Brett McCarthy (15 page)

om•ni•pres•ent

The Lighthouse Project turned out to be one of the biggest genius turn-ons in Special Challenges history. Even the ever-delighted Mrs. Augmentino had no words to describe her amazement at what Fifth Period produced. The range of projects prompted her to ask No-Hare to create Lighthouse Day and invite the entire student body to see what we’d made.

All the McCarthys, plus the omnipresent Mr. Beady, planned to attend.

Omnipresent:
always there.

He’d found an all-terrain wheelchair, equipped with fat snow tires, just for the occasion. At that point, the deepest, coldest part of winter, Nonna was moving slowly, and preventing her from slipping on ice had become a major family preoccupation. My mother must have purchased forty bags of rock salt from Wal-Mart and coated the Gnome Home front walk and driveway a full inch deep. Dad had bought Nonna these lightweight winter hiking shoes from L.L. Bean and was trying to convince her to wear them indoors as well as out.

“I’m just walking to the bathroom! Not climbing Everest!” she’d complained when he’d presented them to her. She seemed deaf to his explanations about the dangers of soft socks on wood floors.

“Eileen, please,” Mom had said. “If you fall and break a hip, it’s all over.”

Nonna wore the hikers. She wore my island cap, a fun fur scarf, and her Michelin Man parka. She wore her lined wool cross-country ski pants and scarlet Hot Chilis insulated socks. And when Mr. Beady wheeled her into the Fifth Period classroom dressed like that on Lighthouse Day, you’d have thought J.Lo had just stepped onto the red carpet. We’d been milling around, admiring all the projects displayed on tables and on the walls of the classroom, when we heard an excited “She’s here!” Someone clapped, and as my family entered, the whole group applauded.

Mrs. Augmentino had set aside the first half hour as a little party just for Fifth Period and invited guests. Mrs. LaVoie was there. So was my former lunch buddy and fellow Tar Heels fan, No-Hare. The cafeteria provided a big plastic bowl of red punch, and I provided McCarthyesque Super-Sized sweets. Monique Rose and the Unit had come over the night before to bake with me.

“Why are you cutting them so big?” Carla had asked. The fact that I was slicing only six brownies to the pan really worried her.

“It’s what they do,” Monique Rose explained.

“‘They’?” I asked.

“You and your grandmother,” she said to me. “These big desserts. It’s sort of your signature characteristic. You had them at the birthday party. You always do them at your garage sale.”

“You’ve been to the garage sale?” I asked, surprised.

“Every year,” she said.

“I’ve never seen you,” I said, amazed. “Where have you been hiding?”

“Where have you been looking?” Monique Rose asked.

Standing alongside her, next to our trifold display “Maine Island Stories,” I was struck anew how strange it was that someone who’d previously existed on another planet could suddenly be my project partner, lunch companion, and describer of McCarthy family “signature characteristics.” I knew it was odd for her too. One afternoon, when we were walking to the Gnome Home together after school, she’d blurted out, “I still can’t get over that we’re friends, you know? I always thought you were some brainless jock.”

The word hung in the air, like the frost from our breath: friends. Violent, Suspended, Redefined Me had actually managed to
make
a friend, as opposed to
losing
one.

“Yeah, well, don’t kid yourself,” I’d said. “I
am
a brainless jock.”

Mr. Beady, Nonna, Mom, and Dad began their circuit of the room with us.

“Fairy houses!” Mom exclaimed. Monique Rose had suggested we construct a little fairy village of twigs, moss, pinecones, and stones to display before our trifold. They went with the island stories about ghosts and pixies, although Monique Rose had learned that
those
stories were often cooked up by islanders trying to scare or intimidate their neighbors.

Nonna leaned over, peering into the front door of a fairy house.

“It makes me wish I were thimble-sized and could lie on a little moss bed,” she said.

“Beautiful work, hon,” Mom said, looking over our trifold. “I love the way you’ve woven interviews and family anecdotes into old stories and history.”

“You weave with fibers; Brett weaves with words,” Mr. Beady said proudly. I looked at him, surprised. It had never occurred to me that Mr. Beady had any pride of ownership in me. Nonna twisted around in the wheelchair to look up at him.

“Have you noticed that ever since you blasted Philip Larkin, you’ve become wise and insightful?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, patting her shoulder and shaking his head. I could tell he was sorry he’d ever heard the name Philip Larkin.

Mom’s eyes had filled. “Remember all the fairy houses we used to make?” she said.

“We can still make them,” I said quickly. “I still love to make them.”

“You’re never too old to make fairy houses,” Nonna agreed. Mom smiled at me, and I gave her one back before they wheeled off to the final, climactic portion of the classroom. The lights.

