The Girl with the Silver Eyes

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Mr. C. lowered the box to the floor and stood up, dusting off his hands. “Some of these have been in storage for a while and they’re dusty. Be a good girl and wipe them off for me, will you? I have another box to bring up.”

  He was gone, leaving her there with his books. Naturally, Katie couldn’t help taking a look at them. She’d never been able to resist a book; and when Grandma Welker didn’t approve of her, that had been her punishment—to stay in her room without a book. Katie used to keep one or two hidden, in reserve, just in case.

  There were some hardcover mysteries with gory covers, and a lot of paperbacks. Katie looked around for something to use to get the dust off them and settled for a paper towel. The kitchen was so sterile-looking she couldn’t believe he’d cooked anything in it. Nathan left crumbs everywhere when he went into the kitchen. There was no toaster, no electric frying pan, no can opener, none of the things Monica had in sight on her counter.

  Katie knew it wasn’t really polite to poke around in other people’s refrigerators, but her uneasy feeling was growing, and she felt compelled to open the door.

  There was almost nothing in there. A carton of yogurt, four apples, a quart of milk and another of orange juice. That was all. Nothing to cook.

  Suspicion led Katie onward, the paper towel forgotten in her hand. And she was right. There weren’t even any pots and pans to cook in, and only plastic utensils to eat with, and paper plates. In the almost-empty cupboard there was a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.

  What did it mean? Adam Cooper was more camping out than he was living here.

  She heard his feet on the stairs and turned quickly back to the box of books. Her heart was beating fast and loud; it felt like a small frightened animal in her chest.

  Mr. C. put down a second box of books beside the first one. “There. Maybe these will make the place feel more like home.” He grinned at her, but somehow Katie didn’t feel like grinning back.

  “That book on top must be one my sister’s kids left, the last time they came to visit,” Mr. C. said. “Why don’t you take it and read it, if you want to? And you can always come back and borrow anything else you want. Do you think these will all fit in that little bookcase?”

  Katie stared at the book he’d handed her. The Headless Cupid. Well, it did look interesting, though she thought it might be intended for little kids. She’d take it along, what the heck.

  “Well,” Mr. C. said. “I worked up a sweat, carrying that stuff up here. I think now I’m ready for a swim. What about you?”

  When Katie hesitated, he added, “Maybe your friend, Mrs. Michaelmas, would like to come and dangle her feet in the water again. Why don’t you ask her?”

  Katie did want to go into the water, and Mrs. M. was willing to sit on the edge of the pool—today she was wearing a pink and white and lilac muumuu that spread out around her like a gigantic flowered tent—so Katie pushed aside her doubts about Mr. C.

  At first it was all right; she and Mr. C. swam vigorously, and the water was cool and refreshing. But then Mr. C. said he had to rest awhile and he went to sit on the edge of the pool beside Mrs. M. To begin with, Katie didn’t pay any attention to what they were talking about. And then she heard Mr. C. say, “Has she ever done anything odd when she was with you, Mrs. Michaelmas?”

  Katie had been on the bottom and had just bobbed to the surface close to the edge of the pool. She was hidden from the speakers by a bonsai tree in a planter box, and she held her breath—but not to dive back under the water. Was he asking questions about her again?

  Apparently Mrs. M. thought he was pretty nosey, too. She sounded a bit cross, and Katie could see her blue veined feet as she splashed them impatiently in the water.

  “What do you mean by odd?” Mrs. M. asked. “People think I’m odd because I talk to my cat. People think my friend Mr. Upton is odd because all he can talk about is his coin collection. And Mrs. Shaver, upstairs in 3-C, is a vegetarian. Won’t even eat butter from cows or eggs from chickens, she’s such a vegetarian. What’s odd, Mr. Cooper?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you,” Mr. C. said easily. Katie could see his legs, too, tanned and hairy. “I just couldn’t help being curious, is all. I mean, Mr. Pollard thinks Katie is able to . . . do things.”

  “Do things?” Mrs. M. echoed. “Can’t everybody do things?”

