Very in Pieces (20 page)

“I don't think Christian wants to break up with you, either.”

“I know,” Britta concurs. “And it's not like I didn't expect it to happen someday.”

“Mommy was bound to leave Daddy eventually,” Grace says.

“It's just that I would have liked a warning,” Britta says.

“How did you know we would break up?”

There is silence on their end. An orderly comes across the parking lot, hesitates, then seems to say,
Screw it
, and stands by the far edge of the bench as he lights his skinny cigarette.

Britta clears her throat, but it is Grace who speaks: “We didn't think it seemed like you were super into him, but we thought that maybe that's just the way you are.”

Subtext:
We knew you didn't love him, but we thought maybe you were incapable of love.

“I guess that is just the way I am.”

“Very, I—” Grace begins.

“Listen, I have to go. I've been here for hours. I haven't even started my chemistry problem set.”

“Okay, but if you need anything, we're here,” Britta says.

“One hundred percent.”

“We love you.”

“Love you, too,” I say, and hang up the phone before turning it off for real.

I run both hands through my hair and glance over at the orderly. He has long hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, and stubble sprouting in uneven patches. He holds out his pack to me. “Need one?”

“My grandmother is inside dying of lung cancer.”

He knocks the pack. “Take two, then.”

I laugh. I laugh and laugh until there are tears streaming down my face and I don't know if I'm still laughing or crying, but my body is shaking. I am making the most inhuman sound: a guttural sob that sounds like it's from some pre-evolutionary part of my body, some part we don't even need anymore. I wipe my eyes. The orderly is still holding out the pack of cigarettes toward me.

“I'll pass,” I tell him.

“Smart girl.”

“That's my name, don't wear it out.”

His smile falters, but he has it back on in a second. Surely he's dealt with grieving family members before. Surely he knows the best way to deal with us is calmly, slowly, like we are rabid animals. His voice is low when he speaks. “The truth of it is, it's awful, and you want it to be over, for them and for you, and then it is over, and it's a thousand times worse.”

I reach out my hand and take one skinny cigarette from his pack; I do have to replace the one I smoked from Nonnie's cigarette case. “I guess I'll just save this for later, then. In case of emergency.”

“You do that,” he tells me.

“Thanks,” I say. “For telling the truth.”

“Don't tell no one on the inside. I could lose my job for telling the truth.”

“My lips are sealed.”

I give him a half wave, half salute as I cross the parking lot and then get into Nonnie's Rapier, where I take the cigarette and put it in Nonnie's case. Then I slip into reverse, back out of my spot, and head home—what's left of home without Nonnie.

Outside our house, I open my car door and step out into the cool night air. The seasons are finally starting to behave and it feels like fall. A tinkling sound makes me turn my head toward the bay. There's something about the water down behind our house that bends sound. Voices come trailing up, words spinning around like mist. I used to sit by my window listening to them, imagining the speakers and the lives they led. I wanted them to come for me. I wanted them to wind up the hill, across our lawn, around the house, and then to throw pebbles up at my window and ask me to come down, to come with them on whatever wonderful adventure awaited.

I hear the voices again tonight.

The moon is full and shines in slats on our driveway. The light hits the bottle caps—have they grown in number?—and they seem to dance on the side of the house like water shimmering in midday sun.

There's another square of light on the driveway, more yellow, and when I look up to the house, I see that the light is still on in my mom's studio. She's up there moving around in an
almost choreographed way: twist the hair, cross the room, hand to cheek, cross back in the other direction. She seems to be circling something, regarding it, but of course I can't see what it is.

Even from this distance, you can tell she is beautiful by the curves of her body and her posture. I straighten my own back.

She stops short and raises both hands to her head and leaves them there, as if she's posing. Her elbows jut out to the side the way Ramona and I would pose for pictures when we were younger. We called it the supermodel pose, although honestly I've never seen a photo of a supermodel standing with her hands behind her head as if she were resting on them, hip jutted out to the side.

Mom's pose doesn't look silly. She looks like she might suddenly yank her hair out at the roots. I begin to worry. If you have a stroke, I wonder, could you freeze like that, in that eerie pose? Or a seizure, maybe. People think they leave you thrashing on the floor, but more often than not, the victim seems to be staring into space.

