I Can Hear the Mourning Dove (8 page)

She shrugs her shoulders. “It's okay, I guess.” She has taken off her blouse and skirt and her half-slip. She is hanging up her skirt and blouse on hangers with clips, wearing only her white underpants and her crisp white bra. I feel myself starting to flush; I wonder if I should look away.

It's going to feel less tense if I talk. “Before we moved here, we had a lovely stone house,” I tell her. “It was built in 1840. The walls were about a foot thick and the house had exposed walnut beams and door latches instead of door knobs. My dad modernized it, but he knew how to blend the new with the old. My Uncle Larry helped him with some of the remodeling. Uncle Larry was killed in action in Vietnam. His name is on the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C.” Why am I jabbering like this?

DeeDee is feeding the fish in a large aquarium near her window; she is still wearing only her underwear. The aquarium has a filter and fluorescent lights. She feeds the fish from a vial that looks like a salt shaker. “I'm sorry about your uncle,” she says. “The house sounds real special. It sounds like it had lots of character.”

I feel confident that she won't take her underwear off; she won't do that. No one could be that unself-conscious. “Our house was at Allerton Park,” I tell her.

“Your house was in a park?”

“Not exactly in a park. Our house was on the Allerton estate. Allerton Park is about fifteen hundred acres, but the estate is almost five thousand acres. Most of the estate is farms; our house was right beside a dairy farm.”

“Fifteen hundred acres is really big. What kind of a park was it?”

“It's not a park like a city park. There's a huge Georgian mansion and European formal gardens. There are hiking paths through the woods. There are so many statues, I wish I could show them to you. Some of the statues are bronze and concrete, but some are alabaster.”

DeeDee is putting on a pair of designer jeans and a pale blue sweater. She looks at herself briefly in the full-length, crystal-clear mirror mounted on her closet door. I like telling her about our stone house. I like it that I can share with her. I would like to believe that we will become friends, but it may be dangerous to think that way.

“Our house is expensive,” she says, “but it doesn't have any character. It's just the same as all the other houses in the neighborhood. Sometimes I even think the way we live doesn't have any character.”

“Please, I don't think I understand.”

“My parents are into materialism.” She sits on the corner of the bed and starts running the brush through her thick hair. “When I hear you talk about your father, I feel jealous. You were close to him, and he stood for something. People like that make the world a better place.”

I can't imagine myself as the object of anyone's envy, especially hers. I shrug my shoulders and don't say anything.

DeeDee goes on, “My parents are concerned about keeping their social calendar straight at the country club and having the LiquiGreen man come over once a week to treat the lawn with all the right chemicals.”

“I don't want to argue, DeeDee, but isn't that the way most people want to live?”

She sighs. “I guess so. My brother is going to be just like my parents. He can't wait to be a yuppie.”

“Don't be too hard on your family, though, please. People do things. They do things to survive.”

She looks at me with a puzzled expression.

“Please don't think I'm criticizing you. It's just something I've learned from being in the looney bin. A lot of people are hanging on for dear life; hanging by their fingernails. People do what they have to do to survive.”

She is frowning but she says, “I'll have to think about it.”

Who am I to tell her a better way of thinking? Who am I to be the giver of advice? I can feel my pulse beginning to race; it was probably a mistake to bring up the mental illness.

“Come on,” she says to me. “Let's go downstairs.”

I leave to go home at five o'clock, when DeeDee is getting ready to go to work at the mall. I walk very fast along the sidewalk and keep a close watch on my feet. It will be safe to walk past the IGA now, it's past five o'clock and the Surly People will be gone.

It is three days later when DeeDee is waiting by my locker after school. I put some books away.

“Let's go talk to Miss Braverman,” she says. She still thinks I should do a project. I'd like to, but I don't think I could get one finished.

“I don't think I could,” I say.

“Sure you can.”

