Nest (7 page)

It’s almost twilight, which means I shouldn’t be heading to the salt marsh by myself, but I don’t care and I don’t think anyone else does, either. I didn’t even bother leaving a note. Dad’s still working, Mom’s still napping, and Rachel’s probably at her new best friend Genevieve’s house, and I bet she’ll end up staying there for dinner again, because Genevieve’s family is
so cool
and
totally on the right wavelength
and
wicked interesting
.

No hopping, no counting, just my strong legs and this almost-twilight chilly air that feels sharp to breathe in, like eating mints. I’ve got my binocs, a wool sweater, and some cheddar cheese in my
knapsack, in case I get hungry. I’m not scared, even though the branches of the pitch pines are already making spooky shadows. I’m not scared.

I run past the dead beech tree. I run past the fork in the path. I run and run until I see my perfect spot, loud and clear. I pick up a big stick, which might be
her
stick.

“Listen, lady,” I whisper. It’s hard to talk into the purple swirl, darking up the sky. It’s hard to talk into the bird squawks, cricket chirps, water slaps. I take a deep breath. “Listen, you,” I say again, louder. “This is
my
tree. This is
my
spot. You had no right to shoo me away.” I stop. I wait. Nothing happens.

“How would you like it if you were just wanting to watch birds in your special spot and a lady shook a stick at you? Do you think you’re the only one who has had bad things happen to her? You don’t even know what the doctor said.”

I smack the ground with my stick. I’m not allowed to say mean things. “You must be a stupid lady. A really stupid lady who doesn’t know anything. You don’t even know that the doctor said today that Mom might have multiple sclerosis, because first her leg had weird burning and then her left side went numb and then her leg dragged and then her eye started jerking and you only need three unrelated symptoms to diagnose multiple sclerosis and Mom has already had four. It will be definite when the doctor says it’s definite, so Mom still feels like she’s waiting for the
sky to fall, which is what she told her friend Clara on the phone. She just lies around and feels bad, and the Saltwater Dance Brigade is going to have to replace her in the show with another dancer, because there’s no way she’ll be able to be a dead soldier in time when she’s got so many symptoms.”

Something dark swoops down above my head. It might be a bat. It might be a bird. But I’m not ready to take out my binocs and watch.

“So just leave me alone. I’m going to come here and I’m going to look for loons and you can’t stop me. If you behave yourself, I don’t mind if you’re here, too. You have my permission to come here and do whatever you were doing. But leave me alone. No more sticks. No more shooing.”

I take my stick and toss it like a spear at the water. It gets stuck in the sea lavender. I take a handful of sand, pitch it, and watch the grains drift down.

“And by the way, if you leave your sandwich out, the ants will get it. Next time, keep it in the bag.”

Finally I’m calm enough to take out my binocs and lean against my tree. The water’s so dark that the white bellies of the herring gulls stand out. The double-crested cormorants have got to be out there, but with their black feathers, black feet, and black bills, I can’t see them at all. In the sky, it’s mostly swallows swooping, but there are a few bats sprinkled in. Everybody’s hunting flies. I watch until it’s dark enough that I can’t tell birds from bats. Then I
eat my cheese, put on my wool sweater, and start my slow walk home.

Mom’s still lying on the couch. “Oh, good,” she says when she hears me open the door, “let’s make supper together.” I walk into the living room. Her hair’s tangly. Her face looks puffy. She’s not getting up.

I sit down next to her. She opens her eyes and smiles.

“C’mon, Chirp, let’s go,” she says, like I’m the one holding up the show.

I stand up.

Slowly, Mom slides her body around so she’s sitting. She rubs her left leg with her hands.

“Maybe something simple tonight?” she says. “Scrambled eggs and toast?”

“Sounds good,” I say. Last night was fried-egg sandwiches.

