Husky (11 page)

“Well, maybe that's why. Maybe I never get to pick the bench and I never get to pick anything or do anything I just want to do, so today I did. Is that okay?” I say as I cross my arms, which I totally know makes me look like a big baby or a brat, but I don't even care. I can be whatever I want because I just saved the world by getting this bench.

“Fine,” Ellen says, and she sits down next to me. She doesn't say anything else. She doesn't cross her arms even. She just sits there. Quiet. Swinging her feet a little, looking over the side of the bridge. Is she waiting for me to say something? I don't say anything. I just sit there, crossing my arms. But my not doing anything or saying anything is a thing. I'm doing it on purpose. What's with Ellen today?

“This is really a nice bench,” Ellen says.

I don't answer.

“We're silly not to come out to this part of the park, it's really pretty here . . . and quiet.”

I wish I could say,
Yes, I know, I come here all the time on my own or with my other friends, you don't know them, but we come here all the time, but it's not a big deal. This is sort of our favorite spot. It's no big deal, not being invited somewhere, is it? Nope. No big deal.

But I don't say anything except, “Yup. I like this place better.”

“I never knew you didn't like our bench,” Ellen says.

“I didn't say that,” I say.

“You sort of did.”

“No, I said I like this better. I never get to pick, and now I am picking and this is where I pick. God,” I say so loud and awful, like I am one of those stupid teenage girls on TV. I so hate that I did that.

“You can always pick, Ducks,” Ellen says.

“No I can't,” I say back.

“Yes you can, who says you can't?” Ellen asks me.

“You! You always march off and I have to follow you. Which I always do because it's actually not a big deal, not at all. But me not getting invited or even a say if I'm invited to my best friend's birthday party is a really big
deal. A huge deal.” I'm getting loud, and I don't want to. I don't want to be this person, but I'm really sad and angry and I sort of want Ellen to be sad and angry with me, but she's just not. She's talking about a bench. And I'm making sounds like a brat on TV.

“It's not even her real birthday party. It's not even on the right day,” Ellen says.

“Is she going to have another party?” I ask.

“I don't know, I don't think so,” Ellen answers.

“Then it's her birthday party and I'm not invited,” I say, crossing my arms a lot tighter.

“It's a makeover party, they're getting facials and they're getting their nails done,” Ellen says. “Gross. Why do you want to go? I'm not.”

“You're not going?” I ask.

“No,” says Ellen. “My mom thought it was just a little silly, and she didn't think I wanted to go anyway. I totally didn't.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because it's not my thing. I don't want to sit around and have a stranger touch my feet and put mud on me,”
Ellen says. She makes the face she made that time we found a dead bird.

“Is that what they do?” I ask.

“Yeah, I guess. I don't know. It's not my thing.”

“Well, at least you were invited,” I say back snottily.

“You're a boy,” Ellen says.

“So I don't need nice feet or mud?” I say back, snottier.

“It's not like that,” Ellen says back.

“Then what's it like?” I ask really loudly, not in a way like I want an answer or anything but more like I just want to be rotten.

“Ducks, you need to not freak out about it,” Ellen says, smiling at me, which only makes me lose it.

“I am not freaking out! I'm not. I just don't get it. I don't. Okay: It's a girlie thing. Fine. I'm a boy. Fine. So it's a thing I can't know anything about because I'm not cool enough.”

“No one is saying that,” Ellen says, trying to interrupt me, but I keep talking.

“Or because I'm not rich enough, or because I don't even have a cell phone or nice sneakers or anything, or
because I don't know about the music you and everybody else know about, or it's just because I'm fat.”

“Wait, what?” Ellen says, totally stopped.

“I've been your friend forever, and for everything, your braces and you being super mean about everything and even that one year, a whole year, where you only wanted to be called Max. I was your friend, and I called you Max. And now, what, Allegra hates me, and for whatever reason you have to too?”

“I don't hate you at all,” Ellen says. “What are you talking about?”

“Then why aren't you mad too?” I say.

