Figgrotten put her hand in the pocket of her brown coat on her way to school the next day and found the hair clip. She touched it with her fingers and felt around its little pink plastic flower. She was two seats behind Christinia and Ben. He was wearing his wool hat, gray with red stripes. But peeking out of the hat and curling onto his neck was his straggly hair. This was the part of him she liked the best. The raggedy part. The worn sneakers. The ripped jeans that hung down too low.
She looked out the window and saw they were coming up to James’s house. Figgrotten leaned a little and saw James standing alone on the sidewalk. He had his backpack on and in one hand was clutching his book. When the bus stopped, he climbed on and without looking at anyone sat down in the same seat close to the front. The pimply lumpy driver didn’t even say hello to him. Alvin would have kept reaching out to James had he been there. He would have kept saying good morning to him and eventually he would have asked him what he was reading. He would have become a friend to him just like he was a friend to Figgrotten and everyone else.
But not the new driver. He just sat like a big lump in his orange hunting hat and drove the bus. Figgrotten did everything she could not to have to look at him. She kept her eyes averted. But occasionally she couldn’t help herself and saw his face in the mirror. She had no worries that he would spot her scowling at him, because he never so much as glanced in the mirror. For Alvin, looking in the mirror was half the job of driving the bus. He drove and he also watched over his riders.
* * *
—
At recess that day Figgrotten asked Fiona if she’d help her for a minute, and they walked into the girls’ room together. Figgrotten pulled out the hair clip and held it out to Fiona. “Can you put it in my hair?”
Fiona didn’t look even slightly surprised at the request. “Sure,” she said. “But you know you have to take off your hat.” Then, after a spurt of chipmunk giggles, Fiona fiddled with the clip until it was in a perfect place. “Now do not touch it,” she said, and stepped back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Hey, that looks really nice.”
Figgrotten turned and looked at herself in the mirror and again felt surprised at how the little clip changed her so much. Then she stuffed her hat into her jacket pocket, took a deep breath, and walked out of the bathroom.
The only person who seemed to notice the clip was Mr. Stanley. He was correcting papers at his desk when Figgrotten walked into the classroom, and he glanced up at her and did a double take. He smiled and opened his mouth to say something but then didn’t and went back to his papers. Figgrotten felt relieved. She wanted to wear the clip without a lot of attention focused on it. Just like changing seats on the bus. Do it for a couple of days and people will get used to it. That was her hope.
Having the clip in her hair for the rest of the day made Figgrotten feel so different she might as well have been wearing fake eyelashes for the first time. Or a dress. Luckily, other than people looking at her extra hard, no one said a thing to her about it. When she got on the bus, one of the boys gave her a funny look as she was walking up the aisle. But then, once she was in her seat, she was safe and the first day with the clip was almost over. The last worry was Christinia. Somehow this was the hardest part of all.
“I like the hair clip,” Christinia said, again with her voice casual like before, when they got into the kitchen. “It looks nice. You can have it.”
Figgrotten didn’t say anything. She stuffed a granola bar into her coat pocket and stepped out the back door. But before she could shut it, Christinia said, “And I can show you how to do one on the other side if you want.”
Figgrotten stopped for a second, but then, without answering, she shut the door.
Up on the rocks, she fished her hat out of her pocket and pulled it over her head and breathed a little sigh of relief. Wearing the clip all day was like switching seats on the bus. It was like inching out into another world one tiny step at a time.
What surprised Figgrotten was how the whole town turned up for Alvin’s memorial service that Saturday. There were cars parked all along Main Street, and when she and her family walked into the library, there was barely room for them. The place was mobbed.
“Oh boy,” Figgrotten’s dad said. “We should have come earlier. Who knew there’d be so many people here?”
The screen up at the front of the big main room, where they showed movies sometimes, was pulled down, and there was a slide show going, with photographs of Alvin. Figgrotten had been distracted by all the people until then, but once she saw Alvin it came back to her why she was there. This was about him.
She made her way up to the front of the crowd by ducking and turning sideways and at one point almost crawling. Finally, when she was at the front, she stood there in her brown coat looking up at the photos. There was a picture of him as a younger man (not that young, actually), wearing hiking boots and holding a walking stick. He had a bandanna wrapped around his head and he was smiling at the camera. There was a picture of him standing in front of the library with a book in his hands. But her favorite picture of all was of him sitting behind the wheel of the school bus, his Greek fisherman’s hat on and his hand on the lever of the door like he was about to close it. And the best part of this picture was that his eyes were looking up into the rearview mirror and it seemed he was in the middle of saying something to the kids behind him. Figgrotten stood looking at the pictures as they flicked by, waiting for the bus one to come back again.
She’d left her family by the door, but now, suddenly, she realized that Christinia had also made her way to the front and was standing next to her. And then, when she looked again, there was Ben, standing on the other side of her, so she was between the two of them. Ben was wearing a sports jacket and his hair was combed, which made him look awkward and funny. Somehow this made Figgrotten like him even more. He glanced over at Christinia and said, “Hey,” and they all looked up at the photos. There was music playing in the background. Jazzy music with horns. Figgrotten had never known about Alvin’s taste in music, but somehow this seemed right.
