Tell Me Something Real Read online

  “It’s a quote from Joan of Arc.”

  “She left one of these notes in every desk. The teacher thinks it sounds threatening. The principal agrees.”

  “It’s just a stupid quote,” I say.

  “Well, Marie’s teacher thinks she needs professional help. She wants her evaluated. She doesn’t think she can be in the class and recommended special ed.”

  I place the note on the table. I should have seen this coming. Marie isn’t in any shape to go to school. I can’t sit in a classroom. How can she? “They want her tested because of her crazy saint stuff?”

  “That’s part of it. She made up her own vocabulary list. Religious but hard ones, like ‘transubstantiation.’ I doubt her teacher could spell them, much less define them. Instead of doing math, Marie drew this.”

  He hands me another piece of paper, a horrifying drawing of a burning Joan, her melting face.

  “They won’t let her go back to school, Vanessa. Not until she’s evaluated.”

  “What are we going to do, Dad?”

  I’m surprised when he smiles. “My attorney does a lot of work with a family therapist specializing in situations like ours. Mental illness. Dr. Shepherd saw Marie today, and when she looked at the drawings, she suggested Catholic school, given how safe Marie feels at church.”

  I nod. “They know her there. They won’t think she’s a freak.” I wave the drawing in the air. “They’d probably give her extra credit for this. You’ll have to tell them about Mom, though. They need to know why she’s acting weird.”

  “I’ve already put in the call. You’ll like Dr. Shepherd. It will be good for all of us to see her. I’m glad your mother’s psychiatrist recommended her.”

  My eyes remain on Marie’s sketch. “Did you see Mom today too?”

  “I did.”

  “I want to know what it’s like,” I say, thinking of my music, of the vivid memories that infect my brain. “It has to be better than what I picture in my head.”

  “It’s an ordinary hospital. It looks like the hospital we went to for your ankle.”

  “And Mom?” I ask, raising my eyes to his. “What’s she like?”

  “More or less the same. She’s still foggy from the medication.”

  “But she hasn’t been in a coma for the past two weeks, right? Dad, I want to know. I need to know because she’s all I think about. Please tell me.”

  He leans back in the chair and looks at everything in the room but me. “What did you do with the photos?”

  “They’re in a box. I had to do it.”

  He gives me a hard stare. “Do you really want to know?”

  “I need to know.”

  He looks at the far wall, but for the life of me, I can’t remember which picture used to hang there. “It was awful. For the first two days, she screamed for hours. They sedated her, but as soon as it wore off, she started screaming again. She was out of control, scratching herself, pulling her hair until it came out in fistfuls. They’ve been working on her medication ever since.”

  I smooth Marie’s drawing with my palm. “You said she could get out. That you might need to be more aggressive.”

  He nods. The lines surrounding his eyes and mouth have deepened, making him look severe. I hadn’t noticed and it shocks me. I’m used to him looking softer, open, even if he is half-consumed by work and fighting off his demanding asshole boss.

  “Yes, she could. I am doing everything I can.”

  I want to stop crying, have my tear ducts sealed shut. My chest heaves and I want him to hold me, but when he does, even though it feels good, it just makes me cry harder. I can’t find a safe place in the house, a corner of comfort, any place where I can rest and have a break from memories of Mom. Every nook and cranny is tainted by her lies.

  “I don’t know if I can stay here anymore,” I say. “It hurts too much. It’s like she’s still here.”

  He leans back so he can look at my face. A memory flashes through my mind. I was six and went through a brief phase of being terrified of water. I couldn’t go to the beach without screaming. He took me to the boardwalk, and when I started to panic at the sight of the giant waves, he told me that we weren’t going to walk on the sand. We would stay on the concrete. He’d looked at me the same way he does now, telling me a promise that he kept.

  We went there every night. Each time, he said we could walk on the sand if I wanted. That’s it. He didn’t pressure me. He must have planned it, because when they had the sand castle building contest, I wanted to go see them, excitement eclipsing fear. Too absorbed by turrets and moats, I let the water splash over my feet. I barely noticed. When we left, he hugged me.

