At Risk Part 1

At Risk.

Alice Hoffman.

There is a wasp in the kitchen. Drawn by the smell of apricot jam, lazy from the morning's heat, the wasp hovers above the children. All through town a yellow light is cast over the green lawns and the rhododendrons. By dusk there will be a storm, with raindrops that are surprisingly cold, but of course by then the birds in the backyards and out on the marsh will have taken flight. Where do birds go in the rain? How do they disappear so thoroughly? Already, the sparrows in the chestnut tree are restless. They're not fooled by the pure yellow light any more than they're fooled by this Jast burst of August heat.

"Look at her abdomen," Charlie says of the wasp. "It's full of eggs."

Amanda, who at eleven is older than her brother by three years, puts a dish towel over her head. "Get it out of here!" she says. "Kill it now, and I mean it."

"No way," Charlie says. He is a collector of specimens, a lover of anything mildly revolting: frogs, insects in bottles, bats' wings, centipedes. "I don't have to take orders from someone who still wears braces," Charlie informs his sister.

"Mom," Amanda yells.

The wasp, startled, flees to the ceiling.

"Oh, great," Charlie moans. He stands up on his chair and lifts the jam jar into the air to tempt the wasp from her hiding place.

"You are really disgusting," Amanda tells Charlie. "Mom!" she yells.

"Chicken," Charlie says to his sister.

"Moron," Amanda counters.

Their mother, Polly Farrell, who is out in the garden, can hear the children arguing. It's been hard, but she has trained herself to tune out their squabbles; otherwise she'd spend most of her time refer-eeing. She never pays her garden much attention either, but this year the voles obviously found the small untended patch fascinating. In the hardware section of the corner store, Jack Larson told her to bury sticks of dynamite under her vegetables, and the smell of sulfur would scare away the voles. But the idea of her vegetables resting on explosives made Polly too uncomfortable. Instead, she stuck blue-tipped kitchen matches around each plant. Needless to say, whole stalks of broccoli and all of her carrots and lettuce have disappeared underground. The only thing the voles wouldn't touch were the zucchini, and they've gone berserk. Polly has been putting zucchini into everything, and by now her children can ferret it out no matter how well she disguises it. Last night she deep-fried it and tried to pa.s.s it off as onion rings, but Charlie immediately removed the doughy breading and unmasked the zucchini. Amanda has taken a recent vow not to eat anything green.

Polly snaps off two large zucchini and hides them under her white cotton shirt. Tonight she plans to chop the zucchini up and sneak it into the meatloaf. She has to do something. Thin green tendrils are climbing up the chicken-wire fence around the garden, and even her husband, Ivan, who'll eat just about anything, b.u.t.tered, burned, or stale, is starting to complain and search through the freezer for packages of French beans and mixed Italian vegetables. Before she opens the screen door, Polly wipes her hands on her faded blue jeans; as soon as she's inside, she ducks into the pantry and hides the zucchini she's picked behind a row of cereal boxes.

"Mom, this is really serious," Amanda calls. "I really mean it."

Polly straightens her shirt and comes into the kitchen. She pulls the dish towel off Amanda's head so that her daughter's blond hair stands straight up from her scalp in pale, spokelike strands. Polly quickly feels Amanda's forehead. Amanda has been dragging around a summer cold since June and, although she insists her throat no longer hurts, her forehead is still warm.

"I want you to take some Tylenol," Polly says. "Now."

"Charlie has a wasp in here," Amanda says.

Polly looks up at the ceiling. "Charlie!" she says. She pulls Charlie down from the chair.

"I didn't bring her in the house," Charlie insists.

"She flew in all by herself. And anyway," he tells his sister, "she has as much right to live here as you do."

Polly, who's allergic to bee stings, steps toward the doorway just in case the wasp shoots down toward her.

"Ivan," she calls. "A wasp!"

"A what?" Ivan calls back.

Amanda and Charlie look at each other and try not to laugh; it's their mother's main complaint, their father hears only what he wants to hear.

"Very funny," Polly says to the children. "A wasp," she shouts.

"A female," Charlie yells. "She's got about a zillion eggs in her abdomen." Charlie then looks at his mother apologetically. "That ought to get him in here," he explains.

