3:2 Central and Inevitable

Diary,

(I think I will use that one from now on.  It still makes me feel like I am writing a letter to a friend, someone who cares, but doesn’t sound quite so lame or babyish as “dear diary.”  Anyway.)  Back to the events of the not so distant past…

Things were getting a little better at home, or at least we were all coming to terms better.  The boys started high school not long after their birthdays, and while all four of us rode the same bus, Galilei was dropped off at the elementary school, alone.  I know she felt devastated, suddenly being the only one of us in that school, but what could I do about it?  My heart hurt for her every morning, though, seeing her sitting off by herself, looking so sad.  I tried to sit with her a couple of times, but she didn’t always want me to, for some reason.  The boys didn’t know what to do either.  They felt bad, but high school can be so overwhelming, especially when you are new, and they just didn’t have as much time.  The workload was so much harder, and their interests were just changing.  “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.”  Thomas Wolfe said that, and he got it right on the nose.  Most of us, however, don’t find it out as early as my little sister did.

Galilei became more and more withdrawn.  After a while, she was barely speaking to any of us, and I was getting seriously alarmed.  One afternoon, I set up an appointment to talk with her teacher.  After I was done at the high school, I went over to the elementary to wait for her to get out.  I stood in the hall next to her room, listening to the teacher, Mr. Spiers, go over the day’s homework, and smelled the familiar smells of paste and construction paper.  It made me smile, and made more than a little sad for days when life was so much easier.  When the bell finally rang, I stood against the wall while kids poured out of the room.  Galilei wasn’t with them, and when the flood finally abated to a trickle, I peeked around the door.  She was standing at her desk, slowly gathering her things.

“Hey, Sis,” I said, coming in and putting my hand on her shoulder.  She looked up at me, surprised, a slow smile coming on to her face.  It made me realize I hadn’t seen that smile for quite a while now.

“Why don’t you wait out in the hall for me for a minute, hon?  I need to talk to Mr. Spiers.  Then we’ll maybe run over to the park for a while, okay?”  I had arranged that morning for the sitter to stay later, and there were leftovers we could heat up for dinner, so time wasn’t much of a worry.  Galilei nodded and left the room.

“Hello, Marie,” said Mr. Spiers, coming over to shake my hand.  Of course he knew me, he’d been my teacher in fourth grade.  It was kind of nice to see him again.  “I heard about your mother, of course.  I am so sorry.  How is your father holding up?”

I hated that question, I was never sure how to answer it.  I gave a non-committal shrug and got right to the point.  “Mr. Spiers, I’m kind of worried about Galilei,” I said.  “She’s been getting very withdrawn at school, more even than right after mom…you know.  I was wondering, well, how she is doing here in class?”

Mr. Spiers sighed heavily.  “I’m sorry to say, Marie, that she isn’t much different here.  Ever since Albert and Carl went up to the high school, she’s hardly spoken two words.  She never did have a lot of friends in her own class, but always played with her brothers during the breaks.  My guess is that she is lonely.  Does she get a lot of attention at home?”

“I try,” I answered.  “But with taking care of the baby, and the boys, and my homework…I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job.”

“What about your father?” he asked.

I could feel myself go pale; that was more than I’d meant to say.  “He, uh, is working.  A lot.  I tend to…do a lot around the house to help out, you know?”

He nodded, a look of understanding on his face.  I guess he understood more than what I wanted him to.

“She is shy already,” he said.  “The loss of her mother at such an early age—well, that isn’t going to help.  I know you are already doing far more than you should, but try to make a bit of time for her for a while.  Get her some friends.  And see about perhaps getting her a hobby, something she can focus her attentions on, to work through this.”

I thanked him, and turned to go.  Before I got to the door, however, he stopped me.

“Marie, you are taking on far too much responsibility.  You should think about getting outside help.”

I kind of half nodded, and ran out the door, thinking.  Mr. Spiers was nice and all, but I didn’t see what I could be doing differently.  Asking for outside help didn’t seem to be an option.  What if Child Services got involved, and decided to split us up?  Daddy sure wasn’t a fit parent right now, and I was just a teenager.  They could take away Galilei and baby Rachel, and I might never see them again!  I could feel myself panicking a bit, and tried to calm down.  No, outside help wasn’t an option.  I had to do this myself. Galilei was down the hall a little, looking at some drawings hanging on the wall, and I went over to her.  She slipped her little hand in mine, and we took off for the park for the rest of the afternoon.  We played on the playground and fed the ducks, just hanging out and enjoying each other’s company, then finally caught a taxi home when it was closer to dinner time.

After the talk with Mr. Spiers, I tried to carve out even more of my time for playing with Galilei.  As soon as my bus pulled up, I would run up, take Rachel from the sitter’s arms, and get started on my homework while I held her.  When Galilei got home half an hour later, she would do her homework at the table next to me.  After she was finished, I would put the baby down for a nap, and we would spend some time playing—often it was a picnic with her teddy bear.  I would sit in, sometimes bringing along one of my old stuffed animals, sometimes being the waiter.  We would play for about an hour, then I would run to get dinner started, usually finishing the cooking with Rachel again in my arms.

