Amalee (5 page)

“You made him happy,” I said.

She clutched my arm. “Do you think I did?” Now tears were rolling down her cheeks. “Do you think I did something wrong? Did this happen because I talk too much? Sometimes I talk too much.”

I knew how Phyllis felt. I remembered all those times Hally stared at me when I couldn't stop talking, because
I felt nervous. “No, Phyllis, you don't talk too much,” I told her. “And you didn't talk too much.”

Phyllis opened the door. There was Dad, half-smiling and fast asleep. We had no idea if he'd remember whatever had just happened.

Phyllis asked, “Amalee, did you see us, or did you see a
different
us?”

“Your voices were different.”

“How different?

“If you don't know, I don't know.”

Dad woke up about four hours later. Phyllis and I sat on his bed while he told us that he'd dreamed of fighting a snake and sailing in a glass boat surrounded by angelfish, barracudas, and sharks.

He seemed almost happy then. But in the days that followed, Dad looked terrible. He was sicker. Phyllis was panicked that she'd done something wrong, but I knew she hadn't. When Dad perked up at all, it was when I talked about jungles, oceans, forests, or even my social studies project on the first Thanksgiving. Phyllis had helped him clear a path to his childhood, and it made him happy whenever he went there. There was nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, I wished I could go there, too.

A few days later, Dr. Nurstrom showed up with what he called an intravenous bag, or IV bag, which meant he wanted to feed my dad with a tube. Joyce promised that she could check on Dad every four hours or so. She would be sleeping in the living room. Dr. Nurstrom was kind enough to tell me to look away while he put a needle in Dad's arm. That's how Dad would be “fed.” I thought all eighty pounds of me were about to hit the ground in a faint. He put some tape over the needle, so I didn't have to see what was going on.

“Are you sure he shouldn't be in the hospital?” I prodded.

“Yes, but I need all of you to make sure the needle is in, not just Joyce. I'll be coming in twice a day, and you can use the beeper I gave your dad. It has my number,
plus the number for Helen Forrest, a nurse who lives in New Paltz, and the one for Northern Dutchess Hospital.” He stopped as if he'd remembered something. “Uh, tonight I can't come.”

Joyce was standing next to him. “Why not, Robert?” I was surprised to hear her call him by his first name.

“Oh, it's just a little award ceremony.”

“Are you getting an award?” Joyce asked, her eyes sparkling.

“Why, um, yes. It's an award ceremony for me.”

“Well, well! This is an important night!” Joyce exclaimed.

“You could say that.”

Dad suddenly spoke up, surprising us with the fact that he was awake.

“Could my friends go?” Dad asked Dr. Nurstrom. “They make a very good cheering section.”

Dr. Nurstrom, or Robert, was trying not to look excited. “I'm sure they could come.”

“Actually, the only person who can make it is Joyce,” Dad realized.

“Well, in that case, I'll seat you at my table,” Dr. Nurstrom said.

Was my dad creating an excuse for Joyce and Dr. Nurstrom to go on a date? Somehow this whole IV bag
and needle thing didn't seem so scary if my dad was doing that! I was still scared, but I trusted Dr. Nurstrom more now, and I'd overheard him telling Joyce we just had to be patient for a while. I believed him. After all, he was an award-winning doctor.

 

At school, Ellen and Hally were unusually nice to me. Hally said she liked my sweater. I could have sworn she hadn't the last time I wore it. I think she said it was a peculiar shade of green that didn't quite go with my coloring. I would have stopped wearing it, but she had pointed out something wrong with all my clothes by now, so what choice did I have?

Ellen and I both went to our lockers before lunch. “Oh, no!” she moaned. “My lock is jammed again!”

“You can put your books in my locker,” I offered.

“Thanks.” Ellen rushed over. “Tell me your combination, so I can get my books later.” I felt a little uneasy as I saw her write it on her hand.

She repeated, “Thank you
so
much!”

I'd seen the first robin redbreast of the spring on the way to school. I decided the new season was making everyone more friendly.

