by Maria Padian
Prowess: extraordinary ability.
Deep down, I think my folks always wondered where they’d gone wrong. Maybe if they’d made me take Suzuki violin lessons, or played classical music while I did puzzles, or spoken Spanish to me in the womb, I would have turned out to have an IQ like Michael’s. Or like theirs. Instead, they got a poorly dressed sports nut, and while I knew they loved me, I also knew they didn’t quite get me.
So I figured they’d be thrilled to see me in Fifth Period. Hangin’ with the smart kids. Maybe some of it would rub off…could genius be contagious?…and instead of IM’ing Kit or watching back episodes of Lost on TV, I’d spend evenings discussing po-ehms (two syllables) with Dad.
But here’s the thing about parents: Just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they pull the rug out from under you.
They greeted my big news with: silence. The spinach lasagna steaming on our plates made more noise.
“Well, let’s get excited, why don’t we?” I finally said.
“I—I’m sorry,” Dad stammered. “Mother never said a word to me about this.”
“And that surprises you?” Mom replied sarcastically.
“It’s actually not a bad idea,” Dad said. “That’s a pretty creative bunch of kids. And with our Brett”—he reached over and squeezed my shoulder—“I bet they’ll come up with a great plan.” He smiled, but I saw worry behind his eyes.
“Did the teacher mention whether Nonna plans to attend these classes?” Mom asked.
“She didn’t say. And I haven’t asked Nonna.” The Gnome Home had been dark when I’d gotten home from school that afternoon.
“Well, great. Just great,” Mom snapped. Tossing her napkin into her full plate, she got up from the table and walked over to the sink.
“What’d I do now?” I exclaimed. Somehow, my marvelous news had soured.
“You haven’t done anything, sweetheart,” Dad said. “We’re just a little frustrated with your grandmother right now.”
“Because?” I prompted.
“It’s complicated,” Dad said. “She has some decisions to make about her treatment, and we’re having a hard time getting her to focus.” I remembered the forms Nonna had had with her in the hospital. She’d seemed pretty focused to me.
“Mr. Beady said you guys fought,” I said.
“Mr. Beady needs to mind his own business!” Mom burst out. Dad flashed her one of his “not-in-front-of-Brett” looks. Typical.
“Beady seems to be her partner in crime these days,” Dad said dryly. “I know he has her best interests in mind, but for a man in his seventies he can be rather immature. About certain things.”
“Such as?” I asked, a tad aggressively. For some reason, it bothered me to hear them criticize Mr. Beady.
“Such as this ridiculous party he’s cooked up for her!” Mom fumed. “Did he tell you about this…this Bazooka Birthday?”
I had heard. We’d started planning it during Nonna’s last night in the hospital. Instead of talking about the advance directive forms (which would upset me) or my latest suspension (which would upset Nonna), we’d planned her birthday party. Nonna would turn seventy-three in December, and she had some very definite ideas about how we should all celebrate.
For starters, no gifts. “The last thing I need is more stuff,” she declared. “I need to get rid of stuff, not take more on.”
“Don’t we all,” Mr. Beady commented. Nonna’s face brightened.
“Beady, you’re brilliant!” she exclaimed. “That’s exactly what we’ll do!”
“I said something brilliant?” he asked me. I shrugged.
“Instead of a gift, everyone has to bring something they need to lose,” Nonna said.
“But then won’t you get stuck with all their stuff?” I asked. Probably pretty bad stuff too. I had some fairly awful socks I needed to toss.
“No…we’ll blast them! From the bazooka!” Nonna said excitedly.
“What if they bring old cars? Bicycles?” Mr. Beady asked.
“They’ll have to bring small items,” she said. “Or photos of larger items. Or models. Symbols.” Nonna was on a roll. She began to think out loud. “Perhaps the things they want to lose are not material at all—what if someone wants to lose weight? Or a bad habit? The possibilities are endless!”
The whole wacky idea pleased her enormously. For the rest of that evening we talked party: from the menu to the guest list to all the stuff we imagined people bringing. We planned until the night nurse told us visiting hours were over, and as Mr. Beady and I drove home, I realized we hadn’t thought about cancer for an entire hour.
