by Dar Williams
By October, I could see that I was really changing. My brain felt sharper. I put my clothes out the night before school, and I made sure I had what I needed for class. I tried not to let any old stupid thing come out of my mouth. I tried to be more like Hally. Ellen talked a lot, but she was clever.
I actually liked everything we were learning about, especially new words and history. I felt like I could be smart around them, and we could challenge each other. Phyllis called this kind of thing “sharpening your wits” and said it was why she liked hanging out with Mr. Spiro, the librarian.
The strange thing was, the teachers liked Ellen and Hally, but they didn’t seem to like me as much.
I mean, our music teacher, Ms. Bernstein, was a hippie, so she liked everyone. Mrs. Donaldson, the math teacher, didn’t really like anyone. Mr. Hankel, the science teacher, called me a “swell kid” once. But there was also Ms. Severance, the English and social studies teacher. I thought she was brilliant, but she liked Hally and Ellen much better than me, which didn’t seem fair.
Once Hally turned to Ellen and said, “She should wear bigger earrings, to compensate for her long face.”
Ellen said, “And she also wears that sweater, like, every day. I hope she washes it!”
Ms. Severance wore that sweater a couple of times a week. I knew because I loved it. It was a soft mossy green with buttons that looked like shells. And she wore little earrings that sparkled when she turned toward the window. There was nothing wrong with that. I didn’t notice her long face until Hally pointed it out.
I said nothing, and that’s when I knew I was like the other kids, too afraid to speak up.
Finally, the day before winter vacation, I saw a note that Hally wrote to Ellen. It said, “She could use a professional haircut: a salon.” There was an arrow underneath the words. I closed my eyes and figured out that, yes, the arrow had been pointed at me.
So I felt uncomfortable around my friends for a good reason. They made fun of me, too. Under Hally’s writing, Ellen wrote, “Is she a boy or girl???”
I showed the note to Ellen and she said, “You took a piece of paper off the dirty floor, uncrumpled it, and read a personal note between me and Hally? It wasn’t about you. And it was PRIVATE.”
From then on, when she and Hally passed notes, they wrote PRIVATE on them in big letters. There were no more sleepovers, and no more laughing together.
On a good day, I said one thing that made them smile.
After vacation, I asked Frances if she’d had a good time skiing, but by this time she expected the trick question she’d gotten from Ellen. She said, “What do you care?” I couldn’t blame her, but it made me feel like walking poison when it came to friends.
My dad’s friends, on the other hand, all wanted to be my friends, but that was because they loved my dad. Why was I so bad at making my own friends?
Dad always said he was lucky to have the friends he did. He talked about how they helped him be a single dad and how they convinced him to keep me when he wasn’t so sure he should.
When my dad was in his twenties, he lived with his girlfriend, my mother, because of me, their daughter. The story goes that they met at a restaurant where they worked. Then they had me. They got different shifts, hers at night and his during the day. They hardly saw each other, but they didn’t have to get baby-sitters.
My mother, Sally, was unhappy. I knew this because Carolyn once said, “We all know Sal had that baby to make her parents angry.”
Lovely. My mom had me as revenge.
My dad and his other friends all jumped in and said, “Noooo, noooo, she loved you sooooo much.”
But if my mom was unhappy, the next part of the story made more sense.
One day she said, “I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”
“This” was me. She couldn’t handle it. Me. And so she left.
Dad met with his friends. “This kid deserves a stable environment,” he said, and they said, “Yes!”
And he said, “So I should put her up for adoption,” and his friends said, “No!”
They told my dad that he could raise me, because they would help. Apparently, it ended with John saying, “David, this will be an adventure!”
Well, I liked that story, because I liked the ending. I loved my dad. He was nice to everyone, including me. He taught philosophy at the State University of New York, New Paltz, or SUNY New Paltz, and he would have students over for holiday parties in December. They liked my dad, too.
