Joy School (18 page)

“Nona used to be really active in the church,” Cynthia said. “People were all the time calling her or she
was calling them. She had a phone caddy, you know, one of those flip-up ones, you put the arrow to the letter you want and it flips up? She had one of those, gold metal, and she used to lie in bed at night with that phone caddy talking in Italian real loud.” She smiled and then she looked sad because she remembered that this is it for Nona, no more phone calls, ever. I didn’t ask any more questions. It wasn’t really right of me to be acting like Brenda Starr, reporter. I was just there to be a friend to Cynthia in her time of sorrow. She listened to me when I told her about Jimmy. I told her and Cherylanne, but not Taylor. I thought Taylor would say, “Big deal. There’s more where that came from.” And that is so not true.

The priest begins his sorrowful speech about Nona’s life. Mrs. O’Connell starts to cry real hard and there are tears rolling down Cynthia’s cheeks. I bite my lips a little, stare straight ahead. Under my shirt is my half of the best-friends necklace. I’m sorry I ever took it off. It offers something to you to have one of those.

“Nona died,” I tell Father Compton.

“I’m sorry to hear that. She was a friend of yours, really, wasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“Hard to loose two friends at once.”

“Well, Jimmy was not my friend.” Now I am pure sorry I told him about Jimmy. He nodded all sympathetic
but I can see that he did not really understand, either.

I look right at him. “He was not my friend. I loved him.”

“I know you did.”

“No, see, you say that but what you are thinking is, puppy love.”

“No. No, I am not. I am thinking that in the best kinds of love there is friendship, too.”

Well, that is true. He has said a true thing and I have yelled at him for nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“It’s all right.”

“Maybe I’ll come to Mass this Sunday.”

His eyes change, but he says nothing.

“When is it?”

“I say the seven-thirty and the eleven o’clock.”

“Well, seven-thirty is no good.”

“Uh-huh.”

Nothing more. These Catholics are good, I have to hand it to them.

Oh, all right, I think, but I don’t say anything. This way it’s not a promise.

On the way home, I think, Wait. Maybe he meant Taylor when he said that about losing two friends and then I just dove into Jimmy and he didn’t say one word. Because he saw my need. He said silently, Well all right, child, that’s fine. I have piled up inside me quite a bit of gratefulness for him.

Maybe Mass is interesting. I know one thing is they actually believe the priest is standing there with the host and, presto, it becomes Jesus Himself. And then they eat Him.

Well, now here I am in my room with nothing to do again. Things have come back to that. It is Sunday and Cynthia is off with relatives. When someone dies, all you do for about a week is spend time with relatives and eat.

Taylor called, did I want to come over? but she has just worn me out. I would like to think that sometime we could be friends again, but I don’t know. I think it was because of her that I stole this lipstick sample last week. I know it’s not as bad as what she does, but still. It’s crème caramel, a pretty light brown color. I keep it in my underwear drawer and every time I wear it it is a thrill. So I can see how I could move up on the stealing line. One day Taylor showed me some things she stole, shoes, records, books. And the next time I was in a department store I was looking at purses and I realized I could just put one over my shoulder and walk out. They would not catch me, I knew it. I got all dry in the mouth and trembly, like, okay, let’s go, do it. But I didn’t, I walked away. Taylor is a funny person who doesn’t see any right and any wrong and it is too strong to be around. I suppose someday she will be famous and people will say, “You quit hanging around with
her? Why???”
and I will say there is more to it than I can explain.

I wrote to Diane this morning, even though she still has not sent me anything but a postcard saying she is moving to California. She didn’t say she and Dickie. I asked her in my letter, is he going with you or are you getting a divorce? Although I already know the answer. Their marriage was a little paper boat in the gutter that only sailed because there was a storm. Now that it is calm, Diane is looking at Dickie and saying never mind. And poor Dickie.

Well what else is new, in the world of love, things never work out even. Even when people think they are even, they are not. Take my father and Ginger, who it looks like any day now are going to tell me they’re getting married and I will say, No kidding I have only known for about two hundred years. Ginger is the one who loves more. Even though my father has a great deal of affection for her, she loves more than he does.

