A Plague Year (11 page)

The Lyles, stepmother and stepdaughter, looked at each other again. Did they think Jimmy was crazy? Maybe.

But I can tell you, the rest of us did not.

Dad left early today to help Reg unload a shipment of pumpkins. Mom made breakfast, like she always does. It was Quaker instant oatmeal for Lilly, and Life cereal for me (both products of the Pepsi food conglomerate).

I had my PSAT prep book next to me, opened to the vocabulary section. I read the words softly to myself: “
Laconic
, ‘terse in speech’;
languid
, ‘sluggish from fatigue or weakness.’ ”

Mom sat down at the table with us. Her eyes were shining; she was eager to talk. “So, Lilly, you’re graduating this year. What are your plans?”

Lilly just shrugged, which is never a good move with Mom. “I asked you a question, and I would like an answer, please.”

Lilly spoke through a mouthful of oatmeal. “I don’t know.”

“You must have thought about it.” Lilly chewed silently. Mom tried, “Well, what would you
like
to be doing one year from today?”

Lilly’s mouth was empty when she replied wearily, “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me what I should be doing one year from today? That’ll save us all some time.”

Mom turned to me with a martyred look. Then she turned back to Lilly and said, “Well, I hope you will be continuing your education. That’s what your college fund is for.”

“No way! I am through with school, forever. I have done my time.”

Mom said, “Okay. You have worked hard to graduate from high school. But what do you want next in life? A job?”

Lilly answered (laconically), “Sure.”

“So you’ll need a skill.”

“I have a skill. I’m a Food Giant cashier. Why not just pay me to do that?”

“We do pay you,” Mom protested. “We pay into your fund.”

“Or maybe Kroger would pay me. And not into a fund.”

“They wouldn’t pay you much, believe me. You have to have a real skill to make real money.” Mom got to the point. “Mrs. Nalbone’s daughter Kellie took a course to be a dental hygienist. Now she’s got a good job, in Dr. Wojahowitz’s office.”

This did not have the desired effect on Lilly. She screwed up her face in a look of horror. “A dental hygienist! You mean she puts her hands in other people’s mouths? Oh my God. That is so disgusting.”

Mom quickly added, “There are other courses, too. You could be a nurse’s aide.”

“That’s even worse!”

I said, “Yeah. What do you stick your hands into in that job?”

Mom was losing her composure. “Lilly! Please. You need a way to support yourself.”

Lilly smiled. “I’ll just do what you did. I’ll be a housewife, a traditional housewife.”

Mom shook her head emphatically. “No. You’re too young for that. Too young to get married. Too young to be serious about a boy. You’re barely eighteen. You shouldn’t even be thinking about marriage. You should be dating lots of different boys.”

Lilly laughed. “Oh, right. And where would I be finding these boys? At school? Uh, no. At work?” She held up her index finger. “Let me see: There’s Mitchell, in the meat department, but I think Del has her eye on him.”

I closed my book and smiled.

Mom said, “Mitchell is too old for you.”

I added, “Anyway, Reg says Mitchell is only interested in his own meat.”

Lilly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Reg the Veg. Now, there’s a real catch.”

Mom frowned deeply.

“And then there’s Bobby.”

“Lilly! We don’t make fun of Bobby.”

“I’m not making fun of him. I just don’t want to leave him out.”

Mom got to the point. “I don’t think there’s anyone at the Food Giant for you.”

“How about John?”

“Who?”

“John, the assistant manager?”

“He’s too old for you.”

“He’s twenty-two.”

“And you’re barely eighteen.”

“I am legally an adult. It would be legal for me to date him.”

“What? He asked you on a date?”

“He did, in fact. Yesterday.”

“When he was supposed to be working?”

“He was working. He was setting up the Halloween display, and I said that I always loved Halloween, and he said he did, too. Then he asked me to go to a Halloween party.”

“A party? Where? At a bar somewhere? You’re not old enough to go to a bar.”

“At the Hungarian church.”

“At a church?”

“In the basement. He volunteers with the youth group there. He’s chaperoning the party, and he asked me to come.”

“He’s Hungarian?”

“No!”

Mom looked trapped. “Your father is always hiring new people. Young people. You can find a boy closer to your own age.”

“Like who?”

“Well … what about that Vincent boy? He seemed nice.”

“Dad fired Vincent,” I informed her.

“Fired him?”

“Yeah. A month ago.”

“For what?”

“Stealing.”

“He stole money?”

“No. Cleaning supplies and cold capsules.” Mom looked confused, so I went on. “People are stealing those things to make meth.”

That didn’t help. She looked even more perplexed. “What is that, Tom? A drug?”

“Yes. A very addictive drug that you can make yourself, at home, using those supplies. We learned about it in our counseling group.”

“You’re not supposed to be learning how to make drugs in that group! You’re supposed to be learning how to say no when people offer you drugs.”

Lilly formed her mouth into a small O. “I said no when you offered me drugs.”

“Me? What are you talking about?”

“The Adderall?”

“Lilly! That was from Dr. Bielski, not me. He said you needed it because you were sluggish!”

Lilly turned to me. “What does that word mean?”

“
Sluggish
means you act like a slug. Like a slow, soft worm. It’s like
languid
. That’s one of my words today.”

“Great. I’m like a worm.”

