Ann Martin - Claudia And The Sad Goodbye

"She knew," I whispered.

My mother nodded. "I really don't think she could have held out any longer, Claudia. She might have felt like a nuisance,' that's true. But that didn't have anything to do with the timing of her death. She didn't give up, or let herself die. It's like Janine said. She must have known her time had come. And finally her heart just gave out. I think she was sicker than anyone, even the doctors, knew — except Mimi. She knew."

"The doctors should have known!" I cried, exploding again. "They should have done more. They're supposed to be trained. They're supposed to be so smart, but they let Mimi die. They never even figured out what was wrong with her. What a bunch of jerks. They should have saved her, but I bet they didn't even try. They probably thought to themselves, 'Oh, she's just an old lady. It doesn't matter.’ Well, it matters to me!"

My family listened to my outburst, and I felt better when I was finished. It was" a whole lot easier to be mad at the doctors, since I didn't really know them, than it was to be mad at Mimi. And I felt like I had to be mad at someone.

"Claudia," said my father, "can you remember some nice times you had with Mimi, instead of the bad days at the end?"

“Yes," I answered, feeling my throat tighten. I thought of the night before the funeral, sitting around Mary Anne's kitchen table with my friends. "Yes," I repeated.

Mom and Dad and Janine and I talked about Mimi a little longer, and Mom said that, now that the door to Mimi's room was open, we really should dean it out and fix it up. The rest of us agreed. In fact, we left the living room then and went into Mimi's room. Janine plopped herself down on the bed again, Mom and Dad stepped inside and began to look around, and I hovered in the doorway.

"We can't get rid of the things on her walls," I said. "The haiku poem and stuff. I think those should stay here."

My dad agreed. "They'll look very nice in the guest bedroom," he said. "All we need to give away are her personal items. Her clothes and jewelry and things."

Mom hesitated, then opened the door to Mimi's closet. "I'd kind of like to have her kimono," she said.

Dad picked up a paperweight from the table. "I'd like to keep this," he said, turning it over in his hands. Then, "Hey!" he exclaimed. "There's a piece of tape on the bottom with

my initials on it. I guess Mimi wanted me to have it, too."

The four of us began looking through everything in Mimi's room. Lots of things were labeled. Mimi had been thinking ahead. We took the items that were marked for us, and set aside those for Russ and Peaches.

"The jewelry isn't marked, though," Janine pointed out, and she held the pearl pin toward me.

This time I took it. I knew I would never wear it, but I would always keep it, because it had belonged to Mimi.

Chapter 14.

Another Saturday, another art class.

With the puppets finished, we were trying something more abstract. Collages — even though Marilyn and Carolyn had each made one already. They didn't mind making seconds, though. Their first ones had been made with feathers and sequins, crepe paper and glitter, scraps of felt and lace. Their new ones were going to be made up solely of words and pictures cut from magazines and were to be in the form of birthday cards for their father.

Everyone was hard at work.

Jamie, remembering the twins' joke about Trouble and Shut Up, had decided to invent a joke of his own. "Why," he asked expansively, "did the little girl slide down the slide on her toenail?"

"Why?" asked Gabbie.

"Because she wanted to!" hooted Jamie.

He didn't quite have the hang of jokes yet, but most of the kids let out giggles anyway, I guess at the ridiculous thought of someone actually sliding down anything on one toenail.

When the giggling died down, Carolyn leaned over and whispered something to Corrie, who nodded.

A few moments later, Corrie whispered something to Jamie, who also nodded.

What was going on? A secret?

I could understand that. I had a secret of my own. I was working on a special project in my room. I worked on it in between school assignments and assignments for my art classes and my stop-action painting and babysitting and club meetings. It was slow-going, as you can imagine, because of everything else I had to do, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that I was working on it. But I didn't tell anyone about it. It was a secret from my family and my friends. I didn't even mention it to Stacey when we talked on the phone. And Stacey knew about everything else — about how the kids at school had acted, about Janine and the jewelry box, and being mad at Mimi and the doctors. But she didn't know my secret.

Soon everyone would, though.

"Claud?" said Mary Anne, interrupting my thoughts.

"Yeah?"

"I hate to say this, but I think we're running out of glue."

That morning, with the help of Corrie, our early bird, Mary Anne and I had filled little paper pill cups with glue, one for each kid. Collages take a lot of glue. Even so, it was hard to believe we were already running out. But I looked around the table, and the children were literally scraping the bottoms of the cups.

"Okay," I said, "I'll go get the big glue bottle."

The big glue bottle, unfortunately, was in my room, so I had to run up two long flights of stairs — from the basement to the first floor, then from the first floor to the second floor — in order to get it.

When I returned with the glue, I got the distinct impression that Mary Anne and the kids had been talking about something, but had stopped as soon as I appeared. More secrets?

Before I could ask, Corrie spoke up shyly. "Claudia?" she began. "Could a collage be a mural, too?"

"What's a mural?" asked Gabbie.

"It’s a very big picture," I told her, trying to sign to Matt Braddock at the same time so that he wouldn't be left out of the conversation. "You could make a drawing on a long, long piece of paper. For instance, you could draw a picture of going for a drive. You could show your street, then your town, then the countryside and a farm. Something like that."

"Oh," said Gabbie, and the others, who had been listening intently, nodded.

"But could you make a collage mural?" asked Corrie again.

"Well, I guess so," I answered.

"Goody!" exclaimed several of the children.

"Is that what you'd like to try next?" I asked.

"Yes," replied Myriah firmly.

I was pleased. The kids were learning new art forms and trying to combine them on their own. That was important.

"Can we start next week?" asked Marilyn.

"Sure," I replied.

"We'll need all these materials," added Carolyn. "The scraps and glitter and stuff plus the magazine pictures and the words."

"You know how you guys could help out?" I said, since I was running out of magazines. "You could each bring in a couple of old magazines and even a newspaper, okay?"

I signed to Matt to make sure he understood what we were doing.

Matt nodded, looking excited.

At that moment, the doorbell rang.

"I'll have to get it," I said to Mary Anne. "Dad's gardening in the backyard, and Mom and Janine are out."

"Okay," agreed Mary Anne. The kids were working busily. Everything was under control.