Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree Read online

  Elizabeth Lazarus was younger than the parents of most of Emma-Jean’s classmates. Yet she possessed the wisdom of an old sage. She always had keen insights into matters of the human mind and spirit. Over the years, Emma-Jean had engaged her in frequent discussions about her peers. Almost all of these discussions took place in Emma-Jean’s mother’s bed, to which Emma-Jean and her mother often retreated in the later hours of the evening to read and discuss the day’s events.

  That evening, as was her habit, Emma-Jean had brought into bed the quilt her father had made for her when she was born. It was made of hundreds of tiny squares, arranged in a pattern of startling intricacy. She and her mother liked to warm their feet under the soft cotton, mindful not to get their toes caught in the ragged edges. Emma-Jean knew that she needed to repair the quilt’s border, that it could fall apart if she didn’t. Her mother had brought her many times to the crafts store, but Emma-Jean had yet to find an assortment of fabrics that would fit with her father’s pattern.

  Emma-Jean recounted the cafeteria incident, sparing no detail. Her mother listened closely, her coppery eyes intense. When Emma-Jean finished talking, her mother took a few moments to reflect, pursing her lips in concentration. Emma-Jean waited patiently, at one point reaching over to gently remove a piece of lint from one of her mother’s reddish curls.

  “I feel sorry for Brandon,” her mother announced.

  “Why?” Emma-Jean said.

  “Because I can picture him as an adult,” her mother said.

  Emma-Jean’s mother would never claim to possess anything as fanciful as psychic powers. But she did have the ability to project into the future with surprising accuracy. For instance, as she had told Emma-Jean many times, she had known instantly that Eugene Lazarus should be her husband. They met when Emma-Jean’s father was opening a checking account at the bank where Emma-Jean’s mother worked. This was before Emma-Jean’s mother began her steady climb through the bank hierarchy, and just weeks after her father had graduated from M.I.T. and moved to town to begin his doctoral work at the university.

  “Your father was very shy back then,” her mother had told her. “But I could see what was inside him. It was all written out in those eyes of his, that he was a man who had a gift for life. Like you have, Emma-Jean. It was all right there, waiting for a person who would know how to open that gift. And that person was me.”

  Of course her mother had been right.

  Emma-Jean tried now to imagine Brandon Mahoney grown up. She frowned as she pictured a man with several missing teeth and bleeding gums, whose ill-advised antics provoked generally good-natured people into acts of violence involving fruit.

  Her mother was correct. Life could not turn out well for such a person.

  “What about Will Keeler?” Emma-Jean said.

  “I like him,” her mother said without hesitation.

  “But you’ve never met him,” Emma-Jean said.

  “I still like him,” her mother said. “I believe he was defending your honor.”

  “Like a knight?” Emma-Jean said, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Emma-Jean’s mother said. “Just like a knight.”

  Emma-Jean was speechless. Her father had read her many volumes of Arthurian legends. She had never considered that a boy like Will Keeler could have anything in common with the chivalrous warriors of medieval times.

  Then again, Emma-Jean recalled that many of the bravest knights were simple men who ate mutton with their fingers and bathed but once a year. Perhaps there was more to Will Keeler than mediocre grades and exceptional basketball skills. Perhaps he possessed a talent for old-fashioned gallantry that went largely unnoticed in the modern hallways of William Gladstone Middle School.

  Emma-Jean would have to observe him more closely.

  “What about what Brandon said,” Emma-Jean said, “that I am strange.”

  Emma-Jean’s mother sat up.

  “Let’s look up the word strange in the dictionary and see if he is correct,” she suggested, brushing a hair from Emma-Jean’s forehead.

  They both rose from the bed and went over to their well-worn copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, kept out on her mother’s dresser for handy reference.

  There was a large entry for the word strange, but Emma-Jean’s mother pointed to the second definition:strange adj

  extraordinary, remarkable, singular

  “Do you think this is an accurate description of you?” her mother said.

  Emma-Jean let the words seep in and settle in her mind. They fit quite well.

  “Very accurate.”

