Our Daily Bread

by Lauren B. Davis

  “They seem to want you to go back outside,” said Dorothy.

  “I know.”

  Cathy whispered something in Gelsey’s ear and Gelsey laughed. Dorothy thought Cathy’s eyes had taken on a sly look, flattened at the corners and suspiciously conniving.

  “I take it you do not wish to join them.”

  Ivy hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said, in a voice that sounded as though she had just admitted something shameful. “If it’s okay.” There was the catch of tears in her throat.

  Dorothy did not wish to become involved in any schoolyard feud, for she knew these things were unlikely to be resolved in an afternoon. Children and their war games were far more complex than adults cared to admit, and it never ceased to amaze Dorothy that adults, who had presumably once been children themselves, could so easily forget the brutalities of their youth. Campaigns of terror had been waged for years in locker rooms, assembly halls and home rooms. Memories of her own childhood surfaced, scattered vignettes of being ostracized, teased and betrayed. She was tempted to shush Ivy out, tell her to stand up for herself and be done with it. She looked at Cathy Watson and locked eyes with her, thinking the girl would crumple and back off under the clear disapproval of an adult. However, Cathy Watson merely cocked an eyebrow and—there was no other word for it—she smirked. It was something very close to a dare. If it had been a different era, and Dorothy was quite sorry it was not, she would have paddled her backside with one of the antique canes from the umbrella stand. The impudent little miss.

  “Yes, I suppose it’s all right if you stay for a few moments. It’s not as though I’m up to my ears in customers, is it?” She peeled off her rubber gloves and walked to the window. Ivy stood up, glanced at Cathy and Gelsey, and then back to Dorothy. Dorothy smiled at her and flapped her hands at the girls outside. “Go on, away with you both.” She opened the door. “Ivy has shopping to do; you’ll have to go on without her. Bye-bye.” She waved her hands again and closed the door.

  Gelsey stuck her tongue against the glass, pulled a dreadful face, and then both girls shrieked with laughter and ran down the street.

  “I can see why you might wish to avoid them,” said Dorothy. “How revolting.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Carlisle.”

  Dorothy looked out the door. The girls, as suspected, waited at the corner. “How are you at polishing silver?” she said.

  “I can do that.” The girl looked so keen to please it was slightly embarrassing. It was easy to see how a bully would turn that eagerness to her advantage.

  “How old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Is that, in your house, old enough to drink tea?”

  “I’ve never had tea.”

  “Well then, it’s about time you did. Follow me.”

  Dorothy set the kettle to boil. It all felt rather silly, as though she was some eccentric aunt in a Dickens novel. Ivy stood at the doorway to the kitchen, looking about her, taking in everything.

  “Where does all this stuff come from?” she said.

  “All over. People bring me things. And I go scrounging around in attics and basements and barns.”

  “Is everything old?”

  “Yes. Some more than others. That plate over there,” she pointed to a delicate blue and white platter with a pattern of flowers on it, “that’s over two hundred years old.”

  “Wow.”

  “Indeed,” said Dorothy. She handed Ivy two cups and saucers, fairly good ones, painted with green vines and gold rims. “Take those over to the table.” She put several ginger cookies on a plate and carried the tray.

  “Milk?” she said when she had poured the tea.

  Ivy hesitated.

  “I always take milk in my tea, but some people don’t, and others prefer it with lemon,” said Dorothy. “You strike me as a milk person.”

  “Okay,” said Ivy.

  Dorothy sipped her tea, holding the saucer in her left hand and lifting the teacup to her lips with her right. Carefully, Ivy did the same. Dorothy couldn’t think of what to say, and she scanned the room for ideas. “I have a book over there you might find interesting. It’s a first edition of The Wizard of Oz. On that round table. Why not bring it here. No, not that one, the other, with the red leather binding.”

  One of the girl’s socks was completely muddy, as though she had stepped in a deep hole. Ivy brought the book back and began looking through it. She handled the book carefully, Dorothy was pleased to note, turning the pages with gentle respect. “The illustrations are by W.W. Denslow. Look closely and you will see he signed his name with a seahorse for the ‘S.’ Isn’t that clever?”

  “Shouldn’t this be in a museum?”

  “Well, it would mean a lot to a collector, I’m sure. And it’s worth a significant amount of money, I suppose. But I don’t really need the money and I like beautiful things. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

  “It’s fantastic,” the child’s face lit up in a most pleasing way. It almost removed the puffy evidence of her earlier tears.

  They finished their tea and Dorothy showed her how to polish silver. She was an attentive student and worked hard. Half an hour later the tea set sparkled. They stood back, admiring their work.

  “Do you think we should call your mother and let her know you’re here?”

  “My mother works at Wilton’s until six.” It was four-ten.

  “Well, your father then. Tom’s finished work early afternoon, isn’t he?”

  “Can’t I just stay here for a little while? Then I’ll go home.”

  “I’m sure those girls have long since lost interest or have found a small animal to torture.”

  Ivy’s eyes went wide.

  “I’m joking, dear. I’m sure they wouldn’t really hurt an animal.”

