How to Be Brave (7 page)

The bus stops at the front entrance, where Hare Krishnas are dancing and chanting and jangling their bells between the bronze statues of two lions, who look like they've had enough.

We pay for our tickets and head inside, into the familiar central lobby where school groups and families and tourists shuffle up and down the mass of stairs that weave like a spider's geometric web under the echo of wide arches and towering columns. I'm instantly regretting this idea, not because we're about to get high, but more because I shouldn't be here like this.

This place is sacred.

It's more than a museum.

It's a church.

My mother's church.

She came here at least once each month, with or without my dad and me, and she walked and walked, meditating on the endless lines of art. Except for the day of their wedding, he never forced her to go to his Greek Orthodox church with him (though she did a few times each year), and I think it was because he understood that she didn't need the church's lessons; she had art. She had thousands and thousands of years of human life to meditate on. She had Picasso and Kandinsky. She had the Hindu sculptures of southern India and the Buddhist heads of Thailand. She had Chagall's blue windows and the rows and rows of armor and the fragile glass paperweights.

And now, here I am, about to desecrate her church.

Or am I?
This is what she wanted. This is what she told me to do.

“You okay, Georgia?” Liss reads me like no one else can.

I nod, and we head downstairs to the bathroom, where we go in the family stall and Evelyn hands us each a piece of brownie. I take one more. Liss takes two.

And then.

And then,

I'm light. And color. And shape. And form.

And I think everyone's looking at me. I think everyone knows.

And maybe they do.

And Picasso's women are thick and round and heavy.

And they're blue, so blue.

And I'm dripping down Pollock's paint.

And I'm a child on Seurat's lawn.

And I'm a dancer at the Moulin Rouge.

And I'm a leaf drowning in Monet's mist.

And Dal
í
is laughing at me.

And then,

my mother is there,

right there,

lounging in a striped red armchair,

her hips full and round,

her torso thick with color,

her eyes

a confusion of line and sphere,

but tender,

and warm.

They're smiling at me.

They are right there,

so close I can touch them.

*   *   *

The brownies start to wear off. We're leaning against a wall, staring at Chagall's blue window, and I'm exhausted—completely and utterly exhausted. “Can we go lie down somewhere or something?”

Evelyn nods and we follow her down a long back hallway to the new building, where the exit spits us out into the park. We find a tree and collapse under it. Everything is still weirdly bright—the leaves shake in their vivid yellows and oranges—but I can feel the ground, and the earth is there. It's spinning beneath me—I know that, too. But I also know I'm here. Chicago, Illinois. Millennium Park. Georgia Askeridis. Pothead.

“Holy shit, man,” Evelyn says. “You guys okay?”

“Oh yeah.” Liss takes off the sunglasses, and I realize she might have been wearing them the entire time we were in the museum. She lifts her head off the ground and looks at us. Her eyes are bloodshot. “That was … amazing.”

Evelyn grins. “Turns out that shit was a little stronger than I'd anticipated. Sorry, guys. Hope you're okay.”

She pulls out a clove and lights it. Liss takes a drag, and I reach out for it. I inhale, and it burns—holy shit, does it burn—and I cough a little, but then I try it again a few more times. My brain swims a little more, but it feels good. I lick the cinnamon from my lips and rest my head back on the earth.

We stay there for a while, searching for shapes in the clouds.

“Elephant,” Evelyn says.

“Sailboat,” I say.

“Turnip,” says Liss.

She would see a turnip. This is why we're friends.

It starts to get cold, and we realize we're hungry as all hell. We stop at Dunkin' Donuts, buy a dozen to share, and eat them all the way back home.

I'm not sure exactly what I accomplished today, but I know I feel good.

I know I've done something different.

I'm marking that down as Positive Thought #10.

 

5

The Second Official Locker Date occurs randomly at the end of the day on Halloween when Daniel looks over at me and says, “Nice costume.” I'm wearing an orange shirt with the silhouette of a statue of Athena that I found half price at the Alley, and I'm holding an old book with the words
Forgotten Lore
that I drew on with some calligraphy pens my mom had in a drawer. Oh, and best of all, I'm wearing a raven on top of my head.

