In the Clear (8 page)
I nod. Geez â I know what to do! Haven't I watched years of road hockey from a window? I lean over, right arm extended. Even if I have to throw myself out of this wheelchair, I'll stop one of the next five balls. I'll show Henry.
Henry shoots the balls fast, one after the other, always down on the right.
I catch the last one.
“Ha!” I gloat, holding it high in the air. “You're going to have to shoot harder than that.”
Henry smiles at me. “You haven't changed, Paulie.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He lines up the five balls again, getting ready to shoot. “Just that you're fun to play with.”
His words make me tingle with pleasure. But his next ball whips right at my head and I block it with my glove, just in time.
“Hey, are you trying to kill me?”
Henry's mouth drops open and his forehead bunches up with worry.
Me and my stupid mouth. I've scared him. “I didn't mean that. Don't worry. I'll be ready for it this time.”
But he pauses, looking less sure of what he's doing. “I can't guarantee I won't hit you.”
“I'll pay you back somehow. Don't worry about it.”
He rests his square chin on his hands, clasping the end of his stick, and says softly, “I had enough paybacks, don't you think?”
I feel the blood gush into my face. He's not talking about the ball. He means the Go away, and me not talking to him for so long. Tears well at the back of my eyes, but no way will I let myself cry.
Darn this boy anyway! What does he know about anything?
He walks halfway toward me. “Do you remember those horses your dad made us? I had the blue one. You had the red one.”
Do I remember? How could I forget? I nod.
“Do you remember ⦠I let you take the lead that day?” He pauses awkwardly. “It was your birthday. For a long, long time I thought it was my fault you got polio. Because I let you take the lead.”
I stare at him, uncomprehending. How could he think anything so stupid?
“My dad always taught me that boys should take care of girls. Hold the door and all that stuff. And we were chasing bad guys, remember?”
I suddenly realize what Henry's about to say next.
“I blamed myself. I should have been in the lead. Then I would have been the one to get polio, not you. I let the bad guys get you, Paulie.”
“That's not how a virus works ⦔
He interrupts me. “I know the scientific explanation. We studied all about Salk's vaccine in school, believe me. But ⦔ he brushes his light brown hair back from his forehead as if it will clear his thoughts. “It's the darndest thing. When you got polio, I believed it was all my fault.”
Imagine that. Henry thought it was his fault. Neither of us understood what was happening. Nobody talked about it or explained it to us.
I dig the ball out of the net where it's stuck in the webbing, freeing it. There's so much to talk about; maybe I can do it too. Yet somehow it's harder to talk face-to-face with a friend than it is to write it down in a letter.
“You want to know what I believed?” I ask shyly, checking Henry's face first. He nods seriously, listening.
“I thought it was because I had the red horse. Remember when my dad made them, and we both wanted the red horse? I pouted and you let me have my way. I thought I was getting punished for being so selfish.”
“Gee.” Henry lets out a long breath. “Guess we were both dumb.”
“My dad had to burn those horses. The hospital told him they were contaminated.”
All of a sudden he asks me, “Why wouldn't you speak to me?”
I get that ornery, prickly feeling all over me again â the one that gets me into so much trouble. “How would you like not being able to skate or run?” I say before I can stop myself.
“I wouldn't.”
“Even if it's a virus ⦠it could have been you, just as easily.”
“I know that.”
But he's mad, I can hear it in his voice. He turns away and walks back to the balls, lined up, waiting.
How'd we get into this?
Henry shoots a ball, really hard. It zings by my left shoulder, and stupidly I watch it stick in the netting.
“Good shot,” I whisper.
“I need a goalie. Are you going to try or not?”
I breathe deep, lean forward and stick both gloves out.
“Left side. Get ready.” He shoots the remaining four and I miss them all.
“I'm no good on the left side.”
“Then I'll keep shooting them there. It's the only way to get better.”
We play for a while, but it's starting to get dark.
“I can't see the ball coming.”
“Let's stop.” He shoves all the equipment in the big can, and the net at the side of the garage, harder than he needs to. “Your dad's having a long phone call. Shall I take you home?”
I nearly say, I can walk by myself. But I think better of it. It's all over Henry's face that he's struggling with something. So instead, I say, “He's probably got my mother stuffed in a closet so she can't come out here and watch us.”
Henry doesn't say anything.
“She doesn't want me to go to school. Thinks I'll be sick all the time and worn out. She thinks kids will be cruel and say stuff. But you should see the awful stuff she makes me read. Classics.”
“Mothers are all the same. You should hear my mother yell when Lisa and I read comics all day. She yells we're reading garbage.”
“I've heard. You only live next door.”
Finally he smiles a little. “Maybe you should try Nancy Drew. My mom doesn't seem to mind those books and Lisa's crazy about them.”
“What are they about?”
“Some girl detective.”
“Sounds good.”
“I'll lend you one.”
We're at my front door already. Henry passes me my crutches and puts the wheelchair in the garage.