As if Mom can sense my worry, she drops her arms to the side, pivots, and walks straight toward the window. My heart speeds up in panic. She'll know I've been watching her. She comes right up to the window and puts one hand on the sill, her forehead on the glass. The moonlight makes her ghostly. There's no sense hiding, so I raise my hand in a small wave.

Mom doesn't react at all.

v.

Mom tries to sneak into my room late at night, but the door squeaks and her ice cubes clink as she walks over to the side of my bed and sits on the edge. When I was young, this was how she used to wake me up in the morning. She sat beside me and rubbed my back and maybe hummed a little song. Sometimes I'd pretend I was still sleeping just because I liked it so much.

“You've been avoiding me,” she says.

“I'm sorry,” I mumble, and hope that will be enough.

She scoots farther onto the bed, and I slide over to make room for her. Her knees are drawn up to her chest and she balances her drink on them. I wondered if she's been up all this time drinking. “I understand what you're going through, I think. It means so much, but it means so little, you know?”

“Mm-hmm.” My eyes are dragging down, desperate to close.

“Why don't you tell me about it?”

“It's not important,” I say.

“Sure it is.” She pushes some hair out of my face, her fingers cool and damp from the condensation on her glass.

I squint at the clock. It's 2:27. She isn't going to go anywhere until I talk to her. I can feel it in the way she tucks her body against mine. I don't know where to start, so I just say, “I kissed a guy that wasn't Christian.”

“And you said there was nothing to tell. There's a story there, I'm sure.”

I'd been expecting her to be trembling with excitement,
leaning forward, cheeks flushed.
Finally! Finally her daughter was acting the way she was supposed to.
But her face is soft. She holds her drink in both hands and studies my face so carefully, I bury it in my pillow.

“You wouldn't have kissed the butcher boy if everything was good with Christian.”

I rub my fists into my eyes. “I just didn't think it was right. There was nothing there. It wasn't right.”

She takes a sip and extends her legs out in front of her. “The hardest thing is thinking about all the time you spent trying to make it work when you could have been doing something else, pursuing other dreams. I mean, all that time you spent watching hockey games. You don't even like hockey.”

I have never been to a hockey game: our six months together missed hockey season.

“So there you were freezing and watching him on the ice when you could have been, I don't know, solving some amazing math problem. I'd hate to see that dream lost to you.” She takes a long drink, and then another, and when she begins to speak again I realize she has been pausing while she decides whether to tell me the next bit of information. “I was going to go to Pratt. I was all set to go when I met him. Your father. And then I decided to just study art here at Essex.”

This is not the fairy tale I'd always been told. “But you were already done with college when you met him.”

“I took his music class over the summer. He was teaching summer classes then, to make extra money. I was only seventeen,
you know, young for my grade.” She kind of giggles, kind of sighs. “I walked into that lecture hall, and it was like something out of a movie. Everyone else just faded away, and there was a clear line between us. What choice did I have?”

“You started dating Dad when you were seventeen?” I left out the second half: and he was twenty-seven.

“Instead of Brooklyn, I got this tiny town, and instead of galleries in SoHo, I've got the Essex grind. Don't get me wrong, I love your father. I'm just saying that the choices we make, they ripple out into places we never expected them to.”

It never occurred to me that Mom might be disappointed in her life. “Your art is really, really good.”

She laughs. “No, it isn't. Not the stuff you've seen. My new stuff . . .” Her voice fades out. “Maybe that. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that instead of studying art in New York City, I was watching the proverbial hockey game. So I know how you feel, Very. Even though it was your decision, I know how disappointing this is.”

Outside, an owl hoots a mournful cry.

“But this is the time in your life when you are supposed to make those mistakes. I don't mean that condescendingly. God, it used to drive me crazy when my mother would tell me that I was wasting my youth. But she was right, you know. She wasn't right about a lot, but she was right about this. And I am so glad—I am so proud of you—that you aren't making the same mistake as me. That you aren't letting yourself get swept up in your first romance, that you have some perspective.”

Her words are gentle and tumble over me, and I have a hard time holding on to them. “It's okay, Mom,” I say.

“This is the time for figuring things out. Figuring out how to be in a relationship, what makes a good one. How to end it. You're doing it right, Very. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Perhaps Dominic is something else I'm supposed to experience. My bad-boy phase. But I know it's more complicated than that. Not that he isn't really bad, or is a bad boy with a heart of gold or whatever. I don't know. Maybe it always seems like more when you're the one living it.