“Give me a hand here, honey,” Mom says. She reaches out her hands and I pull. When she’s standing up, she puts her arm around my shoulders. “Mmmm, you smell like fresh air. You smell like stars.” Her voice sounds far away, even though she’s whispering right in my ear. She’s leaning on me, hard, as we walk into the kitchen. Her draggy leg weighs us down.

“Why don’t I be the supervisor, you be the cook?” Mom asks, like we’re playing a fun game. I walk her to the chair, and she sits down heavy,
oy
.

“Rachel’s going to eat at Genevieve’s tonight,” Mom says. “Dad should be home soon, but we can go ahead and get started.”

I get out the margarine. I get out a pan.

“Two eggs each,” Mom says.

I get four eggs. Dad likes his dinner hot. I’ll cook for him later. When I’m ready to chop the onions, Mom says, “Tell me about your day, honey.”

I can’t think of one thing to tell her. Not one single thing. My heart starts to race. Mom needs a story.

“How about a poem?” I ask, and start right in on
Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night
, which is one of our favorites, especially the part where the stars throw down their spears and water heaven with their tears. Mom closes her eyes while I chop onions and ask so many questions:

And when I get to the end, I wish my eyes had been closed, too, because the onions have been stinging me for too long.

“Oh, sweetie love,” Mom says when she opens her eyes and sees the onion tears streaming down my face, “it’s awful, just awful.” Mom slides her chair back and opens up her arms for me, and since I’m
scared to get in her lap because of her leg symptoms, I kneel in front of her and wrap my arms around her stomach.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me, to us,” she says. “I can’t believe that I might have MS and my body is falling apart.” She’s crying into my hair and now my onion tears are real tears.

“I can’t believe this,” she says.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I cry into her stomach.

“No, Chirp, it’s
not
okay,” she says, and suddenly her voice sounds mad. She pushes me back by my shoulders so she can look right in my face. I’m glad her eye stopped being supersonic yesterday. Her face is wet, but her tears are over.

“When you were born, I swore that you’d have an easier path than me. My mother caused me so much pain, and sometimes I still feel like it’s swallowing me up. I swore that, for you, it would be different. And now …” Mom takes a breath. “And now …” She slowly pushes each word out, like it’s stuck in her mouth. “You—have—a—sick—mother.” She folds me back into her arms. My cheek’s against her stomach. She’s moaning now, a sweet, quiet sound like a mourning dove. I hold Mom tighter. I
cooooo
my own soft bird sound. What else does Mom want me to do?

M
ISS
G
ALLAGHER THINKS IT
would be
nifty
if we made our own Halloween masks. She thinks a lot of things are
nifty
, like the electric pencil sharpener that Mr. Simpkins, the gym teacher, brought her on the second day of class, and the fact that I’m Jewish and stayed home from school on the High Holidays, and her latest discovery, which is that I make my own lunch. She found that out yesterday when she was carrying a box from her car in the parking lot back to the classroom. I was watching from my lunch rock and saw her short red skirt get shorter and shorter, because the box was hiking it up. I was scared that she was going to start showing her underpants, which would be about the worst thing that could happen to a teacher.

“Miss Gallagher!” I yelled, and waved. I had to tell her.

“Naomi,” she yelled, all cheery. Then she shifted the box to her hip so she could wave back to me, which made her skirt problem a definite emergency. She walked over to me on her tippy high heels. I looked away, because I was scared that I would see what I really didn’t want to. But then she put the box down, so I was safe.

“Wow, Naomi,” she said, hovering over me and peeking in my lunch box. Her blond hair was like a silk scarf blowing in my face. “Your mom sure packs you a healthy lunch. Apple. Carrot sticks. Cheese sandwich on wheat bread.”

“I make my lunch.”

“Really? Every single day?” She backed up and looked right in my face with her eyebrows up. I could see her green eye shadow. I could see squiggly black lines under her eyes.

I nodded.

“Nifty!” she said. “Your mom is a very lucky lady to have such a responsible girl. You tell your mom I said that she’s one lucky, lucky lady.”

