Izzy, Willy-Nilly Read online

  Mrs. Hughes-Pincke came in, just before lunch, and sat down in the chair she pulled up, all perky and pregnant.

  “Hello, Isobel. How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine,” I said, turning down the volume.

  “Let’s turn that off so we can talk.”

  I turned it off.

  “Do you have any questions?” she asked. “What would you like to talk about?”

  There was nothing I wanted to talk about. I shrugged.

  “I have to stay here,” she said. “You’re on my appointment sheet and I have to earn my salary.” She asked questions and I answered them until finally she left.

  My father came by and ate some of the fruit and cookies for lunch. My mother arrived as he was leaving. She’d bought me a needlepoint kit, for something to do with my hands. She picked through the tin of cookies, looking for the rolled kind, which are her favorites. After a while, my mother had to rush off. I turned on the TV.

  Dr. Epstein came by. “You look pretty good,” he told me. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine,” I told him. “You should have one of my grandmother’s cookies.”

  “You’re right, I should. And I will. How about you?” He held the tin out to me.

  I didn’t want any. Dr. Epstein stood beside the bed. He’d elevated it again, after he had checked my bandages, so I was sitting up. He picked out one of the rolled cookies and bit into it, watching my face.

  I looked right back at him, because I knew by then that I could count on myself to be all right in front of other people.

  “Good cookies.”

  “She’s a good cook.”

  “Can I take one with me for my appendectomy?”

  “As long as you don’t take another one of the rolled ones. Mom really loves those.”

  He chose the biggest cookie, layered with raspberry jam. “Do you have any questions for me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay, then, I’ll see you tomorrow. Hold the fort,” he said to me.

  I watched TV for most of that afternoon and while I was eating my afternoon snack and while I was eating my dinner. I watched TV that night, waiting for the phone to ring, hoping that it wouldn’t because I didn’t have anything to talk to anyone about, wondering why it didn’t.

  When at last it did, a little after the nine o’clock news break, it was Suzy. As soon as she said hello and asked me how I was, I wanted to get off the phone.

  “Geez, Izzy, I didn’t know,” she said. I kept my eyes on the screen, wondering what the Thursd0ay night movie would be. Suzy’s voice went on, into my ear. “I didn’t know it was that bad. What are you going to do? And all;”

  “Ummnnh,” I said. I punched at the channel changer—I never liked spy movies.

  “And you’re going to miss so much work.” Suzy changed the subject. “How’re you going to catch up? Oh well, your parents’II figure out a way.”

  “Yeah,”I agreed, switching the channel from a sitcom. “Listen,”I said, “I’m kind of busy here now.”

  “You are? Yeah, I am too, tons of homework, and I have to wash my hair. But what about Marco?”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Izzy? You’ve got to let him know sometime.”

  I thought I was going to cry right then. Marco hadn’t even sent a get-well card. I didn’t want to hear from him, or anything, but I wished he wasn’t so … He hadn’t even said he was sorry. I didn’t want to talk to him, not a bit; I didn’t even want to think about him; I didn’t even like hearing his name. But I wished he didn’t have to show me so plainly that he wasn’t worth wanting to go out with, that I should never have gone out with him. Although I guessed I wasn’t much better, because it wasn’t as if I had wanted to go out with him, Marco, particularly. “Tell him okay,” I said. “Listen I’ve—”

  “Okay what?”

  “Okay whatever he wants. Just tell him I don’t remember anything. I’ve really got to go. Bye,” and I dropped the receiver back into the cradle just as she started saying her happy thank-you’s.

  The phone rang right away, so I had to answer it. I covered my eyes with my left hand and pushed my fingers against my forehead and hoped I could sound normal enough to get rid of Suzy quickly.

  But it was my mother, who talked for a couple of minutes, then told me I sounded funny.

  “I’m pretty tired.”

