Thea at Sixteen

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  “Okay,” Gina said.

  Kip and Thea walked out of the ward as the nurse pulled the curtain around Gina’s bed. “I like Gina a lot,” Thea said as they stood outside the room. “She’s very sweet.”

  “She talks too much,” Kip replied. “But I guess she doesn’t have that many chances to talk. I hope you didn’t mind all that stuff about Dani.”

  “That’s okay,” Thea said. “I’ve heard worse.”

  “Dani’s going through a rough time,” Kip said. “Mom works four to midnight weekdays, and she has a part-time job on weekends as well. Whatever spare time she has, she spends here. Dani’s alone a lot more than she should be.”

  “That must be very hard on all of you,” Thea said. “Your mother working so much.”

  “Working cuts down on her drinking,” Kip replied. “So in some ways it’s good. I work eight to four at the Burger Bliss. I’m the sub assistant manager. That means I’m eighteen and full time. Do you go to school?”

  “Briarton High,” Thea said. “I’m a junior.”

  “I don’t remember having seen you there,” Kip said.

  “We just moved here,” Thea replied. “We used to live in Harrison.”

  “Do you always visit hospitals?” Kip asked. “Is that how you get your kicks?”

  “No,” Thea said. “This is my first time.”

  “Well, I hope it isn’t your last,” Kip declared. “Gina seems to like you.”

  “She said this was her fourth time in the hospital,” Thea said. “I can’t imagine what that must be like.”

  “It’s hell,” Kip said. “Maybe a little bit worse than hell.”

  “You must all be looking forward to when she gets home,” Thea said.

  “Gina isn’t coming home,” Kip replied.

  “You mean you’re moving?” Thea asked. “Gina said your apartment was small.”

  Kip stared at Thea. “I mean Gina’s going to die here,” he said. “She’s never going to get well enough to come back home.”

  Oh, God, Thea thought. Nicky, what have you gotten me into?

  “You didn’t know?” Kip said. “Nobody told you?”

  “No,” Thea said. “Mrs. Chambers just said there was a high cure-rate. Sixty percent. And Gina certainly didn’t say. Does she know?”

  Kip shrugged. “Probably,” he said. “She hasn’t brought it up, at least not with me, and probably not with Mom, either. I would have heard about it if she had. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know, just that she doesn’t want to talk about it. So don’t you mention it, either, okay?”

  “Sure,” Thea said. “I never would. How can you know? Did the doctors tell you?”

  “Doctors don’t say things like die anymore,” Kip replied. “They say there’s no point continuing treatments and we should prepare ourselves for the worst and it’s probably just a matter of months. This is Gina’s fourth bout with cancer. The first three times the treatments put her in remission. This time, they haven’t. Remission is life, no matter how short it lasts. No remission is death, which lasts forever I’m told. It’s that simple.”

  “No,” Thea said. “It’s not simple.”

  “You’re right,” Kip said. “It’s not simple at all. So do you still want to be Gina’s Friendly Visitor?”

  Thea thought about it, while trying to look as though she weren’t. She’d never known anyone who’d died before, not even grandparents, let alone someone Sybil’s age. And what if that were Sybil lying on the hospital bed while they all waited out the time until she died. How would Thea ever be able to survive? No wonder Kip didn’t smile.

  “I like Gina,” she said. “And Gina seems happy to have a Friendly Visitor.”

  “Happier than I’ve seen her in a while,” Kip said. “Maybe you can talk her into eating that doughnut.”

  “I’ll give it a try,” Thea said. “The doughnut, I mean. I’ll stick with being Gina’s Friendly Visitor.”

  “Thank you,” Kip said. “In return, I promise we’ll never send you down to bail Dani out.”

  Thea nodded. “It’s a deal,” she said.

  The nurse walked through the door and smiled at them. “I’m all done,” she said. “And Gina’s eager to get on with your visit.”

  “We’re eager, too,” Kip said. “Come on, Thea. Let’s teach the kid some math while we have the chance.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Tell me some more about your family,” Gina said as Thea stretched in the chair by her bed.