After a few minutes the head librarian, Madeleine Stroble, got up on the little stand that had been put there and cleared her throat delicately into the microphone. Immediately the crowd became quiet.
“Welcome, everyone, to this celebration, a true celebration, of the life of Alvin Turkson, friend to so many, as is apparent by the size of this crowd. In the spirit of Alvin’s inclusive nature, we ask anyone who would like to get up and say a few words to please do so.”
Mrs. Stroble stepped off the little stand and someone named Martha Friedman, who seemed downright unsteady, slowly climbed up. She had to have been at least eighty years old.
When she began to speak, the microphone made a horrible screaming noise and needed to be adjusted by a man who seemed to be in charge of the electronics. Figgrotten caught Ben and Christinia smiling at each other over this.
“Alvin,” Mrs. Friedman began in a croaky old voice, “was a friend of mine for forty-eight years. So I knew him pretty well. And I will tell you one thing about him that you all know: He had a heart of pure gold. He was kind to the core, and because of it I will miss him each day.”
She reached into the pocket of her pink wool jacket and pulled out a lump of tissues and blew her nose directly and loudly into the microphone. Figgrotten heard a tiny snort next to her and saw that Ben was trying to contain his laughter, and then she saw that Christinia was also trying not to laugh, which made Figgrotten have to bite her own lip to hold back her own giggles.
The next person up on the stand was Alvin’s boss at the bus company, a skinny, nervous type who kept wiping his perspiring brow with a handkerchief and who talked about what a dedicated employee Alvin had been for thirty-four years.
“Day in, day out, he was dependable.”
Then Mrs. Flynn, the principal, stood up in her same tweedy su
it and blue eye shadow and spoke about Alvin. But Figgrotten could tell she hadn’t truly known Alvin the way the other people did. Mrs. Flynn kept up a little of her coldness throughout her speech.
After this, two other old friends got up and told stories about him. One woman talked about Alvin’s love of reading, and the other, a very tall, skinny man with a scraggly beard and a ponytail, spoke about a time when they’d gone hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Alvin had insisted on sitting on top of a mountain during a torrential thunderstorm.
“He said he wanted to feel it,” the man said. “I said, ‘But if you’re dead, you won’t feel anything.’ At which point he yelled at me and said if I was going to start worrying about dying, then we might as well have stayed home!”
People laughed as the tall skinny man stepped down and walked back into the crowd.
Then no one walked up and there was a long pause. Figgrotten glanced around. She figured the memorial was now over, but everyone was still very quiet. She had the feeling every single person there was thinking about Alvin and feeling the way she did. Sad. So sad.
But then, suddenly, when people started to murmur a little and move around like they were going to leave, Christinia took in a big breath next to Figgrotten and stepped up to the front. Everyone immediately grew quiet again.
Figgrotten froze and her mouth dropped open. Her sister was truly the last person on earth she would have thought would go up there. Indeed, she looked more scared than Figgrotten had ever seen her look. She climbed the steps and took another big breath and then she began to speak. Her voice, at first a little shaky, grew stronger after a second and she stood up straighter.
“Alvin was a friend to all the kids who rode on our bus. But…” Christina paused for a second here, then started up again: “But Alvin had a special friendship with my sister, Frances.”
At this point, Figgrotten had that terrible feeling in her throat and around her eyes that meant she was going to start crying.
“Everyone knew it too. Frances was Alvin’s really great friend,” Christinia continued. “They talked every day on the way to school and on the way home. They talked about a lot of things too. We could hear them talking about nature and books. And just life. Lots about life.”
Figgrotten was staring at her sister, with her long shining hair and her dark brown eyes. Ben, who was still standing beside Figgrotten, seemed to have moved closer to her, and she could feel that his shoulder was nearly touching hers. She almost had the feeling it was as if he had thrown an arm around her while Christinia spoke.
“You see, Alvin understood and appreciated Frances. Because the fact is, she’s a pretty cool person. And he knew it. I mean, he liked everyone. But he really, really loved my sister.” Christinia’s voice here wobbled suddenly and she paused, then went on. “Because the thing is, he wasn’t exactly a teacher, but he was a teacher. Alvin was always teaching us how to act because of how he acted. How to listen and be kind to each other and be accepting of each other. And, well, I’ll never forget him. And I miss him a lot already.”
Then she stopped talking and walked down and came over and stood next to Figgrotten. The crowd was very quiet and a few people could be heard sniffling. But Figgrotten kept her eyes on the floor and didn’t look at Christinia. She was frozen. But she was breathing. In and out and in and out. This was to keep from crying. If she was going to cry, it was surely not here, not now, not with Ben standing right next to her.
She stayed quiet too. All the way home in the car, she looked out the window, and then when she went up to the rocks, she stayed very quiet. Quiet as she put the bread out and whistled and watched as the crows flew down to eat the meal they now seemed to depend on.
