by Ann Hood
Anybody could be Millie’s father. She was conceived at a time when Renata had been indiscriminate, when she lost herself to strangers every night. She worked at a jazz club then, in the West Village. It was the time when she realized she would never be an artist, not really. She drank a lot, and never went home alone from work. She did not bother to ask the men their names. She didn’t care. Their faces were a blur too. So that when she looked at Millie, it was as if the little girl had come from thin air. She was completely unlike Renata in every way—temperament, appearance, point of view. Like all those Ramone children, Millie seemed to have nothing to do with a man at all. Nothing to do with Renata. And when Millie asked who her father was, Renata told her the truth—“I don’t know.”
But Jack was as close to a father as Millie could have. He copied famous paintings onto sidewalks with colored chalk all around the city. She sometimes went with him, watching as he worked. When she was little, Millie thought he was Leonardo da Vinci.
This summer, he was copying Starry Night on lower Broadway. All the rain was making his job difficult. So he spent a lot of time telling Millie stories about artists. She worried about van Gogh cutting off his ear. And Michelangelo painting on his back like that. True stories bothered Millie too.
Tonight, Jack came by as Renata watched Millie sleeping on the couch.
“She’s worried,” Renata told him.
“What does a little girl like her have to worry about?”
“The sky opening and swallowing her up.”
Jack laughed. He had a voice as deep and rumbling as the thunder outside. “Shit,” he said.
The room was completely dark except for the light from the television. Jack stroked Renata’s face. She saw streaks of colored chalk, blue and pink and green, in the creases of his palms. She closed her eyes and let him stroke her face, her neck, her breasts over her T-shirt. When Millie was born, Renata stopped sleeping around. The only man she had sex with now was Jack, and that was only occasionally, when one of them was lonely.
He lit up a joint, and she heard his sharp intake of smoke, then a pause before he released it from his lungs. She took it from him almost greedily. Something about today, about Millie’s lethargy, Mrs. Ramone’s curses, had upset her. If Jack had not come to her tonight, she would have gone out in the rain, walked down Broadway to his puddle of colored stars, and brought him home with her.
Renata stumbled into the living room where Millie slept. The funny clock on the table, the one that Millie loved with the two fifties teenagers dancing and the words IT’S MASHED POTATO TIME, read almost eleven.
“Millie?” she said.
The little girl was still on the couch, naked, wrapped in the blanket, just as Renata had left her the night before. Renata felt a moment of panic, until she saw Millie’s chest rise and then fall.
“You scared me for a minute,” Renata said, laughing nervously.
“I don’t feel so good,” Millie told her.
Renata frowned. “You don’t look so good either,” she said. Then she added, “That flu.”
“I’ve been lying here,” Millie said, “waiting for you to get up. I called and called but I guess you didn’t hear.”
Renata leaned closer to Millie. It looked like her face was drooping slightly on one side, the way Renata’s grandfather’s had after his stroke. “Why didn’t you come and get me?” Renata said.
“My legs are too shaky.”
Diseases were coming into Renata’s mind at a rapid rate. Pneumonia. Mono. Lyme disease. And wasn’t there a rare encephalitis outbreak on Long Island this summer?
“Millie? Does your neck hurt?”
The little girl nodded.
“And your head?”
She nodded again.
Renata shivered. She tried to remember if Millie had any mosquito bites, tried to remember her scratching. But her mind was racing with too many other things.
And then, as Renata tried to figure out what was wrong and what she should do, Millie’s right arm started to twitch.
“Millie?” Renata said. And then stupidly she added, “Stop doing that.” She remembered how just a few days ago—or was it last week?—Millie had seemed to drop everything she touched. Plates of food and a glass of juice and pens and crayons. Renata had made a mental note to enroll Millie in dance class in the fall to help her coordination. She had meant to start calling around but hadn’t gotten to it yet. She’d only gotten as far as imagining Millie in a glittering tutu, a rhinestone tiara on her head like a little princess.
