Who Do You Love (4 page)

“I want to stay,” I said. “I want to make sure he's all right.”

“He's got his mom now.” Which was hardly any kind of consolation, and the expression on Sandra's face suggested that she knew it, too.

“I want to stay,” I repeated. “I didn't get to tell him the end of ‘Hansel and Gretel.' ”

“I'll tell him,” Sandra said. “I'll tell him that Hansel and Gretel killed the witch, and moved into the house made of candy, and they both lived happily ever after.”

That wasn't the ending I remembered. “Don't they go back to their parents?” I asked.

Sandra shook her head. “I think he'd like it better my way.”

•••

Upstairs, Alice's door was still closed. Sandra walked me past it and into my room, where I adjusted my cannula under my nose and climbed into a bed made with Care Bears sheets, surrounded by my toys, my books, the lamp with the pink lampshade from my bedroom at home. My get-well-soon cards were lined up on the table, next to my Walkman, my Simon game, my tapes, and my books.

I closed my eyes, listening to the beeping of the heart monitor, the hiss of the oxygen compressor, the low murmur of people in the hallway, the PA system echoing as someone paged Dr. Blair. Normally, those sounds soothed me. That night, though, sleep took a long time to come. I thought about Andy, five floors down, having his broken arm set. I wondered if his mother knew my mom's trick, of having me squeeze her hand as hard as I could whenever I got a needle, passing my pain along t
o
her.

In the middle of the night, I woke up in the dark to a horrible howling sound. For a minute, I thought that I was Gretel, lost in the forest, with animals all around me and no mother or father to keep me safe. The sound went on and on, and I heard footsteps and voices, and then, finally, the noise stopped, like someone had ejected a tape from a player.

I woke up early the next morning, planning on telling Alice all about what had happened in the night. It would be, I decided, my best story yet. I'd describe everything—the nurse with the hairy chin and the girl with the Barbie shoe in her nose and the man who'd been cursing, and about Andy and how he was all alone. Our parents almost never left us alone. Alice would like that part.

When I got to her room, though, the new sign had been taken down, and nothing had been put up in its place. I pushed the door open. The room was empty. The bed was bare, with not even a sheet. Alice's Duran Duran poster wasn't on the wall, and her pink plastic bucket that held her toothbrush and her face towel and washcloths wasn't on the table. The stack of books and puzzles had been removed. Everything except the Ouija board was gone.

I crossed the room and picked it up. A sticky note was attached to the box.
For Rachel,
it read, in handwriting I didn't recognize. Someone had come in and mopped the floor, and the disinfectant smell was strong enough to sting my eyes, but I didn't leave. I sat in the chair with the Ouija board box in my lap. She hadn't said goodbye to me. She hadn't told me enough about what it was like, when you knew you weren't going to get better. She hadn't told me if it had hurt.

“Alice?” I whispered. Maybe her spirit was still nearby. Maybe she was even watching me. But no answer came, and when I closed my eyes and then opened them again, everything in the room was exactly the same.

•••

On the day that I finally got to go home, my mom came early to pack up my things, deliver more treats, and tell the nurses goodbye until next time. She was hurrying around, making sure she'd retrieved my shampoo and conditioner from the shower, when Sandra knocked at the door with a letter in her hand. My name,
Miss Rachel Blum,
was printed on the front of a square pink envelope, in carefully formed letters that were almost too small to read.
Bloom like flowers, not blum like plum,
I thought. Inside was a single sheet of paper, and more of that cramped handwriting, as if my correspondent was being charged for each drop of ink.

Dear Rachel. Thank you for keeping me company the night I broke my arm. And also for Rudolph. I will never forget you. Your friend, Andrew Landis.
Beneath his signature was a drawing of a boy with brown hair and something black—my bear, I guessed—under his arm. The other arm was wrapped in white. The cast, I figured. Next to him was a drawing of a girl with curly hair and a big pink smile and, when I looked carefully, a tiny, hash-marked scar on her chest. Around the boy and the girl was a red crayoned heart.

Andy

1987

A
ndrew!” Sister Henry's voice echoed down the hallway, but Andy didn't slow down. His eyes were on the door, and the street beyond it; the gray sidewalks and the gray winter sky.

