by Glen Huser
I nod.
“Any questions?”
“There are people…”
“People?”
“Friends. Can I still see them?”
“Well, the Hetheringtons will be your guardians. But I can also act as something of a…liaison. Do you want me to contact them? Then, maybe I can arrange some way for you to be in touch with them.”
“Yes,” I nod again. “Please.”
I tell him about Cosmo and Nathan, and he scribbles some notes into a little book he carries in his jacket pocket. “I want you to think of me as a friend, too,” he says, leaving me a card with his name and phone number on it. “I spent a couple of years in a foster home when I was a teenager. It wasn’t great. They put me in with a family that seemed okay on the outside but was having lots of problems when you closed the kitchen door. So it’s important to me that I find good homes for young people in my charge.” He has warm brown eyes and little lines of worry across his forehead. His fingers keep checking just above the worry lines, where there used to be hair.
When he opens the door to the den, Livvy is bouncing up and down, waiting for us.
“Barbara, I made the trains go and they went real fast and I thought there was going to be a crash, but Uncle Hal made it stop just before it happened. Right, Uncle Hal?”
“Righto, kid. You’re a demon on that switch. Now let’s go and see what damage we can do to that pile of flapjacks and sausages I was telling you about.”
“Oh, goodee.” Livvy flashes her dimples.
I know what Jim Beresford means.
It’s only been a few days since I saw Jim Beresford, but I wish he would call. Is Cosmo out of the hospital yet? Nathan would know. I’ve tried phoning him twice but each time I get his mother. “You gotta be kidding. I’m the last person to know where he is,” she says the second time I phone. “I’m just his mother.”
It’s hard to find a time when Auntie Sophie isn’t watching me and I can get hold of the phone for a few minutes. How long does it take for a hospital to fix pneumonia? Maybe Cosmo is already at home resting. One of the times Livvy and I went over to Cosmo’s apartment, I peeked in his bedroom as we headed back from the bathroom. His bed was filled with gigantic cushions covered in embroidery and patch-work–even, it seemed, bits of silver and gold and tiny odd-shaped mirrors. A bed out of The Arabian Nights. Maybe he’s there now, on that ocean of cushions, sleeping, or reading, or listening to the lady with the sad, scrapy voice singing. God Bless the Child.
“Barbara.” Livvy is calling me. I wonder if she’s had an accident. And then I remember she doesn’t call me for that anymore. Not since Auntie Sophie’s been looking after her.
I go to the bottom of the basement stairs. “What?”
“Guess what I’m doing?”
“Pretending you’re a sweet little girl?”
“No. Guess.”
“Don’t know.”
“Come up.”
I climb the stairs but my legs feel so tired I can hardly do it.
“Making muffins.” Livvy cackles. “Muffins. Muffins.”
“Your face looks so much better today, Barbara.” Auntie Sophie stops spooning muffin batter into a couple of pans she has waiting on the counter. Livvy is on a stool beside her, licking her fingers, chanting a song she has made up with lots of yummy-yummies in it.
I know what my face looks like. It still looks like I got hit by a truck. One eye is pretty well swollen shut. It’s green and purple and blue all at once.
“I’m helping Auntie Sophie,” Livvy chirps.
“She’s such a dear.” Auntie Sophie has a jar of Smarties which she’s shaking onto the top of the muffins. Livvy’s hand darts out and she catches some. She giggles like a demented Munchkin.
“And I think we’re just going to get on top of her health problems in no time. What this little girl needs is a good diet, and routine, and proper rest. When I think of what she’s been through. Well.” Auntie Sophie holds the Smarties jar in the air as if it were a weapon she’d like to use against Daddy and Grandma. Maybe me. “I suspect she got her kidney infection in the first place because of a lack of sanitation. Likely she was run-down. That’s when nephritis strikes, when you’re run-down, and those itty-bitty germs are just waiting to pounce…”
Keep talking, Auntie Sophie, I think. You know it all. When I close my eyes, I see the laundry sink in the basement with Livvy’s clothes and bedding soaking. I smell the bleach. I think of the thousands of times I’ve helped her clean up and change.