Mom corrected me. “It means ‘depressed,’ Lilly. The doctor prescribed that medicine because you were acting depressed.”

She agreed. “Yes! I
am
depressed. I am depressed because I hate school. I have always hated school. But soon I will be through with school, and I will no longer be depressed.”

Mom looked up at the wall clock. Her eyes were no longer shining. She exhaled loudly. “Okay. Put your bowls in the sink.” She looked at Lilly. “It’s time to go to the place that makes you so depressed.” She looked at me. “And the place that teaches you to make drugs.”

Mom’s breakfast talk had not gone as she’d planned.

Wendy sat next to me today in Mr. Proctor’s class. She picked up right where she had left off, talking trash about Pennsylvania, and Blackwater, and Haven. She said, “Even the people with homes around here look like they’re homeless. Does everybody dress right out of the tool department at Sears?”

I looked down, embarrassed, at my own generic, nondescript clothes. “Well, we don’t have much choice.”

“People always have a choice. The women choose to wear men’s clothes here—baggy jeans and work shirts.” She raised her eyebrows to make a point. “Here’s what I think: It all stems from the weather. If the weather is depressing somewhere, then the people who live there get depressed, especially in the fall and winter. It’s called seasonal affective disorder.

“Depressed people don’t care what they look like, or what their houses look like, or what their cars look like. It all filters down. This place needs serious medication.”

“It needs drugs?”

“Yep. On a massive scale—lithium, Valium, Prozac. Like a
crop duster needs to zoom over Blackwater and spray it with antidepressants.”

I laughed. “Sounds like it’s worth a try.”

“Definitely. This is not normal. You should see how people live in Florida.”

“Yeah? I’d like to.”

“It’s always warm there, so you have to wear shorts, and T-shirts, and swimsuits. You have to show your body. There’s no hiding it. You can’t get by being all flabby and pasty and unhealthy-looking. California is like that, too. You can’t be hiding under Sears all-weather farm clothes.”

I asked her, “How many places have you lived?”

“Three: California, Florida, and—
ta-da!
—Blackwater, Pennsylvania.”

“I guess I don’t have to ask which is the worst.”

“Let’s see. Blackwater would come in at number one in that category, yes. And, curiously, at numbers two and three, as well. It’s that bad.”

All this time, I had figured that Mr. Proctor was deep in thought. He was standing by the whiteboard, but, as it turned out, he was listening to us. He took a step forward and said directly to me, “Blackwater, Pennsylvania, is the center of the world. It is the most important place in the world.”

Wendy’s face screwed up into a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me expression. She said, “Come on, Mr. P. Even the name is awful. It sounds like black death. Black Death, Pennsylvania.”

“But that doesn’t make it black death.
You
make it what it is.”

I think Wendy wanted to rebut that point, but Mr. Proctor didn’t let her. He told the whole class, “Okay! Let’s start. I need everybody’s attention up here.”

He wrote today’s vocabulary word and sentence on the whiteboard:
au pair—an exchange student with household duties. The au pair pared a pear for the pair of pères
.

Wendy conceded, “That’s awesome, Mr. P.”

We all wrote it down and worked in our vocabulary books for ten minutes.

Then Mr. Proctor passed out another book. It wasn’t a novel, though. It was a play titled
The Roses of Eyam
, by Don Taylor. He held the book high and told us, “This is a play about the bubonic plague. The roses in the title refer to the rose-shaped blotches that appeared on a plague victim’s skin. These blotches, and a sudden sneezing fit, signaled the beginning of the end. You may have heard of this before without realizing it.”

He flipped up both index fingers, as if he were conducting music, and recited, “ ‘Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies. A-tishoo, a-tishoo, all fall down.’

“And they did all fall down. In some towns, every man, woman, and child fell down. Dead. Every one.”

He continued: “
Eyam
rhymes with
dream
. Or
scream
. It is the name of a village in England.”

He looked at Wendy as he went on. “You may not like our village of Blackwater too much. You may think it is the worst place in the world, and you can’t wait to get out of here. But before you go, consider the villagers of Eyam. They really
were
in the worst place in the world because, in the year 1666, death arrived in their village.

“The bubonic plague. The Black Death. When they realized what was happening, the villagers’ first instinct was to run for their lives and take their chances out on the road. But their second instinct, their higher instinct, was to stay where they were; to keep the plague confined to their village for the greater good of mankind.

“More than half the villagers died because of that decision, died horribly. It is likely that many of them would have lived had they run for it. But it is also likely that some of them already had the plague. And they would have spread it, unchecked, throughout the countryside. They would have set off a chain of events that killed thousands.

“So this is a play about choice, and responsibility, and being connected to mankind as a whole.” He looked at me. “And maybe it’s about blooming where you are planted; about playing the hand you are dealt; about getting lemons and making lemonade. All those things.”

He pointed out the window. “Are there better places than Blackwater? Maybe. Are there worse places? Yes, most definitely.”

At the end of class, Wendy ripped a page out of her planner. She wrote down her address and phone number and handed it to me. “Here. Don’t lose this. I’ll talk to your driver right now.”

She sidestepped in front of Arthur before he could exit. She said, “Arthur? May I call you that?”

“That’s my name.”

“Sorry for the late notice, Arthur. I am inviting you to a Halloween party at my house. Tonight.”

Arthur shrugged, but he answered, “Okay.”