Secrets in the Shadows (11 page)

"Craig wanted to be there first. We were crowned king and queen of the prom."
"I know," she said, smiling and rubbing my hand. "He was going too fast and something happened . . . the car just flew."
"He lost control," she said. "Alice," she began. She looked at the doorway and then turned back to me. "Did you . . . were the two of you smoking pot?"
I stared at her. That was in the puzzle Those pieces came together quickly, too. I nodded.
"He had it. I took only one puff and then he took it back."
"They found it, and I guess they could tell from the autopsy that he had been using it," she added.
"Do Grandpa and Grandma know?"
"Yes. But it's not your fault," she said quickly. "What happened is not your fault. Don't dare let anyone get you to think it was."
I studied her face. "Someone is saying it was?" She didn't reply.
"Craig's mother?"
"You can't fault a mother for trying to understand and for being angry and trying to blame someone or something other than her own child, but we all know there was no way you could have had it. He had to be the one to get it," she said, but she said it with a lift in her voice, as if she was asking and not telling.
"Yes, he had it. I didn't even know until we were in the car and on our way to the party."
"Damn. Smoking grass while driving. That's a big no-no," she said.
My grandparents came back to my room. Grandpa smiled when he saw I was awake, but my grandmother looked terribly worried. She looked to Aunt Zipporah.
"It's true about the pot," she told my
grandmother. "He had it," she emphasized.
"Oh Alice," my grandmother said.
"What could she do about it? He had it," Aunt Zipporah said.
"My God."
"There's no sense getting her more upset, Elaine," my grandfather said.
"She's blaming me? Craig's mother is blaming me?" I asked her.
"She's the sort that would never blame herself for anything, even if she were caught red-handed," my grandmother said.
"Don't think about any of that," my grandfather told me as he moved closer to the bed. "I want you to concentrate on getting better. Nothing else."
"As soon as you're well enough, they're going to fix your hip," my aunt Zipporah told me and smiled. "You'll be fine. You can't get out of working this summer, so don't even think about it."
I turned away.
All I could think about now was Craig's beaming smile at the prom and the great joy and excitement we both had felt. How quickly we had fallen from that cloud on which we had been sailing. It was truly as if it had all been a dream and now that dream had become a nightmare.
I didn't have to look at my grandparents' faces to know what awaited me out there. I could feel the gloom and doom coming toward me like rolling thun der. With Craig's mother finding ways to blame what happened on me, heads would bob in agreement and people in our community would say they always knew something like this would happen. They might as well hang a banner on Main Street that read THE APPLE DOESN'T FALL FAR FROM THE TREE.
I hoped I would die on the operating table and everyone's misery would end.
"We should let her rest," I heard my
grandmother say.
"I'll bring you magazines, things to do, Alice," my grandfather promised. "Maybe, when you're able to sit up, they'll let me bring in some paintbrushes, paint and some art paper."
I turned sharply to him.
"I don't want to paint anymore," I said.
"What? Sure you do. You don't give up something like that, Alice."
"It's not important."
"Of course it's important."
"Don't think about it now. You're not in any state of mind to make decisions anyway," Aunt Zipporah said. "I know it might sound cruel to you, but in time, this will all pass and you'll go on. You can't change what happened, but if you let it destroy you, too, then everything anyone says bad about you will seem to be true."
She made sense. I was just not in the mood to acknowledge it. I closed my eyes instead. They all kissed me on the cheek before leaving, but I didn't open my eyes. I wished I could keep them closed forever.
A little while later the nurse came in to check on me, and then the surgeon who was going to do my operation arrived to talk to me about my injuries and describe what had to be done to my hip.
"Your hip-joint socket was broken in four places, Alice," he said. "It's going to be a long operation, but you won't notice because you'll be under anesthesia. To you it will seem like a few minutes," he said, smiling.
I wanted to ask him if he could put me under anesthesia now. I think he saw it in my face.
"Look, Alice, you're a very young girl. You'll recover from this and get strong again."
"The boy I was with will never recover."
"I'm sorry about that. Believe me, I wish I had a chance to try to make a difference. for him, too. have a son not much younger. But right now, we have to give you our attention. I want you to he stronger and have a good attitude about your healing," he said. "It helps."
"Okay. Thank you," I said. He patted my hand, checked my chart and left.
It's easier to say okay than to say anything else, I decided. People leave you be when you agree with them.
My operation was scheduled for a later date. Until then, I was left to heal and get stronger. Tyler sent me flowers and a box of candy. Aunt Zipporah visited me at least a half dozen times, and my grandmother was there every day. My father called, and then he and Rachel sent me flowers and candy as well, but he said nothing about coming to see me. He wished me good luck on my operation and promised to keep in touch and especially to keep in touch with my grandparents.
No one from my school came to see me or even called until two days after my operation.
I found out the operation took nearly ten hours-- the hip joint was that shattered. I was told that we wouldn't know how successful it had been for a while and that I would need some physical therapy.
