I am too busy trying to keep my race car from sliding off the muddy track to pay attention to the annoying voice that enters the office.
“Mom. Mom. Mo-ther! . . . I am not being stubborn. I’ll call you as soon as I’m done. . . . Yes! Right after. Ugh!”
My car, an orange dune buggy with massive wheels, hits a rock the size of Peru and I am engulfed in flames as pieces of the buggy fly at the screen in super slo-mo.
“Next time try the blue dragster. It has less suspension but handles the curves better.”
I turn to face the annoying voice, but when I do, I am surprised to see that it belongs to Summer Goodman, who is in my new orthodontist’s office. She’s sitting in the chair next to me, and I watch as she reaches into her purse and takes out a sparkly pink plastic case. “Oh, thanks for the tip,” I say, trying hard not to gawk at her.
“I’ve played that thing a million times.” She opens the sparkly case and takes out a purple retainer and pops it into her mouth as simple as if it were a breath mint, which frankly I wish I had right now. “You get really good if your teeth are bad enough. Trust me. First time here?”
I want to answer but am too caught up in noticing that with her retainer in her mouth Summer talks with a tiny lisp, so “First time here” sounds like “Firthst time here.”
“Uh, yeah. My teeth kind of need help.” And as proof, I actually open my mouth wide so that she can witness the scattered lineup inside.
“Whoa. You are gonna get top thcore with that meth.”
We both laugh, which I can’t quite believe. It’s the most normal thing that’s ever happened between us—not that much has happened at all.
She keeps talking. “Veerlawn ith gonna love thothe.” She is now pointing at my mismatched mess of a mouth.
“I’m glad I can help the guy out.” I laugh again. “Um . . . when did yours come off?”
She’s using her tongue to slip the retainer on and off her teeth like she’s done it a hundred times. I can tell she doesn’t even realize she does it. It makes her look much younger. “Latht thummer. Right before thchool thtarted. And you want to know the very firtht thing I did? Went to the Pit Thtop and bought a pack of Thtrawberry Thquirt gum. Chewed the whole pack before I even got home. Mmmm . . . I can thtill tathte it!”
She grabs the second controller and expertly navigates the menu to set the game up for two players. She’s already picked the blue drag racer, so I go for a motorcycle with a sidecar. “It’th your funeral,” she says, seeing my choice.
We’re midway around the second lap, and she is by far the better racer, when a man in a blue doctor costume pokes his head around the corner and says, “Okay, Summer. You’re up.”
She doesn’t hit pause. Instead, she drives her car directly off the cliff so that it explodes in midair. And then she gets up, turns to me, and grins. “Crash and burn. I love that part. Thee ya, Milo.”
“Yeah,” I say, kind of stunned by too many things all at once. “See ya, Summer.”
She leaves just as my dad walks in. Apparently, the parking lot has way too many floors, and it took him a while to navigate the maze of doors to get out of the place. “Who was that?” he asks as Summer disappears into one of the many little rooms off the hallway. “Friend of yours?”
And there are so many ways I would’ve answered that question this past year. But the answer is actually pretty simple, and it’s what I tell my dad: “Just some kid from school,” I say, and I don’t need Dabney St. Claire or anyone else to tell me that it’s one more thing that’s getting straightened out.
digging in the dirt
MULCH!”
Marshall is zigzagging between the rows of plants that line the outdoor part of the Green Scene. “I love that word. Say it—your mouth has to chuckle. Mulch!”
Hillary just shrugs and adjusts her cupped hands that are full of tulip bulbs.
“You’re nuts, Marshall. Certifiable.”
“Mulch!”
We are at the Green Scene with Sylvia, who came to get some flowers—gladiolas, I think—and asked if we wanted to come along. We’d been sitting on my front steps trying to name the best Life Savers flavors (top five: Spear-O-Mint, Tropicals, Tangy Fruits, Wild Cherry, Wint-O-Green), and all it took was a nod of our heads and we were in.
