Amalee (9 page)

My books were lighter as I walked home from school, and the sun was shining through the trees in the woods, like an enchanted forest to go with Carolyn's enchanted garden.

I was excited to see my dad. Maybe I'll tell him the whole story. Okay, maybe I'd tell him
most
of it. And, I thought, I would talk to him about his being sick. He had avoided the whole conversation with me, but I would bring it up with him. I would ask him everything about it.

He was sitting in the living room reading the paper. I sat next to him on the couch.

“Hey, there,” he said, smiling. “Did you have a good day at school.”

“I had a great day,” I answered. “How are
you
?”

“I'm fine,” he said. Silence.

“Well, that's new,” I encouraged him. “After the couple of months we've had.”

“Hey,” he said, “Phyllis says she's gotten you up to speed on the government. Did you know we've got a big election coming up this year?”

I couldn't speak. It hadn't been my imagination. He refused to talk to me about his sickness.

“Do you really want to change the subject?” I asked.

“I was just asking if you knew about the election in November. It's earlier than that, actually. The primary in September should be pretty big, too. Do you know what happens in a primary?”

“Yes. People from the same party run against each other and the winner runs against the other party in November.” I spoke as flatly as I could, just to show him that two could play at this game. No feelings.

Then I got up and said, almost threateningly, “I have to make a phone call.” Dad just nodded his head and went back to his paper.

I called Joyce and left a message.

She called back before dinner. I pretended she was someone from school, just to experiment with this idea that to be a friend I had to act like a friend. I told her I felt frustrated. I told her I needed her advice. I knew now that I was determined to do things differently. I told Joyce
about Phyllis and Ms. Severance and how I felt about it. She'd already heard about Lenore from Phyllis. Then I swallowed and told her about Dad, and how he still wouldn't talk about anything but the September primary.

“So you'd like me to help?” Joyce asked.

Did I?

“Yes, I'd like some help with this,” I said.

“I'm proud of you, Amalee. I've been hoping you'd ask.”

“Why are you proud of me?”

“Because you're like your dad sometimes. You don't like to talk about your problems, and you don't like to ask for help.”

“Isn't that just what human beings do?” I asked, a little afraid. I didn't know other people had noticed this about me.

“Why, yes!” Joyce said. “But you know what I mean about your dad. He's not exactly John. Or me.” She laughed.

I got off the phone when Dad walked in the room.

“So who's running in the September primary?” I asked as seriously as I could, heading toward the kitchen to get us some vegetarian meat loaf for dinner. We could talk about politics over dinner. I would be happy to be eating with Dad in the kitchen, and I'd let Joyce take care of the rest for now.

 

School was starting to feel much better. After lying low like a river rock for the last two months, I didn't feel the need to hide or to be so hard. I sensed that there was another river, next to the river of unkindness. It was the river of kindness, of course! It didn't make the loud rushing noise of mean words and accusations, but was, instead, often quiet, and maybe harder to find.

Hally had a hole in the armpit of her sweater, and I didn't point it out like I knew she would have. Who cared about a little hole? Not we who swim in the river of kindness!

I could survive the kids who were hard to deal with now that I trusted that there were kids who were trying to be nice.

Lenore tried to talk to me about our next social studies project. She started to explain that she'd picked the most difficult subject, but too much had happened between us. She couldn't boast the way she used to. She knew that she shouldn't have been mean about my dad. She knew I felt like a monster for pushing her the way I did. Competing over history projects was nothing compared to our own history.

I overheard Ellen telling her latest victim that George Washington became president in 1789, not 1776. I
watched Bob, a pretty serious kid, nodding his head respectfully, ready to accept her suggestion that he was a little stupider than everyone else because he didn't know it took over ten years for the United States to end the revolution and elect a president.

When Ellen walked away, I said to Bob, “I didn't know that about George Washington. I thought he was elected on July fourth, 1776, when they all signed the Declaration of Independence!”

“So did I,” he confided.

“I guess we're not very smart,” I said sarcastically.

“Oh, yeah, me and the smartest girl in the class,” he joked. Is that how the other kids saw me?

Ms. Severance was almost dancing as she wrote the words of the day on the blackboard. She asked for a sentence with all three words.

Bob raised his hand. I felt like I'd given him a little lift.

“Excellent!” Ms. Severance cried. He had used the words “opaque,” “transparent,” and even “translucent” correctly.

Bob looked up and then down at his notebook. He didn't know where to look. This was very new for him.

 

Ms. Severance had clearly gone and talked with some other teachers, because in music class, Ms. Bernstein put
the words “Lachrymose: tending to cry easily or to make people cry” on the board.

“Here's a vocabulary word that you'll probably never use!” Ms. Bernstein announced cheerfully. “It comes from the Latin word
Lacrima
‘tears.' I wanted to play you one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. It's called the ‘Lacrymosa,' from Mozart's
Requiem
, which means ‘
music for the dead
.'” We all shuffled around a little when we heard this. “By the way, Mozart was writing ‘Lacrymosa' when he knew he himself was dying,” she added, “so it is truly a lachrymose piece of music. Feel free to let a few
lacrimae
go.”

Did she choose this because of me and my dad? She slipped a CD into the player.

This was different from the symphony she'd played a few weeks before. The violins played slowly, as if a very sad parade were passing by. I felt the tears starting to well up. I thought about a man who knows he's going to die and who thinks about the way things come to an end. Is that how Dad had felt? Yes, lachrymose, indeed.

 

That day, after school, I saw Joyce's car in the driveway. I wondered if something had happened. I plopped down my books and got a few cookies from the kitchen. Then I made my way to Dad's room, only to see him sit
ting up, his back perfectly straight against the pillows on his bed.

“Oh, hi,” whispered Joyce, sitting next to him.