“Millie,” Renata said, “you’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring me,” Millie said.
Renata wrapped Millie in one of her own T-shirts, the very one that Jack had lifted from her so gently last night. She pulled the blanket around Millie tighter and hurried out the door. In the hall they passed Mrs. Ramone, out of breath, bags of groceries tied to a little cart. When Renata pushed past, the woman made the sign of the cross.
The doctor in the emergency room looked like a high school student. His voice cracked when he spoke, stray hairs sprouted here and there on his face from a sloppy shave. Renata wanted to shout for someone older, someone wise who could treat encephalitis. An encephalitis specialist. But her voice came out calm and even as she answered the doctor’s questions.
“Her head hurts,” she reminded him. Did she have to make this diagnosis herself?
“Everything’s all blurry,” Millie said.
This surprised Renata. It filled her with relief. “Why, she probably just needs glasses,” she said, almost giddy. Why hadn’t Millie said that earlier? It explained everything, the headache and the clumsiness and dizzy spells.
“When did it start?” the doctor asked.
He had beady eyes. Renata didn’t like that about him. His name, pinned above the stethoscope in his pocket, seemed to have no vowels.
Again, her voice was calm. “Yesterday,” she said.
“April,” Millie told him.
The doctor’s head shot up. “April?” he asked, his voice cracking again.
“Millie,” Renata said, her heart starting to pound again, “you got sick yesterday.”
“Remember that day Jack took us on the boat?”
“The Circle Line,” Renata said, looking at the doctor. She suddenly felt like she had to prove she was a good mother. “One of our little excursions,” she said.
“That’s the day I got sick. I could hardly see the Statue of Liberty’s face.”
“But why didn’t you mention it to me?” Renata said. She remembered how that day Millie had dropped her soda and she had scolded her. Looking back at the doctor, she added, “She never said a word until yesterday.”
“I thought it would go away,” Millie said, sighing.
Renata thought encephalitis would be bad. It would be touch and go for a while, she thought. There would be intravenous, the intensive care unit, hushed voices. Then Millie would open her eyes and ask for some Baskin-Robbins bubble gum ice cream. She would look around surprised at where she was. She would giggle and say, “Can we go home now?”
Encephalitis would be bad. But this was worse. This doctor who still had acne, who didn’t shave carefully, whose voice still hadn’t finished changing, was telling her that Millie had something called a neuroblastoma. He said it as if everyone knew what that was.
“Speak English,” Renata said.
“A brain tumor,” he squeaked.
“No,” Renata told him, surprised that her voice still sounded so calm.
She had been in the hospital for twelve hours, sitting on this hard plastic turquoise chair drinking bad coffee from a vending machine. Whenever they wheeled Millie past, Renata leapt up and made jokes. She grabbed her daughter’s hand and squeezed it. She made her promises. They would get goldfish, a cat. They would grow plants that wouldn’t die.
“I want another doctor,” she said. “I want to take Millie home.”
He sat down beside her and took both of h
er hands in his. She was surprised at how cool and dry his hands were, and slender like a teenage girl’s.
“Just take it out,” Renata said.
The doctor sighed and told her to make an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. A Doctor Jinx.
“Jinx?” Renata said. “What kind of name is that for a doctor?” Certainly not one that could save someone’s life.
“It’s up to Jinx, of course,” the doctor told her. “But my guess is radiation.”
“There’s been a mistake,” Renata told him as he shook her hand.
He nodded. He had dandruff too, big flakes that clung to his sideburns.
“I know how you feel,” he told her.
It did not seem right that Millie was in a room with children who were not really sick. A girl whose leg was in a cast and suspended from a sling. Another who had her tonsils out. There was an empty bed, and then Millie, dressed in a hospital johnny decorated with Sesame Street characters. Renata noticed that the other children wore their own pajamas and she felt embarrassed.