Although most kids stuck to the assignment and tried to re-create a lighthouse from 1803, a few of them decided to simply let their genius imaginations run wild. In one corner of the room a couple of boys were torching a pile of sticks atop a little rock tower: That was the Egyptian lighthouse, modeled after one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Interesting and certainly smoky, but not relevant. Near the window a kid had put together a laser light powered by these little solar panels, which also fueled tiny lead-acid batteries. This project would probably gain him early acceptance to Harvard someday, but it wasn’t the Jeffersonian solution we wanted.

Michael had done it. He’d figured out that Spruce Island light had been commissioned just about when Lewis and Clark were exploring the Louisiana Purchase. He researched the sorts of lamps used at the time and discovered that Argand lamps—which used concave reflectors and glass cylinders around the wick—didn’t make it to the United States until 1813. So his hunch was that Spruce Island was first lit with whale-oil-burning lanterns. His “light” was nothing more than sixteen kerosene (he couldn’t get whale oil without committing a serious crime) lanterns arranged in a circle with flat tin-and-mirror reflectors behind them.

“How simple!” Nonna exclaimed. “All this time I’ve been thinking we had to construct some complicated crystal thingie…but this is all it took. Amazing.”

“The trick will be setting it up,” Dad said. “That tower needs a lot of work.”

“You know, that brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask all of you,” said Mrs. Augmentino. The whole class quieted.

“The students have heard so much about your island from Brett, and become so
very
involved in this project, that we wondered…might the class take a trip out to Spruce Island once the light is installed? It would be a
marvelous
way to wrap up the year!”

Something clutched in my chest. My mind fast-forwarded to warm months in late June, our family boat, the
Dolly Llama,
laden with waterproof wet bags and food-filled coolers, plowing through blue waves that mirrored the sky. These were images I often hugged to myself, like a cozy fleece blanket, during the dark winter months. But time didn’t feel like a friend anymore. Turning calendar pages seemed dangerous these days.

“Of course!” Nonna exclaimed. “I can’t think of a better way to…christen the light. Does one christen a light, Beady? Oh, at any rate…yes. Absolutely yes.”

Cheers, claps, excited chatter. I could hear Monique Rose speaking insistently in my ear about fairy houses, see Mrs. Augmentino bend over to hug Nonna and enthuse about how incredibly marvelous this had all turned out to be. But the McCarthys just looked sort of numb. Mom held Dad’s hand as he examined one of Michael’s lanterns like it was the most fascinating thing in the world. Mr. Beady stared at the floor; then, as if he could feel my eyes on him, he looked up at me. And I realized I wasn’t the only one in the room who had fantasies about turning back the clock. Or at the very least slowing it down.

per•sist•ent

Early March, a Friday, was one of Nonna’s bad nights. By March a bad night meant she couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to be alone. Later, “bad” would take on a whole new meaning, and we would look back on those cold March nights like they were the good ol’ days.

Our definitions of even the simplest words, like “bad” and “good,” shifted week to week, changed like the weather, surprised you like a crocus poking from the snow. Hey, you’d think. Winter’s gone. That happened fast. But it didn’t. It happened slowly, while you thought of other things. And suddenly you faced a whole new season, whole new definitions of good and bad and pain.

Thursday had also been bad, and my parents were tired. So since Friday wasn’t a school night, they said I could stay with Nonna. I had my orders: Call us if you need help; don’t cook or do anything that would make Nonna get out of bed; don’t keep her awake if she can sleep.

I went armed for a slumber party. I brought my iPod because Nonna said listening to music helped her. I brought some videos—she special-requested an oldie called
Casablanca.
I brought Dad’s high school yearbook—I liked going through the pictures and encouraging her to tell me inappropriate stories about the kids he grew up with. I brought bananas, one of the few things she still had a taste for.

But nothing worked. Nonna kept twisting on the bed, failing to find a comfortable position. She wouldn’t eat, not even the bananas. She couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to listen to music and barely paid attention to the boring black-and-white movie (although I managed to watch it all). I had run out of things to say, and we faced the prospect of a long, sleepless wait for dawn. I began to understand why my parents seemed so wrecked.

However, despite my long list of shortcomings, I am nothing if not persistent.

Persistent:
continuing without change in function.
Never giving up.

“Nonna!” I said. “How about a little truth or dare?”

“Hmmm,” she said. “I don’t know if I can handle any dares at the moment.”

Nonna and I played hardball truth or dare. Once she refused to tell me whether Dad had ever gotten into trouble when he was in junior high. So I made her eat an entire jar of peanut butter. Another time (it was January) I refused to reveal if there was a boy at school I had a crush on. She made me wear my bathing suit and run around the outside of the house. Twice.

“Well then, you’ll just have to tell the truth,” I said.

“You are a heartless creature,” she said. “Who goes first?”