  “We’re not through with your spelling lesson yet,” Thea replied. Two weeks had passed since the girls had met, and Thea had settled into a comfortable routine of visiting Gina on Mondays and Thursdays. This was a Thursday visit, and Thea wasn’t about to let Gina get away with anything.

  “I’ve spelled every word in the dictionary,” Gina declared. “Twice. Come on, Thea. I want to hear some more about your sisters. Do you think they’ll visit me sometime?”

  “Not if you don’t finish your spelling,” Thea said. “Desperate.”

  “What?”

  “Spell desperate and use it in a sentence,” Thea said. “Remember? The same way you spelled all the other words in the dictionary.”

  “You mean incorrectly?” Kip asked. Thea could never get over how quietly Kip slipped in by Gina’s bedside, or how happy Gina was to see him.

  “Gina’s been spelling well today,” Thea informed him. “When I can get her to concentrate on it.”

  “The word was desperate,” Kip declared. “I know the feeling. Come on, Gina. Spell it for the Kipper.”

  Gina and Kip laughed the intimate laugh of an old family joke. Thea thought of all the jokes she and Evvie had shared, and felt that little lurch of loneliness she’d come to associate with thoughts of Evvie. They wrote pretty often but it wasn’t the same as being together all the time.

  “Desperate,” Gina said. “D-E-S-P-A-R-A-T-E. I am desperate to get out of here.”

  “I’m desperate for you to learn how to spell,” Kip said. “It’s P-E-R, pumpkin.”

  “E-R, A-R,” Gina said, and then she giggled. “I know a lot more about E-R than I do about A-R,” she said.

  “I’ll put you in the E.R. if you don’t start paying attention,” Thea said, and was gratified when Gina and Kip both laughed. “All right. Now that you know how to spell desperate, how about giving destruction a chance?”

  “Desperate, destruction,” Kip said. “That’s one upbeat spelling lesson.”

  “I’m just following orders,” Thea said. “Your mother left a list of words for Gina to spell. She didn’t tell me to make them happy words.”

  “I can spell destruction,” Gina said. “D-E-S-T-R-U-C-T-I-O-N. Destruction. I witnessed the destruction of my family.”

  “Gina!” Thea said.

  “What?” Gina replied. “Did I spell it wrong?”

  “I think Thea prefers happier sentences,” Kip said. “I witnessed the destruction of disease and poverty.”

  “I witnessed the destruction of my entire nervous system ever since I met the two of you,” Thea said, closing the notebook containing the spelling list. “You’re worse than Sybil.”

  “How is Sybil bad?” Gina asked. She curled up in her bed, and Thea had the sensation of telling her a bedtime story. She used to make up stories for Sybil, years ago. They were mostly half-remembered versions of the stories Evvie had made up for her. Claire always refused to listen.

  “Sybil is the world’s greatest speller,” Thea declared. “I mean it. She can spell anything. Only spelling bores her, because when you can do it as easily as she can, it’s hard to be interested. So she makes up spellings.”

  “You mean she puts her e before her i?” Kip asked.

  “Nothing that simple,” Thea said. “She spells words backward. Correctly, but backward. Or she spells words one letter off, so desperate would start E-F-T, and then go on. If you wrote down how she spelled it, you’d see what she was doing, and she always got the word right, but she’d g
o so fast, it was hard to keep track.”

  “It sounds serious,” Kip declared. “How did you handle it?”

  “I stopped spelling with her,” Thea said. “We all stopped testing her, but I won’t even ask her how to spell a word anymore when I’m writing something. I’d rather find the dictionary, which moves around a lot in my family, than ask Sybil’s help in spelling.”

  “Sybil’s my favorite,” Gina said. “She’s my age, Kip.”

  “I know,” Kip said. “You’ve told me that twenty-five times.”

  “Is she your favorite?” Gina asked Thea.

  “I don’t have a favorite,” Thea said. “They’re all my sisters, so I love them all.”

  “I wish I had sisters,” Gina said.

  “You have a sister,” Kip replied. “Remember?”

  “I just wish I had more of them,” Gina said. “Sisters like Thea has. I wish I had a sister just like Thea. Sometimes I wish I could be Sybil and have three big sisters and a mother and a father and not be stuck in bed all the time.”