“You are supposed to live through these things now, not hold on and stick with it for the rest of your life. Christian is a nice guy, but if you had told me that he was it for you, that you were going to get married, or even just that you were going to go to college together, I would have sat you down and tried to talk you out of it. Not that it would have done any good. My mother's talks just made me want your father more.”

She puts her drink down on my bedside table and curls up beside me. “You ought to get some rest,” she says. “I'll just wait here with you until you fall asleep, okay?”

“Mom?” I ask.

“Mmm?”

“You were telling me earlier about a boy you dated before Dad. In New York.”

She does not say anything for several minutes. “Ancient history,” she finally says, but that pause tells me the truth: she regretted leaving him. Who knows if her life would have been
any better if she'd never come to Essex, never had to leave that boy. I know she doesn't miss him, not really. She regrets the potential he represents, the road not taken.

I feel her breath as I try to sleep. I listen to it get slower and slower as she succumbs. It is later—how much later, I'm not sure, but it seems like forever—that I fall asleep myself.

When my alarm goes off in the morning, she is still there. She moans and rolls over. I turn the alarm off, slip out of bed, and cover her with a bedspread, tucking it around her shoulders.

i.

IT'S BEEN TWO DAYS
since I broke up with Christian. Three days since Nonnie went to the hospital. Four days since I kissed Dominic.

Ramona greets me in the morning wearing wide-legged pants with an untucked button-down shirt and tie. She's twisted her long hair into a bun.

“Drag day?” I ask.

“Women can wear ties. Not very enlightened of you, Very.”

I had hoped that maybe Nonnie getting sick would snap Ramona out of her attitude, but no such luck. She didn't come to the hospital for a visit, not even a quick one like Dad, who managed to pop in to the hospital for a few minutes each day. Instead, evidently, she was at home reworking her look from hippie chick to Annie Hall. She picks up a pencil from the kitchen counter and tucks it into her bun. When she opens the
refrigerator I say, “The food's all gone. Mom said it spoiled.” Still she looks for a moment longer before conceding that there is in fact nothing to eat in the refrigerator. I'll have to go to the grocery store after school. Maybe I'll go to the bigger one in Dover so I don't run into Dominic.

We head into the garage, but then she reaches for the door to the outside. “I don't want to take Nonnie's car.”

“She gave it to me. It's mine now.”

She removes the pencil from her hair and bites it between her front teeth. We stare at each other like that for a moment, not saying anything. And the truth is I have no idea what direction this conversation could go. Will she be jealous? Will she talk about Nonnie? After twirling it in her fingers, she slips the pencil into her pocket.

“Are you trying to become her?” she asks.

“No.”

“Because you can't, you know,” she says, as if I hadn't answered. “You can't just cut your hair and drive her car and poof, you're Imogene Woodruff.”

“Obviously.”

“I don't even know why you'd want to.”

“Stop it, Ramona.”

“She wasn't perfect. It doesn't do anybody any good to pretend that she was.”

“She
isn't
perfect.
Isn't
.” I squeeze my hands into fists until my fingers turn white. “Not that you'd know. She could be dead already for all you care. What were you doing when she
was in the hospital? Shopping at Goodwill for your next transformation?”

“No. Not for that.”

“Don't bother being cryptic. I don't care. I don't care what you do anymore, Ramona. You're so set on being weird, being the supercool or deep or whatever version of yourself, that you aren't even you anymore, and I don't care because I actually love Nonnie and it matters to me whether she lives or dies.”

“I don't want to go there and listen to her myths.”

“They aren't myths. She's telling me the truth, who she was—”

“Arthur Miller and the Chelsea Hotel and all that? That's her version. The edited and shined-up story.”

“How would you even know?”

“Mom was telling the truth. She doesn't own the house anymore. Mom and Dad do, and the mortgage is huge. I found one of the statements lying around. They owe so much money on it, they'll never be able to pay it back. As soon as she dies we're selling, we're gone. You and me and Mom will be living in some condo somewhere and—”

“Stop it, Ramona.”

“I thought you wanted the truth?”

“Stop it.”

She gives me the strangest smile. Not a smile, but a twisting of the lips. “In that case, I'll take the bus.”

ii.