In science, something funny actually happened. It
was pretty awful, too, but I think Mr. Hankel should have expected what was about to happen.

He started the section on digestion. He pulled down a diagram.

We were fine for the mouth part. He talked about how digestion begins in the mouth, how saliva starts to break the food down. Then he ran his pointer down the esophagus, telling us about peristalsis, which is the rippling motion that pushes food down to the stomach. For the stomach, he even had a special effect. He pulled out a bone he said he'd soaked in vinegar to show the effect hydrochloric acid has in our stomachs. He bent the bone like it was made out of rubber. Interesting.

But things started to fall apart when he got to the large intestine. First it was giggling. We all knew where this was going. Then there were the obvious digestion noises every time Mr. Hankel turned his back. He started on the gallbladder, which wasn't even the bladder, but the laughing and the noises got louder. And then Mr. Hankel got so angry! I was a little surprised. How many years had he taught this? A million? He should have known.

He erased everything off the board and gave us a pop quiz on the parts of the ear. We were quieting down when
we heard him mutter, “I don't know who got you all so riled up, but I'll get to
the bottom
of this.”

Well, then even I had to laugh. The next five minutes were a chaos of sound effects, most of which required two hands, and then the bell rang.

It was not such a bad day.

Dad had been on the IV for three days when I woke up to scratching and screeching noises down the hall. What would today bring? Dad's health, teachers, my so-called friends. Would things get better or worse?

I'd finally given up on talking to Dad about his real life or my real life. I was trying to live without anyone being able to answer any questions.

I thought maybe it was Phyllis making all the noise, so I got up. I actually liked our rides to school together, listening to her Broadway musicals. As it turned out, the noise was John. He was disappearing into my dad's room with a kitchen chair. Someone else came in the front door. It was Carolyn, with her short, freckly arms, sharp nose, and tight, thin mouth. I could see the small muscles in her arms as she carried in a painting easel.

“If I've parked out on the road, will I get a ticket?” she asked me. That was Carolyn, asking the person who couldn't drive. One thing I actually liked about her was that she didn't treat me like a kid. I think she forgot. I shook my head. No, no ticket.

“Do you have any coffee?” she asked, heading for the kitchen. “This is a little early for me.” I nodded, then followed her into the kitchen to get some cereal.

“You want some?” she asked, pouring water for the coffee, and when she saw me with the cereal box, she said, “Good idea. Can you make me a bowl, too?” She pulled a couple of bananas out of her straw bag. “You can slice these on top.”

I started talking with myself in my head.
Carolyn is bossy. That's okay. It's just what she's like. She brought bananas. That's a good thing. Say thank you.

“Thank you,” I said out loud, but I didn't like the way it sounded. It sounded aggravated.

John walked in. “Who wants eggs?” he asked. He saw me with two bowls of cereal. “Oh, well,
I
want eggs. And how about I make you a scrambled egg and tomato sandwich for school?”

I said, “Thanks, John. Sure.”

“No problem. Hey, Carolyn, if you don't have enough coffee for me, your butt is seriously in the ringer.”

“Oh, you want some?” Carolyn jumped up to make an extra cup.

“I help Carolyn lug her painting stuff into your dad's room, and she doesn't even remember to make me coffee,” he groaned.

Carolyn didn't seem to hear him. “I'm going to paint a
trompe l'oeil
mural on your dad's wall,” she said.

“What's that?” I asked.

“It's French for ‘fool of the eye.' You paint something so realistic the eye thinks it's real. I could paint the lawn and the sky outside his window, and you would think that I'd just knocked down the wall.”

“You're that good?” I asked.

John turned and gave me a look. I looked at my cereal.

“Oh, yes,” Carolyn said, matter-of-factly. “But I'm not painting the lawn. I'm painting an enchanted garden.” She strode out, with John about to follow. He had two plates of eggs.

“Who's the second plate for?” I asked.

“For your dad, silly! Could you bring us some juice? I'll come back for the coffee.”

“Haven't you heard?” I asked. “He hasn't eaten in three days.”

