“You want to know how I really feel? I feel dead inside, okay?! I wish I had been killed that night instead of Jimmy!” There. I had said it.
“Why?” my father asked softly. “Why do you wish you had been killed?”
“I don’t know! Because Jimmy could have made it without me, but I can’t make it without him!”
“Yes, you can.”
“But I don’t want to!” My father and I looked at each other. There was just this awful silence. I looked away, then I felt his hand on mine.
“When you were little, it was easy,” my father said. “You thought I could fix anything—”
“No one can fix this,” I said.
“No.”
“I’m scared,” I said. “It scares me to feel this way.”
“I know,” my father said. “Tell you what—why don’t we get you out of the house for a little while, okay? Let’s go for a short walk. Maybe just down to the corner and back.”
“A walk? Did I hear you right? A walk?”
“Depression’s a funny thing,” my father said. “The more you lie around, the more depressed you get.”
“Dad, come on—going for a walk isn’t going to change anything.”
“Yes, it will,” he said. “It’ll make your father happy to see you in a vertical position for a change.”
“I don’t know. I feel kind of shaky about going out.”
“I’ll be right there; nothing’s going to happen.”
I looked at him. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“A little,” my father said, and I laughed. For the first time in weeks. It felt terrific.
My father smiled. “Wait for you outside.”
I got dressed and went downstairs. My father was waiting for me out on the sidewalk in front of our house. When he saw me, he smiled and held out his hand.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. I took his hand and we started walking. The sun was very strong; ice patches were slowly melting into warm puddles. The whole season had started changing while I was up in my room hibernating.
“I’ve never had a close friend die,” my father said, “so I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through—”
“I can’t figure all this stuff out! It’s like it’s all tangled up! It started after Jimmy was killed. I know that. But knowing doesn’t make it any easier to untangle.”
“You’ll get it untangled.”
“I got through Jimmy’s death okay, but what I can’t figure out is how to get through my life without him.”
“Like the Novocain’s finally wearing off and you’re beginning to feel a little pain?”
“Yeah . . .” We hit the corner, turned around, and started walking back. I was wearing tennis shoes, and they were soaked from all the slush we’d been walking through. “You know, I never cried once after he was killed,” I said. “I don’t know why, but I never did.” I looked at my father. “Do you think that’s wrong?”
“No . . . I think everybody probably handles something like this in their own way. Look at Enid. She did enough crying for both of you.”
I smiled. “Yeah.” A sudden memory flash: Jimmy, whirling me around and around his porch one hot summer day. I wanted to blot it out. I tried to. I couldn’t. “God, I’m remembering stuff about him and I don’t want to!”
“Come here,” my father said. He put his arm around me and pulled me into a hug. It was nice. Safe. I felt anchored to someone again. We walked home like that. On the way into the house I noticed something I hadn’t seen before: tulips, peeking up around the big tree out front.
Spring was definitely on the way.
26
The next morning I decided to take the plunge and go back to school. When I told my mother at breakfast, she practically chased me around the table with a box of cornflakes.
“No!” I said. “I’m not hungry!”
“You’re going back to school, you’ve got to have something to eat—”
“If I have anything more than coffee, I’ll throw up.”
“Oh,” my mother said. “Oh. All right, then. Just coffee.”
“You have to write me a note. Just keep it simple. Something like ‘Please excuse Morgan’s absence from school, but she went nuts for a while. Although she may foam at the mouth from time to time, she poses no serious threats to students or teachers.’”
“Honestly,” my mother said. She set a mug down in front of me and filled it with coffee. “You okay about going back? How do you feel about it?”
“I’m more or less petrified.”
“Are you? Do you realize you’ve never done that before? Told me how you felt, straight out like that?”
“Ta da,” I said. I traced the rim of my coffee cup with one finger. “No, what I mean is . . . I never meant to keep anything from you. I’m just not too great about talking about what’s inside. But I guess you know that.”
“It’s a family characteristic,” my mother said. “All on the Hackett side, I might add. You get it right from your father. And your aunt. Your father says she was just like you when she was your age.”
“Really?” I took a sip of coffee. I tried to picture my aunt at seventeen, walking around hunched over her science books, quiet like me and alone like me. It was a picture I couldn’t quite get out of my head. “What was it like for you when you were in high school?” I asked. “Did you have a lot of friends?”
“Well, Enid and I were friends, of course,” my mother said. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down. “But we sort of went our separate ways after high school.”
“I wonder if that would have happened to Jimmy and me after we graduated,” I said. “I wonder if we would have drifted apart.”
“Jimmy thought you were pretty special, you know. I don’t think there’s any way he would have just let you drift away from him.”
“I hope not. I hope we would have stayed close.”
Jody cornered me in the cafeteria. I was sitting alone at a table trying to peel the Saran Wrap off a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when suddenly there she was—she dumped her books and sack lunch on the table and sat down next to me.
“Welcome back,” she said. “What was wrong with you, anyway?”
“Hi. It’s a long story.”
