published. Mother went wild with excitement and got right to work on the leads he provided.

  I would love it—and yet—how could I tell anybody?

  They don’t want me to do more, they want me to do less.

  The Awesome Threesome went cross-country skiing on the hills beyond Lost Pond. There had been an ice storm, and skiing was crunchy. We were together five hours.

  Marching orders from our mothers, actually, because over Christmas vacation we’re not allowed to be mean. I said to my mother, “Did Mrs. Quint tell you to tell us to ask Jennie?” and my mother said, “Are you kidding? Mrs. Quint is thrilled that Jennie is finally out of the threesome. It was holding Jennie back, you know.”

  And I said, “So why do Emily and I have to do this?” and my mother said, “Because I felt so guilty at Killington without Jennie that I had a horrible time.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You have a horrible time and I have to be nice?” I said. My mother shrugged. “Life isn’t fair,” she reminded me. I rolled my eyes again. “Of course not,” I told her. “After all, we’re talking Jennie here.”

  So we invited Jennie skiing and she was happy. Emily, however, was weird. I hated it. It isn’t like Emily to be weird. Em is so ordinary, it’s what I like best about her. Some of the time it was me and Jennie talking, with Emily just being weird in between topics. Something that interests all three of us is Paul Classified, but even then Emily was weird.

  “What do you think Paul Classified’s background really is, anyhow?” I said.

  “Maybe one of his parents is in prison,” said Jennie. “That’s why he won’t tell us anything about himself.”

  “He doesn’t look like the sort of person with a parent in prison,” I objected.

  “I know, but have you ever seen his parents?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I don’t think anybody has.”

  And does Emily contribute her ideas about Paul Classified? No. Emily says, “Look up Talcott Hill. Every sliver of ice is a prism tossing off sunlight.”

  “Paul’s an alien,” was my next suggestion. “He doesn’t have parents. He’s a collection of atomic particles.”

  Jennie giggled. “Actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a spy. Has a second passport under a false name and Swiss bank accounts to turn to in time of trouble.”

  “The false name,” I said, “is the one we have. Paul Smith? Now I ask you. Can anybody really be named Paul Smith?”

  “Paul R. Smith,” corrected Jennie. “Let’s not forget the classified initial.”

  Emily actually said, out loud, and everything, “The sky is so blue it’s not part of the world. Isolated as Paul. Come spring, maybe the sky will soften and get involved again.”

  Jennie and I stared at her, and then at the sky. Jennie said, “I like that, Em. The sky as uninvolved politics.”

  Well, maybe Jennie liked it, but I didn’t. I went back to Paul Classified. Taking off my ski gear and leaning it up against the back porch, I said, “I think the ‘R’ stands for some horrible name, like Rollo or Reginald.” The three of us went into my house thinking of humiliating “R” names. There were a lot. Roscoe. Rudolph. “Enough to make anybody decide his middle name is classified information,” said Jennie, giggling.

  My mother greeted us with hugs and kisses and hot chocolate. “How was skiing? Did you have a good time? Why didn’t you ask me to go along? You’re so mean, you three. You never include me.” She was just babbling. She was so pleased that the three of us had lasted four hours without coming apart at the seams. Cross-country is hard work. It helps when you’re gasping for breath, you can’t argue much. And it was nice that we had an ice storm—Jennie fell as much in the ice as we did.

  “Next time, Ma. This time I instructed you to stay in the kitchen making cookies and apple pie for us. Did you obey me?”

  We all laughed. Mom is a computer analyst in the city and hasn’t baked a cookie since I started first grade. “No,” she said, “but I rented some good movies. I told the man I wanted a movie to cry by. I am in the mood for tears and Kleenex.”

  “On New Year’s Day?” said Jennie. “That sounds very significant to me, Mrs. Lang.”

  “I’m going to get all my sobbing for the year over with the first day,” she explained.

  S
o we trooped into the family room and convinced my father that he really wanted to see his football game in the bedroom on the little TV. After sticking the tearjerker in the VCR, The Awesome Threesome lay on the rug to eat bakery cookies and drink instant hot chocolate while my mother tucked herself under an afghan and prepared to sob for an hour and a half.

  But I was the one who sobbed.

  Later. Much later.

  When everybody was gone, and the movie was over, and my parents went out: then I sobbed for an hour and a half. I was terrible, so terrible, I was bad, every ounce of me, I actually hated another person.

  On New Year’s Day.

  Don’t tell includes Hillary.

  I can’t talk to Hillary! Or my mother! Or Hill’s parents. Who are practically my second set anyhow.

  Don’t tell. I didn’t realize how much Classified was asking. He’s asking me to become classified, too.

  What a test. Doing everything with Hillary, including talking about Paul Classified—and not breathing a word. I don’t think I’ve ever kept a secret before. I don’t think I’ve ever had a secret before. Not from Hill.

  Mrs. Lang made us be nice to Jennie and I think Hill and I were both secretly glad. It’s easier to be nice when you’re under orders. And I even had a pretty good time. But they kept bringing Paul up! And I kept having to bite my tongue to keep from telling what I know! Instead I would say something dumb about the sky or the glare off the snow.

  I was so glad when we went inside for hot chocolate; Mrs. Lang would do all the talking now and I was off the hook.

  But Mrs. Lang wanted us all to write New Year’s resolutions. “I don’t think a person should go overboard,” she said, tossing pencils at us. “Three is probably enough. Let’s write three New Year’s resolutions apiece.” We agreed, and Mrs. Lang handed everybody an index card. “So your resolutions won’t be too long,” she explained.