Change Places with Me

by Lois Metzger

  “Oh! I didn’t know. . . . Do you live with a guardian?”

  “I wouldn’t call her that.”

  “You are no stranger to death, then. Not to imply that you and death are friends, necessarily. That’s another interest of mine, a death in the family. I’m writing a book for children called When Some Bunny Dies. Young children must hear the truth, no sugarcoating. You should never say, about the deceased parent, ‘She’s sleeping,’ or the child will think Mommy is sure to wake up. You should never say, ‘We lost him.’ Then the child might go searching for Daddy. In my book, Mama Bunny tells it to Baby Bunny straight out—‘Papa Bunny dropped dead.’ Now I have to call your—what did you say she was?”

  “Stepmother.” Clara gave her the number.

  Ms. Gruskin made the call. She explained in a whisper, but loud enough for Clara to hear, why Clara had been sent to her. Then she hung up and turned around. “She didn’t sound surprised.”

  That didn’t surprise Clara.

  Ms. Gruskin frowned. “You’ll have to check in with me next week, or with Ms. Pratt if she’s back by then. So I guess that’s it, unless you wish to discuss the frog?”

  Clara shook her head.

  “Anything else you’d like to share?”

  “Should I wait in the hall?”

  “Yes.” Ms. Gruskin breathed out, sounding relieved.

  Clara went back to the bench. School had just ended and Nick Winter was outside, throwing a basketball. He was tall and wore a team tank top, which left his arms exposed so he could flex them every time he took a shot. A few girls hovered, admiring him. Orange light from outside settled over Clara as she waited for her stepmother.

  CHAPTER 16

  Evil Lynn showed up looking marvelously put together, as always, not a single hair out of place even when the wind blew. She was curvy and athletic and wore clothes effortlessly, as if they had been designed for her, blouses and pants that on anybody else might look okay, nothing special.

  As they walked, the sky, now smeared with dark orange, gray, salmon pink, and purple, caused people all around them to stop and point and admire. Clara, though, looked straight ahead and never slowed; such things were lost on her—nothing to write home about, as her dad used to say. Walking along Belle Heights Drive, she saw peeling paint on some of the storefronts and a mannequin in a thrift-shop window that was missing an arm. At Fully Baked, the window, filled with miniature glazed cupcakes, had a sign that had been there forever, promising “all the colors of the rainbow.” But that, as Clara made a point of noticing, didn’t include Cloudy Dead Blue. Off Belle Heights Drive, they walked along curvy, hilly streets where the rows of houses had straggly lawns out front. It wasn’t dark yet, but streetlights came on and cast a bluish glow.

  “Acupuncture,” Evil Lynn said suddenly. “You’ve never tried it.”

  Clara pictured herself on a dissecting tray. “Is that where they stick you full of pins?”

  “You don’t feel it.”

  Clara found that highly unlikely.

  “Don’t forget—we already have an appointment tomorrow at Neuro Plus, a biofeedback place. It’s in the mall in Spruce Hills, but don’t let that fool you. It’s highly reputable. So don’t make any plans after school.”

  As if Clara ever had plans.

  Evil Lynn was persistent, you had to give her that, despite failure after failure. In her bedroom she had a whole bookshelf full of child-development books. Sometimes Clara flipped through them when Evil Lynn wasn’t home, and saw things highlighted in yellow: Some psychiatrists believe that true mourning is not possible until adolescence; only then can the older child process the younger child’s pain. Evil Lynn had underlined that as well with a thick black marker, and added: ???

  Phrases Clara didn’t understand leaped out at her: Integrate the traumatic event of the death within the psychic structure of the bereaved . . . move beyond shock and numbness to despair and sorrow, and finally to remembering and mastering the events with an eye toward the reorientation and equilibrium of the self and object.

  Just last month Evil Lynn had researched Chinese herbs and brought home bags of yellow and brown powders. She looked positively witchy, sifting powders together and placing the mixture in clear capsules that had no effect on Clara.

  Clara felt her phone buzz.

  But her phone never buzzed anymore.

