Miriam's Well (19 page)

At last, maybe thirty minutes after she'd begun, she said, “We will both breathe very deeply.” I saw that her eyes were closed, and I closed my own. “Think rainbows, please.” I did. After maybe two minutes of silence, she gently lowered my feet to the floor and stood up. “We are through. How do you feel?”

“Like I've had a long soak in the tub, with bubble bath up to my ears.”

“Good, good. I like that.” Perched on the stool again, she smoothed her denim skirt over her knees.

“Can I ask you a question, Dr. Chin?”

“You may ask me a question, yes. But first, stand up, please.”

I stood up, stood on my tiptoes as she requested, stretched, reached way above my head to the channel switch on the TV that hung from the wall. It felt wonderful!

“The question?”

“Are you a Christian?”

“Buddhist.”

“Are there a lot of Buddhists in Wichita?” I'd lived here all my life and never met one.

“Not so many. Who will my son marry? But now, I go to teach a class. You will walk around, not stay in bed. Tomorrow we will work together again,” she called to me gaily from the door, where she plucked up the DO NOT DISTURB sign. “Think rainbows through the day.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Told by Adam

“Dismissed,” Mrs. Loomis said, a full two minutes after the bell rang. “Not you, Adam.” I told Brent to explain to Moron, and I hung around until everyone had left. Mrs. Loomis's next period class was already straggling in, so she took me into a work area between her classroom and the next one. “I've read your essay,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” I shifted from foot to foot.

“It was quite polished.”

“History's always been a special interest of mine.”

“The style was reminiscent of another student's.”

If I stayed cool, she'd never be able to prove anything.

“I want to see both your parents and you tomorrow after school.”

“What do you think, I couldn't write a paper like that?”

“That is not what I think. I only think that you
didn't
write the paper. Tomorrow at three-thirty,” she said. “Now, my sophomore class is waiting.” She dashed off a pass for Mr. Moran and thrust it at me without even looking at my face.

I called my parents during lunch, then cut out to the hospital and told Miriam about my latest brush with Mrs. Loomis. Since Miriam had been having the Chinese lady's touch treatments, she'd been feeling pretty good, so they let us go down to the cafeteria for something to eat.

“That wasn't too smart, Adam. Do you think Mrs. Loomis can keep you from getting into college?”

“Are you kidding? It's not her business anyway, it's Grinnell College's business, and they're never going to read anything Diana Cameron wrote. So what's the difference?”

“It's cheating, that's all.”

“Oh, yeah, swell, I should have known better than to tell Miss Goody Two-Shoes.” She looked hurt, and I felt a little sorry, but she wasn't helping me feel any better either.

“And did you think of how Diana could get in trouble for this?”

“Naw, not Diana. She always comes out a winner.”

“I guess so. She won you,” Miriam said.

“Well, there wasn't much of a competition. Like the girls were waiting in line, taking numbers.”

“I never even got a number.”

“Yeah, but the weird thing is, I'm around here a lot more than I'm at home, or out with my friends.”

“I certainly wouldn't want to keep you from your friends.” She'd come to the bottom of her Coke and was poking ice cubes with her straw.

“There really isn't anybody I'd rather be with, to tell you the truth.” She had the good sense not to say a word. She just kept on sucking air at the bottom of her glass.

The Loomis thing wasn't so bad for my father, because all he had to do was mark off the hour on his schedule, but my mother had to arrange to leave work at the college bookstore, which meant she'd have to make it up later. They weren't thrilled to be called for this conference with Mrs. Loomis anyway.

“Let's get the facts straight,” my father had said, when I dropped the bomb at lunchtime. “Did Diana write the essay, or not?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly? Well, what percentage did she write? Would you say your input was in the range of two-to-five percent? Um-hmm. Very honorable.”

“Good grief, Adam, I thought you had better sense,” my mother had groaned. “When are you going to pull yourself together and be a real student? You're only cheating yourself, Adam, don't you see that?”

Oh, I could tell we were in for a great time with Mrs. Loomis.

