Whatever Happened to Janie? (9 page)

She was never left alone. Mr. and Mrs. Spring did not get home from work until late afternoon. Jodie and Stephen were virtually on rotation duty, making sure their new sister was always escorted, and safely locked indoors. Who did they think would kidnap her now?

Jodie was given to flashes of temper that vanished as quickly as they came. Janie rather envied this trait. It must be nice to be mad and be done.

Tired of romance and mystery novels, Janie found the rack of college catalogs and took some of them home. Janie had never wanted to go away to college. How terrifying those huge dorms full of strangers looked. Now she yearned for college because college had no parents. You did not have to divide your loyalties between the Connecticut parents you loved and the New Jersey parents you still could not believe were yours. College had no brothers and sisters either. If you didn’t like your roommate, you could trade.

But the days became weeks, and what had been alien became ordinary.

The name of the beauty shop was Scissors, and outside in front hung an immense wooden pair of
scissors, painted silver, glittering in the thin afternoon sun.

Mrs. Spring was the kind of person who was never happy at how her hair turned out and changed hairdressers continually. “Hairdressers hate Mom,” Jodie informed her sister. “She hardly tips at all and then she goes to somebody else for exactly the same cut. So she can never go back a second time to anybody.”

“I’m running out of options,” said Mrs. Spring. “Pretty soon I’ll have to go out of state for a trim.”

“When did you have it cut last?” asked Janie. Mrs. Spring’s hair was fluffy and ill-kempt. Her real mother, elegant and perfect, never had a hair out of place. And yet Janie felt a touch of affection for Mrs. Spring because her hair was a mess.

“Eight weeks ago,” said Mrs. Spring. “Or ten. Or twenty.”

“Twenty?” repeated Janie, laughing. “That’s four or five months.” Her real mother went every six weeks.

“Well, it gives me a chance to see if the beautician knows how to deal with disaster.”

Scissors was exactly like any hairdresser’s Janie had been in. The same perfumed air, the same shampoo-y scent. The same rows of wet-haired women without makeup, smiling at their yet-to-be-made-pretty selves in the huge mirrors. Even the same beauticians: two incredibly thin girls with strange and impressive hair; a heavyset matron fresh from her cigarette break, her hair dyed an impossible blond; and an amused young man, not
surprisingly named Michael. The familiarity was soothing.

While they waited, Janie chose
Cosmopolitan;
this was no doctor’s office where the only choice of reading material was
National Geographic
or
Sports Illustrated.
She and Jodie examined the cover for some time, wondering how the model had been laced into her bizarre gold gown.

“Three? Trims all around?” said the heavy beautician, bored. “I only got two on the schedule but we could fit the third in.”

Fit in.

I could fit in, thought Janie, touching the wilderness of her hair. I could get this cut. It would make me more Jennie and less Janie. “Okay,” she said. “Cut mine like”—she felt like a dentist extracting the word—”like my sister’s.”

“No!” shrieked Jodie, blocking the hairdresser as if she were armed. “You’d look terrible, Jennie. This isn’t your cut. You have such beautiful hair.” Jodie said to the hairdresser, “Absolutely not. Don’t touch a hair on her head.” She turned back to Janie. “See, I hardly have any hair. I have to cut it pixie like this because I am not hair-endowed. You, on the other hand, have to display your hair the way the
Cosmo
model displays her cleavage.”

They giggled.

Like sisters.

Mrs. Spring and Jodie went in the back to be shampooed. Janie finished the magazine.

It’s happening, she thought. Everybody told me that all it would take is time. Time alone. Days passing would turn me into Jennie Spring.

She stared at her watch. How incredible that time—invisible, lost-forever time—marked by little changing hands on a tiny decorated circle, could change her family, her name, and her thoughts.

I can lean into it, thought Janie. I can take this turn in the road. Become a Spring. Or I can step back.

