Girlhearts

by Norma Fox Mazer

  TEN

  “Sarabeth might as well just stay on with us,” Cynthia said. “She’s got to sleep on the couch, but hey! It’s comfortable, isn’t it?” she said, looking at me. I nodded. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m sure that’s what Jane would have wanted. I don’t mean the couch! I mean living with us. And Billy and I have already talked about it and, well, we’re ready.”

  “We are,” Billy confirmed, tipping back in his chair.

  “So, good, but Sarabeth could come to us, too,” Leo said, looking at Pepper. “We have a pretty big place we’re renting, and Jane didn’t leave any kind of written instructions, did she?”

  Everyone had finally left, but the four of them had remained to clean up and, I realized now, to discuss me. What I should do, where I should go, who I should live with. Nobody had asked me anything yet.

  I put a jelly glass in the cupboard, bumped another one next to it, and said, “I’ll stay right here.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sarabeth. You can’t do that,” Cynthia said.

  “Not an option,” Leo agreed, booming, his voice matching Cynthia’s rich voice, as if they were both onstage. But they were standing at the sink. She was washing dishes; he was drying.

  “I think it is an option,” I said. “I want to stay in my own house.”

  “You can’t stay alone,” Leo said. “Not to speak of how are you going to buy food, pay the rent and the other bills.”

  “She knows that,” Cynthia said. “We’ve already been over this whole thing.”

  “I can figure it out,” I said. “I’ll get a part-time job. I can take care of myself. Why do I have to go anyplace else?”

  “Ha!” Billy said in his army sergeant’s voice, calling us all to attention. “Are you out of your mind, Sarabeth?”

  “You’re a girl,” Leo chimed in, as deep-voiced and loud as Billy, “a thirteen-year-old kid. You’re not staying here alone.”

  I sat down, dizzy, the contrasts between them too sharp for my eyes, too loud for my ears. Cynthia operatically singing her words, Leo like the god of thunder booming his, and Pepper with her thin arms and jingling silver bracelets, and Billy with his Ha!s and his sharply cut hair and perfectly pressed khakis.

  “Even if it was a possibility, to let you stay here would be a total desecration of Jane’s memory,” Cynthia said, turning around from the sink. She peered at me from her height, which suddenly seemed impossibly tall. “Can you imagine what Jane would say about your being alone and not putting school first?”

  “She would go nuts,” Leo confirmed.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Cynthia said. “We all know how Jane felt about school. She revered education!” She lit a cigarette. She’d given up smoking when she was pregnant with Darren, but she was at it again. “Do you really think any of us could sleep, Sarabeth, knowing you were here all by yourself? And even if we would consider it, which none of us would, the county would not allow it.”

  “The who?” I said.

  “The county. Your legal parent now, Sarabeth. Sorry to say it this way, sweetie, but you’re an orphan.”

  “Little Orphan … Sarie?” I said, making a feeble joke. Only Leo responded, giving me a grin and flipping the dish towel at me.

  “You’re grieving, Sarabeth,” Pepper said suddenly. She’d been quiet until then, wrapping the leftover food in foil. She gave me a solicitous look. “You shouldn’t be solitary; it’s not a healthy thing.”

  I didn’t want to hear her say anything, but give her this much—she didn’t say it twenty-five times over, like the others did. In the end, I shut up and let them all go at it, let them ask the questions and bat around the answers. Their answers.

  Should Sarabeth live with Leo and Pepper or with Cynthia and Billy? Hmmm, gotta think about that one. What should they do with Jane’s stuff, store it or call the Rescue Mission? Store it for now, too soon to make these decisions. What about money? Jane didn’t have any. For her, it was touch and go every month. Would there be a refund of the rent? Pul-leeze, did you get a load of Dolly Krall’s face? That woman is tight as a fist. But Sarabeth will get Social Security now, won’t she, something like Aid to Dependent Children? So who’s going to oversee it? And what about Jane’s car? Oh, we can talk about that later on.

  I hated this talk, hated every bit of it. I left the kitchen and went into Mom’s room. I lay down on her bed. Her sheets and pillow smelled like her, not like expensive roses, nothing like that, just a good Mom smell. I couldn’t describe it, but I knew it, and I pressed my face into her pillow.

