Eleanor got up from the table. “Here’s what you need to understand, Ursula,” she said. “Some things that happen don’t have any solution. Some things that get broken aren’t fixable.” She picked up Ursula’s most recent library selection,Love, Medicine & Miracles,opened the door to the woodstove, and threw it in.
Crazyland alert.
“That was a library book,” Ursula said quietly. She was a girl who prided herself on never once bringing library materials back late.
“It was a good idea, Ursie,” Cam told her, after Eleanor left the room. “Your mom is just having a hard time right now.”
After, from where she stood in the kitchen with Phyllis, slicing a roll of Toll House cookies and arranging them on the sheet, she heard her parents talking in the yard. Not really talking. They didn’t do that so much anymore, except for working out things like who drove Toby to physical therapy and who picked him up.
“I’m just as sad as you are, Eleanor,” her father said. “But we have to find a way to keep going. You can’t go crazy on our children like that. Our daughter’s just trying to help.”
Ursula looked at the babysitter, who placed a hand on her shoulder. “All parents argue sometimes,” Phyllis told her. “Don’t worry.” But she did.
At night, in bed, Ursula searched the pages of Harold Kushner’s book for something that might apply:What could a person do to help their father who believed he was responsible for the most terrible thing that ever happened in your family? Worst of all, what if your mother believed this also? How could you make everyone happy again, or just not so miserable?
All she could think of was praying. She tried that, too.
By October, when the leaves on their big tree turned red, and after, when they fell, Ursula was still spending hours every day reading to her brother. Sometimes she told him jokes. She applied polish to his fingernails and his toenails and French-braided his hair, that nobody felt like cutting. Ursula held on to the hope that one of these days Toby might emerge, like Scuffy the Tugboat, through the fog, look her in the eye, and speak to her in thatstrangely husky man’s voice of his—not just the one- or two-word phrases that came out of him now, but sentences and songs, like in the old days. Laughter.
Did you know I saw Mr. T on the playground?
I went over to God’s house. We made spaghetti.
44.
Call Me Al
Iwish you’d give up already,” Ali told her sister. “I’m sick of watching you wasting your time. Toby just sits there and he’s not even looking at you. No offense, but it’s kind of depressing.”
Alison took a different approach from her sister’s to Toby’s transformation. Back in the old days—meaning before the accident; that was how they measured time now—she’d been the most enthusiastic of the family about going along with Toby on his wildest adventures—carrying on the long conversations in the language they’d made up, camping out in the woods, building a rope swing, rescuing a baby skunk whose mother had been run over by a car, dissecting a cow’s eye—big as a pool ball—that her teacher had given her during their unit on the human body, taking apart an old radio Walt dropped off when he was cleaning out his garage. Ursula didn’t love Toby any less than Alison did, but she was a more careful type, and she not only followed the rules laid out for her, she actually liked rules—where to Toby, and to Alison, little offered greater satisfaction than breaking them.
Toby had been the one in their family who shared Alison’s love of everything mechanical—putting things together or (his specialty) taking them apart, and in the first days after the accident, Alison had kept trying to arouse a response from her brother. She spoke to him in their old secret language. She set a baby turtle in his hand, and a worm, and a piece of owl scat. She showed him Walt’s broken radio with the suggestion that they fix it together, but he just sat there, staring at the objects she set in front of him. No glimmer of interest.
By September, Alison no longer spoke to Toby. She avoided all mention of his name. Passing through a room in which he sat, staringat a ball or a truck or wrapping his old pink ribbon around his finger, she seemed not to acknowledge he was even there.
“Can’t you just pat him on the head or something?” Ursula said to her once. “You pet Sally more than Toby.”
“Toby’s not a dog,” she said. “Toby’s not anything anymore.”
Another change took place in Alison’s life that year, possibly touched off by the accident, and by a growing attitude of skepticism in her as to whether or not anything you thought was real in your life could actually be counted on, and the general pointlessness of everything.
Alison had never liked girl clothes and most of the other apparatus that went along with them—barrettes and bracelets, dolls, anything pink. But that summer seemed to mark a passage for Alison from simple tomboy behavior to living, as much as possible, like a boy. To Alison, it appeared, the position of son in their family stood vacant. Maybe that was part of it. Or maybe she just decided it was too hard putting on an act anymore.
At dinner one night, a couple of monthsafter(no need to say after what), Alison made the announcement.
“You know that song Toby used to love so much?” she said, as Eleanor was wrapping up the leftover chicken, and she and Cam were loading the dishwasher. “I was thinking about it. When a person says they’re born in the U.S.A., it’s supposed to mean they’re free, right? In this country, we’re supposed to be who we want. Even way back when I was little, we were always playing that record with the pink cover.”
She meantFree to Be... You and Me. For years, that was the family favorite on road trips.
“So I want to be free, Mom,” Alison told her. “My real self.”
“And you don’t feel free now?” Eleanor asked her. “Did your father and I give you the impression you had to be someone you’re not?”
“It’s not your fault or Dad’s,” Alison said. “I just want my name to match who I am. From now on, I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Al.”
Later that night, in the dark of their bedroom, Cam had reached for Eleanor. They had not made love since the accident. He placed his hand on her belly and stroked it.
“Here’s where our babies came from,” he said. “I will always love this place.”