Ivan comes into the kitchen and shoos them all out. He's tall, with that posture reserved for tall men; he resembles a stork when he runs. To Polly, Ivan still looks as young as he did when they met, though he was thirty-eight last March. No matter how annoyed she is with him, and she's often annoyed, particularly because Ivan has grown more forgetful and in some odd way less involved with her, Polly still loves the way he looks, more so because she knows Ivan never gives his appearance a second thought. He's happiest wearing frayed sweaters and unwashed chinos,- he'd never have his hair cut if Polly didn't remind him.

"Your hero approaches the wasp," Ivan says.

"Oh, yeah!" the children shout gleefully from the hallway.

"Right above you!" Polly says.

The children peer into the kitchen and giggle as their father grabs a colander from the counter and puts it over his head.

"Protective measures," Ivan calls through the holes in the colander.

After he opens the windows and the back door, Ivan rolls up a newspaper then gets onto a chair. He waves the newspaper at the wasp, but Polly can tell he's not really aiming at the d.a.m.ned thing. He doesn't want to hurt it.

"Ivan,", Polly says coldly. At this moment he is hardly her hero. "Just kill it."

Ivan removes the colander from his head so he can look at her. He has to crouch so he won't hit the ceiling.

"You want to try?" he suggests.

"Do it your way," Polly says, and she leaves the children there to watch Ivan gently coax the wasp out an open window while she goes off to hunt for her car keys.

It's a good thing August is almost over. They have had all summer together and are long past the point of getting on each other's nerves. There's been a mood of dissatisfaction in the house; the days have been too hot and too long, there's been too much timie left open for arguments. Ivan, who's an astronomer, usually divides his time between his own research and teaching a graduate seminar at the inst.i.tute he helped to found. This summer he's had no cla.s.ses and has been working on a paper he will present at a conference in Florida in a few weeks. Ivan is not pleased with the paper, which he's been aimlessly rewriting, or with the fact that he has been scheduled as one of the last speakers, at an hour so late that most of the other astronomers will have already left the state. Polly is no happier with her work. She feels vaguely embarra.s.sed by it and has kept it a secret from people like her parents, who she knows would disapprove. She's involved in what the children have dubbed the Casper Project: photographing the seances of a local medium, working with Betsy Stafford, an author whose books her photographs have ill.u.s.trated twice before. But Charlie is the most discontented of all. He's spent the past two months perfecting his obnoxious behavior with too much TV and with collecting a bas.e.m.e.ntful of specimens, including some field mice Polly can hear squeaking at night. Charlie complains that his parents favor Amanda and treat him like a baby,- the only person he can stand to be with is his best friend, Sevrin, Betsy Stafford's son. But whenever the boys are together, and they're together night and day, they do something irresponsible&mdashtrack a skunk -through the woods or bike through heavy traffic to the mall&mdashwhich only proves Ivan and Polly right when they refuse Charlie privileges.

Amanda is the only one with any real purpose this summer. She has dedicated herself to gymnastics and has gone from the self-conscious beginner she was last year to one of the best students in the gymnastics camp the elementary school has been running this summer. Amanda cannot walk through a parking lot without balancing on the raised yellow dividers,- the swing hanging from the willow tree in the yard has been replaced by a wooden bar. It still amazes Polly that this girl who can throw herself onto the uneven parallel bars with a grace that is almost like flight is her daughter. Somehow, while Polly wasn't looking, Amanda became her own person. When she watches her daughter compete, Polly feels what Laurel Smith, the medium she has been photographing, calls the "cold hand," a piercing physical reaction to something extraordinary. At those times Amanda is not the child Polly covers at night with an extra quilt, the girl who leaves her leotards on the floor, who has to be cajoled into going to the orthodontist. She is a creature Polly cannot name, one made up not of flesh but of points of brilliant light.

"You'd rather have Daddy get stung than kill that stupid wasp," Amanda says to Charlie after the wasp has been directed out the window and car keys and backpacks and gym bags have all been collected. .