Yes, an honest-to-goodness fake blackbird, one of those Styrofoam-bodied things from Michael's that I glued to an old Blackhawks baseball cap. I said I wanted to go bold, but I think today is the day that I've firmly solidified my position in No-Woman's-Land. People have been giving me funny looks all day. But it's Halloween, people! If there's any day to be brave and do everything, today's the day.

Daniel's staring at the top of my head, and I think he might actually like my costume, but it could be that he's staring because I'm dressed like a total dork. He's dressed normally, a jacket and jeans.

“‘Quoth the raven…'” Daniel intones in a low voice.

Yes! Except for my nerdy English teacher, Ms. Langer, he's the only one who got it today. Liss thought I was an evil librarian, and Evelyn thought I was a witch.

He's smiling at me. Okay, yeah. He likes it.

“Nevermore,” I respond.

“May very well be the best poem ever,” he says.

“Agreed! My mom used to read it to me when I was little. That and ‘The Bells,' which I thought was hilarious.”

“To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells / From the bells, bells, bells, bells, / Bells, bells, bells.”

Ah! He's cute
and
smart. “Yes! Exactly!”

“Another great poem. Edgar Allan Poe, man. Nothing like him. How great was it that your mom read those to you?”

And … we're having an actual, real, honest-to-goodness conversation that involves something other than stilted salutations.

Be still, my fluttering heart.

He's staring at me, waiting for me to respond.

Right. Words.
Speak, Georgia.

“Looking at it now, it's kind of sick, actually, that she read ‘The Raven' to a little kid, right? I mean, he's freaking being haunted by a bird of death. Way to give a kid nightmares.”

Daniel laughs. “Are you headed to the bus stop?”

I nod.

“I'll walk with you.”

Siiigh.

“Cool!” I say with maybe a little too much enthusiasm.

We close our lockers and head toward the door. We walk past Liss, who's dressed like Rosie the Riveter. She flexes her biceps and mouths to me, “You can do it!” And then, “Number thirteen!”

Crazy girl. I look at Daniel to see if he saw her.

He didn't. Phew.

We step into the breezy afternoon, passing hordes of people dressed as skeletons and ghouls, farmers and angels, and the ever-predictable guys dressed as cheerleaders and girls dressed as football players. Once we near the edge of the school, I take off my raven hat and tuck it under my arm. We walk toward Lincoln Avenue, past shops and restaurants. It's a perfect autumn day; the sky is bright and the air is cool. The Second Official Locker Date has just evolved into what I will call Our First Semiromantic Stroll. Except that neither of us has said anything in more than a block.

“Weather's changing,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. “It's a little chilly.”

“But nice,” I respond.

Come on, Georgia. You can do better than that.

“Um. No costume for you today?”

He stops right in front of a Starbucks doorway and throws his backpack on the ground. A mom walking out with a stroller and a stressed-out business-looking man have to push past us to walk around. They both grumble, but Daniel stays right where he is. He unzips his jacket and gives me a frown.

He's wearing an orange shirt, kind of like mine, except his says “3.14159265358979323…” with more numbers winding around the front of his chest and under his armpit. Then he pulls his jacket down and spins around. The numbers continue around his back and fade into tiny, tiny font. I offer a silent swoon for this close-up glance at those ridiculously chiseled shoulders.

“Pumpkin pi,” I say. “Nice.”

“You got it!” He pivots around, a wide smile on his face. “You're one of, like, three people to get it!”

Yes! Go, me!

“Well, you're the only one who got mine,” I say, pointing to my bird.

“Really?”

“Well, you and Ms. Langer.”

“Yeah, she got mine, too.”

He zips up his jacket and throws his bag over his shoulder. “Does no one pay attention in class?”