He and I always spoke sympathetically about my mother, as if she were a friend who had never figured out what she wanted. She died in a car accident soon after she left. Poor Sally. I really did feel sorry for her.
I looked over now at my dad driving and wanted to get back into a conversation. I was sick of feeling so quiet and frowning all the time. I asked about his headache.
“It’s not good,” Dad admitted. “It’s in the back of my head and neck.”
“I know those,” I said. “It feels like a robot has you in its pincer?”
Dad laughed. “That’s exactly what kind of headache it is.”
And that’s what a great dad he was. I knew he had to be mad at me for what I’d said to John, but he still laughed. And unlike Ellen or Hally or Lenore, he never called me “crazy.” None of his friends did, either. Of course, that’s because they were all pretty crazy themselves.
But they had helped raise me. In some ways, I’d grown up with five parents. Sometimes I thought I had only one, but he was a very, very good one.
I was getting ready for school the Monday after the movie weekend, after I’d opened my mouth. I hadn’t laid out my clothes. Suddenly, I didn’t like any of my clothes. I thought of Hally quietly noticing the pills on my sweater or the little ink stain on my pants.
I heard my dad getting ready for work. He taught two classes at the college on Mondays.
On my way to the kitchen, I was surprised to see Phyllis’s car in the driveway. My mind filled with that terrible silence in the car after I’d dropped that bomb, telling John to give it up.
Phyllis was polite. She didn’t seem mad, but I couldn’t tell. She didn’t talk and talk and talk like she usually did. She was a little spacey as she drank her coffee and I poured some cereal. I tried to make small talk as if I were going to work like her and my dad.
“Another day, another dollar,” I said, shaking my head.
“Would you like a ride to school?” Phyllis asked. “I’m not going to work today, actually, but I can drop you off.”
“Why aren’t you going?”
“I’m driving your dad to the doctor,” she answered casually.
“Which doctor?” I asked.
Phyllis crossed and re-crossed her long legs. “He hasn’t been feeling well.”
“What do you mean? You mean the headaches?”
“Yeah, and he’s been feeling dizzy. A little dizzy.”
“Is that bad?” I was worried now.
“It’s something to pay attention to.” Phyllis was looking into the next room, hoping my dad would come in and finish the explanation.
“How bad is that? I mean, how dizzy is he?”
“He fainted.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. You were at the library. Don’t get me wrong, people faint sometimes. We’re just being careful. So we’re both calling in sick today. Don’t tell anyone I’m just the driver.” She stopped herself from going on, and she smiled.
“So this is just to make sure he’s okay?” I asked, still nervous.
“Exactly. And you know how careful I like to be.” She was right about that. “I said, ‘Nuh-uh, no driving for you until you see a doctor.’ If he fainted in the car — I can’t even think of it. So I’m cutting school.”
I knew it had to be a big deal if Phyllis was cutting school. “I’ll tell them you’ve got a huge rash with blisters,” I promised her.
“Thank you,” she said with a near smile. “Then they won’t miss
me.”
“Well, hello,” my dad said as he came in for breakfast. “Are we taking you to school today?”
“Yeah, and then you’re going to the doctor,” I said. I looked at him closely, to see if I could notice something really wrong. Mostly he looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
Dad looked at Phyllis. “Yup,” he said, “I’m sure I’m fine. It’s part of being healthy to be careful.”
Sure. I narrowed my eyes to look very serious, but they didn’t notice.
Dad insisted on sitting in the backseat of the car, and I got a little chill down my spine. Sitting in the front seat, I felt like I was the parent and we were dropping my dad off at school. But when the car stopped, it was me jumping out and going up the steps of the middle school.
I walked in past Hally and Ellen on the way to my new seat. The seating had changed, and that was fine with me. Ellen was talking with Lenore. “New York was founded by the Dutch,” she said. “They had a boat called the Half Moon. The Mayflower went to Massachusetts, not the Hudson River.” And then she added what she always added: “Everybody knows that.”
