by Delia Ephron
She stops.
“I can’t do this, I don’t want to do this. This was my mom’s idea.”
“Aw, Frannie.” She puts her arms around me. “Hug time.” My face smashes into her shoulder. She pats my back as if prompting a burp.
This is so embarrassing. So embarrassing to be someone anyone can make cry. I mean, one hug from Harriet Honker Thornton is all it takes. How humiliating. To avoid a flash flood, I have to freeze my face, make it rock solid, a difficult thing to accomplish. Fortunately she releases me.
I focus on her freckles. “But what am I supposed to do?”
“I have no idea. Do whatever you want.” She blows a piercing blast on her whistle. “Hey there, Jesse, wait up.” She signals another counselor and strides off.
“Excuse me.”
I turn.
She must have been here all along but I hadn’t noticed. An extremely neat person: an ENP. Her Camp Winnasaki T-shirt is tucked into pressed khaki shorts. As for my obsession, hair. Hers (in a ponytail) behaves: Not one strand escapes from the velvet scrunchee. She’s at least eighteen years old—I can tell from her poise. I don’t know anyone my age who is truly confident. Not even Sukie Jameson, in spite of her curves and straight-A average. When Sukie gave an oral report on the African-American Civil War Brigade, her voice trembled. The reason I know the ENP has poise to burn is that she asks a question as if it wasn’t one. She says, “I’ll come back later, do you mind?” But she implies, “I’ll come back later, tough noogies if you mind.”
The ENP is gorgeous, something everyone in a random survey would agree on. Golden-brown hair, flawless coppery skin, a perfectly proportioned straight-and-narrow nose, and royal-blue eyes, small but startling. Excuse me while I experience envy.
“You don’t have to stay,” I tell the ENP unnecessarily as we cross paths, me returning to the little monsters, she on the exit route.
“’Bye, Eagles,” she calls.
“’Bye,” they all shout back.
“Okay, everyone—horizontal.” I snap my fingers.
“Horizontal,” the Barbie girls instruct their dolls, placing them on the floor, as all the Eagles lie down and start complaining about how prickly it is, except for one girl who remains standing. My mom stuck rubber daisies on the bottom of the shower so I wouldn’t slip, and the shower floor looks exactly like the fabric on this girl’s pants.
“What’s the matter?” I ask Daisy Pants.
“I’ll get dirty.”
“You’re supposed to get dirty. All great artists get dirty.” I don’t know this for a fact, but can you imagine a great artist, about to paint a masterpiece, getting vexed and anxious, Uh-oh, I hope paint doesn’t drip on me?
“What’s your name?”
“Hazel.”
“It smells in here. It smells like poop,” says Rocco.
“It doesn’t smell like poop. What you smell is a good smell, it’s nature. You can watch,” I tell Hazel, who is still standing and now holding her nose. “Okay, everyone, I want absolute silence, because what we are going to do is the most important thing in the world.”
To my amazement, they all shut up.
“To be an artist, you have to use your eyes. Look up. What do you see?”
“Poop,” shouts Rocco.
“If your eyes are closed, you can’t see,” Hazel points out.
“Keep your eyes open.”
Rocco rolls around, coating himself with straw. “Poop, poop, poop.” He rolls into the wall. He rolls into another camper, who kicks him. Rocco kicks him back, and then there’s a pile-up of campers pummeling, and the Barbie twins bawl that someone kicked their dolls, and Pearl shrieks that her tiara got bent. I scream at the top of my lungs, “Stop.”
And everyone does, except Pearl.
Forget art. Forget seeing. Forget it all.
The kids, all jumbled on the ground, begin to disentangle.
“I have an idea,” I say. “Do you know what poison is?”
14
Poison is a riveting subject. I hold them spellbound. We devise a project. They leave, and the eight-to-tens arrive. Poison is riveting to them, too. Harriet said I should do what I want, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. They get their instructions. They know what they have to find at home and bring to camp tomorrow. Before I leave, I give Harriet a list of supplies: glue, cardboard, masking tape, and scissors. Enough scissors for everyone. And markers.
