The Book of Michaels, excerpt

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chapter 1



         Whose fault was it?
         
         I'm standing, well if you can call it that -- more like, leaning, my forearms encased by chrome, and my hands pressing hard on the cushioned handles of my metal crutches -- looking out my bedroom window.  My  thoughts are flying around in my head with no place to land, like there's no solid ground for me anymore.  Even my eyelashes are throbbing, and my leg can't hold me up anymore and Anne is gone and... this pain is like nothing I've ever felt, like nothing I ever believed possible in the thirteen years I've been -- damn!  I don't even want to think the word, "alive."  I'm held up by my crutches, but I'm still floating, buzzing, being stung by a thousand bees at once, that's what it feels like to have a partially crushed leg, remade in plastic and surgical steel, and to be totally alone as well. 
         Every molecule, from my scalp, over my eyelids, across my shoulders, into my fists gripping the crutches, down my back, through my stomach, down both legs, down to my toenails... it all hurts.  Three months of rehab. and counseling, and on my first day home, it still hurts, worse now than ever, a burning ache, everywhere.  I believe that the everywhere-pain is from trying to hold myself together.
           No one's home at Anne's house.
         Not even a light on, not there, and not here.  Although my room is pink with late afternoon sun, it's dark inside me.  Empty, in spite of the rock in my chest and the fist in my throat.  And the worst pain of all, even worse than the stabbing-throbbing-screaming in my leg and the all-over ache... is in my heart.  My heart feels like a jagged rock was plunked down in my chest, poking at my lungs when I breathe, filling me up with weight but not life.  Anne was the fun one of us, she was the one with the spirit that could light up a room no matter how dark it got.  Me, I was the dramatic, wimpering one.  I still am;  Anne is not here. 
         Life is so unfair, I can't believe it.
         My father half carried me up the stairs to my room when we got home today, and he was crying, which a big guy like him simply does not do.  We do not cry in front of other each other in my family, it's not done...  We eat dinner together every night at six o'clock.  We say, "How was your day?" and answer, "Okay, and yours?"  My father pours white wine and maybe grumbles at the stuck cork.  My mother has a second helping, and begins desert before Dad and I have finished eating, and no one says anything.  It isn't even that we don't care that she could die from her obesity, at least I always cared.  It's that we don't cry, and we don't talk.  Sad to say, I think our family's pretty normal that way, even healthy -- healthier than Anne's, with her mother calling her every two seconds and her father, well, I don't want to think about him, except to think, It was his fault.
         In the morning, before school or work, we -- Mom and Dad and I -- move silently around each other like sharks.  We disappear to our separate spaces after dinner -- me to read or paint or draw or... well, previously, to call Anne;  my father to read the paper or a James Patterson novel while he slowly smokes a cigar;  my mother to mend clothes we can't afford to replace, or to watch TV or to lie down...  Those things, we do. 
         We do not cry in front of each other.
         We do not talk, either.

         So now here I am, alone, crying with great gulps and moans and dramatic effect, wanting someone, anyone to talk to me, to hear my story, and Anne's and to figure out why this happened to us.  There's never been anyone to talk to except Anne, and now she's gone. 
         The hole in my life that opened as soon as the accident happened -- that hole only got bigger as time wore on.  Now, after months of physical therapy that made me hate the smell of my own sweat, and counseling -- where I still didn't learn to talk -- and so much other junk... the stupid hole that I used to think would be filled by Michael Armstrong, well, it seems to be gaping, ragged edges getting bigger around the space that will never be filled by anything but darkness, dead weight.  It takes my breath away.  I really, really wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, whom I used to think was Sarah Finkelstein, but now I'm starting to think is myself. 
         Gazing out the window towards Anne's house, I wonder if her mother is going to move, or if we are, like my mother said that we would have to, after I woke up in the hospital -- "now that I'd done what I'd done."  I also remember her saying, "What are we going to do now?" like fifty million times.          
         To her credit, she tried to hold my hand once in the hospital, pain for me etched into her face, but I refused the gesture and pulled away.  We don't cry, but we pull away.  All I could think then was that maybe it was her fault.