He pounded down the hall and pushed through the glass doors, hearing her heels on the hardwood, hearing her
calling
—“Andrew, wait!” Like it even mattered. School was letting out at noon anyhow. It was already Friday, and Christmas was on Monday, and break started that afternoon.

One last “Andrew,” and he was out on the sidewalk, the cold air stinging his cheeks, head down, arms pumping, running past the row of school buses idling by the curb and racing around the corner. Down Castor, then right onto Kensington Avenue, where the streetlamps were decorated with Christmas wreaths. A train rumbled overhead as Andy ran, arms swinging, knees lifted high, weaving in and out through the people on the sidewalks, the high school kids, the homeless men, the drug dealers. The coat that had started all the trouble was still on his back. Andy ripped it off as he ran and tossed it at a trash can without missing a step.

He knew he was in trouble. Sister would tell his mom about the fight, and he'd be grounded or worse. Maybe his mom wouldn't even give him his Christmas presents . . . but for now, no one could stop him, no one could touch him. For now, he was free.

One of the first things Andy Landis could remember in his entire life was his mom on the phone, his beautiful mom with her red-lipsticked mouth and her hair that fell in ripples down her back, and the gold chain, fine as a thread, that she wore around one ankle. “You know how boys are,” she was saying, “you've got to run them like dogs.” When he was little, they'd go to a park, a big rectangle of grass in the middle of their neighborhood with a swingset and slide at one of the rectangle's short sides. The edges of the park were studded with broken glass, empty bottles, and sometimes needles, but the middle was a long, unbroken swath of green. Andy would race from one end to the other, faster and faster, finally running back to his mother, running right into her arms, smelling her perfume and cigarette smoke, Camay soap and Jergens lotion, until she patted his back and let him go. The sunshine would sparkle on her gold anklet and in her hair, and he would think that he had the most beautiful mother in the world.

But that was when he was just a baby, not even in kindergarten. Now he was a big kid, tall for his age, already wearing men's-sized shoes. “I don't know what to do,” his mother would complain, talking on the phone to Sharon or Beth, her work friends. “Every six months his pants are too short and his shoes don't fit.” Sometimes she'd sigh when she looked at him, the same way she'd sigh at the bills that came in the mail, but sometimes she'd smile, pulling him close until his head rested on her shoulder.
My little man,
she would say.

Andy still ran at the park sometimes, but he liked the street best. After school, when his homework was done and the table was set, he would put on his sneakers and his 76ers jersey, the one that had been his father's. In the winter he'd pile on layers, sweatpants and sweatshirt and a hat. In the summer, he'd just wear shorts. The only thing that never changed was the shirt. The 'Sixers had been his dad's team, and now it was
Andy's
. He'd start off at an easy trot, warming up his muscles, running from Kensington to Somerset, then turning east, past Frankford and Aramingo and Allegheny, racing along the sidewalks, past bodegas and hardware stores, pharmacies and doctors' offices, gas stations and storefront churches and the vacant lot where the vendors were selling Christmas trees, until the street curved into the on-ramp for I-95. That was the three-mile mark, where he'd turn around and head back home.

His gym teacher hadn't believed him when Andy told him how far he could run. He'd taken Andy out to the soccer field and made him do laps until he'd run one mile, then two. “Let's stop now,” he'd said, but Andy had said, “I can keep going,” and he had, and ever since then Mr. Setzer would let him skip calisthenics and volleyball so that he could go to fields and run.

Swinging his arms in big, high arcs, eating the distance up with each stride, for once not thinking about the nuns hissing at him to stop fidgeting, not worrying about knocking over one of his mother's china figurines, or bumping into the table, or having her glare at him and say, “Jesus, can't you sit still?”

At first his feet were so light it was like they were floating, and the air slipped like cream down his throat. Then he'd start to sweat, and his legs would burn and his breath would come in gasps that tasted like hot pennies. He welcomed the pain, letting it in, then pushing through it, getting past it, savoring the cramps and the fire in his thighs until he was past hurting, until his vision narrowed to just the squares of the sidewalk and every other thought had vanished from his head. Faster and faster, knees lifted to his chest, hands curled into fists, running past the memory of lunchtime at Holy Innocents, when the kids with the free and reduced-price lunch cards like Andy had to get in line ahead of the kids who paid full price; the Winter Concert and the science fair and the Celebration of Learning, when almost every other kid had a parent there and Andy had no one, because his father was dead and his mom had to work, because
money doesn't grow on trees,
because
someone's got to pay for all of this,
even though
all of this
was a crappy one-bedroom apartment where the ceiling dropped chunks of plaster on you when you were sleeping and the windows didn't open because the windowsills had been painted so many times and you had to jiggle the toilet's handle just right if you wanted it to flush.