“There’s been a mistake,” she told Millie.
Already a bruise had formed on the back of Millie’s hand where an IV was hooked up.
“Tomorrow I’m talking to a new doctor who will straighten all of this out.”
Millie said, “I thought you got to eat Popsicles when you were in the hospital. And ice cream.”
Renata smiled. Children with brain tumors had no appetite. She was sure of that.
“I’ll go tell a nurse to get you some. Okay?”
Millie nodded.
Renata noticed that these other children had teddy bears with them, dolls, familiar things. But Millie was only here for the night, she reminded herself. She didn’t need anything like that.
The door was blocked by the arrival of a new patient, someone for the empty bed. It was a girl Millie’s age, with long blond braids and a fading tan. Everyone around her was cheerful, making jokes and laughing. The girl clutched a stuffed zebra. When she smiled two dimples appeared in her cheeks.
“It’s been a scary few days,” the woman told Renata. Her voice sounded nervous, high strung. “We were at our place in Sag Harbor and she got bitten by a mosquito.”
Renata turned and watched as they lifted the little girl from the gurney to the bed.
“Encephalitis,” the girl’s mother said. “You hear these things on the news and you think it can’t happen to you.”
Renata nodded.
“They didn’t think she’d make it,” the girl’s mother said. “They said it was fifty-fifty.”
Renata nodded again. They had given this woman odds, at least. She would take fifty-fifty right now. She thought of the doctor’s smooth hands holding hers.
Behind her, the little girl’s family huddled around her bed while a nurse snapped their picture.
In unison, they all said, “Cheese.”
“This is the first time I’ve seen you smile in days, Gretchen,” the mother said.
Renata left the room to find someone who could get Millie’s ice cream. But the nurse’s station was empty, the hallway deserted.
The room was dark, filled with the steady sounds of children’s breathing. Renata sat beside Millie’s bed, studying her face. Not memorizing it, she told herself, but looking for clues. Someone who was going to die would not have eaten all of her dinner, or giggled with the little girl who’d survived encephalitis, or look so calm and unconcerned.
There’s been a mistake, Renata told herself again.
The sky lit up with late summer heat lightning. Then the thunder started again, Loud, close.
Millie opened her eyes.
“Mama,” she said.
Renata pressed her fingers to her little girl’s lips. “Shhhhh,” she whispered. “Listen.”
“What?” Millie said.
“The angels,” Renata told her. “The angels are bowling.”
Caitlin was always saying that part of the problem with life was its predictability. She sighed like an actress and moaned, “No surprises.” And as usual, Dana agreed. They listed all the boring things in their lives—school, working at Pizza Pizzazz, and their boyfriends. Mike and Kevin were exactly like every other boy in school. “No surprises,” Caitlin said.
They had been with them since seventh grade when Gayla Lobrowski had a Halloween party in her basement and after bobbing for apples and eating junk food everyone played spin the bottle and paired off. It seemed strange to Dana that most of those original pairings were still intact. Mike was the first boy she had kissed. He was there when she had her first drink and her first cigarette. He had taught her how to drive and waited while she took her driving test to make sure she passed.
But more and more lately she found that she hardly listened when he spoke. He never had anything to say, really. He didn’t seem to have ideas or opinions about anything. His favorite phrase was “status quo.” “How’s everything?” Dana would ask him and Mike would say, “Status quo, babe.” He was the school’s star wrestler until he broke his arm last season. Now he mostly watched TV, got drunk, and talked about The Simpsons. Sometimes, sitting next to him on the couch in front of the television set, Dana went to sleep, even if it was only eight o’clock. She just slept until he took her home.
The night after her mother left, she tried to explain how she felt to Mike. But his eyes kept drifting to the old M*A*S*H rerun on the television.
“You have to listen to me,” Dana finally screamed at him. “My mother is gone!”
Mike’s eyes settled on her briefly. “With your mother,” he said, “that’s sort of status quo, don’t you think? I mean, even when she was there, she wasn’t there. You know what I mean?”