“Because it's not a big deal,” Ellen says, and I want to scream.

I want to scream so loud that everything in the park stops. I want to scream so loud that people playing volleyball drop the ball, that the people walking their dogs stop and so do the dogs. I want to scream so loud that even frogs stop. Everything in the park, even everything in Brooklyn stops. Stops cold. I want to scream. It is. It is a big deal. But all I say is, “It's a big deal to me.” And that makes Ellen stop.

“You're not fat,” Ellen says. Why did she have to say that first?

“I am. I hate this,” I say.

“What?”

“I hate feeling like this.”

“Like what?” Ellen asks.

“Like everyone is not like me, or doesn't like me, and I don't know why and I don't know how to be anything else. I really don't. Because if I did, don't you think I would try? I'm just so tired of losing everything and everyone . . .” I stop for a second, I stop now, because more than any scream that would stop all of Brooklyn, that thing I just said stops me, because it's the truth.

“I love you. And Sophie totally loves you. You're not losing us. And we don't want you to be like anyone else at all.” I don't want to believe her when she says this, because it sounds like something you're supposed to say and not mean. But the way she says it, I want to believe she actually does.

“It's not her birthday. It's something stupid Allegra wanted to do. And stupid Allegra's mom is taking them,”
Ellen says. Ellen takes my side and at least calls Allegra stupid, but I can't smile because this part I still don't totally believe. Some part of me still thinks it's her birthday and it's a big deal.

Almost as big a deal as Ellen getting her braces off, which up until this moment I haven't even noticed. Her smile looks great.

Ellen buys me frozen yogurt and we walk to her house. We're mostly quiet on the walk, except for a few words about school coming up or how good it feels not to have metal on Ellen's teeth. Both of us feel this way: It's a big improvement. I walk Ellen all the way to her door, and she gives me another big hug. At the door she says through her brand-new smile, “I'm always glad you're you.”

Getting home should take only a few minutes, but I don't want to go there. At least not yet. Home'll be filled with questions and Nanny being loud and asking me what I'm going to do tonight and if I'm going to the Big Bake tomorrow or not. And I don't know. I just don't know anything at the moment. I don't know even where to go, so I just keep walking. I can't think of a place to just be by myself and not have to talk to anyone else, because right now everyone else in the world is just awful to me. Everyone. Even the people I like.

So I walk. Past my house. And then past the park. At least that has quiet bits. I don't have my iPod with me, so it's just me alone in the world. No music, no orchestra, no soaring voices in Italian, nothing that will take me
away from this really sucky moment with myself. I guess I think I can walk it off, or walk away from it, but it follows me, and keeps following me. Everywhere. I'm not invited. I know what Ellen said but I'm not wanted at all. It's not on Sophie's actual birthday, but that doesn't actually matter. Ellen says they love me, but do I believe her? I'm not going. But neither is Ellen. Is she just as upset as me? Allegra and her mom planned the whole thing. Probably planned the whole thing so I couldn't go, because they hate me. Hate me. And I've never even met Allegra's mother, but I would totally imagine she's awful too. Everyone is. Everyone. Maybe even me.

I keep walking.

Back through the park. Back to the avenue, then a big avenue, and then I turn around again. It's such a strange feeling, not knowing where to go, really having no idea which is the right way. At all. Where is the place you'd go to be where all of this didn't feel so bad? I could walk to Manhattan, maybe. Or maybe somewhere else, like the Bronx. Just to get away. Far away, even if it is scary or something. Just away.

I walk down to an ice-cream place, the one Sophie and I always go to but probably never will again. I walk past Martinetti's. I walk past the bakery, just to hear if Stevie Nicks is playing, and she is. I start to walk home. Maybe this is all for nothing. Maybe I just need to go home and maybe there I can be alone. Maybe.

By the time I get home, Nanny is waiting by the door again. Waiting for me.

“What time do you call this, now?” she yells as I open the door. “Come here to me, boy-o.” So I walk in without a word.

“Where've you been? What were you doing? Nobody's seen you. You don't call.”