I feel a touch of dizziness. “DeeDee, I don't mean to offend you, but why are you doing this? I'm sorry, but I have to ask.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're giving me all this encouragement in science. Please tell me it's not Miss Shapiro's idea.”

“No way.”

“Because if it's just part of Miss Shapiro's strategy, it would be so humiliating.”

“This doesn't have anything to do with Miss Shapiro; I only talked to her that one time.”

“I don't want to seem ungrateful. I'm only bringing it up because in a way it would be better to be ignored than to be someone's project.”

Her eyes are so kind when she looks at me. “I'm really sorry. I should've just kept my mouth shut about Miss Shapiro.”

“Oh no, you were just being honest.”

She smiles and says, “This is just my idea. If you get involved in the science fair, I think you'll really like it. Please believe me.”

I do believe her. “I do believe you,” I say. She does act like she wants me for a friend, the way she's so kind and encouraging.

I take a deep breath. “Okay then, let's go.”

We go to Miss Braverman's room. I am standing next to her desk while DeeDee sits in one of the front row desks.

“What's on your mind, Grace?” Miss Braverman's smile is kind, but she is so chic and she has such composure. She will see through me; she will know how unstable I am and how incompetent.

I swallow and say, “I would like to do a project for the science fair.”

“What kind of project would you like to do?”

“I would like to do it on cruelty to animals in laboratory experiments. It would be an information display.” There, I said it.

Miss Braverman crosses her arms and tugs at her earlobe. “You catch me by surprise,” she says.

A small knot forms in my stomach.

She goes on, “I don't want to discourage you, Grace, but it sounds as though it might be a little on the negative side. A display on cruelty to animals in laboratories might put scientific investigation in a bad light.”

“I understand.” Some of her words are beginning to pop with static.

“Usually, projects for the science fair have something to do with research and development or scientific progress. Do you see what I mean? It's usually a positive approach.”

“I understand.” Her voice is popping out. Why is DeeDee sitting at that desk instead of standing here beside me? She's the one who urged this on me.

Miss Braverman says, “If you did this particular project, you would need to put the emphasis on the scientific aspect and not on the political or emotional aspect. It would be good, for example, to show the goals of certain experiments and how those same goals might be achieved without using laboratory animals.”

“Miss Braverman, please, I need to sit down.”

I sit in the chair next to her desk and take deep breaths. DeeDee and Miss Braverman hover over me like clucking hens. DeeDee wants to know if I need a glass of water. I am so pathetic I almost laugh at myself. Miss Braverman says there's a lot of flu going around, she has no idea how whacked out I am.

We are outside, walking home. I've still got the shakes, somewhat.

“Are you going to be okay?” DeeDee asks.

“I will be, sooner or later.”

“Have you always been like this, Grace?”

“More or less. Not exactly. Not this bad.”

“Miss Braverman didn't turn you down.”

“I know.”

When we get to DeeDee's house, we go into the family room. There are two more aquariums like the one in her room; she is feeding the fish again. The family room has expensive, rust-colored carpeting. There are large paintings of cats, in Japanese style, with chrome frames.

All done feeding the fish, DeeDee sits beside me on the couch. She wants to know about my mental illness. “If you think I should mind my own business, just tell me,” she says.

A small, hard lump forms, causing me to hesitate. I do want her for a friend but how close can I let her get?

“I tried to kill myself September twelfth of last year. It was three months exactly after my dad died. I got home from school at about four o'clock on the bus, like any other day. Mother was gone, she was running some errands. I changed my clothes and sat out on our flagstone patio; it was a beautiful sunny day with the bluest sky and a touch of fall in the air. I happened to look at our pile of firewood, which was close to my chair. The pile of logs was so small, and it was clear to me that it wouldn't last long. I'd been depressed all day, but for some reason that pile of firewood made me feel all hollow inside like there wasn't anything worth living for. I knew my dad would never be coming home again and the two of us would never go out in the woods again to gather firewood. It felt like this huge prison of sadness, and I knew that death would set me free.”