“You know, the party is not Mr. Beady’s idea,” I told my parents. “This is all Nonna. And she’s psyched.”
“The party is fine,” Dad said tiredly, as if this were a topic he’d already discussed a million times. “But we can’t let it distract us from what’s important right now.”
“Exactly,” Mom agreed. “And that means treatment. Meetings with doctors. Visits to the hospital. I know those things are not as much fun as planning parties or…building lighthouses with children…but being a grown-up means doing a lot of boring things. It means taking responsibility.”
“You sound like you don’t think Mr. Beady and Nonna are grown-ups,” I said quietly.
“That’s right. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got three children!” Mom exclaimed. Dad slapped his fork down loudly on the table.
“Enough,” he said firmly. “I will talk to Mother. Tonight. I’ll find out what she’s planning at the school and make sure it coordinates with the treatment plan the doctors have prescribed.”
“Fine,” Mom said, clearing away our half-eaten plates. “As long as she starts chemo next week. That’s priority number one.”
i•ron•ic
Growth is a defining fact of a junior high kid’s life. The defining fact.
Early growers are Royalty. Kings and Queens of the school dances. Lords and Ladies of the sports teams. Once-skinny boys who could barely heft a basketball from the free-throw line morph into broad-shouldered starters for the A team. Shy girls who only just gave up playing with dolls sprout bodacious breasts requiring hot outfits from the teen department.
Conversely, slow growers are Peasants. In a world where everyone wants to seem as high school as possible, flat-chested shortness is a curse. Lucky slow growers find a safe haven in Geek World, too busy practicing their musical instruments or attending math meets to worry about the boy-girl or sports scenes. The unlucky…those who are short, untalented, and only mildly intelligent…they kind of get lost in junior high.
It was ironic that just when everything in and around me concerned growth, my grandmother embarked on a journey of antigrowth, a.k.a. chemotherapy.
Ironic: given to irony; expressing something other than and especially the opposite of.
The doctors wanted to shrink the tumors they’d found on Nonna’s pancreas. So they prescribed chemotherapy. Chemo, as Mom called it. This involved Nonna going to the hospital once a week, where they fed antigrowth chemicals into her veins. The chemicals stopped the cancer cells from growing—as well as all the other cells in her body. Her fingernails. Her hair. Bam! No more growth. And the thing about hair is that when it stops growing, it loses its hold in your skin. And it drops off. Not all at once, but slowly. First a few extra hairs in the brush or on the shower floor. Then handfuls. And before you even realized what had happened, your silver-haired Nonna was bald.
Unfortunately, chemo also causes nausea. Which causes vomiting. Which causes weight loss. So another irony of that winter was that while I spent most of my waking hours feeding my machine with healthy foods (not Pop-Tarts), and waking up every morning a bit bigger, Nonna shrank. Pounds fell off her, she slept a lot, and because she didn’t feel well, she didn’t speak as much. Even her personality seemed smaller.
She had cut a deal with my parents: She’d do chemo for six weeks and see how it went. She wouldn’t skip her treatments
and she’d follow all the doctors’ orders. In exchange, they’d leave her alone about participating in the lighthouse project.
My first day in Fifth Period coincided with Nonna’s first chemo treatment, so she didn’t come to school. Mrs. Augmentino said I could “intro” the project for everyone. She asked me to bring pictures of the island and come prepared to speak.
Nonna was really happy that I’d been invited to join the lighthouse project, and not just because it gave me something to talk about besides missing soccer. The night before my presentation we pulled together about a dozen of our favorite Spruce Island photos and glued them to poster board. I practiced what I’d say about each, and in what order. We figured a visual prop like that would keep me from panicking, which was a real possibility.
That’s because despite my unbelievable confidence and aggression on a playing field, I am an absolute wreck when publicly speaking.
“Don’t look at the audience,” Nonna advised me. “Pick a spot on the back wall and talk to it like it’s an old friend. Works like a charm.” She’d offered this advice after we’d finished the board and started in on the Congo Bars she’d baked. I passionately adore Congo Bars.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, selecting a particularly large bar from the plate.
