I guess that's the beauty of a knot, really. It never comes undone.
Mom's taken her jeans off and is wearing some crazylooking housedress, fourteen times too big. I wonder where it's come from-it looks old, like she could have found it in the attic, but also stained with grease, like Dad used it as a rag when he was still around to work on the car. And it hits me that it looks like a maternity dress. Like she wore it when she was nine months pregnant with me. I get the hot chills all over again, because as she glances up, I'm not sure who she thinks I am. I wonder if she's somehow lost in time. I wonder if she even remembers that I was born, that I'm hers.
Then again, I try to tell myself, maybe she grabbed the old dress because it looked like a comfortable thing to paint in.
As we stare at each other, I find myself wishing that Mom could somehow pretend to be sane. It's a wasted wish, like squeezing your eyes shut and hoping that when you open them again, poof You'll have traveled back in time.
Still, though, the whole world is full of posers. People who lie on Internet dating sites. People who fudge their real weight on their driver's licenses. People who drive rented sports cars to their high school reunions, acting like they're more successful than they really are. So maybe, just maybe, me and Mom could pretend to be normal.
My eyes settle on the pockets on her housedress. Big pockets, open at the top. And because I can feel desperation knocking on the door of my heart, I quietly slide one of her drawers open and pull out a crystal from her collection-one of those rocks she swears she can feel vibrate, she swears has power, can heal. I slip it into one of her enormous pockets.
I mean, even if I'm not exactly sure I believe in this stuff, she does. And that's what makes all the difference, isn't it? Her belief? Isn't it what's governing my whole damn life-the shadows Mom believes in?
I finally manage to steer her out of her room, down the hall, and into a kitchen chair. An October evening breeze comes through the screen door, rattling the driftwood mermaids above the table. I pull the sliding glass shut, dole out heaps of steaming casserole.
"We can't sit long," Mom insists. "The world will stop.
Janny's fork pauses midair.
"Our feet. Everyone's feet," Mom says. "We all take steps, only we're not just pushing ourselves forward. We're pushing the world, see? We're pushing the whole world forward. If men and women and animals die from the world completely, the earth will stop moving. It takes us to move the world, to propel it forward. Like how you pedal a bicycle, see? We've got to pedal the earth!"
"Mom," I say. "Let's eat dinner, okay?"
Mom leans forward, her eyes wild. "What about her?" she whispers, pointing at Janny. "Do you see her? Because I do, I can, but I might paint her later if she's okay to be real for a little while."
"Mom," I say quietly. "That's Janny. You know Janny."
I can hear Janny gulp even from across the tablewhat's harder to swallow, I wonder, my mom or my tuna?
Janny sucks in a deep breath and pushes her scraggly brown hair behind her ears, and she does try. God love her, in that moment, she smiles and says, "Could you please pass the salt? Grace? Pass the salt, please."
Mom stands up, her face lighting up like she's just had the biggest epiphany of her entire life. "You know, if I tried hard enough, I think I could change the course of the whole world. Think," she says, stepping out into the middle of the linoleum. "If I just spin hard enough, fast enough, in the opposite direction-"
She starts twirling in her bare feet, squealing like she's the fastest thing on the whole planet-faster than bullets or pain or fear.
Janny makes this terrible face as she fights her tears. God, she fights as hard as some people battle cancer. But the tears break through, anyway.
"I just want the salt," Janny cries out. "Salt." She screams it with such power, I think for sure she's ripped her vocal cords right in two. She jumps up and throws her napkin on the table, still screaming-not words, just screaming, like a woman in a haunted house.
I grab the shaker where it's still sitting beside Mom's plate. But Janny's already snatched her purse up and she's heading for the door.
Wait wait wait wait wait.
Janny races down the front steps and I follow, like a dope, the salt shaker still in my hand. Here, Janny, here's your salt, take it, I want you to have it always and forever.
"I can't anymore," Janny says. "I can't be around her, all right?"
"Why? What's the deal? You used to stand up for me, you know."
"God, Aura, because-because it's too hard for me, okay? I can't deal with her anymore. Not now, not with everything else."
