At Risk Part 6

Polly gets dressed, she even puts on some blush, but once the kids are out in the car she tells Ivan she has a headache. She can't go.

"Don't stay here alone," Ivan says at the door.

"I'll be fine," Polly tells him. "I'll do the laundry."

"Polly, come with us," Ivan says. He's begging her for something, and she doesn't have anything to give him.

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake!" Polly says. "Will you just go!"

He lets the screen door slam. Polly waits until she's certain he won't come back; then she goes around to every window and pulls down the shades or draws the curtains. She can't stop thinking about wasted time. She wants to scoop up all the hours teenage suicides give up and claim them for Amanda. The telephone rings, and Polly lets it go on ringing. It is probably that horrible group who want to keep Amanda out of school, or her father, who's been driving her insane. Al wants to come up with Claire for a weekend, a couple of days, maybe' a few weeks. While Polly is dragging Amanda to the hospital for blood tests, Al will shoot a few baskets with Charlie,- Claire will cook a stew. It's the last thing in the world Polly wants. She's always on guard when her parents visit&mdashif she weren't she might tell them what she thought of them&mdashand she doesn't have the energy to keep up her guard. If Claire and Al came up to stay, the children would know how bad things really are, and Polly will do just about anything to make their lives appear normal. She plans each meal for high nutritional value, carefully gauging how much Amanda eats of her lamb chop, her broccoli, her b.u.t.terscotch pudding. She tells the children their rooms are a mess, when she no longer cares at all, and insists they pick up after themselves. She reminds Charlie to take out the garbage, and she always stacks the supper dishes so Amanda can load the dishwasher. But all the time she's following their daily routine, what she'd like to do is hide both of her children and build a wall of cinderblocks around them so nothing can harm them.

The phone continues to ring, and Polly looks at it, imagining that it might explode. There's no one she wants to speak to, but the ringing drives her mad. What if it's Ed Reardon? What if he's discovered that Amanda's blood sample was mismarked at the lab and it's someone else's child who has tested positive? Polly picks up the phone and knows in an instant that she's made a mistake.

Her father.

"We want to come up for a visit this week," Al says.

He acts as though they haven't been through this a dozen times before.

"Daddy," Polly says tiredly. , "Your mother can pack a suitcase, including wrapping everything in tissue paper, in ten minutes flat."

This is no idle threat, Polly has seen her mother doit.

"Absolutely not," Polly says.

"Next weekend," Al says. "Well drive up Friday night."

"I'm going to hang up on you," Polly tells him.

"What have you got against us?" Al says. "What did we do to you that was so terrible?"

"Nothing," Polly says. "Look, I don't want Mom to be upset." .

It's nowhere near the truth and Al knows it; he laughs in a peculiar, dark way. Ever since her mother took him back, Polly has not trusted Claire to be anything but weak. That's exactly what they don't need now, a weak old woman crying in their kitchen.

"She's our granddaughter," Al says. "You can't stop us from helping."

"You ,do what you like," Polly says tightly. "You always have."

After she hangs up on her father, Polly starts to cry. When she was a child she didn't believe in bad luck. She thought her childhood was rotten because her parents didn't love her, and she couldn't wait to get out of their clutches. She was all wrong about luck, she sees that now, and it's frightening to think what else she may have been wrong about. When her parents come to visit she knows Claire will dust the night table in the guest room and then she'll set out the framed family photographs she always carries in her suitcase. There'll be a green garbage bag filled with the tissue paper she's used to pack Al's sweaters and shoes. The children will be delighted to see their grandparents, they always are. Polly cannot believe that Al and Claire lavished one-tenth of the attention on her that they give to Amanda and Charlie, but then quite suddenly, she thinks about the velvet cloche Claire made for her. Every st.i.tch was done by hand, small st.i.tches no one would ever see. It took a long time to make something so perfect, longer than Polly would ever have imagined.