  “Oh,” said Ivy, who did not look quite so sure.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” Oh why, thought Dorothy, have I asked that? “Of course, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Ivy said nothing for a moment, folding the polishing cloth carefully, unfolding it and then folding it again. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “Perhaps you’d better tell me. Sit down.”

  “It was stupid. I knew I shouldn’t have gone. But Cathy can be so nice sometimes.”

  Cathy Watson, it seemed, had persuaded Ivy to walk home from school with her and Gelsey through the woods that ran in a wide swath between Elm and Woodbridge. Many of the children who lived on the far side of the forest chose to take the shortcut rather than to walk the long way round. A rutted path ran to the Stony Creek, leading to a bridge of large rocks on which they could cross.

  “The water’s high this time of year. It was really slippery,” said Ivy. “We had to be careful and go from stone to stone. Cathy went first and she never slipped. She told me to be careful.” Ivy frowned and picked at the knee of her jeans. “Gelsey laughed. I didn’t know what was funny. And then Cathy looked at me and her face was all weird, like.”

  “Like what, dear? I don’t know what ‘weird’ means in this context. Be specific.”

  Ivy looked at Dorothy and it was clear she was trying to find the right words. Dorothy felt a flicker of respect. She liked young people you could treat as adults.

  “Well,” said Ivy after a minute, “Cathy’s smile was there one minute, the pretty one, but then it was gone. She looked mean. She looked . . . sneaky. I hate that look.”

  “You’ve seen it before then.”

  Ivy nodded. “We were a long way in the woods. Cathy stopped. She was on this big rock in the centre of a swampy part. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Well, well.’” Ivy’s voice was sing-song, taunting, imitating the other girl. “‘Look at this. You can’t pass, can you?’ I looked behind me, to go back, you know, but
Gelsey was there. ‘Come on, Cathy. Move,’ I said. She just danced around on the rock and laughed at me. She said, I wasn’t her friend, not really. I said I was and she said I had to prove it. She said I had to cover my shoes in mud. And I said I didn’t want to, but Gelsey said I had to. ‘Of course you don’t want to,’ Cathy said. ‘If it was something you wanted to do, it wouldn’t prove anything, would it?’ I said why did I have to prove anything and Cathy said, ‘Because if you don’t, something bad might happen.’” Ivy hung her head. “It scared me. The look in Cathy’s eyes like that. Snakey-like.”

  “Reptilian,” said Dorothy.

  “Reptilian,” repeated Ivy, nodding. She paused for a moment, as if to hold on to the word. “Then she said, ‘If you want to be my friend you will do this.’” Ivy hesitated. “Cathy has a lot of friends. She kept saying do it, do it, do it.”

  “And so you did it,” said Dorothy, gently.

  “I used a stick. I smeared it with mud and put some on the side of my shoes, but that wasn’t enough. And then she picked up a stick of her own, a big one, and so did Gelsey and she said I better do it.” Ivy’s eyes flashed with tears. “I didn’t want to do it.”

  “And then what happened?” Dorothy handed Ivy a tissue.

  “She pushed me with the stick. Hard. I almost fell back, but I didn’t. I had to step down though, one foot into the mud. It came up over my left foot right to the ankle. Then Gelsey jumped onto her rock and pushed me the rest of the way so I had to either fall down or put the other foot down. I was way deep in the mud. I tried to pull my foot out, but my shoe came off and then I had to pull that out. They laughed at me and said, ‘come on, come on,’ like I was going to fight them or something.” She was crying hard again. “So I came back to town and was going to go around the long way, but then they followed me back here and I didn’t know what they were going to do . . .” her voice trailed off, hiccupping.

  “Don’t cry, dear. It doesn’t help, you know.” Dorothy handed her another tissue. “I’ll have a talk with your mother.”

  “No! Please. She’ll get mad and she’ll yell at them or their moms and then they’ll get even madder and—”

  “All right, Ivy. Really. You mustn’t get hysterical.”

  Ivy looked at her, and blinked. “I’m not hysterical, Mrs. Carlisle. I would never get hysterical.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Dorothy made a show of blowing her nose in order to hide her amusement. Oh, she had insulted the little girl. And Dorothy, seeing the frown, the pursed lips and the flush of indignation, liked her better for it. Pride in excess was a bad thing, but a little, judiciously applied, could steel up a backbone quite nicely.

  “It’s just I’m, I don’t know, mad, I guess,” said Ivy.

  “Well, with some good reason.”

  “What time is it, please?”

  “Just after four-thirty.”

  “I better go. Thanks for letting me stay here, and for the tea and all.”

  “Thank you for polishing the silver. It was most helpful.”

  Ivy gathered up her schoolbooks and her coat. As she was opening the door she turned back. “Do you think, sometime, I don’t know . . .”

  “What is it, Ivy? Speak up.”

  “Could I come back, and maybe help you again?”

  “I don’t need much help, dear, but thank you.”

  The girl blushed deeply and she dropped her eyes.

  “Well, sometimes, I could use a hand dusting, I suppose. Once in a while. Occasionally.”