“You must really have been sick. You were gone over a month, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t sick, Jody. Jimmy’s death finally caught up with me and I really started having problems. I guess I sort of cracked up.”
Jody didn’t say anything. She turned her brown paper bag upside down. A sandwich, a couple of cookies fell out. An apple rolled across the table, and I stopped it with my hand. “Tuna fish again,” she said. She looked at me. “I didn’t know things were that bad for you.”
“Neither did I. You know something, Jody? Three weeks from Sunday I’m going to be eighteen, but inside . . . inside I feel like I’m a little kid trying to cut it in a great big world.”
“I feel that way sometimes too. I think it’s nature’s way of letting us know what life as an adult is going to be like. Sort of like a preview of coming attractions.”
“Maybe.” I took a bite out of my sandwich. “What happened in English while I was gone? Did I miss a lot?”
“She’s been cramming a lot of Robert Frost down our throats. We have to turn in a paper Wednesday analyzing ‘The Road Not Taken,’ and we have to memorize the first twenty lines of ‘Birches’ by Friday—”
“God, there’s just no way I’ll be able to make everything up by the end of the quarter.”
“Sure you will, Morgan. You can do anything.”
“Thanks, but I don’t know . . . just making myself get out of bed and come to school was a major accomplishment for me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to graduate on time. I might have to go to summer school.”
“I guess this has been a pretty bad time for you.”
“Yeah.”
“How are you now? Are y
ou okay?”
“No,” I said. “But let’s keep it our little secret, okay?”
Jody smiled. “Trade you half a tuna fish for half of your peanut butter and jelly.”
“Jody,” I said, “I hate tuna fish.”
She picked up half of my sandwich and took a big bite out of it. “Who doesn’t?” she said.
27
Jimmy’s birthday was April twentieth, four days before mine. I hadn’t gone to his funeral, but I figured the least I could do was to celebrate his birth. I stopped by Kar-Lee’s after school, bought a half dozen roses, and took them to his mother. Taking flowers to his mother made a lot more sense to me than taking them to his grave, but I was nervous about it. I wasn’t sure how Mrs. Woolf would take it. After I pulled into the Woolfs’ driveway, it took me a good five minutes to get out of the car. The porch looked so quiet, so different, so dead compared to the last time I’d stood on it, the day Jimmy had whirled me around and around because he was so happy he’d gotten the callback at his audition. I was sitting in the car memory tripping when the kitchen window opened. Mrs. Woolf leaned her elbows out on the sill and looked at me.
“Are you going to sit out there in that car all day, Morgan Hackett, or are you going to come in and say hello?”
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi yourself. Come on back to the kitchen; I’m making coffee.”
It was weird being back in Jimmy’s house. I had practically grown up in this house; it was my second home, but now I felt out of place. Like I didn’t belong.
“Be careful on the hall floor,” Mrs. Woolf hollered from the kitchen. “I just waxed it; it might be slippery.”
I had the feeling I had interrupted Mrs. Woolf’s spring cleaning. The living-room furniture had been pushed back against one wall, the rug rolled up, the floor waxed. There were some cardboard boxes at the foot of the stairs, but I didn’t think too much of them at the time. I tiptoed down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Did I come at a bad time?” I asked.
She looked up from the coffeepot. “You? Never. Come on in and sit down.”
“I didn’t forget,” I said. I handed her the flowers. “I’ve been thinking about him all day. It’s hard for me, because we always celebrated our birthdays together.”
“I know,” Mrs. Woolf said. “These are beautiful, Morgan. Thank you.” She took a large glass pitcher out of the dish drain, filled it with water, and put the flowers in it. “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about you today too. How’ve you been doing?”
“Some days are easier than other days,” I said. “Jimmy spoiled me, you know. No one else measures up.”
“He thought an awful lot of you, too, Morgan. You know that, don’t you?”
“I think so. I know he did.”
“Jimmy talked about wanting to do something special for your eighteenth birthday. I don’t know what he had in mind, but I went ahead and did something anyway. Wait here a second.”
I poured the coffee while she was gone. Being with Mrs. Woolf without Jimmy was like being in a puzzle with one of the pieces missing. I think in the back of my head I was waiting for someone to come along and put in the missing piece, someone to make things all right again.
Mrs. Woolf came back and handed me a small battered box. I took the lid off; inside was a tiny gold ring with a J engraved on it.
“It was Jimmy’s baby ring,” Mrs. Woolf said. “I had it made a little bigger so you could wear it.”
“Are you sure you want to give this to me?” I asked. I slipped it on my little finger. A perfect fit. “Don’t you want to keep it?”
“What I want,” Mrs. Woolf said, taking my hand, “is for you to have something of Jimmy’s.” When she said it like that, I started to feel pretty good. Warm. Like I’d had a nice shot of brandy.
“This really means a lot to me. Thanks.”
“Happy eighteen, Morgan.” She sat down and took a sip of coffee. “Jack and I are doing something for Jimmy, too. For his birthday. We’re establishing a scholarship at his dance school.”
“He’d like that,” I said. I thought it was a nice idea, giving someone else a shot at the career Jimmy couldn’t have.
