The Book of Fred

by Abby Bardi

  I look out the window past her and see that we are on a small country road with big bushes on either side of it. There's only room enough for one car, but we are barreling along and I'm hoping that no one is coming the other way. There are hills to our right that rise up blue and cold with a pink sky behind them, and they look really creepy. For the first time, I start to feel just a little bit afraid. What if M.F. is right about this Big Whatsit? What if we're about to spend our last hour on earth in Mom's clanking mess of a car? I hearscary noises but then I realize that it is just the sound of Roy in the front seat, snoring.

  “Are we getting close, Mary Fred?” Mom calls back.

  “Just keep going on this road, ma'am,” M.F. says in a small voice. “It isn't far now.”

  As we keep driving along, the road becomes more narrow and bumpy. Finally we come to a stop, and our brakes squeal, as always. I look out the front window and see that there is a metal gate in front of us with a big No Trespassing sign on it, and next to that, an empty guard shack like on a military base or something. “Here we are,” M.F. says. She jumps out of the car, walks over to the gate, punches a code into a metal panel with numbers on it, and pulls it open. A chunk of frosty air has blasted into the car, and when she gets back in, cold radiates from her. “Drive on in.”

  I am pressed to my window, looking out, as we pass some fields full of barns and then a bunch of cabins. “Drive up to the main building,” M.F. says. Mom keeps going and pulls up next to what looks like a really big log cabin. “The chapel is just behind it. You can park over here.” Mom pulls up next to the building, beside a pickup truck. It's the only vehicle we've seen so far, and it suddenly occurs to me that it doesn't look like anyone else is here.

  “Wake up,” Mom says, giving Roy a big poke in the ribs. He jumps up in a way that normally would make me snarf, but I am suddenly feeling too frightened to think anything is funny. We all follow M.F. out of the car as she walks like a sleepwalker behind the big log cabin building and into what looks like a small church behind it. We walk in the double doors behind her. It's a wide room full of wooden pews with a big cross at the front. No one is there. The room looks still and dirty and smells like mildew, like no one has been in it for a long time.We stay there for a while, a long while, listening to how quiet it is, as M.F. sits in a pew and sobs. Then we get back in the car and drive away.

  M.F. cries in my arms for most of the way home.

  For the next two days, M.F. does not come out of her room. Every so often I go in there and see her lying in her bed in the dark, pretending to be asleep. Sometimes I say something to her and she answers in a snuffly voice, like she's been crying some more, and then sometimes I say “M.F, are you awake?” and there is no answer, but I'm sure she's not sleeping. Luckily it's the weekend so we don't have to figure out what to tell the school, but it's horrible. Mom and Roy and I sit alone in the living room and every so often one of us looks up at the stairs, like we're expecting her to come down them like Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly!, but it's just the three of us all weekend long. Everything seems so dark and silent. Mom goes to Mary Fred's room every few hours with a tray of food, but when she brings the trays back down, the food is always untouched. Even Roy has a turn at going up and trying to bring M.F. back to normal. He goes out and buys her a Princess Leia Pez dispenser and brings it to her, but when he comes back down he says she was asleep so he just laid it on the pillow next to her head.

  Monday morning I get up and the house is quiet, but just as I am about to start panicking about what to do about M.F., she sails out of her room and into the bathroom, emerges with her hair in a ponytail, returns to her room, comes out all dressed in a brown sweater and a heavy brown skirt and her fake Doc Martens. She doesn't smile or anything when she sees me, but she heads down the stairs, and when she pours herself a bowl of cereal, she pours one for me too. When I get downstairs, Iam relieved when I see it. I guess I was afraid that she was never going to talk to me again, as if it was somehow my fault that the world didn't blow up on January 7 like it was supposed to.

  We ride the school bus without saying much but by the time we get to school, she seems a lot more normal, and we walk down the hall together like we always do, stopping first at my locker, then at hers, and I watch for Dylan Magnuson because first thing in the morning is one of the three times a day that I am most likely to see him in the hall, and though I don't see him, M.F. waits for me and I almost feel like things are okay. By the end of the day when we go home together, she seems more or less recovered. She's talking, even smiling a little bit, and she doesn't look like she's been crying in the bathroom, which is the official place to cry. We walk from the bus stop to our house in the cold, and when I say something, she answers, like I say “I wonder who's on Jenny Jones today?” and she says “I hope it's not more ‘From Geek to Chic,’ I'm really getting tired of that.” I feel all warm inside whenever she talks, like there is hope.