“No!” John looked unsteady. “Oh, Lord, I saw the IV bag, but I thought it was, you know, vitamins or some
thing. I don't know anything about this. I've hated all this medical stuff since my mom died in a hospital.” He stood and considered the eggs. “I'm just going to wave this under his nose. And then I'll eat it myself.”

I got ready for school and visited Carolyn, John, and my dad as I was leaving.

“How are you, Dad?” I asked.

“Just tired, sweetheart,” he answered with a half smile. “John's got me propped up, so I'm going to watch Carolyn paint. Then I'll sleep, I'll watch, and I'll sleep again.”

“I'm taking care of your father today,” Carolyn pronounced. This worried me. She had offered me a cup of coffee. What would she do to my dad? I saw the real possibility that she could knock him out with paint fumes and so I cracked the window open with a thin book that Carolyn had brought.

“Hey, I was going to read that to him!” she said. “It's about the effects of acid rain on the indigenous cultures of northern Quebec. Stunningly written. Real cultural resonance and sensitivity.”

“That sounds very uplifting, Carolyn,” said John. “But I agree that the window should be open, and besides,” he said, winking at me, “I know the way you work. Once you start, you're unstoppable. Your talent has a mind of its own.”

“That's true,” Carolyn agreed thoughtfully.

I kissed my dad and winced when he said, “Be good.” It was only last year, when I was in the fifth grade, that he would say, “Be good,” kissing me on the top of the head. I would say, “And what is good, according to philosophy?” Philosophy is the study of everything good and bad, right and wrong. He would say something like, “Well, this philosopher says don't drop your history report in the snow on the way to school, and we can call that good. Wait! That's me telling the day to be good for
you!”
I would laugh, and so would he. Things had really changed.

I walked out of Dad's room with John, who started laughing as soon as we were in the hall. “Oh, man, acid rain? What was Carolyn thinking? How about some good bedside reading?” He went on, “And it's a good thing your dad has that IV bag. Carolyn can't make toast. But she
is
good at lettering.”

He nodded at my lunch bag. She had written my name on it in a beautiful medieval-looking script.

“Have a good day,” said John. “Don't let the mean kids get you down.”

How could I even begin to tell him that
I
was one of “the mean kids”?

School was a blur of misunderstandings from start to finish, like getting in trouble when my pen ran dry and I couldn't find another one.

First I was stared at for rustling in my book bag, and then I was “separated” when I asked Ellen if she had another pen. She just gave me a blank look. So much for being on her good side. Luckily there was a pen on my new desk, the only good thing that happened in school today.

Lenore pestered me about whether I wanted to sleep over. “My mom says you have to tell me yes or no. What are you doing next Friday night?” I'd already told her I couldn't come this week.

“My aunt is coming,” I told her.

“What about Saturday?”

“She's coming for the whole weekend.”

“I could come over.”

“She's taking me fishing,” I said.

“In March?” she asked.

“Uh … she's from Canada.” What a pile of lies. I had no aunt, let alone one from Canada.

“Oh, okay then,” she said. “Sunday?”

“No,” I said, and walked away, out of lies.

I ate lunch alone backstage. I looked at my lunch bag, with Carolyn's beautiful writing of my unusual name. Inside was the egg sandwich, and I could tell it was made with care. Carefully cut in triangles on lightly toasted bread, with just the right amount of salt and pepper. Even the tomatoes weren't soggy. John also put in an apple and a big piece of cake. Maybe he knew how much I hated school, or maybe that's what he always did for people.

We studied the arrival of the French in North America in social studies, and that was cool. They came through Canada, trapping beavers and otters as they paddled on the St. Lawrence River. They weren't like the settlers who came with a religious mission. They just wanted to hunt and fish and make a lot of money. They lived rough. I thought of my made-up aunt from Canada who was going to take me fishing in March. I thought about her all the way home.

 

The first thing I saw when I got inside was Carolyn standing outside my father's room. “I don't know what came over me,” she said, almost shaking. “I thought this would take a few days, but it's — it's done! And it's quite extraordinary!”

