“Yeah,” she said. “I guess that was it. I was just surprised.”
“That makes sense. To be surprised, I mean. Mackenzie’s such an idiot. They all are. And did you see what Courtney was wearing? Beyond tacky.”
Rosie nodded. She had been thinking the same thing.
“I overheard my mom talking to someone on the phone once,” Meg went on. “She said that Mackenzie’s mother ran off with some guy from Augusta a few years ago and that her father’s still a wreck about it. And she said that Mackenzie’s brother is a loser. Well, actually, she called him a douche, but don’t tell her I told you that. I heard he got arrested once up in Portland for being drunk on the streets. Gross.”
“Yeah. Being drunk is gross no matter where you are.”
“Yeah. And Courtney, please. I heard that her dad has been in jail, like, four times and that her mother is an alcoholic and that her younger brothers go to school wearing dirty clothes. No wonder she’s always wanting to beat someone up and dressing like a tramp.”
“Oh,” Rosie said. “That’s too bad about her family.”
“Yeah,” Meg went on, “and Jill, well, I don’t know what her problem is other than for some weird reason she worships the ground Mackenzie walks on. And Stella, I don’t know about her, either, but she seemed okay before she started to hang out with Mack—”
“Meg,” Rosie interrupted. “What are you trying to say?”
Meg blushed. “I don’t know. Sorry. It’s just that I want you to believe me when I tell you I don’t like those girls. I mean it.”
“Okay. Um, did you go to the fireworks last night?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t really in the mood, but Petey really wanted to go, so Mom and I took him. It was okay.”
Rosie glanced over to the Giroux house. “Does your mom know you’re here?”
Meg shook her head. “No. She’s at work. Like always.”
“Will you tell her you came over?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she’d mind... .” But Meg wasn’t at all sure what her mother would think about her having gone over to Rosie’s. “I mean, I’m not doing anything wrong. Am I?”
“No,” Rosie said. “Except that my mother might not like that we’re talking.”
“I know. She told my mom I wasn’t supposed to bother you anymore. I waited until I saw your mom leave the house before coming over. Will you tell her that I was here and that we talked?”
Rosie paused before answering that question. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe not yet.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not like I have to tell her everything.”
Meg heard the new note of defiance in Rosie’s voice and thought it was a good thing. “Right,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like we’re Petey’s age.”
Rosie smiled. “Right. How is Petey, anyway?”
For a moment Meg wondered if she should mention that Mr. Patterson had asked to spend time with her brother. She decided against it. It wasn’t her place to tell. Besides, maybe Rosie already knew.
“He’s good,” Meg said. “He likes day camp a lot. Can I tell him you said hi?”
“Sure.”
“So, what books did you choose from Mr. Arcidiacono’s list?”
“Dubliners by James Joyce, Emma by Jane Austen, and for the non-fiction, a biography of Elizabeth the First and a history of the last Crusade,” Rosie said.
“Yow. The last Crusade? How many were there?”
“A lot, I think. I guess I’ll find out. What did you pick?” Rosie asked.
“The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Up From Slavery, and a biography of Ben Franklin. But I’m also rereading the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”
“I love the movies, but I haven’t read the books.”
“I could lend them to you, if you want.”
“Thanks.” Rosie glanced over her shoulder, back at the house. “I should probably go inside,” she said. “My mom will be home soon. She only went out to get some coffee. My father likes the kind they sell at Port City Roasters.”
Meg nodded. “Right,” she said. “Rosie? Thanks.”
“Sure.” Rosie smiled and then went back inside.
Meg half ran across the Pattersons’ backyard, through the gate, and into her own yard. She felt happy. She felt relieved. Rosie had actually talked to her. They had had a real conversation. Meg felt tears prick at her eyes and furiously blinked them away. Her mother would be home from work soon. The last thing Meg needed was her mother seeing her eyes all red and swollen and asking questions about where she had been or what she had been doing all afternoon. Meg wanted to keep this very important moment to herself until things between Rosie and her became clear. And then, if everything was all right, she would shout it to the world.
17
The chicken was roasting in the oven, a pot of potatoes was boiling on the stove, and the green beans were rinsed and waiting to be steamed. Frannie ineffectually fanned her face with a dish towel and wondered what had possessed her to roast anything in this heat. She would love to have an air conditioner, central air preferably, but that certainly wasn’t in the budget.
With a sigh meant for no one, she went to the sink and poured a glass of cold water. She thought about Petey, upstairs in his room, playing with an old Erector set he had inherited from the brother of a girl at school. The night before, as she was tucking him into bed, he had asked again why he wasn’t allowed to go over to Aunt Jane’s house.
Frannie had smiled and unnecessarily straightened the sheet over her son. “I told you before, Petey. She’s very busy right now,” she had said, hoping like mad that he would believe her lie. “She has some new clients and they’re very demanding, so she needs to focus on work.”
But Petey hadn’t believed her lie. “Did I do something wrong?” he had asked, tears suddenly quivering in his eyes.