  When Mom comes home, we all retreat to the kitchen and start dinner, and we do our usual jobs—M.F. gathers all the food from the fridge and cuts it up, I finish washing the dishes from breakfast and put them away, Mom stands at the stove flipping and turning things, and the kitchen gets warm and steamy from our cooking. Sometimes I get a warm and steamy feeling in my stomach from this, the three of us together, and I think, this is where I live, this is my life, and it feels squishy and cozy. I wonder if M.F. ever feels this? Not today, I think, looking at her. She's still pale and gloomy, like someone from a horror movie.

  Dinner is quiet except for the pathetic sound of Roy trying to make jokes to cheer everyone up, and afterwards we go intothe kitchen and wash everything without saying much. But finally I just can't take it anymore, and while M.F. and I are at the sink washing and drying, I say, “Listen, M.F., you can't feel so bad. You just can't. It's a good thing the world didn't blow up. I mean, you should be happy about that. Just think of all the good things in life we can still have now, and Mom and Roy and me aren't burning in hell or whatever. Everything is normal again, M.F. Everything is just ordinary.”

  “Oh, Puffin,” she says, turning to me, her hands full of wet dishes. She's never called me Puffin before, but I let it pass. “I am glad that the world didn't end. That's part of what bothers me so much—how glad I am. I'm just so—” She stops and thinks for a moment. “Attached. And I was so glad you didn't have to go to the Judgment as a Lacker, and I didn't have to go up to the garden without you. I was just so glad of that, and then I realized that it was all different now, and I'm different, and I didn't want to be different but I am, and it scares me, it just scares me.” Tears are starting to roll down her cheeks but she doesn't sound like she's crying at all, she's just talking in her normal M.F. voice, which is very sensible and plain. “And the other thing is—” Her voice makes a little choking sound. “I was so afraid when I saw that they weren't there. Then later, I realized, oh, maybe they all went to the Outpost. Maybe everything was changed, and they were there because—well, I didn't know. All I do know is that here we are, Heather, and it's already January tenth, and the prophecy was wrong. It was just wrong. And I'm so glad about it. And that's maybe the worst part. And also the best part. I'm really glad.”

  She didn't look glad, standing there crying, but I basically understood, at least I think I did. Anyway, I gave her a little hug, and we went back to our dishes.

  * * *

  After our talk, M.F. seemed fine. She got up the next morning laughing and joking like she always did, and on the way to the bus stop, she petted the neighbors' cats and commented on the Christmas decorations that were still up, which she liked. She said she had a quiz in math but that she wasn't ready for it, and I was about to say we should have worked on math all weekend, but then I caught myself because I didn't want her to think I was blaming her or anything. I had missed a chemistry test while we were on our little trip to Virginia and I was supposed to make it up somehow, but I didn't feel like talking about that either. We got on the bus, sai
d hi to the driver, Mr. Turner, and sat in our usual seats. This was our routine every day, all week, as homework came and went and we traveled back and forth, back and forth.

  “T.G.I.F.,” M.F. said on Friday morning. This was what she always said, and I don't know where she learned it. We had some microwave oatmeal for breakfast, since it was especially cold out today and she said the oats would stick to our ribs. M.F. and I had not mentioned the Big Non-Event at all since our talk over the dishes, and I was glad about that. I hated talking to people about serious stuff, and all I wanted was for it to go away, and, I realized, what I really wanted was for M.F. to stay with us forever and forget about her parents and the Littles and the Fred people and the brothers who had died, and to think of us as her family and live with us until we all got old and I married Dylan Magnuson, and M.F. married someone, hopefully not some dumb football player or worse, Danny Fox, and we had kids and lived next door to each other, and our kids would play together and think of themselves as cousins.

  I was seeing all this in my mind through the whole school day—in the morning as I headed toward my locker, with my eyes glued on the end of the hallway, hoping for a DylanMagnuson sighting. He wasn't there, so I skulked around the building between all three lunch periods, looking for him, but all I saw was M.F. in the cafeteria at the table full of stupid jocks and preps, laughing away like nothing bad had ever happened to her before in her life. That made me feel kind of sick, but I ignored it and went down the hall, hoping that Dylan Magnuson was on his way to his math class which I happened to know met right there on the first floor in 1101. Instead I saw stupid Danny Fox coming down the hall, a Grateful Dead T-shirt under his coat, his icky long hair hanging in his face with little damp ends like he'd been sucking on it. Dylan Magnuson was nowhere to be found, so I finally went to my chemistry class, and Ms. Peachum made me go get a note because I was late.