She didn't seem as sharp as she usually was. In fact, if there was one word to describe how she was acting, it was shy — shy about whatever it was she'd done.

She looked me in the eye. “Amalee, I'm very good, but this is different.” How could I tell her that something very different was going on for all of us? She hadn't seen John working in our kitchen, where sometimes it looked like he had more than two arms. She hadn't watched Phyllis zooming herself and Dad back to childhood to help him forget his sadness.

“Do you want to see?” Carolyn asked.

We went into the room. I didn't know what to say. I expected a wave of paint fumes to hit me as we walked in, but instead I could almost smell what I can only describe as the color green. I smelled moss and leaves and long grass because they were right there in front of me. Plants whose stems were as thick as celery, with huge shiny leaves and large drooping flowers, plush green grass leading into a hedge, and slightly off to the side, a
giant gnarled tree with silvery branches spreading out in a spiral over carpets of tiny white flowers and violets. Under its branches was an archway.

I looked over at Dad, who was sleeping, no surprise, and turned back to Carolyn's incredible creation. As I walked closer to the painting, I saw the garden continuing farther in. On the other side of the archway were ancient-looking fruit trees, with all their peaches, apples, plums, and apricots catching the soft, golden sunlight. The trees grew in fields of tall grass and wildflowers, and when I stepped forward, I could make out the beds of small white flowers in the distance beyond. That's when I walked into the wall.

“That's a wall,” Carolyn said, in explanation.

“Thank you,” I replied sarcastically.

She wasn't making fun of me, of course. That was the great thing about Carolyn's seriousness. She would never make you feel stupid for believing something that wasn't real. She might have walked into the wall herself and realized, as I did, that the wall was less like a wall and more like a blanket of warm summer air, and that it smelled like grass.

I stepped back and clapped my hand to my mouth.

“I know,” Carolyn spoke in a whisper. “This isn't my work. It's better than me.”

We both looked at the garden again. I saw more things. In the wildflower field, there were flowers that looked almost like fireworks, and others that looked like big floppy bells.

Carolyn stepped forward and stood with me, close to the painting. “I think I see what happened,” she said under her breath. “You see, I kept on painting and painting, but the flowers seemed too small. There they are, over there.” She pointed to tiny distant flowers. “And then I thought,
No, fields full of wildflowers. That's what I'll do.
And I thought,
No it's still not enough!
And I painted a hedge over the whole thing, with an entrance you could see through. But the hedge was too heavy and too boring, so I painted flowers in front of it, but it still wasn't enough! This is your father we're talking about! This wasn't good enough for him! And I thought, maybe a big, ancient Japanese maple, and then maybe rubber plants and rain forest plants, big Amazonian plants, maybe that would be dramatic and beautiful. Beautiful enough.”

“And look at it,” said my dad. “The enchanted garden.”

We both swung around and saw him, wide awake.

Carolyn still looked like she couldn't believe it. “I guess so,” she whispered.

Then she bent over and took something out of her straw bag.

“David,” she said, anxiously, “I got you something.” She straightened up, brushing something off. “Would you like an apricot?”

In her hand was a small apricot, glowing deep yellow, almost orange, rosy along the side. It looked warm from the sun.

I felt myself almost wanting to yell at her. Hadn't she listened to anyone? He couldn't eat! That was the problem! I also shot a glance over to the painting, where the apricots on the trees looked exactly like the one she was holding out. They were so similar, I almost wondered if this was enchanted fruit, if Carolyn had wandered into the garden just long enough to pluck one ripe apricot from the tree.

“C'mon,” she said, extending the fruit to him.

My dad took it. He closed his eyes and smelled it, and then he took a bite. I held my breath. He took another bite. He almost finished the apricot.

“I thought you'd like it,” she said quietly.

He tried clenching and unclenching his fingers. Carolyn put a bunch of sprigs in his hand. “Chew on these. This is milk thistle. It's for your liver. And this is the root of a purple coneflower, echinacea.”

Echinacea? That sounded like a monster from a Greek myth, one with six heads.