  “Sarabeth?” I must have drowsed. Cynthia was at the door. “Come on in the kitchen, hon; we need to talk to you.”

  I sat down between Cynthia and Leo. I felt closest to them, but not really close, either, not the way I used to be. They all looked at me, solemn-faced, as if they expected me to speak, to say something profound. “What?” I said.

  Leo and Cynthia started talking at the same time. “We’ve decided … this is the thing … you see …”

  “Hold it!” Billy used his sergeant voice. “One at a time.”

  Cynthia told me that I was going to live with her and Billy. They didn’t have the room for me, as I knew, but they were married, and Leo and Pepper weren’t. “They’re respectable folk; we aren’t,” Leo joked. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “What about Tobias?” I said.

  There was silence for a moment; then Cynthia said, “Oh, shoot. We forgot the cat.”

  “We’re not taking him,” Billy said.

  I half rose. “Tobias has to come with me.” My voice cracked with panic.

  “Sarabeth, you know our place,” Cynthia said. “You know how much room we have. I mean, how much room we don’t have.”

  Pepper picked up Tobias and held him near her chin. “Is he sick, Sarabeth?”

  “He’s got … a cold.” I could barely get out the words. Not have Tobias with me? We’d always been together.

  “He’s sweet.” Pepper stroked him, her bracelets rattling. “I love this little orange bit over his eye.”

  “His fur usually looks much better,” I said. “Like clean, clean white snow. And he’s really much livelier, even if he is getting old. And he understands people, he really does. He’s very—” I broke off. I didn’t know why I was talking so much.

  “I’d take him to live with us,” Pepper said. “How about it, Leo? Let’s take him, okay?”

  “Oh. Sure,” Leo said. He didn’t sound that enthusiastic, but it was settled—Tobias’s fate, and mine.

  ELEVEN

  Mom died on Friday. That was the day I saw her in the hospital and the night I stayed alone. Saturday was the first night I slept over at Cynthia and Billy’s place. Sunday was the open house and the second night I slept over at Cynthia and Billy’s place, but the first night I officially moved in with them.

  Monday was the beginning of a new week, as Cynthia pointed out. I stayed out of school. I wasn’t ready to go back yet. I stayed out on Tuesday, too. That was the day Mom was cremated. Mrs. Corelli called at 8:15, and Cynthia spoke to her. Then around ten o’clock, the phone rang again. “Get that, will you?” Cynthia called. “I’m in the bathroom.”

  It was Mr. Keller from the funeral home. “Ms. Silver,” he said. “How are you? I know you will want to pick up your mother’s remains, and you may do it any day now. How would tomorrow be?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, then, when would be good for you?”

  I was silent.

  “Friday?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to suggest a day?”

  Again I was silent. The day I wanted to suggest was no day. Never. I didn’t want to pick up Mom’s “remains.”

  “How about a week from Thursday?” Mr. Keller was saying. “Surely you can make it then? And we’ll settle the financial arrangements at that time, so of course Mrs. Ramos will be with you.”

  I called Cynthia to set the time with Mr. Keller. While she was on the phone, I
played with Darren and didn’t let myself think about anything else. “Horsie,” Darren said, and I got down on the floor so he could climb on my back. He was a chunky little guy with big hands. Billy joked that he was going to be a truck driver or a boxer. “He’s got the hands for it,” he’d say, then irritate Cynthia by adding, “He got them straight from his mom.”

  Later that afternoon, Cynthia asked if I wanted to go out for a walk with her and Darren. “You should come with us,” she said, zipping up Darren’s puffy jacket and buckling his little snow boots. Same thing she’d said the day before.

  “No, thanks.” Same thing I’d said the day before.

  “All you’ve been doing is sitting around, Sarabeth. Your mom would really not like that.”