         I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment to blot it out -- the pain, and then the pain, the deep inside sensation of my insides tearing apart; the loss that I will never, ever get back.  I can feel the darkness spreading from the hole inside me, making my fingertips cold.
         How did I get here, from there, my old life?  I feel like I have to figure out why I was so obsessed with Michael Armstrong that this had to happen to me, to us -- to me and Anne, oh God, Anne.  What made me so crazy, and I do mean crazy, about Michael?  My God, I think I still love him. I know it.  What is wrong with me? 
         Was it my fault?
         In spite of the agony it causes, I open my eyes, and slide my arms out of the crutches.  I can walk alone actually, it just hurts, and the brace means I can't bend my knee, so it's awkward.  It's not really walking, it's more of a shuffle, swing, stab, push... but it gets me across the room, away from the window.
         I don't want to look at Anne's house anymore.  What if I were to try and see into her window, and think about how we once tossed a string across and used to pull notes back and forth across our side yards... well, it would be too much.  Nothing will be easy, ever again. 
         But it was, it was until a few short months ago, even when I was crying over Michael... Michaels, plural -- but Michael, meaning Michael Armstrong, the Michael of the moment.  The Obsession, with a capital "O".  I should start calling it that, and not love, because if love destroys so many lives with just one small party, a couple of shots and a couple of stupid barely-teenaged girls, then love wasn't all I had meant it to be, I mean, love sucks.
         With great care, I finally reach the eaves (that's basically the attic, only my room is in the attic, so it has eaves on the side, for storage and stuff).  I slide open the door, and pause, smelling the dust of Christmases past, and childhood toys and exposed insulation that hangs pink from the slanted walls.  Of course it's hard to bend and get in there, but through tears and gasps, I do make it inside, where I find the weight in my heart useful for pulling me down to the ground, at which point I half-crawl, half-drag myself to my secret spot, behind my old dollhouse, next to the Easter baskets on one side, and suitcases on the other. 
         For a moment, I rest, catching my breath, squeezing my eyes shut.  Time takes on a different quality, even before I pry up the floor board.
         My secret space.  I see my pile of old wills, rewritten whenever I was depressed and thought, I guess, that growing up would kill me (little did I know):

         To Anne, I leave all my money and books, and artwork and awards.

         Pushing aside a rainbow-colored friendship bracelet;  a bunch of letters torn out of school notebooks and bound in string;  a small painting I'd started for Anne, but changed my mind and had intended to give to Michael Armstrong instead;  a piece of notebook paper that says, in Anne's neat script, "I heard this, and it reminded me of you and Michael," followed by the lyrics to The Beatles' "The Long and Winding Road"  and a nearly full box of cigarettes;  I finally uncover what I came in here for -- The Book.  That's what it says on the cover, then in smaller letters, it says, Of Michael, and then an "s" is added later, so the final product -- a bulky, faded purple, mishapen scrapbook, full of artifacts, notes, pictures and memories -- is, The Book of Michaels.  I've always just thought of it as The Book though.  As if my life had expanded to biblical proportions when I first fell in love.
         I stuff "The Long and Winding Road" lyrics into The Book, where it belongs.  I would've taped it in months ago, except that Anne gave it to me just as school was ending the day of the party, and I never had a chance.
         Without bothering to drag myself back out into the light, I open The Book.  I want to know if I was responsible for Anne's death, or if it was the Michaels -- if I was too involved with them in my heart to save Anne the times she needed it; if the Michaels were real and important, or just ways for me not to see.  The sad, really heartbreaking part, is that I don't have a Book of Jessica and Anne. I want to remember her, and this is the only tangible thing I've got to get me started, The Book of Michaels.
         Still, I want to place the blame for Anne's death somewhere, and I don't know where -- my thoughts are still flying around, scattered and battered, confused in my head.  The Book, with its bits of my life and the Michaels pasted in, will ground me, will give me stopping and starting points to help me remember whole pieces.  Good and bad, my life is in there.  I hope The Book will keep me from flying apart, my memories like shrapnel peppering the low, slanted ceiling, the suitcases, and my old dollhouse.