“You know, Morgan . . . I have something to tell you, and I’m not exactly sure how to go about it.”
The warm glow receded. I didn’t want to hear bad news. I was no longer good at coping with bad news. I had had enough bad news to last me a lifetime, but I braced myself for it anyway.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Jack has accepted a transfer . . . to Kansas City . . . and we’ll be moving as soon as we can sell the house.”
“Moving,” I said. “No . . .”
“I know I should have mentioned it earlier, but it just wasn’t definite until today.”
“Mrs. Woolf, why? Is it because of what happened? Is it because of Jimmy?”
“No. Jack was offered this promotion last fall, but we didn’t want Jimmy to have to change schools his senior year. It’s really all right, Morgan. We’re in pretty good shape. We’re looking forward to this move; we’re not running away from anything.”
It just didn’t seem fair. Jimmy, then the Woolfs. Too much was changing and too fast.
“Have you told Mother yet?” I asked.
“No. Not yet.”
“She’s not going to like it,” I said. “She’s really going to miss you. So am I.”
Mrs. Woolf smiled. “You’re my second kid, you know, and I’m not too crazy about being away from you either.”
“Is that why you’re doing all this cleaning? Because of the move? Is there anything I can help with? Anything I can do?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Woolf said. “You can come over here and give me a hug.”
I got up and went over and hugged her. After a minute I said, “Is it really okay? Are you happy about the move, I mean?”
“Yes. Really.”
“That’s all that matters, then.”
It really rattled me, the idea of Mr. and Mrs. Woolf moving. But why? It wasn’t like they could take Jimmy away from me, because he was already gone, so what exactly was wrong? It was almost like I couldn’t accept it. It was funny how my mind kept trying to adjust the picture and make it right, when it wasn’t the picture that needed adjusting, it was me.
28
Jody was waiting for me by my locker Friday afternoon after fourth period.
“Sunday’s your birthday, isn’t it?” she said. “Here.” She pushed a huge paper bag at me.
“How’d you know my birthday’s Sunday?”
“You mentioned it that day you came back to school, remember?”
I opened the bag and took out a floppy-brimmed straw hat.
“Are you kidding?” I said. I put the hat on my head. The brim was so big it touched my shoulders. “Jody—don’t get me wrong—I mean, it’s lovely and all that, but you don’t expect me to wear this around school, do you?”
“Of course not. I expect you to wear it when we ditch school.”
“Ditch? Oh, no . . .”
“I have the afternoon all planned, Morgan. We’ll get some hamburgers or something at Prince Castle and eat them down by the lake—”
“I am not ditching! I missed enough school when I was . . . you know, I cracked up for a while and I missed a lot of school.”
“That doesn’t count. Missing school because you’re cracking up is understandable. It’s excusable. I’m talking about out-and-out ditching. Ditching just to have fun.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on. Didn’t you ever do anything crazy on the spur of the moment?”
I had to think about that. When Jimmy was around I did a lot of crazy and unplanned things. It had been a long time. Too long, maybe.
“All right,” I said.
“Well, come on then! Dump your books in your locker and let’s get out of here before some pervert of a hall monitor tries to stop us.”
I opened my locker and threw my books in it.
“What happens?” I said. “I mean, the attendance office’ll find out about it, won’t they?”
“A couple hours’ detention. Big deal. You’ll love it. It’s like a party.”
“Okay, Jody, okay,” I said. “But this better be one hell of an afternoon if I’m going to have to pay for it by spending some Saturday morning in detention hall.”
We got a sack of hamburgers and French fries at Prince Castle and walked down to the park by Lake Ellyn.
“Let’s sit on the swings and eat,” Jody said. “Wait a second. Here.” She took one of the hamburgers out of the sack and unwrapped it. She handed it to me. “Hold that for a second. We have to do this properly.” She unhooked her backpack from her shoulder and unzipped it. She rummaged around in the bottom of it and took out a pink candle and a pack of matches.
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
“Believe it. This is an official birthday hamburger.” She stuck the candle in the hamburger and lit it. “Make a wish,” she said.
I shut my eyes and blew out the candle. I didn’t make a wish; wishing for something I couldn’t have seemed like a big waste of time.
“Don’t tell me what you wished for,” she said. “If you tell, it won’t come true.” She sat down on the swing next to me and started in on her French fries. “Did I tell you I’m not going to Northwestern? They don’t want me. Neither does the University of Wisconsin, where my boyfriend goes. I got both rejections on the same day, can you believe that?”
“Where are you going to go, then?”
“I don’t know. College of DuPage, maybe. It’d save a lot of money.”
“I sort of envy you,” I said. “At least you know you want to go to college. I’m not sure what I want to do.”
“I thought you were going to be an actress.”
“So did I. Now I’m not so sure. It’s like my wanting to do it was all tied up with Jimmy or something. I just don’t know if it’s important anymore.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You should stick with it, Morgan. The theater, I mean. You’ll be mad someday if you don’t.”
Say Goodnight, Gracie Page 12