  Thea didn’t know what to say. Even on Sybil’s worst day, she had things a thousand times better than Gina.

  “Where do I fit in, then?” Kip asked. “With all those sisters and parents?”

  “You’d be my brother, anyway,” Gina replied. “I can have a brother, can’t I, Thea? Even if you don’t?”

  “You can have as many brothers as you’d like,” Thea said. “I always wanted a brother. When all you have is sisters, a brother sounds pretty terrific.”

  “We finally agree on something,” Kip said. “I’m stuck with sisters, when what I really wanted was a brother or two.”

  “You’d rather have a brother than me?” Gina asked.

  “See,” Kip declared. “Now you know how it feels. No, pumpkin, you I’d keep. Dani was the one I wanted to change. All she’d have to do is drop her i and become Dan.”

  “Thea’s sisters all have girl names,” Gina said. “Sybil’s my favorite name.”

  “I’m partial to Gina myself,” Kip said. “And Irving.”

  “Is Kip short for something?” Thea asked.

  “Like Kipling?” Kip said. “No, it’s a nickname. Officially I’m Paul Junior, which is a joke, given Paul Senior. My mother picked up Kip from a soap opera. She thought it sounded classy. When I go to college, I figure I’ll become Paul without the junior.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to go to college,” Thea said. She felt better hearing it, and then she felt like a snob.

  “Kip’s going to go to college in New York,” Gina declared.

  “Shouldn’t you have started already?” Thea asked. “Evvie’s been gone for a couple of weeks now.”

  “I’m not going this semester,” Kip said, and Thea realized from his tone that she had asked a stupid question. Kip was staying until Gina died. She knew, if she had asked him that question privately, that would have been his answer.

  “Kip likes his job too much,” Gina said. “He’s sub assistant manager at Burger Bliss. He got a raise and everything.”

  “Right,” Kip said. “I now earn more than minimum wage.”

  “I want to hear a story,” Gina said. “One about your sisters, Thea.”

  “What kind of story?” Thea asked. “A true one or a made-up one?”

  “True,” Gina said. “Only babies like made-up ones. Tell me about you and your sisters when you were twelve, like me and Sybil. How old was everybody else then?”

  “Evvie was fourteen, and Claire was ten, and you and Sybil were eight,” Thea replied. “Let’s see. I think we were living in an apartment that year, not a very nice place.”

  “What wasn’t nice about it?” Gina asked.

  “It was small and kind of ratty,” Thea said. “It seems to me that was when I was twelve. We all hated that apartment so much.”

  “Why were you living in a small, ratty apartment?” Kip asked.

  “Because we couldn’t afford a big, ratty one,” Thea said. “I’d think that would be pretty obvious.”

  “Don’t you have money?” Kip asked. “You act like you do.”

  “We mostly have money,” Thea said. “That was a bad year. Sometimes my father’s investments don’t work out, and then things aren’t so great. But then he puts a new deal together, and the next thing you know we’re rich again.” She realized she was revealing family secrets and felt a twinge of disloyalty.

  “We’re always poor,” Gina said. “I think I’d like to be rich sometimes.”

  “I’d like to be rich all the time,” Kip declared. “The way I thought Thea was.”

  “Sorry to disillusion you,” Thea said.

  “I still want a story about when you were twelve,” Gina said.

  “When I was twelve, I still liked to play make-believe games,” Thea said. Now that she thought about it, she liked them most that year, in that terrible apartment. They all did. That was the year they made-believe they were anyone and anyplace, just as long as they could be somewhere else for as long as the game lasted. Thea suspected even Megs liked make-believe that year. “My favorite game was Little Women. You know, from the book. There were four sisters in that, and I was one of four sisters. I always wanted to be Jo.”

  “Who did Sybil want to be?” Gina asked.

  “Sybil didn’t have much of a say in the matter,” Thea said. “She was only eight, so she got last pick. Claire always insisted on being Amy, because Amy married money. And then Sybil would say she wanted to be Meg, because Meg was practical and good with money, and besides, she was the oldest, and Sybil was tired of being the youngest. She wanted a chance to boss us around. You must know how that feels, Gina.”