chapter 2



         I pause, my finger on The Book, and notice that my heart's pain is so constant that sometimes it becomes numb.  If it didn't, I wouldn't be alive and in my attic right now.
         Anne and I used to play with that dollhouse over there, even in fourth grade, when love seemed more important than life.  We renamed the dolls, and the pretty doll who was too tall for the other dolls was me, Jessica.  The round-faced, wooden boy with the red yarn glued to his head was Michael O'Connor.  Anne's doll was the smiling mother with the broken leg, because in a way the doll was like Anne's mother.  Mrs. Hanover's legs were fine, but she was sick all the time.  She was so thin, sometimes it looked like the littlest breeze would sweep her away.  Sometimes it almost did, and I'd see her from out my window, leaning on Anne's father, who was the doll with the face nearly worn off that we usually didn't play with and I should've thrown out.
         I remember, with warm tears filling my eyes, that Anne used to make playing with the dollhouse in fourth grade not childish, but fun.  She used to make the Michael doll say things like, "Ooh hootchie mama!" to the Jessica/Dawn doll.  If I made the mother doll say something like, "You're sucking the life out of me!", Anne would make Jessica say, "Kiss my grits!"  I didn't even know what that meant, but we used to drop the dolls to cover the laughter that burst out of our mouths.  I remember, after I fell in love with Michael O'Connor, Anne had the father doll say, "You're getting married and you're only nine!  Great Caesar's Ghost!" 
         September wind whistles outside, meaning it's getting later.  A faint smile creases my lips without actually upturning them, and a cramp in my leg diminishes as the sound of the wind seems to change into the sweet sound of Anne singing, as if she's in the attic with me.  She had the most beautiful voice, you could feel it singing in your teeth, making your whole body resonate like a tuning fork, carrying the frequency of her spirit. 
         I feel and smell the dust of the years settling around me.  Looking back down at The Book, my head leaves the attic, and although I can begin to hear my parents arguing through the floorboards, their voices lose meaning.

Baseball pens, set of 2.  Bat-shaped.
Each engraved w/Babe Ruth signature. 
$4.95 + shipping and handling
         The small, rectangle advertisement is the first item in The Book.  The tape is brown and dry and lays over the corners, barely holding the paper in place anymore.  The newsprint is yellowed, and brown around the edges where the tape-glue once held.  I think back to my first Michael.  Michael O'Connor, fourth grade.
 
