His mom smiled. Then she told him a memory she had
about that day. Her memory was, she asked him to run
and get the plunger and he said okay and ran all around
the house looking everywhere and then he came back
and said, “What’s a plunger?”
Remembering that made her laugh. Laughing was
his favorite face. After she laughed he stopped thinking
about, Would she be dead soon too?
The next time he asked his mom if she was going to
be dead soon she said, “No,” in her strictest voice ever and the vein on her forehead came out faster so, Very Mad.
Sometimes her Mad face made him cry. Sometimes
when he cried he made his eyes go Poppy-Out Big so
his tears wouldn’t dribble down his face, but usually that didn’t work. When his mom saw his tears she always got
quiet. Disappointed.
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Rules for Moving
He decided not to ask her about being dead anymore.
h h
h h
Holding his breath made his chest hurt so now instead
of thinking, Is my mom comfy or dead? he was thinking, If my chest keeps hurting will I start to cry?
His mom sighed and blew warm air on his face. He
sighed too, even though he didn’t want to. His sigh wasn’t as loud as hers, but she heard it.
“You okay, buddy?”
He wanted to pretend he was sleeping, but she could
always tell when he was faking so he nodded. She moved
her knee so it wasn’t touching him anymore but his eyes
were still closed so he didn’t know if they went back to
scissors or not.
“You feeling sad?”
He shook his head and said, “Happy,” and squeezed
his closed eyes tighter so she couldn’t see it was a lie.
“You don’t sound happy.”
He didn’t know how to sound happy when he wasn’t.
Probably when he was a grown-up he would know. His
mom knew. Sometimes when he stared at her to see how
she was feeling her words said, Don’t worry. I’m fine, but her face said, Sad.
h h
h h
The first time he went to see Miss Mary alone, she gave
him crayons and paper and asked if he would be a deer
and draw a picture of his mom. He didn’t know how to
be a deer but he did know how to draw, so he did that.
For his drawing he made his mom have a smiling face and
35
Nancy Star
he made her eyes sparkly with droplets on her eyelashes.
When Miss Mary asked why he drew his mom with a
smile but made her eyelashes have tears, he told her that
sometimes his mom said she was happy but her eyelashes
said something else.
Miss Mary told him he was smart to notice grown-ups’
words didn’t always match their faces. She said it would
be better if everyone noticed that, but what can you do.
So far Miss Mary’s words and face always matched.
When she liked what he said, she smiled with her mouth
open so wide he could see cavities. The first time he saw
her cavities he didn’t know what they were and he wasn’t
sure if it was okay to ask, so he didn’t. She saw him staring at her mouth though, and it made her forehead go
crinkled so, Worried.
Miss Mary used her most serious voice and said there
was a rule in her room that he could ask any question he
wanted. That was the main thing about her room. Safe
for questions.
The question he asked was, “Why do some of your
teeth have silver in them?”
That made her laugh with her mouth open even more,
so he got to see even more silver. After she laughed she
told him the silver was for cavities she got from drinking too much soda when she was little. When she finished
telling him about that, she handed him a new sheet of
paper and a bigger box of crayons.
There were a lot of crayons missing from the box and
when he asked her why, Miss Mary said it was because
some colors got used up faster than others. When he asked
her why again, she said maybe they could talk about that
later because she wanted to talk about something else
now, which was, could he draw his family?
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Rules for Moving
Drawing his family used to mean drawing his mom
and his dad and him. Now he wasn’t sure what it meant.
Maybe he was still supposed to draw his dad. Maybe he
wasn’t.
Because he got quiet, Miss Mary asked him what he
was thinking about. He told her he was thinking, “Was
it okay for a person who liked to draw to not feel like
drawing?”
Her forehead went crinkly again. “Of course. No one
should draw if they don’t want to.”
She took a few crayons out of the box and asked if
he would mind if she drew animals. She said, “Animals
are good to draw when you want to relapse.” When Miss Mary was finished he worried that she might ask if he
could tell what kind of animal she drew. If she asked
that, the answer that was true would be, “No,” which
might make her Sad. She wasn’t a very good drawrer. But she didn’t ask that. All she ever asked after she made a
drawing was, “Do you like it?” and it was easy to give a
true answer to that. “Yes.”
h h
h h
The night his mom asked if he wanted to give a try at
sleeping alone, her face looked like she wanted him to
say, “Not yet,” so that’s what he said. He was pretty sure there were two reasons she still slept in his bed. One was, he didn’t want to sleep alone. The other was, she didn’t
want to sleep alone either.