  When classes were over, I went to my locker to wait for M.F. Instead, I saw Danny Fox coming down the hall, swaying back and forth a little bit as he walked, as if he didn't look dumb enough just being Danny Fox but had to introduce a stupid walk into the picture too. I was hoping that if I ignored him he would go away, but he stopped to ask me a question about chemistry. I told him I didn't know the answer, which of course was true, so he went down the hall to his locker, luckily before someone saw me talking to him. I put my history book in my locker, since I wouldn't be needing it till next Tuesday and it weighed about a thousand pounds, and I looked in the mirror that I had hanging there next to some pictures of bands I didn't really like anymore (Korn, Metallica, the Beastie Boys) and was just about to fluff my hair up a little when past my locker door, down at the end of the hall, I saw Dylan Magnuson. I always saw his hair first, which was black and kind of naturally spiky, since he was pretty tall and his hair would poke above everyone's heads as he came down the hall.A few feet behind him, M.F. was walking with some jocks. She saw me and started making faces at me and mouthing the words “Dylan” and “Magnuson” in a pretty uncool manner. I rolled my eyes at her to get her to stop, but she just went right on gesturing and winking. Dylan Magnuson walked right past me without looking at me, as usual, and started heading out the front door. I watched him walk away, and then I turned back to look at M.F. She was talking to this beefy red-faced guy in a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, and the guy was standing a little too close to her, his piggy eyes kind of looking her up and down. I went over to try to rescue her, but just as I reached them, she threw back her head and laughed at something he had said, and I thought, hey, M.F. doesn't want to be rescued, despite the fact that this guy is a creep and has a face like boiled ham. I turned back around to see if Dylan Magnuson was still in sight, but he wasn't. I went up to M.F., who was still laughing, and said, “I'll meet you at the bus stop.”

  “Okay, Heather,” she said, not really looking at me, which kind of hurt my feelings.

  I went back outside and was about to join the big crowd of people waiting for our bus, which was late, as usual, when I noticed that Dylan Magnuson was in the parking lot, opening the door to his Toyota. Very casually, I started to stroll in his direction, digging into my purse like the keys to my Lexus were in there. He climbed into his car and started it up, and I could hear loud music suddenly begin to boom from his speakers. I stood there, pretending not to watch him. I had once loitered in a phone booth on Laurel Avenue for several hours just in case he happened to walk by, and I was pretty good at appearing nonchalant (SAT word). I saw M.F. come out of the school, still laughing and talking to the stupid jock guy, and she went over and stood at the bus stop in the crowd of peoplewaiting, right next to Danny Fox. The jock came and stood next to her, even though I knew he didn't take our bus, and he started putting his arm around her. I watched as she didn't even make him take it off, and it annoyed me. I thought, what the hell does this creep think he's doing? and I was just starting toward her to put a stop to this guy and his tacky moves when I heard a car come toward me. I turned to look and sure enough, it was Dylan Magnuson, and as I looked at him, he seemed to see me, he actually looked at me, kind of, and I thought, hey, that spray stuff is working! and for a moment I hoped he'd stop and offer me a ride or something, but he just kept on going. He floored his accelerator and the car made a little screeching noise, like it didn't really want to go anywhere but was being forced to, and then suddenly it just shot right past me, going much too fast into the circular driveway in front of the school. Then, as if in slow motion, instead of turning to the left and following the path of the driveway, the car plunged forward. Right before it drove into the crowd, in the moment before I saw several people just go flying right through the air, I heard my own voice screaming and screaming, “No! No!” and I didn't stop screaming for a long time.

  THE BOOK OF ROY

  When I first met Mary Fred, I thought, “That is one strange little chick.” She didn't look like she was from this century. She dressed in these funky brown clothes all the time and wore her hair in those little ponytails girls wore back in pioneer days, or in weird braids that seemed to come from inside her head. She looked like she should have been riding on the front of a covered wagon somewhere just past Kansas, or in a spaceship, or both.

  I thought Alice was totally insane to bring some new person into our wretched little lives, but I didn't tell her that that's what I love about her. When we were kids, she was always bringing home cats with missing legs, or dying birds that we would have to bury in the backyard, or when she got older, boys with crossed eyes, or withered arms, or idiots like that exhusband of hers who was obviously just looking for someone to revere him while he grew up to be someone who did not appreciate reverence. I would never say any of this to Alice—all I would say to her is Al, you're nuts. Which she is. But she is also a good person, and a good sister, and secretly I admire that, though I slime everything over with sarcasm, everything.

