Ann Martin - Claudia And The Sad Goodbye

When Mary Anne calmed down a little, she offered to call the other members of the club for me, which was very nice of her. I let her call Dawn (so Dawn could console Mary Anne) and Jessi and Mal. But I wanted to call Kristy and Stacey myself.

I called Stacey first. Stacey hadn't been close to Mimi at all, but she'd known her and liked her, and besides, Stacey was my best friend. I had to call her.

Stacey was getting ready to leave for school when the phone rang in her New York apartment. She was supposed to be out the door twenty minutes from when I was calling. But she stopped and talked anyway. She knew, as soon as she heard my voice at that hour on a weekday, that something was wrong.

"Mimi died early this morning," I told her flatly. Each time I said that, the words came a little more easily — but they didn't seem any

more real. I was calling people, telling them Mimi was dead, and not believing it myself.

Maybe that was because I suddenly realized that I didn't know what "dead" meant. Oh, sure, I understood that it meant not breathing or thinking or moving or feeling; the opposite of alive. But what did it really mean?

Stacey was comforting at first, and then began asking questions. "When is the funeral? What time? Which church?" She and her parents were going to come, of course, she said, before we got off the phone.

The call to Kristy was easier than the others had been. Kristy is not a crier. She'd known Mimi for as long as Mary Anne and I had, since the three of us had grown up together (at least before Kristy moved), and she loved Mimi, but she wasn't as close to her as Mary Anne and I had been. I guess she hadn't needed her quite as much as we had. Besides, she has Nannie, her own wonderful grandmother.

Still, Kristy was shocked, and after all the "I'm sorry's" and "What can I do's?" she said, "Our club meeting this afternoon is canceled, of course. I'll tell the rest of the members in school today."

"Oh, no! Please," I said hurriedly. "Don't

cancel it. I want to see you guys tonight. Don't stay away from me. I need you. I mean," I babbled on, "even if we don't conduct an official meeting, please let's just all be together. Mom and Dad won't mind. I don't think. We'll stay up in my room."

"Wow, okay," said Kristy, sounding breathless, even though I had just done all the talking. "I didn't mean for you to think we'd, you know, shut you out. We wouldn't do that. I just figured today would be sort of a private one for your family. But if you want us there, we'll be there."

I felt a little better by the time we hung up.

But not much. Before I left my bedroom I took this framed portrait of Mimi that I had once painted down from the wall and slid it under my bed. Then I decided I didn't want Mimi under my bed, so I put her in my closet. But I didn't want her in my closet, either, so I moved her to the attic and left her there.

Kristy had said she thought that day would be a private one for us. She couldn't have been more wrong. Word about Mimi's death spread fast (as I'd thought it would), and people began coming over to our house around eleven o'clock. And everyone who dropped by

brought food. Why? Because Mimi had been the cook in our family? That didn't make sense. The rest of us could cook, too. Anyway, our relatives came (with food) and helped Mom and Dad make funeral arrangements and write Mimi's obituary. Our neighbors and friends dropped by to console us.

If was the longest day of my life. If I hadn't believed it before, I became more and more certain, each time the doorbell rang, that Mimi really and truly had died. (Whatever that meant.)

I wished everyone would go away and leave us alone and let me think that a big mistake had been made.

But at five-thirty, my parents left to meet with our minister, all the visitors left, too, and my friends came over. We held a strange meeting. For one thing, Janine sat in on it because she didn't want to be alone. For another thing, it wasn't really a meeting. Kristy didn't conduct business. She didn't wear her visor. She didn't even sit in the director's chair. And no one called because all our clients knew what had happened and figured we wouldn't be holding a meeting. They didn't want to intrude, anyway. So the seven of us sat on the floor. We barely spoke because no one seemed

to know what to say after, "I'm sorry," and, "We'll really miss her."

But we were together.

Even so, the longer we sat there, the guiltier I felt. I couldn't help remembering the times I'd lost my temper, wished to be at an art class instead of at the hospital — and especially the time I'd thrown the magazines on Mimi's bed.

I was a horrible person and I knew it, even if no one else did.

Chapter 8.

Despite what Kristy wrote in the notebook, I know she felt a little funny holding a club meeting on Friday, the day before Mimi's funeral, but I really wanted to. Janine and I weren't going back to school until Monday because there was too much to do at home. And with everything all out of order like that, I at least wanted to hold regular club meetings, and Mom and Dad had given their permission. I didn't like special attention. I wanted my life to go on as usual, or, as Kristy said, as if nothing had happened. That was pretty difficult when I wasn't going to school, so if we'd stopped our club meetings, I don't know what I'd have done.

Kristy was right. Our Friday meeting was quiet, like the one on Wednesday. No one called. Plus, us club members didn't seem to

know what to talk about at first. Finally, Kristy started talking about food fights and bras, trying to make us laugh (Janine was not at that meeting), and that worked for awhile.

At ten minutes of six, Mary Anne stood up. "Come on," she said. "I'm starved. There's no point in sitting around here. Let's go to my house now and order the pizzas,”

Mary Anne had invited the club members to her house for a pizza dinner, since her dad and Dawn's mom were going out on a date, and she had already invited Dawn over to keep her company. Besides, Mary Anne thought I might need a pizza supper with my friends on the night before Mimi's funeral. (I think Mary Anne needed it, too: She'd been pretty teary lately. In fact, she seemed even more upset than I did. I hadn't cried since Wednesday morning.)

So the six of us left my house and walked across' the street to Mary Anne's dark, empty one. She turned on the porch light, unlocked the front door, turned on the inside hall light, and was greeted by Tigger, her kitten.

Kristy told me later that she thought it must be-really lonely sometimes to be Mary Anne. Was it possible, I wondered, that Mary Anne

would miss Mimi even more than I would?

"Hiya, Tiggy. Hi there, Mousekin." (Mousekin is also Tigger. Mary Anne has about a zillion nicknames for him.) She picked Tigger up and nuzzled him under her chin. "I bet you're hungry, aren't you? Well, so are we. Kristy, why don't you order the pizzas while I feed Tigger?"

We had to have a very long conversation about what kinds of pizzas to get since we can all be picky about some foods. Dawn wouldn't eat anything but plain or with vegetables like green peppers. No one else likes green peppers. I wanted a pizza with everything, but Jessi gagged at the thought of anchovies. Mary Anne didn't want sausage. We did finally order two pizzas, though, and when they arrived, they were actually hot. (Pizza Express isn't always as expresses they advertise.)