by Annabel Lyon
“Yuh, in a tent,” Merry says. “We had hot dogs.”
“Wow, you’ve got a good memory.” I plop down on the floor to feed the air hose into the little spout in the air mattress. Merry plops down beside me. “And the bugs—remember the bugs?”
“Yuh.” She stares at my fingers as if I’m in a bomb disposal squad. I hand her the plastic bellows and show her how to pump air into the mattress. She pumps a few times and then says, “Too hard.”
I show her how to stand up and pump with her foot. She does it, but reluctantly. I remember this now, how she never liked to try things she knew she was clumsy at. “Remember how mad Dex got when we hid her flip-flops and she had to go to the porta-potty in her bare feet?”
Merry doesn’t say anything.
“Fun,” I prompt.
“Yuh,” Merry says. She’s not pumping anymore, just staring at the squishy mattress with a zoned-out look on her face.
“Let me.” I stomp on the bellows until the mattress is plump and firm, and get her to help me spread a sheet on top. When she drops her corners, the sheet floats off to one side of the mattress in a puddle. I fix it, and throw a pillow and blanket on top. “Good enough?”
Merry is staring at the blanket now as if she’s mesmerized by it.
“Earth to Merry?” I say.
“Green,” she says. “Remember? On my face.”
I remember: the sun through the tent wall, especially early in the morning. Pools of palest green light moving on our faces and our skin. We stuck twigs in our hair, Merry and Dex and I, and for the rest of the day we pretended we were green-skinned aliens and the twigs were our antennae. Dex got sick of the game first, and Aunt Ellie took Merry’s out when she combed her hair, but I went to bed with mine. I remember lying in my sleeping bag, almost asleep, and feeling fingers in my hair: Merry checking that my antennae were still there. I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“From Mars,” she said.
“You and me,” I told her, and pulled out one of my antennae to stick in her hair. When we woke up the next morning, they were still there.
I haven’t said much yet about Merry, for instance what she looks like, apart from what makes her look like everyone else with Down’s. If she didn’t have Down’s, actually, I think she would look a lot like Dexter. She has blue eyes and blond hair, curly to Dexter’s straight, and that pretty pink skin, just a little rougher and rosier than Dex’s, as though she’s just come in from a cold wind. She’s fourteen, in between Dex and me, and shorter than either of us, and will never get any taller. Lots of people with Down’s get pudgy—it just goes with their body type, Mom says—so Aunt Ellie watches Merry all the time and tells her when to stop eating. Now that she’s living with us, we all have to watch her.
For instance, the night they arrived, Dad said he was going to make popcorn. But instead of everyone sharing from a big bowl, Mom gave us each a little dessert bowl with, let’s face it, not enough popcorn in it, and that was that. At breakfast the next morning, Merry poured herself such a big bowl of cereal that Mom had to help her put some back in the box. Afterwards, Mom took Dex and me aside and said we should Set A Good Example with food and snacks, putting small, healthy portions on plates rather than just rummaging through the fridge and the cupboards so it looked like we were eating however much of whatever we wanted.
When Mom cooks now, she chats along with herself like a host on the Food Channel, saying things like, I love spinach! It’s so good for you! and Oh, oh, oh, not too much butter, that’s not healthy! Dex will play along, cutting her apple into slices and giving Merry some on a plate and saying, I love apples, do you like apples? Merry will say, Yuh, I like some apples, and Aunt Ellie will say, Remember your thank you. Merry will hug Dex and say, Thank you!, and Dex will hug her back and say, You’re welcome! Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how many of Mom’s chocolate chip cookies I can hide up the sleeve of my shirt so I can get them up to my room and eat in peace.
Then there’s clothes. Mom and Aunt Ellie always talk about how people with Down’s are so sweet and good-natured but stubborn. Stubborn! You have not seen stubborn until you’ve seen Aunt Ellie pleading with Merry to fix the T-shirt she’s put on backward, or change her dirty socks, or take her hoodie down when we’re in the house, and Merry just stares at her feet with her face set, batting away anybody’s hands that come near her to try to help.
Except mine, apparently. One day we’re all getting ready to go to the mall and she won’t take off her flip-flops.
