She leaned closer to me. “If you pick up that phone right now instead of watching this film, the jury will crucify you for being heartless.”
So I sat on my hands, getting more and more agitated. Maybe the jury thought it was because I couldn’t watch this. The phone would stop vibrating and then start a moment later. On the screen I watched you at physical therapy, walking forward toward the mat biting your lower lip. The phone vibrated again, and I made a small sound in the back of my throat.
What if you’d fallen? What if the nurse didn’t know what to do? What if it was something even worse than a simple break?
I could hear snuffling sounds behind me, purses being opened and rummaged through for Kleenex. I could see the jury riveted by your words, your elfin face.
The phone buzzed again, an electrical shock to my system. This time I slipped it out of my pocket to see the text message icon. I hid the receiver under the table and flipped it open.
WILLOW HURT-HELP
“I have to get out of here,” I whispered to Marin.
“In fifteen minutes…We absolutely cannot recess right now.”
I looked up at the screen again, my heart hammering. Hurt, how? Why wasn’t the nurse doing something?
You were sitting on the mat, your legs frogged. Above you a red ring dangled. You winced as you reached for it. Can we stop now?
Come on, Willow, I know you’re tougher than that…wrap your fingers around and give it a squeeze.
You tried, for Molly. But tears were streaming from your eyes, and the sound that came from you was a sharp, staccato burst. Please, Molly…can I stop?
The phone was vibrating again. I wrapped my hand around it.
And then I was on the mat with you, holding you in my arms, rocking you, and telling you that I would make it better.
If I had been more aware of what was happening in the courtroom, I would have noticed that every woman on the jury was crying, and some of the men. I would have seen the TV cameras in the back of the gallery that were recording for playback on that night’s news. I would have seen Judge Gellar close his eyes and shake his head. But instead, the moment the screen went to black, I bolted.
I could feel everyone watching me as I ran up the aisle and out the double doors, and they probably thought I was overcome with emotion or too fragile to look at you in Technicolor. The moment I shoved past the bailiffs I hit the redial button on my phone. “Amelia? What’s the matter?”
“She’s bleeding,” Amelia sobbed, hysterical. “There was blood all over the place and she wasn’t moving and-”
Suddenly, an unfamiliar voice was on the phone. “Is this Mrs. O’Keefe?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Hal Chen, one of the EMTs who-”
“What’s wrong with my daughter!”
“She’s lost a great deal of blood, that’s all we know right now. Can you meet us at Portsmouth Regional?”
I don’t know if I even said yes. I didn’t try to tell Marin. I just ran-across the lobby, out the courthouse doors. I pushed past the reporters, who were caught unawares, who pulled themselves together just in time to focus their cameras and point their microphones at the woman who was sprinting away from this trial, headed toward you.
Amelia
When I had been really little and the wind blew like mad at night, I had trouble sleeping. My father would come in and tell me that the house wasn’t made of straw or sticks, that it was brick, and like the little pigs knew, nothing could tear it down. Here’s what the little pigs didn’t realize: the big bad wolf was only the start of their problems. The biggest threat was already inside the house with them, and couldn’t be seen. Not radon gas or carbon monoxide, but just the way three very different personalities fit inside one small space. Tell me that the slacker pig-the one who only mustered up straw-really could get along with the high-maintenance bricklayer pig. I think not. I’ll bet you if that fairy tale went on another ten pages, all three of those pigs would have been at each other’s throats, and that brick house would have exploded after all.
When I broke down the door of the bathroom with my ninja kick, it gave more easily than I expected, but then again, the house was old and the jamb just splintered. You were in plain sight, but I didn’t see you. How could I, with all that blood everywhere?
I started to scream, and then I ran into the bathroom and grabbed your cheeks. “Willow, wake up. Wake up!”
It didn’t work, but your arm jostled, and out of your hand fell my razor blade.
My heart started to race. You’d seen me cutting the other night; I’d been so angry, I couldn’t remember if I’d hidden the blade back in its usual hiding place. What if you had been copying what you’d seen?
It meant this was all my fault.
There were cuts on your wrist. By now, I was hysterical crying. I didn’t know if I should wrap a towel around you and try to stop the bleeding or call an ambulance or call my mother.
I did all three.
When the firemen came with the ambulance, they raced upstairs, their boots muddy on the carpet. “Be careful,” I cried, hovering in the doorway of the bathroom. “She’s got this brittle bone disease. She’ll break if you move her.”
“She’ll bleed out if we don’t,” one of the firemen muttered.
One of the EMTs stood up, blocking my view. “Tell me what happened.”
I was crying so hard that my eyes had nearly swollen shut. “I don’t know. I was studying in my room. There was a nurse, but she went home. And Willow-And she-” My nose was streaming, my words curdled. “She was in the bathroom for a really long time.”
“How long?” the fireman asked.
“Maybe ten minutes…five?”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know,” I sobbed. “I don’t know.”
“Where did she get the razor blade?” the fireman asked.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to meet his gaze. “I have no idea,” I lied.
Buckle: a cake made in one layer with berries in the batter.
When you don’t have what you want, you have to want what you have. It’s one of the first lessons the colonists learned when they came to America and found that they couldn’t make the trifles and steamed puddings they’d loved in England because the ingredients didn’t exist here. That discovery led to a rash of innovation, in which settlers used seasonal fruits and berries to make quick dishes that were served for breakfast or even a main course. They came with names like buckle and grunt, crumble and cobbler and crisp, brown Betty, sonker, slump, and pandowdy. There have been whole books written on the origins of these names-grunt is the sound of the fruit cooking; Louisa May Alcott affectionately called her family home in Concord, Massachusetts, “Apple Slump”-but some of the strange titles have never been explained.
The buckle, for one.
Maybe it’s because the top is like a streusel, which gives it a crumbled appearance. But then why not call it a crumble, which is actually more like a crisp?
I make buckles when nothing else is going right. I imagine some beleaguered Colonial woman bent over her hearth with a cast-iron pan, sobbing into the batter-and that’s where I imagine the name came from. A buckle is the moment you break down, you give in, because when you cook one, you simply can’t mess up. Unlike with pastries and pies, you don’t have to worry about getting the ingredients just right or mixing the dough to a certain consistency. This is baking for the baking impaired; this is where you start, when everything else around you has gone to pieces.