The day after I was returned to my own room, Charlene Lewis came to see me. My grandfather had gotten me my school assignments to work on as soon as I was able. I had done very little. In the back of my mind was the idea that maybe, just maybe, I would never return to school. I didn't know what I would do as an alternative, but I dreaded the day I would walk back into that building, so when Charlene appeared in my hospital room doorway, some of that dread came in with her.
"How are you?" she asked.
I shrugged.
"I don't know yet. I was operated on and we have to wait to see."
"Very little about you has trickled out, but we did hear that you had something seriously wrong with your hip," she said.
I nodded.
"If I can walk, I will probably have a bad limp. My dancing days were short-lived," I added.
She looked very unhappy for me. She and Bobby had been in one of the cars behind us, so they had seen the accident or come upon it first. I had also heard that they were the ones to get to a home and get the police and ambulance on its way.
"Nearly the entire senior high school attended Craig's funeral," she said. "The baseball team attended in uniform. Bobby and Mickey and two others were the pallbearers."
I didn't say anything. My grandparents-- actually my grandfather--had decided not to attend. My grandfather was afraid of a scene between Craig's mother and my grandmother. He didn't come right out and say that, but I knew it was what he was thinking.
"It's been horrible at school," Charlene continued. "Girls break out in tears constantly. Bobby's so depressed. Everyone's depressed."
I pressed my lips together hard to keep myself from crying.
"I suppose you heard that there was a police investigation and they had found the pot in the car."
"Yes, I heard," I said.
"Most of us know, of course, that Craig had it. This wasn't the first time, but his mother . .."
"I know. She's telling everyone I brought it along, right?"
Charlene nodded.
"Jennifer Todd's mother is one of Craig's mother's best friends. She said Craig's mother had discovered a lot of stuff about the murder your mother committed. She said she had found it in the desk in his room and she says you brought it to Craig to convince him your mother didn't do it just so you could get him to be your boyfriend."
"That's not true! He had it all there and showed it to me. She knew that he had it before he even had spoken to me. She knew!"
"She's telling her friends that you got him crazy with it. She's making it sound like you put a spell on him. Some of the girls, well, a few like Mindy and Peggy, are telling people they saw you do witchcraft stuff. Remember that day at the baseball practice when you were kidding about it? I shouldn't have, but
I mentioned it. It gave them something else to make up about you. I'm sorry," she added quickly. "But it didn't really matter what 1 said and didn't say. You know how some people are. They enjoy listening to and telling stories about other people. It makes them feel popular."
"Why did you come here to tell me all this, Charlene?" I asked, my eyes narrow with suspicion.
She looked down and then up at me.
"I felt sorry for you, Alice. I know the accident wasn't your fault. Bobby was screaming at how crazy Craig was driving, and I don't believe any of that junk about witchcraft, of course. I just came here to make sure you knew about it."
"To warn me?"
"Yes," Charlene said.
"Don't worry about it. Tell everyone I'm not going back to school. They don't have to keep gossiping about me anymore. They've won. I'm gone," I said.
She looked surprised. "What do you mean? Where will you go?"
"Anywhere," I said, and I meant it. Then I turned back to her. "I wish you had been the one chosen prom queen. Craig might not have been so reckless, so swollen up with it all."
"You can't blame it all on that," she said, smiling.
"No? Did anyone, even Bobby, ever know that Craig's parents forbid him from taking me, that they had taken away his allowance and they had taken away his car?"
"They had?"
"He didn't rent that car to be a big deal, although it made him feel like one. He had to rent a car or join in with the limousine some were renting, and he didn't want to do that."
"I didn't know. No one did, I think."
"Yeah, well take that back to the gossip mill and have them churn it into something."
"I feel sorry for you, Alice. I really do."
"Oh yeah? Tell me, Charlene, if I do go back to school, will you be my best friend?"
"What?"
"Just what I said, will you?"
"I thought you said you're not coming back." I smiled at her.
"I'm not," I said. "Now you can be the center of attention and tell them you saw me and heard everything firsthand. Make up whatever you want. Tell them I had candles burning in the room and I was chanting in a foreign language."
"I won't do that."
"Whatever. I'm tired. Thanks for stopping by."
She stared at me a moment and nodded. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry."
I grunted, and she turned to go. I did feel bad. Why take it out on her, the one girl who had cared enough to visit me?
"Charlene."
She turned back.
"I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to sound so bitter. Thanks for coming to see me."
She smiled.
"One thing," I added. "Tell Bobby good luck on his college career and baseball career. If Craig were here, he would say that."
She widened her smile.
She really was beautiful. I wished that somehow things had been different and I could have been her best friend. We would have had a great senior year together. Maybe she and I would have become like my aunt and my mother had been.
"Good luck, Alice," she said and left.
The walls seemed to close in around me and shut out all noise, every peep, except the far-off sound of someone sobbing.
It took me a while to realize that the sobbing was my own.

