by Nancy Star
Always, at some point every night, she’d end up watching videos of street performers. She watched performances in Portland and in Cambridge and in New York City and in San Francisco. She learned to distinguish between walk-by acts—musicians, mimes, living statues—and circle acts—puppet shows, break-dancers, magicians—though which kind of act Julia and Nick were doing, she really had no idea.
She watched the man who called himself a nihilist anarchist—he created puppets out of garbage and dead animals—and the man who offered to eat anything anyone gave him, for a price. There was a woman who painted cartoons on walls in abandoned buildings in front of an audience that consisted of her videographer and rats. There was a young boy—he didn’t look like he’d been through puberty yet—whose specialty was sneaking into subway tunnels to do cartwheels inches from where trains passed by. A few of the performers struck her as actual artists. Some had concert hall talent, or great physical grace, or charismatic, expansive energy. But many more made her hyperventilate. So many panhandlers. So many mentally ill.
She watched as many as she could find, videos that were dark and grainy, shot in back alleys and subway tunnels, and videos that were professional-grade, shot at fairs and festivals. But no performers, no street dancers or festival singers, no sidewalk preachers or panhandlers were wearing Salvation Army jackets and a helmet and a sheet.
“You have to stop,” Richard said, when he came home to pick up more clothes and found her hunched over her computer, still in her robe. “You’re going to be late for work.” Her first response was to bristle; he was speaking to her as if she were a child. But when she turned around and saw the tenderness in his face, she let it go. Maybe the temporary separation was working. Maybe they would be able to find a way to bring kindness back into their marriage.
That didn’t stop her grief, though. It built up like acid reflux, a nagging irritation that grew to outright pain. Finally, in her nightly web travels, she stumbled upon a way to relieve it. The Portland Family Crisis Shelter posted a wish list every week, so now, every week, she sent a care package. She’d send towels or toothbrushes or shampoo—whatever they wanted—and as a bonus, she’d add a flyer with safety tips. Insects to Watch Out For or How to Clean a Wound. She knew this wasn’t helping Julia. Julia wasn’t living in a shelter. But at least she was doing something.
Because weekends had a yawning emptiness, she chose Friday afternoons, before her daily visit to Glory, to make the care packages. This week, night-lights were on the Crisis Shelter wish list, so she filled her shopping cart with twenty gender-neutral models of balloon bouquets and winking moons. It was at the last minute that she saw the Tinkerbells. Julia had a Tinkerbell night-light when she was a young child. Ginger still remembered the night it broke. Julia woke them up to say the light had gone out in the fairy’s eyes. She’d refused to sleep in her room until the problem was fixed. It took Ginger days to finally locate a replacement.
These Tinkerbells looked completely different, but still, Ginger knew it was a mistake as soon as she grabbed them. The Tinkerbells, six of them, unnerved her as they stared from the shopping cart, and they unnerved her on the counter at the shipping store. Even after she’d left them behind, all boxed up and waiting to be loaded on the truck, she’d hurried, as if at any minute the Tinkerbells might come after her.
“Long time no see,” her mother said when she finally got to the Meadows.
“I was here yesterday,” Ginger said. Slipping off her coat, she sat in the chair by the bed. Her mother offered a pleasant smile, always disconcerting. Was it the smile that made her ask? Was it because the Tinkerbells had upset her? Or was she just so worn down she could no longer control the impulse. Whatever the reason, the question that had been much on her mind now came out of her mouth. “How did you handle it when Callie left home?” The smile vanished and Glory looked away, but Ginger didn’t stop. “After Charlie died, how did you go on?”
Glory met her eyes. “Six one eight two four?”
“What?”
Her mother looked at her quizzically and then repeated the numbers.
Ginger felt woozy. Was this it? The next stage of Glory’s decline? Digits? Had her mother’s speech gone in one moment from normal to numerical? She’d heard of this but never observed it—sentences that held all characteristics of regular speech, clauses and pauses, intonations and questions, but were composed not of words but of numbers.
Or was this a ploy? It wouldn’t be unthinkable for the queen of deflection to cook up her most creative duck-and-dodge scheme ever just to avoid Ginger’s unwanted prying.