“Planting spring flowers makes me smile,” Sylvia told us while we drove to the greenhouse that’s near the highway. “And I just love when the dirt gets wedged under my fingernails and I can’t get it out for days.”
I look through a catalog of different plants and flowers and talk to the guy who works there. I’m trying to find the name of a plant that used to be outside House #3—it’s one my mom loved when it bloomed. “It was yellow,” I tell the guy whose name tag says leo.
“More like a tree or more like a bush?” Leo asks. He’s flipping pages of the book that shows pictures of what has to be every growing thing on the planet. We’re like detectives trying to narrow down our suspects.
“A bush. It grew all over the backyard, and the flower part was small—kind of like an opened-up banana peel.”
This new information must mean something because Leo gets that “aha” look and flips some more pages in the book. “Like this?” Proud-like, he turns the book to face me.
“Yes!” I say. “That’s the one. Exactly.”
“Forsythia,” Leo says. “Early to bloom. Easy to grow. Very popular.”
I laugh a little because I always thought my mom was saying “for Cynthia,” like she was visiting a girl secretly buried in our backyard every time she went to take care of the plant.
“Forsythia.” I say it out loud and then go with Leo to look at the ones you can buy.
Later it’s just Sylvia and me standing in my backyard, and she’s got her shovels and some soil in a small wheelbarrow from her garage. “Nice idea, Milo.” Sylvia is all gung ho about planting my mom’s favorite bush.
“The way I see it, every time they bloom, I’ll think of her.” I start digging the hole where the small bush will go. The ground is harder than I thought and it takes some effort to get past the rocks and roots, but ten minutes later Sylvia says I’ve dug deep enough.
She’s a pro at this so she has me place the plant’s butt inside the narrow hole, and then I use the small spade to shovel in clumps of new dirt, burying the roots of the plant all the way to the top.
“I bet she’d really love this,” I say. “Thanks for helping.”
“My pleasure,” Sylvia says. And then after a few seconds go by, she adds, “You know, Milo, remembering your mother any way you can is really important. But there’s something else too.”
“What’s that?” I ask, sort of aware that I’m not sure I want to know the answer. We’re patting the new dirt down around the base of the forsythia and our hands are touching.
“After Paul died, the memory of him was all I had. He was all I thought about, and all I did was miss him in a sad and lonely kind of way.”
“But you still think about him all the time. All those pictures. The stories.”
She smiles. “Yes. Now those are good memories. But I had to make room for them because the sad ones were taking up all the space.”
I watch as her hands scoop up one more pile of dirt and add it to the base of the plant. “It’s what saying good-bye is all about, Milo. It’s making room for the good memories to spread and take root—like the bush.”
“But I have good memories. Now I do, anyway.”
And it’s true, thanks to all the great yard-sale stuff I’ve collected. But she is right about one thing.
“I never did say good-bye. It all happened so fast, and then it was just . . . over.” I am suddenly uncomfortable and just want to go watch TV.
“Maybe while you finish planting the forsythia it would be a perfect time to say it. Good-bye, I mean.”
Sitting in the dirt, I let Sylvia talk and I just listen. She asks if I want to imagine the last time I saw my mother so I can picture her and picture me and use that
picture to actually have me say “good-bye” to my mother. “You don’t have to,” Sylvia says. “It’s just an idea.”
I glance down at the skinny forsythia stems sticking out of the dirt like twisted fingers. “Okay,” I say, though I’m not 100 percent sure.
But I take a deep breath and close my eyes and go backward to that last time I saw my mom, and this is a secret place I have kept tucked way back on the highest shelf inside me. It’s a place I never wanted to see again, but Sylvia’s hand on my shoulder helps me push hard, and I let myself open the memory of the hospital and I fill up on the sick smells that make my nose burn and let the sound of soft nurse shoes scurrying down the hallway come back to me.
All I can do is stare at the floor that is dull green linoleum because I am scared all over. I don’t want to be back in this room, in this memory, but deep inside I know it’s something I have to do. . . .