After dinner, I would make the boys clean up so I could try to spend a little more time with Galilei, though this time I would have the baby also.  Then put the baby to bed, get Galilei bathed and into bed, then sit down and do more homework.  Graham had gotten a part time job after school, so he wasn’t able to come over and help me as much now.  The boys, who should have been a help, were still kind of like big kids—but at least they didn’t give me any trouble.  Knock on wood.

All the time that this was going on, I was trying to figure out what type of hobby to get her into.  As it turned out, the answer was staring me right in the face the whole time.

I was in her room one afternoon, playing the usual tea party, when I really looked around the walls.  There were crayon pictures up everywhere, of sunsets and trees, flowers, and even a llama.  Some of them were really pretty good, especially considering that they were in crayon.

“Galilei,” I said.  She had been playing the waiter this time, and frowned a little when I interrupted her recitation of the menu.

“You’re supposed to call me garcon,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah.  You like to draw, right?”

“Um, duh.  It’s only my favorite thing in the world.”

“Don’t say duh, it’s rude.”  I corrected her out of habit, but the wheels in my head were already spinning a thousand miles an hour.  I didn’t say anything else right then, but I had a plan.

The next day was Saturday, and I grabbed Rachel and called a taxi, telling the boys I would be home in a couple of hours.  I knew they would be okay watching Galilei, and Dad was in his room.  As usual.

I headed downtown to the bookstore, where I knew they had some art stuff toward the back.  I wasn’t sure they had what I wanted, but my fingers were crossed!  I lucked out, and a hour or so later was heading back home, a couple of bulky, paper-wrapped parcels on the seat next to me.

The taxi driver was cool enough to help me get everything into the house without anyone noticing, and after I laid the baby down in her crib (she was so tired and cranky by this time, it was ridiculous), I called Galilei into the art room with me.

“I got you something,” I told her.  Her whole face lit up with pleasure.

“What is it?”  She sounded so excited, more normal than I’d heard her in months.

“Open it and see, dork!” I laughed.  We always called each other names like that, but I guess it sounds weird if you don’t do it all the time.  Or when I write it down like this.  Whatever. 

When she got the paper off, she saw the easel I had picked up.  It was full sized, so it would last her forever, she would just need a stool for a while.  The other package held a stack of canvases and some paints and brushes.  She jumped up and threw her arms around my neck, squeezing until I could hardly breathe.

“Thank you so much!  You are the best sister in the world!”  I smiled at her, and by the time I got up off the floor, she was happily mixing paints.

After that, she would run to her easel every day, as soon as her homework was done.  I was happy that she loved it so much, but just a little sad—she didn’t seem to need me nearly as much.  Sounds so dumb, looking at it written down.  I should just be happy that she is doing better.  Her paintings were slowly improving too, though some were a little…ferocious.  Those were usually the ones she painted after a particularly bad day at school.  Her grades started to pick back up, and while I knew she would never be one of those regular hyper kids, I also knew that she was going to be okay.

Seeing how happy she was with her paints made me think of my own dreams of being an author.  I couldn’t go to Smuggsworth Prep, sure, but I could do other things.  One afternoon instead of getting on the bus to go home, I grabbed a cab over to city hall.  An hour (and a crapton of paperwork) later, I was registered as an author.  It felt so good, I think my smile was a mile wide as I walked out of the building.  Now I could officially take freelance assignments and get paid, if I were good enough.  I planned on starting a book that very night, maybe something in the science-fiction genre.  I even had a title picked out– The Holmberg- Weider Effect.

While the situation with Galilei was finally looking up, other things–like Daddy– were just getting worse.  Now that the boys were older, I didn’t try so hard to hide his craziness from them—I couldn’t.  They were horrified when they saw how bad he had gotten, after witnessing one of his more intense arguments with himself.  At least he hadn’t started acting afraid of his hand and choking himself this time, like he will once in a while.

Carl came to me later that night when I was sitting at my computer, writing.

“How long’s he been like this, sis?” he asked.

“Since after mom died.  It’s been getting worse the last couple of months, though,” I added.

“And you’ve been dealing with it by yourself?  You kept it from me and Albert all this time and everything?”

“What else could I do, Carl?”  The anger that always seemed there just below the surface tried to bubble up, but I clamped a lid on it.  “I had to keep it together.  You know that.”  He nodded. After he left the room, I took a few deep breaths.  I didn’t like that anger- I had to be focused, not let everything fall apart.  I couldn’t afford the anger.

The next morning at breakfast, Carl looked up at Galilei as she got up to put her plate in the dishwasher.