  “Is there something you want me to do?” I asked. “I can vacuum or wash the blinds or—”

  “No, I don’t mean that sort of thing!”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Just forget it. I want you to do things for yourself. Okay, I’m going to indulge you today: You lie around or whatever you want to do, but tomorrow I expect you to pick yourself up and get in the groove. That means school. And right now, maybe you could do something, after all, like folding the blankets, so the couch doesn’t look like a tornado just whirled through here.”

  “Oh, sure,” I said, but after she left, I just sat at the window, staring down into the street. It was so different from where I’d lived with Mom. There, it had been all young families and old people, and I pretty much knew everyone, at least by sight. Cynthia and Billy lived on a busy main street. You could just sit there and not think of anything, just watch the cars and the crowds of people always going up and down the street and in and out of the buildings.

  Time passed. I don’t know if I was actually thinking or just vegetating, but when the phone rang, the sound went through me like a needle. The ringing didn’t stop, and I finally went into the kitchen to answer.

  “Sarabeth!” It was Jen. “Where were you? I was just going to hang up.”

  “Sorry, Jen.”

  “Everyone’s with me. We’re all here at my house, and we decided to call you. Patty had Cynthia’s number. Good thing, huh? When are you coming back to school? How do you feel?”

  “Okay.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “You don’t sound okay. You sound all limp and draggy. You sound crappy; you don’t sound like yourself at all.”

  I tried to rouse myself, to put energy into my voice. “What does sounding like myself sound like, Jen?” I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. Actually, it was as if I couldn’t, as if my voice was wound up and couldn’t or wouldn’t stop until it was completely unwound. “You mean like a normal girl, Jen, like any girl, or like someone whose mother has died? You mean—”

  “Sarabeth, stop that.”

  “—like someone crazed, like someone who wants to scream, like someone who wants to howl. That’s me, Jen, that’s me. I can howl like a dog or a coyote. I can. I can do it.”

  I did. I threw my head back and I heard sounds coming out of my throat, sounds I’d never made before, but very like the cries and shrieks I’d heard from the coyotes.

  “Sarabeth!” Asa was calling me.

  I put my head down, panting.

  “It’s me, Sarabeth. It’s Asa. Jen is crying her eyes out. You scared her. Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not, but why were you doing that?”

  “Asa, I don’t know. Asa, they’re going to cremate my mom. I mean they did it already! The man called, and we’re supposed to pick up the … the, you know, the ashes; he calls them ‘the remains.’ So they did it, Asa, they did it.”

  “But that’s good, Sarabeth. We don’t have cemetery plots in our family, either. We think it’s primitive to dig a hole in the ground and stick a box into it, sometimes even made of concrete, which is completely absurd, because it will never biodegrade. My grandmother is the only one in my family who doesn’t agree, but she’s so old-world. I wouldn’t have it any other way when it’s my turn. I want my ashes scattered to the wind and I made out a will saying that.”

  Asa had made out a will? From pure surprise, for a moment I seemed to come more awake than I had been in days.

  “Sarabeth, here’s Grant. She wants to talk to you, too. No, wait, Patty first.”

  “Sarabeth,” Patty said, “I just want to tell you we love you, we all love you, and we’re waiting for you to come back to school. And Grant wants to play something for you on her flute.”

  Then I heard Grant’s voice. “This is called ‘Red Cloud’s Song.’ Are you sitting down, Sarabeth? Sit down, close your eyes, and listen. All right? Will you do that?”

  “Yes,” I said, and I did it. I sat down, closed my eyes, kept the phone pressed to my ear, and listened to Grants flute. It was like listening to a bird singing in a still forest. Mom never liked that really quiet music, but I thought she would have liked this. She would have loved it, and maybe she would have cried, too, listening to it.

  The next morning, I got up really early. No more running for the school bus at the bottom of the hill. My school was all the way across the city now, and Cynthia was going to drive me there. We both rushed around getting ready and acting, as Cynthia said, “like chickens with their stupid heads cut off.” Because of the morning traffic, it was a thirty-five-minute drive, and she pulled up in front of school exactly two minutes before the last bell.

  “Wait for me outside after school,” she said. “I’ll pick you up. Don’t worry if I’m a few minutes late.”