After he said, “Not yet,” a big whoosh of air came
out of her mouth, like the kind of whoosh that happens
when you hold your breath for a hundred and a hundred
minutes. That meant, right answer.
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Nancy Star
h h
h h
The most Disappointed his mom ever got was when he
forgot about Grandpa Marshall. Even though she said,
It’s okay. Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault, he could tell.
Disappointed. The day after that was when she told him
they were going on a trip to Florida to visit Grandpa
Marshall and Grandma Sylvie.
That day her words said, “I’ve got good news,” but
her face said, “I’m sorry we have to go.”
38
CHAPTER FOUR
As she’d promised, Lane handed Henry his bag of air-
plane surprises as soon as he buckled up. She watched
as he rummaged through the offerings—a new sketch
pad, a pack of twelve twistable crayons, two Henry and
Mudge chapter books, a travel LEGO set—and pulled
out the art supplies.
She closed her eyes and tried to convince herself this
trip was not a mistake, that it wouldn’t be a repeat of the last time they came, when Henry was two and Aaron stayed
behind because of a work conflict and she felt relieved.
That was the year something shifted in their marriage,
when, like Aaron’s bourbon and for no discernible reason,
it went from straig
ht up to on the rocks.
There was one wonderful surprise on that trip: Shelley
flew in from London, their taxis pulling up at the same
time, one behind the other, in front of their parents’ house.
When Sylvie opened the door and saw not one but
both daughters standing there, her eyes went wide with
surprise.
“Look who’s here,” Lane said to fill up the silence.
“Look, it’s Shelley.”
“Your mother knows who she is, Turtle,” her father
said, suddenly appearing behind his wife. “Why do you
always have to make a big megillah out of everything?”
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Nancy Star
Sylvie said, “Oh well.” She didn’t say more than that
for the rest of the day; she just sat on the living room love seat looking vaguely uneasy.
Marshall, meanwhile, followed his daughters around
like an overeager puppy.
“Don’t you have anything else to do?” Shelley asked him.
“I’m visiting,” Marshall said. “Isn’t that why you came?
To visit?”
“Yes,” Lane answered when it became clear that her
sister—mouth closed, jaws mashing—was not going to.
To Lane it felt as if she’d accidentally wandered into the middle of an argument she knew nothing about. This
feeling wasn’t unusual; in the Meckler family she often
felt one link short of being in the loop.
h h
h h
The airplane loudspeaker crackled. The captain’s voice
broke through her reverie. “Sorry we weren’t able to give
you that great Manhattan skyline view but apparently
the weather had other ideas. We do hope to make up the
delay. Please sit back and enjoy the rest of your flight.”
They hadn’t been aloft for long when the captain’s
voice returned. “We’re going to be coming into a bit of
turbulence ahead. We should get through it fairly quickly
but we do need everyone to please stay in your seats with
your seat belts fastened.”
The flight attendant walking the aisle stopped at
Henry. “You buckled, sweetheart? You’re not worried
about a little turbulence are you? You look pretty brave
to me.”
Henry said, “Thank you,” which is what his mother
taught him to say whenever adults paid him a compliment
40
Rules for Moving
or asked him a question he didn’t understand. As soon as
the flight attendant moved on, he turned to his mother.
“What’s turbulence?”
Lane shared a smile with the man at the window.
“That’s what they call it when it gets a little bumpy.”
“Cabin crew, please be seated.”
The turbulence hit. The ride got bumpy. Henry held
on to the armrests and grinned.
When it was over, the flight attendant stopped
by on her way to the galley. “Hey, sweetheart, how’d
you do?”
“Good. I like turbulence.”
She laughed and asked Lane if she could borrow Henry
for a sec, to give him something special. Henry looked
at his mother and nodded so she’d nod too, which of
course she did.
Several minutes later he returned to his seat with his
chest arched so Lane couldn’t miss the wings pin now
attached to his shirt. Eyes wide, he told her that after the lady pinned on the wings he had to move because the
captain was coming out of the cockpit.
“No one is allowed to stand near the captain when
he comes out,” Henry explained. “But he looked at me.
And he saw my pin. And he did this.” Henry saluted his
mother to show her and then scrambled over her legs to
his seat. “I like this vacation.”
The man at the window smiled again but this time
Lane pretended not to notice. There was no way she was
going to share with a stranger what Henry didn’t know,
that their time here on the bumpy plane might be as good
as this vacation got.
h h
h h
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Nancy Star
It was as if the turbulence had uncorked in Henry a sudden thirst for information. Lane didn’t blame him for having
questions about the grandparents he didn’t remember. It
was the answers that were the problem.
