Passing Through Paradise (22 page)

Sandra eyed the bucket with suspicion. “Here goes nothing,” she said, and flipped the lid. “You weren’t kidding about how gross this is, Kevin.”

Mary Margaret hoped she would act squeamish. Dad had no patience with squeamish people. Sandra didn’t freak out, just kind of screwed up her face, reached her gloved hand in and grabbed some old bones and fish heads. Stuffing them into the bait well, she asked Mary Margaret, “Is this enough?”

“A little more,” she couldn’t help saying.

Sandra filled the well and Mary Margaret shoved the trap overboard. It made a big splash, then settled and sank into deep blue nothingness.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Sandra said. “Thanks for your help. You’re a pro, Mary Margaret.”

“Yeah, right,” she muttered.

“You did a good job piloting the boat, too,” Sandra added. “I ‘ve never gone out in a boat before.”

“Really? That’s pitiful.”

“Never had the chance. I’m not a water person.”

“I am,” Mary Margaret said.

“I’m trying out for swim team this summer,” Kevin piped up. “Do you like swimming?”

“Actually, I never learned how.”

“You’re kidding,” Mary Margaret blurted out. Now that really
was
pitiful. She thought everyone knew how to swim. Her dad seemed as shocked as she felt. He stared at Sandra with narrowed eyes.

“I’ll get the next trap.” Kevin grabbed the hook. He took a long time reeling in the line.

This one was empty too, Mary Margaret saw with disappointment. They baited it again and sent it overboard.

“Let Sandra do the next one,” Kevin said.

Mary Margaret sat back and watched with grim satisfaction as Sandra handled the rope clumsily, tangling it on the deck. It took her twice as long to bring the trap aboard, but when she set it down, they could hear the unmistakable clicking sound of a lobster. Zeke growled and shrank from the trap. Kevin jumped up and down in excitement. “Two of them,” he yelled, punching the air. “Two great big ones. You caught two great big ones, Sandra.”

“I take no credit for this,” Sandra said, leaning down to peer into the trap. “They’re pretty big, aren’t they?”

“Did you know a one-pound lobster’s seven years old?” Kevin said, going into his trivia-wonk mode.

“Did you know a female lobster can lay up to a hundred thousand eggs at a time?” Sandra asked.

How did she do that? Mary Margaret wondered. She must have a lint trap for a brain.

“Lobster for dinner,” said Dad. “I was hoping for this.”

Kevin was already playing his favorite game of holding the lobsters by their backs, stomping around the deck and making monster noises while the dog barked. He was such an idiot, but Sandra and Dad acted like he was hilarious.

Eventually, Kevin put a band around the crusher claw of each lobster so they wouldn’t attack each other, and dumped them both into a big white plastic bucket.

“I’m cold,” Mary Margaret said suddenly, tossing her wet gloves into the locker. “I’m going inside.”

“How about you help me steer, buddy?” her dad asked Kevin, bringing up the anchor.

Sulking, Mary Margaret stood in the doorway of the stateroom she and Kevin shared when they stayed on the boat with their dad. The bunks were covered with Granny Malloy’s quilts and a few stuffed animals, old and worn from years of loving. An overwhelming sadness swept through her. Since the divorce, she’d perfected the art of flinging herself on the bed. She could actually hover, suspended for a split second, before slamming facedown into a wailing pancake of despair.

Oh, she was tempted. But that would only make her look pathetic. Scowling, she went to the main saloon and flopped down in one of the cushioned chairs. Digging around her backpack, she took out the book she was reading. Then, to her horror, it dawned on her—she was reading a book by Sandy Babcock. She tried to hide it before Sandra saw, but she was too late. Sandra came in, slid the door shut and took off Dad’s hat.

“So what do you think?”

“Don’t know.” Mary Margaret held the book at arm’s length. “I just started reading this.” Actually, she was nearly through, and really liked the book. She hated that she liked the book. She didn’t want to like anything about Sandra Winslow.

The fact was, this one was her favorite so far, the story of a girl named Carly who had no father. She didn’t even know who her father was. Carly’s mother lived with another woman. They were lesbians, and the kids in school made Carly’s life unbearable.