  “I agree,” her mother said, closing the dictionary and patting the sky blue cover. “The next time someone calls you strange, you should thank them. It sounds to me like a compliment.”

  Emma-Jean nodded.

  “Did people think my father was strange?” Emma-Jean asked, sitting back down on the bed and wrapping the quilt around her shoulders. It gave her a feeling of deep comfort.

  “Oh yes,” her mother said, smiling slightly and looking at the large photograph of Eugene Lazarus that sat in a brass frame by the bedside. Though her father had died over two years ago, he still watched over them. There were pictures of him in every room of the house. They were framed on the walls, stuck to mirrors, hung with magnets on the refrigerator, slipped into the pages of novels. Her mother kept a small snapshot tucked into the sun visor of her Toyota Corolla.

  “Your father was wonderfully strange,” her mother said. “He was an absolute original. Like you. That’s one of the reasons I loved him so much, and one of the many, many, many reasons why I love you.”

  Emma-Jean was always pleased to hear that she took after her father, a brilliant mathematician, a beloved professor, and the love of her mother’s life.

  Emma-Jean had looked at her father’s photograph, focusing on his bright green eyes, which peered merrily out from under a mop of shaggy black hair. As always, he seemed to give her a reassuring nod.

  Chapter 4

  Emma-Jean began working on Colleen Pomerantz’s problem without delay. During lunch that day, she outlined Colleen’s problem from all angles. By the time the bell rang, she had conceived of a multistepped, highly logical plan of action.

  Step one required her to stay after school in order to study the large bulletin board outside the main office. This was where flyers were posted announcing important news and upcoming events. Emma-Jean looked carefully at all the notices until she found the one she was looking for.

  BOYS’ BASKETBALL

  AWARDS BANQUET

  THE BANQUET FOR THE BOYS’ PAL

  BASKETBALL TEAM WILL BE HELD THIS

  SATURDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 24,

  IN THE SCHOOL GYM,

  FROM 6:00- 8:30

  Emma-Jean copied the information into her notebook and hurried home to Stanton Drive. Her house was a small Victorian that she and her mother had recently repainted robin’s egg blue with pale yellow trim. The house had many good qualities, in particular the dogwood tree she and her father had planted outside her bedroom window the spring before he died. Emma-Jean and her father had spent long afternoons drawing the tree, making note of new branches and shoots.

  Another fine quality was the delicious smell of garlic and curry spices that greeted Emma-Jean when she came home from school each day. The person responsible for this aroma was Vikram Adwani, who was the best cook Emma-Jean had ever known. He was thirty-one years old and six feet tall and came from Mumbai, India. He had caramel-colored skin and a long black ponytail. He was a doctoral student in immunology at the university, and for close to six months, he had rented the sunny third floor of Emma-Jean’s house.

  Emma-Jean hung up her coat and stopped into the kitchen to visit Vikram, who was standing at the stove, stirring the contents of a cast-iron skillet. He smiled at Emma-Jean.

  “I’m sorry I can’t assist you today,” Emma-Jean said. “I am helping one of my classmates solve a serious problem.”

  “Very good,�
� Vikram said, holding out a wooden spoon full of chana masala for Emma-Jean to sample. Emma-Jean admired the attractive combination of the golden chickpeas and crimson tomatoes. She blew on the spoon a few times to clear the rising steam, and took a taste. She closed her eyes as her senses filled with a lively blend of flavors—turmeric, she thought, and certainly cumin, and just the right amount of chili pepper. Emma-Jean

  nodded her approval and put the spoon in the sink.

  “Your flavors are perfectly balanced,” she said.

  “That’s kind of you to say,” Vikram said

  “I will be in my room.”

  “Good luck with your problem,” Vikram said, lowering the gas flame under his pan.

  “It is a challenging one.”

  “I have great confidence in you.”

  “Thank you,” Emma-Jean said.

  Emma-Jean went upstairs to her neat and airy bedroom, where she was greeted by the soft squawking of Henri, a seventeen-year-old parakeet. Henri had been her father’s bird, named, of course, for Poincaré.

  “Emma-Jean,” the bird said in his raspy whisper. “Greetings, Emma-Jean. Bonjour. Hola. Namaste.”