That afternoon, still in his school uniform of khakis and a blue button-down, Andy ran to the three-mile mark before slowing from a sprint to a jog to a trot to a walk, the sound of his shoes on the pavement softening from slaps to pats. Usually, he would be able to hang on to some of that sensation of rightness, that place past thought. For at least another hour, sometimes for the rest of the afternoon, he would feel good in his body, at home in his skin.

He and his mother lived on the first floor of a row house in Kensington that had been split into three apartments, one on each floor. Andy armed sweat off his forehead and pulled out the house key that hung on a cord around his neck, unlocking the door and stepping inside, releasing the gentle sigh he
always gave when he realized that he was alone. A single woman, a widow, lived on the second floor, but Andy hardly saw her, and the landlord kept the third floor mostly empty, using it for cousins and grandchildren when they came to visit. Andy Landis didn't spend much time at other kids' houses when their parents were home, but he was starting to get the idea that not every kid had to be as careful to avoid the lightning flashes of a parent's temper, that other moms were different from his. It wasn't like Lori hit him or ignored him for the few hours between dinner and bedtime when they were together, but sometimes he thought that his mother just didn't like him very much, that if some genie or fairy godmother showed up and promised to take Andy somewhere else, to give him to other parents, Lori would agree without hesitation. But then he would tell himself that Lori worked hard, sometimes six days a week, on her feet for nine, sometimes ten hours, and that he always had enough to eat, and clothes to wear, even if the clothes came from thrift shops or the church donation table, and he was the one who cooked the food and did the dishes afterward.

Three weeks ago he'd been doing his math homework at the kitchen table when his mom had handed him a gray-and
-wh
ite ski jacket that she'd picked up at church. “It's still got a lot of wear in it,” she'd said, sounding proud. Andy had seen the tag with Ryan Peterman's name sewn on the back of the collar right away, but when he'd pointed it out, he'd kept his voice quiet, not wanting to hurt her feelings, not wanting to make her mad.

Lori had sighed, then had looked at him, looked right in his eyes, holding his gaze with her own so that he couldn't turn away. “I can't buy you a new one, and you're too tall for last year's,” she'd said. “This one's almost good as new.”

You can buy me a new one,
Andy thought.
You can, but you won't.
He knew about what she called her “mad money,” how there was a chipped mug all the way in the back of the kitchen cabinet that was full of quarters and bills, ones and fives and tens and twenties. Every few months she'd ask the Strattons if Andy could sleep over and she'd take a bus to Atlantic City with her girlfriends. Sometimes she'd come back laughing, her wallet full of crisp new bills, but mostly she'd walk right past him into her bedroom and shut the door without a word.

Andy had stuffed the jacket in the darkest corner of the coat closet, but that morning, finally, it had started to snow, and Lori had insisted that he wear it, had even walked with him to school to make sure he didn't take it off.

Ryan Peterman hadn't wasted a second. “Hey, asswipe, that's my old jacket!” he'd shouted, loud enough for the rest of the fifth grade to hear.

“Fuck off,” said Andy—that being, of course, the only acceptable response. Ryan had yanked down the collar to show the other kids his name. Andy felt the world narrowing, the way it did when he ran, only this time, instead of just the street or the grass or the sidewalk, all he could see was Ryan Peterman's big, stupid pale face as he drew his arm back and started pounding Ryan, on his cheek, his head, his shoulders and chest and sides, hitting and hitting until Ryan's nose was dripping blood and he was crouching down with his arms over his head, screeching “Get him off me! Get him off me!” and the Sisters had come with their habits belling out behind them, rulers at the ready.