  “Cynthia.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thank you. Really. I’m sorry I’m such a drag.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. It’s not a problem. Just get out there and get going, Sarabeth. That will give me the most satisfaction.”

  I ran toward the building and up the steps, thinking that Mr. Dunsenay had made an announcement to the whole school about Mom. Now everyone knew. Suddenly, I panicked at the thought of hundreds of curious eyes peering at me. I turned around to call Cynthia, to tell her I wanted to go back with her, but the VW was already out of sight.

  I shouldn’t have worried. That morning, it seemed as if half the school hugged me and patted me and told me how sorry they were and that they wanted to help me any way they could. Mrs. Coppel in the office; Mrs. Hilbert, who was my favorite teacher; and even Mr. Abdo, who taught Social Studies and PE, tried to comfort me. And Mr. Dunsenay popped out of his office long enough to squeeze my arm and say, “You just let me know if you need anything.”

  At lunchtime, my friends were waiting for me at our regular table in the cafeteria. “Here, Sarabeth, sit between me and Grant,” Patty said, pulling out a chair.

  I sat down and looked around at them. The last time we’d been together in the cafeteria seemed so long ago, but it was actually only five days ago. Then I remembered howling over the phone and I was embarrassed, but none of them mentioned it.

  “Where’s your lunch?” Jennifer said.

  “My lunch?” I looked down as if it should be on the table. “Oh, wow. I must have forgotten it.” I’d made a sandwich the night before at Cynthia’s urging, but in the rush of getting ready, I hadn’t even thought about putting it into my backpack.

  “You have to eat, girl,” Grant said. She was completely recovered from her flu. “Here, take half my sandwich.”

  “I have fruit,” Asa said, giving me an apple and a handful of dried apricots.

  Then they all gave me food, more than I could possibly eat, another half sandwich, celery and carrot sticks, three cookies, and a carton of strawberry yogurt. They took care of me, and not just at lunch, but for the rest of the day, checking up on me in the halls, even wanting to carry my books between classes. “You nuts!” I said. “Stop that. I’m not feeble.”

  Asa and Jennifer waited outside with me after school for Cynthia. A wind was blowing. Leaves drifted down. “You all are the best,” I said. “My mom loved—”
/>   I meant to say “loved you all,” but I stopped, remembering Mom’s sneering, “Oh, your friends” on that last morning, as if she had no use for them. It wasn’t true. She had been sick that morning. I knew she liked my friends, liked them a lot, approved of them. She had opened her heart and our home to Patty when Patty needed it … but still … but still, I could hear Mom’s voice saying those words. And I wished I couldn’t.

  “You should have seen Lisa Farger in the locker room after PE,” Jennifer said to Asa. “Draping herself all over Sarabeth and crying as if she was Sarabeth’s best friend!”

  “Lisa’s a sympathy monster,” Asa agreed. “Anything sad that happens to anyone, that’s her meat. If you’re suffering, she’s in her glory.”

  Jennifer clicked her tongue disgustedly. “Sarabeth, you should have told that brat to get outta town.”

  Cynthia pulled up at the curb. She waved to me and called out, “Hi, girls!”

  The sun came out as I walked toward the car. It shone through the red leaves of the maples lining the street, and I thought how much Mom had loved seeing the trees change color. She always said fall and spring were her favorite seasons. And then I thought of that song called “Beautiful Old Life” about all the things that someone who had died would never know again or hear again or see again.

  TWELVE

  The day Cynthia and I were supposed to go to the funeral home, I was so tired and so slow in school that I barely made it on time to any of my classes. “What’s the matter?” Patty said when we met for lunch.

  “Nothing. Don’t feel too great.” I opened my lunch bag and then just sat there, looking at it.

  “Is everything okay over at Cynthia’s?” Grant asked.

  I nodded.

  “Liar,” Jennifer said. She slurped her soda.

  “You’re pale,” Patty said.

  “She looks green,” Asa said.

  Why were they attacking me? Suddenly, I was shaking and my teeth were rattling. Grant got her arm around me, and I tried to pull away, not even knowing what I was doing. My stomach heaved, and I heard Jennifer say, “Uh-oh, I think she’s going to toss her cookies.”