Smart Women

by Judy Blume

  Her bedroom door opened and Margo walked in, smelling of Chanel No. 19. She sat on the edge of Michelle’s bed and placed a hand on her forehead. “You feel warm, honey. Have you taken aspirin?”

  Michelle nodded.

  “I’ve got to go to work now, but Andrew is here if you need anything. I’ll call at noon to see how you’re feeling.”

  “Who was that on the phone a few minutes ago?”

  “Oh, that was nothing,” Margo said. “Stay in bed and take more aspirin if you feel feverish. I’ll try to get home early.” She dropped a kiss on Michelle’s forehead, then left.

  Nothing, Michelle thought. B.B.’s gone bonkers and Margo calls that nothing! What about Sara?

  Right before noon the phone rang again. School, Michelle thought. She picked up the phone, but Andrew was already on. This time it was Lewis, B.B.’s boyfriend. Michelle listened as Andrew told him the whole story. He finished by saying, “I’ve already been in touch with my doctor down there. He knows Francine. She was his patient. I’m sure that whatever he recommends . . .”

  But Lewis interrupted. “I’m taking the next flight out. I’ll be in Miami by tonight.”

  “That really isn’t necessary,” Andrew said.

  “You don’t understand,” Lewis told him. “I’m taking charge of the situation. She’s my wife.”

  “She’s your what?” Andrew said.

  “My wife. We were married in Hawaii on New Year’s Eve. She wanted to keep it a secret for a few months, until we had a chance to make some plans.”

  Michelle held the phone away for a minute. She was breathing so hard she was afraid they would hear her. When she put the phone back to her ear she heard Andrew asking, “Does Sara know?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “No,” Lewis said. “B.B. and I were planning to tell her the next time I came to Boulder.”

  God! Michelle thought. B.B. had married Lewis and they hadn’t told anyone, not even Sara. How could they have done such a thing? Michelle would never forgive Margo if Margo got married secretly. Marriage was a family matter and the children had a right to know. Now somebody was going to have to tell Sara not only that her mother had gone off the deep end, but also that she was married to Lewis. What a mess, Michelle thought. What an intensely ridiculous mess!

  32

  SARA WAS SICK for two weeks, longer than anyone else in the house. The doctor had come twice and Clare had come over every day, bringing soup and Jell-O and dog food for Lucy, but then Clare had come down with it too. Everyone in the house was still coughing, but Sara’s cough was the worst. Her cough kept her up at night and sometimes she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then she’d get scared and knock on Margo’s bedroom door, asking her father to come sit with her. And he would, holding her hand until she’d fallen back asleep.

  Now her father said it was time for her to go back to school. She didn’t want to go. She cried and begged him to let her stay home a few more days. But he said it would do her good to get out of the house, to be with her friends again. He said it would help take her mind off her mother.

  She could not stop thinking about her mother, imagining her in a hospital that was exactly the same as the place where they took Jack Nicholson in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which she had seen on HBO at Grandma and Grandpa Broder’s house over Christmas vacation. It was a scary place, filled with weird patients and mean nurses. Her mother would not like it there. She would cry herself to sleep every night. Sara could see her, wearing an old hospital gown, lying on her small cot, her knees pulled up to her chest, her fingers twirling several strands of hair the way Sara sometimes did when she was tired or frightened. Sara could hear her mother crying, Help me, Sara . . . please help me . . . And Sara wanted to help her mother, but there was nothing she could do. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Sara would wake up crying.

  She had cried too on the day that her father had told her that her mother had had a mental breakdown.

  “Do you mean she’s cracked up?” Sara had asked.

  “Yes, I guess so,” Daddy had said.

  “But why?”

  “Because sometimes life just gets to be so hard,” Daddy explained, “that one more crisis sends you over the edge. It must have been very hard for your mother to deal with Grandma Goldy’s stroke.”

  “But the last time Mom had a crisis it only lasted a week and she didn’t have to go to the hospital.”

  “When was that?” her father asked.

  “The day she found out you were coming here.”

  Daddy covered his eyes with one hand and shook his head back and forth, back and forth. Then he took her in his arms and stroked her hair as if she were a puppy and said, “Poor Sara . . . this has been very hard on you, hasn’t it?”

  “Sometimes.” That was all Sara was going to say. She was not going to tell him how her mother had been screaming and crying and acting crazy for months. Crazy. That’s what had happened. Her mother had gone crazy, although no one would say that word. Sara wasn’t all that surprised either. She had known something was very wrong, but she had not known what to do about it. In a way it was a relief that it had finally happened and that it had happened far away. But Sara knew she should not be glad, even though she had secretly wished that her mother would go away and never come back. She had wished worse things too, but they were too terrible to think about. She began to cry again.

  “It’s temporary,” her father said, misunderstanding her tears. “She’ll get better.”

  “When?” Sara asked.

  “No one can say for sure.”

  “A week? A month?”

  “Longer than a week. Maybe even longer than a month.”