Her mother glanced across the room and repeated the numbers again. “Six one eight two four?”
“No one’s at the door.” It was disturbing to think that her mother was using number-speak to change the subject and even more disturbing to consider the possibility that the number language was the result of an episode of neurologic dysfunction. But it was also troubling that somehow, even when her mother spoke in numbers, Ginger completely understood—was it the tone?—exactly what her mother meant to be saying.
“Five four two eight ten?” Her mother pointed to Ginger’s wrist.
Ginger looked at her watch. “I’m not late again.”
Her mother’s face rearranged into a scowl, and her gaze skipped to the top of Ginger’s head. “One-fifty two-thirty four?”
Ginger checked to make sure her barrette was still in place. “I didn’t do anything to my hair. Can you please go back to words?”
Her mother let out an exhausted sigh and lay her head back on her pillow. It was a new king-sized pillow, Ginger noticed. Mimi must have been here. This was how her sister made up for infrequent visits, by bringing things, a set of exquisitely embroidered pillowcases, a crisp new duvet cover, a scented diffuser—one time in a tinted glass bottle; another time in a dented tin, which Mimi made sure everyone knew came from a tiny store in the south of France.
Her mother started snoring softly and Ginger got busy, her long fingers tucking in the clothes that poked out of the dresser drawers as if attempting escape. The drawers had been like this for days now, slightly ajar and off their bearings. Inside were soft sweater sets in pastel colors, fine wool trousers with mother-of-pearl buttons, structured undergarments—some wrapped in tissue paper with tags on; others so old it was hard to tell which body part they were intended for. Ginger moved quickly, as if the clothes were hot to the touch.
Something red peeked out of the bottom drawer, and for a confusing moment Ginger wondered how the bathing suit she bought for Julia last summer had ended up here. Of course it hadn’t. She’d returned that bathing suit the day she got it. It was a stupid impulse purchase made when she was still struggling to train herself to stop doing that, stop buying things for Julia because whatever she bought was wrong. Wrong size, wrong fit, wrong idea. But the color of the bathing suit was such a close match to Julia’s hair. It was a whim, more magical thinking really, as if a present could change the atmosphere inside a house. She let go and the silky garment, a slip she saw now, slithered back into the drawer.
Her mother’s eyes opened. She let out a whoosh of air, like a balloon deflating. And as if she’d just then decided number-speak was no longer necessary, she asked a normal question the normal way. “You going to visit me tomorrow?”
“I visit you every day.”
“Hmm.” Glory rubbed her hand. “It’s been bothering me all of a sudden.”
“Your fingers? Arthritis?”
Her mother closed her eyes again. “Good night, Gingie.” She was dismissed.
In the hallway, Ginger bumped into Glory’s social worker, Tracy, a woman of terrifying high energy who’d recently called a family meeting to discuss Glory’s diminishing appetite. Ginger told her the real mystery was how anyone could digest in the Meadows Café, where no amount of exclamation points—Crepes!! Fricassee!!! Soufflé!!!!—could hide that everything smelled as if it was on the brink of going bad. And the food wasn’t the
only problem. In the Meadows Café, no opinion went undeclared. It was like a bingo hall gone berserk, residents shouting above the thrum of oxygen concentrators to share fragments of every flickering memory that popped into their heads. Add to that the sighing and the belching. It really was a wonder anyone ate anything at all.
For once, Tracy wasn’t smiling. “Did your sister tell you I called?”
“No.” Why hadn’t Mimi told her?
“Oh. Your mom had a TIA. Your sister didn’t understand at first—not being a health professional and all. She got scared. Thought a TIA was the same as a major stroke. I told her there’s no need to worry yet. That a lot of times a TIA will resolve with no ill effects at all. I did suggest she stop in and visit, though. When is a visit a bad thing, right?”
So Glory’s number-speak wasn’t a ploy. And Mimi knew about it and didn’t call.
“Bad timing, though,” Tracy said. “Your mom being so excited about her performance. You should have told me she was an opera singer.”
“My mom was an opera singer?”