“But all that’s going to be different now, isn’t it, lamb? Auntie Sophie’s not going to let any of those nasty germs near…”
I try to block out the sound of the woman’s words buzzing around the kitchen like a bunch of dizzy flies. I wish I had my word search but it’s downstairs in the survival bag.
“And all that alcohol and smoke. Gracious heavens, I shudder to think what you’ve been through.” Auntie Sophie is slipping the muffin pans into the oven and Livvy is licking the mixing bowl with big slurping noises, smacking her lips and burping.
“Quit acting dumb,” I say to her, and she gives her tongue a rest from licking the bowl long enough to stick it out at me. Auntie Sophie almost catches her but Livvy gives her a sugary Shirley Temple smile.
“You were probably both born with fetal alcohol syndrome,” Auntie Sophie says, closing the oven door and taking the mixing bowl from Livvy.
I know about fetal alcohol syndrome. The man from the alcohol and drug abuse center told us all about it in one of Ms. Billings’ health classes. Expectant mothers who drink, giving birth to alcoholic babies.
Stop talking, I try to say, but Auntie Sophie’s voice goes on and on, like the churning of the dishwasher. You don’t know anything about Mama, so just shut up.
“It can lead to all kinds of psychological and physical problems.” Her voice won’t stop. Livvy has hopped down and is trying to see into the oven. “Hyper-activity, lack of attention…”
I feel each word pounding into me. My chair crashes to the floor and suddenly I’m running downstairs. I slam the bedroom door and turn the lock.
Someone is screaming. Someone is knocking Luanne’s glass collection all over the room.
The someone is me.
It only lasts a minute and then I am on the floor, searching for the bits of glass. There is the head of the zebra. There is the glass whale. It’s not broken at all.
A hand is banging on the door.
“Barbara!” Aunt Sophie shrieks. “Open this door! Open this door right away!”
Close to the ruffle on the bedspread, I can see a piece of the glass monkey. I crawl over and add it to the little pile.
“Baarbraa,” Livvy is wailing.
I get up and unlock the door.
“Barbara, whatever’s the matter?” Auntie Sophie nearly falls into the room. She gives her chest some little pats as if she’s trying to get something that’s stopped going again. Then she sees the pile of Luanne’s glass pieces. She gasps and holds tight to the top of her dress. I watch as her mouth opens and closes like a goldfish that’s flopped out of its bowl.
“Barbara.” It is Livvy who finally speaks, choking my name out of the end of one of her sobs. “I want Daddy. I want to go home.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m not sure if Auntie Sophie hears me. “I’ll buy some new ones for Luanne.”
“I want to go home.”
“Hush, sweetie.” Auntie Sophie quits sputtering and pulls Livvy to her. “That was a very…hurtful thing to do.” She looks at me in a way that makes me feel about the size of one of Luanne’s glass animals. “She collected those for years.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll…”
“They can’t be replaced.”
Livvy spies the glass elephant over by the window and runs to pick it up.
“That’s a good girl.” Auntie Sophie’s voice sounds like it might begin crying in a minute. “You help Barbara pick these up. I want to talk to Harold abou
t this.”
I’d better start packing. Not that I have much with me to pack. Livvy has made a pile of glass fragments on the corner of Luanne’s desk, and then she creeps out of the room and I hear her go upstairs.
Uncle Hal, when he comes down later, doesn’t tell me to get my things together. He looks at the pile of glass pieces and picks a couple of them up.
“It’s funny what people collect,” he says. “Me and my trains. That was something I wanted to do when I was twelve but I never started doing anything about it until about ten years ago when the girls left home. Now, Luanne, I don’t think she ever cared much about this collection. It was more her mother’s idea. She got one little glass animal for her birthday one year. And then Sophie got it into her mind that Luanne was collecting them. After awhile, I think Luanne started believing it, too. But if it was something really dear to her, I think she would have taken it with her.”
