I gather from the much sadder strands of the conversation that Dr. Aidoo had seen Isabelle when they first brought her into the hospital, when she was put on a respirator.
Dr. Aidoo and Aunt Leslie reaffirm that they must stay in very close touch—and he nearly drags the word touch into a sentence—about my case.
I think they see me rolling my eyes, so they start talking shop. Almost.
It seems that Aunt Leslie had indeed known him before, in medical school, and knowing that he had privileges in our hospital, among others, she had specifically requested him for my and Isabelle’s case.
They then travel down some censored version of medical school memory lane, which includes a few tales of binge drinking, and some other things they were trying to keep from me by speaking about them in medical code. This goes on and on even while he listens to my heart and listens to me breathe, looks into my ears, looks into my eyes, looks into Aunt Leslie’s eyes, then checks how long I can follow his fingers back and forth, and hold my arm out, and how many times I can walk around his tiny office that way.
When we’re done, he tells me that he could consider letting me go back to school in a few weeks after he’s taken a new MRI. He also agrees with Aunt Leslie that it’s okay for me to visit my school that day. I think he would say yes to nearly anything Aunt Leslie suggests.
I feel bad for all the times I thought of him as a big duck. He probably would have scolded me for writing him a thank-you letter, so I just come out and say it again: “Thank you very much.”
“I’m glad Leslie called me,” he says, keeping his eyes on her face.
They kiss each other goodbye on both cheeks, in this kind of awkward way people do when they’re trying real hard for their lips not to meet.
I roll my eyes again and he says, “See, even your eye rotations are getting stronger.”
After we leave Dr. Aidoo’s office, I wait until Aunt Leslie starts the car before I ask about their past. I had not hallucinated him at the funeral home that day. He had actually been there.
I close my eyes so I don’t have to see the road, then I say, “You totally used to hit that, didn’t you?”
She pretends not to hear me. Then I open my eyes for a second and look over at her, and I see a little smirk growing wider and wider across her face.
I hate to admit it, but she and the head duck would probably make a cute brainy couple.
“Well, you can say that he and I both used to hit it,” she says.
“Is he the one that got away?” I ask.
“How do you know such things?”
“Hello, I live in the world. And I watch romantic comedies. Or I used to.”
“Then there is a silver lining to your current condition,” she says.
“Are you going to do something about this?” I ask.
“About what?”
“About Dr. Duck?”
“What did you call him?”
“I mean Dr. Aidoo.”
“Why do I have to do something about it?” she asks. “Is that the rule in your romantic comedies?”
“Is he doing something about it?”
“Maybe,” she says, her eyes beaming in a way that would have probably blinded me if I weren’t wearing my cat eyes.
“We’re going to try to find some way to work together,” she says. “Maybe I’ll join his practice here.”
“How sexy,” I say.
Here is Aunt Leslie taking a big leap with Dr. Duck, while my parents are about to let go.
“I haven’t told anyone yet,” she says. “You’re the first person I’m telling, besides him, of course.”
Maybe to keep me quiet, Aunt Leslie drives me right to Morrison. When we get to the school, before we go anywhere, Principal Volcy wants to meet with Aunt Leslie and me.
This has been arranged by Aunt Leslie and my parents, I realize when I end up sitting in front of the principal’s desk with Aunt Leslie in the next seat.
“We’ve already had an assembly to talk about your sister,” Principal Volcy tells me.
Thank goodness they’ve already done it, I think, because I can’t imagine sitting through one of those.
“We also had grief counselors, and many of the kids have taken advantage of those,” she says.
Has Gloria Carlton taken advantage of the grief counselors, I want to ask, but don’t.
“Again, I’m so very sorry,” Principal Volcy says. “We’re cooperating fully with the police in whatever way we can.”
“What did the police want to know from you?” Aunt Leslie asks her.
“I’m sure they would tell you themselves,” Principal Volcy says.
“We just want to get some idea from you,” Aunt Leslie says.