  “Different from what the rest of us can do, he says. Like, Katie’s around when a sudden wind blows a door shut in his face and gives him a nose bleed. And the wind also blew the money right out of his wallet and up in the trees and down the street.”

  “Winds’ve been blowing for hundreds of years,” Mrs. M. said. She reached out a hand to scratch at her shin. “I expect they’ll keep on, long after all of us are gone.”

  “Sure. Only some winds are different from regular ones, don’t you think? Winds that happen inside a building, for instance, when Mr. Pollard’s briefcase came open and his papers went sailing all over the place.”

  “Mr. Pollard’s a . . . a . . . what’s the word the kids use? A jerk? Or do they have a different word for it now? Doesn’t matter. He’s one of those people who blame their problems on other people. Can’t abide the man. Where’s that child got to?”

  “She’s underwater. Katie’s a good swimmer,” Mr. C. said, and Katie quickly went under and swam out across the pool so that they could see her red bathing suit beneath the surface.

  She came up on the far side, gasping for breath, and turned to find them both watching her.

  Why did Mr. C. keep asking questions about her? Was he trying to get Mrs. M. to admit that Katie could do things other people couldn’t, for some terrible reason?

  She didn’t know why, but she was convinced that the reason was terrible.

  Katie clung there, at the side of the pool, a conviction growing deep inside of her. The conviction that Mr. C. had moved into The Cedars Apartments for one reason: to ask questions about Katie, herself. He didn’t intend to stay long, only until he’d learned whatever it was he hoped to learn, and that was why he didn’t have any pans to cook in and hadn’t filled up his refrigerator; and that was why he’d brought some boxes of books, after he found out Katie liked to read. He was going to tempt her with the books and use them to get her to talk to him, and then what?

  If he became certain that Katie could make winds blow and other things happen, what was he going to do about it?

  10

  THE HEADLESS CUPID WAS A very good book, but Katie couldn’t concentrate on it and worry at the same time. So she finally put it aside and stood up.

  Monica had come home with a sick headache and hadn’t wanted any supper; she was lying down in her room, a cold cloth over her eyes. Katie had had a Mexican TV dinner and had made her own salad to go with it. She didn’t mind. TV dinners were a treat because Grandma Welker never had them in the house; Grandma had thought they were totally worthless and tasteless.

  Maybe some of them were, but the Mexican ones were delicious. This one had had a cheese enchilada and refried beans and Spanish rice and a tamale. The tamale was the best, but it was very small; Katie had eaten it in three bites. She wondered if they made dinners that had more tamales.

  It was warm, but Katie didn’t feel like swimming any more even if there was someone in the pool. She could see, through the sliding glass doors that looked out onto the deck, that there were people down there. Mr. P. and Miss K. were stretched out in the lounge chairs, and Mr. C. was there on the edge of the pool again.

  They all wore bathing suits, but they weren’t swimming. They were talking, and Katie felt a prickle of apprehension. Were they talking about her?

  She suddenly decided to see if she could find out. Monica was silent in her darkened bedroom. Nathan hadn’t showed up, for the first evening since Katie had come to live with her mother. She wondered if Monica’s headache was because she’d had a quarrel with Nathan, but she didn’t want to ask.

  She couldn’t go down the stairs fro
m the deck without being seen, but she could take the inner stairs and then go out through a door that the manager used, at one corner of the pool area. The people who lived on the ground floor used that door, too. It came out a short distance behind where the two men and Miss K. were sitting.

  It was also shielded from them by another one of those bonsai trees; this one was a little bigger than the ones nearer the pool. Katie thought if she opened the door very quietly and moved slowly in her bare feet, she could crouch behind the tree and hear what the three were saying.

  And just as she’d suspected, they were talking about her.

  She could see them through the prickly little tree, bits and pieces of them. Mr. Cooper was facing almost toward her, but he was looking at Miss K. Miss K., in an electric blue bikini, was worth looking at.

  She poked at her red-gold curls and said, “I think you’re both crazy. She’s just a normal little girl.”

  “Then how come,” Mr. P. said, leaning forward, “she made that rock jump out and whack me on the ankle? You saw the rock!”