"What else?" I scream. "Really! What? Your kid's got what-a stuffy nose, Janny? But my mom-help me!"
"You don't know what you're talking about," she yells, tears dripping off her chin. "You don't know everything."
"I know you're a shitty-ass friend."
Janny wipes her face and nods. "Then I guess you won't miss me much, will you?" she asks. She raises her arms a little, just to let them fall to her sides-such a final sound.
"I'm goin' to Ace's," she says.
I stand there on the step, hoping like hell I look defiant and solid as Janny climbs into her p.o.s. When her car rattle-bangs around the corner, disappearing into the night, I scream and slam the stupid shaker on the front walk. Under the moon, the salt glistens even brighter than the broken shards of glass.
I collapse into a pile of blubbery tears on the step, just as the front door opens behind me. Mom wraps her paintdrenched arms around my neck. "It's okay-I know how things break, mine break, we're so alike, you promised, remember? You promised, right?"
Scientists have discovered that the same flexibility in thought that leads to creativity can also lead, in some individuals, to mental illness.
y chest is heaving as I leaf through the pages I printed out last night. All my Googling has resulted in one clear line, and it runs straight through schizos and artists both. Mad genius, my pages shout. Schizophrenia and the artistic temperament. Creativity and psychopathology. I feel like throwing up.
I'd started my search to help her. I mean, for Christ's sake, there's an herb for everything, right? Echinacea for colds. Bilberry for eyesight. Ginger for a metabolism boost. So I figured I could get her something. Pick it up in the vita min aisle of Walmart. But then I started running into this other stuff-and all of a sudden, I'm wondering about me.
Because the thing is, genetics are only part of it. One risk factor. I've always known-white-coats had always assured Dad and me-that environmental forces play their role, too. And now I'm starting to wonder, what kind of environmental forces? Drawing? Writing? Sketching? Hammering chords on the Ambrose Original? It suddenly seems like my whole life I've been a smoker, only nobody's bothered to tell me what smoking does to the lungs. I've spent the past fifteen years begging for disease to flower inside of me.
And the worst part in this whole stinking mess is that I can't even talk to Janny about it. I tried to call her, sure, because it isn't like we've never had a fight before. But when her mom answered the phone, I could hear Janny scream, "I'm not talking to that selfish bitch. Hang up the phone. Hang it up."
"Aura, sweetie," Mrs. Jamison tried, syrupy as a short stack, like I was eight.
"Forget it," I'd sighed, trying to convince myself Janny just needed time to cool. But when I'd walked up on the Circle this morning, she'd flicked her cigarette and run off before I had time to catch up.
"Hey, Aura," Frieson the Freak hisses.
I jump, realize that Wickman's got Bio II in full swing (when did the tardy bell even ring?), and start shoving the pages from my Internet search into my canvas bag.
"Aura," Frieson hisses again.
"What?" I hiss back.
"We okay about the cat?"
The way Angela's so obsessed with dissections makes me feel like my skin is getting peeled off. Because I know all those white-coats Mom's seen over the years would love to hack into her, pull
her brain right out of her head and hold it to the light, point to some circuit and say Here, right here. This is where it all went wrong.
And after what I read last night, I know they'd like to get their hands on me, too. They-no, not they-Angela. As I sit there staring at Angela, I can see us, twenty years down the road, me on the carving table and her a real M.D., or maybe one of those autopsy CSI guys. Only her coat wouldn't really be a doctor's coat at all-it would be more like a butcher's coat, covered in red splatter.
"I asked to get you," Angela would tell me. "All the way back in junior year, I asked Mr. Wickman if I could get you to dissect-I got dibs, way back then. You're mine, now that you've gone crazy, too, just like your mama, just like you were destined to be."
Too anxious to even bother to roll up her sleeves, she would jab me with her knife and make that giant "Y" incision down my chest.
"Aura?" Angela persists. "We agree, right? When the time comes, I'm gonna get the cat?"
"Take it, already," I spit. "Don't let me stand in the way of your sick dream."
"Aura Ambrose." When I look up, Wickman's holding another green pass. All I can think of is that awful car ride with Mom.