That night, after the children are in bed, Ivan spreads his work out on the coffee table and starts to go over his lecture. He can hear Polly cleaning up in the kitchen,- he can hear the tap water running and the occasional clinking of dishes against each other. Ivan leans back against the couch and lets his arms go limp. There's no point in going over his work; all he can think about is blood and bones and antibodies. He's not going to Florida, and he'll never deliver his paper. He goes into the kitchen to tell Polly, but when he gets to the doorway he sees that she's not really rinsing off the dishes, she's just standing there, letting the water run so he'll think she's cleaning up. So he'll leave her alone. That's what she wants.

Ivan goes back through the living room; he grabs his jacket and his car keys and keeps on going, through the front door, which they never use. When he starts the Karmann-Ghia, smoke pours out of the exhaust pipe and the engine rumbles. Just above the sink, where Polly is standing, there is a window. She can see Ivan warming up the car,- she could stop him if she wanted to, at least ask him where he's going to. But she doesn't, she doesn't even try.

Ivan drives out to Red Slipper Beach. Two small deer run in front of his car, and he has to brake suddenly.

He parks at the observatory alongside an old beat-up Mustang, and he rolls down his window so he can listen to the ocean. It's low tide and the odor of seaweed is strong. Ivan doesn't know if he's been avoiding his colleagues or if they've been avoiding him, but he feels as if he hasn't talked to another human being for weeks, other than the perfunctory conversations he's had with Polly, meaningless talk about the new clothes she's bought for the kids or the cost of the new shocks for the Blazer. He can see one of the graduate students, a kid named Sandy, locking up the observatory. Sandy waves at Ivan as he gets into his car and Ivan waves back. He waits for the kid to leave and then he gets out of his car and walks to the observatory. In his wallet, shoved between two twenty-dollar bills, is a phone number he's been carrying around for days. Max Lyman at the inst.i.tute gave him the number. Max's cousin is a social worker who helps staff an AIDS hotline in Boston, sponsored by a' gay organization Ivan's never heard of.

Everyone who enters the observatory is supposed to sign in, but tonight Ivan doesn't bother. He's not here to look at stars. - He goes into the office, switches on a desk lamp, and sits down in an old leather chair he's sat in a thousand times before. The phone receiver is cold when he picks it up, as cold as a telescope feels against the corners of your eye. When a human voice answers his call, Ivan's throat is so tight that what comes out doesn't sound like any recognizable language. But the voice on the other end of the line keeps talking, telling Ivan it's all right, he doesn't have to say anything right away, he can just go on crying. The voice belongs to a man named Brian, who staffs the phone two nights a week. The odd thing is, he doesn't even sound like a stranger, and maybe that's why it gets easier and easier for Ivan to call him, so that by the following week Ivan doesn't have to look for the paper with the hotline number.

He knows it by heart.

Amanda and Jessie always sit next to each other in cla.s.s. They have been best friends for three years, and they can slip notes to each other so fast a teacher would have to have X-ray vision to catch them. On the morning of the first day of school, Jessie is already waiting when Polly drives up in front of the school. Amanda and Jessie have carefully planned their outfits; they're wearing matching polka-dot dresses identical in all ways, except that Amanda's dress has been painstakingly ironed by her Grandma Claire, up for a visit over the long Labor Day weekend.

It was not quite the disaster that Polly imagined, even though Claire, who has never believed that dishwashers do as good a job as she can, managed to wash the dishes by hand every time Polly turned her back and Al has sworn to return and fix the broken porch step. Al played endless rounds of Monopoly with Charlie and lost every game, and on Sunday he drove Amanda and Jessie to the theater at the mall and took them to see a movie their parents had forbidden them to see. On Monday evening, when her parents were getting ready to leave, Polly felt that she was being abandoned. She insisted that her parents stay for dinner, even though this meant they would hit the worst of the Labor Day traffic returning to New York. It is terrible to admit, or even to think about, but she's afraid to be alone with Ivan.