           I remember the night before school started.  My older brother, Kyle, was blasting Eminem in his room next to mine.  I didn't mind the music, even though it was past my bedtime -- I liked the sentiment, "You gotta lose yourself/ In the music, the moment..."  But I could also hear my father bellowing up the stairs, threatening Kyle with The Belt if he had to come up there "One more time!", and I remember wanting to shout at Kyle myself, "Why can't you just stop!" even though it was supposed to be Kyle and I against Them, a united front of kid.
         The thing was, Kyle was a teenager by the time I was in fourth grade, and he didn't hang out with me or stick up for me or anything like he used to, and I could've used it!  I was suddenly taller than any of the other kids, and always bumping into things or knocking them down, and sometimes it didn't feel like I could trust the ground to stay beneath my feet and the sky overhead.  On top of that, I felt like, why did Kyle have to mess up the peace at home like that, huh?  Yelling and crying and punishments made my teeth hurt.  I remember cringing under the covers every time my father's belt slapped my brother's skin that night.  I remember thinking, Oh God, I have to get away.  I'll get married and get away!  My parents are married, but they don't love each other, and that's why they're so mean.  School starts again tomorrow, and first thing, I have to fall in love... With my future husband.  Whom I will love and cherish forever. 
         I was only starting fourth grade, but that was how I thought.  Anne and I sometimes talked about how I could escape, but we had no point of reference to imagine getting away, even though in reality, we did get away  --all the time with our imaginations, with the dollhouse, and notes folded into small triangles that we slid down the row of classroom floor between our desks, and Anne by singing, me by painting and drawing.  But actual escape, such as college, was far in the distance.  Lorelei Gilmore from the TV show, Gilmore Girls would never be our mother, no matter how many stars we wished upon, and so I thought I should get married, like Suki from Gilmore Girls, and be the ugly but secure friend to Anne's beautiful Lorelei.  Anne may have been a blond, not a brunette like Lorelei, but she was without measure, the prettier of us, with her perfectly proportioned, delicate little body and upturned nose, and Lizzy McGuire backpack with matching lunchbox. 
         The first day of fourth grade, the day I created The Book, Mrs. Lamb, my fourth grade teacher, seated me next to Michael O'Connor, instead of next to Anne.  Michael O'Connor, who, through no part of his own, was suddenly the love of my life, the one I'd been hoping for to marry me and take me away from all yelling.  I kept sneaking glances at him.  My breath felt hot and dry in my mouth.  I kept forgetting to exhale.  I decided to ask my mother for a new hairclip to keep my mousy half-curls out of my face, which was pretty enough.  I had blue eyes and an upturned nose and decently pouty lips, and rosy cheeks getting rosier by the minute, after sitting next to Michael.           True, I was tall and gawky in my limbs, baby-fat still clinging to my torso.  I wore a pair of bell-bottom, hand-me down jeans that were too short and exposed a half-inch of sweat socks.  I'd been growing my hair long, but it was staticky and stringy, and everything, it seemed, from my glasses to my plain-Jane sneakers, pointed to me being too smart to be married.  But Michael O'Connor!
         I wrote his name all over the inside cover of my favorite notebook, the purple one with the butterflies on it, and then I put that notebook aside from all the others I used for schoolwork.  It had become The Book.
         He had babyish curls around his face in shades of pale red and blond.  He had a delicate sprinkling of orangy-tan freckles over his perfectly upturned nose, full lips, like a girl's, and pale, almost translucent skin, like a china doll.  Even in fourth grade he was a future Ivy Leaguer who wore creased khaki pants, unscuffed Nikes, and button-down shirts with tasteful vertical stripes.  There couldn't have been a girl in the fourth grade who didn't love Michael O'Connor.
         I don't know why I thought I had a chance, but shortly after moving into the seat next to him in Mrs. Lamb's class, and creating The Book, I decided I would become Michael O'Connor's Secret Admirer.  Future stalker of all Michaels, I obsessively gathered information on him for The Book, with Anne's faithful help.
         I found out that he loved baseball, Anne found the ad for  baseball bat pens in the back of one of Kyle's comics, and I sent away for them.  Every day, Anne and I ran home and checked the mailbox before anyone else, so the pens would remain a secret -- I knew my parents wouldn't approve, and they wouldn't believe I was really in love, in fact they might -- no, they would laugh at me if they ever found out i was going to get married to Michael.  And maybe buying pens for a boy was an offense bad enough to warrant "The Belt", what did I know?  I tried not to think about it, and focused instead on Michael's blue eyes, and wondered how I was going to get him to marry me when I couldn't even talk to him...
         So marriage might not have been in my immediate future.  Tired of the dollhouse one afternoon, I said to Anne, "Maybe if I knew more about him," I ran my finger over the Michael doll's red hair.
         "We need to go on a secret spy mission!" said Anne.  She was bright and eager, and it wasn't even her Michael, she just liked to keep me happy, and also to go on adventures.
         "What kind of secret mission?" I wanted to know.  Anne laid out her plan, and I was delighted.  It was daring, it was thrilling, and it was sure to mean something, like that we were ready for anything, even if we were only in fourth grade.