“Chemo Eve,” she replied matter-of-factly. “My personal Mardi Gras, if you will. The big pig-out before you can’t eat.” She helped herself to the next-biggest bar. I didn’t need to ask what she meant. We’d already had a family talk about her treatments.
Nonna and I sat silently chewing. Chemo Eve had turned frosty—the weatherman had predicted our first dip into the twenties that night—and she’d fired up the woodstove. The dry logs popped comfortably as we ate and surveyed our photo display.
“That one’s my favorite,” I said, pointing to a four-by-six of me, Mom, Dad, and Nonna. Each of us held live, unbanded lobsters in each hand as we posed for the camera. I must have been about five, but I was fearless when it came to lobsters. The sun shone brilliantly in that picture, and all the colors—ocean blue, balsam green, windbreaker yellow—were vivid.
Nonna nodded. “That was a happy day,” she agreed. “This one’s my fave.” She pointed to a fading Polaroid of her, Dad as a little boy, and my grandfather standing outside one of the cottages. Weeds grew high around the front steps, and the clapboards dropped paint in curling gray peels. The place looked a mess.
“Why that one?” I asked.
“It takes me back to a good time,” she said simply. “We were broke, with more work on our hands than we could handle. But we had each other and our health. With all our years and all our dreams stretching before us.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have me yet,” I teased.
Nonna placed one hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Oh, yes we did,” she said. “You were the dream.”
Arriving at the Fifth Period door, poster board tucked under one arm, I tried to keep my mind focused on the business at hand and not on what I imagined happening that very moment in the hospital across town. Nonna’s parting words to me on Chemo Eve kept running through my head.
“We will both be very brave tomorrow,” she’d promised, hugging me good night at the kitchen door. Not “try to be brave,” but “will be brave.” Cowardice not allowed.
I scanned the room for Michael. He still had no idea that I was joining the ranks of the Gifted and Talented. I couldn’t wait to see his expression. It was the only thing, other than Nonna’s expectations of bravery, preventing me from turning tail and running away from all those bright young minds.
Michael’s back was turned when I walked in, and there was a vacant seat behind him. I slid quietly into it, leaned forward, and whispered, “Yo, Einstein.”
Michael whirled around, his jaw dropped, and I could almost hear the well-oiled gears in his finely tuned brain screech to a halt. This does not compute! This does not compute! screamed his inner hard drive.
“Guess who’s Specially Challenged?” I said. Before he could answer, Mrs. Augmentino strode into the room.
“Good morning, boys and girls!” she trilled with enthusiasm. “I am very excited today. Not only because we begin a new project, but also because we welcome a new classmate. Brett McCarthy, could you come to the front of the room?”
Delight instantly turned to dread as fifteen pairs of eyes fixed on me and my poster. My feet felt like they’d been tied to lead weights as I shuffled forward. Be brave, I thought. Be brave.
“We’re beginning a unit on islands this month,” Mrs. Augmentino said. “Maine’s coast includes thirty-five hundred islands—did you know that?—and in addition to looking at the unique history, biological diversity, and extraordinary microclimates of our island communities, we’ve come up with an expeditionary project for those of you who would like to take the challenge!”
Mrs. Augmentino could have been speaking Greek. This is bad, I thought. Where were the Smoking Demigods of Dumb when you needed them? My heart raced in panic as Mrs. Augmentino went on. I looked at Michael, but he was listening intently, nodding his head with interested comprehension.
“Brett?” Mrs. Augmentino gazed at me expectantly. Fifteen pairs of eyes shifted back to me. Oh help, I thought.
“I’m sorry…what?” I stammered.
“I said why don’t you tell us about your family’s island,” she said kindly.
I unrolled the poster Nonna and I had made and clipped it to the easel Mrs. Augmentino had set up. Stare at the back wall, a little voice said in my head. But no way could I force myself to face that room full of geniuses. I turned instead to the photos, desperately trying to remember the opening lines I’d rehearsed.