“How did you do it?” DeeDee asks. Her elbows are on her knees and her chin is in her hands. She's a good listener.

“I cut my wrists with a razor blade, in the bathtub. Actually, I only cut my left wrist. There were single-edge razor blades in my dad's art supplies in his old desk. I was unconscious when my mom got home and found me, but I was still alive.”

“Then what happened?”

“I went into the hospital. I was in for a little more than six weeks, clear up to the end of October. I got ECT treatments and everything.”

“What's ECT?”

“Shock treatments. They wire you up and zap you. They're horrible. My new doctor, Dr. Rowe, doesn't give shock treatments to teenagers.”

“I'm sorry, Grace, I really am.”

“Then in January I went back in for another month. I had another ECT series.”

“What about the schizophrenia?”

“The schizophrenia started this summer when we started getting ready to move. The most horrible, confusing things started happening to me. I started having these terrible nightmares and I would wake up screaming and sweating; sometimes I even wet the bed. Every once in a while I would hear these voices speaking to me, and sometimes the voices were like my father's voice; sometimes the voices would come from out of the sky. My mom and my grandma couldn't hear the voices, only I could hear them. I had a lot of trouble sleeping every night, and I didn't have any appetite. When I wasn't disoriented, I was just depressed. It got worse after we moved here. We were only here about a month when I found myself in another looney bin.”

“It sounds like the schizophrenia came so sudden.”

“That's true, but Dr. Rowe says your chances of getting better are increased if it happens that way. There's almost no chance of getting well if you have the slow kind, the progressive kind. I don't understand what all of it means, but that's what she tells me.”

“I can see how scary it is for you, Grace, I'm sorry if I was prying.”

“It isn't prying, you're just open. It's the most wonderful quality.” She makes it possible for me to share. I would like to give her a hug, but I wouldn't know how to do a thing like that.

DeeDee gets us each a Seven-Up and we go out to sit on her patio. She shows me a lilac bush she has been pruning and a variegated red twig dogwood she has recently planted. I tell her briefly about the scraggly Russian olive tree near our apartment. She says a tree that far gone would probably need lots of pruning and some work with a deep-root feeder.

She has an Irish setter named Rowdy; we throw a rubber ball around the yard and he romps after it. I lie in the grass and hold my arms around him. His fur is soft and warm and he slurps my chin with his scratchy tongue.

“He's the nicest dog, DeeDee.”

“You like dogs.”

“I love dogs. Mother says our apartment is no place to have a dog, but I'd give anything if we could. When we lived in the country we had a big malamute we named Tubba, which was short for tub of lard. He was overweight. We had to leave him with my grandma, but at least I know he has a nice home.” I have tears forming when I think of Tubba, but I blink them back.

“Rowdy is a stitch sometimes. Watch this.” She drops the ball straight down and he crawls on his belly, all the way across the patio.

I start to laugh. He does it again and I am laughing even harder, and it feels so good to laugh.

DeeDee puts away the ball and asks me if I want more Seven-Up.

The sky is blue and the sun is so warm. “No thanks, I have plenty.” We are sitting on comfortable redwood patio furniture.

“There's plenty more if you change your mind.”

“No, I'm fine.” It's mellow sitting here with her. “DeeDee, sometimes I think of having tea with Miss Braverman.”

“What do you mean?”

“In my imagination. It's a fantasy. I picture you and me going together to have tea with her in her apartment, on a Sunday afternoon. Is it okay if I tell you this?”

She is scratching Rowdy around the ears. “Sure, why not?”

“It's just such a weird thought. I have so many weird thoughts, but I feel like I can share it with you.”

“It doesn't seem so weird, tell me about it.”

I take a moment to moisten my lips. “Miss Braverman's apartment is real tasteful. She serves us tea on a slate coffee table, with real china cups and saucers. The cream pitcher and sugar bowl are also china, with gold leaf trim.”