  She opened her phone and saw Selena’s ID pic jump out at her, big smile, freckles, dimples. Her message, however, had flames shooting from the words:

  Mr. S got computer back on but Astrid had to rush & pierced the heart & we all got D-minus on the frog thanx to you meaning no thanx.

  All at once Clara bumped into someone. It was entirely Clara’s fault—she’d been staring at her flaming phone. She glanced up and saw a girl about her age. She wore a jean jacket and her lipstick was dramatically red. She had short dark hair just above her chin; on one side her hair was behind her ear, and on the other it was in front. She held a leash, which led to a small dog in a sweater.

  Clara ought to apologize.

  But the girl gave her a big, warm, open, completely spontaneous smile and said, “Oops.”

  In that moment Clara felt an intense surge from her innermost core to the outermost reaches of her being:

  Change places with me.

  One of the therapists Clara had been taken to had told her that every thought and emotion reached out to every cell in the body. It hadn’t made sense until now. With everything in her and more, Clara wanted to be this girl in the jean jacket, think her thoughts, live her life—which Clara could already imagine with perfect clarity. This girl was on her way to meet her friends, because of course this girl had lots of friends, and they’d all listen to music or go to a movie, it wouldn’t matter what, because just being together would be wonderful by itself. And they’d send messages to one another because they had something funny to say, not messages burning with leaping flames. And time would just zip by, not drag from one moment to the next. This girl was kind and had a big heart; she loved animals, clearly—she’d put a sweater on her dog—and she reached out to those in need, people who seemed lonely, and everyone remarked on it, what a good soul she was. Her parents were so proud and astounded by how lucky they were, having such a daughter.

  If only, Clara thought, I could change places with her. Not that she’d ever want to. . . .

  Although—some ads for memory manipulation and the new techniques available had popped up on her phone. She’d never checked out the long versions. If Clara could somehow slide this girl’s memories into her head, replacing her own, that would be just as good, right?

  Or, no—it sounded too crazy.

  Clara, who wouldn’t stop for sunsets, turned to watch the girl walk away. There was a large embroidered rose on the back of the jean jacket. Clara had never seen anything like it: layers of gorgeous red petals, maybe a little uneven; she imagined the girl’s mother hand sewing it. Here, try it on, she could hear the girl’s mother say. Now go to the mirror and turn around.

  Why should I—?

  Look over your shoulder.

  Oh . . .

  Do you like it?

  I love it!

  CHAPTER 17

  Clara’s block, with its complex of two-family redbrick houses arranged in a long line of two-story buildings, felt crowded and claustrophobic to her, with pairs of families on top of one another and stuck to other pairs on either side, all in the long shadow of the monstrous Belle Heights Tower.

  Upstairs from Clara and Evil Lynn lived an old lady who had always had two enormous dogs. At night Clara could hear their toenails clicking on the floor overhead. Didn’t the old lady have carpeting?

  As it happened, the old lady was coming downstairs just as Clara and Evil Lynn reached their front door, those huge dogs panting heavily and pulling at their leashes. One of them barked, shrill and hollow; it echoed in the stairway.

  “Do you see that sunset? Isn’t it breathtaking?” The old lady al
ways tried to engage Clara in conversation, but Clara never, ever engaged back.

  Evil Lynn took a moment to agree that the sunset was lovely.

  “Oh, my dear, you look terrified,” the old lady said.

  “I’m fine,” Clara said, even as she felt her breath catch in her throat. Those dogs could lunge at you, it suddenly occurred to her, not just want to lick your hand. How would you know, until it was too late?

  “But my dear, they wouldn’t hurt a soul!”

  Clara went straight to her room, closed the door, and waited for her heart to stop thudding. She grabbed the old elephant, the stiff, bald toy that had belonged to her mom, and held on for dear life.

  That night Clara did the dishes; hot soapy water bubbled up between her long fingers. Usually she wore dishwashing gloves, but after that bio lab she would never wear them again.