         One AM on Friday night.  I'd lain in bed, awake, and listened to my parents argue, like they did when they drank too much, and then listened to the grunts and groans and loud "Yes! Yes!"'s that often followed the screaming that followed the drinking.  I had to pee, but I couldn't get up, or they'd hear me, and know I was still awake, and they'd get sick mad at me, and I might even get a spanking, or even The Belt, and I still wouldn't get to pee.  If they caught me sneaking into my brother's room to use his bathroom instead of going downstairs to the main bathroom, it would be worse.  Kyle was supposed to have his privacy, and I was glad to give it to him, after one time when I didn't knock, and went in and found him pulling on his penis and moaning, and then gross stuff spat out of it and I ran back to my room.
         One-thirty, and finally all was quiet in the McCarthy household.  A fullness of pain in my lower abdomen made me feel like I was going to explode, but I continued to hold in my pee while I slipped out of bed and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt over my nightgown.  I slipped into socks, a secret-spy-mission black knit hat, and then arranged piles of clothes under my covers in a human shape, and put a doll's head on the pillow, artfully arranging the brown hair that looked enough like mine to fake anyone out, I thought.  I pulled the covers up so only the hair showed.  I really, really had to pee, but it was ever so slowly that I opened my door a crack, just large enough -- which was actually pretty big -- to fit my pudgy-tummied, boyishly-shaped, five foot-five tall self through (they called me giant sometimes at school -- I tried not to think how they meant ugly instead of tall and powerful like a goddess).  Kissing my hand, I pressed my fingertips to the sticker of the Virgin Mary I'd stuck to the outside of my door a year ago for protection.  I didn't know if I was a believer, but my Catholic upbringing had me kind of scared not to.  I tried to make religion a positive thing though, and to think of the Virgin Mary as protection and love.
         Shutting the door silently, I padded softly down the hall to the stairs and down, carefully stepping over the steps that creaked.  Finally, I could pee!  Without flushing, because the flushing toilet could've given away my final retreat, I grabbed my sneakers in silence, and slid out into the night.
         We'd left our bicycles out, behind my garage, and after easing them down the driveway, trying not to disturb the gravel too loudly, we swooshed down the street.  Hardly any sound accompanied us as we pedaled hard to Michael's house across town, just the blowing of our breath in and out, and the soft rumble of our tires against the pavement.  Although the air had a chill, we didn't mind.
         We were free.
         We stopped at Michael's house, and I asked Anne, "What do you think of him?  Isn't he the cutest guy ever?"
         She only shrugged.  "I guess," she said after awhile, and I didn't know if she really felt that way, or if she was just being a true best friend -- purposely making it clear she'd never move in on my guy.
         My guy.  Kinda funny, but I thought of him that way, even though he still hadn't said word one to me.  I knew a lot though, from listening in when he talked to his friends.  I was a good secret-spy already.
         He had three younger sisters.  As I stared at his house in the dark, unafraid that anyone would notice me -- especially in my tight fitting hat with my hair tucked inside -- I tried to figure out which window was his room, and which were his sisters'.  I imagined myself inside, joining in the warmth of his family, accepted.  His sisters look up to me, and his mother invites me to dinner all the time, and never, never does she smack me with the back of her hand for setting the table with the knives facing the wrong way, or call me stupid either.  I imagined she was always proud of Michael, and my chest swelled under my warm clothes as I thought of how much more proud she'd be when he brought me home and said he was going to marry me. 
         "Oh, wonderful!  We'll adopt you right away!", says Michael's mother, and it is the best feeling ever.  I am so loved, and I deserve it, because I am smart and good, a secret-spy and a goddess.