The Secret of Clouds

by Alyson Richman

  * * *

  • • •

  THE Friday before Labor Day, I arrived early at Franklin Intermediate, eager to set up my classroom. I had filled my silver Toyota with boxes of supplies: folders, paper, and marking pens. My friend Suzie Price, the art teacher, was in the hallway, stapling colored paper to the bulletin board, when I walked inside. I knew it would be a full-blown art gallery of student works on display in less than two weeks’ time.

  “Hey, beauty,” she said. In truth, Suzie was the real beauty. With bright red lips and perfect skin, and all her scarves and mix-matched separates, she had that artistic way of styling herself I so envied. Come winter, when I’d be bundled up in a practical wool cardigan, she’d be wearing one in chenille with buttons made of sea glass.

  “Good summer?”

  “The best! No more reverse commute from the city. Bill and I found a great new place . . . a cottage out in Stony Brook.”

  “That’s amazing news, Maggie. I need to move out of my place one of these days. Living in a basement isn’t good for the artist’s soul.”

  “Check the PennySaver,” I hollered over my shoulder as I carried my box down toward my classroom.

  * * *

  • • •

  ROOM number 203, my classroom, was smack in the middle of Franklin’s west wing. Like the majority of Long Island’s public schools, Franklin’s interior was devoid of any charm or architectural detail. The ceilings were low, the cement-block walls were painted a drab shade of putty, and the floors were a checkerboard of linoleum tile. But nearly all my fellow teachers relished the opportunity to defy the 1960s functional architecture and transform their surroundings into something inspiring for their students once they stepped through the threshold of their classroom.

  We all prided ourselves in the various themes we used to decorate our rooms. That summer, I had deliberated over mine for weeks before finally deciding on “The mind is a powerful tool.” I spent hours creating a template for a squiggly shaped brain with all its infinite coils. I then color-coded each section with an array of neon Magic Markers to highlight the two parts. I made the left side of my template orange to show the children “the logical brain,” where language and analysis were generated, and then I highlighted the right side in pink for “the creative brain,” the area that sparked daydreaming and imagination. I also made a miniature brain for each of my twenty-four students and wrote their names in the center with a thick black Sharpie. I hurried to my classroom, eager to begin working on setting up my bulletin board.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN I entered my classroom, much to my surprise, I found a yellow Post-it note from the principal already taped to my desk.

  Ms. Topper: Need to speak with you when you get a chance. I’ll be in my office all day. Stop by whenever it’s convenient.

  Thank you,

  T. Nelson

  I wondered what he could possibly want to discuss on my first day back. I checked myself in the mirror, took a deep breath to calm my nerves, and prepared to go see him.

  * * *

  • • •

  PRINCIPAL Nelson was standing over his metal filing case when I walked into his office. A desk fan was circulating warm air in the corner.

  “Glad to see you, Maggie.” He gestured for me to sit down. “Did you have a good summer?”

  “Yes, thank you. But I’m happy to be getting back to school.”

  “Good to hear.” He smiled as he walked over to his desk and settled into his chair. “I have an unusual request for you . . .” He leaned in closer to me.

  “Maggie, I was pleased with your work here last year. You bring an enviable enthusiasm to the classroom.”

  I blushed and was about to deflect the praise when Mr. Nelson lifted his hand to stop me.

  “No need to say anything more on that subject. I just wanted you to know that I’m looking forward to a great second year with you here at Franklin.”

  He cleared his throat. “And, in fact, I was so pleased, I thought of you right away when I got this special assignment from the superintendent.”

  “Sounds intriguing . . .” I felt a surge of nervous energy pass through me.

  “There’s a child entering the sixth grade this year who just moved into the district. He was actually slotted to be in your class, but from what I gather of the details, he was born with a heart defect that has really weakened him.”

  I felt my stomach tighten.

  “Since he’s too weak to be at school right now, the administration has agreed to send tutors to his house for him so he doesn’t fall behind. And I was hoping you’d be his English language arts tutor.”

  He tapped his desk with two fingers as he awaited my response.

  “We’re obviously hoping he’ll get his strength back and be able to join your class later on in the year. But in the meantime, the district will pay for you to visit him after your classes end here each day. We were thinking two days a week to start. The administration will be arranging another tutor to help him with math and science, but I don’t believe he or she will be from Franklin.” He folded his hands on the desk.

  “Does that sound like something you’d be interested in doing, Ms. Topper?”

  The excitement I’d felt only seconds before was now replaced by dread. The memory of a sick little girl from my childhood flashed through my mind, her eyes pressed to the window as the school bus passed by her house.

  I could feel the color draining from my face, and my mind froze. I wanted to say something professional and well-meaning, like how wonderful it would be to teach a student one-on-one or how it would be a privilege to tutor a child who was in need, but my words failed me. I could only feel myself fidgeting nervously in my chair.

  Mr. Nelson leaned forward again. “So, can I count on you, Maggie?”

  I swallowed hard, desperate to do something that would at least enable me to respond, but I could not stop thinking about my childhood neighbor Ellie.

  “What’s the student’s name?” I pushed myself to ask.