“Those are the most worn-out flip-flops I have ever seen,” I say. “Put on some socks and shoes, and when we get home I’ll find you my old flip-flops from last summer. They don’t fit me anymore, but at least the soles aren’t half falling off.”
“Remember your thank you!” Aunt Ellie calls from the bathroom.
“Thank you,” Merry says, and hugs me.
“You’re welcome,” I mumble. And from then on, I am Merry’s personal fashion icon. If I come downstairs in the morning wearing a button-up shirt instead of a T-shirt, Merry will run and change into a button-up shirt. If I put my hair in a ponytail, Merry will try to put her hair in a ponytail, and inevitably I will have to help her unsnarl it and do it right.
Everyone thinks this is cute.
Worst of all is walking Merry to and from school. I don’t mind the first part of the walk so much, actually. I tell her silly jokes and show her my Bollywood dance moves and pretend to be a car alarm. Merry’s the best audience ever; she laughs at everything I do. But as we get closer to the school, I can feel the other kids staring at us. Who is that? I can hear them wondering. Oh, yeah, it’s that Number One girl. What a disgusting nickname. Who’s she got with her? That new girl from the special class? What’re they doing together? She’s her cousin? Seriously? No. Seriously?
I don’t actually hear any of this directly. Lots of them say hi to Merry, and a few of them kind of nod at me. But I see the way their eyes slide sideways at us, away, and then back again. I see them smile.
I can hear everything they’re thinking.
A month after Aunt Ellie and Merry arrive, they’re gone, but not far. Aunt Ellie has found them a house on Indigo Court. We live on Cobalt Avenue. So now, on a cool early October weeknight with the smell of burning leaves in the air, we walk the five minutes from our house to theirs (Cobalt Avenue to Marine Drive to Bluebell Street to Turquoise Avenue to Indigo Court) for a housewarming supper. Daniel will be there, because Daniel is always there. Although he has his own house, I overheard Mom tell Dad she thinks it’s just a matter of time. I know what “it” is.
“String Bean!” he says, greeting us at the door in sock feet as if he already lives there and isn’t just a guest like the rest of us.
Their house looks a little empty still because their Montreal furniture won’t come until next week. We sit on the living room floor on a bunch of colourful pillows, drinking juice from matching glasses that still have the price stickers on the bottoms. “We made it to IKEA, anyway,” Auntie Ellie says, punching one of the pillows fondly.
“Edie see my room,” Merry says to me.
I follow her upstairs. Merry’s room is more finished than the rest of the house, with a bed and chair and dresser and bookcase, and posters on the walls, and one of those make-ityourself stained glass unicorns hanging on the window. There are white wicker baskets on the bookcase with her pencil crayons, stickers, bright plastic beads the size of cocktail wieners, and some books about crafts. Also some books with titles like Cooking for Kids and Kids’ Encyclopaedia and Super Science Experiments for Kids that are probably too difficult for her. The posters are all of Montreal Canadiens hockey players.
“You can sleep here,” she says, struggling to show me how the chair, a futon, folds out into a mattress.
“I sleep in my house,” I correct her, folding the futon back and smoothing out the creases, erasing the very idea.
“For a sleepover,” she says. “My mom says we can.”
This is
too much.
“I’m thirteen now,” I say. “I’m too old for sleepovers.” It just comes out. I should have said yes and forgotten about it, or come up with some lie, but it came out too fast. She looks at me, confused, and then not confused. We go back downstairs without saying anything else.
Back in the living room, Auntie Ellie and Daniel are laying out Styrofoam hutches of takeout Japanese. “Girls, there’s miso,” she says, and Dexter and Merry and I each take a hot foam bowl. After that there’s udon, and colourful rolls—fish and veggie morsels encased in rice—all laid out like something precious. I can’t look at anybody, can’t bear to talk. Aunt Ellie keeps trying to give me more food, but I can’t eat because how could I take food from her after being so cruel to her daughter in her own house, and she’ll probably never even know?
“Dynamite rolls, Edie,” Mom says, offering me one of hers because they’re my favourite and hers too, but I shake my head. She gives me a look. She knows something’s up; knows from my face it’s something she’s not going to like.
Aunt Ellie sees the look, but her Edie radar isn’t as fine-tuned. “By the way, Edie,” she says, oh so casually, “I’ve been wanting to thank you for all the time you’ve been spending with Merry. Walking her to school every day, bringing her home, showing her around. And Dexter too, for helping with her homework on the weekends. You girls have both been wonderful.”