That night when she got into bed, she lay in the dark with her eyes open. She kept going over what Christinia had said. “She’s a pretty cool person.” She had actually said it up there in front of everyone. And it had worked. It was like Christinia had reached inside her and moved the concrete block that had been so unbudgeable. It was an apology, and the result, Figgrotten could feel, was forgiveness.
After a while she turned on her flashlight and directed the beam around her room. The propped-up branches, the poster of Lucy’s bones, the bird feathers she had found over the years that she had scotch-taped up to the wall. There were seventeen of them. Blue jay feathers. Crow feathers. Several gray feathers with a little yellow on them, probably from flycatchers. A huge turkey feather. A striped feather from a hawk and one perfect red feather from a cardinal. She had found each one on the ground, and each time she had found one it had given her the same thrill. As if someone had left her a gift.
“The natural world is filled with wonders, Miss Pauley, and to sit up there in that rock world and be an observer of it all…well…what a terrific thing that is.”
Right there and then, Alvin’s voice, his face, his hat, his skinny arms coming out of his short-sleeved button-down checkered shirt, his small dark eyes—suddenly everything about him came to her in perfect clarity. Oh, Alvin, she thought. And with this, the dreadful ache came up through her, it pushed through her throat, and finally little streams of tears began to trickle out of her eyes. And this time she just let them go. She couldn’t stop them anymore. She would never ever see him again. It was just the absolute bare bones of the truth, and she could no longer not face it. She could no longer push away the sadness. She rolled her face into her pillow and a little sob came from somewhere deep within her. It was almost like a little freed bird that had been caught somewhere. And then, as she predicted, the crying began and it didn’t stop for a long time. She sobbed and kept sobbing into her pillow. But then, finally, she was done and she turned onto her back and lay breathing in hiccuppy, stuttery breaths. She was horribly sad still, but now it was not locked inside her and she felt peaceful in a way she had not felt in a long, long time.
* * *
—
“Were you married ever, Alvin?” she’d asked him one afternoon this past fall.
“No, not officially. But yes, I was married in every other sense of the word to a wonderful woman for forty-seven years.”
“What was her name?”
“Sylvia,” Alvin said, and then he shook his head. And Figgrotten could tell he was remembering. “But I only called her sweetheart.”
“Where is she now?” Figgrotten asked.
“Oh, Miss Pauley, she’s here and there and she’s everywhere. In the air, she is.” Alvin then took his hand off the steering wheel and made a sweeping motion out in front of him.
Figgrotten was remembering this when she fell asleep. And she realized she felt it too. Alvin was here. He was there. He was everywhere now.
The following week Figgrotten took Christinia’s suggestion and began wearing two hair clips, one on each side of her head. She found the second one next to her toothbrush in the bathroom, and she was pretty sure Christinia had left it there for her. Wearing her hair like this made her look around a bit to see if anyone noticed, and it did seem that more people glanced at her and these glances made her feel like she was a part of things in a way she hadn’t quite felt before.
The only problem with her new hair was that wearing a hat kind of ruined it. So, suddenly, she was going out to the bus stop in the mornings hatless, the bitter wind drilling into her ears. And for the first time she understood why Christinia didn’t dress right for the cold.
Starting on Monday Christinia came out and waited for the bus beside Figgrotten. “You realize you’re lucky you have curly hair, right?” she told her.
Figgrotten shook her head. “Um, no. Not lucky.”
“Yes. And I read that if you don’t wash your hair too much and then don’t brush it ever, you’ll get really nice curls. Just let it dry naturally.” Christinia paused, then sort of blurted out, “And also, Frances, I’m sorry I made up that story about telling my frie
nds you were adopted. I didn’t do that. I’m sorry that I told you that.”
When Figgrotten heard this, she held back from letting herself get teary. She’d suffered needlessly for something that didn’t even happen. But finally she shrugged. She was so used to not speaking to Christinia that speaking felt downright awkward. Then finally she said, “Okay. I’m glad you didn’t say it.”
* * *
—
From her new seat nearer to the back, Figgrotten could observe the other riders in a way she hadn’t been able to when she sat in the front behind Alvin. Now she could not only look at the back of Ben’s and Christinia’s heads, she could also see everyone else except for the few behind her. But she mostly found she was focused on James. He sat in the most slumped-down position of all, his head hanging forward over his book. While this had annoyed Figgrotten to begin with, now it just made her feel bad. She knew her yelling in the class that day had probably just made him all the more lonely and miserable, and now every time she saw him it bothered her. Being mean like that had made a kind of bruise inside herself that wasn’t going away. In fact it seemed to be getting worse.
Behind her in the backseat, she also knew, was Becky Moss, who used to be Christinia’s friend. She wasn’t sure whether Ben’s moving out of the seat to sit with Christinia that first time had been what Becky deserved. Someday, if she and Christinia ever got to be close enough again, she might ask her this. There were certain things she didn’t quite understand still. Who was friends with who, who wasn’t, why groups of kids were together for a while, then not together. Why those two bully girls walked around needing to be mean. But it occupied a lot of her thinking now. Especially without Alvin there to talk about bigger, deeper things.
The Heart and Mind of Frances Pauley Page 10