“I don't have a phone,” I answer back.

“Oh, this again. No, sir. No. This is not my fault at all, you little devil. How can I trust you to take care of one of them phones when you can't even call home to me to tell me where you're keeping yourself?”

I try not to laugh, but seriously? I can't help it. I mean, she just said she can't trust me with a cell phone because I don't have a cell phone to call her. It is so . . .
the worst mistake I could make right now, but I smirk. And she sees it.

“Funny, is it? You won't be laughing when I call your mother. Come now to me,” Nanny says as she throws her purse on the chair and marches out to the kitchen. We're going to call my mother, who she thinks will yell at me and punish me and scream me into the floor. But she never does. It's never happened once. But here we go. Again.

Nanny is so angry, she can't work the phone. She gets flustered like this with remotes too. Anything with buttons. Maybe that's why I don't have a cell phone, because if she ever really gets angry at me, she won't be able to find the buttons to turn it off. I think about this, and I smirk again, which is a huge mistake. Huge. Nanny looks over and hands me the phone. “Here, Chuckles, call your mother and tell her what a disrespectful little brat you are. Go on, tell her. Go on.”

I dial the bakery. And wait and wait, but no one answers. I look at my shoes while I wait, because if I start thinking about saying all those terrible things
about myself to Mom to prove to her what an ungrateful brat I am, that'll make me laugh too. But as the phone rings and rings, and Mom doesn't pick up, it gets less and less funny.

Finally I look up. “She's not answering.” I'm not smiling at all.

“Like mother, like son, never where none of you are supposed to be,” Nanny yells. “Well, I'm going to meet the Mrs., if they're still there at this point.” Nanny marches past me and grabs her pocketbook. I get up to go along, thinking I need to go too, but then she turns and says, “I'll be back later. If I feel like being nice to you, I'll bring you something. Not that you deserve it.”

And she leaves. She leaves without me. I never get left home alone. Never. I always have to have someone around. We've had huge fights about it. I've wanted this. I know I can handle it. I want to not have to go where everyone else is going, except to Sophie's party. I want to be grown up and do what I want. And what I've wanted, really wanted, was to be left home alone. And now I am.

But she just left me. And that part sort of upsets me. Because it's not like I got handed this big gift, like, here was this thing, this present I was asking for and wanted. Here. It's not like I earned it, like, I was finally able to handle it. I just got left. And that sort of feels . . . not great. And now I'm hungry. And left.

The first thing I need to do is put on music. My music, as loud as I want, and whatever I want. It's hard to pick whatever you want when you really can get whatever you want. I could go for something loud and big, something that is all drama and violins and horns and that shakes the floor when things really start happening, or I could listen to something so sad that it's hard to get over all the terrible things as they happen. Or maybe a mix of the two. I might go for terrible and sad, but I sort of want something big and loud. It would be a shame to waste all this space alone and not fill it with something.

I pick
Madama Butterfly
. It's both big and really sad—I think the saddest one. Or maybe tonight it's because she gets left. It's all about this girl in Japan named
Cio-Cio-San, and she falls in love with an American ship captain named Pinkerton. He loves her too, or at least he does in the first act, and he marries her. There's a big wedding, and she even becomes a Christian for him. But after, he has to sail back to America and he promises he'll be back.

So Cio-Cio-San gets left.

And she waits and waits and waits. And he never comes back. And she has his baby and the baby waits too. And all the while Pinkerton's back in America, probably looking at all the cell phones and going to the makeover parties and everything cool that Cio-Cio-San doesn't get invited to because she is stuck in Japan with her baby. And he forgets her. But she doesn't forget him. She just keeps waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

When he does come back, he shows up with his new wife, a cute little American girl named Kate. I've always hated the name Kate for that reason, which is not a nice thing, because Kate Boylan in my class is actually really nice. So Pinkerton comes back to Japan with Kate, barf, and he wants to take Cio-Cio-San's baby. And
Cio-Cio-San still loves him, so she says,
Yes. Take my baby. Take all the times that we had together and that were really nice and all that fun we had together and throw them away, but before you go, take me too.
Then Cio-Cio-San stabs herself. When I read about it in the liner notes the first time, I cried for a whole day, because I sort of couldn't figure out how much one person is supposed to lose. Just everything. It's the saddest thing ever. And the music is beautiful and loud. So it's perfect for tonight.