  “You’re my brave girl,” he said.

  We went swimming the next day.

  He was right. If I know anything about myself, it’s that I have courage.

  “I got into the conservatories. I want to go. I don’t know what else to do,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, honey. You can’t. What would your sisters do without you? It will get easier. We’ll see the therapist. We’re going to go through this together.”

  After dinner, Dad sits in his study, on the phone, first speaking with the Catholic school, and then to Barb, reviewing rentals from the classifieds. Marie and I watch The Muppet Show as Adrienne paws through the box of freshly removed photos. The family room reeks of something sour and I crack a window to let in some air. We both ignore the unwashed dinner dishes. Adrienne raids the junk drawer and covers the floor with concentric circles of organized stacks—felt, glitter, plywood, and ancient copies of Architectural Digest. She disassembles the frames, removing the glass from the wood, taking out the pictures.

  Adrienne holds up the photos: our trips to Catalina Island and Disneyland, and countless pictures of Mom pregnant or holding a newborn baby girl.

  “Stop,” I say. “I don’t want to see any more.”

  “Fine.” Adrienne is in her art zone. She chooses a photo, one of her with Mom, and glues it to a piece of felt. With a razor blade, she traces the outline of Mom’s image. Once the image is free, she glues it to another piece of felt.

  I can’t watch. It’s like surgery. The credits roll across the TV screen. I click it off. “Come on, Marie,” I say. “Time for bed.”

  Adrienne keeps her eyes on her project. “Don’t wait up. This is going to take me all night.”

  Teeth brushed, I pull a book from the shelf to read to Marie. Her arms appear free of ink, a relief. “Did you write anything new on your body?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “My favorite quote is too long. Wait, could you write it on my back? It goes like this: ‘One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.’ That will fit, right?”

  She sweeps her long hair over her shoulder so I can evaluate the length and width of her torso.

  “What’s this?” I ask, looking at a cropped spot at the base of her neck. I stroke her hair, holding it high like I’m going to pull it into a ponytail. She trimmed off several inches from the back of her head, cut so short that I can see her scalp, but unnoticeable when she wears it down.

  “I need help with the rest. I don’t want to cut myself.”

  I rub the nearly bald patch. Her hair is shorter there than Caleb’s was when we first met.

  “Why did you do this?” I ask.

  She hops over to her shelves and removes a new book, a biography of Joan of Arc. She flips through the pages, full of vibrant illustrations, and points to two portraits. They look like one of those before and after makeover articles. In the first picture, Joan looks like an average girl with long hair and a peasant gown. She gazes at the sky with a radiant smile, a sign of her secret pact with the lord. In the other, perched on a white horse and brandishing an impressive sword, she wears a suit of armor. Her long hair now short, a pixie cut like Mia Farrow’s in Rosemary’s Baby. I don’t turn the page
, wanting to avoid the explicit drawings of the stake—smoke, chains, and flames.

  “That’s how I want my hair cut. Just like Joan’s.”

  I wrap my arms around her, wondering when her fascination turned to obsession. She rests her head against me, and I smooth her hair to hide her shorn scalp.

  “You don’t have to cut your hair off to be like her,” I say. “You’re brave and strong. How about we make some new shirts this weekend? Adrienne can copy that picture.” I point to the warrior painting.

  “I still want to cut my hair,” Marie says. “I need to be like her. I can help Mom if I’m like Joan.”

  I take a deep breath to ease the shaky feeling that never seems to go away. Dad is right—there’s no way I can leave her. “Marie,” I whisper. “You can’t help Mom. Only doctors can. She’s sick, just a different kind of sick.”

  Marie smiles, an eerie resemblance to the first portrait of Joan. “You’re wrong,” she says. “I prayed for her not to die and she didn’t. She doesn’t have cancer.”

  A chill climbs up my spine and I blink back tears. I won’t cry in front of Marie.

  “Hey, do you want to have a slumber party?” I ask.

  She snaps out of her saint trance and jumps to her feet. “Yes! Yes!”

  “Your room or mine?” I ask.