“No problem, Aunt Ellie,” Dexter says. “It’s been fun.”
“Whatever,” I say.
Now the look on Mom’s face takes a sharp little kaleidoscope twist from What Is It, Edie? to Whatever It Is, Young Lady, We Will Be Having A Talk Later, Believe You Me.
“Later,” to Mom’s credit, comes after we’ve helped clean up, after the walk home, after Dexter has gone for her pre-bed bathroom hour and Dad has gone off to read his newspaper in front of the all-news channel, the way he likes to. “Now,” she says.
We’re in the kitchen. I’m getting my lunch ready for tomorrow and she’s rooting through cupboards, making a shopping list. “I hate school,” I say, slapping a pickle into my plastic sandwich box next to my cherry tomatoes. Then I change my mind and plop the pickle back in the jar. What if someone sees me eating it and starts telling everyone I have pickle breath?
“Don’t change the subject,” Mom says.
“What subject?”
“The subject,” Mom says, closing the cereal cupboard, “is you being so rude to Aunt Ellie. What has gotten into you?”
I stare at the bagel I’ve halved, wondering which is more socially acceptable, peanut butter or cream cheese.
“Are you even listening to me?” Mom says.
“Are you even listening to me?” I say. “Kids make fun of me. Every day I’m wearing the wrong thing or I say the wrong thing in class or my hair is wrong. And now I have to walk Merry to school and take her from class to class? That’s going to help me fit in?”
“I don’t notice Dexter complaining,” Mom says.
“That is totally unfair! Nobody at school even knows Merry is her cousin! Why can’t she walk Merry to school for a change, and then see if she’s still so popular?”
“You know perfectly well why: she goes early to study so she has time for her ballet after school. What do people actually say to you, anyway? Are they bullying you? We can think up some things for you to say back. You have to stand up for yourself, be assertive. The school is very proactive on bullying. Should I make some calls?”
This is so Mom. And the fact is, of course, no one ever has said anything. I just feel them all looking at me, and then looking away, and that’s bad enough. “Never mind,” I say. “Is there any more carrot cake?”
Mom gets it from the fridge and cuts me an extra big piece and smoothes my hair back from my forehead as I try to fit it in next to my bagel. It’s too big.
“It’s too big!” I shout, taking the piece out and dumping it onto the counter. “Why does it have to be so big? Can’t you see the size of the box I’m dealing with here?”
Mom actually flinches back from me as if I’ve slapped her. “Suit yourself,” she says quietly, and leaves the kitchen.
The summer when I was ten, just before we all went camping together, Mom sat me down with books and explained Merry’s condition in genetic terms—the chromosomes, the double helix, all that. Merry had a snarl in her genetic code. A tangle of black wool was how I pictured it, a snarl you could never comb straight no matter how hard you tried. That was why we had to be kind to her, Mom explained, and never be sarcastic, and always share. And I was ashamed: because it was her and not me, because she would never get better, because I pitied her and was afraid of her, and afraid for her, of what the world would do to someone like her if people like me didn’t take care of her. I was afraid of people like me.
Fools Rush In
“Edie!” Dexter shouts from her bedroom.
“Edie!” Mom shouts from the kitchen.
“Edie!” Dad shouts from the den.
I sigh. I’m rehearsing a monologue for drama class, which I have to present tomorrow. For my September monologue—Lady Macbeth’s mad scene—I got a D. Mr. Harris said he couldn’t hear me because I was mumbling. “Loosen up,” he said. So now, for my October monologue, I’ve chosen a passage from Waiting for Godot. “Too loud?” I ask Sam.
We’re in my room. Sam lies on my bed giving me pointers while I rehearse. At least we’re talking again. She plays piccolo in the concert band and doesn’t have to take drama. “Maybe a little,” she says. “You know that thing you’re doing with your hands?”
I do the thing I’ve been working on.
“Looks a little weird,” Sam says. “Maybe don’t do that.”
“I’m gesturing! That’s what acting is! Things with the hands!”
“Okay,” Sam says. She doesn’t sound convinced.
“‘Astride of a grave and a difficult birth,’” I say. “‘Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave-digger puts on the forceps.’” I do the thing with my hands.