"At some point, I'll get you in here for a full class," Wickman says beneath his brown moustache, a relic from the days when Magnum, P.I. ruled the tube. I'm frozen, until he rattles the pass. "Come on. Hurry up. Mrs. Fritz wants to talk to you."
Great. My counselor, Queen of the Anti-Gypsies, wants to talk. This can't be good-it can't. My whole stomach turns into the board game of Chutes and Ladders-all ups and downs, topsy-turvy. I'm about to get reamed ...
I scoop up my notebooks and slide out of the room. One good thing about being sent to my fate is that at least I won't have to imagine the Freak dressed up like a character out of Macbeth, stirring a boiling cauldron of dead cats.
Down the stairs, around the corner to the main office. Mrs. Fritz, the sign over the first door on the right announces. Counselor, A-C. Yeah, Fritz, as in: broken, not in working order. This cheap-ass TVis always on the fritz.
Mrs. Fritz's office is full of red and white pom-poms and those cheerleading skirts with all the pleats. She's got signs up all over her walls-Second Place, All-State Championship. First Place, Citywide Cheer-Fest. Because she's their sponsor, you know, the cheerleaders. Which is pretty funny, considering that Mrs. Fritz is the kind of fat old gal that makes you stare at her pantyhose-covered legs while she drones on in her nasal voice. You just stare and stare, thinking that anytime now, those brown legs are going to pop-I mean, pantyhose can only stretch so far. And then surely they'd pop, right? Just like a balloon with too much air? One more sip of the gigantic Dr Pepper she keeps on her cluttered desktop and WHOP! Mr. Groce, the security guard, would come racing in, 9-1-1 already dialed on his cell phone, because he was sure we were all in the midst of another Columbine.
Oh, never mind, he'd tell the operator when he looked inside Fritz's office. Janet just blew her hose, is all.
"Aura Ambrose," I say, holding the slip.
"Come on in, dear," Fritz says, making me wish to God that the faculty members could find another pet name. I mean, what is it with that word, anyway? I've never called anybody dear in my life. Is it a sign of age, I wonder, like crow's feet and varicose veins? Do you just open your mouth one day and out it comes, like vomit, even though you're trying to hold it back, but there it is, all sloppy and nasty, this sign that suddenly you're an old woman?
She points to a seat next to the door. As I sit down, I check the clock. Two minutes have passed already since I got her note. Two whole minutes I haven't been thinking about Janny, or Angela's dissections, or even Mom, and in that moment, I'm actually grateful to Mrs. Fritz, because she has such fat legs and she uses the word dear and it takes my mind away from everything in my life that sucks.
"I was contacted by Mrs. Kolaite a few days ago," she starts as she unwraps a bacon, egg, and cheese Burger King Croissan'Wich.
Ah, here we go, here we go. Mrs. Kolaite (rhymes with of lady) is just the kind of uptight stickler who would've blabbed to my counselor that I've got five post-lunch tardies to her English class. Every single stupid time I'm late to one of Kolaite's thrilling lessons on onomatopoeia, she purses her lips and tosses a disgusted look at me, her stub of a chin sinking so deep into her fleshy throat that it disappears completely. But it's not like I'm wrapped up in some vapid teenage cafeteria crap-hairdos and can 1bar- row your silk cami on Friday and guess who isn't a virgin anymore. No, I have a best friend who rants about her son all through lunch and snaps at me, "What, my problems don't interest you?" when I try to leave because the clock says it's time for me to get my hiney back to class.
Correction: I had a best friend. Wait-is that really what happened last night?
"Yeah," I tell Fritz, "the tardies. I know. Kolaite told me she might make me do an extra assignment-an essay on Billy Budd or something." And I'll take it in a second, if it means I can get out of your office. I'll smile and tell you some whopper like I find that literary critique is just like dietary fiber-I just can't get enough of it into my life. "
"Mrs. Kolaite actually didn't mention the tardies," Fritz frowns. "But punctuality is an incredibly important part-"
"So-" I interrupt. "If that's not it-"
"Yes," Fritz says. "The real reason I called you to my office." She pauses for effect and to take another slurp of her Dr Pepper. "Mrs. Kolaite contacted me about your papers, your work. You're a very creative young lady, Ms. Ambrose."
