by Paul Mosier
I take a bite of toast and chew it. I swallow.
“Give them a price range,” I say. “Let them pay just your expenses if that’s all they can pay, and if they are able to afford the beautiful work of an amazingly talented and semi-famous dressmaker, then let them pay a higher amount.”
Mom smiles and looks to Dad. “Did we raise El this way? Is she this good a person because of anything we’ve done?”
Dad smiles. “Probably not.”
Mom laughs and leans over to kiss my cheek.
“I’m not such a good person,” I say.
They look to me quizzically, so I lay Echo’s drawing out for them to see. Dad shakes his head; Mom puts her hand to her heart.
“I thought she was oblivious until I saw this.” I look toward the hall to make sure she isn’t coming. “I seriously thought she was taking everything so well because she was too young and clueless to notice what she was going through. But she’s strong.”
“You’re right, she is strong.” Mom puts her hand on mine. “This is a new experience for all of us, El.”
“You’re strong, too.” Dad fills my glass with grapefruit juice. “You’re doing so well.”
After school, Octavius is quiet as we ride the train up to his neighborhood in Hamilton Heights. He’s quiet on the birdless sidewalks where the shadows grow long. He’s quiet leading me into his building and up three flights of stairs, while keying us into the apartment, and past his mother, who looks up from the kitchen table and says nothing.
We walk down a short hall to a closed door. Octavius looks at me, then turns the knob.
“El, meet Cassia.”
“Cassia,” I hear myself say as the door swings open and her world is revealed. It’s exactly as she left it when her lifeless body was carried out two years earlier. I step inside.
There are shelves filled with books, and mobiles hanging from the ceiling of dozens of tiny paper kites in bright colors, and of the winged horse Pegasus. And clouds and strings of raindrops and autumn leaves, and a rainbow painted across the wall. There is a window with a view of someone else’s window across an alley.
There is a record player and a stack of records, all of them opera. I pick up one whose cover shows a plump, shiny-faced woman in an evening gown singing to the lights.
“That was her favorite,” Octavius says. I put it back on the stack. “It’s on the turntable. Check it out.” He clicks a switch, lifts the needle, and sets it down. The crackling dissipates as the needle finds the groove, and a soprano voice—singing in Italian—swells and fills the room. It’s beautiful, and mournful, and so different from everything I see in the room, like it’s the missing ingredient of what a human can feel. Like it’s the sound of Cassia crying.
Above her bed is a string, like a clothesline, with get-well cards draped from it. Also hanging from the ceiling, in a corner, is a yellow paper kite with the words Look out below! painted in cursive. The tail is adorned with dozens of paper identification bracelets from the chemo clinic.
On the walls there are posters of puppies and photos of family, and drawings that would make me smile if I could smile.
There’s also a calendar with drawings rendered in a style I recognize as being that of Octavius. It shows chemo every day except Sunday, when it shows Ice cream and carousel! instead. There are drawings of sundaes and ice-cream cones and painted ponies on the Sundays, and hypodermic needles and pills and hospital buildings on the other days.
Lying on her pillow is a photo of Cassia, before she got sick, smiling with bright eyes and teeth and thick black hair. I pick it up and study it closely.
“She’s beautiful.”
Then I lean in close to see something written in cursive marker on the wall beside her bed.
This is hard, but I can do hard things.
My knees buckle. The photograph falls from my hand.
I turn away from the writing, put my hand on the desk to steady myself.
Octavius reaches for my shoulder. “You okay?”
“I heard Echo say those same words.”
He nods, puts the photograph back on the pillow. “They teach it at the clinic. One of the better rallying cries.” He’s studying my eyes, but I’m not gonna come apart in front of him.
I take a deep breath. “Can I come back and visit sometimes?” I ask.
Octavius looks puzzled. “Do you mean me, or—”
“Cassia,” I say. “And you.” I take a look around the room, then nod. “I really need for you to be on Echo’s team.”