  “Definitely yours,” she says, giggling, almost like her old self.

  I fill my arms with her favorite stuffed animals: a penguin from Sea World, a bear from Yosemite, and a bunny from Easter.

  “Grab your pillow, okay?” I ask.

  Marie does, and then reaches for her Joan of Arc saint card.

  “You won’t need that,” I say. “You have me.”

  My body fills with relief when she rests the card against her lamp. She clasps my hand. “Will you make popcorn?”

  “Of course. And Ovaltine. Just like we used to.”

  Before the diagnosis. Before the clinic. Before the saints.

  Thirteen

  It’s six o’clock in the morning when I wake, the first one up. It takes me several minutes to feel my limbs, and when I do, it hurts—not the burning, prickling sensation of numbness, but the simple fact that they are there—and I feel a crushing weight on my chest. I fell asleep thinking about Marie’s hacked hair and Caleb’s return. With him back, maybe it will be endurable.

  I start working on the dishes, quietly dipping them in soapy water, rinsing, and stacking in the drying rack. As I wipe off the counter, I find her note:

  Not feeling well.

  Sleeping in. Will go to school late.

  Lunches made.

  Don’t wake me up or I’ll kick your ass.

  Love,

  A

  Peanut butter and jelly for Marie. Turkey and American cheese for Dad and me. Apples and granola bars. She prepared their picnic. Dad promised to take Marie on a holy outing to Mission San Juan Capistrano, which brought a grin to Marie’s face. He hasn’t told her about getting kicked out of school, not yet, not until the meeting with the Catholic school later in the afternoon.

  I finally coaxed Marie into telling us what happened on the playground. Two girls were spinning on the monkey bars, apparently so fast that Marie worried they’d get hurt: skulls splitting on metal, spinal cords broken on the blacktop. The lord told her that they needed her protection, to keep them safe, so she pulled them to the ground. They taunted her, shoved her down on the blacktop, the asphalt digging into her skin. Marie didn’t fight back.

  I look at Adrienne’s note again. If she skips the meeting with Dr. Whelan, she’ll surely get detention or worse. Our family can’t take a second school crisis.

  At school, I don’t see her all day, even at lunch, when I wait at her locker. After the final bell rings, Dr. Whelan, Mrs. Albright, and I sit before the portable tape player ready to listen to my piece. Mrs. Albright is pressuring me to give it a title, but I can’t, not yet. Everything that comes to mind is too personal. I can say what Mom did, but it’s something else to describe Mom as a person. Not just the lies and betrayal, but all of her. The intersection of memories. Sea World and the clinic. Laetrile and Christmas cookies.

  How can I name that?

  Ten minutes pass and Adrienne still isn’t here. I hope she hasn’t done something stupid, like painted a mural of Zach in a compromising position, covering the wall facing the parking lot. A crazy but plausible stunt.

  The second hand travels the circumference of the clock, and Dr. Whelan says, “Okay, let’s go ahead and get started.”

  Mrs. Albright pats my shoulder before reaching to press play. As I listen to the recording, objectively, away from the piano, I realize my intent. I’m not processing what happened—what Mom did. I wrote it for Mom to hear. This is my good-bye, all of the words I want to say to her but can’t. Maybe my song can get through to her, “my healing music,” as she always called my playing. Mom might understand the meaning of the piece—or not. Six years of clarinet gave her a glimpse into my world, even if she never felt the same pull. Music can’t compete with prescriptions and syringes, with exam rooms and doting nurses. Dr. Whelan and Mrs. Albright may be listening with me, but they’re secondary. I have an audience of one in mind: my mother. It’s a relief that Adrienne didn’t hear it.

  “I’m proud of you,” Mrs. Albright says once the song ends. “You’ve done well with composition assignments, but you never produced anything like this.”

  “It helped that I didn’t have time to overthink it,” I say.

  Dr. Whelan smiles. “That’s a good point. How can you express yourself more without ‘overthinking,’ as you put it?”

  “I do in orchestra. I wish I could spend the whole day there.” I hope they don’t check my attendance and notice my complete avoidance of English class, where they’re reading A Separate Peace, exploring themes of death, guilt, and grief.