Aunt Leslie is a great sidekick even though we couldn’t figure out Isabelle’s password, which I bet Isabelle did her best to keep secret from me. She hadn’t chosen any of the obvious choices. Or at least the ones that seemed obvious to me. The ones I have, or would have chosen myself. She did not choose her middle name or my name or Dessalines’s name; Ron Johnson or pilot whales or any titles or famous lines or abbreviations of famous lines from the books and movies we loved. I bet Tina and Jean Michel can hack into Isabelle’s account, but I’m not ready to ask them yet.
“Well.” Principal Volcy pauses and looks me over carefully. “The detectives served us a warrant for Gloria’s school records. They want to make sure what happened was actually an accident, that she wasn’t purposefully targeting anyone.”
I give Aunt Leslie an “I told you so” look as we head out of Principal Volcy’s office.
Part of me hopes that I will run into Isabelle in the halls, just as I did sometimes when I was least expecting it. She would catch me daydreaming or doing a WWR (Walking While Reading) and bump into me on purpose.
“Hey, Giz,” she’d call out. “Wake up!”
Aunt Leslie and I get out of Principal Volcy’s office just in time to make French class.
Walking the school hallway, even with Aunt Leslie next to me, I feel like every inch of the school is haunted. People, students, staff, even the janitors, can’t help but stare at me. Kids I’ve never seen before wave to me and I wave back, in part with gratitude. At least they can see me. At least I’m here.
Thank goodness Aunt Leslie is with me, to help me get through some of the quick hugs, the overfriendliness of strangers, the too loud “That’s her” that people think I can’t hear. Since I’m wearing my cat-eyed glasses inside, maybe some are wondering if I’m now blind. Others whisper Isabelle’s name as they walk past me. The same kind of confusion that might have happened when Isabelle was alive is happening still. They’re not sure who they’re looking at. Or maybe they’re asking themselves the same question I am. Why her and why not me?
Aunt Leslie drops me off at the door of French class. She wants to go in with me, but I don’t let her. I take a deep breath and walk inside.
Everyone is already seated. I take the seat closest to the door, hoping that both the class and Madame Blaise will act as if nothing is different from the last time I was there.
Madame Blaise’s going on as though I’m not even there makes me think they’ve been rehearsing for my return.
Just act normal, she might have told them.
Still, there are whispers, and notes are being passed. I don’t even have a notebook to doodle in. Madame Blaise walks over, leans down, and whispers, “Je suis désolée.”
I get up and leave.
Aunt Leslie and I go and sit in the empty school auditorium for a while.
My head fills up with images of past gatherings there: pep rallies, award ceremonies, talent shows, speaker days, career days, holiday pageants, all things that Isabelle and I attended together, even while sitting in different parts of the auditorium with our own sets of friends.
This is where the spring orchestra concert was supposed to take place. This is where it had taken place last year and the year before that. When no one had died.
The blac
k curtains were supposed to part and Isabelle was supposed to be sitting up there on the stage playing Stravinsky with her friends. We were supposed to arrive early and find seats near the front row. We were not supposed to be late. We weren’t supposed to not be there at all.
Aunt Leslie agrees to let me try one more class visit.
What a strange experiment we’ve undertaken. Yet spending another day at home resting might have been harder still.
In art history, Mr. Rhys changes his lesson plan as soon as I walk through the door. I can tell because everyone is shuffling pages, trying to find what he’s talking about.
He’s going to talk briefly about grief art, he announces.
The idea was just to say hi to Mr. Rhys and maybe pick up a few reading assignments I could do when I was feeling better, then leave. But then he asks if I’ll stick around for a few minutes. Maybe this is why I also want to be here, to be part of some kind of reassuring performance for my friends, live grief art.
Jean Michel turns around and looks at me and just about everyone else does, too, except Tina, who keeps her head down.
Mr. Rhys has to use the Smart Board to quickly find some good examples of paintings that show the five stages of grief. He dims the lights and logs in. The names of the five stages of grief pop up neatly on the board.