Every day he seems like more of a stranger. He disappears at odd hours, he's been avoiding going to the inst.i.tute, and he has started Amanda on a strict regimen of large doses of folic acid and vitamin C. Once, while Polly was searching in his backpack for a pen, she found a folder filled with articles about alternative therapies for AIDS patients. Startled, she dropped the folder on the floor. This is not at all like Ivan, who has always put his faith in science, in medicine, in tested and proven remedies. Amanda complains about the vitamins, she says they make her gag, but Ivan insists; he gives her gla.s.ses of Gatorade and Hawaiian Punch to wash down the capsules. When Polly suggested they talk with Ed about the vitamins and the high-fiber diet Ivan's demanded they all go on, Ivan refused. What can he offer us, Ivan asked her. Nothing.

So far, five children have been registered at private schools, pulled out of Cheshire before the first day of cla.s.ses. Although Linda Gleason phones Polly each time there's a parents' or teachers' meeting, Polly doesn't bother going to them,- she can't waste the time better spent at home, with Amanda. She pities Linda Gleason, who has to try to keep everything under control, but she pities the princ.i.p.al from a distance; it's not unlike watching a puppet show.

From where she's parked, in front of the school, Polly can see two people on the sidewalk, each handing out pamphlets to parents. One of them, a woman in a blue cotton dress, looks familiar; Polly thinks her child may have been in nursery school with Charlie. Polly is not about to let Amanda go in there alone, but as soon as Polly starts to get out of the car, Amanda has a fit.

"You can't walk in there with me," Amanda insists.

"Is there a rule against it?" Polly says. "I see parents out there."

Charlie grabs his backpack and looseleaf and takes this opportunity to escape.

"See you," he shouts, and as he gets out Amanda shoots him a dirty look.

-"I'll just walk you to the door," Polly says. It is bad enough to be separated from Amanda for an entire day. Impossible to let her walk past these people leafleting against her.

"Mother!" Amanda says. "I'm in sixth grade!"

Amanda's braids are so tight Polly can see her clean scalp. The back of her neck is soft and pale. Out on the sidewalk, Jessie is waiting, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

"I'll pick you up at three," Polly says.

"Four," Amanda says.

"Four? "Polly says.

"It's the first day of practice," Amanda explains. "I don't want you to make a big deal out of it,"

Amanda leans over and kisses her good-bye, but Polly can feel her bursting to get out of the car. Amanda opens the door and runs to Jessie. When the girls reach each other, they cling together and squeal.

"My mother wanted to walk me into school," Amanda confides. She looks back and waves at Polly. Polly waves back, then forces herself to drive on.

"Oh, G.o.d," Jessie says with real feeling.

"I don't look sick, do I?" Amanda says.

"You look great," Jessie says. "Your dress looks fantastic."

Amanda smiles, but when they get to the door she feels scared. Scared she might throw up or something worse. She hesitates, until Jessie says, "If anyone says anything mean to you, I'll hit them."

Amanda laughs at that, especially because Jessie is so small. It's strange, but even when she laughs she feels something hot behind her eyes. Sometimes she holds her breath and tries to imagine what it's like to be dead. How would it be to leave her body behind? She has never believed in heaven, but now she wonders. Sleep, white clouds, wings. Could she actually believe in that? No, she does not. It's easier to think about becoming one with the earth. She could believe that; out of her body will come gra.s.s, roses, black-eyed Susans. She could almost believe that, if it weren't happening to her.

"Don't look behind you;" Jessie Eagan says in the hallway.

Amanda peeks over her shoulder and sees a boy in their grade. Keith Davies.

"He's staring at you!" Jessie whispers loudly, excited.

"No he's not," Amanda says, but when she looks he is staring at her. He's dopey-looking, but sort of cute, too.

"Sixth grade is the best grade ever," Jessie says.

"Yeah," Amanda agrees. "Are you ready?"

"Ready," Jessie says, although as they walk into their cla.s.sroom, they momentarily forget that they are sixth-graders and hold hands.

At two forty-five, Amanda and Jessie head over to the gym, their identical pink gym bags slung over their shoulders.