In my life, I've been called to the office numerous times, always for something good. The best, of course, was when I was called down and there was Mr. Tompkins waiting to tell me that his conference proposal, including the proof I'd done, had been accepted for the Math Around U conference.

So when Ms. Blythe finds me studying at a back table in the library and tells me I'm wanted in the office, I imagine what it could be this time: a scholarship, a summer math program, or maybe they'll tell me that I've been granted early acceptance to the college of my choice and can pack my bags right now. Not that I've made my choice. Not that I would leave Nonnie.

The secretary ushers me into the assistant principal's office. Ms. Pickering always dresses in these power suits, except on Fridays, when she wears jeans and high heels. Since it's Wednesday, it's a pink power suit. She smiles widely when I come in, and says, “Verrrronica,” trilling out the
R
.

“Hi,” I say, settling into the chair across from her.

Her face grows more serious. There's a vase of wildflowers on her desk, and she spins it a half turn, causing a few petals to fall onto her desk. “Your sister has been missing quite a bit of school.”

Because really, my week isn't bad enough already. “Oh?” I try to sound neutral.

“Yes, three days last week, and of course she hasn't been in at all this week.” She clears her throat. “She's missed more days
than she's attended so far this year.”

She isn't out. This morning I waited until I saw her board the bus, then cruised right by with the top down. “Yes, well, she's been feeling under the weather.”

“Her attitude, too, seems troubling. Teachers report that she's listless in class. And she hasn't turned in any work. Of course it's early in the year, but this is not the best way to start off her high school career.”

An accurate first impression: the best possible version of Ramona.

I look at the arrangement of things on her desk: calendar, clock, red stapler, a shallow bowl filled with paper clips. “Ms. Pickering, I don't know what to tell you.”

She smiles. “You don't need to tell me anything, Veronica. I'm telling you. You're a great student, and I want to enlist your help in helping your sister. We find these things work best when the whole family is involved.”

“Okay.”

“To be perfectly honest, we don't normally go to siblings, but we've had some trouble reaching your parents.” She pauses as if waiting for me to supply some information, but I do not. “I left a number of messages, but now it seems the answering machine has been turned off?”

“I'll check when I get home.” The window behind her looks out into the parking lot. I can see Nonnie's car, and contemplate crawling out the window to get to it.

“That will be lovely, but the bigger issue here is Ramona. She could use your guidance.”

“Well, like I say, she hasn't been feeling well. Maybe it's mono or something. I can take her to the doctor.”

Ms. Pickering arranges the stack of papers on her desk. “I hope it's something so straightforward, I really do, but I fear there may be more going on. She seems to be disconnecting from her life.”

Disconnecting from her life. Wouldn't that be nice, if you could really do it? Not like permanently, but just a little break for a while.

“We're thinking she might need some help.”

“What kind of help?” My guess is Ms. Pickering isn't talking about a tutor.

“We have a school psychologist.”

“She's not crazy.”

“I didn't say she was crazy. I've heard your grandmother is ill. Ramona just might need someone to talk to, to process the situation. People grieve in different ways, and this could be Ramona's way of processing the stress of the illness.”

For Nonnie's cancer to bother Ramona she would have to acknowledge it.

“You don't need to take this on yourself. Perhaps a family discussion about how best to handle the situation is in order.”

“I'll see what I can do.”

“Wonderful!”

Yes, everything is just wonderful. “Thanks for letting me know,” I say as I stand.

“Veronica, there is something else I want to talk to you
about.” I sit back down on the molded plastic char. Ms. Pickering's is one of those high-tech office chairs, sleek, curved, and black. “Of course it's not my practice to listen to idle gossip, I'm sure you know that. But every once in a while things bubble up.”

Oh God.

“It's come to my attention that you've been spending some time with Dominic Meyers.”

Actually I haven't seen him in two days;
he
is the one who hasn't been in school.

I look down at my hands in my lap—folded like two broken birds—and think of the last time I saw him, on Monday: after the parties, after Nonnie went to the hospital. On that day I acted like he was just some piece of loose paper that had blown up against me, something to be brushed away.