Denial and Isolation
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
“On now to finding the art to match them,” Mr. Rhys says.
I can still feel everyone looking at me. The screen is so bright it seems like it’s sending daggers into my eyeballs. I feel a new kind of pain, like a hammer repeatedly landing on my forehead.
I close my eyes to avoid the grinding pain. I stagger over to my empty seat next to Tina and Jean Michel. Jean Michel reaches over and takes my hand. His hands are as sweaty as mine. He’s nervous for me, I think, about what might show up on that screen.
If I were Mr. Rhys, I’d choose a different painting for every grief milestone he’s listed. For Denial and Isolation, I’d show Frida Kahlo’s The Two Fridas (Las Dos Fridas), in which Frida Kahlo is holding hands with a mirror image of herself, their two exposed hearts joined by one vein. For Anger, I’d show Edvard Munch’s swirly ghost in The Scream. For Bargaining (“If we’d left fifteen minutes earlier …”), I’d show one of Isabelle’s favorite Haitian artists, Louisiane Saint Fleurant’s portraits of bubble-headed twins. For Depression, I’d show Alison Saar’s Barefoot, a life-size wood sculpture of a woman coiled into a fetal position, weeping as a tree grows from the soles of her feet. And for Acceptance, I’d show Basquiat’s Riding with Death.
I don’t know what Mr. Rhys actually shows. I’m not sticking around to find out. I pull my hand away from Jean Michel’s and walk out. As I’m rushing away, my arm grazes the back of Jean Michel’s neck and I nearly lose my balance.
I wish I had given myself more time. I am trying to fast-forward my life so I can put more distance between that awful night and me. I want to figure out how people can go on with their lives when mine has changed so much. I want to relearn how to breathe without carrying this big, empty cave inside me.
Tina and Jean Michel rush out behind me. Aunt Leslie is waiting right outside the door.
“We’ll go with you,” Tina says.
I don’t want them with me. I am jealous of them. I’m jealous of them because they can read and watch a screen. I’m jealous because they can look at a newspaper without getting a headache. I’m jealous because they still think French and art history classes matter.
“It’s okay. I got this,” Aunt Leslie says. “You two go back to class.”
They hesitate, then together step back into the classroom. I can tell that Tina wants me to send Jean Michel away and ask her to stay with me. My asking them both to leave me alone is like putting my lifelong friendship with her on the same fragile ground as whatever possibly romantic thing might be happening between Jean Michel and me.
Before I walk away, I see Tina looking through the Plexiglas panel in the door, and I know that she’s feeling both worried and betrayed. But there’s not much I can do for her. There’s not much I can even do for myself. Every kind of comfort either she or Jean Michel could offer me would only keep reminding me of everything that was now impossible for Isabelle, everything that she would never experience, everything that she would never feel, everything that she would never know.
Jean Michel squeezes his face in next to Tina’s in the small square opening. Their eyes, mouths, chins now block out everything I once loved and am leaving behind: those slides and screenshots, those paintings, Mr. Rhys, the two of them. Alone. Together. Without me.
THE NEXT DAY I get a visit from Ron Johnson. Aunt Leslie and Grandpa Marcus are dropping Mom and Dad off at their respective doctors. I’m home with Grandma Régine and we’re sitting on the couch listening to a call-in Haitian news program. The doorbell rings. Grandma Régine walks over, opens the front door, and Ron Johnson is standing there holding a massive bouquet of white roses.
Grandma Régine thinks he’s selling the individual flowers, so she leaves the door half-open and asks him to wait while she gets her purse. He doesn’t quite hear or understand her, so he follows her inside.
I nearly jump out of my skin when I see him. He seems startled, too, as though in all the versions of storming Isabelle’s castle that he’s imagined, none of them were so easy.
Grandma Régine has already picked up her purse and is searching for the money when she looks up and sees Ron Johnson handing the sympathy bouquet to me.