In the last light of the summer evening, silence stretches between us like a long, winter shadow. There's so much more to talk about, but it's stuck, frozen in this silence between us. How do we become friends again? What would he do if I told him about the House of Horrors? About Witch Wilson? About really being stuffed in a closet?
“Thanks, Henry. Maybe next time you'll let me shoot.”
Henry doesn't smile. He nods goodnight and turns away to go home. Just like that. I lean after him, hungry for more, wishing he'd stay and talk.
But tonight, it's his turn not to speak.
I have a few wonderful memories from the six months I spent in the House of Horrors.
B. He was everybody's best friend. Mine too.
He turned Witch Wilson and Nurse Fredericks into a game, thinking up new ways to get back at them. B had the gift of mimicry and as soon as Witch Wilson left the ward, he'd stand up in his crib and imitate her, making us laugh so hard we had to be careful not to wet our beds.
My parents came to see me every Sunday â the only time we were allowed visitors. It had been five months since my father had carried me out of my house to the car to take me to the hospital. Five months ⦠it felt like forever.
And then Nurse Nightingale appeared. She was something wonderful too. One Saturday afternoon when she was working, instead of taking her break she asked if I would like to look out the window.
My eyes must have popped the question, How? I could wiggle toes and fingers and turn my neck. That was it.
She held out her arms. “Trust me? I'll carry you.”
She picked me up and I relaxed against her chest. I could feel a bit of starch in her white dress â it was clean and reassuring, like the smell of soap about her. She was humming something under her breath that sounded like “Somewhere over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. I'd seen it twice. It was my favorite movie, my favorite song.
I smiled and hummed along in my mind.
She rested my bottom against the windowsill, never letting go of me. Her arms were as strong as any chair. I couldn't sit up or move, but if I could have, I would have wrapped my arms around her neck.
I think that's where my love of sitting at a window started. It was the first time in five months I had felt safe and ordinary, like once-upon-a-time. I was me again, if only for a few minutes.
It was winter outside. The sun sparkled in the snow, and I could tell by the crisp blue sky that it was a very cold day. The birch tree beside the long drive way was bare of leaves, and a blue jay perched in one of the top branches. It surprised me, so intensely blue against the white bark. And still here in winter, just like me, still here.
I felt happy to be alive, perched in the warm circle of Nurse Nightingale's white, uniformed arms.
I blew a foggy circle on the window and, with my nose, drew a happy face.
Nurse Nightingale kissed my forehead. “Thank you, Pauline. I'm so glad it makes you happy.”
She never once tried to make me speak.
I think maybe she was an angel.
Over the summer, my shot gets pretty good. But I'm frustrated with the arms of the wheelchair. “They're in my way!” I say, pounding them with a fist. My dad argues that they provide something to hold onto, along with extra protection.
“Off!” I appeal to Henry. He sees the problem. Henry looks at Dad, and next thing I know, the armrests are gone. Suddenly I'm free to lean out as far as I dare and get the full power of my shoulders into the swing.
Stuart and Billy watch us the way Henry did in the beginning, and before I can say August, they're playing too. We have a regular Saturday morning game. For my thirteenth birthday, we play road hockey on the street and then come inside for card games and chocolate cake. It's the best birthday party in a long time.
Then school starts again. I find the weekdays at home too long. I easily finish the work my mother assigns me. By three o'clock I watch at the front kitchen window for the kids to come home from school.
“I want to go to school like everybody else,” I tell my mother. She's sitting at the kitchen table, checking my map of Europe. The bun of her hair sits like a lonely mountain peak at the back of her head. She takes off her reading glasses and stares at me, her fingers smoothing the already smooth map.
Outside, kids are yelling things at each other as they pass by, coming home.
She surprises me. “Okay. I'll phone the principal of Don Mills Junior High,” she says slowly. “We can arrange a visit and see what you think.”
There's a catch. “In return, I want you to re-read Heidi and The Secret Garden ⦠all the books piled up beside your window seat. I think we need to discuss them.”
I pretend a reluctant agreement. Secretly I've read all the books, Heidi and The Secret Garden three times. Each time I like Heidi and Mary Lennox more and more. They're now my secret friends; will I meet girls like them at school? I cried reading about Roosevelt in the book about U.S. presidents. Finally, a cripple who doesn't walk at the end! He had a dream and followed it right into the White House. It makes me wonder if my mother understands that I have dreams too. Yet when the time comes to talk with her, I can't help but fight.
“Well, did you learn anything from these books?” she asks me.
“When are we visiting the school?”
“Tuesday. But first, we discuss the book about the U.S. presidents.”
My feelings go up and down like a teeter-totter when I talk with my mother. “You want me to say how inspired I am that Franklin Roosevelt had polio and was a great president of the United States. Right? Well ⦔
She's smiling, looking pleased at my words. Why can't I stay positive? I was inspired by Roosevelt. But the teeter-totter is going down. I feel all prickly and ornery, ready for a fight.
“But they never took his picture once in a wheelchair or with crutches. Even his statue doesn't show him the way he really was. He had to pretend he had no trouble walking. Why? Wouldn't people vote for a cripple?”