I have heard them at night in the living room. Ginger is worried about how will I feel, which is so nice of her but really it is not to do with me and I am already used to it, big deal.

I stand up, do some toe touches. I am too fat to be a teenager. Although it does not matter, because I am done with the dating game. I met the one and he is gone. I guess he really is gone, now, too, three weeks are up. I know all my life no one will believe the trueness of this, that he was the only one for me. I saw everything about him. He was a tender man and so
handsome you could die. You could say anything to him. He was interested in me, he thought I was interesting. Around him, everything bad about me was excused and everything good about me got held up. I have been on this earth long enough to know how hard it is to find all that in a man and I know I will never find it again and even if an exact copy of Jimmy came to me later like when I was twenty-three, no, it would not be right. Sometimes you just know things even though you are at a young age, and believe me, I do know. But from now on I will keep it to myself. People don’t believe you. I saw how Ginger tried to listen and believe me but behind her eyes she was making plans for me that I am not one bit interested in. I mean love plans, like who could be next. Well, I do not need love, I am just going to be a poet.

I go into the living room, stare out the front window. Not one fun thing to look at. I have no idea why they have to make every single house look just the same. Why not build a house around a tree, so that smack in the middle of your living room, nature. Why not have round windows and crazy angle ones, walls of glass, rainbow colors painted everywhere? My house will have that. I will draw how it should go and they will build it and say, My, I never
thought
of that!

Ginger and my father are out buying lamps for the house. Give me a break that I’m not supposed to know they’re getting married. You would have to be an imbecile
not to see that. Well, I’ll get to have Bones. Me and Bridgette, she’ll have a stepbrother.

I put on my coat. Sometimes when I do this I figure out where I want to go.

The pond.

I get some pieces of bread for the ducks, step outside. The snow is all gone. Now, with the sky for the ceiling, I am already better. They ought to let crazy people outside. It would help.

This is my lucky day, there is a duck convention. I sit with my back to the station. I don’t want any memories to wreck how green the males’ feathers are. I throw a few crumbs and the ducks come swimming over, quacking away. I wonder if they are saying, Oh boy, bread, or Get the hell out of my way. Some stay in the water and others waddle onto the shore. I should have brought more bread. There aren’t a whole lot of things much finer in life than feeding ducks and now I will run out too soon.

“Hi,” I hear.

I quick turn around and it’s a good thing I’m sitting down. He is not gone. He is right here. Right there. How long?

“Hi, Jimmy.”

He walks the rest of the way toward me. “I’m glad to see you.”

“… Oh.”

“Can we talk a little?”

“I thought you were moving.”

“I am. Today’s my last day. I just got off work and saw you sitting down here.”

“I’m feeding the ducks.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“I thought you were gone.”

“Took a little longer than we thought.”

He sits down, puts his arms on his knees, looks out at the water. “Pretty out, today. Not so cold.”

One thing I do not need is the weather report. Plus looking at him is making me feel like crying. I stand up, brush the crumbs off my coat.

“Well, nice to see you, I have to go.”

He looks up at me.

“See you,” I say.

“Katie? Could you spare a minute? There are some things I really want to say to you.”

I think of two fists, only one holding something. Pick.

I sit back down, don’t look at him. But I can smell him. It is not cologne smell, it is just soap-and-water smell and it practically kills me dead.

He takes in a breath, starts to say something, then stops. “Dang,” he says quietly.

Inside, the tight bud of my heart starts to open again.

“Well, look. I just want to tell you that I’m so … honored that you cared for me, Katie.”

Here, the sting of tears. The body drives, the mind comes along.

“That’s okay.”

“No. You are such a fine person, and you know what? You’re just going to get better and better. Some day, when you are ready, some man is going to love you so much.”

Well here comes the flood. I am crying and crying and crying. “I don’t want anyone else,” I say. “I am finished. I only wanted you. You are just the right one and there will never be—” I look at him fiercely. “I went out with someone else. And all he did was shove my hand down his pants!”