“You’re teasing me, right? Very funny. Well, I’m going to go visit her now. See if I can get her to sing. You know how sometimes people with aphasia can sing even when they can’t speak?”
“Her words are back,” Ginger said. “I just left her. She’s herself again.”
“Super,” Tracy said. “You should come tonight. I think she said she wants to sing something from La Bohème.” She hurried on to cheer up the next person on her list.
At the elevator bank, a woman in a wheelchair called over to her. “Hello, lady with the dog.” She said this to Ginger every day now, and Ginger no longer bothered to correct her.
At Glory’s house, she went inside to check on the progress of the painter. That was the division of labor: Ginger oversaw and Mimi paid. The kitchen, walls a clean creamy white, smelled of paint, but the painter was gone. No more work would be done in Glory’s house today. She caught herself. This was not Glory’s house anymore. That head-banging discovery came the day after Glory’s move into the Meadows, when Ginger, attending to the mountain of her mother’s past-due bills, came upon a statement for a reverse mortgage that neither sister knew anything about. She’d immediately called Mimi and shared the news that without consulting them, Glory had taken out a reverse mortgage, ten years ago, with the lump-sum option.
Mimi had been apoplectic. “That was the height of the market.” She’d worked as a real estate agent just long enough to speak with authority. “Our net will be zero.” It was odd how often Mimi complained about money. “After everything I’ve done.” Sacrifices were recited. “I missed Wallace’s Mock Trial finals two years in a row and—”
Ginger tuned her out. She had many techniques for escaping uncomfortable conversations. Her current favorite was to picture the medicine cabinet in her school office, reviewing what supplies she did or did not need. While Mimi fumed about the injustices she’d endured, Ginger pictured the top shelf. Cold packs, hot packs, tongue depressors, gloves. “She never thanked us for the TV.” Gauze sponge, gauze pad, tweezers, tape. “After Neil and I bought her the dishwasher, she told us, No thanks. It’s easier to wash everything by hand.”
As she walked out of the house she still thought of as Glory’s, Ginger noticed how the late-spring sun hit her father’s stone wall like a spotlight. Forever half-finished, the wall finally fit in, a perfect companion to the hanging gutters, weedy garden, and crumbling front steps. The rusty mailbox door creaked as she scooped out the leavings, a crossword puzzle magazine, a padded envelope from a theatrical makeup supply house, a catalogue with a brown paper cover that read, “Gloria Tangle, We miss you! Come back!”
Ginger got in her car and buckled the mail into the passenger seat so it wouldn’t slide around. When she got home, the flashing light on her kitchen phone caught her attention. Her first thought, always, was Julia. The usual rush of disappointment followed.
Tracy, the cheerful social worker, was a fast talker on the phone, so Ginger had to play the message back twice to understand what she said. “I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll call your sisters now.”
“Sister,” Ginger said to no one, and then sat, alone, digesting the news that Glory Tangle was finally gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“How come we didn’t go home with Daddy?” Mimi wanted to know.
Ginger kicked her sister’s ankle. Couldn’t she see that the night had not gone well? The evidence was right there, on their parents’ bed: the comforter twisted like a rope, their mother’s pillow crushed flat as a pancake while their father’s sat like a puffy marshmallow, proof his head had been banished to the living room couch early on.
Glory acted as if she hadn’t heard a thing. Her headache gone, she was on a cheery mission to get them to the beach fast. This meant finding Ginger a bathing suit that fit. “Which one?” She held up a black plunging one-piece and a mustard colored two-piece with a skirt. Since neither was not a choice, Ginger chose the black one.
As soon as she put it on, she saw it came with its own pointy breasts that didn’t need her to stay erect. The rest of the suit hung slack on her slim frame. She came to show her mother it didn’t fit, but after a quick once-over Glory announced, “Perfect.” As if the suit had an opinion of its own, the straps dropped off Ginger’s narrow shoulders and the top collapsed to her waist.