  “I want to talk to her,” Sara said.

  “She can’t have phone calls now,” Daddy said.

  “Why not?”

  “Her doctors think it’s best that way.”

  “But when you’re sick you want to talk to your family.”

  “Look, Sara . . . your mother . . .”

  “Stop calling her your mother,” Sara shouted. “I hate it when you call her that!”

  “I’m sorry,” Daddy said. “I didn’t know. What should I call her?”

  “Francine. That’s her name.”

  “All right,” Daddy said, “from now on I’ll call her Francine.”

  They were quiet for a few moments. Then Sara cried, “It’s all my fault.”

  “No,” Daddy said, “it has nothing to do with you.”

  “You don’t know,” Sara said.

  “Don’t blame yourself for Francine’s problems. None of it is your fault.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.” Sara bolted from the room. Her mother would be angry if she said anything more and she would be angrier still if Sara stayed at Margo’s house. She would never forgive her for that. Sara would have to get her father to take her home and stay there with her until her mother returned.

  But then they had all gotten sick, one right after the other.

  THE DAY BEFORE SARA WAS to go back to school her father took her home to pack up some of her things. She had not been home in more than two weeks. Everything looked the same and yet it all seemed different. She ran her hand along the polished wood of the piano. Maybe she wouldn’t have to take piano lessons anymore. She didn’t like piano lessons, but her mother said it was important to learn to play. Sara didn’t see why, but Mom kept telling her she would understand when she was older. It had something to do with being popular at parties. Sara sometimes went to parties, but nobody ever played the piano. Twice this year when Sara had come home from parties her mother had stood her under a bright lamp and had looked into her eyes to see if her pupils were dilated. Mom thought all kids did drugs. She had also smelled Sara’s c
lothes and her breath. Sara had been really angry. “You don’t trust me, do you? You don’t trust anyone!”

  “It’s hard for me to trust,” her mother had said.

  “You could at least try to trust the people you love.”

  “TRY TO PACK UP QUICKLY, SARA,” Daddy said, sitting down on the sofa in the living room with a copy of Newsweek. “There’s a lot to do at home.”

  “This is home,” Sara said, “and I don’t see why we can’t stay here. I don’t see why you can’t just move in until Mom gets better and comes back.”

  “Try to understand,” Daddy said. “I can’t live with you in this house. I don’t belong here.”

  “Well, I don’t belong there, in Margo’s house,” Sara argued.

  “I know you feel that way now, but as soon as we fix up your room . . .”

  “I already have a room. A very pretty room. Right here.”

  “We’re going to paint your room at Margo’s,” Daddy said. “What color would you like?”

  “I don’t give a damn about that room!” Sara shouted. “It’s Stuart’s room, not mine. It will never feel like my room even if you paint it purple.”

  She ran upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door behind her. Her room looked perfect. Mrs. Herrera had been in to clean. Sara could tell because Mrs. Herrera always tilted the pictures on the wall so Mom would know she had dusted them. She did the same thing at Margo’s house. It was weird seeing Mrs. Herrera cleaning there too. Yesterday she had taken Sara aside and had asked, “You’re all right here? They’re treating you okay?”

  “Yes,” Sara had said.

  “If you want my opinion it should never have happened. They shouldn’t have let it happen. You get what I’m saying?”

  “I guess,” Sara had said. But she wasn’t really sure.

  Sara turned on her clock radio. It reminded her of the night her mother had thrown it across the room, screaming at Sara, and Sara had screamed back, You don’t deserve to be a mother! That was the night she had secretly wished that her mother would go away and never come back. Well, Sara’s wish had come true. She felt the beginning of tears and swallowed hard. If she had been nicer to her mother, if she had said, For always and forever that night Mom had phoned from Grandma Goldy’s hospital . . .

  Sara went to her closet and took out a canvas duffel. She packed her clothes. Then she walked down the hall to her mother’s room. It still smelled from her perfume. She opened the door of Mom’s closet and looked at her clothes, all lined up, all the hangers facing the same way. She grabbed her mothers blue silk blouse and tucked it into her duffel. “Why did you have to go and have a mental breakdown?” Sara whispered. “I’ll bet you didn’t stop to think about me, did you . . . about what would happen to me if you had to go to the hospital for a long time. Now look, now I have to go and live at Margo’s.”

  “All set?” Daddy asked, when she came into the living room carrying her duffel.

  “I guess,” she told him.

  In the truck on the way home, she asked, “Who’s going to water the plants?”

  “Miranda has arranged for a house sitter.”

  “Oh,” Sara said.

  “Have you thought about what color you’d like me to paint your room?” Daddy asked.

  “Purple,” Sara said, staring out the side window.

  TWO DAYS LATER she came home from school to find that Stuart’s room had been painted purple. Margo said the room needed a nice rug and asked if Sara would like to go shopping with her. “You need some plants and posters too.”

  “I can tape posters to the wall?” Sara asked.

  “I think it’s probably better to tack them up because tape pulls off the paint,” Margo said.