“You can’t play?”
said Jodie, as if Janie had said she couldn’t speak English. “I’ll teach you. You’ll love it. It’s very addictive. We’re crazy about it.” She handed Janie a joystick. Janie had played plenty of computer games, of course, just not Super Mario. She and Stephen and Jodie sat on the edge of the couch staring at the TV screen.

It took her a while to figure out how to make Mario fly and swim and bounce high enough. Janie was determined to keep up, but it was impossible; Stephen and Jodie had mastered the game ages ago and were wonderful.

When Stephen played, he sat completely still, eyes riveted on the screen, moving nothing but his fingertips.

Jodie, however, played sitting on the edge of her chair. She looked like the top half of a ballet dancer. Her legs and feet lay still, but her arms curled and leaped as she lifted Mario up a cliff. She sank down into her own lap when Mario slid on an ice floe and she rotated herself desperately as she tried to hurl Mario over boiling lava. Janie loved watching her. Jodie was a remarkably unselfconscious person in play and in sleep: thrashing and moving and making faces.

Before long, Janie was in the Vanilla Dome, tucking under safe overhangs to escape blue-bubbled enemies. Just when she thought she was going to make it, blue bubbles came from both directions. “Oh, no!” shrieked Janie, trying frantically to run. “I’m dead! I have no hope! Look what’s coming!”

Sure enough, Janie was killed, and the cheerful
that’s-it-for-you!
music took her off the screen.

Jodie giggled. “You sounded like a pilot being shot down in World War Two. ‘Oh, no! I have no hope!’“

“How many lives do you have left?” asked Stephen.

“Just one.”

“Hah!” said Jodie with satisfaction. “I have twenty-two.”

Janie studied their play, memorizing the tricks and keys. She had memorized the little Nintendo songs without meaning to, the way you memorized the theme to
Jeopardy.
They sang in her head, like little companions.

“Let’s get something to eat,” said Stephen.

Mesmerized by the game, Janie hated to pause it just so they could eat. Jodie laughed at her. “Your stomach is growling, you need a snack so much.”

It was true.

“The game sucks you in, doesn’t it?” said Jodie. “There’s never a time when you’re really ready to stop.”

“Yes, there is,” said Stephen. “All of a sudden you’re so sick of it you can’t believe you’ve spent the whole day there.”

“Don’t tell Mom and Dad we played two solid
hours, Jennie,” cautioned Jodie, following her brother into the kitchen. “And especially don’t tell them you died fifty times,” she yelled back. “They think all that dying makes you callous and perverted. They might even take the Nintendo away.”

Stephen and Jodie discussed snack possibilities. They decided to stick chocolate chip cookies under the broiler to melt the chips. Neat idea, thought Janie, getting up and going after them. Daddy would love that.

Daddy.

The cozy school-day afternoon died as if Janie had put a knife through it. She had actually forgotten Mommy and Daddy. She had been having fun. She had liked being in this house, with this brother and sister. For an entire afternoon, she had put her parents on the shelf of her mind, storing them for backup.

Mommy and Daddy will shift into the past, she thought. Soon they will be shadows. People I remember in slow moments, or sad times.

No!

That’s not what I want!

I said I’d try—but I didn’t want it to work!

“Cookies are ready!” yelled Stephen.

“I don’t want any,” said Janie. She felt herself stiffening, as if she were preparing for war.

Jodie popped back into the living room. “Yes, you do. Come on. I just poured milk.”

“I am allergic to milk,” said Janie sharply. “How many times do I have to tell you that?” Stop it, she told herself, don’t pick a fight.

Jodie stared. “Why don’t you come on in and
tell us again, Jennie?” she said. “We’re slow learners, we Springs. Anyway, we love hearing about you and the Johnsons. About how you never have pizza and you’re always going horseback riding and you need a thirtieth Swatch.”

Janie walked past. If they had a fight, it would exonerate her from forgetting about the Johnsons. Her loyalties twisted and swung, like a dead person hung from a tree. She opened the refrigerator door roughly and pushed the available drinks around.