There were chairs arranged in a semicircle around her desk. I took the hot seat, in the middle. My mother's eyes shifted nervously, while my father sprawled in his chair with a yellow pad open on his knees, his Mark Cross pen ready for action. I pulled a paper clip into shapes previously unknown to humankind.

“I am disappointed in you, Adam,” Mrs. Loomis said, lowering herself into her chair behind the desk. The chair squeaked and groaned. My mother shot a glance my way, and I wondered if she remembered that Mrs. Loomis was the one I called the Big Bang and the Great Wall of China. My mother's eyes crinkled slightly; yes, she remembered. Never mind. I had to start taking this seriously.

Mrs. Loomis said, “The offense is contemptible.”

My father nodded and wrote a couple of words on his yellow pad.

“Contemptible for two reasons. One, Adam is passing someone else's work off as his own, and two, he is capable of something quite as good as this, but he doesn't bother producing it. That is not only contemptible, but inconsolably sad. Do you see the gravity of the situation, Adam?”

To me, it looked like she was blowing the whole thing out of proportion. But there was my father, feeding her just what she wanted to hear.

“We are deeply concerned over Adam's performance at Eisenhower,” he said, “because we have seen his IQ scores and aptitude tests, and we acknowledge that his work does not measure up to his potential.”

“I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Loomis,” said my mother.

That made Loomis mad. She leaned toward my mother. “You do not owe me an apology nor should you apologize for your son.” She seemed to be having trouble breathing. I heard a faint rattle in her chest, which I recognized because of my own allergies. She was pretty upset. I wondered if she'd have an asthma attack.

“All I can say,” my father promised, “is that my wife and I will talk with Adam about this privately, and nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Mrs. Loomis reared back in her chair. “I understand that you're under a great deal of pressure, Adam. The Pelham case has taken its toll on many of our students, and I've heard that you've become a friend of hers. She needs friends. Perhaps I'm to blame for this grave situation, pairing you two on the poetry assignment.”

“Oh, no, no,” my mother protested. “You only did what—”

I'd had it. “You know something, Mrs. Loomis?”

“Adam,” my father warned, but I ignored him.

“You talk about the ‘gravity of the situation,' but let me tell you what's really grave. It's having this disease that's probably going to kill you. It's having your family fight it out in court.” I looked at my father, and he turned his eyes away. “You think I'm going to worry about a stupid thing like some event that changed history a million years ago? Grinnell College doesn't care, but personally, what's going on with Miriam Pelham is the most important event in history right now.”

“Adam, I understand the nature of your concern.”

“No you don't, Mrs. Loomis.” I felt my mother's hand on my arm, but I shrugged it off. “You understand verbs and thesis sentences and foreshadowing. Well, let me tell you about foreshadowing. The doctors, the preachers, the journalists, the lawyers, they're all dropping hints that a good reader wouldn't miss. Death. Dark shadows, the Grim Reaper, heavy organ music, the whole works.

“See, the doctors want Miriam to die so they can prove that the preachers are crazy. The preachers want her to die so they can say the doctors are the Antichrist, and besides, she's headed for greater glory in the next World.”

“Adam, let's go home,” my mother said gently.

“No, wait, I'm just getting to the point in this brilliant essay. Okay, what about the journalists? Well, they don't care if Miriam lives
or
dies. They just want to sell papers, and hey, death sells better than just about anything except celebrity sex scandals.”

“And the lawyers?” my father asked. I saw my mother shake her head, and I wasn't sure whether she was trying to stop him, or me.

“Oh, the lawyers are the heroes in this thing. They're willing to let Miriam die because it preserves our good old American civil rights.”

I'd said it all so calmly, though my head was pounding. I saw my mother wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. Then I added, “It was cheating. I screwed up. I'm sorry.”

“The situation is behind us now,” Mrs. Loomis said. “I will expect your essay by tomorrow, Adam. If it is at least ninety percent quality, I shall not penalize you for turning it in late. And thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Bergen, for coming to discuss this matter.”