  So the whole deal with the Little Chick seemed to be moreof the same, business as usual for Alice. That's how I came to think of her, as the Little Chick, though I never called her that to her face. Sometimes I called her M.F., like Heather did, because it cracked me up that she didn't know that it stood for Motherfucker, a word she'd probably never heard in her life and wouldn't understand if she did hear it. Hell, I don't think I understand it either. I mean, what is that word about? Please. I heard it a lot when I was six years old and the tough guys in the third grade used to chase me home every day and try to knock my books on the ground. Most of the time I waited for Alice to walk with me because she was bigger than they were, and when she saw them, she would give them her most reproachful look, the kind of look that shoots hideous remorse into the heart of every man. I always hated it when she used it on me, like her eyes were saying, Oh, Roy, I had such high hopes for you, even when her mouth was telling me it was okay, whatever it was I did this time.

  Well, the Little Chick was an imposition in my life, I have to say. I was used to going out and doing my thing all day, whatever my thing happen
ed to be at that time, and coming home and finding my niece Puffin on the couch, staring at the tube, incapable of speech, which suited me fine. Sometimes I would sit with her for a while and just collect myself. That's how I thought of it, like little pieces of me were shredded all over the place, and I had to sweep them all into a big pile before Alice got home, because I didn't want her to see through me.

  It amazes me even now that I could go that long without her knowing about the heroin. I just thought it was so obvious—the signs were so clear. I never had any money, I was in and out of these hazy moods, I went out and never said where I was going, I stayed up too late almost every night and slept in the next morning, I kept to myself, and most of all, I neverlooked right at Al because I was sure if she saw my eyes she would know. I knew she was upset that I did not seem to be working, since she was always short of money and could have used my contribution, which was supposed to be a fairly pathetic $300 a month. Every so often she would try to talk to me about the fact that I had no job, and that I wasn't doing anything with my life, and that she was concerned about me, etc. I felt terrible when I saw that she wasn't at all worried about the money but was genuinely only worried about me. Even though she was walking around in these ratty skirts that she had worn since college.

  This just made me feel even more guilty, and the more guilty I felt, the better it seemed to go out and score just a little bit of dope, not enough so I was really strung out, I thought, but just enough to take the edge off. Then I would go to work.

  Yes, the fact was, I did have a job, which accounted for my being out at about the same time every day. I worked as a telemarketer selling lightbulbs to churches and old people, a scam I hooked up with through some of my drug cronies. Every afternoon from about noon to three, four, or five, depending on how I felt, I would sit in a room full of addicts, most of whom were wearing just their boxer shorts, because the room was about a hundred degrees, and we would call the people on our list and try to sell them lightbulbs that they didn't need. The best approach, which I learned from a guy named Nick, was to call a church and say, “Let me talk to Bill.” They would say, we have no one here by that name, and you'd say, “You know, the guy who orders your lightbulbs.” “Oh, you mean Ed,” they'd say like idiots. “Of course, Ed,” I'd rasp exasperatedly. “Come on, now, hurry, I haven't got all day.” Some nice old church lady would fluff around looking for the lightbulb guy, some deadbeat custodian who never did any real work anyway, and when he got onthe phone I would say, “How ya doing, Ed (or Sam, whatever), I just wanted you to know that I'm shipping your order now.” Ed or Sam would say “What order?” and I would say in a weary, long-suffering voice, “Your lightbulb order, man,” like he was a moron and had forgotten. Most of the time Ed or Sam would just say okay. Sometimes, however, he wanted to know all about the lightbulbs, how much they were (a mere $700—we marked them up a billion percent), whether any of them were fluorescent (of course), or how long they'd last (forever). Then, eventually, he would agree to take the shipment. If he refused, I'd say, “Tell you what I'm gonna do Ed, or Sam, I'm gonna ship these lightbulbs to you on a trial basis. No obligation on your part. If you like them, just send me the seven hundred clams. If not, ship the whole box back to me, no questions asked.” Ed or Sam would agree to this—how could he refuse?—and I would take a box from our warehouse, drop it on the floor, and kick it around a little, until I heard a bunch of breaking glass. Then I would call UPS and have them pick it up, insuring the whole thing, which was really only worth about fifty bucks, for the $700. When Ed or Sam received it, he would send it back to me, saying it was broken, and I would collect the insurance money and turn it over to the head guy, Sergio. He would give me fifteen percent, and then I would go out and score some drugs and feel better for a little while.