12
TWO DAYS LATER I’m walking home after school, accompanied by Octavius. I’ve finally agreed to let him meet Echo. I’m worried that she’ll think it’s weird that he wants to meet her, but I feel like I need to let him since he let me meet Cassia, even though it’s way different since Echo is alive and Cassia isn’t.
“Please don’t bring up Cassia,” I say as we walk down my block.
“I won’t.”
“And let’s just make it casual, like you’re over to do homework with me, and she just happens to be there.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t bring up her cancer, or talk about it, unless she does.”
“Got it.”
We arrive at our front steps, and I turn to him. “Just be your charming self. But without the part that knows so much about cancer.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for letting me meet her.”
I don’t say you’re welcome, because again I’m not so sure that I feel like he is welcome. I punch in the key code and open the front door. Up the stairs we go, and suddenly the image of Echo’s body being carried down the stairs invades my head. I push it away, out of my brain, as I have become practiced at doing with scary thoughts, and begin whistling “Lust for Life” from the fight song sampler Octavius made for Echo.
We rise to the third-floor landing and our door on the left. I turn my key, open it a crack, and call out, “Mom, I’m here with a friend. Is everyone wearing clothes?”
Mom appears and opens the door the rest of the way. She smiles at me, then Octavius.
“I’m guessing you must be Octavius?”
“That’s me.”
“I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Grace, El’s mom. Please come in!”
“Thank you.”
It’s fairly horrifying that she said she’s heard anything at all about Octavius, like I go around talking about him all the time or something. The place is crowded with her dressmaking stuff, with a dress form mannequin standing in the middle of the living room. Opera plays on the radio. Octavius better not say anything about Cassia liking opera.
“So, me and Octavius were gonna do some homework,” I announce to Mom. “And maybe hang out a bit.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Mom says, a sewing needle between her lips. “But please wash your hands first.”
“Are you making a dress?” Octavius asks. I roll my eyes.
“Yes! That’s what I do. This one is actually designed to allow easy access to a chemotherapy port. That’s so when someone is getting treatment for cancer or some other disease requiring chemotherapy they can feel pretty. Even on the days they have to go to the clinic.”
Octavius approaches the dress form. “Wow. That is so cool.”
“See?” Mom pushes a flap of fabric aside and tugs on a little zipper. “And then down here, at the hip, a zipper vent for the line to come out of after it’s been installed. It’s more comfortable this way.”
“Cassia never had anything that pretty.”
I can’t believe Octavius said that. All the coaching I did and practically the first thing that comes out of his mouth is his experience with cancer. At least Echo wasn’t in the room. Mom gives a look like she’s interested in hearing more, but she’s not gonna be hearing any more from Octavius, as I drag him into the kitchen.
“What was that?” I ask once we’ve reached the kitchen. I wash my hands at the sink.
He’s look
ing at the All for one, all four one chalkboard on the refrigerator. “This is a cool idea.”
“Can you please just try to remember what I asked of you?”
He looks to me. “Huh? Oh. Yeah.”
“Wash your hands. Have you forgotten everything?”
“No.” He moves to the sink to wash his hands.
Just then, Echo skips into the kitchen. She stops when she sees Octavius.
“Who are you?” she asks.
Octavius about melts at the sight of her. “I’m Octavius. Who are you?”
“I’m Echo. I’m El’s sister. I’m a girl but I’m bald. And I don’t get to go to school. I have cancer.”
“Nice to meet you, Echo.”
“Nice to meet you, Octopus.” She thinks she’s pretty funny.
“Do you miss school?”
“Yeah. I like pretending that Mommy’s dress forms are other girls who have to stay home. And we have class together.”
Octavius smiles. I’m watching him react to her.
“Is that fun?” he asks.
“Not really. But it’s less un-fun than not doing it.”
“You crack me up,” he says. “Do you like flying kites?”