The operation on my hip was not a total success. Even after I got over the pain, I was unable to walk without a pronounced limp. It made me feel as if I was walking on a tipped surface all the time. After nearly five weeks of care, surgery, postoperative care and therapy, I returned to the Doral House. My grandfather suggested I move to a downstairs bedroom tor a while to avoid having to go up and down stairs, but the doctor had specifically said I should not avoid stairways.

"There's no reason why you can't climb a stairway. If you think of yourself as physically disabled, you'll be physically disabled," he told me with a smile.

I was easily able to rationalize and tell my grandparents that he was right. I could pretend my body wasn't that much different from the way it had been before the accident. I wasn't all that restricted in doing the things that were important to me. After all, I wasn't going to be a ballerina, was I? And I wasn't much of an athlete before the accident. However, pretending I wasn't any more disabled than I had been before the accident was just fooling myself, I decided. Nevertheless, I did reject Grandpa's suggestion to avoid the stairs. I remained in my own room.

During my recuperation period, I had done whatever schoolwork I had been given and was granted the right to finish with home study. My grandfather arranged for me to take my final exams after school when everyone else was gone. I didn't know exactly what he had told the administration and my teachers, but whatever he had said worked. He was good at convincing juries, so I had no reason to be surprised at his success in persuading the school authorities to treat me differently. I suspected he relied a great deal on my psychological trauma, which wasn't altogether a false argument.

I still had great difficulty recalling the exact details of the car accident. I had absolutely no memory of what had occured immediately afterward. For a while I even had trouble recalling specifically how the accident evolved. The hospital assigned a therapist to speak with me, and together, she and I worked out the details until I felt it all come rushing back. She was surprised when I suggested Craig was reckless and practically suicidal because of his anger at his parents. However, after I detailed some of what he had said and what had led up to it all, she nodded at me with a look of appreciation.

"You're a pretty bright young lady," she said. "Don't sell your future short."
What future? I wanted to ask. Except for my art, I had never been ambitious about anything, and now it seemed to be impossible to envision myself passionate about any sort of career. As for my art, a very strange new fear came over me during my period of recuperation. For the first few weeks after my return from the hospital, I did not attempt to go up to the attic. My grandmother was not unhappy about it. She had looked for every opportunity to get me out of the attic as it was.
"I know what the doctor told you, but you don't have to go and climb another set of stairs every day," she said. "Your grandfather could bring all your art materials downstairs and set up a studio for you in the guest's bedroom. Why look for trouble? All you need, Alice, is to injure yourself before you're fully recuperated from the injuries you had."
"Fully?" I asked. "How can I ever recuperate fully, Grandma?"
She looked away rather than answer. No one seemed capable of coming right out and saying,