  “Did Sybil get to be Meg?” Gina asked. “It must be funny being the oldest when you’re the youngest.”

  “No, we wouldn’t let her,” Thea said. “Because if Sybil was Meg, then Evvie would have had to be Beth, and Claire and I wouldn’t let her be Beth because …” She stopped, realizing that they wouldn’t let Evvie be Beth because Beth died, and they couldn’t deal with Evvie dying even in a make-believe game.

  “Because why?” Gina asked.

  “Because Beth’s a wimp,” Kip said. “You know the kind. She always does her spelling assignments and never complains about them.”

  “Yuck,” Gina said. “So Sybil had to be Beth?”

  Thea nodded. “When I played Little Women just with Sybil, though, I let her be Meg,” she replied. “Sybil was very good at bossing me around.”

  One of the nurses walked over to Gina’s bed. “I hate to break up this party, but we need Gina for some tests,” she said.

  “Should we wait outside?” Kip asked.

  The nurse shook her head. “It’s going to take a while, and Gina will be pretty tired when we’re through,” she declared. “Why don’t you make an early day of it this time, and you can visit with Gina tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be back on Monday,” Thea said. “I’ll see if I can get Sybil to come.”

  Gina’s face lit up. “Do you think she would?” she asked. “I want to meet her so much.”

  “I’ll ask,” Thea said. She smiled at Gina, and then bent down and gave her a kiss. “You take care, all right.”

  “I will,” Gina said. “’Bye, Thea. ’Bye, Kip.”

  “’Bye, pumpkinhead,” Kip said. He kissed his sister, and walked out with Thea.

  “Thank you,” Thea said to him as they walked down the corridor. “For rescuing me from that story about Little Women.”

  “Beth was a wimp,” Kip declared. “She probably died asking for another spelling assignment.”

  “I forget sometimes that Gina is dying,” Thea said. “She seems so lively, so vital.”

  “You should have known her when she was in remission,” Kip said. “You couldn’t keep her down. Now I look at her … Well, she puts out a lot of effort when you’re there.”

  “She doesn’t have to,” Thea said.

  “She doesn’t do it consciously,” Kip said
. “It’s good. She gets excited about your visits.”

  “Maybe I should come more often, then,” Thea said.

  Kip shook his head. “Don’t start something you can’t continue,” he said. “You’ve been to see her what, four times? That’s okay. That’s no big deal. After ten or twelve or twenty times, you might not want to see her quite so often. And then Gina will get used to your visits, come to expect them, and you’ll feel like you’re letting her down if you don’t see her so often, then you’ll feel guilty and she’ll feel bad and then you’ll stop coming altogether. Twice a week is fine. Once a week is okay, too.”

  “You really are a cynic,” Thea said. “I like Gina. I like her as a human being. I like spending time with her.”

  “Do you like watching her die?” Kip asked.

  “I’ve never known Gina when she wasn’t dying,” Thea replied. “The Gina I see now is the only Gina I know.”

  Kip stood for a moment, turned around, and faced Thea. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I underestimated you.”

  Thea tried to keep from blushing.

  “It’s just that you’re pretty, and you dress well, and there’s an air about you,” Kip said. “Something rich and soft.”

  “And that’s worse than hard and poor?” Thea asked. “You’d trust hard and poor more?”

  Kip grinned. “I’d feel more at home with it,” he replied.

  Thea smiled back. “Do you think I’ll stop coming because Dani has?” she asked.

  Kip shook his head. “You’re nothing like Dani,” he said. “Dani’s wild, and all this is making her mean. Not that I blame her. I’d like to be wild and mean myself.”

  “You?” Thea said. “The sub assistant manager of Burger Bliss?”

  Kip brushed his hair back off his forehead. “Inside I am wild and mean,” he declared. “Inside I’m a lot of things I don’t show when I’m with Gina.”

  “Like what?” Thea asked. They were at the hospital door, but Thea didn’t want the conversation to stop. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she’d been walking with Kip or because she was more accustomed to the place, but this was the first time she hadn’t felt lost getting from Gina’s ward to the front lobby.