I nodded, but I haven’t said anything to Mom. She’s been feeling lots of things lately, but lucky is definitely not one of them.

Now Miss Gallagher says, “Okay, children, let’s see the artists in you come alive,” but first we have to tear a lot of strips of newspaper and mix up paste out of flour and water. “There’s no limit to our imaginations,” she says as she hands out one balloon per
student to blow up and use as a mold for the mask. So far, everyone is doing a pretty good job of cooperating and not playing balloon volleyball or whacking each other with rolled-up newspaper, since Miss Gallagher told us during class meeting this morning that our Halloween party on Friday is a privilege, not a right, and she will happily enjoy the treats herself while we sit with our heads down on our desks if we choose to act like hooligans, which is, she’s afraid, becoming our bad habit, just like some people choose to smoke cigarettes.

While we work, Miss Gallagher reads us a story about a girl who sees a glowing light in the swamp near her house at midnight on Halloween and sets off by herself to investigate the mystery. She’s scared of everything—the dark, the birds, the shadows, the bats—so I don’t understand why she doesn’t just stay home under the covers, relax, and forget about it.

“
Now
what do I do?” Dawn whispers to me after she has a pile of newspaper strips, a milk carton of paste, and a blown-up balloon.

“Take one strip. Dip it in the paste like this. Press it on the balloon.”

Dawn nods and smiles.

The girl’s flashlight wimps out when she’s in the middle of the swamp. It’s the blackest night. The very darkest night of the year.
“Whoooooo,”
Sean says, but I guess Lori and Debbie are too scared to laugh. Joey looks at me and rolls his eyes.

“Make sure you only cover half of the balloon,” I whisper to Dawn. “Otherwise you won’t be able to get the balloon out and you won’t have a mask.”

“I know that already,” Dawn says.

Rachel told me at breakfast that she might not trick-or-treat with me this year. She says that Genevieve’s parents are having a Halloween party and she and Genevieve might hang out with the grown-ups, because they’re really laid-back and fun to be with.

“But, Rach,” I said, “we
always
trick-or-treat together. It’s our tradition.”

“Well, traditions change. Everything changes. Case in point.” She waved her hand at Mom’s empty place at the table.

“As soon as she’s feeling better, she’ll start coming to breakfast,” I said.

“C’mon, Chirp. She’s not going to be feeling better. Only worse. That’s how MS works.”

“She might not have MS. We don’t know for sure.”

“Fine,” Rachel said. “You keep living in your fantasy world. Meanwhile, I’m going to go to a really cool party.”

Before I could ask her who she thought I’d trick-or-treat with then, since there are no other kids on our road except the Morell boys, she jumped up from the table.

“Rachel!” I yelled.

“Shhh,” she said, “you’ll wake up Mom. A little
consideration, Chirp.” Then she pulled on her penny loafers, grabbed her books, and headed out the door.

I want to be a seagull. With a bright yellow beak. And a red dot on the beak. I’m going to make cardboard wings and just keep my fingers crossed that it won’t rain.

Last year Rachel was a hula girl and nearly froze to death because she wore a pink tube top and a grass skirt made out of torn-up brown paper bags, and Mom said that she absolutely had to wear a jacket and no point in trying to argue, so Rachel walked out of the house in her peacoat but then stashed it under the first pitch pine. I was toasty because I was a coconut. I wore Dad’s brown down jacket with a belt around the bottom and stuffed it with towels to round me out, and Mom put brown face paint on my face.

“Aloha, my tropical beauties,” Mom said when we came home, and if she noticed Rachel’s chattering teeth, she didn’t show it. Then Dad said, “Show us your loot,” and Mom said, “Any chocolate for the parent who loves you best?” and Dad said, “Chocolate, shmocolate. If you love me, you’ll turn over the Sugar Babies,” and Mom laughed and hugged him while we dumped our loot out on the living room floor. The four of us sat in a circle and ate candy until it was way past my bedtime and we just couldn’t eat any more.