chapter 9

CYLIN

ON Tuesday morning, Lauren and Cassie went back to school. My brothers and I went swimming and watched TV and hung out. Aunt Kate had taken time off from work to be at home with us, and when she wasn’t there, Uncle Joe was.

In the afternoon, we got out our cousins’ art supplies and made a few more cards for Dad. We had been making cards every day for Mom to take to him in the hospital. I used crayons to draw a picture of our house on Cape Cod, the little red house with a big yellow sun over it, and I added some colorful flowers in our front yard that weren’t really there but I thought they looked nice.

Eric drew a mini comic book of an imaginary superhero he had invented years ago called “Super Hippo.” Super Hippo was wearing a red cape with the letters “SH” on it and doing feats with his super strength. The drawings were pretty good.

Shawn was the real artist, though. Like Mom, he could draw anything. So he did a picture of Spider-Man, using a comic book to get it just right. It looked like a store-bought card when he was done with it. We left the cards for Mom so she could take them to Dad the next day.

Around the time that Lauren and Cassie came home from school, my grammie showed up at the house along with our uncle Brian, my mom’s other brother. They had been to the hospital to visit my dad. Uncle Brian sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands like he had a bad headache. It seemed like Grammie couldn’t stop crying. Uncle Joe helped her to sit down, and she asked me to sit next to her so she could put her arm around me. I’d never seen her cry, so it was a little scary. I didn’t know what to do to make her feel better, so I just sat there. “You’re so young,” she kept saying, hugging me tighter. She took off her glasses and wiped the tears off them. “You’re just a little girl, nine years old. You’re the same age your mother was when my Floyd died.”

I knew that she was talking about my grandfather, Floyd, my mom’s father, who had died a long time ago in a canoe accident in Maine. After diving in to help rescue a drowning friend, he struck his head on a rock and never came back up—they didn’t find his body until days later, miles downriver. Grammie always said that he was the love of her life, and I guess it was true because she never even went on so much as a date with another man after he died. “Your poor mother, to have to go through what I went through . . . ,” Grammie said, sobbing.

Uncle Brian didn’t say anything, but sometimes he would look over at me and shake his head like I had done something bad. Eventually Uncle Joe told us kids to go down to the playroom and stay down there until Grammie felt better.

When we got downstairs, Cassie and Lauren got out their Barbie playhouse and gave me a Barbie doll to use. I never played with Barbies; I didn’t have any at home. Having two older brothers around meant that I mostly did what they did: riding bikes, skateboarding, playing Atari and Star Wars make-believe. It was nice to have two girls to play with, and to play dress up with their dolls.

“You know why Grammie is crying?” Lauren asked me. “Because your dad is going to die,” she said, putting a form-fitting sparkly gold dress on her Barbie. She held up her doll and started brushing its hair. “But you’re lucky,” she pointed out, “because at least you don’t have to go to school.”

I looked down at the doll in my hands and tried to find an outfit for her. But I felt sick to my stomach. Why would Mom tell us that Dad was okay if he was really going to die? I tried to tell myself that Lauren was just a bossy know-it-all, because she was older than me. She wasn’t always right.

Later that night, Mom came back to Uncle Joe’s house after Grammie and Uncle Brian had left. Lauren and Cassie were already in bed. Ever since school had started for Lauren and Cassie, the slumber party in the playroom had ended. Now Eric and Shawn and I slept downstairs while Lauren and Cassie were in their own rooms.

I could hear Mom talking and walking around in the kitchen, then she came down the stairs. “You guys still up?” she asked softly.

“Grammie was here,” Shawn told her. He had been sitting up in his sleeping bag, reading MAD magazine.

“I know,” she said. “Grammie came to see your dad today.”

Then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Lauren said Grammie was crying because Dad is going to die.”

“God!” Eric rolled his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was mad at Lauren or me.

Mom shook her head. “Your dad is not going to die. In fact, you guys can see him tomorrow,” she said. “If you want to.” She looked at us and we all nodded.

“Then I need to tell you some things so that you’re ready to see him,” Mom said. She sat Indian-style on the rug by our sleeping bags. “Your dad will have a lot of bandages on his head. You might see some blood on the gauze, but that’s nothing, he’s fine,” she told us.

My brothers and I were silent as she went on. “He can’t talk, but he is able to write notes if you have anything you want to ask him. He’s also really tired. He might be asleep when we get there, we’ll see.” Mom took a deep breath. “The worst thing you’re going to see tomorrow are the tubes. There are a lot of tubes going in and out of your dad—on both of his arms, his stomach, his face, and his throat. I don’t want you to be scared,” Mom said, looking directly at me. “Okay? There are going to be a lot of tubes and machines. The machines make a lot of noise, so you have to speak up so that he can hear you.”