His opener: “Will Grandpa like me?”
“Of course. He already likes you.” Was that true? “He
loves you.” That had to be true.
“Is he nice?”
Another hard one. “Usually. Unless he sits around
for too long. He gets grumpy doing nothing. When he’s
grumpy, we leave him alone. But he never stays grumpy
for long. He’s very excited to see you.” She closed her
eyes for a moment and tried to picture her father being
excited to see Henry but she was unable to conjure any
image at all.
“What about Uncle Albie? Is he nice?”
“Yes. Quiet but nice.”
Henry moved from question to question with barely a
breath in between. It felt to her as if he’d been hoarding them, just waiting for a moment to present itself so he
could give her a family quiz. Unfortunately for her, the
right moment was now.
Will Grandpa play with me? I hope so. Will Uncle Albie play with me? I doubt it. Why not? He likes to be alone.
Why? Some people prefer to be alone. Is that why Grandpa calls you Turtle? Because you like to be alone? I don’t like to be alone. I like to be with you. So why does he call you Turtle?
That started because I got a turtle as a pet.
father used to tease her about her turtle. “You’re two of
a kind,” he’d say. “You on your bed. Him on his rock.
Both of you sitting alone, staring into space while the
world whizzes by.”
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Rules for Moving
He wasn’t wrong about the turtle. It didn’t do anything,
except for dying a few days after she got it. But though
the turtle expired, the nickname stuck. Years later, after she told Aaron how much she hated her nickname, he
invented a new one for her and made a stab at getting
her father to switch.
“Call her Duck,” he told Marshall. “That’s what I call
her. My sweet little odd duck.”
Lane had never been and still was not a fan of
nicknames.
“Can I call you Turtle like Grandpa does?” Henry
asked. “Or Duck like dad used to?”
She noted, but didn’t comment on, his use of the past
tense. “Absolutely not. You can call me Mom.” She leaned
over and kissed the top of Henry’s head. “I’m going to
close my eyes for a minute. Get a little rest. Want to try and rest with me?”
Henry said he would, but when Lane opened her eyes
a moment later, he was staring at her, waiting to ask an-
other question: “Did Uncle Albie always live with you?”
“No.” Lane’s memory for the details of her nomadic
childhood was spotty, but some things, like when her uncle moved in, were clear. Before he moved in she had her own
room. After, she shared with Shelley. Before he moved in,
they would sit around
the dinner table when her father
came home and talk over each other, everyone vying to
be the first to say what happened while he was away. After, they ate in silence. “He moved in when I was your age.”
“You’re lucky. I wish Aunt Shelley would move in
with us.”
“Me too. But she has her own family. Uncle Quinn
and Melinda. And they live in England. You remember
that, right?” He nodded. She closed her eyes.
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Nancy Star
It was sweet, Henry wishing his aunt lived with them.
There’d been no sweetness when her uncle moved in. No
explanation, either. Just her father’s curt announcement,
followed by a warning: “Uncle Albie lives with us now.
Don’t bother him. Your uncle isn’t me.”
Lane and Shelley had to work hard not to laugh at
that. Their father wasn’t someone anyone would choose
to bother.
The call bell dinged from somewhere at the back of
the plane. She opened her eyes.
Henry was staring at her again. “How come Uncle
Albie didn’t live with his own family?”
There was no way she was going to answer that.
“Some things are hard to explain.” She shrugged. “Oh
well.” And there it was, the evasive vagueness of Sylvie
Meckler, living inside her. “We should try and rest. So
we’ll have lots of energy when we get off the plane.”
Henry nodded and settled down. Lane closed her eyes
and let the muffled buzz of the airplane rock her into a
dreamy state. Her thoughts drifted back to the last time
they’d visited her parents. She could still picture their
dinner the night she arrived. It was the usual Meckler
spread of mashed potatoes, skinless chicken breasts and
some kind of vegetable, hidden beneath a camel-colored
sauce. The kind of meal, Lane later learned, most people
would eat only when they were getting over a stomach bug.
They hadn’t been sitting for long when Sylvie got up
and started clearing.
Marshall put his napkin on his plate and stood up too.
“Excellent meal, Sylvie. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have
to use the washroom.”
“Washroom?” Shelley repeated as soon as he was gone.
“Who says, washroom?”
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Rules for Moving
“I don’t know why you two are so hard on him,” Sylvie
said, even though Lane hadn’t uttered a word. “It hasn’t
been easy.” She turned and saw her daughters’ puzzled