Echo looks at Octavius like he’s crazy. “Of course I do!”
Octavius smiles. “I’ve got one I’d like to give you. Next time I see you.”
“Thank you!” She takes her water bottle from the fridge. “Well, I gotta do homework. My teacher will be here in a little while and she’s not happy if it isn’t finished.”
“Good luck against cancer.”
“Good luck with my sister!” She skips away.
I sit at the table. Octavius drops into a chair across from me. He looks like he’s waiting for me to say something.
“I don’t know why she said that,” I say. “The ‘good luck with my sister’ thing.”
Octavius just looks at me but doesn’t say anything. So I need to change the subject.
“Are you really gonna give her Cassia’s kite?”
Octavius nods. “She’d like that. She built it to fly. Not to decorate her room.”
He’s so wise. But I don’t ever want to be wise the way that Octavius is. I don’t want to learn what he’s learned. “You did well with Echo,” I say.
“Thanks. You did a nice job protecting her.”
This brings tears from my eyes. Crying happens so much now, I don’t ever wonder why or even try to stop it. “Thanks.”
Octavius looks over his shoulder toward the living room. “Should we actually do homework or something?”
I roll my teary eyes. “How about we open our folders, but we can be friends for real while we pretend to do homework.”
He smiles. “That’s even better.” He opens a folder, takes a math problem sheet out. “She looks good without hair.”
“You think?” I bite a fingernail. “I can’t look at her bald head without thinking that it’s just an emblem of her having cancer.”
He looks at me. He studies my face. “She has your eyes.”
“My mom’s.”
He nods. “I wish . . .”
“What?”
“I regret that I didn’t shave my head when Cassia lost her hair.”
“Why?”
“To show solidarity. Team Cassia and all that.”
I look at his face. I picture him without hair.
“It wouldn’t have helped,” I conclude. Then I bite a fingernail. “I’m not gonna do it.”
“I didn’t say you should,” he says. But he’s studying my face, and I can tell he’s picturing me without hair.
After Octavius leaves, I’m lying on the couch reading a novel that isn’t about cancer while Mom moves frantically about one of the dress forms standing near me. She’s pinning, stepping back to assess it, then moving in again, repeat.
“I have a customer coming any second,” she says through the corner of her mouth. Three pins are held between her lips.
“Are you asking me to leave?”
She turns toward me, takes the pins from her mouth. “Why would you think that?”
My shoulders sag. “I never get to see you anymore.”
Mom tilts her head. She gives me a sympathetic look.
The doorbell buzzes.
She quickly turns back to the dress form. “Could you get that?”
I sigh, rise to my feet, move to the button on the wall.
“Yes?” I say in a voice that’s nearly too cheerful.
“It’s Marjorie, for the dress,” comes a voice through the speaker.
“Come on up.” I hold down the buzzer for three seconds. Then I look to Mom. “Did you want me to leave the room?”
“No, I was just letting you know someone was coming. Actually it would be great if you could get the door. And I’d love to have you stay in the living room.”
Seconds later we hear footfalls on the stairs, the landing. Then comes the knock on the door. I step over, open it.
There in the doorway is not just Marjorie—the woman on the intercom—but also a girl, who looks to be about my age. They both smile.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello!” they answer.
They both are dressed fashionably and have beautiful coffee-colored skin. But I’m stricken by the girl, who beneath her blueberry-colored beret is bald. She’s who the dress is for.
“El, please invite them in!” Mom says, hurrying toward the door. I back away as they step in, but I can’t look away from the girl as she moves past. Her eyebrows have been wiped away by chemo and drawn back with makeup. She’s not trying to be dramatic like Miss Numero Uno. She’s just trying to look like a normal, healthy girl who hasn’t lost her eyebrows to chemotherapy.
I stand back and watch as Mom plays host, serves them tea, gets the dress from a rack, and presents it to the girl. The girl says it’s beautiful, says she loves it, and is escorted by Mom to the bathroom to try it on.