“I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I didn’t mean to smash them.”
“Sophie said some things, didn’t she?”
I look down at the carpet. There’s a piece of glass we’ve missed, half hidden behind a leg of the wicker chair.
“Sometimes she doesn’t think how things might sound.” Uncle Hal’s voice is very soft. “Now, let’s just forget about this. It’s over, and Sophie’s feeling sorry, too. I’ll ask Luanne if she’d like us to get new ones for her and, if she does, we’ll work something out.”
I don’t start crying until Uncle Hal leaves the room. I hide my face in Luanne’s flowery bedspread. When I look up, I see Livvy has crept back into the room.
“What do you want?”
“I’m sorry.” Livvy’s face crumples. “I won’t lick the dish out noisy again.”
“It’s okay. I’m not mad at you. I just want to be alone for awhile. I’ve got a headache.”
“When it’s finished, will you read to me?”
“Sure,” I say. I’m a better reader than Auntie Sophie. She gets half the names wrong in Winnie-the-Pooh.
On the weekend, the Hetheringtons pack a picnic and take Livvy and me out to Alberta Beach for the day.
“I want you to tell me what you’d like to do, Barbara,” Auntie Sophie had urged, watching as I finished a chapter of Jane Eyre, putting it down for a minute and stretching. “We’ve been doing all kinds of things for Livvy, you know, taking her out for pizza and to the park, and renting movies, but we haven’t really done anything special just for you.”
I think she and Uncle Hal have had a talk about me.
“I’m fine. I don’t really feel like doing any-thing.”
“Your face is looking ninety percent better. You could go out now and nobody would notice anything, I’m sure. You think of something you’d like to do this weekend. Your choice.” Auntie Sophie can’t be turned off once she’s got an idea in her mind, so I told her about being at the beach with Mama, and how much I loved it. Almost wiggling with pleasure, she called Uncle Hal up from his trains and they worked out the details.
“Goodee, goodee. A picnic.” Livvy bounces into the car, acting as if the whole thing is her idea.
“What have you got in the bag, honey?” Auntie Sophie asks me.
“Oh, just the stuff I always take with me.”
“Winnie-the-Pooh?” Livvy asks.
“Of course.”
“Read me some on the way out. I like the part about Piglet where he is entirely surrounded by water.”
“Did you hear that, Harold?” Aunt Sophie says. “Livvy my love, you are developing an amazing vocabulary.”
Astounding–she can remember a chapter heading, I think.
When we get there, the Hetheringtons find a picnic table close to the beach.
I want to find the spot where Mama and I used to spread our beach towels. “You want to do some word searches?” I ask Livvy.
“No. Uncle Hal and I are going to get double-dipped ice-cream cones.”
“Well, whoop-dee-do,” I say, but not loud enough for anyone to hear.
It takes a little while but I’m pretty sure I find our spot. I lie on the big striped towel Auntie Sophie has given me. I have sunscreen and word searches. Auntie Sophie refused to make dillpickle sandwiches. She has her own ideas of a picnic lunch. Hot dogs with home-made relishes, simmered onions in a little thermos, enough potato salad to feed the town of Alberta Beach.
“Dill-pickle sandwiches!” She actually shuddered.
The beach is crowded–kids running back and forth squealing, adults baking themselves, some teenagers horsing around. Three old ladies in straw hats watch everything from a bench. There is the smell of the lake, a smell of dampness and dead fish, cut wood and evergreens. Gulls hover over the sand watching for food. Every now and then they drift back into the sky, their cries lost in jittery music from ghetto blasters.
I close my eyes, letting myself slip into the warmth and the smells and sounds. It seems as if Mama could be very close. “How’s my big girl?” I think I hear someone say, but the words become caught on the squeal of a gull and carried away.