X.O.X. Kisses and hugs.
My father puts a hand on my head and another one on my sister’s. That’s the cue that we have to go, and the reality dawns on me—we have been brought there to say good-bye because it’s impossible to know what will happen when they operate, and I am terrified to say a single word because that would be admitting the possibility of something I could never accept.
“It’s time,” a nurse says, and then I am walking away from the last time I will ever be loved again. And I freeze inside and want to say something to her—but no words exist.
A final look back and people in dull gray gowns and white masks are already swarming around her and I picture crows pecking and poking and I have to look away but there’s no place to look that doesn’t feel and smell like a hospital.
And that’s when the fog settles inside me for the first time and I just let it fill me all the way up because it’s so nice to let my feelings get wrapped up in thick blankets that will be stored away somewhere safe.
My eyes open. Sylvia sits cross-legged in the dirt beside me and she watches me, but I don’t feel like being looked at. I don’t feel like much at all.
“This is stupid,” I say to her. “It’s just a dumb bush.”
Sylvia tries to put her hand back on my shoulder, but I just move like I have to pick up the shovel. “Thanks for helping,” I tell her, and she’s smart enough to know that means it’s time to leave.
I go back in my house, mad at myself for letting Sylvia talk me into remembering the hospital. I don’t need to say good-bye. And to prove it, I just stare out my bedroom window at the forsythia we planted . . . and watch as the twilight sneaks up and makes it disappear into the night.
tuna fish
I CAN’T SLEEP.
I’m still tangled in the memory mess left over from what I remembered this afternoon. The frightening moments before her operation, before she died, are always freeze-framed pictures that make me want to shrink and hide.
Lying in bed staring at the ceiling, I just want to get out of the house, and so even though it’s past midnight, I grab a sweatshirt and take my flashlight and wander out to the backyard. Shining the beam onto the forsythia, I smile at the hints of yellow that are already waving at me.
When I turn the flashlight off, I am blown away by how many stars are in the sky. I lie on my back and just stare up at the sky, trying to put together the easy constellations, which, to be honest, look like big games of connect-the-dots.
Do I fall asleep? I’m not sure. But in the stars my mom’s face is lit up by hundreds of connected dots, and then my face fills in next to her. And she isn’t sick. And I’m not sad. And I realize I can say good-bye any way I want to.
She is so pretty in the sky, and together we dance between the seconds that my heart beats under my sweatshirt. I don’t have to hang on to the sick image of her and let that be my good-bye. I decide this is the face I will hold on to, and then shooting stars are all that I see as I let the words skip out of my lips.
“Tuna fish, Mom.”
And her smile lights up my wet eyes. “Tuna fish.”
growth spurt
IT’S A FAST-FORWARD DAY—WHERE THE MINUTES just whiz by.
It starts with the car ride to school, which my dad offers even though I don’t have Cheerios. After dropping my sister off at the high school, the rest of the drive together goes by so fast that I don’t even think about needing the Top 5 Topics to help me survive.
“Mr. Shivnesky says you’re doing pretty good,” my dad says between stoplights on Highland Street. And then quickly he adds, “But he still wants to see you after school.”
“I know,” I say. “I actually sort of like going. But don’t ever repeat that out loud, okay?”
“Way to go, kiddo,” he says, and even though I hate the word “kiddo,” I know he’s said something nice, which is cool.
“Truth is, I probably won’t end up one of those NASA guys who has to use math to save a space shuttle or anything, but I’m pretty sure I won’t flunk. That’s what Mr. Shivnesky tells me, anyway.”
My dad nods and then a big grin swallows his face. “Hey, what’s with that guy’s head? Does he shave it or what?”
We both laugh while some oldie comes on the radio about a girl named Alison. The song makes my dad tap the inside knuckles of his fingers against the steering wheel like he used to do on our family trips. It’s an old habit I haven’t seen in a long time, and I can tell his tapping makes a different noise now, which at first I think is because it’s a different car—but then I see the real reason: He doesn’t wear a wedding ring anymore. The ring was what made the tap-tap-tapping crisp and real—and it’s the only time a piece of fog threatens to invade the car ride.