“Hey Galilei, you want to go to the art gallery this weekend?”

She was so shocked, I think she forgot to breathe for a couple of minutes.  The look on her little face was so funny, I had to hide my own face so I didn’t bust up laughing.

“Really?” she finally squeaked out.

“Yeah, it would be fun,” he said.

“Fun, my ass,” said Albert from the fridge.

“Albert!” I yelled.

“What?  It just doesn’t sound like fun to me.  But you guys go ahead.  I’ll hang out here at the house.”  He smiled at Galilei, and it looked pretty genuine, so I let his language slide.

Galilei didn’t talk about anything else the rest of the week.  By the time Saturday rolled around, I thought we were all going to go crazy from it!  It was okay, though, because it was nice to see her so happy, for once.  That morning, Galilei was up with the sun, dressed and ready to go.  She danced around Carl as he dragged himself from his room, still wrapped in his robe, hovering at his shoulder while he tried to eat breakfast.  Finally, he told her to go ride her bike around a bit while he finished getting ready, to work off some energy.  She rode all the way to the bottom of the hill and then back up, and by the time she was back home, Carl was waiting out front.

“You ready, kid?”

“Yes!”  They took off in the taxi that pulled up, and I went back in the house to get the baby, who’d started to cry.  Albert hopped online on my computer, playing some dumb racing game, but at least it got him out of my hair.  There were times I felt so surrounded by people, even if they were all family, that I could just scream.  Besides, I was going to talk to Dad.  I put Rach in her bouncy seat in the living room, and went in search of him.

Oddly, I found him standing in the nursery, looking around as though he were lost.  I walked up to him and touched him on the shoulder, and he turned to me.

“Marie?” he asked.  He looked like he hardly knew me.

“Daddy, how are you?” I asked.  He didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead.

“I’m glad to see you up and about, Daddy.  There was something I wanted to ask.  Rachel’s birthday is coming up soon, in a couple more weeks, and I want us all to have a little party for her.  Just us, just the family,” I rushed on.  “But I want you to be there with us, Daddy.”

He started to turn away without saying anything, and something in me snapped.

“Look, Daddy, I don’t ask a lot of you.  But you need to be there on her birthday, and I am not going to let this go.  Do you understand me?  Please?”  I tried to keep my voice calm, but I was so mad!

He looked at me again, for a long time, before finally opening his mouth.

“I’ll try, Marie.”  His voice was barely louder than a whisper.  “I’ll do what I can.”

It was the most he had spoken to anyone outside of is head since Mom’s funeral.

The day of the “party” Galilei helped me clean up the house.  She was actually pretty excited—it wasn’t too often that we had cake, and I had picked this one up just that morning at the market.  It was the standard cake the store’s little bakery offered, nothing too special; in fact, it looked pretty much like every other birthday cake we’ve ever had in the house.  What, do they only teach these people one way to frost?  The doorbell rang and I shook the thought out of my head and went to let Graham in.  He was practically family, so it was only right that he was there also.  After greeting him, I went into Dad’s room to see how he was doing.

I found him sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed—sort of—and looking very pale.  I smiled and ran to hug him, knowing that it meant he was at least going to try.  Grabbing his hand, I led him to the kitchen to stand next to the cake, and then ran to the nursery to get Rachel.

As I placed her in his arms, I felt like I was about to start crying.  I walked around the counter to the other side, to stand with Albert and Graham, and watched Daddy stand there holding Rachel in his arms for the first time in her life.  He looked so very lost, and like he was going to start crying himself at any minute.  I was glad that Rachel was such a good baby, because he was so tense with how he was holding her that otherwise she would have been screaming, picking up on it.

The boys and I started cheering and waving around those dumb noisemakers, and Galilei pulled out a little party horn to start blowing on.

“Blow out the candles, Rachel,” I called, hoping to prompt Daddy, who still looked kind of lost.  He blinked a little, then leaned over the cake, carefully holding her waving little hands away from the flame.  Blowing out the candle, he straightened up, then set Rachel on the floor.  I could see tears in his eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses.

Rachel turned into the sweetest toddler ever, with a fuzz of red hair the same shade as mine, but Mom’s darker skin.  The shape of her mouth reminded me a bit of mom’s too, but I knew it was kind of early to tell for sure.  She smiled, a huge toothless grin, and stretched her arms up at Daddy.  I held my breath, hoping with all my might that he would reach down and pick her up, but he simply stood there as though frozen.  How could he do this?  Couldn’t he see that we were part of Mom, too?  I swallowed the bubble of anger back down.  I just needed to be more understanding, that’s all.  This was hard for him.

Finally, I went over and scooped her up myself, cuddling her to me.

“Who is a gorgeous big girl?” I asked.  She laughed and grabbed my hair, tugging on it, then stuck her fingers in her mouth and looked at Daddy.  I thought my heart was going to break when he turned his back on the two of us.