Only when the girl is in the bathroom and Mom is chatting with the mother on the couch do I feel like I can breathe properly. Something about the girl—her age, her demeanor—makes me feel like she’s my friend, but a friend who is suddenly less recognizable because of disease. It makes me want to be her friend. But it makes me scared to be her friend, because I’m already worried enough about Echo.
After a moment the girl comes out of the bathroom. She looks giddy, she twirls. Her mother applauds, my mother beams. The girl is stunning.
“Look!” she says, unbuttoning the flap where the chemo will be accessed. “It’s so cute! And it’ll be so easy!” Then she turns to her mom, hand on her heart. “It makes me feel like I’m still me.”
“I’m so happy you like it,” Mom says. She looks really happy and proud of herself. I’m proud of her, too. Then she turns to Marjorie. “I understand how expensive treatment can be, and the last thing I want to do is pile on more financial stress. So, if the price makes life more difficult, I’ll accept a lesser amount. You can pay as much as the full price, or as little as my expenses, which for this dress is only about twenty dollars’ worth of materials.”
The woman’s eyes get big, and it’s her turn to put her hand to her heart. “For such a beautiful dress? That is so generous of you!”
Mom smiles and looks to me. “The sliding scale was actually El’s idea.” She looks really proud of me.
Now the whole room is smiling at me. The sliding scale seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I’m thinking how with twenty bucks we’ll be lucky to pay for one lunch. But whatever.
“Can I wear it home?” the girl asks.
“Of course!” Mom says. She and Marjorie stand and speak to each other quietly. The woman bends over our coffee table to write a check.
The girl comes over to me. She’s exactly my height. “You’re so lucky to have such a talented mother!”
“Yes,” I say.
“Does she make dresses for you?”
“Sometimes.” Mom and the woman are at the door
, thanking each other. The girl is still standing before me, smiling. “Good luck,” I say.
“Thank you!” she says. And hugs me. Hugs me.
They exit, the door closes. As their footsteps sound down the stairs, I say a prayer in my head for the girl, even though I don’t do that sort of thing.
Mom sighs. “They were nice, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
Then she holds up the check the woman gave her, studying it. Now her hand goes to her heart.
“What?” I ask.
“Apparently my price doesn’t make life more difficult for them.”
“That’s good.”
Mom hands me the check. I feel my eyes get big, to take in the number written on it. It’s the price of the dress, plus ten thousand dollars. Which is, like, twenty times what she ordinarily gets for a dress.
On the memo line is written Thx 4 yr generosity!
13
MONDAY IN ART class I’m doing a watercolor self-portrait. Miss Numero Uno has assigned us a ton of self-portrait work, which might be because she thinks we need to be more introspective, or possibly because she wants to make things difficult. Doing it in watercolor is the worst.
I’m rendering myself bald, ’cause hair is tricky with watercolor. I look like a character from some science-fiction movie. But I also look like Echo.
Then a shadow falls over my work. I look over my shoulder and see Miss Numero Uno. She has one eyebrow drawn into an arc to indicate interest, but it’s just the charcoal stick.
“I am actually interested in your work,” she says. “It is not merely the fact of my eyebrow rendered in the black charcoal stick.”
Then she drops a piece of paper on my table and walks away.
I look at the paper. It’s a flyer, which reads:
FUND-RAISER FOR ECHO
Cancer has struck a six-year-old girl.
The art world will strike back with a glorious expression of strength and beauty.
The most avant-garde of New York’s visual artists have donated work, with proceeds benefitting Echo’s medical expenses.
Tar Soup Gallery, SoHo.
Friday, October 28 at 7:00 p.m.
Even though it shows a thoughtfulness, I don’t know how to respond to this version of Miss Numero Uno. So I avoid eye contact with her even more than usual, and when the final bell rings I slip out of the classroom.
