Imperfect Spiral (15 page)

The telephone rings; against my better judgment, I answer it.

“Danielle, you saw the flyer for the community hall meeting?” Doris Raskin asks.

No “How are you?” No “How is school?” She just launches right in.

I tell her I did, that it showed up in our mailbox yesterday.

“I'd like to urge you to speak,” she says.

“Oh, I don't think so, Mrs. Raskin,” I say.

“I think the Franklin Grove Board—and all of us in the neighborhood—would benefit from hearing from you,” she continues.

She's not saying what needs to be done—sure she's not—since we need to hear from the engineering consultants, respect the character of the neighborhood, encourage diversity of opinion, blah, blah, blah—but she's thinking sidewalks, streetlights, and a crosswalk with a blinking light.

“Would you like me to call the office to tell them that you'll be speaking?” she says.

“No, thank you, Mrs. Raskin,” I say.

“You'll call them yourself?”

I hesitate. She jumps in.

“Danielle, you're a young woman now. Not a child. And
I think you can understand that you owe it to your neighborhood to speak up. Everyone wants to make sure something like this never happens again.”

“I've talked to the police, Mrs. Raskin. Twice.”

“Oh, my dear, this is not about the police. This is not about assigning blame to you. I would hate for you to think that anyone in the neighborhood is looking to blame you.”

Oh, that's a relief.

“We are concerned about the absence of certain safety features along Quarry Road,” Mrs. Raskin says, “and about making improvements that will benefit us all.”

She says the Dankers are interested in the issue of safety on Quarry Road. They lost their son and they want to make sure no one else ever has to suffer such a loss.

“Don't you think you owe it to the Dankers, Danielle?”

“I don't think they really want to hear from me,” I say.

“Given Tom Danker's status in the legal community, you might think about how best to make clear that what happened is a result of the woeful condition of our street, and not of your … caregiving.”

Whoa, there. Whoa. First:
Woeful
? And second: Is she saying that Mr. Danker, lawyer extraordinaire, might
sue
me? She just said that no one was looking to blame me.

She's still talking.

“… and I think that after all Clarice Danker risked for her boy, it would be a blessing if some good could come of his death,” Mrs. Raskin says. “You would be doing a mitzvah.”

Mrs. Raskin isn't even Jewish. She should leave the concept of mitzvah alone. This is not some good-deed mitzvah project for Sunday school. Plus, I have no idea what she's talking about: Mrs. Danker risked something for Humphrey? But I'm not going to ask Mrs. Raskin to explain. I just want to get off the phone.

“I'll think about it, Mrs. Raskin,” I say.

“And you'll let me know?” she says. “You'll get back to me before next Thursday?”

“Yes. I'll get back to you.”

Okay, so I'm crossing my fingers when I tell her that.

“What's the point of a community hall meeting about something that's already been investigated? It's not like the Franklin Grove Board can
do
anything about anything.”

Adrian just gives me a look. He came for dinner, our parents have gone to the living room to watch
Jeopardy!
, and now he and I are cleaning up.

“You know I'm right, Adrian,” I say. “All they have any power over is trash pickup.”

“Don't forget snow removal,” Adrian says.

Right. I wouldn't want to forget the single plow in their vast empire. “So a bunch of neighbors want to put sidewalks and streetlights and whatever on Quarry Road—as if that has anything to do with anything. As if a sidewalk would have kept Humphrey from running into the street.”

“Then maybe you should tell them that,” Adrian says. “Maybe you need to give them a reality check.”

“But, Adrian—it's the Franklin frigging Grove Board! What a waste of breath!”

“They'll end up passing a resolution calling for these so-called improvements. They'll send the resolution on to the county council,” Adrian says. “That's what they do. So, yeah, the Franklin Grove Board can't directly build anything, but they can make a formal request. And then the county council will debate the issue. And the council will want to do something, because people always want to do something when bad things happen. So you're saying you're saving your breath for the county council?”

“I can't believe you're on Doris Raskin's side.”

“You and your sides! I'm not on Doris Raskin's side,” he says. “I'm on your side. But the point is, you do have a side, Danny. And I don't want you and your side to just fade away.”

The thing is, I'm not sure. What do I know, really? I feel like I barely know what happened. To talk about it in front of a bunch of people feels impossibly hard.

“You know I hate to talk in front of people,” I say.

“I know, Danny,” Adrian says. “Sometimes, though, you do what you hate. If there's a good enough reason, you just suck it up and do it.”

“You have no idea how impossible that feels for me,” I say. “It's not like, ‘Oh, I hate this.' It's not like I can just suck it up. I totally can't do it. I will implode. Or explode.”

Adrian nods sympathetically. “I know it feels like that.”

He can't know, really. He can't know because he hasn't felt it.

“What if I break down and cry in front of everyone? Get hysterical. Lose control.”

“I don't think that would happen,” Adrian says, “although if it did, it wouldn't be the end of the world.”

I stare at him.