  Principal Nelson lifted a sheet of paper from his desk and squinted.

  “Yuri Krasny.” He read the name quickly. “I have no idea if I’m pronouncing that right . . .”

  “Yuri?” I said the name again. It sounded exotic and interesting. Not like all the Michaels and Jonathans who were so plentiful at Franklin Intermediate.

  I felt a whirlwind of emotions rush through me—thoughts of wanting to help a child in need, and fear of the emotional baggage that I’d been carrying around for fifteen years.

  “I know it would be a very special opportunity to tutor him. But would you mind if I took the long weekend to think about it? I just want to make sure I’m not spread too thin in the afternoons.”

  Mr. Nelson looked surprised.

  “Well, sure, Maggie.” He tucked his pencil behind his ear and pushed himself away from his desk, the wheels of his chair squeaking across the tile floor. “Take a look at your schedule and get back to me Tuesday. But I’ll have to decide on another teacher if you’re not up to it, so please don’t take any longer than that.”

  “Of course, and I’m sorry for needing the extra time.”

  “But I do hope you’ll see the importance of this assignment,” he added. “It’s unique, and I think you’d be well suited for it.”

  I nodded. I knew it was a vote of confidence for Mr. Nelson to have asked me, but deep down I worried if I was up to tutoring a sick child in his home. My mind kept returning to Ellie. That is the thing about memory. As hard as we try to will ourselves to forget certain events, our histories remain. I thought of those serpentine coils on the miniature brains I had made for my students. Every one of us had stories locked away in the intricate mazes of our minds. But, like most things, our stories can remain buried for only so long.

  * * *
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  • • •

  I was thirteen years old the summer that Ellie Auerbach got out of bed one morning and felt her legs go weak beneath her. She was five years old. That summer she had gotten her first bicycle, a bright pink one with a straw basket and a metal bell fastened to the handlebars. We heard her going up and down the street for hours each day, her training wheels dragging behind her, the bell ringing in the air.

  I remember Mrs. Auerbach telling my mother that she thought maybe Ellie had slept in a funny position and her legs had fallen asleep. But there had also been the inexplicable fevers that had plagued her the month before, and the persistent virus that her mother thought might be a late-season flu. These were all clues that perhaps Ellie’s mother had overlooked because they interfered with her refusal to waste her energy on worrying too much about things she thought would eventually pass. Yet, eventually, these events glared in a painful, telling light.

  Mrs. Auerbach had always believed in the goodness of the world and that the sky changed color every sunset for a reason. “The universe doesn’t want us to grow complacent in its beauty,” she told me one hazy afternoon on her large white porch as she handed me a tall glass of lemonade. The condensation was cold against my fingers as I took it in hand and sipped from a paper straw. She was pregnant with Ellie then. Her abdomen was large and full against the linen of her white dress, her cheeks rosy, and her dark auburn hair in a long, single braid. She put her hands on her belly and cried, “Oh, Maggie, I felt a kick! Do you want to feel the baby?” Before I could tell her I was too squeamish, Mrs. Auerbach had put my hand over her middle. And that bright summer day, I felt a little heel or a clenched fist—round and impatient—making its needs well-known from within the confines of its womb.

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY brought Ellie home in a straw Moses basket a few weeks later. Pink and wrinkled beneath a crocheted bonnet, her five little fingers clenched at her mouth. Mr. Auerbach stood outside in pressed cotton khakis, sunlight striking his face. “A little girl,” my father had congratulated him. “There’s nothing quite like having one of your own.”

  I remember my mother telling me not to get too close to the baby, but Mrs. Auerbach had only raised her hand and laughed. “If Maggie’s washed her hands, it’s okay for her to peer in and see the little bug,” she told me as she nestled into a large comfortable chair, her body still full beneath her dress. I felt so happy at that moment as I leaned in and my finger grazed Ellie’s cheek. Her eyelids lifted open, and I saw the soft haze of her newborn gaze, her little fist now unclenching. As Ellie’s small finger reached out to touch my own, she became the baby sister I never had.

  * * *

  • • •

  EIGHT years between us, I was always ahead in my milestones, but Ellie was never far from my family’s house. She loved to putter in my mother’s garden, where she wore my old rubber boots and used my little watering can with the painted daisy on the side. So that summer, when the pain in her legs first appeared, we held our breath as Mrs. Auerbach took Ellie from doctor to doctor, until a specialist in New York City finally told the Auerbachs that Ellie had a rare form of cancer.

  She didn’t get to go to kindergarten that year as planned. Those first few days of school, the yellow school bus still slowed outside her house, as though it was waiting for the little girl to hop outside.

  “They told me to cut her hair short,” Mrs. Auerbach confided to my mother, her voice low in a whisper. “So when it falls out, it’s not too upsetting,” she explained as the tears rolled down her face. The next time I saw Ellie and her mom, neither of them had their braids. Mrs. Auerbach had also cut her hair short, the moment the hairdresser had finished cutting Ellie’s.

  Their house transformed from a home where the planters were always filled with bright red geranium flowers and the windows were wide open to one that was suddenly shuttered and impenetrable. The curtains all drawn closed. Flowerpots filled with shriveled stalks and leaves.

