All Alone in the Universe (8 page)

My breath was coming in jerky sobs, evening out only to collapse again. Finally, I got my breathing to calm down. In, out, in, out No loud noises. I lifted my head, and my glasses slid down to the tip of my tear-slicked nose. I dried them with my skirt, then used my sleeve to wipe my face, but I needed something else to blow my nose.

“Here,” said Miss Epler. She handed me some Kleenex. She was watching me with a concerned expression.

“It‧s a good thing I‧m not the guidance counselor,” she said. “The whole school would be bawling. Everyone would have to wear life jackets.

“Listen,” she said. “It‧s almost time for the bell. Let‧s go in and wash your face.” She took me into the teachers’ washroom and put wet paper towels on my face and drops of Visine in my eyes.

“This is how all the stars do it” she said. And then: “Maybe just a little blusher,” brushing some pink onto my cheeks. “You want eye shadow? You would look stunning in lavender, but you have too much on your mind today to be fighting off advances. Let‧s just use a little concealer to deblotchify you.” I let her pat something around my eyes, her bracelets bangling and clacking together on her arm. She was trying to jolly me up, and her voice was calming, but when she led me to the mirror, I looked like death with rosy cheeks.

“Now, take a deep breath,” she said, “and if anyone asks, you have hay fever. I think there‧s still some ragweed out there. And if there isn‧t, who cares, right?”

I wondered how long this hay fever season would be lasting.

We stepped out of the washroom, and the bell rang.

“Hang in there, kiddo,” said Miss Epler. She gave my arm another squeeze. “Are you going to be okay?” I tried to smile but didn‧t even come close. I felt tears welling up again.

“You are,” she said. “You are absolutely going to be okay. Okay? I‧ll see you sixth period.”

The wave of voices and footsteps swelled and burst through the classroom doors into the hallway. I let myself be carried back to my locker, where I messed up the combination three times before getting it right. I slipped back into the current that was pulsing up the stairs and ejected myself into life science class. For once I was grateful that alphabetical order kept me on the far side of the room from where Maureen and Glenna would sit.

I opened my notebook and didn‧t look up when I heard their voices entering the room. I wasn‧t ready to look at anyone. My eyes and my heart felt thick and swollen. Paul Nepovicz was sitting in front of me, and I stared at the back of his shirt It was paisley, in psychedelic rainbow colors. It must have put me into some sort of a hypnotic state because suddenly Linda Sabotnik was passing a note to my desk that said, “Do you like Paul N.?” I considered this for a second, then looked at her as if to say. Are you nuts? She pointed to my notebook. I saw that I had copied his whole paisley shirt. I wrote, “No, just his shirt,” on the note and passed it back. Linda passed another note that said, “Where were you last period?” I wrote back, “Nurse‧s office. Bad hay fever.” I looked back at my notebook page. Besides Paul Nepovicz‧s shirt, neck, and ears, there were the words
cell division
and
superstition,
but I had no idea what Mr. Zianetti had talked about. I wrote, “Can I copy your notes?” and passed it to Linda.

 

I didn‧t have a plan. I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I moved like the wrong end of a magnet through the iron filings of the day, repelling contact. I could feel Maureen‧s questioning glances. I could sense Glenna‧s satisfaction. She was so sure I was out of the picture that she came over and, in a voice that almost sounded friendly, asked me if I was going to lunch. As if you cared, I thought.

“I can‧t,” I lied. “I have a doctor‧s appointment.”

“Are you sick?” she asked with fake sympathy.

Only of you, popped spitefully into my mind. But aloud I said, “Just hay fever. Allergies.”

“I didn‧t know you had allergies,” she said.

“Neither did I,” I said. “But I‧m starting to think I might.”

I wanted Maureen to come to her senses and say, “You, Debbie, are my best and truest friend. I‧m so sorry, Glenna, but you will have to go back to the pond scum where you belong.”

She didn‧t. She didn‧t say anything like that.

I started to understand that she wasn‧t going to. Ever. I was adrift. I wondered what I had done wrong. What was wrong with me. Why my friend had left. All by herself. I wanted to ask her why. I wanted to ask. How? But something I had thought was solid was just gone. It had dissolved, and I couldn‧t bring myself to ask anymore.