  Emma-Jean unlatched the door of the cage and stood still as the bird flew out and settled on her shoulder. Henri leaned his soft, tidy head against her cheek. Emma-Jean closed her eyes. Her days were filled with pleasant moments, and this was one she particularly relished.

  “I’m sorry, dear Henri, but I can’t talk right now,” Emma-Jean said in a low voice. “We’ll have time to talk later. Right now, I have an important and challenging problem to tend to.”

  With Henri on her shoulder, Emma-Jean sat at her computer and gathered her thoughts. Using the computer program Quark Xpress, Emma-Jean painstakingly re-created the William Gladstone Middle School logo, which included the school’s name written in eighteen-point Times New Roman font, framed by a royal blue rectangular box.

  She printed out a sheet of paper with the school’s logo on top. Then she composed a letter. It took her several drafts to achieve the correct wording and tone, but as the afternoon was fading to evening, she printed out her final version.

  Ms. Laura Gilroy

  3 Feather Place

  River Flats, CT 07890

  Dear Laura,

  It is my pleasure to inform you that you have been selected to perform at the boys’ basketball awards banquet on Saturday night, February 24. There will be a short dance performance following the awards presentation, and several talented dancers from various grades have been invited to perform. You are the only seventh-grade dancer selected, and we ask that you keep this matter quiet until after the banquet.

  You must attend a rehearsal on Friday night, at 8 p.m. in the school gym. We apologize for the last-minute notice, and hope you will be able to perform at the banquet. If you can’t, we will select an alternate.

  Sincerely,

  Basketball Banquet Committee

  Emma-Jean was a studious observer of human behavior. She had seen enough to deduce that Laura Gilroy would gladly give up the ski trip with Kaitlin Vogel for the opportunity to dance on a stage in front of the boys’ basketball team. Laura Gilroy was like a peacock that lived for the chance to display her feathers. Of course Emma-Jean knew it was the male peacock that had the beautiful feathers. But still, she felt the comparison was valid.

  Emma-Jean sat back in her chair. She had approached this problem with creativity and logic. However, there were many variables and it was difficult to predict what the outcome would be. Emma-Jean turned to Henri for reassurance, but he was peacefully asleep on her shoulder.

  Chapter 5

  Colleen’s mom had a saying: Time heals all wounds. That’s what she’d said a when Colleen’s hamster died in second grade, and when Colleen didn’t make the travel soccer team in fifth grade. And so Colleen knew what to expect when she told her mother that knew what to expect when she told her mother that she wasn’t going skiing with Kaitlin this year, that Kaitlin was bringing someone else. Colleen half hoped her mother would come over and put her arms around her and pat her back and say, “That’s just the worst story I’ve heard all day! You must feel so hurt!”

  But her mother wasn’t the huggy type. Besides, she had been busy emptying the dishwasher.

  “There will be other ski trips,” she’d said, handing Colleen a stack of plates to put in the cabinet. “I know you’re upset, but remember . . .” Colleen had cringed, knowing what was coming. “Time heals all wounds.”

  Okay.

  But how much time? Her mother never said. The truth was Colleen still missed Piggy, her adorable hamster who used to tickle her neck with his whiskers. And it was still pretty embarrassing that Colleen was practically the only girl in the entire fifth grade who didn’t make the travel team. (Okay, she hated soccer, but all her friends were doing it, and would it have been so hard for the coaches to add just one more girl?)

  When would Colleen ever get over this ski trip?

  Colleen wondered this as she sat in first-period Spanish, four desks away from Laura Gilroy. It had been two days since Kaitlin had broken the terrible news (two days, 48 hours, 2,880 minutes, 172,800 seconds—Colleen had secretly used her calculator while Señora Weingart was writing on the board).

  And Colleen still felt completely, totally miserable.

  Spanish was a cinch, and usually Colleen spent the period passing little notes written in pink Magic Marker. Nothing earth-shattering, just sunny little messages to brighten someone’s day. “I luv your sox!” she might write to her friend Valerie, who could get down on herself. “Where’d U get them?”