  Evil Lynn, in a striped red-and-black kimono, sat watching TV in the living room on the couch she had reupholstered herself. Clara had liked the old, faded, wheat-colored fabric, despite several large holes shredded around the edges; Kim used to say it looked like a stray cat had snuck in during the night. Now the couch had a dark floral pattern Clara had never warmed up to. Over the years Evil Lynn had done other things to the place that seemed, well, out of place. A piece of yellow silk draped over the back of her dad’s favorite blue chair was an obvious mistake, because it kept sliding down. A huge rug from a flea market, disgusting. Who knew anything about the people who’d owned it before? And hanging up a patchwork quilt—why would anyone put a blanket on the wall? Blankets belonged on beds.

  On-screen Clara saw a young woman who looked sad and scared and lost.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Clara blurted out.

  Evil Lynn turned, surprised to see Clara standing behind her, even more surprised that Clara was speaking to her. She cleared her throat. “She thinks her husband is still in love with his first wife. This girl is rather plain and awkward, and terribly shy, and the first wife was sophisticated and gorgeous.”

  Clara stared at the actress. She was actually very pretty, with soft, swept-back brown hair and beautiful dark eyes, but she looked so deeply unhappy, even as she insisted to her husband, “We’re happy, aren’t we? Terribly happy?”

  Clara’s dad had met Evil Lynn at a bus stop. They’d both been waiting for a long time before someone showed up and told them the bus stop had been moved to a different street because a water main had burst. Together Clara’s dad and Evil Lynn had walked to the temporary bus stop, taken the bus, begun dating, and were married only a few months later. At which point he said this was partly for Clara’s sake! “I didn’t want to introduce you to a string of women,” he’d said, smiling gently. “I wanted something everlasting.”

  There was a photo in the living room of Clara’s real mother, her hair a mass of dark-brown curls, head tilted, crinkles at the corners of her eyes, laughing. She hadn’t been everlasting—she’d had thyroid cancer, one of the cancers with an incredibly high survival rate except for the few who were unlucky. Clara used to touch her throat, where the thyroid is, and hum, trying to feel this thing that had killed her mother. As for the thing that had killed her dad, all she had to do was hold her hand over her heart. But she didn’t do it.

  “Plus,” her dad had said about her stepmother, “I saw something amazing in her right away. There’s a quality there—very unusual.”

  Clara had never seen it, not a glimmer. Not then, not now.

  “What’s her name?” Clara asked about the woman on-screen.

  Evil Lynn kept her eyes on the TV and spoke. “She doesn’t have a name.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “The movie is called Rebecca—”

  Clara folded her arms. “Then her name is Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca was the first wife, who died.”

  “But everybody has a name!” Clara had moved closer to Evil Lynn, without thinking, and caught the smell of lavender.

  “She has a name,” Evil Lynn said. “We just never learn what it is. Maybe because she lives in the shadow of a ghost, the ghost of Rebecca. The girl thinks Rebecca must’ve been the perfect wife, but it turns out Rebecca was vindictive and cruel and used people dreadfully, and the husband never loved her. In fact, it turns out he ended up killing Rebecca. In the movie it’s an accident. In the book it’s definitely murder. So you see, not everyone is what they seem. Sometimes you think somebody’s wonderful but she’s not, and the opposite can be true, too—”

  “Does the new wife have a name in the book?” Clara didn’t care about any of the rest of it.

  “No, she narrates and we never learn it there, either.”

  But a name was—well, important. It gave you a place on earth that was yours alone. Clara stood there in the living room, watching and waiting and longing for someone to call this woman by her name, but no one ever did. There would have been so many just-right names for her—Rose, for instance, which was so simple but contained so much, beauty plus a thorn to protect her.

  CHAPTER 18

  There was a Post-it on the kitchen table the next morning: Don’t forget—appt. today.

  Clara shook her head. When would Evil Lynn give up?

  At lunch, the kid at the scanner remarked to her, “You used to be a friend of Kim’s,” and Clara heard herself say, “I am a friend of Kim’s,” and then caught sight of Kim, who had on a Mets jersey and turquoise harem pants, no doubt from Second Nature because no regular store had carried them in years. The old tug of their friendship pulled at her, the dumb things they’d done; in kindergarten they’d hidden in a storage closet during a fire drill, laughing their heads off. Their teacher got so mad when they were found, and got so much madder when Clara kept saying, “But it wasn’t a real fire.” Before she knew it she was putting her tray down and sitting opposite Kim and asking, “Okay if I sit with you?”