“Okay,” Eric said, nodding. When Grammie had been at the house earlier, I overheard her telling Eric that he was the man of the family now, and that he had to be there for my mom, be someone she could lean on. His face was like stone now—strong, no emotion.

Shawn’s eyes were big and his feet were moving around in the sleeping bag like they did when he got nervous and agitated. “Did his face get hurt from driving off the road or from getting shot?” he asked.

“Well . . .” Mom started to say something, then stopped herself. “It was probably both, but mostly getting shot,” she finally said. I could tell she was about to cry. If he was going to be okay, then why was she so sad? “It’s going to take some getting used to, how Dad looks now,” Mom went on. “So you have to give yourself some time to get used to it.”

Something wasn’t right with what she was telling us, and I knew it. She was lying. He wasn’t going to be okay. That’s why Grammie was crying, why Uncle Brian wouldn’t talk to us. Lauren was right. I started crying

“Cee, it’s okay to cry now, but don’t cry tomorrow. You’ll make your dad feel bad, and we need him to feel good so that he can get better, okay?” I could tell she was done talking to us for the night. “Now go up to the bathroom and wash your face,” she told me. “You’ll feel better.”

I went upstairs to the bathroom crying so hard I couldn’t catch my breath. When I tried to breathe in, the air caught in my throat. I hated Lauren for being right. Tubes and bandages and machines—my dad was going to die, and even Mom was lying about it. I hated everyone, everyone, everyone.

I went into the bathroom and slammed the door hard. Then I opened it all the way and slammed it again, harder. I sat on the floor and cried, waiting for my aunt or uncle or mom to come yell at me for slamming the door, but no one did. After a few minutes, I looked in the mirror over the sink at my blotchy face and red eyes. I stared at my face for a long time. I was still freckled from the summer sun, and my skin was brown, my hair bleached blond. I looked just like the girl I had been last week, but I felt so different. I didn’t understand why the anger I felt didn’t show on my face. I wanted to scratch myself and put a mark somewhere. I ran my fingernails down one cheek, but my nails were too short to leave a mark. After staring at myself for a few more minutes, I splashed some water on my face and went back downstairs.

The room was dark, and Eric and Shawn weren’t talking so I guessed they were asleep. I laid in my sleeping bag and sniffled back tears until I drifted off.

When I woke up the next morning, Lauren and Cassie had already gone to school. It was the day that we would see Dad. I was feeling better, but when I went upstairs and into the bathroom, I saw my red, puffy eyes and I remembered crying myself to sleep. I felt a little babyish and ashamed of myself, and I hoped no one else would notice. I went into the kitchen and found Mom sitting with Eric and Shawn at the table. “Hey, lazybones,” Mom said to me. She was drinking a cup of coffee. Her skin looked gray.

“Do you have any money?” Eric asked me.

I said no. I hadn’t thought to bring any when we came to my uncle’s house a few days before. “We’re going to put our money together and buy Dad an OMNI magazine,” Shawn said. “And maybe some other stuff, too.” OMNI was a science fiction magazine that Dad loved. It had lots of weird illustrations and creepy stories in it.

I felt bad that I didn’t have any money to chip in. “That’s okay,” Mom said. “I have to give you guys your allowance anyhow.” She looked around for her purse. We hadn’t done our chores—like making our beds and cleaning up the yard—in almost a week, and that was the way we usually earned allowance. But Mom seemed not to care.

We drove to the hospital in Uncle Joe’s car, the three of us kids crammed into the backseat, where I had to sit in the middle. My uncle took us to a store where we could buy Dad his favorite magazine. I picked up a bag of M&M’S and put those on the counter too.

Shawn grabbed the bag. “He can’t eat those, didn’t you hear Mom? His face is all messed up!” He stuffed the M&M’S back under the counter before the cashier could ring them up. I had forgotten that Mom told us Dad couldn’t eat for a while. But I was too embarrassed to admit it. I reached down and picked up the bag again. “They’re for me.” I scowled at Shawn as I put them back on the counter.

“Nice, really nice. We’re supposed to be getting stuff for Dad,” Shawn pointed out. I felt tears stinging my eyes, but I wasn’t about to let him see me cry again today. After we paid for our presents, I stuffed the bag of M&M’S into my jeans pocket. I was going to give it to Dad anyhow and just tell him that he could hold on to it until he could eat again. The other stuff we had gotten him was from the three of us, but this would be from just me to him, and I knew Dad would like that.