It was as if someone had tossed me a rope. The smiling faces of my family and the bright colors of Spruce Island pulled me in, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about how stupid and out of place I felt. I wasn’t thinking about the hospital or Nonna’s treatments. I was smelling salt water. Listening to foghorns and seagulls. Picking wild blueberries.
“For me, Spruce Island is the most amazing place in the world,” I began. “But it’s not for everyone. There’s no electricity, so we don’t watch TV. There’s no running water, toilets, or showers, so we carry buckets from a hand pump, pee in a privy, and wash from a basin. We have propane for cooking and refrigeration, and we heat with woodstoves. But the cottages aren’t insulated, so you can’t stay there in winter. There’s no trash service, so we compost our food scraps and burn what we can. There’s no bridge, so we come and go by boat. When you’re out there, you feel completely cut off from the rest of the world. You feel different.”
After that I didn’t notice how nervous I was. I told them every story that went with every picture on that poster. About the grandfather I never knew. About the fairy houses Mom and I would build in the woods, using moss, pinecones, and twigs. About cooking lobsters and clams over an open fire on the beach, covering them with seaweed to keep the steam in. I forgot about the time or the room full of kids.
“For my family,” I said, finally out of breath, “Spruce Island isn’t just a place where we go. It’s a way to be. When we return to the mainland, we use TV and electricity again. But we keep a little bit of Spruce Island inside us, and it feels good to know that we’ll always go back.” The bell rang.
“Whew!” Mrs. Augmentino exclaimed. “That was more than any of us expected. But it was wonderful, don’t you all agree?” Fifteen pairs of hands burst into applause. Michael put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
“For tomorrow I’d like each of you to come up with one unique fact about Maine island life. And, for those of you who decide to take the Lighthouse Challenge…” Mrs. Augmentino’s voice rose to operatic heights of excitement. “Think up one way to light a lighthouse. Actual or imagined. As Brett told us, the Spruce Island light hasn’t been used in many, many years. And for our expeditionary project some of you may design and actually construct a functioning light.”
The final bell ra
ng and everyone began shuffling out. I was rolling my poster when a girl approached me.
“Have you ever been to Monhegan Island?” she asked earnestly.
“Uh, no, actually,” I said. “But I’ve heard it’s cool.”
“You made me think of it when you described the fairy houses you make with your mom,” she continued. “People build fairy houses all over Monhegan. Fairy villages, practically. They’re really wonderful. You should check them out sometime.” She stood looking at me, waiting for a response.
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said. I waited for her to go away.
“Your presentation was very good,” she continued. “Your family is very lucky.”
“I know,” I said. “I mean, about being lucky. Thanks.”
She stuck out her hand.
“I’m Monique Rose,” she said. “Welcome to Fifth Period.” We shook hands, and Monique Rose departed.
Okay, I thought. I guess I made a friend. Then someone behind me cleared his throat.
“So…how’d I do?” I said as we left the room.
Michael’s smile stretched wide across his face. “Can you say ‘challenged,’ boys and girls?” he replied in his Fred Rogers voice. “Can you say ‘awesome’?”
im•pas•sive
The stamping on the bleachers sounded like thunder. The rhythmic roar of “De-FENSE! De-FENSE!” shook the walls of the gym. It rattled the cartons of Milky Ways, Skittles, and Three Musketeers neatly arranged on the shelves of the Snack Shack. Or, to be more accurate, the Snack Closet, an impossibly small space in the junior high lobby where you can buy candy, soda, popcorn, and pizza during basketball games. The girls’ basketball team runs the Shack during boys’ games, and the boys run it when the girls play.
As a member of the Mescataqua girls’ basketball team, I had volunteered, with Kit, for this, the boys’ season opener. We were both sorry. It had turned out to be an amazing game—the Mescataqua Maineiacs versus the Topsfield Buccaneers, our archrivals—and with three minutes to go in the fourth quarter, the score was tied. Both of us were dying to abandon our Snack Shack posts and join the screaming crowd in the gym, but we knew we’d get in big trouble if we turned our backs on all the food, not to mention the cash box.