I groaned and quickly passed both of them.
How was I going to make it through this day? I don’t even know if I did. I could only think about Dad at the doctor’s.
At lunch, I went to my hiding place, the side of the stage we had in the gym. Once, during an assembly, I looked into the dark wings of the stage and knew I could go there to be alone. Sure enough, the door to the backstage was always open, even though it had the word “PRIVATE” in chipped letters. There was never anyone there. Today I went backstage and felt so lonely that I tried to read a book in the dark.
The teachers’ moods matched the weather, gloomy and heavy. Ms. Severance didn’t wear my favorite sweater. She hardly looked at us, either.
After school, I walked home through the snow. I knew a shortcut through the woods, and that’s the way I liked to go.
Phyllis’s car was in the driveway again, and so was Carolyn’s. I didn’t feel good about this.
“Hi, Amalee,” Joyce said in her squeaky, teary voice as I walked in. She was there with Carolyn and Phyllis, who had their heads bowed.
“Hi,” I said. “How did it go? Where’s Dad?”
They made Joyce explain, because she was the therapist. My dad was in the hospital, and would be for a few days.
“What???” I exploded.
Phyllis jumped in, “Now, the doctor is being careful —”
“A few days?” I repeated. “That’s not careful, that’s worried.”
Phyllis and Joyce started talking at once. Words of comfort, words of hope to cover up words of fear and words of despair. My dad called these words euphemisms. “Stop it with all of those words you use!” I shouted. Joyce covered her mouth and Phyllis turned away. I froze up and couldn’t apologize, but I wanted to. They were just trying to help, I knew.
Luckily Carolyn spoke up. “All right, all right, you can see it, Amalee. We’re all a little worried. But actually the doctor said not to be worried.”
Okay, that was better. If we were all scared, then I wasn’t the only one in the dark. We all were.
Phyllis said, “I’m going to stay with you.”
And she did. She stayed after Joyce and Carolyn left. It wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. She was like my dad’s sister.
We ate spaghetti that night. After she convinced me that my dad was really fine and that there was only the slightest chance that something was wrong, I asked Phyllis why I didn’t see other adults walking around with a pack of friends like my dad did. “Well, some people get married and kind of keep to themselves, and none of us are married, well not anymore,” she thought out loud. “But you know what I think it is? Your dad is an only child, so he turns all his friends into brothers and sisters. I mean, I guess you do that, too.”
“No, I don’t,” I said with emphasis. Emphatically — a word Ms. Severance had taught us.
“Is there, um, something wrong at school?” she asked slowly.
“What would be wrong?” I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Do you have any friends?” she asked.
“Yes, they’re just at school.”
“I see,” she said. She knew I was lying.
The phone rang and we both ran for it. It was Dad.
He said, “Hey, there! I hope I don’t sound too funny. They have to knock me out to do these tests. Do I sound like I’m talking through a tube?”
“No!” I laughed. He sounded fine. After I got off the phone, I excused myself quickly from the table and went to my room. And cried and cried.
Phyllis stayed for three more days. We had spaghetti for three more nights. That was a nice thing about her. She didn’t care if we had the same thing three nights in a row.
She didn’t ask any more questions about school or friends. We watched the news together, and she tried to explain what was going on in the government. It was an interesting change in my life, but I was looking forward to being with my dad again.
On Friday afternoon, Phyllis and Joyce were pulling out of my driveway as I got home from school.
“We’re going to get your dad!” Phyllis said cheerfully.
“Let me come,” I said.
“Uh, you don’t want to go all the way to Westchester,” Phyllis said, wrinkling her nose in sympathy.
“Sure I do,” I told her.
Phyllis looked really nervous and sighed. “Okey-dokey, then.”
“So,” Joyce chattered as we drove down the highway, “what are you up to in school?”
“We’re building a rocket.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s just a one-person rocket. We’re sending Mr. Hankel up. It’s kind of a combination science project and retirement party.”