Amanda looks over at Ivan, concerned. It's a look Polly has been noticing a lot more often lately. Suddenly, Amanda is interested in how Ivan feels and what he thinks. When he talks, Amanda listens. When Polly talks, Amanda puts on her Walkman. And, Polly knows, it's only the beginning. By the time Amanda is fourteen, Polly will be lucky if her daughter speaks to her, never mind listens to her. Polly remembers only too well when she cut off her own mother, Claire. In her memory still, it's as if she had two mothers: the warm person she loved to touch and be near and the weak, disappointing creature she realized her mother was as soon as Polly turned thirteen. Of course, circ.u.mstances were different. Claire had already disappointed Polly, but Polly has never wavered from her adolescent a.s.sessment of Claire, and now that worries her. Amanda was an easy child, the kind who edges onto your lap, who never had to be told to hold hands when crossing the street. Sooner or later, she'll have to hate her mother, and all Polly can hope for is that their break will be temporary, that it won't cause any permanent damage.

While Ivan guides the children out the back door, Polly taps down the broken porch step with the heel of her shoe. The house is white, with black shutters; the porch ceiling is a soft blue, as though a wedge of the noonday' sky had been caught inside the wood. With its oval windows on the stair landings and its wide, sloping floorboards, it's the kind of house Polly always dreamed of having as a child. But Charlie and Amanda take it for granted and treat it badly. They slam doors and complain about drafts; their idea of a great house is something modem and sleek, with skylights and lofts and cable TV.

"You really make me sick," Amanda tells her brother.

"Thank you," Charlie says, with a formal bow.

Originally, Polly and Ivan moved up to Cape Ann from Boston for the children. But, as it turns out, they're the ones who have become most attached. It's not only the house they fell in love with but the town. Morrow has a wicked history, one the children have no interest in, a history prettily disguised by the large white sea captains' houses, and the town common ringed with shops, and the day-trippers up from Boston all summer, here for the wide, smooth beaches. Whether or not two witches were drowned in the pond in the center of the common is uncertain, but many towns in Ma.s.sachusetts could claim that heritage. What nearly turned Morrow into a ghost town was the influenza epidemic after World War I. Whole families perished in single rooms. Children were lost one after another, wives locked themselves in attics so they would not infect their husbands. For years afterward no one was interested-in the sea captains' houses or the summer cottages, even though the -reason they were abandoned was long forgotten. In the sixties newcomers from Boston who knew nothing of the epidemic began to buy up houses, cheap, and some of the vegetarian restaurants and craft shops they opened are still in operation, though their prices are much higher now. The school superintendent began to hire Harvard graduates, who, in a later era, might have gone on to business or law school, but who, in 1965, were drawn to a small town where their dogs could run free and summers could be spent digging clams and getting suntans. By the time Polly and Ivan were looking for a house, Morrow's school district had been rated among the top ten in the Commonwealth. That alone was reason to move.

Of course, the children tell them often enough how they plan to leave town as soon as they turn eighteen. Amanda wants to live in Manhattan. Charlie alternates between Alaska and California.

"Good. Go. I'll pay for your plane fare," Ivan tells them during arguments when they taunt him with how much distance they intend to put between themselves and their parents once they're free to do as they please. But when the children are in bed, and Polly and Ivan sit out on the porch and watch lightning bugs drift through the bushes, they find themselves wishing they could stop time and keep Amanda and Charlie children forever.

Impossible, and yet they hope.

"No Laurel Smith today?" Ivan teases Polly as she gets the kids into the Blazer.

"Don't make fun of Laurel," Polly tells Ivan. She leans on the open door of the Blazer, only now remembering she has an appointment to take it in for new shocks this afternoon.

"I knew it!" Ivan says. "You're falling for her garbage. You're so suggestible."

"I am not," Polly says.

This summer, Polly had her long, dark hair cut into short layers with the idea of facing up to her thirty-sixth birthday, but instead of making her. look her age, the new haircut has her looking as young as a graduate student.

"I suggest we send them off in a cab and go back to bed," Ivan whispers.

Polly grins at him, not taking his proposal seri--ously.

"You make time for Laurel Smith," Ivan complains. , "That's work," Polly says, 'annoyed.

"Mom," Amanda calls from the backseat, "I don't want to be the last one there."

"She doesn't want to be the last one there," Polly tells Ivan, grateful for a way out of a conversation which, she knows, will end with Ivan accusing her of what he himself is guilty of: too many hours spent working.