Mary Margaret was fascinated by the way Carly’s feelings were described in the book—how scared she was sometimes; how embarrassed she got when people talked about her situation; how she was angry a lot of the time. How much she wanted to hate her mother’s roommate, but ended up liking her instead.

Sandra was quiet as she fixed a pot of tea in the galley. When she came out, she had two mugs. “Your dad said you like cream and sugar.”

Mary Margaret took a desultory sip of the tea, half wishing it didn’t taste so good. Setting aside the cup, she picked at her nail polish, chipping a big section off her thumbnail. Then, even though she didn’t want to speak to Sandra, she said, “I don’t understand how the girl in your story keeps going to school every day when the kids are so mean to her.”

“It’s not very fun for her, is it?”

“I don’t see why you’d want to write a book about a girl everybody hates.”

“If everyone loved her, it would be a pretty dull story, and I wouldn’t be interested in telling it.” She cradled her hands around her mug as if to warm them. “People with perfect lives are boring.”

“But doesn’t it get depressing to write about a girl going through all that?”

“Would you rather read about a perfect girl with a perfect life?” Sandra smiled at Mary Margaret’s expression. “Trust me, that would be even
more
depressing.”

“I hope her mom dumps the roommate and finds her real dad and marries him.”

“Do you think that’s going to happen?”

“That’s what would happen if I had written this book.”

“That’s what’s fun about writing. You can make things turn out anyway you want. In my books, I always try to find the honest ending. The realistic one.”

“You mean the depressing one.”

“Sometimes. But there’s always hope in the end. At least, I like to think there is.”

Mary Margaret opened to a random page. It flipped her out to think that the words printed on this page had been written by somebody who was right in this room with her. She frowned. “How’d you think up all these words and paragraphs?”

Setting down her mug, Sandra rummaged around in a big tote bag and took out a dog-eared spiral notebook with an old-fashioned pen clipped to it. She opened the note-book to reveal page after page of cramped handwriting in turquoise ink. She showed Mary Margaret the pen, twirling it in her fingers. “That’s a good question. Sometimes I think all the words and paragraphs are up inside this pen. And when I write, they just come out.”

Mary Margaret’s eyes widened. “I need to borrow that pen.”

Sandra laughed. She had a nice laugh, and the silence that followed was a little more comfortable.

“So that’s your next book?”

“Yep. Eventually I’ll type it all up.”

“So there’s only that one copy? What if something happens to it?” Mary Margaret shuddered, thinking about the scene in
Little Women
when Amy burned Jo’s manuscript. Never mind Beth dying;
that
was the scene that made Mary Margaret cry.

“Can you keep a secret?” asked Sandra. “I don’t want people to know how weird I am.”

Mary Margaret sat forward. “What do you mean?”

“Well, every night before I go to bed, I put the note-book in the freezer.”

“The freezer?”

“So if the house burns down, the book won’t be destroyed.”

Weird times ten, thought Mary Margaret. “No wonder you don’t want me to tell.”

Sandra put away the pen and notebook and sat drinking her tea, watching the scenery go by out the window.

“I asked my dad if you were his girlfriend,” Mary Margaret said, her mouth forgetting to clear things with her brain.

Sandra made a whooshing sound, as if she couldn’t quite get the words out. “Who . . . who . . .” She cleared her throat, tried again. “And what did he say?”

So pathetic. She reminded Mary Margaret of a sixth-grade girl trying to find out if a certain boy liked her. Mary Margaret knew she had a chance to lie. She could say Dad had told her he didn’t like Sandra at all. Mary Margaret could make her believe it, too. She could say he was only hanging out with Sandra because he needed that contract to work on her house. “What do you think he said?”

Once again, Sandra made that funny, breathy sound with her mouth, like she had to sneeze or something. Her face turned red, and the cords of her throat stood out.

“Are you okay?” Mary Margaret asked.

Sandra lowered her head and nodded. She stopped making the noise and took a few deep breaths. “Sorry about that,” she said in her normal voice.

“Do you have, like, asthma or something?”

“Or something.” A worried look must have crossed Mary Margaret’s face because Sandra said, “I’m not sick. I have a stutter. Do you know what that is?”

Mary Margaret nodded, amazed. A stutter. Of course she knew what a stutter was. It was the most horrible of all speech impediments. The most noticeable. The easiest to make fun of. When she was in third grade, a boy named Peter had a stutter. Kids used to follow him around, chanting “Peter Peter P-p-pumpkin Eater,” exaggerating the stutter until Peter started to cry. Mary Margaret tried to remember if she’d joined in the teasing.