I walked to school by myself. I was starting to get used to it when one day a voice called out to me from behind, “Hey. Debbie. Wait up.” I turned around. It was Marie Prbyczka. I waited for her to catch up.

“Don‧t you hang out with Maureen no more?” she asked. “Did you‧ns have a fight or something?”

“No, we‧re still friends,” I said. This wasn‧t exactly true, but I still didn‧t feel like saying so.

“I thought you guys were like this.” She crossed her fingers, like for good luck or telling a fib. “Me and Don used to say to each other, ‘Oh, look, here comes the Bobbsey Twins.”

Part of me was proud, but another part was embarrassed and sent blood rushing to my face and ears. This must be some evolutionary survival mechanism, but I can‧t imagine how it worked. I also can‧t imagine Marie reading
The Bobbsey Twins.
Probably she just knew the tide. I was surprised they had even paid any attention to us.

“Where‧s Don?” I asked her. “Doesn‧t he usually give you a ride?”

“That jagoff,” she said. “He has some new girlfriend. Some chick from Hesmont. I told him, ‘If you‧re calling her up, don‧t bother calling me up no more.” She didn‧t seem to be heartbroken. She didn‧t even seem to be concerned.

“Do you miss him?” I asked.

Marie laughed. “I miss getting a ride to school,” she said.

Marie was all right to walk with. She talked a lot, so I didn‧t have to. She told me about Jerome and Anthony, the oldest of her little brothers, who were always stealing her cigarettes and then almost setting the house on fire. She told me stories about the weekend dances at the Hesarena. The stories always had cigarettes, beer, cars with a lot of people packed in, and fights. Sometimes the police. I wondered what it would be like to go there. Marie talked as if I would be doing that, any day now. I sort of hoped that I wouldn‧t be. I sort of hoped some other option might come along.

One day Marie told me that her dad had girlfriends besides her mother, that they both drank too much sometimes and then they had arguments where they threw things. The gold grapes flying though the air, the lamp with the figurines.

“At each other?” I asked her.

“No,” Marie said. “Just across the room or at the wall or something. Just to make some noise.”

I looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead, out from under her long bangs, out from behind her beige makeup that ended like a mask at her chin and the sides of her face. Her eyes were watery. Then she turned to me. She peered out through the mascara and said, “I bet that don‧t happen at your house.’

“No,” I said. I couldn‧t even imagine it.

Marie sighed. “My dad is such a jagoff,” she said. “I can‧t wait till I‧m eighteen.”

It turned out that Bobby Prbyczka was in Mom‧s class at school in September. And in October and November, of course, until the Prbyczkas drove off into nowhere in their big, shiny car. A few weeks into school Bobby started showing up in clothes that didn‧t seem to have been washed lately. Then they were the same clothes day after day.

“I feel sorry for him,” Mom said. “He actually smells, and the other kids don‧t want to be around him.”

She gave Bobby a bag, and she told him to put his dirty clothes into it and bring it over to our house. She washed them, folded them, and ironed the shirts and pants. Some things she even, mended. At school one day she had Bobby stay inside for recess, and she helped him to wash himself. In minutes the water in the sink was a dark gray.

“Good Lord, Bobby,” she said, “when was the last time you took a bath?”

“I think we‧re out of soap,” he said. “And anyways, my dad don‧t make us take baths.”

“Oh, he doesn‧t, does he? Well, what about your mother? What does she say about that?”

“She don‧t say nothing. She ain‧t there.”

This stopped my mom in her tracks. But not for long. “Where is she?” she asked Bobby.

It turned out that the Prbyczkas were separated. Mr. P. said it was his damn house and he wasn‧t going to move out, so Mrs. P. was staying with her sister for now, until she could find a place where there was room for the kids.

Mom started packing Bobby a lunch, and she made him eat half of it before school started. She made him brush his teeth. “I can‧t feed the whole family,” she said, “but it‧s hard to teach when you can hear someone‧s stomach growling.”

One day Mom opened Bobby‧s laundry bag and pulled out four or five shirts. Men‧s shirts. “Well, if he thinks I‧m going to do
his
laundry,” she said, and she stuffed them back in the bag.