  “Of course, you must be. I’m sorry, Love. Just say hello to Francie—no, Francie, Izzy’s tired and needs her sleep, you can only say hello. Sleep well, Angel. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They were all going to see me tomorrow, and I didn’t want to see any of them. I didn’t want to see anybody. I didn’t want tomorrow to come, because it was just going to be a repeat of today. The only thing I wanted was not to be in the hospital, not to have had my leg amputated.

  I could feel tears trying to squeeze themselves up into my throat, so I got busy. I gathered up the cards and letters, leaned over, and dropped them into the wastebasket. I threw out both of the Harlequins too—tossing them up into the air and listening to the clunk they made when they landed in the trash. I pushed the table away from the bed and got myself into the bathroom. There, I scrubbed at my face with soap and hot water, then slapped cold water over it.

  Crying, complaining—they never did any good anyway. I’d never been a weeper or a whiner.

  Yeah, but I’d never had anything really to weep about, or whine over, before. I’d just never known, before.

  I got to sleep all right, but when I woke up in the darkness of the night, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop myself. I didn’t know why it had happened to me, because I knew lots of girls whose dates had too much to drink and they didn’t end up crippled. For life. I couldn’t think of what to do with my life, what to want to do, because all the things I wanted to do required normal people—and I wasn’t normal anymore. I wasn’t going to be able to be a cheerleader, or even to walk around. I couldn’t ride my bike or play tennis—I didn’t think crippled people could drive cars, not with only one leg. Not to mention dances, I wouldn’t be able to dance with a boy, and besides, who would ask me to a dance with him now? Who would want to go out with a cripple?

  The tears ran down by my ears and my hair got wet and cold, and I couldn’t stop them any more than I could stop the thoughts I was having; but I tried not to make any noise. If anybody heard me, and came in, and saw the way I was sniveling …

  I wondered why I couldn’t be brave, the way other people were, and I wept more. I couldn’t turn on the TV to distract myself, because of the noise—or the radio either. If I didn’t want someone coming in.

  It was dark in my room, and I felt so all alone that I couldn’t stand it. I started sobbing, really crying. I put my pillow over my head. I didn’t want to be alone and abandoned here—while everybody else was asleep in his own bed—and I didn’t want to be crying, but I couldn’t do anything about anything.

  After a long time, I went back to sleep.

  It used to be, before, that when I woke up in the morning everything was fresh, and there were new chances every morning. When I woke up that Friday morning, nothing had changed. I was in the same small room being awakened so that my temperature could be taken. I waited for the usual length of time, until I was so hungry I wasn’t hungry, for breakfast to arrive—the same bland and half-cold hot food on plastic plates and in plastic bowls. My mother called at the same time and asked if I thought ten o’clock would be an inconvenient time for her to come by. I told her maybe, because of people who said they’d see me tomorrow, so she said she’d come in the afternoon. The only edible thing on my breakfast tray was a piece of toast.

  The same noises were there, where I couldn’t see them, sometimes quiet conversation, sometimes a loud worried voice, sometimes a little kid crying or laughing. The black nurse came back and pummeled at me, rolling me over because I couldn’t do it myself. Then she put me into a wheelchair and took me for a walk—covered from
the waist down with a blanket. We went down the long corridor to what she called the sunroom, where some kids sat around a TV set, and then back to my room, where she hefted me up onto the bed again. I didn’t know why she made me do that, because she didn’t say a word to me and she didn’t enjoy it one bit. Mrs. Hughes-Pincke came by and made a conversation. This time she was all interested in my courses and my grades, but I didn’t have much of anything to say. Dr. Epstein examined me and had a couple of cookies. He gave me an orange from the fruit basket. I got it about half-peeled before I realized I didn’t want to eat anything and heaved it into the wastebasket. Another nurse came in to give me a sponge bath. They brought me lunch and the creamed chicken was tasteless, the biscuits dried out and crumbly, the milk warm. My mother came by and asked me why I hadn’t started the needlepoint kit. Nobody called me up. Nobody came to see me. I knew there was a football game that evening and probably everybody was tied up with that. So I turned the light out early and lay watching the perfect people on TV, with their perfect complexions and perfect bodies acting their parts. It was a color TV, but the grayness had swallowed me up.