I cannot believe I have said this. Jimmy is shocked. Well, what else can he be.

I look down, wipe the tears from my face, draw a defiant X in the dirt.

A raggedy silence.

And then he says so gentle, “Katie?”

How he says it is how I can look up at him.

“I wish I could tell you. You know, when it happens that you really love someone—I know you think you won’t, I know you believe you will always love me, and Katie, I would be so happy to think that in some way you will, but you will love someone else again, too.”

“Nope,” I say. “I will not.”

“Listen to me,” he says. “I want to tell you something. Boys … aren’t like girls. Boys will do things like
you told me because they don’t care or they don’t know … lots of stupid reasons. It doesn’t have to do with you. It has to do with them. But I want you to hold out for something I know will come to you. And I think maybe you know it, too.”

I don’t look, but I listen so hard.

“When you have sex the real way, the way it’s supposed to be, it’s like … Well, it’s like taking and giving at the same time. It’s this fierce thing, it’s … God, it’s like your whole soul gets snatched away from you and then returned, better.”

“That’s what you have, huh?” I say, miserably.

“And that’s what you’ll have, too. Someday.”

I look out at the ducks, most of them given up and gone now, but a few hanging around, just in case.

It comes to me that when you get right down to it, I am not that crazy about youth.

“I wish you’d believe me,” Jimmy says.

“I don’t care,” I say.

“You don’t care?”

“No, I don’t care about one thing.”

He frowns. “Well, Katie, I—”

I stand up. “I have to go.”

He stands too. “No, you don’t. I’ll go.”

He takes off his glove, offers me his bare hand. “Good-bye, Katie. I enjoyed so much having you for a friend. More than you know.”

I look at his square nails, the small wound at the side
of his thumb, no Band-Aid. I want, my insides are saying. I want. I want.

I don’t take his hand. “Just go,” I say, cold.

He nods, puts his glove back on, turns to walk away and I can’t stand it. I call his name, run over to him. He catches me in his arms so gently and the fit is just right. I look up at him and ask him with all of me to just kiss me once, just once. He leans down and there, light as a butterfly, his lips on my forehead.

No. Not that way. I don’t move.

He sighs, smiles, pulls off his glove to put his hand to my face. There, the backs of his fingers, moving up my cheek so light it gives me the chills. And then he turns and walks away.

I watch him get into his car, drive down the road away from me. I don’t even have a picture of him. I feel a bad ache rising up in me like an inside monster. And I have had some hard moments already. The other day I was thinking about Jimmy while I was fixing toast. I was looking at the deep red of the jelly and in my head came this little play about how I would cut my wrists and die. It seemed so real. It is why I told Father Compton everything. I had to tell someone. I was sort of scared. And we talked a long time about sadness. He said, Well Katie, there was your mother and a move and then Jimmy. I said yeah. He said these were important events in my life and sorrow was a funny thing. I said I didn’t think sorrow was so funny. He said no
what he meant was that it could teach you about joy. I said is that right. He said yes. He said not to be afraid of sorrow, really, that it was just a kind of teacher. A bad teacher, I said. Father Compton said, Well now surely I had had experiences with bad teachers in my life, hadn’t I? My sad, slow brain actually got revved up for a minute, thinking of that. I said, Are you kidding? This school I’m in now that’s their specialty. Father Compton said what he meant was surely I could
survive
a bad teacher. He said there are times we must let sorrow come, learn the lesson and then move on. He said when you think about it, life is just moments. And you have to have faith that the next good moment is coming right along. Then he asked careful was I really thinking about suicide and I said no because then I’d be dead and I wouldn’t know how anything turned out. He said, Well there you go, that’s exactly right. And then he said that the natural antidote to despair is hope. I said I supposed so and when would I get to that part. He said, Oh you’d be surprised, that from where he sat he could see it already.

Now a cold wind blows suddenly, pushes my hair across my face and I get to see everything in slats. I put my hands deep in my pockets, find Jimmy’s stone. I take it out and look at it. It’s a very pretty thing, but there are so many people in the world who would just say “Where?” when you told them that.