“Me.” I pulled the armchair I was sitting in up close to her pillow.

“Is Mr. Beady your boyfriend?” I asked her.

None of us had ever spoken about Nonna’s relationship with Mr. Beady; not to her, not to each other. Well, maybe Mom and Dad did, but not with me. Mr. Beady was just one of those Facts of Life: Nonna’s buddy, always there, smack-dab in the middle of things and utterly undefined. When I was little, I hadn’t given it much thought. But these days, it filled me with questions.

Nonna shifted sideways to get a better look at me. She grimaced, and I could tell the movement hurt. But then her expression relaxed.

“He’s my best friend,” she said. And that was all.

“Yeah, but is he your
boy
friend?” I persisted. “You know.
Boy
friend.” I raised my eyebrows suggestively. Nonna laughed.

“He’s long past being a boy of any sort,” she replied. “So I guess you’d call him a
man
friend. But I’d call him my best. Has been for a long time.”

“You’re avoiding the question,” I said. “I’m gonna make you eat something gross.”

“You’ll have to wipe it up,” she said dryly. “Now tell me what you don’t understand.”

“There are friends, and then there are
friends,
” I said. “There are the guys you just hang out with, and then there are the guys…you date. Or marry. And since you’re not married to Mr. Beady but spend so much time with him, I wondered…”

“Oh, I see,” she said. “You want to know if we make out?”

“No! Gross!” I exclaimed.

“Why gross?” she asked. “Do you think old people don’t make out?”

“Do they?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course they do,” Nonna said, a little impatiently. “Old people do everything young people do. Just more carefully.”

This was information I hadn’t sought. It wasn’t the answer to my question, either, although now the question itself seemed…questionable.

“I guess I just don’t
get
your relationship with Mr. Beady,” I said.

“Well, let me ask you something,” Nonna said. “Is Michael your boyfriend?”

“No,” I said immediately.

“Why not?” Nonna asked. “He’s a boy. He’s quite handsome.” I made a face. “He thinks the world of you. I’d say he’s your best friend.”

“But he’s not my
boy
friend,” I replied.

“Nope,” Nonna said, closing her eyes. “I don’t buy that for a minute. Head straight into the kitchen, fetch the sardines, and eat the entire tin.”

“I’m telling the truth!” I exclaimed.

“You are avoiding the truth,” Nonna said. I didn’t want to tell her where I’d heard that before.

“Nonna, do you think I make out with Michael? Because I’ll tell you: I do not.”

“Well, I don’t make out with Beady either. Of course, I can scarcely sit up these days, so I’m sure that doesn’t surprise you. But don’t you think both of our questions miss the point?” she said. I shrugged.

“We don’t need to affix some title to Beady or Michael in order to understand what our hearts tell us is so. We don’t need to define them with words like ‘boyfriend’ or ‘best friend’ or ‘lover.’ They are dear to us, and we cherish them, and we keep that in mind with every word we say and everything we do.” Nonna closed her eyes and sighed deeply.

She was quiet for a long time, and I realized the mere effort of talking exhausted her. I wondered for one hopeful moment if she’d finally fallen asleep, but then she twisted uncomfortably and looked at me with bright, urgent eyes.

“Brett,” she said, “in the bathroom cabinet there’s a box of fentanyl patches. Bring them in here.”

Fentanyl patches had only just entered our vocabulary. Band-Aid–like rectangles about the size of your hand, each contained a twelve-hour dose of pain medication. Nonna had begun to use them on the bad nights. The box I retrieved for her, with directions for use, was practically new.

“Take out two,” Nonna said, rolling to her side and lifting the back of her shirt. You were supposed to peel the adhesive from the patch and stick it directly on the skin. I frowned, reading the box.

“Nonna, it says one at a time.”

“That’s okay, honey, I can do two,” she said.

I hesitated. Unwelcome visions of Officer Hotchkiss shimmered before my eyes. “Abusing prescription drugs, Miss McCarthy?” the vision sneered.

“I don’t know,” I said reluctantly. “I think two is too much.”

“Brett!” she said sharply. The tone surprised me. Panicky. A little angry. Nonna never spoke to me that way. “I need to sleep, and one patch just isn’t going to do it.”

I remember being glad that Nonna’s face was turned away from me, her shoulder bones protruding like wings, as I gently pressed the patches to her back. Tears slid down my cheeks as I wondered whether I was poisoning my grandmother or helping her.

Nonna finally settled down. Her eyes closed, and she became very still. I thought she was asleep and, after replacing the box of patches in the medicine cabinet, crawled into my sleeping bag on the couch. I heard her say something.

“What, Nonna?” I asked.

“Like a poem,” she murmured. “Like a poem, riding on its own melt.” Then Nonna really was asleep, and I followed.