“Ew!” my classmates say.
Mr. Harris asks me to stay behind after class.
“I know,” I say when it’s just the two of us. “Another D.”
“You’ve read Waiting for Godot?” Mr. Harris says.
Is he making fun of me? I get defensive, sarcastic. “Was I supposed to do Our Town?”
“You’ve read Our Town?” he says.
He is making fun of me. “Whatever,” I mumble to my shoes.
“Everyone else in class adapted characters from their favourite TV shows,” Mr. Harris says. “Half of them pretended to be contestants on Canadian Idol.”
He opens a folder on his desk and pulls out something I recognize: my last writing exercise. We had to write a one-page scene involving two characters in conflict, in which neither of the characters can mention what they’re really fighting about. I wrote the scene where Merry invites me over for a sleepover and I say no. I figured no one would see it but Mr. Harris and he probably wouldn’t read it anyway. Since he already hated me, I figured he’d just give me my D without thinking about it. I didn’t make it that Merry had Down’s, just that she liked me more than I liked her. That was the conflict neither of us could mention.
“I was going to give these back tomorrow,” he says, and turns it around so I can see it. At the top of my page, in red pen, he’s written an A. “Why haven’t you signed up for the school musical yet?”
The school musical is a big deal. It’s held in the theatre, next to the gym, and they have costumes and scenery and spend all year planning and rehearsing and selling tickets to the public. They hold three evening performances and a matinee, and they always sell out. According to the school handbook, the performances are a big fundraiser for various arts programs in the school. In the past they’ve put on Grease, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and a revue of Beatles songs. The sign-up sheets outside Mr. Harris’s office are already pretty full.
“I’m a terrible actor,�
�� I say.
He shrugs, meaning That’s true. Thanks. “Lot of other jobs going, though,” he says, giving me back my assignment. “Think about it.”
Truthfully, as I walk to the special ed class to pick Merry up for our walk home, I’m thinking more about my A. An A and two Ds averages out to, what, a C minus? That’s a pass! Number One is passing drama! Woo-hoo!
Merry’s classroom looks more like elementary school than high school: palmprints and alphabets stencilled on the walls, an aquarium. Her classmates are a girl in a wheelchair, a sad, mute girl, a couple of autistic boys, and another kid with Down’s—a placid brown-haired boy with my cousin’s eyes and smile. My classmates are most impressed by the autistic boy with the photographic memory, a tall Korean kid who with patient prompting will recite pages of the phone book in his fast, nervous voice.
I’m late because of my meeting with Mr. Harris. Everyone else has gone home except Merry, who stands waiting with her teacher, Mr. Dick. I mean, that would have to be his name, wouldn’t it? Although everyone likes Mr. Dick, actually. He coaches the senior boys’ basketball team, and isn’t all super-smiley like you might think he would be, teaching the special class. “Hi, Edie,” he says.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say. “Got your stuff?”
Merry shrugs her shoulder to show me her pink backpack.
“See you tomorrow, girls,” Mr. Dick says.
Merry wants to hold my hand as we walk down the hall. Usually I brush her off, but since it’s late and there’s no one around, and I did just get an A in my worst class, I let her just this once. Her hands are thick and dry and warm. “I love you, Edie,” she says.
Oh, for god’s sake. “I love you, too,” I say. “Let’s not say that anymore, though, okay?”
“Aw,” a voice says.
We’re walking past the art room. The door’s open and I realize, too late, that two girls are still in there working on some project, something big made out of papier mâché. They’re seniors; I’ve seen them around the hallways. They’re popular girls, but not in the way my sister is popular. The taller one wears her dark hair in a faux-hawk and has a pierced nose. She has bright blue eyes and always dresses ugly-on-purpose; today it’s a tartan miniskirt with torn fishnet stockings, clunky boots, and a blue velvet frock coat. The shorter one wears jeans all splotched with paint and a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt, and her hair hangs all in her face so that you wonder she can see to walk in a straight line. At lunch sometimes I’ve seen her leaning against her locker, feet sticking into the hallway so people have to step over her, strumming on her guitar until a teacher comes along and tells her to stop. Everyone seems to like them, though they only seem friends with each other and a couple of boys who dress as weirdly as they do. Their voices pursue me down the hall.