When I asked Marie if it was true, she rolled her eyes casually and said, “Yeah, her and my dad had a fight. So what else is new? They think they‧re Liz and Richard. She‧ll stay at my aunt Renées for a couple weeks. Then my dad will show up there with flowers or something, and she‧ll come back.”

She stopped walking, put a finger to her lips, and narrowed her eyes. Then she brightened a little and said, “Huh. It‧s lasting longer than usual this time. Maybe they really will split up.”

eight

 

 

I
WROTE A STORY FOR
E
NGLISH CLASS IN WHICH ALL THE AMIN
characters died horrible deaths. At the same time I was writing an extremely optimistic story for science class that was a lot of work because it had to use three scientific facts as plot elements, and it had to be sort of technically accurate.

By the time I got to the English one, which was supposed to have a tragic hero with a “fatal flaw,” I had to hurry. I went for broken hearts, fatal diseases, car accidents, and poisonings. And a drowning. The fatal flaw of my heroine was forgetfulness. She kept forgetting to return phone calls, look both ways, label containers correctly, etc. She forgot to bring the life jackets. Finally, she forgot to bring food on a camping trip, and she starved, alone and forgotten (Irony. Also poetic justice) in the wilderness. I knew it wasn‧t a great story, I was tust trying to show that I got the point: Fatal flaw → Tragedy.

It took me by surprise when Miss Epier leaned over my desk a few days later and asked me to come back to the classroom after school. “lust for a few minutes,” she said “I want to talk to you about your paper.”

“Oh. Sure,” I said. But before I could read her expression or ask any questions, she was off on the other side of the room. The bell rang, the class swarmed up in a mob between us, and I decided I could wait to find out what she wanted. Probably I had been just too quick and sloppy. Then I had another idea: Maybe my story was good, really good. Maybe she wanted to send it off somewhere.

When I got there. Miss Epler was at her desk, reading I chose a nearby desk and waited. Miss Epler looked up and smiled her V-shaped, peach-colored smile. “Hey, Debbie,” she said.

 

This seemed like a good start.

I smiled too. and said, “Hi.”

“So, how are things going for you?” she asked casually.

I shrugged. “AU right” I said.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Really all right?” she asked. She leaned back in her chair and looked thoughtfully into my eyes, toward my soul. I looked back. I tried to be thoughtful, too, but my mind wandered to how lavender eye shadow, or any color really, doesn‧t look as good at the end of the day when a person‧s eyes start to get red and watery. Probably this is even caused by bits of powder flaking off and falling in.

I snapped back into focus and said, “I‧m okay. I‧m fine.”

“Your story,” said Miss Epler, “seemed a little angry. A little morbid.”

“It did?” I said.

She nodded. “Perhaps because every single character dies,” she said. “In awful ways.”

“Wasn‧t that the idea, though?” I asked. “Tragedy?”

“Tragedy, yes. Apocalypse, no. You might want to leave one teeny-tiny shred of hope and redemption, just for contrast.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

Miss Epler seemed to be waiting for more. I thought I knew what, so I said, “Do you want me to write it over?”

But she shook her head. “No. I know you could. I‧m not worried about that. What worries me is that someone who writes such a story might actually be feeling, well… somewhat unhappy.”

That was one I hadn‧t thought of. I leaned forward on my elbows. There was an owl‧s face in the fake wood grain on the desktop. Almost all fake wood grain has an owl‧s face in it somewhere. I traced it with a ringer.

 

‘It‧s just a story,’ I Said. “It doesn‧t mean anything.”

“Stories don‧t mean anything?” asked Miss Epler after a pause.

More carefully then, I said, “Not all of them.”

She clasped her hands to her chest raised her eyes, and said, “I think I can feel my heart breaking!”

She was joking, and I relaxed a little and smiled. I thought we were moving out of the serious part But Miss Epler turned thoughtful again and asked, “By the way, how did that friend thing work out? The one with the what was she? A centipede or a slug or something? Something horrible. How is that going?”

I looked down at the plastic wood grain again. I reached for my pencil to draw in the rest of the owl, then decided I‧d better not I wasn‧t thinking about the friend thing. I was keeping it in a separate compartment with the door shut There was a lot a person could do by herself. Like read. At least in books there were people who were faithful even unto death, people who didn‧t Just forget about each other for no reason that you could think of.