"A fate worse than death," Ivan says. He kisses Polly and Polly kisses him back. Before Ivan moves away, she quickly bites his lip.

"That's for being mean about my job," Polly says as she gets into the car.

"I was not mean," Ivan insists. He leans in the window and kisses Amanda, walks around the Blazer toward the ancient Karmann-Ghia he refuses to give up, then leans into Charlie's window. "It's just that I'm medium cool about Laurel Smith," he puns, and the children both let out a groan. .

"Dad, that was pathetic," Charlie says.

"Let me out of here," Ivan says. "I'm going where I'm appreciated."

"Oh, yeah?" Polly grins, knowing how unappreciated Ivan has been feeling lately. "Where's that?"

"Mother, do you have to argue?" Amanda says from the backseat.

Ivan and Polly stare at each other. One of them is amused; the other isn't. . ; "Don't gloat," Polly tells Ivan. "You'll be the one they turn on next."

Ivan'grins and gets into his car. He waves as he backs out of the driveway, and after he's gone Polly reaches for her sungla.s.ses and heads for the Cheshire School. Charlie sits glumly beside her; as always, he is going with them against his will. As far as he's concerned, anyone who isn't his best friend, Sevrin, is just a pain in the neck. As she's backing down the driveway, Polly gets a glimpse of Amanda's thoughtful, unreadable face in the rear-view mirror. Amanda is always distant before a meet; her nervousness takes the form of an unearthly calm so that Polly has to say everything to her twice before Amanda hears her.

There's a seance today, which Polly is missing, but it's worth it. She has been photographing stances&mdashwhat Laurel Smith calls readings&mdashsince June, and so far not one spirit has appeared on film. Polly has tried slower shutter speeds and faster film, she has switched from color to black-and-white. Some of the photographs, though ghost free, are remarkable. In several Laurel Smith, who is a few years younger than Polly, is completely unrecognizable. There's a photograph in which she looks like an old, dark woman and another in which she doesn't appear to be more than a child, with her heavy, pale hair fanned out behind her as though dripping with water. The one photograph Polly has found herself going back to again and again was taken during a reading in which Laurel had contacted a client's husband who was killed in a car crash. Without a doubt, in that photograph, there is a scar along Laurel Smith's forehead.

"Either she's a great actress," Polly once told Betsy Stafford, "or something real is going on here."

Betsy, who is much more of a cynic than Polly, had smiled and said, "You'll have to wait and read the book to find out the answer." Even after she'd seen some of the photographs, Betsy had refused to admit that Laurel might be anything but a charlatan. "Let's just accept Laurel for what she is," Betsy insisted. "A nut."

Polly will always be grateful to Betsy because Betsy is the one who pulled Polly out of her indecision about whether or not to become a professional, an act for which there will never be enough thanks. Their first collaboration&mdashan activity book for preschoolers&mdashwas begun after the two women met through their sons, both in the same nursery school. Charlie and Sevrin have remained best friends, yet the relationship between their mothers remains professional by choice, even though Polly knows, via Charlie, all sorts of odd and intimate details about Betsy's life she might otherwise not know: That she allows the sugary breakfast cereals Polly frowns on. That Betsy's husband, Frank, an attorney who commutes into Boston, often does not get home until past nine and when he and Betsy fight they don't bother to close the bedroom door. They curse when they fight, loudly. Charlie's told her so.

Polly admits to being the pa.s.sive partner. Betsy is the one who writes the proposals, then goes out and gets the book contracts, and afterward hires Polly. So perhaps it is not a partnership at all, except that it feels like one. Particularly since their last book, an in-depth study of coping with death, is a choice Polly herself would have never made. She almost turned down the project, but the fee was too seductive, enough to pay for gymnastics camp and orthodontists and hamster cages for years to come. After photographing her first terminal patient, Polly spent half an hour throwing up by the side of the road. It never got easier, whether the sessions were in a hospital, a hospice, or the subject's home. Only two of the people she photographed have not yet died, an elderly woman with cancer and a young man in Boston with an inoperable tumor at the base of his skull. Both write to Polly occasionally, and she always writes back, but she never looks at the finished book, though it is the project that allowed her to say no, now and forever, to photographing birthday parties and weddings.