Phyllis snorted. I’d made a joke to see how serious things were. If we were all laughing, everything had to be okay. Right?
Not right. As soon as we pulled into the hospital parking lot, I knew something was wrong.
“Do you have a book you can read?’ Joyce asked. “You know, so you can stay in the car?”
“Why can’t I come up?” I asked. I was more than ready to see my dad.
Phyllis came clean. “He’s really out of it, Honey. He’s feeling very sick.”
I could tell Joyce was getting teary-eyed.
“It turns out he has something like the flu, but it’s in his spine,” Phyllis went on. “Which means he needs medication, and sleep, and … and time.”
“Please,” Joyce pleaded, “stay in the car for now. We’ll bring him out.”
And so I stayed, obedient as a golden retriever who sticks his nose out the window that’s rolled down about an inch. They disappeared for about ten minutes. A flu in his spine. I thought of Mr. Hankel’s diagram of the spinal cord.
Mr. Hankel always wanted to prove that every organ had an essential function (except, of course, the appendix). But he was more serious about a few things, like the heart, the brain, the spine, and the spinal fluid inside the spine. Mr. Hankel called the spinal fluid “the stuff of life” because it was also the brain fluid, or “the brain bath,” he called it. He showed us how the fluid helped the spine act like a flexible tube that allowed us to bend and curve our backs. He made us bend and curve our backs and think about how flexible we were. He was a good teacher, I suddenly thought. That’s when I realized I was so scared, I just wanted someone as big and slow and un-mysterious as Mr. Hankel to come and quietly explain everything to me.
Then I saw my dad. They brought him out in a wheelchair looking half asleep.
“Hi, Dad!” I called, jumping out of the car, hoping I could cheer him up. But he looked confused.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“We’re here to bring you home,” Phyllis said.
Joyce was walking with the doctor, Dr. Nurstrom, who was tall and gloomy looking. “He’ll need to come back and see me tomorrow and the next day and proba
bly three times a week, at least,” he was saying, coldly nodding to my dad. Phyllis and Joyce looked panicked.
Suddenly, Joyce seemed extremely warm and friendly. “Dr. Nurstrom, I have a very unusual idea,” she said. “I know we aren’t living in the Wild West here, but I have a picture in my mind of an old-fashioned doctor making a house call.”
“No,” said Dr. Nurstrom. “I need to see him.”
“You don’t know someone you trust around Rosendale? Someone who could stop in?”
“Rosendale?” He frowned. “I live in Woodstock.”
“We’re right on your way to work, then,” Joyce pointed out. I noticed how pretty she was looking at this moment, with flushed cheeks that almost matched the red in her scarf.
“Dr. Nurstrom, we will cook you breakfast, make you lunch, make you coffee,” Phyllis begged. “This drive would be so difficult for him. Imagine what it’s like for him to be driven around in my car, with all the dog hair and the mess.” I was always surprised to catch an adult in a big fat lie.
Phyllis didn’t have a dog.
“I make good coffee,” Joyce added.
At that moment, my dad lifted his head to protest. He couldn’t even do that.
I reached out my hand and said, “Hush.” I tried not to cry. I looked up and saw that everyone was looking at me.
“I, uh, think there are some rail trails around Rosendale where I could go running in the mornings,” Dr. Nurstrom said reluctantly.
“Yes, there certainly are,” Joyce agreed.
Dr. Nurstrom looked very worried, but then he smiled the best he could and said, “Yes, I can do this.”
Then Joyce started to cry. I almost groaned. She put her head on Phyllis’s shoulder and bawled.
Dr. Nurstrom put his hand on her back. “Of course, I can do this.”
As Joyce was helping my dad into the car, Dr. Nurstrom asked if Joyce was my dad’s girlfriend. I shuddered at the thought.
Phyllis said, “No, she’s just a good friend. We’re all good friends.”
“He’s lucky,” said Dr. Nurstrom, and I remembered that not all people have friends like my dad’s.