The campers don’t clown around as much on the way home. Several fall asleep, and the only incident is that, when I look down, Rocco’s head is next to my shoes. He’s chewing my laces.
“I’m a dog,” he says when I haul him out.
The trip feels endless. I’m dying to get back to the puzzle. From now on, when I’m on the bus, I’m going to plug in my iPod. It will make the time pass faster and keep the kids from bugging me. Besides, I’m happier when I’m somewhere else, somewhere not a place, more a space.
The campers yell, “’Bye, Frannie,” when I get off, and some pound the windows. I guess it’s easy to be popular when you don’t want to be.
I should give my mom the silent treatment for forcing me into this awful job, although…bad idea. Rule: If you want to get your mother’s attention, act mad.
I will act happy.
Not too happy. That will confuse her. Just happy enough so that she leaves me in peace.
After checking my room to reassure myself that the puzzle is still there, I hang out with Mom. She chops garlic while Mel gets out glasses and a bottle of wine. There’s a TV in the kitchen, and on the screen a man and a woman ice-skate on a pond in a wooded glen. The woman does some twirls.
“Perfume,” says my mom.
“Deodorant,” says Mel.
They love to guess what the commercials are advertising. They seem intentionally to guess wrong because it makes them laugh. In this one, after the man and woman skate awhile, the ice turns to ground, so now they’re walking, the ground grows long grass, and in the middle of the field is an SUV. Mom and Mel find this wildly funny.
“How did it go today?” she asks.
Mel, uncorking the wine, pauses for my response.
“Vile. Harriet Thornton is a lunatic.”
Lunatic is one of my very favorite words. Eyeballs is another. I like lunatic because of the sound. It’s fun to pronounce. Also, luna means moon in some other language, Greek or Latin. So the word lunatic suggests that the moon has driven you crazy. What a shivery notion. As for eyeballs…that word’s kind of comical. Eyeballs. Try to work it into normal conversation and see if you don’t agree.
“Do you want me to set the table?” I ask.
“Yes, thank you. Are there any counselors you might be friends with?”
I think about Simon and the ENP. “No, they’re all awful. What’s for dinner?”
“Pasta and spinach salad. What kind of arts-and-crafts projects will you be doing?”
I ignore the question. “Harriet stuck me in a barn so rickety, it will probably collapse and kill me.” Oops, I didn’t mean to say that, it slipped out. I meant to keep the conversation innocuous. Fortunately, she doesn’t react because Mel breaks off the cork, leaving half of it stuck in the bottle. His lame move provokes a mini fit—they have to shove the cork down and strain the wine to extract cork bits. The wine is saved, and so am I. Tra la. I can retreat to my bedroom and work the puzzle uninterrupted until dinner and begin again immediately after.
I’m assembling the largest of those ancient Irish houses around the cove. From my beautiful box I cull the reds: reddish brown for the roof tiles and reddish pink for the walls. Here are some red with green spots. The shutters are green. I isolate those, too. What’s this? A red piece with a splash of yellow? I study the photo. I can’t locate red and yellow together, not on this building or any other. I drop that piece back into the box bottom, along with the rest of the unsorted.
Lying on my tummy, I work steadily for hours. The night is windy and the brush of branches aga
inst my window keeps me company. Each time I make a match, I see something unexpected. The edge of the red house, flat in the photo, acquires dimension. Maybe it isn’t flush against the lilac one next door. I imagine someone walking around the side, disappearing down an alley so ancient and narrow that buildings on opposite sides can almost kiss.
My eyes ache. I need a break.
I prop myself up on my elbows, planting one elbow in the box right on top of the puzzle pieces. I close my eyes, dizzy for a moment. When I lift my arm, ready to resume, a puzzle piece sticks to it—the same red piece with the splash of yellow that I tossed back earlier. I try it, and it clicks into place on the red house. I find myself looking at a window. A window with a yellow light inside.
I check the photo again. No window with a light. This detail must be too small to show up in the small snapshot. Is this really a window? I lean close to the puzzle. The yellow brightens to an intense pinpoint glow. My eyes snap closed; I jerk back, try to focus again, and start blinking. A light is shining straight into my eyes. I hold up my hand, blocking the glare, and peek between my fingers. I’m looking at a small round dented brass lamp. It has a little brass cap perched on top of a glowing yellow bulb. That lamp isn’t mine. Neither is the tall, skinny bureau it sits on. I’ve never seen them before.