The book about Laurel Smith was supposed to cheer them up. A lighter book, it was to be a mild debunking. It has not turned out that way. Laurel looks more like a librarian than a medium and, seances aside, her behavior is extremely sensible. She has long blond hair like Amanda's, and deep-set gray eyes. She never bothers with makeup, and Polly has never seen her wear any jewelry other than two rings, one a Small pearl set in gold, the other a thin silver band. Though her clients seem willing to pay any amount necessary to reach the spirits they long to contact, Laurel never changes her fee. No matter how rich her client, she always charges two hundred dollars for a reading. Betsy, who unbeknownst to Laurel has been researching her background and discovered a small trust fund left to Laurel by her parents, doesn't give Laurel any credit for generosity. But Polly is not so quick to judge her. There have been times, inside Laurel's cottage, when Polly has found herself believing in an afterlife. She tells herself it is the powerful conviction of Laurel's clients, all so desperately convinced whoever they have loved and lost can be reached, that affects her. Or it is the place itself, the movement of reeds and cattails in the marsh, the way the light falls and is caught inside the pearl Laurel wears on her finger.

By the time Polly drives into the parking lot at the elementary school, the heat has begun to drift up from the asphalt in snaky waves. The gla.s.s windows along the gym look smoky and dark, making the place seem empty, but it's just an illusion. The windows have been treated to keep out the sun; on the other side of the gla.s.s, the gym is already filling up with parents. Polly knows she can't stop Amanda from becoming a teenager, but she's thankful that the combined high school and junior high is on the other side of town, so that Amanda will be protected from mixing with high school students for another year: Amanda gets out of the car, carrying her pink nylon gym bag like a professional, slinging it over her arm, hajdly noticing its weight. Strands of her hair have slipped out of the elastic band that holds her ponytail. This is the last meet of the summer, and Amanda is excited about her best three events: floor exercise, the balance beam, and vaulting. In her bag she has her ca.s.sette ready, Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf." Amanda is sweating too much; the heat is bothering her, or maybe she's more nervous than she'd thought. When she woke up this morning her sheets were drenched with sweat. She wants to win this meet. She doesn't mention the Olympics anymore because people like her parents get sappy, patronizing looks on their faces when she does. She knows hundreds of other girls dream of going to Texas and having Bela Karo-lyi as their coach, but Amanda is actually saving her money. All she wants is one audition. If he tells her she's not good enough, she'll have to accept it.

Of course the truth is, she can't imagine him telling her that.

"Knock them dead," Polly tells her when they reach the door to the,school. She hugs Amanda tightly, and when Amanda runs off to the locker room, Polly and Charlie head over to the gym. Charlie continues to read as he walks up the bleachers; it drives Polly crazy that he doesn't watch where he's going, but she bites her tongue. She's learned to save her reprimands, to dole them out carefully, in the hopes that they might actually count for something.

When they find a place in the bleachers, Charlie takes off his backpack and sits down, then unzips the backpack and gets out another dinosaur book. He is a Tyiannosaums rex devotee. He can tell you how long a tyrannosaurus's teeth measured and exactly where paleontologists have gathered his remains. Charlie is a lot like his father was at that age. Ivan always says that the sure sign of a budding scientist is that he carries books everywhere he goes so he won't have to be bored by people.

"Polly, I'm hearing strange things about you."

It is Evelyn Crowley's mother, Fran. The Crow-leys live across the street from the Farrells, and Evelyn is one of Cheshire's top compet.i.tors, especially in the uneven parallel bars, around which she throws her small body with a vengeance. Fran sits down next to Polly. "The occult?" Fran says.

Outside, the temperature hovers around ninety, but here in the gym it's at least five degrees hotter, and the compet.i.tion hasn't even started. Polly hopes Fran will think her face is flushed with heat, not embarra.s.sment.

"If you mean I'm photographing Laurel Smith, you're right," Polly says, more coolly than she means to. "It's pretty darned occult," she adds with a laugh.

"I wish I had had the sort of dedication these girls have when I was young," Fran says as the locker-room doors are swung open.