“Don’t like our selection?” said Jodie hotly. “Wish you were in a better-stocked kitchen? Up there in Connecticut where they do things right?”

“Yes!” snapped Janie.

Stephen lifted the plate of hot cookies between their snarling faces. The rich aroma of hot chocolate interfered with the fight. “Come on, Jennie. Come on, Jo. Dad told us to get along. So get along.”

“She isn’t trying,” said Jodie.

“She was for a while. Two hours is the most we can expect of her.”

Janie stiffened.

Stephen waved the plate on a slant. “Dig in. Your big brother’s very own homemade cookies.”

If I had grown up here, Janie thought, would I idolize Stephen? Would this be the big brother I leaned on for advice? Would I think he was a wonderful guy and would my girlfriends want to date him?

She leaned on the huge white refrigerator, wishing she could lean on Reeve, or Mommy, or Daddy. Anything but this place.

Jodie actually picked up a kitchen chair and flung it.

Janie leapt out of the way even though the chair came nowhere near her.

“I hate you!” Jodie screamed, eyes blazing. Jodie grabbed the plate out of Stephen’s hands and threw that, too. Chocolate splatted where it hit the kitchen wall. “You can’t even take a cookie from us! You have brought nothing to this family but hurt and pain. Since you were three years old.” Jodie began sobbing. “I thought you would be so much fun. I always wanted a sister. And we were named to go together. Jodie and Jennie.” Jodie wiped her eyes and went on screaming. “I thought we’d share clothes and giggle and tell stories like a slumber party. But you’d rather lie there in the dark like a stick or read a book. You can’t stand talking to me. And you write your other name on your homework and you telephone those people all the time.”

She was right and Janie knew it, but could not admit it. “They are not
those people!
They’re my parents!” said Janie fiercely.

Stephen actually got between them.

“You might as well be stabbing Mom with a butcher knife the way you act, Jennie! You’re not even trying,” yelled Jodie. “I hate you! You’re a mean, spoiled—” Jodie bit off the rest of her sentence.

Mr. and Mrs. Spring walked in, home from work and no doubt sorry. They stared incredulously at the dumped cookies and upside-down chair.

It’s my fault, thought Janie. I wanted a fight. I practically choreographed a fight.

Mrs. Spring put a hand lightly on Janie’s shoulder and the other hand not so lightly on Jodie’s.

But she did not say anything. She did not take sides. She did not make some grown-up type statement about what this meant. She did not say what they were going to do next.

After a long time, Janie realized that Mrs. Spring did not know what to do next.

Nobody did.

R
eeve Shields had driven to New Jersey before.

That was when he was still practically a little kid. He’d been seventeen, so crazy about Janie that just being alone with her in his Jeep filled his entire mind. Not that being with Janie was ever a mind-thing. It was a body-thing. Thinking about his body and her body was so intoxicating that Reeve found his own body useless. Swallowing, breathing, gripping a steering wheel—difficult in Janie’s presence.

He had lived next door to Janie ever since he could remember. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with the girl next door; she was supposed to be too familiar and too ordinary.

But Janie, her slender but deeply curving shape, her silken but ridiculously fluffy shining red hair …

Reeve had his first college acceptance.

It was so amazing. He would not have thought there was a college in America that would want him. Reeve had spent freshman, sophomore, and junior years killing time and staring at girls. This did not produce high grades. This did not even produce
homework. He had picked up steam senior year, but his grade average was definitely average.

He held the acceptance letter in his hand. Even the envelope was precious, with its college logo and return address. He loved knowing that his name and address were in their computer. They wanted him.

Reeve wanted to tell the world, but mostly he wanted to tell Janie.

You never saw lights on at her house now. The wide glass plates that filled the side wall of the Johnson house were dark. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson must sit in the dark, staring at the shadows, thinking their dark thoughts.