“How much?” she asks anyway.
Ron Johnson is confused. He looks at me, then at Grandma Régine, then finally says, “They’re a gift for your family. They’re not for sale.”
“Oh,” Grandma Régine says.
She puts her purse down and walks over with one of the many vases we’ve accumulated from the endless flower deliveries after Isabelle died.
I am so speechless that I forget to tell Ron Johnson to sit down. So Grandma Régine tells him to. She puts the flowers on the coffee table, making it a much-needed island between Ron and me. She then walks to the front door and closes it, all while keeping an eye on us.
Ron says nothing and I don’t say anything, either. Short of asking him why he’s here, I can’t think of anything to say.
“You’re the boy from the wall?” Grandma Régine finally recognizes him.
“The wall?” Ron asks.
“Isabelle’s wall,” Grandma Régine says.
“Isabelle has a picture of you in her room,” I say.
“A rather large one,” Grandma Régine says. “Of the two of you together.”
Ron Johnson seems both flattered and surprised, as though this was the last thing he was expecting to hear.
I imagine Isabelle being mortified by Grandma Régine’s blabbing. Grandma Régine has just given away a secret that Isabelle might not have wanted Ron Johnson to know. But what does it matter anyway? The dead are not allowed secrets.
“Would you like something to drink?” Grandma Régine asks Ron.
“Maybe some water,” he says. “Please.”
While Grandma Régine is getting the water, Ron Johnson says, “Her accent is pretty.”
“So many people in my life have accents. I don’t even hear them anymore,” I say.
“I guess that can happen,” he says.
I want to ask him how he got our address, but it’s so easy to get anybody’s address, anybody’s but Gloria Carlton’s.
I wonder if he knew her, so I ask him.
He quickly says, “No,” as though he would never want to know her or anyone remotely like her.
“I haven’t seen you at school,” he says.
I want to ask him if he ever saw me before, with or without Isabelle. I guess he must have. If he was in class with Isabelle or was interested in her, he must have at least heard about me.
“I’m not back yet,
” I say. “Doctor says I need to rest.” As in hint hint, maybe you’re keeping me from resting.
Grandma Régine brings him a glass of water so frosty that the glass is sweating. She brings one for me, too, because she considers it rude to let people drink alone in your house, even if they’re only drinking water. If you don’t drink with them, they might think you’re poisoning them, she says.
My glass is so cold that it is making my fingertips feel numb. I take a sip, then place the glass on the coaster she hands me with it. Ron pushes his head back and drinks the whole thing in a couple of gulps. Grandma Régine takes the glass and coaster from him, still watching him carefully as she walks away.
“I guess you must be wondering why I’m here.” He makes his voice purposely deep to sound like the man he might become in a few years.
I know why he’s here. He finds it hard to say goodbye to Isabelle, and he thinks he can keep saying it to me. But I can’t be a grave site for him to visit and bring flowers to. I can’t become a living memorial for him. I also can’t expand Isabelle for him, give him any more of her than he’s already had.
Isabelle is now finite. I can’t give any more of her away. So if she hadn’t told him what her favorite fruit was or what her favorite colors were or what she dreamed about most often, tough luck. He should just keep what he has, without carving into mine. But sometimes not knowing some things, even one thing, makes it harder to say goodbye.
“So Isabelle told you about the whales,” he says.
“She did.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
I tell him that she didn’t, which is true.
“You know what she kept saying that day with the whales?”
“No.”
“What were you doing that day?” he asks.
I try to think back. Then it comes to me. I was doing what everyone in my year was doing, everyone except him and Isabelle. I was taking a mock SAT test.
“That whole day,” he says, “she kept saying”—He takes a stab at mimicking Isabelle’s voice, my voice, which isn’t bad at all. He has the quavering tone and pitch just right.—“ ‘I wish my sister could see this. Wait until I tell my sister about this.’ She would have called you except she didn’t want to mess up your test.”
Untwine Page 15