Frannie had hurriedly reassured him that he hadn’t done anything wrong and that sometimes adults really did just get too busy to ... She had talked herself into a corner. What was she going to say? Was she going to tell him that adults, like Petey’s own father and like his own Aunt Jane, sometimes got too busy to be there for the children they claimed to love?
“I promise you, Petey,” she had said, after kissing him on the forehead, “I’ll never be too busy to be right here for you. Okay?”
It was a promise Frannie hoped she could keep, though she knew all too well that life could be unfair and random and that the most well-intentioned promises might have to be broken.
God, it was hot. Frannie ran the sweating glass across her forehead and thought again of Mike’s offer to spend time with Petey. Really, the only thing standing in the way of her gladly accepting was Jane’s stubbornness. She felt a flare of anger. Who was Jane to be punishing her son? How dare she act so righteously, as if she was perfect and everyone else around her was not? Frannie remembered a time when she and Jane had gone to Portsmouth to look for a birthday gift for Mike. Outside the parking garage they had encountered a homeless woman. It was hard to tell for sure, what with her tattered clothing, mangled hair, and dirt-streaked face, but Frannie thought she must be at least sixty. Jane had mumbled something disparaging about the woman, ignoring her outstretched hand and timid plea for a coin. Frannie, mortified by her friend’s behavior, had given the woman all the change in her purse. Had Jane’s conduct been so kind or generous or loving? It most certainly had not!
Be nice, Frannie told herself. Treat others as you would have them treat you, with kindness and compassion and sympathy. It was a commandment that was a lot easier to deliver than to perform.
Especially when it came to her ex-husband. She had tried again to talk to Peter about what had happened to Rosie, but from the start he had shrugged off the entire string of nasty behavior on Mackenzie’s part as “just normal kid stuff.” “It’s the kind of thing that toughens you up,” he had said again last night over the phone. “The Pattersons have always spoiled Rosie. They treat her like s
he’s a princess or something. That’s why she couldn’t take some teasing.”
“It was more than teasing,” Frannie had retorted. “And what Meg did was probably even more hurtful to Rosie than what those other girls did.”
Peter had sighed like a long-put-upon man. “Okay, Meg shouldn’t have ratted out her friend. It was wrong. But it’s not like it’s the end of the world, for Christ’s sake.”
With supreme effort Frannie held her tongue, but internally she had fumed. Meg’s bad behavior, she had decided after that conversation, was Peter’s fault. Her daughter had learned from her father how to be mean and heartless and callous. She had learned how to disappoint and betray the ones she cared for.
And speaking of disappointing the ones you cared for, Frannie thought, it was time for her to remind Peter, yet again, about a promise he had made to their son. Frannie picked up the phone and dialed his number. With any luck he had remembered to pay his phone bill....
“Yo.”
Frannie rolled her eyes. “It’s Frannie. I forgot to ask you something yesterday. When are you taking Petey to the Sea Dogs game? You promised him you’d take him to a game this summer.”
Peter groaned. “I know what I promised,” he said. “I just haven’t gotten around to buying tickets yet. A buddy said he could get me two for the price of one. I’m just waiting on him, that’s all.”
“Don’t disappoint your son, Peter.”
“Jesus Christ, Fran, lay off. I said I’m on it.”
“You’d better be because—”
Frannie’s ears were met with a dial tone. Not for the first time her ex-husband had eluded an unpleasant conversation by simply hanging up. Frannie sighed and put down the phone.
Meg came into the kitchen then, and yanked open the door of the fridge. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“Nobody.”
“That means Dad. When’s dinner?”
“When it’s ready,” Frannie said, feeling a twinge of discomfort. Did Meg really associate her father with “Nobody”? “Will you set the table?”
“Okay.” Meg shut the fridge door and went over to the cabinet that contained the dishes. Frannie was a bit surprised. Lately, it had been usual for Meg to protest a request (a request that was not really a request but an order) with a sigh or a roll of the eyes.
“You okay?” she asked her daughter now.
Meg looked up from placing a fork next to a knife on a paper napkin. “Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know. You look ... almost happy or something.”
Meg shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well, I hope you are feeling happy.”
“Thanks.”
Meg quickly finished setting the table and loped out of the room.
Frannie sank into a chair at the kitchen table and pushed aside one of the plates Meg had put out. She noticed another scratch on the table’s worn surface and remembered the table leg that had somehow grown shorter (what had Peter done to it, she wondered testily). They could really use a new table, one that didn’t wobble and threaten the destruction of everything on top of it. The question was, how to afford it. She might be able to find something at a garage sale or in one of the local resale shops. It certainly didn’t have to be beautiful, just strong and clean. Although, Frannie thought, it would be nice to have a new and beautiful piece of furniture for once. And with Peter no longer living in the house, it might actually stay beautiful for years!
Peter. His comments about Rosie, however crude, caused Frannie to think back to her own school days. She was absolutely sure she had never bullied another student. For one thing, it was wrong to hurt another person. The Golden Rule—that commandment again!—demanded that you Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You. There had been a pillow on the living room couch in her childhood home, embroidered with those very words. For another, if Frannie’s parents had found out she had done something bad to another student, they would have seriously punished her. Her father had been fond of spanking and had sometimes used a belt. Her mother had liked to impose restrictions on food, television time, phone use—whatever she could find to restrict. Frannie didn’t feel that her parents had been abusive, but they had been harsh, perhaps more harsh than was necessary, to get their lessons across.