  Sara nodded, thinking about the posters she would choose. She liked animal posters best, but she might get a couple of rock stars too.

  She had to remember that Margo was only being nice to her because of her father. She could not allow herself to like Margo, not even a little, because that wouldn’t be fair to her mother. No one ever mentioned her mother, except Daddy, and he didn’t bring up the subject that often. He did tell her that he had talked with Lewis and that Lewis had been to Miami to visit Mom and had arranged for her to be transferred to a very nice private hospital, one with a swimming pool and tennis courts and arts and crafts studios. It sounded more like a camp than a hospital, Sara thought.

  Sara was having trouble in school. She tried to pay attention, but her mind was always someplace else. The teachers knew that her mother was sick and in the hospital so they didn’t hassle her. The kids knew that she had moved into Margo’s house and from the way they looked at her she was sure they knew that her mother was on a funny farm. She remembered that when David Albrecht’s father hung himself from a rafter in his garage everyone talked about it behind David’s back. No one knew what to say or how to act in front of David, and David didn’t either. That’s how it was with her now.

  At least Jennifer was not afraid to talk about it. She said, “Look, parents crack up all the time. It’s no big deal. I’ll bet you half the kids in our class have parents who’ve gone off the deep end. That’s why Boulder has one hundred and nine shrinks.”

  Sara bit a sliver off her left thumbnail.

  “Your mother had a lot on her mind,” Jennifer said. “She’s a very intense person. Probably a classic Type A personality.”

  “Type A’s have heart attacks,” Sara said. “I read it in my grandmother’s McCall’s.”

  “Yes, but they also crack up. It’s like a warning that they should slow down. It’s probably good that this happened. She’s been acting weird all year, Sara.”

  “I know.”

  SARA WAS IN BED, trying to read, but she couldn’t make sense of anything. Jennifer had given her the book I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. It was about a girl who goes crazy. Jennifer thought it might help Sara understand her mother, but the girl in the book wasn’t anything like her mother. The girl in the book had invented a secret world with a secret language and everything. Sara did not believe that her mother had created a secret world inside her head.

  Lucy was asleep on Sara’s legs. Sara liked watching Lucy sleep. She listened for sounds that would tell her what kind of dream Lucy was having. If Lucy sighed and seemed serene, then she was having a good dream. If she shuddered and whimpered and her body twitched, she was having a nightmare. Sara wondered if Lucy dreamed about dogs or people, if she dreamed in color or black and white.

  Sara heard someone coming down the hall. She could recognize each of them by their footsteps. Margo’s were soft and quick; Stuart’s, in his Topsiders, were squeaky; Michelle clumped in her clogs or hiking boots. These were her father’s footsteps and he was wearing his Nikes. “Dad . . .” Sara called.

  “Yes, honey . . .”

  “Could you come here for a minute?”

  “Sure.” He came into her room and sat on the edge of her bed. She put out her hand and he took it.

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you too.”

  “For how long?”

  “What do you mean, for how long?” Daddy asked.

  “You’re supposed to say, For always and forever,” Sara explained, “and then I say, That’s how long I’ll love you too.”

  “Who made that up?” he asked.

  “Mom. We say it every day.”

  “Maybe we could come up with something new and original,” her father said.

  “No! I don’t want something new and original. I want you to say this one.”

  “Okay, sure . . . let’s start again.”

  “I love you, Dad,” Sara said.

  “I love you too.”

  “For how long?”

  “For always and forever.
”

  “That’s how long I’ll love you too.” Sara thought that saying it would make her feel better, but it didn’t. It sounded babyish and stupid. And probably her mother would be angry that she had taught it to Daddy. It was supposed to be their special ritual. Sara looked down at her father’s hands. She liked the way his fingernails ended in half moons. “Do you think she misses me?” Sara asked quietly.

  “I’m sure she does.”

  “Do you think I could write to her?”

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” her father said.

  She started her letter the next day, in English class. She slipped a piece of notebook paper into her American Poetry book and wrote:

  Dear Mom,

  I’m sorry you’re sick and I hope you feel better very, very soon. I had the flu. It lasted almost two weeks. But now I’m better. Lucy is fine. We had a lot of snow but now it’s getting nice and I hope to go skiing next weekend. I wish you could . . .

  “Sara . . .” Mrs. Walters called. “Sara . . . are you listening?”

  “What?” Sara asked. “Me?”

  “Welcome back to earth, Sara,” Mrs. Walters said.

  Everyone laughed. Sara could feel her face turn red.

  “We were discussing what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote the lines, But I have promises to keep,/And miles to go before I sleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sara said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “We know. Try to pay attention from now on,” Mrs. Walters said.

  “I will.” Sara folded the letter and tucked it into her math book. It wasn’t any good anyway. It sounded like the kind of letter you write because you have to, not because you want to.

  33

  FRANCINE, YOU HAVE A LETTER FROM SARA.”

  She would not speak.

  “Would you like to read it?”