We keep walking, past the overpriced hipster shops and right past my bus stop, but I don't say anything. I'll walk all the way to the Wisconsin border if it means I get to talk to Daniel Antell. “Maybe next time, you should bring actual pie for everyone.”

“Yeah, for everyone in the dorm or whatever.”

“Oh, right.” Only eight more months until we all graduate, and then two more after that, we all disperse across the nation. It all seems so far away and yet so close. “What are your plans for next year?”

“Not sure yet. Somewhere that's not here. I applied to about eight different schools.”

“Do you know what you want to study?”

“Yes. Bioengineering so that I can work with three-D medical technology.”

“Wow. That's specific.”

“Yeah, eventually I want to work as a researcher in the development of human organ printing. My dad has polycystic kidney disease.”

“What's that?”

“He has cysts that grow on his kidneys,” Daniel says. “He needs a transplant, but it's unlikely that he'll get one.”

Oh. Wow. Like, really. Wow.

I take a deep breath. “My mom had kidney failure.”

“Oh, I didn't realize that,” he says. “I mean, I'd heard that she died. I'm really sorry, by the way.”

“Thanks.” I can feel him looking at me, but I just can't look back. I might start crying, and that would definitely put a damper on this Second Unofficial Date. Instead, I focus on not stepping on the lines in the sidewalk, just like I did when I was a kid.

“I didn't know it was a kidney thing, though.”

“Well, that was part of it. She had been diabetic and had all kinds of heart trouble, which messed with her kidneys. It's what led to the end. She actually got an infection in her catheter site that spread through the rest of her body and finally to her brain.”

I haven't talked about this with anyone. I mean, I would e-mail Liss in spurts when it was happening, but I haven't actually articulated the history of how my mom died to anyone else. It's like it just happened yesterday, and yet it's an entirely foreign dimension of existence, me being her daughter, her being alive.

Daniel's looking ahead now, and I'm still avoiding the sidewalk cracks, and we're both walking silently in a strange kind of rhythm, and I think that I've said too much. I'm a downer. I've committed the mortal sin of TMI. I bet he wants to split.

Instead, he says this: “I have a fifty percent chance of getting polycystic disease, too.”

“Oh.”

“So, part of my desire to go into research is purely selfish. I want to save my own life. I want to build myself a kidney.”

I want to tell him that he's not selfish at all. I want to tell him about the list and how I'm trying to save my own life, too, and how I'm also doing it for my mom, just like he could save his dad's life while he's saving his own. But then I'd have to pull the list out of my pocket and show it to him, and I can't do that because he comprises three of the items.

Instead, I say this: “I know you'll do it.”

“Thanks.” He nods. “It's hard.”

We walk a little bit more, saying nothing. I focus on the cracks in the sidewalk. I don't know what else to say, but I feel like he wants to talk about this. Finally, I ask, “Is he on dialysis?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Only for about four months. Was your mom on dialysis, too?”

“Yes. For years. She did it at home while she slept.”

He nods. “My dad goes to the center three times a week.”

“Do you go with him?”

“I wish I could. He's out in Oregon with my stepmom. Even though he's supposed to watch his blood pressure, I know he doesn't, and my stepmom tries to get him to eat right, but he doesn't listen. She'll serve grilled chicken and kale salad for dinner, and he'll sneak Doritos and beef jerky at night when she's not looking.”

“My mom used to sneak ice cream.”

“They told him if he doesn't take care of himself, he could die. I mean, they used the big D word. But it's like he doesn't hear them.”

“And there's nothing you can say, right?”

“Right,” he says. “And I just—I don't want him to die, you know?”

How well I know.

He stops at a corner and turns to me. “How did you handle it—when she died?”

I look at him. How did we get here, from pumpkin pi to dialysis? From colleges to death? What happened to our romantic date?

“I'm sorry. Is that too personal?”

“No,” I say. “Not at all. I just have to think about it.”

I think about the very end, the letter, her deterioration, everything that we had to decide—everything that
I
had to decide. I'm struggling for the words. I want to tell him, but I don't want to start crying, either.