Ms. Pickering reaches out and again moves the vase, and another shower of petals rains down. “While I always like to see students breaking out of cliques, and of course you are free to be friends with whomever you wish”—she clears her throat—“I would never say that someone was not worthy of your friendship. At the same time, it's an important lesson to learn that you are judged by the company you keep.”

“And?” If she is going to bring this up, she better go all the way.

“And.” She shifts in her seat, rustling the power suit. “Perhaps how you want to be known, that is, perhaps you don't want to tie your reputation to Dominic's.”

“Maybe he's tying his reputation to mine,” I say. “If we're judged by the company we keep, wouldn't I be a good person to hang out with? You just said I was one of your star students.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So maybe instead of reconsidering my reputation, people should be reconsidering his.”

“Well, yes, but it doesn't always work that way.”

“If people trust my judgment, why shouldn't they trust my judgment of him?”

“Sometimes smart kids make bad choices. That's what I'm trying to avoid here. I don't want you to make decisions that have consequences that you regret.”

“I have a lot of homework to do,” I say. “I'll talk to Ramona.”

Ms. Pickering looks like she wants to say something else, but in the end, she just nods, and says, “Thank you, Veronica.”

iii.

Mr. Solloway sits on a stool behind his desk, holding up two pieces of thick white paper, looking from one to the other. He just nods at me as I enter, as if people go in and out of the art room all the time. There's a quiet hum of concentration and work. Every wall and flat surface seems to be covered with posters, student artwork, figure models, and art supplies.

This is where Ramona is supposed to be: sixth-period art. But as Ms. Pickering has said, she's not here.

Serena is working at an easel near the back. She looks up, sees me. Smiles. I take a deep breath. This is Serena, after all. She isn't someone you just stroll up to and start talking to. We've gone to school together for eleven years, and I've never once had a conversation with her.

You've got your friends and you stick to them.

I clench my fists and I navigate my way to her. She watches me as I walk to her easel but doesn't say anything when I arrive. “Um,” I say. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she repeats. She says it with a slightly British pronunciation,
hell-oh
instead of
hel-low
.

“I just want to thank you. For English class, back on the first day of school.”

“Sometimes Hunter just needs a reminder of common courtesy. And I meant what I said. I do like your grandmother's poetry.”

I tug at the hem of my shirt. “She'd be glad to hear that.”

I look at Serena's easel. It's a swirling painting of the night sky all in blues and purples with streaks of red. It looks dangerous. “That's nice,” I say, and immediately wince. I know better than to call a painting nice. “I'm sorry. I've never been good at talking about art.”

“That's okay. Neither am I.”

When I first came in, all I could smell was the studio: paint, clay, that sort of thing. But now I can smell Serena. She uses a strawberry-scented perfume or lotion that is surprisingly innocent.

“It's supposed to be a self-portrait.”

“You aren't going to have room for yourself in there,” I reply.

“Maybe I'll make myself very, very tiny. Just a speck.” She leans back and glances at a mirror that is set up next to her easel. “It's so much harder to see yourself than other people. I'd rather paint you in there. Your face has great angles.” Serena points at her mirror and says, “I don't like looking at myself.”

“But you're beautiful!”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I saw the picture of you. The one from the high school art competition. It was gorgeous.” Serena holds her brush above the canvas, and I look at her again. Hunter got rid of her freckles, and her smile. He made her eyes lighter and lips darker so she and Callie looked more alike. The picture doesn't seem so beautiful anymore. It wasn't really Serena. Or Callie. He'd turned them into interchangeable pieces.

She paints a few more brushstrokes. These are small and tentative, and I wonder if she's working up to painting herself, bracing herself, digging for the courage. And that makes me wonder how Nonnie did it, time and time again, pouring herself onto the page. When you write your own story, you're asking to be read. “It's poetry,” she used to say. “You're meant to look.”

“I might just paint over this one,” Serena says. “Start again with my face.”

I know she means she'll treat it with a solvent or sand it down and then paint over it with titanium white before starting over,
but I picture the outline of her face over the swirls on her canvas.

“Sometimes you just need to step away from it and work on something else. Anyway, that's what my mom says. Not that she does it, but that's what she says.”

“Is she a painter?”

I've always felt like everyone in town knew my whole lineage. “Yes. I remember her telling Ramona that once when she was stuck on a painting. ‘Take it off the easel. Turn it around so you can't even see it. It'll let you know when it's ready for you.'”