No, Frannie was happy to conclude that she was innocent of any bullying behavior. And then something began to take shape in her mind, not clearly at first, but still, she absolutely knew it was a memory and not a fiction her brain was creating. And there it was. At the time it had seemed a small incident to her... . She must have been in the fifth or sixth grade, definitely not yet in high school because she could see herself in pigtails. It must have been lunchtime or recess because the schoolyard had been crowded with kids. A girl—definitely a girl—was laughing and pointing at another girl. A circle of kids gathered around the victim. Frannie couldn’t recall who the victim was or why she was being laughed at. She did remember being part of that circle of kids, though, laughing along with the tormentor and her audience.
Frannie clutched her head. She was overcome by feelings of shame and embarrassment. Had she passed along to her daughter a serious flaw of character? Had her youthful participation in that poor girl’s humiliation been an indication of something seriously wrong, something that would rear its ugly head in her daughter’s lifetime? Even the Bible said that the sins of the father would be revisited on the sons, and that had to also mean that the sins of the mother would be revisited on the daughters.
The smell of something burning rudely dragged Frannie from her morbid thoughts. “Oh, crap!” she muttered, dashing from her seat and over to the oven.
The chicken, though slightly burnt, was salvageable, though the potatoes she had overboiled might be a little mushy. Lots of butter would make them appealing again. Neither kid would eat more than three or four green beans, so it didn’t matter what she did to them.
Frannie began to slice blackened skin off the chicken, and as she did so, she took herself to task yet again. Here she had been blaming her ex-husband for something for which she might be responsible!
“Let she who is without sin cast the first stone,” she whispered, dropping burnt chicken skin into the garbage.
18
March 10, 2012
Dear Diary,
Can things get any worse?
The answer to that question is yes, they can. They always do. And they probably always will.
Some of the girls at school have started to act as if I’m not even there. They’re totally ignoring me. In Spanish class today Mrs. Moreno gave a girl in the front row a test to pass around, and when the stack of papers came to the girl in front of me, Larissa Flaherty, she reached way back and gave it to the boy sitting behind me. I was shocked. She’s always been friendly with me before now. The boy behind me, Charles Lin, tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a copy of the test, and I thanked him and just pretended that nothing strange had happened.
I’ve gotten very good at pretending.
Then after lunch, this other girl I always thought was nice, Laura Bourdet, snubbed me. I said hi to her in the hall like I always do and she walked right past me without even looking at me. And on the bus on the way home, three other girls from one of our classes got on after Meg and me, and as they walked by us to their own seats, each one said, “Hey, Meg!” sounding really friendly, but said nothing to me. They didn’t even look at me. It was like I wasn’t even there. They always used to say hello to both of us.
Meg just sat there and didn’t say anything about what had just happened. I waited for her to say something like, “That was so rude!” and get angry like she usually does when she sees someone getting hurt. But she said nothing. Like she hadn’t even noticed what had happened or like she didn’t even care.
But then, when the bus let us off outside our houses, I told her about what happened with Larissa Flaherty and with Laura Bourdet, and Meg said I had to tell someone about what was going on, our homeroom teacher or th
e principal, but I can’t. How can I say that people aren’t looking at me or talking to me and not sound like someone so full of herself that she complains about not being the center of attention? Besides, maybe I’m imagining everything, though Meg said that of course I’m not, and that Charles Lin, for one, was a witness and that she, for two, was another witness.
But I begged Meg not to tell anyone, not even Tiffany, even though Meg said she bet Tiffany would know how to handle things. And why would the principal care that some stupid freshman was being snubbed?
Meg kind of got impatient with me then. She said something like, “What did you do to them? You must have done something to make them mad at you!”
I was really surprised and also felt kind of sick. I couldn’t say anything. I just went inside. Now I think that Meg is mad at me, too. But she just doesn’t understand why I can’t tell anyone about what’s happening to me.
I don’t know why all this stuff is going on. But I know that Mackenzie Egan is behind it. Why does she hate me?
Maybe Meg is right. Maybe it’s because I did do something bad or wrong. Maybe this is all my fault. Maybe there is something wrong with me. That’s why Mackenzie is making my life miserable. She could have decided to bully anyone else in school, but she chose me. It must be because I deserve it. Even Meg thinks so.
I was able to cut again after dinner. It helped a bit. It’s like trading one pain for another. And the physical pain is way easier to deal with than the pain in my ... I was going to say heart, but maybe I should say head, instead. I don’t think people like me and my parents, people who are agnostic and don’t pray or go to church, are supposed to believe in a soul. But if I do have a soul, I think that’s where the pain might be worst. But that probably doesn’t make sense. Once I thought that maybe I could talk to someone at Meg’s church, maybe a priest, about souls and spiritual stuff, but then I decided I would only be wasting the priest’s time. It’s not like I go to Meg’s church, so why would anyone care about my questions?
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