“It doesn’t happen too much anymore,” Sandra said. “It was a pretty big problem when I was younger.”

Mary Margaret kept thinking about Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, and she could imagine just how big that problem had been. “So you’re okay now.”

“Most of the time. Sometimes I slip up and struggle with it, like I did a minute ago. When I get stressed out or nervous, I can get into trouble.”

Mary Margaret felt sort of bad for making her nervous. It was weird, having an adult be so open about something as deathly humiliating as this. Most people would never admit to a kid that they were nervous. “How did you quit stuttering?”

“I never actually quit, just gained control. It took years of hard work and practice—mostly with my mom, and later with my—with other professionals. I had speech therapy and counseling. Growing older and gaining confidence helped. And I have a few strategies.”

“What kind of strategies?”

“There’s this thing I do with my diaphragm. And I use a lot of substitutions. For example, I can never pick up the phone and say, ‘Hello.’ That’s one of my worst problem words.”

Fascination tightened Mary Margaret’s stomach, the way it did when she watched nature shows about snakes on the Learning Channel. “So what do you say?”

“Usually ‘Yes, hello.’ Or ‘This is Sandra.’ My therapist and I had to figure out where the problems were likely to come up, and how I could talk my way around them.”

Mary Margaret was fascinated. It was like interviewing someone who had survived a plane crash or a tornado. It made her seem unique and strong. “Is that why you became a writer, because you didn’t like to talk?”

“I’m sure it’s a big part of it. I had plenty to say, but the stuttering blocked me from saying it. So I got into the habit of putting my thoughts and feelings on paper. You’re pretty smart to make that connection.”

“I’d like to write, someday,” Mary Margaret said. The wish just popped out. As soon as it did, she wanted to reel the words back in, clap a hand over her mouth. It was the second-most private of all her yearnings, and she had confessed it to this person she wasn’t even supposed to like. What was the matter with her?

“Why not today?” Sandra asked.

Mary Margaret shrugged uncomfortably. “I never know what to say. Or why I’m writing it down in the first place.”

“Tell you what.” She dug around in the totebag again. “Take this notebook—I always carry a spare.” She passed it to Mary Margaret. “You can write anything in it you want.”

The notebook felt unexpectedly weighty in Mary Margaret’s hands. She opened it, smoothed her hands over the vast blank pages. “I wouldn’t know what to write.”

“Trust me, it’ll come to you. When I don’t know what to write, I make a list.”

“A list of Ten Things.” Mary Margaret remembered the notes stuck to her refrigerator.

Sandra paged through her own writings. “Ten Famous People I ‘d Love to Meet. . . Ten Signs of Agoraphobia . . .” Her face reddened.

“Ten Ways to Get Out of P.E. Class,” Mary Margaret said.

“Exactly. You can share your writing with someone, like a letter, or keep it to yourself. Up to you. You might enjoy it. If you’re lucky, you’ll discover that you hate it.” She grinned and winked. “Writers like to pretend they’re deeply tortured at all times, but really, writing’s great fun. I think, in my case, it kept me from going bonkers.”

“It did?”

“Well, that and some intensive speech therapy.”

Talking to Sandra wasn’t like talking to a grown-up, but a regular person. Maybe that was why the next thing popped out: “I haven’t started my period yet.”

She wanted to die, completely die.

But Sandra didn’t laugh or get embarrassed or anything. She said, “I bet a lot of your friends have started.”

“All of them, I swear. Every single one.”

“You probably feel as though they belong to some secret club you can’t be part of.”

“Yes.”
How had she known?

“Trust me, I know the feeling. Mary Margaret, your time will come. So far, no healthy, normal girl has escaped. It’s one of those things that happens in its own time. I know that doesn’t help, though.”

But it did, sort of, the same way it seemed to help when Sandra admitted the stuttering. “My mom says I should be grateful, because getting your period is a pain.”

“Your mom’s right.”

“I guess.” She handed back the pen. “My mom and I fight a lot, sometimes. “ As soon as she said the words, she wished she could reel them back in. She shouldn’t be talking about her mom behind her back.