"Oh, no, not Charlie," Jessie says dramatically when they see him, standing in front pf the gym.

Amanda is puzzled when Charlie doesn't have a fast comeback. He can usually create a nasty pun on Jessie's name in no time flat. Amanda herself is in good spirits, no one said anything awful to her, and her teacher, who Amanda thinks is too pretty and young to be a teacher, called her aside and told her that it was a pleasure to have her in cla.s.s and that if she missed any time her work could be sent home to be made up. Amanda doesn't intend to miss any time. She's a little nervous about gymnastics practice, and she hopes the aching in her legs won't mess her up and push her way back in the rankings.

"Well, what is it?" she says to Charlie. She doesn't actually want to be seen talking to a third-grader. Charlie shrugs, so Amanda turns to Jessie and says,-"I'll meet you in the locker room."

"All right," Jessie says, going on ahead, "but my dad's going to let you have it if you're late."

"What's wrong?" Amanda asks Charlie.

Charlie shrugs again. He has a creepy feeling in his stomach.

"Come on," Amanda says. She can hear the coach setting up in the gym. -The exercise mats. .h.i.t the floor, then whoosh as they're rolled out flat.

"Sevrin's not in school," Charlie says.

"So what?" Amanda says. "Call him and see if . he's okay."

"He's never home when I call," Charlie says.

Amanda feels in her gym bag to make certain she hasn't forgotten her tape. She hopes the coach doesn't give her a hard time about Madonna the way he sometimes does when someone wants to set her routine to rock-and-roll.

"Well, just go on over to his house then," Amanda tells Charlie.

Charlie looks at her and blinks. He should have thought of that.

"Yeah," he says.

"Try using your brain once in a while," Amanda says. Then she runs off to the locker room. As she's hurrying, she realizes two girls from the team, Sue Sherman and Evelyn Crowley, are staring at her. Amanda faces away and quickly pulls on her leotard. She wishes she were wearing a bra, but her mother thinks she's too young.

"They know you're the one to beat," Jessie Eagan says as she comes up beside Amanda.

Amanda nods and clips her hair up with a silver barrette. She had not thought about other people looking at her as if she were sick and she feels self-conscious as she walks into the gym with Jessie. She goes to the barre and does some warm-up stretches,- because she hasn't practiced as much as she should have, her ligaments feel unusually tight. As she warms up, the coach starts yelling at some new girls, who are only fourth-graders, to take off their necklaces and charm bracelets.

"What do you think this is?" Jack Eagan shouts. "A fashion show?"

Amanda knows he has come up behind her and is watching her, so she bends even deeper. She's waiting for him to shout at her, but he doesn't. He could kick her off the team if he wanted to, because of her illness. She'has been thinking all summer about the meet next June, because it would help rank her in junior high. For a while she thought she wanted to be ranked first in her school so she could put it in her letter to Bela Karolyi when she wrote to him to beg him to take her on as his student. She has stopped thinking about trying to get Bela to be her coach, she has stopped thinking about junior high school. She wants to win the meet at the end of the term just to win it. When Amanda can't take being stared at any longer, she turns around and faces the coach. , "What am I doing wrong?" she says.

Caught off guard, Jack Eagan laughs. "You-must think I'm pretty mean," he says, and when Amanda doesn't answer, he laughs again. He leans against the walls and nods to the uneven parallel bars.

"That's the most dangerous piece of equipment in the gym." : He looks at Amanda from the corner of his eye. There have been moments when he's wished that Amanda were his daughter instead of Jessie. Not that he doesn't love Jessie, he does, but Amanda is a champion. It's not just that she's good, it's that she wants to win. Badly. Enough to give the sport her all; when she's here, she's in this gym and nowhere else. He's heard about this AIDS problem from Jessie, but even if the girls weren't best friends, he'd know by now. Schools are like that, information fans out quickly. Besides, his wife, Louise, has gotten a call from some group of protesters, although Jack Eagan can't quite see what there is to protest about.

"The thing is this," he says, uncomfortable, "if you're weak or you don't feel good, I don't want you to get hurt."