  “I can do that. I’m an excellent duster.”

  And with that the girl was gone, looking quickly up and down the street and then dashing off, leaving Dorothy to scowl at the door and wonder what on earth she was letting herself in for.

  Chapter Six

  “Goodnight, sweetpea,” Tom said, and kissed Ivy goodnight. She pattered out of the room. Tom looked at his watch. It read 8:20, and although he didn’t usually go to bed for another hour, already he was falling asleep in his chair. He glanced at Patty, who sat at the far end of the couch with a glass of wine in her hand, staring at the television set. What was on? Something about a crime scene in some big city, bits of flesh and bone and close-up shots of half-digested stomach contents. Why did she find it so fascinating? Or did she? She sat there, her legs tucked up, her turtleneck pulled over her chin, folded in on herself. How long had it been since they’d necked on the couch after the kids had gone to bed? Fallen asleep in each other’s arms? They had time for themselves right this instant, Bobby was out with friends and Ivy upstairs now. Why was it so difficult to simply cross the room and kiss her?

  As though she sensed his eyes on her, she drank from her glass and glanced at him from the corner of her eye. She said nothing, merely locked her gaze on the set again. A shadow caught Tom’s attention and it was then he realized he hadn’t actually heard Ivy’s feet going up the stairs. He cocked his head, listened, but there was only the sound of the television and the silence of the house.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He poked his head around the doorway. Ivy stood at the bottom of the stairs near the kitchen. She looked at her feet. Her hands were clenched. She glanced up at the top of the stairs and then down at her feet again.

  “What’cha doin’?”

  Ivy’s head snapped around and her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  Tom went to her. “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing,” she said, blushing furiously.

  He knelt down and put his hands on her arms. “Something got you spooked?”

  She shook her head.

  “You can tell me, you know that, right? I am extremely good at dealing with spooky things.” He smiled and waited. From the living room came the bass-heavy theme song for the crime show.

  Ivy looked to the top of the stairs again. “I don’t know. There’s something . . . up there.”

  “What kind of something?”

  She squirmed. “Bad. You know.”

  Tom looked up the staircase, at the twist in the stairs, and saw how the darkness of the upstairs hall seemed to spill toward them. He saw how it must look to a little girl whose parents had not taken her up to bed in a very long time.

  “Light switch for the hall’s a long way away, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah, but if I get to the switch quick enough . . .” She shrugged.

  “I see. Well, how about I go up with you tonight?”

  “Okay.”

  They started up the steps, her hand hidden in his. When they got to the landing she reached up and turned on the light, keeping her eyes turned from the hall.

  “Better?” Tom said.

  “Yes.” She sounded unconvinced.

  “I think we better fix some new lights up here, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll hang around for a few minutes and tuck you in, how’s that?”

  He was rewarded with her smile. She scampered quickly down the hall to the bathroom and when she came out again a few minutes later he walked her to her bedroom and sat on the small bed while she changed into her pyjamas, the ones with pink rabbits all over them. Tom pulled back the blankets and she hopped in.

  “Better?”

  “Thanks, Daddy. I get scared, just sometimes. It’s better now.” She took his hand and stroked the back of it, so the hairs lay flat and smooth. “The worst, though, you know, really the worst?”

  “What’s the worst?”

  “It’s when I come out of the bathroom, because I have to switch the light out there, you know, at that end of the hall and run down here.” She stopped patting his hand and instead picked and smoothed and worried the sheet without looking at him.

  “Sweetie, why didn’t you tell us?”

  She shrugg
ed. “I don’t know.”

  “You know there isn’t really anything up here, don’t you?”

  “I know. I’m not a little kid, Dad.”

  “But still, right?”

  “But still.”

  “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. Tomorrow, I’m going to fix up another light switch, right outside your room, so you don’t have to go down the hall in the dark. And I can put a night light in here if you want one.”

  “No. That’s just for babies.”

  “Not at all. Lots of people prefer to sleep with a little light.”

  She looked sceptical and toyed with the ends of her hair. “I saw on a TV show once, about this man who gets left behind in a cave, because his leg’s broken. But there are sabre-toothed tigers in the cave, left over from prehistoric times, right? And the others say they’ll come back for him the next day, after they get help, and when they come back he’s crazy from being afraid and his hair is all white, completely all white. Which is what happens from being that scared, right?”

  “Well, I suppose that could happen, but you’d have to be really, really, afraid, Ivy. Are you that afraid?”

  “I only checked my hair once.”

  He hesitated asking the question that must be asked. “Why don’t you call Mom?”

  Ivy kept playing with the ends of her hair.

  “Hang on a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  He had something hidden in his hand when he returned. “I’m going to check on you every night before I go to work, okay? And Mom’ll check too, and if you ever feel in any way even a little frightened, you blow on this, okay?” He took her hand and dropped a long silver whistle on a braided cord in her palm. “That used to be your grandfather’s whistle, from when he was a Scout leader. It blows louder than anything. You give a blast on that and one or the other of us will come running. Okay?”

  “Okay.”