Joyce looked a little nervous.

“Hi, Amalee,” she said, moving over so I could sit between her and Dad on his bed. “Your dad has just agreed to let me try an exercise with him, something I read in an excellent book. It would really help me if I could practice it on him. I told him it's just a little something to stretch his brain.”

“I said I would be happy to be a guinea pig,” Dad said innocently. Somehow I suspected that this wasn't just an innocent exercise. Joyce was up to something!

Joyce looked down at me and smiled as if I'd just read her mind. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Close your eyes, then.” Dad and I both closed our eyes, even though this — whatever it turned out to be — was for him. Joyce continued. “Think about something that is filled with water. Think about that lovely red vase next to your bed, David, the one that Carolyn has filled with flowers. Think about the bright red vase and how it contains water so perfectly. Think about the vase without the flowers. It's just a vase with clear water inside.”

Every sentence ran as smoothly as water into the next sentence. It was beautiful. I never knew Joyce could
sound so calm and soothing. The next things she said were just as watery and floaty, but they came out as very separate things to ponder.

“Now think about all the things that a person can cry about. In fact, think about all the things you yourself might cry about, things that are gone that you cannot change, or, on the other hand, things that are very, very beautiful. And now, think of a moment in the last couple months, say, when you may have felt like crying, but you thought that if you did, you might never stop.”

Joyce took an extra pause here, and found another way to say the same thing. “Somehow, you thought if you started to cry, you would think of everything in the world that makes you cry.” She paused again. I was trying to think of what my dad might be thinking. “Now,” she said, “imagine a big rubber stopper, like the stopper in a bathtub, and imagine pulling and pulling on the ring handle. You finally pull it up, and suddenly a fountain of tears comes welling up from a deep hole in the ground. What container would hold all those tears?”

After a minute or so, Joyce asked, “David? Do you see a container?”

“I'm in a boat,” he answered. “I'm in a boat on the water.” I'd always heard that some people were easier to hypnotize than others, and judging from the sound of his
voice, I guess Dad was one of them! He sounded so different, it was strange, even though it was a relief not to hear the forced cheerfulness I thought I'd been hearing for the last few weeks. This was working! This was actual hypnotism! Was Joyce allowed to do this?

“I'm in a red boat on the water. It's a rowboat. And it's raining. It's very cold, and it's raining!” Dad's voice was rising.

I felt something very strange then. It was a cold gust of wind at my neck, even though the window was closed, and I thought I could smell the rain — almost feel it. I saw a flash of red somewhere out in front of me.

Suddenly I saw myself on a beach surrounded by the plants that Carolyn had drawn, as if I'd gone back into the dream I'd had about being in her garden.

But I was in a part of the garden I'd never seen before. I was on a beach, and rain was drumming on the big green leaves of the rubber trees behind me.

In front of me was the water. I could smell the salt in the air. It was the ocean. An ocean of tears! And Dad was alone in an old red rowboat with chipping paint. He wasn't that far away. I waded out and then swam to the boat. The water was warm, but the rain was freezing and falling in angry little daggers. Somehow, without Dad seeing me, I slipped into his boat.

He spoke again. “I'm shivering, and — and — this is terrible!”

He was shivering. I could see him. But he still couldn't see me.

Joyce spoke so gently, it seemed normal that she wasn't actually in the boat with us. She was simply a presence. She asked, “Are you afraid? Think a little deeper, David, what does this rain remind you of?”

Dad was almost yelling, because the rain and the waves were getting louder. I started shivering, too.

“I feel exposed!” he cried. He was trying to answer the question, which made me feel proud of him, to my surprise. He was talking about how he felt. “I — I am cold and alone, and no one can help me. What's going to happen to Amalee in this cold, driving rain if I can't even help myself?” My breath caught on the sound of my name.

Joyce didn't rush to make him feel better. Instead, she went a little farther into what he was saying. “So you feel like if you don't get better, you'll run out of money, you'll lose your house, and your daughter won't have anywhere to go?”

“Yes — that is
exactly
what will happen,” Dad said loudly. I wanted to touch his hand and say I could take care of myself, but I knew this was not the time. I kept my arms wrapped around my chest in the freezing rain,
watching the cold water drip from his hair onto his neck.

“David, you're forgetting something,” Joyce almost cooed.

“What?” he yelled.

“You're forgetting something very important.”

“My bank savings?” he asked.

“No, David. Well, yes, you have some money squirreled away and, sure, that could help. But, David,… think about what else you have. Think about … your friends.”

“They'll get sick of helping me! I can't put this on their shoulders!” he insisted.

“David,” Joyce said firmly, as if she wanted to raise her voice. “You have listened to John talking about his big plans until three in the morning almost every weekend since college. That's twenty years. You have bought an endless number of Carolyn's paintings, even when she did that horrible series about her knees. You listened to her describe every one of them, too. You helped Phyllis get a job after her divorce.” He did? “And me. Well, I don't want to go into what you've put up with. But you know.”

“It didn't feel like I was helping you. You're my friends.”

“Well, how do you think
we
feel?” Joyce asked, trying
to keep the soothing tones in her otherwise exasperated voice.

The wind gradually died down in the silence that followed. The rain became a cool, April mist, and then it stopped completely.

“Has the rain stopped?” Joyce asked.

“Actually it has,” Dad said in a humble voice. Clearly, Joyce had stood up to the voice of his fear, which we all knew was no small feat.

“All right, then. If we're on an entire ocean, there are bound to be other things that come up. David, do you see anything?” I caught myself looking around at the calm ocean. I couldn't see the shore, which was a little frightening. Joyce was right. This boat wasn't coming in to shore yet.

Dad wasn't ready to come home.

“LOOK!” Dad cried. I jerked my head.