"Maybe they're just stupid," Charlie says without looking up from his book.

Polly and Fran have been friends for years&mdash which is probably why Amanda and Evelyn can't stand each other&mdashbut Polly doesn't mind that Charlie has insulted her, she isn't even bothered by the fact that Charlie is clearly more interested in extinct reptiles than in his sister's success. The girls have begun to file in from the locker room, and Polly can't help it, she's nervous. There are fifteen gymnasts from Amanda's program, another fifteen from a school in Gloucester. In their leotards, the girls seem awkward and uncomfortable as the onlookers cheer. Amanda is easy to spot because she is the blondest and, at five feet two, one of the tallest. Some of the girls smile when they spy a parent in the audience, but Amanda, always conscious of her braces, keeps her mouth firmly closed. Polly knows Amanda hopes she won't grow any more; the smaller the gymnast is, the better her chances of staying in the sport. Amanda is second in line to vault the horse and she does so easily, with real power and grace. Polly claps her hands so hard they hurt.

"Don't embarra.s.s her, Mom," Charlie tells her.

Amanda is less sure of herself on the uneven parallel bars, but certainly she's better than most. One poor girl falls at the very start of her routine, and she falls hard, turning one of her ankles so badly she can't continue. Even Charlie looks up when she lurches out of the gym in tears. Polly is thankful that it's somebody else's daughter who's fallen and not hers, and then is disturbed by how much she feels like a stage mother. She realizes that her fists are clenched. A square of sunlight from the highest window in the gym settles on the polished wooden floor. Polly unclenches her fists when Amanda finishes her routine on the balance beam. She has gotten the highest score so far, but afterward Amanda sits down near a pile of mats and the coach kneels down beside her. Polly worries that something is wrong, but soon Amanda gets up and goes over to her team, where she waits for her last event, her best: floor exercise.

"Our girls are terrific," Fran says to Polly. And Polly agrees. If she were the judge she'd be hard-pressed to decide between the two. Perhaps that's why it's possible for her and Fran to sit together at meets. All along the bleachers other mothers, and a few fathers, are intent on watching only their own daughters.

Charlie's knees are pulled up to form a table and his book lies open upon them. His hair, cut short, is damp with sweat. Polly thinks she recognizes a drawing of a hadrosaurus. She knows most of the dinosaurs by now, knows which were fierce carnivores and which ate only marsh plants. She would like to put her arm around Charlie, but, knowing he would be mortified, instead rests her hand against his knee. Charlie looks up at her, misreading her cue, ready to leave. Then they both hear the first beats of "Hungry Like the Wolf." Charlie makes a face.

"Can't you put that book away?" Polly whispers.

"No," Charlie says, "I can't."

He has read this book dozens of times and is no less interested than he was the first time through. Sometimes his lips move when he reads, and Polly knows he is memorizing facts. When she looks at him, Polly often gets a vision of him as a toddler, solemnly counting stones or beads, content to watch a spider build her web, his nature already so set that his first word, spoken at a pond, was not "mama" or "dada" but "quack."

Amanda begins her routine with a roundoff, two back handsprings, and a backflip. Polly, who swims, but is otherwise not athletic, feels that spooky, cold sensation along the back of her neck. Amanda's feet barely touch the mat. She does a forward roll, then a handstand and full pirouette. There is some scattered applause. The girls on the other team are watching her carefully; it's a terrific performance and everyone knows it. Polly's eyes feel hot. When Amanda is through she bows, beautifully. Polly doesn't give a d.a.m.n whom she'll embarra.s.s, she gets to her feet and applauds.

"Not bad," Charlie admits grudgingly when Polly sits back down.

Polly grins and gives him a shove. When Amanda is announced as the highest scorer, Polly stands again and applauds. Other parents are standing up on the bleachers below her and Polly has to strain to see Amanda, who's so composed you'd never guess she had won. Amanda bows, then quickly leaves the floor, as though now that the scoring is over, she has no interest in the gym.

"She deserved to win," Evelyn's mother tells Polly.

"They were all great," Polly says, with more generosity than she feels.

Polly aims Charlie toward the door and tells him she'll meet him out by the car. She greets several parents she knows on the floor, then stops to shake the coach's hand.