  “Well, sure,” Kim said right away, flipping her braid behind her.

  What was happening here? Last night, Clara had actually shed tears, just a few, at an old movie simply because a woman looked so alone and had no name. Clara never cried. Yesterday afternoon, she’d practically broken out in hives over a couple of dogs owned by an old lady she had, without effort, been able to ignore for years. Now she had joined Kim for lunch. She had no idea what to say.

  Kim didn’t seem to mind; she shrugged her shoulders. “So . . . you want to do a crossword puzzle?”

  What a great idea. Clara pulled out her phone and held it between them. A video for Bracelesses popped up, but she swiped it away.

  “I’ve never really done one before,” Kim said.

  Clara showed her how you started with the words moving across, or horizontally. The clue for one across: six-letter word for ache.

  “Pain,” Clara said. “Wait, that’s only four letters. Anguish—that’s seven, too many, distress, also seven, what about agony? Oh, that’s five.”

  “Desire,” Kim said.

  Clara said the easy way to check if your word was correct was to take a quick look at an intersecting word—say, one down. The clue: Personal journal (five letters). That had to be diary, and the d confirmed that the first letter of one across was also d. Kim had gotten it right. Clara had been on the wrong track.

  The puzzle was a tricky one—they got harder as the week went along—but it turned out Kim was a natural, as Clara told her while eating her poppy-seed bagel and chocolate chip cookies. Kim had something she’d brought from home, an avocado-and-turkey spiral. Together they finished the puzzle in less than fifteen minutes, faster than Clara had ever done a Thursday puzzle.

  “Hey, I’ve been looking around for someone,” Kim said. “I wasn’t going to ask you, because, you know . . .” She paused. “But you’d be perfect, Clara. You have the best face.”

  What was that?

  “I want to put stage makeup on you—I need the practice, and this would really help. A girl in the cast got me to sign up to do the play this year, Into the Woo
ds, and I want them all to look just right. Your face is so wide open, so inviting. I look at you and I see—so many possibilities. I could turn you into anything. With makeup, I mean. Please say yes.”

  Clara thought about it—and found she had absolutely no thoughts about it whatsoever. “Okay.”

  “Yay!” Kim actually clapped. “Can you come over today, after school?”

  “Tomorrow,” Clara said quickly. “Today I have . . . plans.”

  Hydro-buses were always way too crowded in Belle Heights, and it also took an extra-long time for passengers to get on and off. The ladder in the center slowed everything down, so most people bunched up toward the ramp at the front. That way you boarded the bus faster, but usually there were no seats to be had. Clara and Evil Lynn ended up standing up the whole way, people jostling them on either side, and there was a vague smell of something sour. The bus kept stalling, which upped the annoyance factor, all the way to Spruce Hills, which, contrary to its name, didn’t have a single hill (or any spruce trees, for that matter).

  Inside the mall, Evil Lynn took her to Neuro Plus, which was between a tattoo parlor and a Bracelesses store. Selena probably came here for adjustments. Clara was grateful to see no sign of her.

  Once inside, Clara sat in a waiting area that was really a long hall. She had Evil Lynn on one side and two women deep in conversation on the other. At one point the first one said, “Is that your new coat?”

  “It’s one of my new coats,” said the other.

  After a time a man stood before them. He had a thick mustache the color and texture of straw. “I am Dr. Stone,” he said.

  Clara got up.

  Dr. Stone looked somewhat alarmed. Sometimes her height threw people off.

  “She’s fifteen,” Evil Lynn remarked.

  “Of course. We see many children. Won’t you follow me?” Dr. Stone signaled for Evil Lynn to stay where she was, something she was accustomed to doing when it came to waiting areas. She had come prepared; a thick book was in her lap.

  Dr. Stone led Clara to a tiny room; it barely held his desk and chair, and a chair for her. But he spoke expansively: “We at Neuro Plus begin with biofeedback, a form of therapy that enables you to monitor your brain-wave activity.” He leaned back in his chair, hitting the wall. “I do that every time!” he said with a laugh.