"You must think I'm really stupid," Amanda says.

She has never talked to the coach this way before. In fact, she's afraid of him. She avoids him when she's at Jessie's because he yells almost as much at home as he does in the gym. Jessie and Amanda have both wondered if he just can't talk in a normal voice anymore.

"I didn't say you were stupid," Jack Eagan says. He's watching a new girl, being spotted on the balance beam, "You're a champion. Champions don't let themselves feel pain. That's why I'm worried."

Amanda looks at him hard. Her mouth is dry. In the past he has criticized her when she's messed up, but she knows she's doing a good job only when he doesn't comment at all. He has never actually said anything positive.

"Are you just being nice to me because you feel sorry for me?" Amanda says hotly.

"You know I'm not nice," Jack Eagan says.

He wonders if she would have given up gymnastics. She might have grown too heavy or too tall, she might have decided to spend her time thinking about boys and schoolwork, might have grown tired of blisters on her hands and black-and-blue marks on her thighs. She might have grown up and left this all behind, anyway.

"Thought much about your floor exercise?" he asks.

He knows he should be out on the floor, giving his usual lecture, scaring all the new girls so they'll be at practice on time. He's been accused of favoring the good gymnasts, Amanda in particular, and why the h.e.l.l shouldn't he?

Amanda reaches into her gym bag and pulls out her Madonna tape. Jack Eagan squints to get a closer look. He cannot remember the last time he cried. He can't remember the last time he told his daughter he loved her.

"Oh, no!" he bellows now, so that the other girls on the floor all turn to them. "Not Madonna!"

Most of the girls in the gym start to giggle, and Amanda grins when Jack Eagan pretends to tear out what's left of his hair. Even Jessie, who's seen her father go through this routine a thousand times before, starts laughing.

"Anything but Madonna!" Jack Eagan shouts, as the team gathers around to examine Amanda's tape, making it possible for Jack to ask Amanda to go through her floor exercise fust, without having anyone accuse him of favoritism.

Charlie has already begun to bicycle over to Sevrin's. He takes the shortcut, through the woods. It still feels like summer, the air is heavy and warm and the scent of damp earth is strong, but it's an illusion. Some of the maples are already turning red. The oaks and locusts seem faintly yellow wherever sunlight touches their leaves. People come to Morrow from Boston and New York at this time of year to watch the migration of geese. That's how Charlie knows when summer's really over, when the marshes are thick with geese and their honking reverberates through backyards early in the mom-ing and at dusk.

When he gets to Sevrin's, Charlie gets off his bike, but he doesn't go up to the house. He has raced all the way and his face is hot. He sets the bike down near a quince bush and waits, although he's not certain what he's waiting for. He just can't walk up to the door and ring the bell. He feels stupid, and he gets down on his haunches to keep his presence from being too obvious. Betsy's car is in the driveway so Charlie knows that at least someone's home. He thinks he can see Sevrin's bike, out behind the garage.

Sevrin finally comes out. From where Charlie is crouched, Sevrin looks small as he lets Felix follow him out. He turns and says something to someone through the screen door, probably his mother, who is still inside. Charlie doesn't call out, but he stands up beside the quince. He feels a certain amount of relief. At least Sevrin hasn't been sent away to prison or military school. At least he hasn't gotten some incurable disease.

Sevrin goes around to the backyard and Charlie has to squint to see him. Sevrin whistles for the golden retriever, but Felix has picked up Charlie's scent and he ignores his owner.

"Over here, Felix!" Sevrin shouts.

Charlie doesn't know why he feels so bad, why there is a lump in his throat.

Felix races toward Charlie, and Sevrin stands with one hand shading his eyes, trying to make out what it is Felix is after. Felix doesn't only wag his tail, he wags his whole body. As soon as he recognizes Charlie, he jumps up and knocks Charlie backward on his heels. Charlie laughs and pushes the dog away. Sevrin has run over and he laughs when he sees Charlie struggling with Felix.