  “I didn’t see it leap out and hit you,” Miss K. said. “I only saw it there after you’d hurt your ankle.”

  Mr. P. struck the arm of the lounge chair with his fist. “I tell you, that kid is dangerous! She can make things happen; I know she can!”

  “Well, I don’t believe that,” Miss K. said. “But even if she could, you brought it on yourself. You were nasty to her.”

  “Nasty! Because I was annoyed when she ran into me and spilled my insurance applications all down the stairs, and then walked on them? Do you know how long it took to fix them up so they were fit to take to the office? And I had to go back to some of my clients and have them sign new copies. Listen, obviously Mr. Cooper realizes there is something mighty peculiar about that kid, or he wouldn’t be asking about her!”

  Katie was getting a cramp in her back from hunching down to keep out of sight, but she didn’t dare move.

  Miss K. turned her head so that Katie could see her profile. “Well, why are you asking questions about her, Mr. Cooper? She hasn’t done anything to you, has she?”

  “Not a thing,” Adam Cooper said.

  “Well, she hasn’t to me, either, and Mrs. Michaelmas thinks she’s cute, too, so why are we wasting time talking about all this silliness? I’m going to swim.”

  For a moment, after Miss K. got up from the lounge chair, neither of the men said anything. They were too busy looking at Miss K. to notice that Katie crept back inside through the service door.

  She wasn’t imagining things. Mr. C. really was investigating her in some way, and for some particular purpose.

  It wasn’t until the next time Katie eavesdropped that she learned what Mr. C. was after, and then she found that it was even more frightening than she had supposed.

  Katie returned to the apartment to find that Monica had emerged from her bedroom and was sitting at the kitchen table, looking wan and pale and sipping iced tea.

  She looked up and tried to smile. “Hi. Want to join me in a cold drink?”

  Katie shook her head. “Do you feel better?”

  “A little,” Monica said. “You didn’t take any phone calls while I was asleep, did you?”

  “No. Did you think Nathan would call?”

  Monica grimaced. “I guess I hoped he might. On the other hand, he was the one who started the quarrel, and I’m not sure I even want him to call. I never realized how jealous he was, how unreasonable. If I can’t even talk to a neighbor when he’s right there, why I’d be foolish to get any more deeply involved with him. I had one marriage that didn’t work out; I don’t want another one.”

  “Are you going to marry Nathan?” Katie asked carefully.

  “No.” Monica drank deeply of the iced tea and sighed. “No, I am not going to marry Nathan, although I was considering it. I’m beginning to see that Nathan and I are not suited to each other at all. Sometimes I wonder if I’m suited to anyone, but it’s so lonely, being all by yourself.”

  Katie knew all about that. She was relieved to hear that Nathan wasn’t going to become a member of the family, and she wondered how long it would take for the tobacco smell to wear off the living room furniture.

  “Do you like Mr. Cooper?” she asked.

  “Oh, I suppose he’s a nice man. I really haven’t seen enough of him to know, for sure,” Monica said. “Don’t get any ideas about matchmaking, Katie. I’ll find someone again, one of these days.”

  “Do you ever hear from Daddy?”

  “From Joe? No, I haven’t seen or heard from him in a long time. Katie, you don’t dream about us getting back together, do you? Because it won’t happen, honey. I know it would be lovely for you, if we were all a family again. But when a marriage is over, it’s over. We couldn’t hold it together for your sake before, even though we both knew you needed a family, because it was bad for us. Do you understand that?”

  “I guess so,” Katie said. But she didn’t really understand. While she supposed she’d known, in the back of her mind, that her parents would never be married to each other again, she knew she’d sort of hoped that it might happen. It was just one of those dreams kids have, like being able to fly. You think it would be fun, but you don’t really believe in it.

  Monica didn’t look as if she felt much like talking, and Katie didn’t, either. Or, rather, Katie did feel like talking, only there was no one she could talk to. Other people, she thought, had mothers they could talk to about their intimate problems. But she was too afraid of what Monica’s face would look like if she suddenly learned that Adam Cooper was asking so many questions about her, and why. If Monica was afraid of a baby that didn’t cry, and then uncomfortable because that child taught herself to read at the age of three, how would she feel to know that her daughter was able to communicate with cats, make small objects move through the air without touching them, and create winds all by herself, violent winds that could slam a door hard enough to make a man’s nose bleed when it struck him?