“You know, Mrs. Loomis, I'm directly involved in the Pelham case myself,” my father explained.

“Yes,” she said, with a strong note of disapproval in her voice. “But my concern is with Adam's learning to be a literate and honest person, not with the legal ramifications of the Pelham melee. I'm certain these two can be kept separate.”

Well, maybe she was sure, but I wasn't. The neat little compartments of my life were spilling over into one another. For some dumb reason I thought about second grade, when we each had cubbyholes for our books and crayons and those impossible round-tipped scissors. Mrs. Jackson used to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, your cubbies are a mess, but look at Adam's. On the count of three, see if you can all get your cubbies to look just like Adam's.” Mine was always neat because I never used it. I was always borrowing everyone else's paper and crayons.
Some things never change
.

The truth is, they changed a lot. Until my tirade in Mrs. Loomis's room, I hadn't understood just how furious I was about Miriam's crummy situation, or how much she meant to me. Then it suddenly felt like I had to write the best possible essay as a sort of tribute to Miriam. Grimly, I thought, it could end up as her eulogy. I worked on the essay all afternoon and most of the night, taking my ideas to the hospital to discuss with her.

“I could write about the fall of the Roman Empire,” I said. Talk about irrelevant. “Or I could dip way back and write about when Moses received the Law. I'm not sure you'd actually call that history.”

“Of course it is; it's in the Bible,” Miriam said.

“Well, I'm not convinced that Bible and history are the same thing.”

Although she didn't agree, she listened intently. Finally she said, “I know what I'd write about. The birth of Christ. I mean, even if you're not a Christian, Adam, you have to admit it's changed everything for the last two thousand years.”

“No,” I said, picking my words carefully. “It wasn't the birth that changed everything, it was the death. I guess I'll write about that.”

“The death of Christ?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“The death of Jesus,” I said. “There's a difference.”

I got up at 4:30 on Friday morning to type the paper. Usually my mother typed for me, but this time it seemed important that I do it all myself, even with only two fingers flying over the keys of the computer. I finished with just enough time to grab a quick shower and run my hair under the water without shampoo. With the hot steam clearing my eyes, and the water dribbling down my back, I thought about the strange twenty-four hours I'd had, not a day I'd want to live through too often. No video games, no basketball, no 10 o'clock trip to Godfather's Pizza. I'd read at the library, I'd taken notes and discussed my ideas with Miriam. I'd even stopped in at the synagogue to run a couple of thoughts by Rabbi Fein, worrying now and then about whether it was cheating to bounce ideas off other people. It wasn't, I decided. It was a good way to sharpen fuzzy thinking, and I was a world class expert on fuzzy thinking. Even in debate, where clear reasoning was the big goal, while I wowed the judges with fast, slippery words, Diana was always clarifying my evidence.

Ferociously drying my hair with a beach towel, I suddenly realized that the only person I hadn't talked to about the essay was Diana.

I met her at her locker before lunch that day. My belly flip-flopped because she looked so damn beautiful in a pumpkin colored blouse with puffy sleeves and white slacks.

“Oh, hi, Adam,” she said brightly. “Have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“We broke up. We're still debate partners, of course. Don't forget the regionals coming up in two weeks. Other than that, there's no Adam and Diana.”

But there had always been an Adam and Diana. We'd been together at practically every dance, every party, every concert, and every debate tournament since the beginning of our junior year. “Who says we broke up?” I whispered. This was not a conversation for the P.A. system.

But Diana was broadcasting. “You did. Actions speak louder than words,” she yelled. “Everyone knows you're going out with Miriam Pelham.”

“Out? We went to a stupid museum one day after school.”

“Oh, face it, Adam. You just about live at the hospital. They might as well put a cot in her room for you. Now really, how can I compete with a deathbed case?” She slammed her locker so hard that it sprang back against the wall and cracked the plaster. “Oh, it's too bad about the history essay. I hear Mrs. Loomis was breathing fire. You'll be happy to know she flunked me on it, too. But I wrote a better essay on the death of romanticism in Western culture, or at least in Wichita, Kansas.”