Andy went to the kitchen, cracked ice cubes out of their battered metal tray, wrapped them in a dish towel, and held them against his knuckles. When the ice melted, he helped himself to a bowl of Cheerios with cut-up banana while he watched cartoons. They didn't have cable like the Strattons, who lived down the street in a row house that looked just like theirs, except it wasn't apartments and the family rented the whole thing, all three floors just for them. Miles Stratton was in his class at Holy Innocents, not exactly a friend, but friendly. Sometimes Andy would go over in the afternoons and they'd watch
The Dukes of Hazzard
and
Three's Company
. Here, he was stuck with a choice between Looney Tunes and soap operas. He watched the Road Runner chase Wile E. Coyote off cliffs and under trucks filled with dynamite while he slurped the last of the milk, rinsed the bowl and spoon, and put them in the dishwasher. He made sure he returned the milk to the fridge and the cereal to the cupboard, checked to see that the tiny square of their table was wiped off and the rickety wooden chair was pushed in, before he went back outside.

“You're so considerate!” Miles's mom always said when he came over. “My mom always says it's the maid's day off,” Andy would tell her. It was one of Lori's refrains, one that she'd repeat if she ever saw
Andy's
dirty clothes on the bathroom floor or if he'd forgotten to put the seat down. Mrs. Stratton was always nice to Andy. She'd ask him to stay for dinner and she'd always bake something for dessert and give him some of it, a big chunk of cake or a slice of pie, to bring home. “Tell your mother hello,” she would say, but Andy never would, and he'd throw the sweets in the trash can by the bus shelter before he got home. The Strattons were black, like
Andy's
father; like Mr. Sills, the handyman who came around every week or two, tightening dripping faucets and oiling squeaky doors; like most of the people in the neighborhood. They were black, and Lori was white, and he was pretty sure that Mrs. Stratton didn't really like her. Once, when he'd left Miles's bedroom to use the bathroom, he'd heard Mr. Stratton, who worked for the gas company, talking down in the kitchen.
How come she moved here? How come she's not back with her own?
Mrs. Stratton had murmured something—Andy had heard his own name and nothing more—but then Mr. Stratton had said, “Well, how sure are we about that? She wouldn't be the first bird to try to slip an egg into another man's nest.” “Stop,” his wife said in a cold voice Andy had never heard her use. After that, Andy had never felt like just a regular friend of Miles's, a normal kid from school. Instead, he'd thought that they looked at him as the kid with the white mother and a black father, half one and half the other, a kid who didn't belong.

Mrs. Stratton was a stay-at-home mom, but
Andy's
mom worked at a beauty salon called Roll of the Dye in Rittenhouse Square, which was Philadelphia's fanciest neighborhood. She left the house at nine-thirty Tuesday through Sunday and came home at seven, smelling like perm solution and cigarette smoke, with sneakers on her feet and her high heels in her purse. Andy had to have the stoop swept, the floors vacuumed, the couch pillows smoothed, the table set, and
dinner
—boiled noodles with canned spaghetti sauce, or frozen pizza or pot pies or a Swanson Hungry-Man for him, a Lean Cuisine for her—heated up and ready. By second grade, he knew how to use the microwave and the oven, and Lori had taught him to run the dishwasher and the washer and dryer.
Most kids aren't responsible enough for this, but I think you are,
she'd said, and Andy had been glad to learn, proud that he knew something other kids didn't. It wasn't until that fall, when he'd read the part in
Tom Sawyer
where Tom tricks the other kids into whitewashing the fence, that Andy realized, with a feeling that made his face and ears get hot, how his mom had
fooled him.

He looked over the kitchen again, the linoleum in front of the sink worn to translucence, the sputtering olive-green refrigerator, the stick-on pine paneling that was peeling off in strips from the walls. Mr. Sills had said he could fix it, could make it look like new and it wouldn't take more than a day, but Lori had told him thanks but no thanks. “You do enough as it is,” she'd said, and Mr. Sills, looking sad, had shrugged, then packed up his toolbox. “Call me if you need anything,” he'd said, and then looked at Andy. “That goes for you, too, young man,” he'd said. Andy knew that he would never call.
We don't take charity,
Lori always said. Andy thought that maybe she paid Mr. Sills, when he wasn't looking, to change the lightbulbs that she couldn't reach and fix the basement window after it had cracked, which made it okay.