I turn away. I’m no longer on the floor. No longer in my room. That’s not my door. A sign hangs from the knob. Not in English. Oh, yes, there is an English sentence. GUESTS MUST LEAVE BY NOON. This instruction appears to be in four languages. Spanish, too, I recognize that. Two others, unfamiliar. GUESTS MUST LEAVE BY NOON. My brain operates at tortoise speed. Am I a guest? Is that an instruction for me? The floor feels rough. I recognize my own bare feet but not the itchy coarse carpet. I recognize my dad’s shirt and my jeans, the clothes I’m wearing. I spin around. There’s a bed—a double bed covered with a thin gray blanket that has a cigarette burn and two pillows flat as planks. What a small, shabby place this is. The bed and bureau almost eat the room. A suitcase juts from under the bed, the cardboard suitcase I saw in Dad’s studio. Next to that are two backpacks, both open, with clothes falling out.
I hear rain. Only let me tell you, I hear it for a while before I hear it. I mean, there’s this pitter-patter happening, but it doesn’t penetrate, and then, oh, wow, rain. Curtains block the only window. I push them to the side.
White. I see nothing but white. I unlatch the old brass window lock, the kind Dad might scavenge from a dump and make a speech about: They don’t make locks like this anymore, feel the weight, blah, blah, blah. When I push it, the window slides open but barely, because the rusty metal hardware jams. I squeeze my hand through the narrow opening and my hand evaporates. I yank my hand back inside. It’s intact, all five fingers. Did that actually happen? I slip my hand back out, and again the fog swallows it: My arm ends at my wrist. This fog is as thick as frosting.
I snake my hand back inside, getting scratched in the process. This decrepit wooden window frame badly needs sanding.
Anyway, there’s no rain.
Of course, no rain. Pitter-patter but no rain.
I walk toward another door, a door I thought led to a closet.
Once I nail it—not rain but shower—that pitter-patter fills my head to the brim. The steady flow from a showerhead. Not a closet, a bathroom. “Hello,” I say.
No answer.
I call loudly, “Hello.”
“Laura?”
My dad. It’s my dad. I want to shout, “Not Mom, me. It’s me, Dad,” but maybe I faint. Maybe my legs crumple, because I’m looking at them and they’re lying limply, and grass appears to be growing around them, only it’s not grass. It’s the fuzzy green rug on the floor of my room.
“Showers expected later today will move through the region quickly….”
My clock radio. Daylight.
15
It’s taking all my not to fall into the Rice Krispies.
I droop over the table, my chin hovers above the bowl. I barely have the strength to lift the spoon. A strange and powerful dream can do that, wear you out and frazzle you. Sleeping on the floor, and for only two hours, can’t help either. Mel, filling his thermos, glances up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I put my tonsils on display, yawning widely.
The route of least exertion is to drink the Rice Krispies, so I cup the bowl in my hands, lift it, and slurp, making dreadful sucking sounds, grossing Mel out. Confession: Irritating Mel gives me energy; it’s like a little protein boost.
As soon as I get on the bus, an assault: The kids clamor to show me what they brought for the arts-and-crafts project. Seat backs rattle. Their shrieks are deafening, the war whoops of advancing troops. My poor woozy head. “Later, later, wait until camp, I need to meditate.” I drop into my seat.
Brandon clonks me from behind. “What’s meditate?”
“Meditate means listen to music.” I plug in my iPod and zone out.
I avoid the Honker and everyone else. At the morning get-together I loiter in the background, keeping my head down. When I trek to the barn, however, Simon brays, “Frannie. Frannie-Bananie.”
Foolishly, kind of knee-jerk without thinking, I look over, and he shouts, “Marry me. Marry me and be my canoe.”
Tucking my head down, I speed on. I hate my mother. How could she force me to work in a place where a guy asks me to be his canoe? What is that? That is so strange, there is probably no name for it. Eyes on the grass, don’t look up. I almost collide with the barn, also Mom’s fault.