  I wanted to go home. To my own room, in my own house, where at least I could eat what I liked. I wanted to be in my own bed, an old four-poster, with my stuffed animals all over it. I thought if only I was home, it wouldn’t be so bad. At home I knew all the nighttime noises. At home I could see the trees from my window. At home, if I was awake in the middle of the night, I could go quietly down the carpeted staircase and sit in the kitchen, to have a snack or drink some hot milk or just look around at the bright yellow cupboards and maybe listen to the radio. If anyone came in when I was at home I’d know who they were.

  If only, I thought—

  If only my parents hadn’t said I could go out with Marco.

  If only I’d had the nerve to tell Tony I’d rather he took me home, whatever people might say.

  Or if I’d called my parents.

  I remembered back and changed things—wishing I could find magic to work it, wishing there was magic in the world to turn back time, hoping that if I wished hard enough it would turn out that the magic was there.

  If only my leg had healed, the way seventy-five percent of them did.

  I played the scene where Marco asked me out over and over in my mind, the way you replay a nightmare, changing things to make everything come out all right. In the scenes I played, I had another plan for Saturday—and even if it was only going to the movies with my friends, I wouldn’t change those plans, not even for a senior.

  If I’d had more pride, when he tried to act big and I could see what he was doing, I would have turned him down. If he’d seen someone else standing there at the bus stop, or if he hadn’t broken up with Carol that summer so she would have been the one to go with him to the party.

  If only I’d learned how to drive, I could have driven myself home, but we Lingards were nice people, law-abiding—and look what happened.

  That night, I never did get back to sleep, even though I cried myself dry. Every time I tried to blank my mind, new ideas would come in, or I would see that little Izzy in my head, doing her stupid back flip, which I never could have done. I tried to face the truth, but I couldn’t face it, it just made me cry. I knew how disappointed my parents would be in me, if they knew.

  But my whole life had been ruined. What was I supposed to do, laugh and clap my hands? Why did they expect me to be perfect? And why were they all tucked up in their own beds, leaving me alone without anyone caring how unhappy and lonely I was?

  I knew what they’d say. They’d say there were people with much worse troubles. I didn’t care about that, and I knew how mean and selfish that was, but I really didn’t care. But I didn’t like being so mean and selfish—I was supposed to be nice, that’s what I was, a nice girl.

  Not anymore, that wasn’t what I was. Now I was a cripple.

  If only, I thought, I’d been killed when the car struck the tree. Hearing myself think that, I understood how depressed I was, and I wept for myself.

  Morning showed gray outside the window. It was Saturday, but that didn’t make any difference. When I thought that, I reminded myself of two differences. First, that on Saturday and Sunday, the black nurse and Mrs. Hughes-Pincke wouldn’t come by. Second, I remembered that there was no school and so I would probably see my friends, and I didn’t want them to see me like this.

  6

  I think it was that Saturday that my mother came in early, and we washed my hair. I stood in the walker with my head in the sink, trying not to bang myself up on the projecting faucet. She poured glassfuls of water over my head, first to wet it, then to rinse the shampoo out. It was tiring and awkward, standing there trying to hold my weight against the walker and clutching the slippery sides of the small sink, my eyes squinched shut. It took three rinses to satisfy my mother. Then she wrapped a towel around my head and started rubbing my hair dry, because she had forgotten my blow-dryer.

  “Can’t I get back into bed?” I finally asked her. She had forgotten all about me and was just concentrating on the job. I was practically shaking from standing so long.

  When I was back in bed and rubbing at my hair myself, I found that my hands and arms felt shaky too. Because—what was I going to do, how was I going to do all the necessary things, with only one leg? Like brushing my teeth, even something as minor as that.