But then we’re at school already. And I’m off with a quick wave and a toot of the horn. Take that, fog!
Gym is just a joke. We’re supposed to do the fifty-yard dash while Mr. Thwaits times us, but what I really think he’s doing is using mind control to see who he can make trip and fall flat on their face so that everyone else can laugh.
“Yo, Milo.” Hillary catches up to me after I come out of the office, where the school nurse, who is really the secretary named Mrs. Cranston, has checked me out for broken bones. Nothing’s busted—or so I’m told.
Hillary and I walk toward the cafeteria. She smells nice, which I don’t tell her. And she drops her favorite pen, which I do. “You don’t want to lose this,” I say, handing over the chewed-up Bic with the green cap.
“It’s like Excalibur to me,” she says, and then chews the tip out of habit, which makes me smile, and not even the smell of the cafeteria’s spaghetti and meatballs gets in the way.
“Dude,” Marshall says later while we try to open his locker, which has been sticking lately due mainly to the fact that Mark Tompkins poured some sort of glue in the hinges. “I tried calling you last night. I found a major spoiler online for Countdown to Zero.”
Countdown to Zero is this sci-fi flick about alien tracker droids who might really be made with human DNA, which is probably the reason they like hanging around malls and eating people. It’s coming out this summer, and Marshall has become totally obsessed with knowing every single thing about it—even the surprise ending, which I told him not to tell me unless it’s really awesome.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was out with my dad.” I pause and then tell the rest. “Bowling. He took me bowling.”
Marshall’s face shows exactly what it was like. Weird. But I got a strike and ate two hot dogs and got to watch my dad throw a ball in the wrong lane by mistake, and we both cringed when it hit the metal pin protector thing—really loud! And then the guy who sprays the stinky shoes got really mad and told us to next time try the Super Bowl down the street.
“It was actually kind of fun.”
Marshall gives me the thumbs-up sign, which means he thinks so too.
“Oh, and he wants to know if you want to come over Sunday and go to a movie or something.”
“No can do,” Marshall tells me while we walk down the crowded hall. “Sunday is—” He sto
ps like he’s just realized the next step is a cliff. “Can’t do it.” That’s all he says.
The bell rings and it’s math class, so I just say, “Whatever” and high-five Marshall before walking into my classroom.
It isn’t until after school when I look at the calendar hanging on the kitchen door that I instantly see what kept Marshall’s sentence from taking that next step.
Sunday is Mother’s Day.
franken-mom
I TELL MYSELF THAT JUST BECAUSE SHE ISN’T here doesn’t mean I don’t have a mother. The last two Mother’s Days were just skipped over, deleted from the playlist, and going to a movie or simply ignoring the day won’t work for me.
On Mother’s Day restaurants fill up with all the Queens of the World. We order pizza and watch the news.
Two years ago was the worst. That was the first year she was gone, when my fifth-grade art teacher thought we should waste valuable class time to make our mothers something “special.” Brian Kelley made an ashtray (I guess his mother smoked, and I wondered why he would want to celebrate that). Elana McEnroe used plastic bottles to make wind chimes, which pretty much made the dullest noise I ever heard. There were a couple of mosaics that spelled happy mother’s day and a few different fiascoes of a clay figurine meant to hold a heart or flowers, but it really doesn’t matter what they were supposed to hold because those things just break off when the clay dries.
Then there was me. And I felt so awful, I just filled a piece of paper with lines that crissed and crossed back and forth over and under each other until the whole sheet was just darkness with the smallest pieces of light sticking through.
It’s moments like those—when the flashlight shines on all the ways mothers exist—that I shrivel up inside. Dabney St. Claire says that’s because I’m still hurting. “Duh,” I say back to him. “Of course I’m hurting!”
Milo Page 11