“I hate you!” Dana yelled.
The next night he showed up with flowers. He stole them from graves but she still thought it was sweet.
“I’m a jerk,” he told her, and nuzzled her neck and told her he was really sorry about her mother.
Sometimes, like right then, kissing Mike felt as sweet as it had that first night in Gayla Lobrowski’s basement when he’d nudged the beer bottle so it pointed at her. Besides Caitlin, no one knew as much about her as Mike did.
“You are a jerk,” she told him, but she hugged him real close when she said it.
They went to Joe’s Diner for burgers and then to the quarry. Sitting in the car with a Madonna tape playing, Mike said, “Remember that first time I kissed you? You were wearing a witch costume.”
“Uh-huh,” Dana said.
“Even with a green face you looked cute.”
Dana stared out the window, past the quarry. She wondered where her mother was right now.
“Hey,” Mike was saying. He tugged on her hand.
“What?” She turned toward him and he had a weird look on his face. “What?” she said again.
“I got you this,” he said. And he held up a ring, a thin gold band with a heart in the middle and the tiniest speck of a diamond chip in the middle of that.
“What is it?” Dana said, even though she knew.
“It’s like a pre-engagement ring. You know.”
It looked so tiny in his big hand. All the girls were getting pre-engaged this year. That was how it worked. Pre-engaged before senior year, engaged that Christmas or Valentine’s Day, married after graduation. It was like one of her father’s maps—you knew exactly where all the lines led. Dana could almost hear Caitlin’s theatrical sigh. No surprises.
“Come on,” Mike said, tugging at her finger. “Put it on.” She wanted to say no. She wanted to tell him that she and Caitlin were leaving, that they were going to lead unpredictable lives. But he looked so happy right then. He remembered she was a witch that Halloween night. He had cheated just to kiss her, nudging the bottle in her direction. So she held out her hand to him and tried to smile.
“I’m getting out of here,” Libby had told Tom on their very first date.
They were sixteen years old and Tom had sat through two years of
English classes next to her before he got the courage to ask her out. He had taken her to Pittsfield for an Italian dinner at a real restaurant. They’d sat in a booth with a candle burning in a red globe wrapped with white net. The place mats had games on them. “Find the Thing That Doesn’t Belong,” one of them said. And Tom had found it—a fish was sitting in a tree, next to a robin’s nest. “Dumb,” Libby had said.
After dinner they’d gone to see the movie Butterflies Are Free, and she’d let him hold her hand the whole time. He couldn’t concentrate on any of it, not on the dinner or Goldie Hawn helping the blind guy in the movie or anything. All he could think of was that Libby Holliday was sitting beside him. He had to admit he was a little afraid of her. She used one word to sum up exactly how she felt. The games on the place mat were dumb. The spaghetti was okay. The movie was heart-wrenching. And his car was cool.
And now they had driven the long way back to Holly so he could pull off a back road next to a cornfield and try to kiss her. “Kiss the ice princess?” Mitch had said earlier. “Good luck. You’ll probably turn into the Abominable Snowman.” Tom had spent the whole week planning every step of this date. He didn’t want anything to go wrong. By the end of the night he wanted Libby Holliday to be his.
They sat in his car with the radio turned on low. The car was a 1972 copper Firebird with a thick white racing stripe and a V-8 engine.
That’s when she said it the first time. “I’m getting out of here.”
For an instant, Tom thought she meant out of the car. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet.
“Out of Holly,” she said, as if she could read his mind.
“Yeah?” he said. It was a silly notion. They were sixteen years old and there was no place else to go. But he played along.
“I am so sick of all this corn,” she moaned, laying her head back on the seat.
He studied her profile, the way her hair clung to the seat, the shape of her neck, her long eyelashes cast downward. Tom leaned over and kissed her as softly as he could right on the neck. She didn’t open her eyes.