“It's for your immune system,” Carolyn explained. “And Saint-John's-wort. For depression.”

My dad chewed a little on each, then said weakly, “Nice of you, Carolyn, sleep …” and he fell asleep. I wasn't sure if that meant it was time to remove the IV bag.

He looked okay. I could even see a little color in his skin, as if he had a little of the sunlight on the apricot inside him.

Carolyn and I walked out as his eyes started to close.

“I'm discovering something,” said Carolyn. “I think I — like making people happy. I mean, everybody likes to make people happy, but it never seemed to work with me. I don't know why.”

Poor Carolyn, with her mysterious paintings. She'd been speaking in code for as long as I'd known her. I always thought that Carolyn, from the planet of Carolyn, with the secret language of Carolyn, was saying, “Look at me!”

Well, sure she was. But today I saw that she'd been saying something else the whole time. She'd been saying, “Can't anybody see that I care?”

Carolyn was mostly quiet as she ate two helpings of pasta with pesto and some vegetarian meat loaf. She didn't believe in the phrase “uncomfortable silence.” I'm
sure silence was very comfortable to Carolyn. She liked a lot of time to think.

When she left, I peeked in on Dad, then skidded over on my socks to the phone. I hadn't wanted to hurt Carolyn's feelings when she was at our house. But what had she just done?

Joyce answered the phone on the first ring. “Are you all right?” she squeaked out, knowing it was me.

“I think so. It's just that … Carolyn got Dad to eat.”

“Did she? Wow.”

“Is it really ‘wow,' Joyce? I mean should I take out the IV-needle thing?” I tried to sound calm.

“I'll call Dr. Nurstrom and get back to you right away, Amalee,” she answered, and I'm not sure if she sounded grateful for the trust I placed in her, or for the opportunity to call Dr. Nurstrom.

The nurse, Ms. Forrest, came by in about an hour and spent some time in Dad's room. “He's really weak,” she pointed out. “I think we should keep him on the IV for the weekend. Did he ask to eat?”

“Uh, no,” I answered honestly. “His friend really wanted him to eat something, so he did.”

“And he didn't throw it up?” she asked gravely, as if I wouldn't tell her if my dad had thrown up! I shook my head.

“I took care of him,” said Ms. Forrest, adding that I should just let him sleep tonight, and that she was always on call.

Still, I lay awake waiting for his little beeper to go off, letting me know that there was an emergency. Or, at least, I thought I was awake. I found myself walking down the hall, into Dad's room, and up to the painting, which was still full of sunlight, even though it was close to midnight. I saw the leaves of the rubber plant move a little. I saw wind blowing through the wild grass, bending the fragile stems of the violets, then, finally, blowing the red leaves of the tree upward to reveal their white undersides. As I smelled the violets and felt the wind in my hair, I heard laughter behind me.

“You're just a kid!” my father said, laughing, as he moved beside me.

“It's true,” Carolyn said, standing next to him. “You're a kid. That's a fact.”

I realized I hadn't felt like a kid for a while. Dad nudged me forward. “Don't you want to go in?” he asked. I held out an arm and walked straight, right into the garden. Dad and Carolyn were following behind.

“Can you climb up there?” he asked me, pointing to the Japanese maple.

I looked at Carolyn. Could I? Did she paint a strong tree?

“The Japanese maple is a very dense hardwood,” she said. “The branches are like iron.”

I started climbing up the tree. It felt like a staircase that you climb with your arms as well as your legs.

When I was about ten feet up, I looked down at my dad. He was laughing. I went up another few feet and out along a big branch. There was Carolyn's world, Carolyn's gift to my dad, fields of wildflowers, fancy flower beds in S shapes, circles around ponds, orchards and hills of soft grass blowing to the south.

“Hey there!” Dad called. “We've got to get going! The sun's going down!”

I joined them at the bottom, and giddy from our time in the garden, we turned to leave. Carolyn leaned over and whispered, “Relax, Amalee. Some things are a mystery. Isn't that wonderful?”

Then we stepped out of the garden and into the room. And then I woke up.