  “You could do that if you attended one of the conservatories,” Mrs. Albright says.

  I glance at the clock, losing faith that Adrienne will show, and listen to them discuss the benefits of my transferring. A moot point after talking to Dad.

  “You’re sure she’s coming?” Dr. Whelan asks.

  “I think so,” I say.

  Mr. Klein walks in as Mrs. Albright says good-bye. He looks nothing like an art teacher. His gray buzz cut is more suited for the ROTC recruiting officers stationed at the top of the concrete stairs in front of the school cafeteria. He wears an industrial apron over his neat slacks and polo shirt. Paintbrushes peek from the apron pocket.

  “No Adrienne?” he asks. “She missed class today.”

  “I’m surprised,” Dr. Whelan says. “Did you know that?” she asks me.

  “No. She made something. She worked really hard on it. She’ll be here.”

  Please come, Adrienne, please.

  “I thought you’d like to see some more of her work.” Mr. Klein lifts sheet after sheet of drawings, some in charcoal, others in pencil. “Here’s what she made yesterday. She’s discovered Los Dias de Muertos. Day of the Dead. It’s her strongest work yet.”

  I can’t stand to look at Mom in skeleton form, with protruding cheekbones and clavicle, jutting joints as pronounced as the Rocky Mountains, hills and valleys once occupied by muscle and flesh. In the sketch, a crown of bright flowers sits upon her head, and Adrienne’s dressed Mom in a frock as festive as a piñata. Three dead babies, helpless skeletons, writhe on the ground. One sketch after another, all bare bones, violence parading as pageantry.

  He collects Adrienne’s sketches, rolls them closed, and secures the paper with a rubber band. Just like the photos, I can’t look at them, at any version of Mom’s face.

  Adrienne appears in the room—finally. I recognize the glass panes and clipped pictures, which she assembled into a building, model scale, just like Dad’s architectural work. Before I get a closer look, her elbow hits a bookshelf and her project crashes to the ground.

  I rush to her and see blood dripping from a gash in her left palm
. “You’re hurt,” I say.

  “I don’t care. I just care about my piece.”

  Shards of glass scatter across the floor, but the structure is still intact. Adrienne starts to cry. Mr. Klein first helps her up and then, with great care, he lifts the piece and puts it on the desk. Dr. Whelan retrieves a first aid kit and delivers it to Mr. Klein. While he bandages Adrienne’s hand, I clear the glass from the floor. Adrienne doesn’t stop crying.

  I wonder what aches more: Adrienne’s wounded hand or the disappointment of the broken project.

  “How deep is the cut?” Dr. Whelan asks. “Do you need to go to the emergency room?”

  “I don’t think so,” Adrienne says, her eyes still full of tears.

  Mr. Klein nods in agreement. “It isn’t deep. The hand bleeds a lot. Like the head.”

  “I’m sorry I was late. I’ve been working on this for hours. I didn’t sleep. I got the idea from this office,” Adrienne says as she points to the orchids. Blood seeps through the bandage.

  “You’re here. That’s what matters,” Dr. Whelan says.

  Mr. Klein gestures at the piece. “Go on. Continue,” Mr. Klein says.

  “It’s a greenhouse. See?” She runs her index finger over the roof.

  So that’s what she was doing with the glass. She assembled an A-frame structure with wood and metal, fusing picture frames together. Inside, flowerbeds shaped like coffins cover the floor. Felt flowers lie on the beds, resting like dead bodies rather than plants growing upright. Mom’s face blooms on each flower. Marigold petals cover the floor.

  “Your mother?” Dr. Whelan asks.

  Adrienne nods.

  “You look just like her,” she says.

  “I know.”

  Half of the glass panes are shattered or cracked, but the interior is untouched. I didn’t see it before, but I like the way it’s cracked, like it survived a hurricane, like it’s ancient but still standing.

  “You did a magnificent job,” Mr. Klein says. “Everything is the correct scale. The repetition is powerful. What glue did you use?”