“Okay, maybe it would be the end of
your
world, losing it in front of a community hall meeting,” he says. “But if that's what's stopping you, then the thing to do is to let go and bawl and get hysterical beforehand. Like—right now. Go ahead. It's okay.”

I shake my head. “I can't let go. It would be totally, completely overwhelming.”

Adrian finishes washing out the pot he's been working on. “Danny,” he says, “you are about the least overwhelming person I know.”

I feel a sting, like I've been insulted.

After Humphrey's funeral, Adrian said I was “daunting.” I remind him of this.

“I don't think a person can be both daunting and underwhelming,” I say.

“It's all part of the intriguing, endearing puzzle that is Danielle Snyder,” he says.

Before he leaves, Adrian pokes his head in my room, where I'm reading my history homework.

“How's the head shrinking going?” he asks.

“It's going,” I say.

“How did I know you would say that?”

“That's me,” I say. “Utterly predictable.”

Adrian gives me a little bit of a cross-eyed look, signaling
Come on
.

“Okay,” I say. “The thing about it is, it's utterly unpredictable.”

“Interesting,” Adrian says. “Meaning?”

“Meaning I think I'm going to talk about one thing, and I end up talking about something else.”

“That makes sense.”

“It's more than that, really,” I continue. “It's more like I'm in therapy to deal with how I feel about the accident, but all kinds of other things from my life come up. I don't know whether I'm just avoiding talking about the accident, or … what.”

“Well—everything's connected,” Adrian says. “You know. The head bone's connected to the neck bone, et cetera.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess that's part of it.” I hesitate, then tell him how I ended up talking to Dr. Gilbert about things that make me feel like I've been a weirdo since birth, like the obsession with my perfect corduroys and jeans.

“Pretty tame, as obsessions go,” Adrian says.

“Compared to what?”

“Pulling out eyebrows. Repeated hand washing. Tame compared to the typical manifestations of obsessive behavior evident in certain high school students.”

He did manage to take AP psychology during his junior year.

“But the pants obsession—is that not weird?” I press.

“If you got a group of friends involved,” he said, “you could call it a sisterhood and write a blockbuster book and movie.”

Adrian can always make me laugh.

“Look, Danny,” he says, turning serious. “About not wanting to talk at that community meeting that's coming up, if you're saying you're too raw, I get it.”

I am. I am too raw.

“Just—don't put yourself outside what happened. It happened to you, in your life. Don't let everyone else shape what it means.”

I shrug. It's the best I can do.

I never get back to Mrs. Raskin, and—thank you, God—she doesn't call me again. September 17 rolls around. My parents have an event to attend for Mom's job—she teaches writing and rhetoric at the community college—so they're not going to the Franklin Grove meeting.

“I can skip this thing at the college,” Mom said this morning. “It's just a reception for a visiting scholar. Dad and I would be happy to go with you to the meeting.”

“I don't know if
I'm
going to the meeting,” I said.

“But if you do, we'd like to be there with you, Danny,” Mom said.

“We want to support you,” Dad said.

“
A
, I don't think I'm going,” I said. “And
B
, if I do end up
going, I won't be doing anything that requires support. Really.”

It's six fifteen. I'm still weighing whether or not to go when my phone rings. I look at the display; no, not the dreaded Mrs. Raskin. Becca.

“I'm an idiot,” she says.

“Hello to you, too,” I say.

“Let me say that again in case you didn't hear me:
Quelle idiote je suis!
”

I laugh. “No, I heard you.”

We haven't talked too much since the second day of school last week when she surprised me with her article idea. We've checked in with each other on how classes are going, and that's about it. Nothing significant, and nothing about putting my life story in the school newspaper.

“I don't know what I was thinking,” she says. “I mean, I know what I was thinking. I can't deny that. I was going to present you and your experience to the world. Or, to the world of Western High School. But really, sometimes I need a muzzle.”

“A muzzle so you don't say what you're thinking?” I say.

“Yes. An internal censor. Just, shut up, Becca. Keep it to yourself.”

“But—why would you be thinking about writing an article about me in the first place? I mean, okay, a muzzle. A censor. But you'd still be looking at me and thinking what a good headline I'd make?”

The phone is quiet.

“Becca.”

Still quiet.

“Hello, hello,” I say, “can you hear me, Joe?” This is our private signal, borrowed from Dr. Seuss.
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
.

“I'm beyond being an idiot,” she says finally. “A
très grande imbécile
.”

“Well, you don't have to call yourself names,” I say.

“I think I do,” Becca says.

“Usually, I feel like you push me to do things because you think they'd be good for me,” I say. “But this felt different. This felt like you cared more about your story than me.”

“That's terrible,” Becca says. “And I'm sorry. I don't want you to think that. Please forget I ever did that. Please?”

“Okay,” I say. “Apology accepted.”

I tell her about tonight's Franklin Grove meeting. Becca doesn't live in Franklin Grove, but in one of the neighborhoods next to ours, so her house didn't get the notice of the meeting.