  But Colleen’s pink Magic Marker stayed in her backpack. Once she reached for it. Her friend Michele had gotten braces, and Colleen wanted to assure her that she looked as gorgeous as ever. But then the thought of Laura Gilroy skiing down Stratton Mountain played through her mind like a late-night horror movie, and the bright and sunny words in her mind turned to black puffs of smoke.

  Colleen looked down at her Spanish notebook, which was covered with doodled hearts and flowers and her name, Colleen Julianna Pomerantz, in her neatest bubble writing. Tears came to her eyes. Why did she have to take everything so hard? Why did she care so much about this ski trip? Why couldn’t she be like everyone else and NOT CARE so much? About everything!

  “¿Señorita Pomerantz, te gusta el pastel de chocolate? ”

  Oh gosh! What was Señora Wiengart saying!

  “Um, sorry, lo siento mucho, Señora . . .” Colleen said, trying to perk herself up.

  “Señorita Pomerantz,” her teacher said, shaking her finger. “¡Atención!”

  Michele looked over, flashing her braces in sympathy, which was really sweet. Colleen shrugged and gave a little smile back to show that it didn’t really bother her that she’d been totally humiliated.

  Colleen took a deep breath, filling her nostrils with the Wild at Heart cologne she’d put on this morning. Who was she kidding? Her heart was about as wild as a Twinkie.

  Colleen slumped in her seat. Sometimes all her caring and wondering really did make her sick to her stomach. She was pathetic! Why couldn’t she stop?

  Or why couldn’t some people just act nicer?

  The bell rang and Colleen gathered up her books, bracing herself for her walk through the hallway, when no matter how bad she felt, she had to put on a smile and say a friendly hello to everyone who walked by.

  But then an unbelievable thing happened.

  Laura was waiting for Colleen at the door. “Hey,” Laura whispered, putting her face so close that Colleen could feel the heat coming off Laura’s bronzed skin. “Do you think Kaitlin will hate me if I don’t go skiing?”

  Just like that.

  Colleen leaned against the doorway because fainting was a definite possibility.

  Laura reached into her sweatshirt pocket and pulled out one of the fancy little chocolate bars she carried around. Laura made a big deal telling everyone how her father brought them back from his b
usiness trips to Switzerland and that they were way better than anything you could get here. Sometimes she shared them, but not too often, and hardly ever with Colleen. Last week, on Valentine’s Day, Laura had snuck a whole box into Will Keeler’s backpack when he wasn’t looking.

  Laura held out the chocolate to Colleen. “Something came up and I can’t go,” she said. “So do you think she’ll, like, totally hate me for life?”

  For days, Colleen had been surrounded by a cloud of confusion and misery that made everything look foggy.

  Now the fog lifted, and Colleen could see it all perfectly. She saw that Laura Gilroy didn’t give one hoot about skiing. Or about Kaitlin. And of course she didn’t care about Colleen. All Laura Gilroy cared about was Laura Gilroy.

  Colleen stared at Laura. She waved away the chocolate because nothing of Laura’s could ever taste sweet.

  “What?” Laura said.

  There were so many answers to that simple question, so many things Colleen wanted to say to Laura at that moment. And one of them was “Thank you.” Because right then, at that thrilling moment, Colleen felt free. Everything was so crystal clear! Laura Gilroy was prettier than Colleen. She was a better dancer. But Colleen had the better heart. And wasn’t that the most important thing?

  But because she was, above all, a very nice person, Colleen didn’t tell Laura Gilroy what she was thinking, and she swallowed the mean words that were lined up on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to walk away, march off without so much as a wave. She’d love to do that!

  But she couldn’t. “Nothing,” Colleen said in not such a nice voice. “I’m sure Kaitlin will be okay.”

  By the end of the day, Kaitlin had invited Colleen to go skiing. The two had hugged and jumped up and down with excitement.

  “I’m so glad she cancelled,” Kaitlin whispered. “I was praying she would!”

  “You were?” Colleen said.

  “I’m so sorry!” Kaitlin said. “Can you forgive me?”

  “What a question!” Colleen said.