My mouth turns into a desert. "I don't understand." I watch as Fritz takes an enormous bite of her croissant. I guess if I'd been assigned to any of the other counselors, I'd be offended. I mean, it is pretty rude for a faculty member to be eating in front of the kid she just hauled out of class. It's not like I have all morning to watch her chow down. But with Fritz, food is like a pair of shoes, or lipstick, because it's her constant accessory. No one in the history of Crestview has ever known her breath to smell like toothpaste instead of onions, or for her fingernails to be painted with red polish instead of marinara sauce.
"Mrs. Kolaite showed me a short story you wrote for class," she says when she finally swallows.
I go cold in my feet. "I had to write it, it was an assignment-"
"And your notes. Mrs. Kolaite is in the habit of collecting your class notes, isn't she?"
"Yes, but-"
"You take very good notes-astute notes, in your own words. And you still have time, each class period, to write free verse poetry and create beautiful sketches in the margins."
"Doodles, that's all-my mind wanders away from me-I know I shouldn't-"
"Oh, there's nothing about this that looks like a doodle, Aura," she says, showing me a sketch I did quickly of Mrs. Kolaite's face-a profile I'd done without thinking or even meaning to, down the margin of a pop quiz. "I took it upon myself to show this little masterpiece to our art instructors, and they both want to know why you haven't enrolled in a single drawing or painting course at Crestview."
Okay, my whole face is going to ignite at any minute. Explode and send tiny little fireballs dancing through Fritz's ofce.
"Dad wanted me to take real courses," I say, which is true. The dad of old-the one who painted houses and quoted the great philosophers and marveled at what Mom could do with a canvas-the dad I'd maybe even lovedhe wanted me to be creative. But the new dad, who sells insurance and drives through town in his ridiculously overpriced hybrid SUV, he'd frowned in absolute disapproval at the Art I that I'd put on my schedule last spring.
"Get real, Aura," he spat. "Just-take something practical, why don't you? How about Keyboarding?" He clicked his pen and marked over my schedule before I could argue. Did he know something.?About what art could do to me? Why didn't he tell me?
"Art is a real class," Fritz protests. "And you have such obvious natural ability that it seems a shame-"
"I don't have any natural ability at all," I tell Fritz sharply.
"Ms.
Ambrose, Mrs. Kolaite thinks you ought to be in our accelerated arts and letters program. She thinks you should be in honors English, and our art instructors all agree-
"Look, I don't want to be in that, okay?" I snap.
Fritz looks shocked, like I've just asked her how she gets her fat ass in those pantyhose every morning, anyway. I mean, really-are they sprayed on permanently?
"In my experience, students who have artistic ability also usually like to take part in art courses or writing courses," Fritz protests. "And in the long run, it would help. Why, art schools and liberal arts universities really do like to see that a student has a background in these kinds of subjects. It could give you a real leg up when you start to apply to college." While she's talking, she's rummaging around on her desk, balling up McDonald's sandwich wrappers and throwing them in her wastebasket, picking up stacks of paper and tossing them aside.
"And it seems to me," she says, pausing to take yet another sip of her Dr Pepper, "it seems that I remember another Ambrose-maybe at the art museum? Is there some talent that runs in the family?"
There's something absolutely menacing about the way she's smiling at me, something horrific, like she's got me in her clutches. Like she knows every single last awful detail about my crummy life. Is that what this whole thing is about? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree?
"Yeah, well, I don't have any inherited ability, all right?" I snap. "And I don't like it. Drawing, writing, whatever. I hate it. I don't want any part of it. Thank you for your time." These last few words should sound polite, but I say them with such hatred it's like I'm telling her Fuck off you fat cow. Cradling my notebooks, I stomp out of her office and down the hallway.
I'm so pissed off, I can't stomach the thought of going back upstairs and sitting next to Angela Frieson while she licks her chops and sharpens her dissecting knife in her mind. So I veer straight toward the back exit and push the bar on the door, which trips the alarm. I make a run for it before Mr. Groce can arrive, walkie-talkie in hand, and find that it's Aura Ambrose who's just broken free.
A Blue So Dark Page 6