  My mother and I would still visit, but Mrs. Auerbach was no longer the mother with a carefree spirit and hopeful gaze. She looked gaunt and tired, her eyes rimmed in dark circles, her smile erased to a thin, drawn line. The air in the house was stale; orange medicine vials lined the counter. And most painful was little Ellie on the sofa, her scalp fuzzy like a newborn’s, but her eyes far older than her five years.

  * * *

  • • •

  ELLIE remained in the back of my mind for most of my adult life. I might hear wind chimes sounding in the breeze, and the image of a pregnant Mrs. Auerbach on her porch would flash through my mind. And every time I heard the sharp, metallic sound of a bicycle bell ringing in the air, it didn’t make me feel cheerful but had the opposite effect. A painful reminder of the unfairness of life, and the incomprehensibility that a child could be taken from this world far too soon.

  So much of Ellie’s death remained unprocessed for me, buried underneath layers of suppressed grief. The Auerbachs moved away less than a year after Ellie died. Their house was now occupied by an older couple from Boston, who had moved to be closer to their son in New York City. Yet there were times I would see a little girl who looked like Ellie, the moon-shaped face and hazel eyes, the golden braids tied with white ribbon, and thoughts of her would come flooding back to me. After all this time, Ellie remained six years old in my mind, even though I was now a grown woman teaching students of my own.

  * * *

  • • •

  ON Sunday, Bill and I went to visit friends in Westchester for a barbecue, and we spent the day on lawn chairs, eating hot dogs and wedges of watermelon, savoring the last weekend in summer. On Monday, the day before school began, Bill went to play golf with a college buddy, so I took a drive out to visit my parents.

  My family lived even farther east on Long Island than I did, two towns over in a remote area called Strong’s Neck. This was a place where people enjoyed their solitude. In the spring, the air was laced with the smell of honeysuckle and hyacinth. In the autumn, it was the rich scent of sugar maple and oak. Long stretches of land with tall grass and ancient trees bordered the winding roads, and many of the old houses dated back to the early settlers of Long Island. My own family’s house was far from historic. It was a modest ranch with cedarwood shingles and shutters that my father had purposefully painted hunter green to match the pine trees surrounding the house.

  My father had the veneer of a sturdy Irishman, but the soul of an old Italian craftsman. He had taken up making violins for his post-retirement hobby, a strange and exotic passion for a man who had been in sales his entire adult life. My childhood basement, where my friends and I used to play Twister or conduct séances during sleepovers, was now a workshop with wood shavings on the floor and glass jars filled with glue and varnish. Even the smells of my family home had changed. It used to have the unmistakable scent of simmering garlic and tomatoes. Now, the fragrance of freshly planed spruce filled the air.

  When I rang the doorbell, my father answered. It always still amazed me to see him so transformed. My schoolgirl memories were of him wearing a navy blue suit and striped tie, gripping a saddle-colored briefcase. Now, my eyes had to readjust. Dad was wearing a vinyl smock, a pencil tucked behind his silver-flecked hair, and when he hugged me, I could feel the calluses on his fingertips.

  “Hey, Mags!” His cheeks lifted with a smile as he kissed me hello.

  “To what do we owe this surprise visit? You must’ve missed your old man, right?”

  “I missed Mom’s lasagna.”

  “I’ll happily take second place to that.” He grinned.

  My father had won the prize when he married my mother, a first-generation Italian American. There was no greater cook in the world than she, as she could take anything and make it into something delicious. But my father always insisted it wasn’t Mom’s cooking that had made him fall in love with her, but rather her beauti
ful singing voice, which he believed to be more perfect than any instrument he could ever craft by hand.

  “And you’re in luck . . . she made manicotti last night. Help yourself to whatever leftovers are in the fridge.”

  “How are your hands today?” My father’s arthritis had become especially painful over the past year and a half.

  He lifted his hands up, the knobby knuckles and sunspotted skin betraying his sixty-three years.

  “Nothing a little ibuprofen and an ice bath can’t fix.” He came over to me and hugged me. “Your dad’s no wimp.”

  I rolled my eyes. “But are those violins really worth all the agony?”

  “Well, to me they are.”

  I smiled. I knew that after a life in pharmaceutical sales, my father finally had the chance to devote himself to what he had always wanted to do, and no amount of pain or discomfort was going to stop him.

  I slid my bag down and went to wash up.

  * * *

  • • •

  BY the time I got out of the bathroom, my mom had come in from the garden. Her green clogs were by the side door, and she was standing barefoot by the kitchen sink, washing sprigs of freshly cut arugula that she had just collected in a straw basket. My mother looked artful even when she had been on her knees in dirt all day. Her chestnut brown hair was threaded in silver and pulled back in a loose chignon, and around her neck she had tied a red kerchief. Her old-world elegance never escaped her.

  “Maggie!” Her eyes lit up when she saw me. She shook her wet hands in the air, and little raindrops of moisture fell onto the linoleum floor. “What a nice surprise. Are you hungry, honey?”