Glory took a second look. “That’s nothing. Needs a little adjustment is all.” This time it took five safety pins to do the job. “No muss. No fuss. Fits like a glove.” She turned her back and Mimi poked the pointy breasts so that they went concave. Like a bird of prey—was it possible she did have eyes in the back of her head?—Glory swooped in and dragged Mimi outside. There was the sound of a slap and then Glory called through the screen. “Show’s over. Time to go.”
In the car Mimi’s eyes were saucers of rage but Glory, driving fast as if they were late, made brisk work of Ginger’s concern. Barely touched her. Don’t be fooled. She’s tough as nails.
When they got to the sandal spot at Jungle Beach, Glory breezed by as Mimi listed what everyone could see for themselves. “Huaraches. Earth shoes. Green thongs. That’s it.”
The chalkboard warned of high winds. A yellow flag snapped in the stiff breeze. They passed the leavings of the previous night’s festivities. A shallow depression in the sand held the charred remains of driftwood. Discarded oyster shells sat in a heap. An abandoned sari was wrapped around the wood slats of a broken lobster trap.
“Looks like there was a party,” Mimi observed. “Where is everyone?”
“Sleeping in, Columbo.” Glory jammed the flimsy umbrella into the sand, the heavy wooden one having disappeared along with their father. “What did you think people do after a party?” She unfolded her chair, sat down, reapplied her pale lipstick, and used her pinky to fix a smudge no one else could see. With her mouth set into a soft smile, she opened a crossword puzzle magazine but didn’t lift up her pen. The pages of the puzzle book fluttered in the wind. The umbrella jiggled like Jell-O.
“Look,” Charlie called. “Someone worked on my hole for me.” With his broken arm held close by the cast and his good arm overhead, Charlie jumped in. “I’m sitting in the hole,” he called out a moment later. “Can you see me?”
Ginger turned and looked. “No. You’re invisible.”
He stood up. “Come in. There’s plenty of room. Callie, jump. I’ll catch you.”
Mimi jumped in after Callie. “Hey, Gingie!” she called. “Am I invisible?”
“Yup.” Ginger came to the edge of the hole and looked in. The hole was deeper now and wider too. It looked like a small excavation site, with sand piled up around the edges to make a low wall.
“Come on,” Mimi said. “Jump. Mr. Diggans will never find us here.”
That was all it took for Ginger to join them. But when she got in the hole, she found that even though it was wide enough for her to lie down in, sitting, her head poked out as if she were an over
sized Alice in Wonderland.
Mimi broke the news. “You have to go. He’ll see us if you stay.”
“Don’t worry,” Charlie told Ginger. “I’m not done digging yet.”
Ginger scrambled out, causing a minor avalanche, which Charlie applauded. “You made it wider. You made steps.” Then he went to work, making the hole deeper so that when Ginger came back in, she’d be invisible too.
Mimi climbed out to check on her rock tower to the moon and Callie followed. But the tower had suffered the opposite fate of the hole: toppled. Only a few rocks remained.
“Did it fall down?” Callie asked. “Or did someone kick it over?”
Mimi shrugged. “Have to rebuild, that’s all. Have to make it twice as high. Want to come with me? We need rocks with flat bottoms.” She skipped to the shore to begin her search without waiting for an answer.
Callie turned to Ginger. “I don’t want to go with her. I want to go with you. To the Cut.”
“We can’t.”
“Why won’t you take me?” Her pleading got louder. “Please? Pretty please?”
Even from a distance Ginger could see her mother’s posture take on an angle of irritation.
“Please, please, please?” Callie begged.
“Stop it,” Ginger hissed. “Let’s go help Mimi.”
While Charlie stayed behind to dig, Ginger stood guard at the shoreline, periodically cautioning her sisters to stay out of the water. Everything was under control until Callie started screaming.
“Monsters! Monsters are coming!” Callie pointed, screamed again, and ran to the blanket.
Ginger ran after her. As she ran, she saw the beach people had arrived. Mr. Diggans was now sitting next to Glory. Thomas was playing Ringolevio with his friends. But even the boy calling out, “Olly olly oxen free,” stopped at the sound of Callie’s screaming. Everyone’s gaze, Ginger’s included, went toward the group of people running from the cliffs, people naked and covered in mud. The monsters.