Imperfect Spiral (21 page)

“That's really pretty cute,” Adrian says.

Yeah. It really was.

“So.” My voice is a little shaky. Hold on. Take a deep breath. “So, I know it's just a coincidence that Justin, who, also coincidentally, hangs out at the same park that I did with Humphrey, happened to speak in Humphrey-speak. I know. But it also felt like, I don't know, Humphrey was there. Like some kind of Humphrey-angel was there.”

I can't believe I just said that. It's ridiculous, and I don't believe in angels. I don't even know what it means to say that you do or do not believe in angels.

“So.” There it goes again, all shaky. Breathe. “It's just weird. And a little creepy. And I feel sort of mad at this guy for making me think Humphrey's around.”

Adrian is quiet.

“But, Danielle,” my mother says. She's standing in the doorway. “What's wrong with thinking Humphrey is around?”

I didn't know she was there. Obviously. By now, Dad's in the room, too, but he's quiet, like Adrian.

What's wrong with thinking Humphrey is around? Isn't this obvious, too? Talk about peculiar. Perculiar. Whatever. Do I really want to be seeing the angel—or ghost—of a five-year-old boy hanging around the only high school boy who's ever paid any attention to me, ever, ever?

“I really don't think I need an angel in my life,” I say quietly. “At this particular time.”

“Define ‘angel,'” Mom says.

Perfect. My mother thinks it will be helpful to analyze my vocabulary of the supernatural. Of the spiritual. Or whatever.

Mom sits down in the chair across from the sofa, where I'm sitting. I don't offer her a definition.

“Okay, then, I will,” she says. “Or at least I'll try to tell you something about—about angels.”

Mom and angels. This is unusual.

“My father died a long time ago,” Mom says. “As you know. Adrian was less than a year old. You, Danny, weren't born yet.”

Yes. I know.

“We were sitting in the kitchen of my parents' house—where Grammy stayed on to live until she died. Grandpa had died that morning. It was late afternoon, and he had already been taken to the funeral home. We were waiting for the rabbi to come talk to us.

“You know how Grammy's house had that big window in the kitchen looking out to their little backyard? As we're sitting there, a big, beautiful red cardinal flew into the dogwood tree. He sat there on the tree branch for the longest time.”

“I remember this, kids,” Dad says.

“The next day, we have the funeral. It was a pretty day. Afterward, we go back to Grammy's house, where we're going to sit shiva. Grammy and I and Uncle Harold are there, sitting in the living room in those special shiva chairs—the ones that are so low to the ground. Because we're only a few inches off the floor in those chairs, our point of view is a little different than usual. We're looking up, if you can picture it. So I'm looking up and out the bay window in the living room, to the front yard. And there's that cardinal again, this time in the cherry tree.”

“You know it's the same one?” Adrian asks.

“I have no doubt,” Mom says.

Adrian and I share a look. Of course she has no doubt. She's Mom.

“Every day of shiva, during daylight hours, I see the cardinal,” Mom continues. “He's always on a branch or windowsill as close to the house as he can be. ‘Mom,' I said to Grammy, ‘if we open the door, I think that cardinal will fly right in.' ‘What are you waiting for?' Grammy said.”

Mom smiles. I can hear Grammy saying that.

“Grammy had never seen a cardinal around the house before,” Mom says. “Chickadees. Blue jays. Finches. Sparrows. But not cardinals. They just weren't seen much around that neighborhood.”

“But Grandpa dies and suddenly a cardinal appears,” Adrian says.

“Yes,” Mom says. “And doesn't just appear; he makes his presence known. He preens. He doesn't flit around like the other birds. Every other bird flies away when we approach the window. He stays put and acts like he's perfectly at home.”

“So you're saying this cardinal was an angel?” I say. “It was Grandpa?”

Mom sighs. “To this day, when I'm stressed—but also when I'm very happy, or just feeling emotional in some way—I find that I'm likely to see a cardinal. Do I think it's Grandpa in the form of an angel? I don't know. That's why I said ‘define angel.' When Grammy and I were sitting shiva, I just might have said that, yes, the cardinal that suddenly showed up and acted like he owned the joint, he was Grandpa, coming back to make sure we were all right. My father was a good-looking man, and meticulous about his appearance and dress. And he liked a little dash of flash. Special cuff links, a good tie, a silk hanky in his jacket pocket—something. If he were to come back as a bird, it would be as a cardinal, a bird so bright you can't miss it, and with that dashing crest on its head.”

Adrian is looking at Mom with his mouth half-open. I think he can't believe what he's hearing. I saw it in his face when Mom said she sees cardinals when she's feeling emotional.

“But do I really and truly think the cardinals I see today are all Grandpa? Heck, I know they're not the same bird we saw all those years ago during shiva. I guess they're not really Grandpa. I guess they're not truly angels, if an angel is defined as some kind of ethereal being.” Mom has been looking at her hands,
and at Dad, mostly, while she's been talking. Now she looks at me. “But when I see a cardinal, I feel like the universe is communicating to me. Not that my father is physically present, or even present in spirit, but definitely that his life force, his impression on the universe, is very much present. Present and available to me.”

We all just sit there for a few minutes. Mom gives me a cockeyed little smile. Adrian looks blown away. Here is what I gather he's thinking from the gears I see grinding away through his transparent skull:
She feels! She thinks about the universe communicating! She talks about life force!

“Thanks, Mom,” I say.

We sit quietly for a few more minutes.

“There's dessert,” Adrian says. “Warm apple crisp, anybody?”