“It‧s okay,” I said.

There was a hesitant knock on the door frame. Alice Dahlpke was standing there.

“Oh, hi, Alice!” said Miss Epler. “Come on in and join us.”

Alice tippy-tapped over and lowered herself into a desk. She twirled some strands of hair around a finger and raised the corners of her mouth in an uncertain smile.

“Well, here we all are,” said Miss Epler brightly. Then, as if she had just remembered something, she checked her watch and said, “Oh, my. Listen, I have to go make a very quick phone call. Do you mind? Can you hang on for a few minutes? I‧ll be right back. You girls chat.”

She whirled out of the room and clip-clopped down the hall. There was the thud of a heavy door falling shut, then quiet.

The room was still. Afternoon sunlight poured in silently under the yellowed shades. It gave an intricate golden edge to the hunched- over shape of Alice examining her split ends.

 

“So,” I said, “what was your story about?”

“A nuclear war,” she said.

“Does everybody die?” I asked her.

“All except the mutants,” she said.

“We were supposed to leave a shred of hope,” I said. “For contrast.”

Alice seemed surprised. “Mutants can be hopeful,” she said. “Mutation is a way of surviving.”

“That might be true for viruses, but I‧m not sure it‧s exactly true for people,” I said. “Although maybe if you explain the scientific part…” Suddenly I had a realization. “Did you use this same story for science?”

Alice nodded.

“You creep! Why didn‧t I think of that?”

Alice smiled one of her huge smiles. (Here is how Alice‧s outside appearance is like her insides: untidy and murky, with bright and dazzling flashes, which are her smiles on the outside—almost embarrassing in their wideness and joyfulness—and her understanding of subjects like math and science on the inside. Under her mousy brown strings of hair lives a great intelligence. Geometry is candy for Alice, but everyday life is a foreign country to her. Sometimes even walking looks like something she is trying out for the first time.)

We sat there for a few minutes, waiting. I hummed and looked around the room. Alice held herself tensely, as if she would love to drum her fingers or jiggle her foot if only she could remember to do that.

“So,” I said.

I didn‧t know what I was going to say next but it seemed we might as well talk. I tried to think of something Alice and I had in common. I had to go pretty far back “Do you remember that time in Girl Scouts when we went horseback riding?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Alice.

“That was fun, wasn‧t it?” I said.

Alice smiled, but she didn‧t say anything. I had expected to get at least two or three minutes out of this topic. Where was Miss Epler anyway? I tried again. “I wish there were horses around here,” I said. “I love horses.”

“There‧s a horse farm in West Bird Township,” said Alice.

“You‧re kidding,” I said. “Where?”

Alice furrowed her dusky brow in thought and pulled the tips of hair she was sucking on from the corner of her mouth. “Somewhere out by that greenhouse on Walters Road. We‧ve driven by it in the car.”

 

This piece of information pierced me like an arrow. I had spent whole years of my life, in grade school, reading over and over again about the Godolphin Arabian, Black Beauty, National Velvet, and all those ponies out on Chincoteague. I had dreamed of riding bareback over the dark moors or through the pounding surf at sunrise, but except for that one long-ago Girl Scout field trip, which was pretty short and pretty tame, I had hardly even been near a horse. How could I not have known that there were horses right in West Bird Township? Why hadn‧t anyone ever told me?

At first I felt cheated. But then a different feeling, like putting on old clothes and finding money in the pockets, took over, and I was filled with a desire to see those horses.

“Do you think you could find it?” I asked Alice. “Do you want to go there, on a hike?”

And that is how I found myself, one Saturday in October, hiking to West Bird Township with Alice Dahlpke.

I should mention that Miss Epler was thrilled when she returned to find us making plans. She seemed to forget why we had come; you would have thought the whole reason was to set up this hike. I didn‧t remind her of our crappy disaster stories, and fortunately Alice didn‧t either. Probably she had forgotten, too.

It dawned on me later that maybe that
was
why we were there: Miss Epler hoped that a friendship would spring up between Alice and me and rescue both of us from friendless despair. I didn‧t know why she thought we would be a good match. Maybe all alone people seem alike to a not-alone person. It was nice of her to try.