  No, talking to Monica was out of the question. Katie left her sitting there sipping her tea, looking rather sad and lost. Much the way Katie felt. She went to her room to read, but fell asleep puzzling over her problem.

  Her anxiety was still with her the next morning, and after puzzling a long time she decided that there was one person she could talk to: Mrs. M. She would at least be honest. Katie let herself out into the corridor, but she didn’t knock on Mrs. M.’s door.

  The reason for that was that the door stood ajar, and she could see that there was no one inside the apartment except Lobo, who was polishing off something in his cat dish. He lifted his head and stared at her, his great yellow eyes unblinking.

  “Hi, Lobo. Where’s Mrs. M.?”

  She didn’t really expect an answer, but it was there, hanging in her mind almost as if the cat had spoken. Mrs. M. had gone downstairs to mail a letter.

  Oh. That explained why she’d left the door open; she expected to be right back and didn’t want to bother with a key.

  “Are you all well now?” Katie asked politely.

  Lobo switched his tail, as if to convey the information that sick cats didn’t eat. He licked at his dish.

  Katie turned away, heading for the stairs. She had to talk to somebody. She was on the landing, halfway down to the ground floor foyer, when she heard their voices. Mrs. M. and Mr. C.

  “Look,” Mrs. M. said crossly, “who are you, anyway? What do you have against that little girl?”

  “I don’t have anything against her, I only want some information, and I think you can give it to me, Mrs. Michaelmas. Katie has confided in you.”

  “She trusts me. That’s because I don’t go blabbing everything I know,” Mrs. M. said, her voice heavy with meaning.

  Mr. C. didn’t back off, however. He wasn’t discouraged. Either he was thick-skinned, which Katie didn’t think he was, or it was important to him to get answers; otherwise, he wouldn’t have kept pushing when Mrs. M. had made it clear sh
e thought he was too nosey.

  Katie tiptoed down another step so that she could look over the railing and see them, or at least the tops of their heads. Mrs. M.’s white hair looked as if someone had stirred it up with an eggbeater, wisps going in all directions.

  Mr. C. ran a hand through his thick sandy thatch and spoke with a quiet firmness. “Mrs. Michaelmas, I’m afraid Katie’s in trouble. You can help her, by helping me.”

  “In trouble?” Mrs. M.’s voice sharpened, and Katie felt her own stomach bunch up into an uncomfortable knot. “What are you talking about? What kind of trouble?”

  “Has she talked to you about her grandmother?”

  “I know she lived with her grandmother for a few years, that’s all.”

  “Did she say anything to you about how her grandmother died?”

  Katie’s fingers curled on the stair railing, and although it was still warm, she felt a chill. What did he mean?

  “The people who live across the road from her grandmother’s place think Katie is responsible for a lot of bad things that have happened on their farm. Young pigs born dead, fruit falling off the trees before it’s ripe, Mr. Armbruster breaking his arm when the ladder slipped out from under him.”

  Mrs. M. made a rude noise. “Pish! How silly can you get? Katie’s a sweet child; she wouldn’t harm anyone!”

  “Well, that’s what you think. Some of her grandmother’s neighbors think otherwise. And they say that Mrs. Welker was afraid of her granddaughter because of things that Katie knew how to do. Things most kids never even thought of doing, and things other people, even adults, can’t do. You wouldn’t believe the stories I heard in that little town about Katie’s peculiar activities.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Mrs. M. said stoutly. If Katie hadn’t been so perturbed by what Mr. C. was saying, she’d have spared a moment to bless Mrs. M.

  “Well, some people in Delaney think Katie’s a sort of witch. If she’d been around a few hundred years ago, they’d probably have burned her at the stake or drowned her on a dunking stool. And it isn’t just the people where she used to live, Mrs. Michaelmas. Surely you’re aware that some odd things have happened right here, in this building, since Katie moved in.”