How you could fall asleep in the middle of so much activity, I don’t know, but I think I do for a little while. Or maybe it’s only a half-sleep and a half-dream with Nathan and Cosmo beside me. Nathan is handsome in his trunks, his skin like buttered toast. He smokes quietly, watching me, his hand moving toward me but not quite touching. “Cosmo,” I say. “You should cover up.” The lesions on his arms are on his chest and legs, too. “The sun can’t be good for your skin.”
“In a couple of minutes,” he says, smiling at me. “I want to explore a little more of your perfect time.” His green eyes wash over me, and then he sighs and the lids close, and he lies still with his arms folded over his thin chest, the ridges of his ribs.
A kid stumbles against me and jolts me back.
“Elvis, watch where you’re going,” a woman yells.
When I look around, Auntie Sophie waves at me from the picnic table where she sits crocheting in the shade. I turn to the last few pages of Jane Eyre. I read slowly, trying to make the book last, not wanting it to end.
Jane! Jane! Jane! a voice calls out.
The page seems hot enough to burn my fingertips.
…it was the voice of a human being–a known, loved, well-remembered voice…and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.
”I am coming!”
Cosmo!
I grab the towel, Jane Eyre and my survival bag, and hurry over to the picnic table.
“Can we go?” I ask Auntie Sophie.
“Heavens! We’ve just got here. We haven’t even had lunch.”
“Can we eat now?”
“I thought you wanted to spend the whole day.”
“I’m starved,” I say, digging into the picnic hamper.
“You let me do that, honey.” Sophie whisks her crocheting away into her sewing bag. “We’ll just get these wieners on the go. Such a good idea, a picnic, and just a perfect day. Harold and I get to be such stick-in-the-muds when we’re just by ourselves. Luanne and Laverne always loved going to the beach, but we used to go out to Pigeon Lake. You ever been there, Barbara? A few summers we even rented a cottage for part of the summer. Then the kids got bigger and began working in the summers and there didn’t seem to be much point in going anymore.”
Uncle Hal and Livvy are ambling back with their double-dipped cones dripping down onto their hands. “Mmmm. Yum,” Livvy says, holding the cone in one hand and licking chocolate off the other.
“Barbara says she’s starving,” Auntie Sophie announces, “so we’ll get everything ready and people can just eat whenever they want.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”
Livvy gives me a look, but she doesn’t say anything.
It is late afternoon by the time we get back into town. As soon as I can, I use the phone in the den to call Jim Beresford but a machine comes on saying the office won’t be open until nine o’clock tomo
rrow morning.
“Whatcha doing?” Livvy bounces up and down in the doorway. “Uncle Hal is getting The Wizard of Oz for us to watch tonight.”
“Big deal. We’ve seen it a hundred times.” I think of Daddy sunk into the sofa, sipping his sherry, mouthing the words along with the characters. I think we’re not in Kansas anymore.
“I want to see To to.” Livvy flounces off.
Somewhere there must be a telephone book. I pull open drawers and open doors in the wall unit, and finally find one in the drawer under the television. When I phone the hospital, the receptionist transfers me to a nurse at one of the nursing stations.
“Nursing Station 6C,” a voice like an answering machine comes on. I wonder if I should talk to it. “What can I do for you?” it says.
I ask about Cosmo.
“Mr. Farber?” she says. “His condition is stable.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you a member of the family?” she asks.
“No. A friend.”
“I see.”
“Can I see him?”
“At the current time, visiting is restricted to family members and a few specified friends. What’s your name?”
I tell her.
“I don’t see it on the list.”
“Honey,” Auntie Sophie is smiling in the doorway, “you’re welcome to use the phone just so long as you tell us who you’re calling.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “I couldn’t get through anyway.”
I wait until the dishwasher is making lots of noise after supper before I phone Nathan from the phone in the upstairs hall. Uncle Hal is getting the video ready in the den, with Livvy helping him.
“H-Hello.” Between the dishwasher and whatever’s going on at Nathan’s house, I can barely hear him. “H-How are things g-going?”
“Okay. The Hetheringtons are okay. But I have a feeling something bad is happening with Cosmo.”