  My mother had to go, to take Francie to her gymnastic class. My father had a golf game. I kept the radio on, to the sound of the top forty, but I wasn’t listening to the music. I was listening to the noise of people in the hallways and wondering when my friends would start arriving. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see them, and in fact, I was listening in dread, so I’d have the right expression on my face when they did come in. I was ready to pretend I didn’t see the way they stared.

  I was also ready for something to happen, even just our usual conversations about hairdos and earrings, teachers or TV shows. I didn’t want them to come until after my hair dried, because I look like an otter when my hair lies flat and wet. I toweled my head and waited, wondering if we’d have enough to talk about, trying to think of things to ask about to keep the conversation going.

  My hair was almost dry when Joel stepped into the room through the open door. I waited for Jack, but he wasn’t there. Joel stayed at the door, for what felt like a long time, not moving out or in, not saying anything.

  My brothers not only got my father’s pure blond hair, but they also got my mother’s light brown eyes and dark lashes. Joel’s six feet tall and muscular. He keeps himself in shape. He doesn’t look exactly like Jack—Jack’s an inch shorter and several pounds lighter; Joel’s nose is short and straight, Jack’s is thicker. Jack’s teeth have a dark metallic row of fillings but Joel’s are perfect. Joel is the cutest, but Jack has the best smile, and he’s got a smoldering kind of personality. Joel’s more easygoing, Jack’s the better athlete, Joel does better in school.

  “Where’s Jack?” I asked, when it didn’t look like Joel would ever say anything.

  Joel grinned. “Hey, Iz, you look great.” He came over, pulled the straight-backed chair around and sat with his arms folded across its back, his big legs in pale jeans jutting out. He kept on smiling. “You always were a pretty kid, though.”

  I knew that I must look pretty terrible. If he’d said, the way he often did, “I don’t know how a good-looking guy like me got such a dog for a sister,” I’d have known I looked all right. His flattery made me self-conscious.

  “Yeah, but where is he?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  I didn’t know if I was or not. It was like, when you’ve had your hair restyled and everybody you see notices that first. Everybody new I saw had the same shock, and I had to pretend I didn’t notice. “Sure,” I said, pretending. I took a breath. “How’s school?”

  “What do you think?”

  I shook my head. I had no idea.

  “It’s okay. Biolo
gy’s harder than I thought, but math is a breeze. How’s yours?”

  “Fine,” I said. I wasn’t used to seeing Joel without Jack, and I wondered why Jack hadn’t come too. Jack always picked me for his partner in games of Monopoly or Clue, while Joel played with Francie; he’d call us the Stupids. “It’s the Stupids against the Smarts,” he’d say. And Jack would answer, “Izzy’s not stupid.”

  “Are you home for the weekend?” I asked him. “Mom didn’t say anything.”

  “They don’t know I’m here. I thought I’d drop in for lunch, catch the old man after his golf—give them all a big treat. I borrowed a car,” he explained. “It’s a Dart—do you know about the old slant-six engine?”

  I didn’t, so he told me about it, how efficient and sturdy it was, how if I looked in the classifieds I’d almost never see a Dart, and that was because they ran and ran. Joel talked away, making jokes occasionally, about the Dart; I sat up in bed with the right expressions on my face and wondered why everything felt wrong.

  I liked Joel, I really did, I liked his easygoing company and the way he could make me laugh. I didn’t think he was as much less of an athlete than Jack as he always said he was. Certainly he was a smart athlete, he was an intelligent athlete—you could see that when you watched him move around the football field or the lacrosse field or the tennis court. I always had a good time with Joel. But I was having a terrible time keeping my face in the right expression for him.

  Joel talked and talked, as if he was trying to fill up the air in the room with words. It didn’t matter what the words were, as long as he filled the air with them. And me—I was sitting up in the bed, pretending that his words were bright balloons, and I was a little kid running around laughing to catch them, pretending that it was fun to try to fill up the air with them.