I put on the iPod, loud. Loud enough that I can hear it downstairs in the kitchen while I decide what to make. I don't really get a chance to cook for myself a lot, so it's sort of an adventure. There's always a lot of food in the house, which is nice, but I don't totally know how to make a lot of stuff, and I don't want to burn the place to the ground if I make a mistake.

I decide on macaroni and cheese, the powder kind, which is gooey a little bit, but is also a little bit my favorite thing. I make it without milk. Nanny hates that, but she's not here. I put on the water and wait for it to boil, put in a little oil so the noodles don't stick to the pan, and
when it bubbles up, I put them in. It's easy and done really quickly. I use about three pans and dishes, and I put them all in the sink when I'm done and sit down by myself at the kitchen table to eat. But now the table seems too big for just me. And then I remember that I'm alone and I can do whatever I want. I have to keep reminding myself. I don't have to sit at the table with a napkin and a glass of water and remember not to put my elbows up like a truck driver, which is what Nanny always says to me when I do it. I can do that now, and I can look like whatever I want. I can be a truck driver. I can look like the worst truck driver, even. I'm all alone, I got left. I can do whatever I want.

So I take my bowl of macaroni upstairs to the living room, which I would never be able to do, like ever, unless I had a TV tray and Nanny was with me. I don't even think of a TV tray, I just sit on the floor and scoop it out of the bowl and right into my mouth. I even sort of kiss the bowl to get a little last bit. And I don't care. I walk around the living room, eating the whole time, I even drop a noodle, which, if anyone was home, would
have caused a huge yell from Nanny, but she's not here, and even if she were, I wouldn't be able to hear her over the music.

I'm liking this. I like the chance to be alone and drop a noodle and listen to music, even sad music, the saddest music I know, and I like walking around eating gooey noodles, which only I like. I like the chance to do what I want without having anyone around to remind me what I'm supposed to do or even be. Being alone and doing what you want, even if it's stupid or dumb or ugly or gross, it's all okay, because no one is there to tell you otherwise. I even eat the dropped noodle off the floor. Why not?

Cio-Cio-San is singing about waiting for the cannon to blast off of Pinkerton's ship when he comes into the harbor, the sound she has sort of been hoping and hoping for, and I forget it happens on the recording, but
boom!
The cannon blasts, and it's so loud that the whole floor shakes, freaking me out, and I drop the bowl, and it flips around as it falls to the floor, with big gooey clumps of macaroni going everywhere. Everywhere. Honest. It's a
huge mess. And the music is so loud, I can't even think. What am I supposed to do now?

I turn down the music first and run to get paper towels and window cleaner, just something to spray at the goo as I pick up the noodles from all over the floor and a little on the wall. I put them, all of them that I can find, back in the bowl and wipe everything off with the spray. I end up using so many paper towels, we almost run out. I just want it not to have happened. I shouldn't have done all those things I'm not allowed to do, even if I was alone. I should have just been good and waited. And waited. Sat at the kitchen table and eaten everything in quiet, alone, and waited. Waited until Nanny came home. Or Mom. Or just gone to bed and not done anything. But waited. And waited. Like Cio-Cio-San.

But then wouldn't I just have gotten replaced by Kate anyway? I never know what to do and definitely not on my own. Things like this happen, and I don't know if I'm as ready as I say I am to be home alone or if I'm a grown-up at all. I clean up all the noodles, so I guess I know what to do. I wash all the dishes. And put everything away. Like
nothing even happened. But it's the panic of being alone when the bowl drops that scares me the most. What if I didn't know what to do? And what if no one ever came home to find me with all those clean dishes and dirty paper towels again?

What if I really get left?