He brings it into the living room.

“Speaking of angels in heaven,” Mom says after she takes a bite. It is, like the rest of Adrian's dinner, so, so, so good.

“In other news of the day,” Adrian says after he finishes his dessert, “I'm a high school graduate. I just wanted you guys to know.”

He explains. I know this already, of course. But I won't let on. This is Adrian's offering to Mom. His acknowledgment that she is, after all—human. That she isn't just cold-blooded, driven, and prestige chasing.

Wait for it.

“Now you can apply to colleges!” Mom exclaims.

I never considered that I was a peacekeeper or any other kind of go-between in our family between Adrian and Mom. In the last conversation that I had with Marissa, though, she said I was. I was less than thrilled to hear more of her opinions, of which I think she has too many, about our so-called family dynamics, so I was happy when the conversation moved on. Although I wasn't happy with where the conversation went, about illegal immigration, but that's a whole different subject.

If I was a peacekeeper between Adrian and Mom, is that a bad thing? I love Adrian and I love Mom, and I just wanted them to love each other more. To
like
each other more, is what I mean, because I'm sure the love is there.

But Marissa made me start thinking that my
go-between-ness was something more than just trying to get Adrian and Mom to like each other. I don't know what, exactly. Something.

When I think about how I have reacted to Marissa's comments about my family, I wonder about myself as a friend. Friends should be able to tell each other things honestly. I know Marissa wasn't trying to put me or my family down. I don't like that she seemed to be saying that her family is superior—but maybe she didn't mean to say that. Maybe she was just trying to be a helpful friend.

And speaking of being a friend, how strange is it that I, a high school sophomore, should have felt so close to Humphrey, who never even made it to kindergarten? I almost feel like he was my best friend. How can I feel like this about a kid who isn't my age and doesn't know enough to have conversations about things like family dynamics and immigration?

I should say who
wasn't
my age and
didn't
know enough.

“This was a total mishmash,” I say.

“Mishmashes can be helpful,” Dr. Gilbert says. “Sometimes the most important thing isn't to say something in a neat and logical way, but just to say it, period. In any way it comes out.”

“But I don't even really know what I'm saying.”

“Do you think there's some truth to what your friend was saying about the role you play vis-à-vis Adrian and your mother?”

My “friend,” or my “former friend.” But that's not the issue here, so I concentrate on Dr. Gilbert's question.

“I'm not sure, but I guess I must think there's some truth there because she said this two weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it,” I say.

“Let's not put a label on the role—like ‘peacekeeper' or ‘go-between,'” Dr. Gilbert says. “Let's just try to think about the function itself. What is it you would do, or still do, with respect to Adrian and your mom?”

“I try to get them to like each other.”

“By doing what?”

I can't think of anything specific. “I guess if I can't come up with examples, I'm not really doing much of anything,” I say.

“Not necessarily,” Dr. Gilbert says. “Do you carry messages from one to the other?”

“Like—do I tell Adrian what Mom thinks and tell Mom what Adrian thinks?”

She nods. I think.

“No, not really,” I say. “That's not it.”

“Do you try to change the subject when everyone's together if you see things are going in a hairy direction?”

“I've done that,” I say. “Not a lot, but sometimes.”

“Do you translate for them?”

I laugh a little, because I'm thinking of Becca and me and our French.

“Not literally,” I say.

“No, of course not literally.”

“But, yes, I've been known to take what Adrian is saying and put it in terms that won't offend Mom so much. And to rephrase something Mom says so that Adrian won't just hear
nag-nag-nag-nag-nag
.”

“Do you try to protect them from each other?” Dr. Gilbert asks.

Do I try to protect them from each other? “I don't know what you mean,” I say.

“I don't have anything in particular in mind,” Dr. Gilbert says. “The question is whether that question resonates with you—whether, even if you can't yet say how or what, you think there might be an element of you protecting them from each other in how you relate to them or behave or things you say.”

“I guess there might be an … element like that,” I say.

“And, on the flip side, do you ever protect yourself from them?”

“No,” I say. “That doesn't sound true at all. They don't bother me enough for me to need to protect myself from them. They really don't bother me at all.”

“And how about this: Do you ever protect them from you?”

I'm about to say no, but I stop.

“Like how?” I ask.

“You tell me,” Dr. Gilbert says.

I want to say no. But there is something there. Maybe not
protection
, exactly. But I'm having the same uneasy, unsure feeling I felt when thinking about what Marissa said about my being a go-between.

“I don't protect my mother from me,” I say. “But I also don't want to give her any trouble, because I know how much Adrian's stuff bothers her.”

“Adrian's stuff being …”

“Taking the opposite position to whatever position she takes. Not letting things she says slide. Not living up to her and Dad's expectations in school and all.”

“So you don't protect your mother from you,” Dr. Gilbert says. “But you do protect her from potentially being disappointed by you.”

“I guess I try,” I say. “I'm not saying I'm any good at it.”

“And how about protecting Adrian from you?”

It pains me, this question, almost as much as hearing Marissa bad-mouth him last winter.

“Again, I wouldn't say I protect Adrian from me,” I say. “But maybe I don't want him ever to feel like Mom and Dad are happier with me than with him. I don't want to do things that make him look bad.”

“That make him look bad by comparison, you mean?” Dr. Gilbert says.

“Yeah.”

“You don't want to upstage him,” Dr. Gilbert says. “If you're an accomplished student who makes her parents proud at school and in the community, then how will he feel?”