Inside I find my supplies lumped on the table. Oh, good, a nice boring task. Something mindless. I arrange neat piles: scissors, glue, cardboard, tape. The Honker has also provided a stack of empty boxes for storage. I label them and put the markers away. I’m hoping to squeeze in some lie-on-the-floor time, but the Eagles arrive.
After toting their backpacks and, in Hazel’s case, towing in a round pink patent-leather suitcase on wheels, they unpack their contributions to our art project, a gigantic poison collage. Dad and I made collages all the time when I was younger. Once, when I glued a doll’s arm in the middle of a collage of Archie and Veronica comics, Dad declared that my “choice” was brilliant. I swear, I could have thrown paint at the wall, drawn blindfolded, or dropped ketchup on a drawing by accident because I was eating a hamburger while I worked, and Dad would have hailed it as a choice. “The artist never does anything by accident,” he insisted. He made everything I did seem grand.
The Eagles have collected a heap of household cleaners. Several campers have brought things I mentioned: toothpaste, dishwashing detergent, detergent for clothes. Rocco empties his pockets of several double-A batteries. I read the label. “‘Batteries may explode, causing burn injury.’ Excellent. Thank you, Rocco.”
I examine other stuff. A box of mothballs. “May be fatal if inhaled.” I have to explain what fatal means, and one of the Barbie twins doesn’t understand the word inhale. Hazel unzips her suitcase and, after showing me her new swimsuit, presents me with a bottle of Listerine. In a loud voice, she reads, “‘If more than used for rinsing is accidentally swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.’”
“A major discovery,” I declare, while confiscating another double-A battery that Rocco has stuck in his ear. “Hazel, I congratulate you. Take a bow. This is mouthwash, a wash for your mouth, and yet, if gulped, dangerous. Does everyone get how cuckoo that is? One false move, like let’s say you were gargling and saw a mouse…”
They all erupt with various other ways they might be shocked into taking huge gulps of Listerine, including spotting a ghost or a zombie. “If you were watching a PG-13 movie, that could cause it,” says Hazel.
“If your brother put a bug down your shirt,” adds Isabel, a bouncy girl cursed with a gigantic head of wiry curls. Her hair is light pinky brown, the color of a dry hippopotamus, and her curls are like a cloud, light and airy. You see them and see through them at the same time, a bit bizar
re.
Isabel has no idea that her hair is unfortunate. I can tell because she’s in perpetual happy motion, jumping, twirling. When she talks, she cocks her head and leans right into my face, then jumps away the minute she’s done. Everything I say makes her clap with excitement. When she’s eleven, someone like Sukie will break the news that her hair is the color of a dry hippopotamus, and depression will ensue.
One of the Barbie twins tugs my sleeve. “What happened to your hand?”
“Can I sit on your lap?” asks the other.
Both these questions are completely off the subject, and besides I am not even sitting down, but Barbie Two doesn’t wait for an answer. She raises her arms. I lift her and sit. She slumps against me, with her doll tight against her chest. At that moment it occurs to me that I can run the project seated. Wouldn’t that take less energy? Perhaps I’ll never have to get up—I can direct the mob from the chair for the whole summer. So, speaking over Barbie Two’s head, I divide them into two groups: One group will put together the small pieces of cardboard to make one giant board to glue the collage on—and knowing a bossy type when I see one, I put Hazel in charge of that task. The other group does the cutting: warning labels, brand names, any images on the boxes they want to include in the collage. Rocco does neither. He jabbers about a dead rat under the garage, staggers around, and falls to show me how the rat, poisoned by Lark, died. He loves the staggering and dying part. He keeps doing it over and over and then asks if I want to see the rat. His dad dropped a brick and smashed it flat.
“I thought Lark poisoned it.”
He ignores that remark. “Do you want to see it? It’s under my pillow.”
There’s no way this rat is under his pillow. “I’d love to.”
Barbie One tugs me again. “Did you cut it?”
“Cut what?”
“Your hand. Did a cat scratch it? My cat scratched me.”
“I didn’t cut my hand.” I hold it out to show her.
She turns my hand over so the palm faces down.
