by Karen Foxlee
“What?” I said.
“I’m in first grade,” said Davey.
“You’re a mighty big first grader,” said Mr. King.
“He’s big for his age,” said Mother. “There’s very tall people in the family.”
“From Sweden,” said Davey.
There was a flicker of confusion on Mr. King’s face like a faltering light. I enjoyed watching it.
“Well, this is mighty fine pot pie,” he said, to cover it up.
“Who is this man, who comes up the stairs and knocks on your door?” said Mrs. Gaspar, but she knew all too well. She wheezed in and lit her white cigarette. Mother pushed an ashtray, kept especially for Mrs. Gaspar, toward her. Mrs. Gaspar trembled slightly with her agitation. She’d drawn her eyebrows on hastily, you could tell.
“Please tell me, Cyn-thi-a,” she said. “Please tell me, Mrs. Spink. It is not Mr. King.”
“He only came for dinner,” said Mother.
“He drives a Ford Graaaaannnn Toriiiiiiiino,” said Davey slowly.
“Hush,” said Mother.
“But he is not right,” moaned Mrs. Gaspar. “To look at him, you can see. For you it is from the frying pan into the fire.”
“It was just dinner,” said Mother. “That’s all. No harm in that.”
She was getting her Cindy Spink whistle. I saw her nostrils flare. But she needed to be careful. Mrs. Gaspar was our evening sitter when Mother worked late shifts and nights. We spent many nights on her sofa by the soft glow of Kojak and the benevolent smiling Jesus.
“Just dinner, that’s all, Mrs. Gaspar,” Mother said again for good measure. Even though Mr. King was gone, she’d stayed a little fluttery. She kept touching her curled hair in a way that made me feel worried.
Davey tapped me on the shoulder. He had the Canada issue in his hand.
“Great Bear Lake,” he whispered and smiled slyly under his long lashes at me.
In bed that night, we made a list of things we’d need to run away to Great Bear Lake. A sleeping bag each, warm clothes, some money. We had to work out a way to earn money for the bus fare.
“Maybe …” Davey began, then stopped.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe we’ll meet Dad on the way.” He kind of mumbled it.
“Maybe,” I said.
I went to sleepover at CJ’s house. A real house with a porch and a chair swing. Mrs. Bartholomew had picked me up in her real Ford sedan with CJ beaming from the window. There were six Bartholomew daughters but there always seemed to be many more girls than that in the house. There were girls on the stairs and girls on the phone and girls lounging in front of the television. There were sisters and sisters’ friends and friends’ sisters and cousins who came to stay to go to school, a shifting tide of girls. That house was in constant flux with the front door forever opening and feet thundering up and down the stairs. The air was full of hairspray and Charlie perfume. Somewhere, always somewhere, there was the sound of a hair dryer, like a lone bagpipe.
Mr. Bartholomew somehow survived in the middle of it all. I liked to watch him, although I pretended not to. He worked for a security firm and he wore a neatly pressed uniform with epaulets on his shoulders. He was tall and permanently exhausted-looking.
The girls liked to creep in under his arms while he watched television and just rest there for a while with his arm slung over them. Or if he was waiting for his coffee, one would come lean against him like he was a post, and CJ lay on him sometimes like he was a rock and she was a lizard, just briefly, and then she was on her way.
He knew most friends by first name.
“Hello, Lenny,” he said to me.
“Hi,” I whispered. I wanted to lean against him too, just to see what it felt like. I don’t think I’d ever leaned against Peter Lenard Spink. Not once.
Mr. Bartholomew’s gaze was like a spotlight. My face burned. He looked at me as though he was interested. Like there was no one else in the room. I saw him do it with the others too. He looked at them all like they were the only girl in the world.
He said, “And what grade is that brother of yours in? I bet you he plays football, right?”
I said, “He’s in first grade.”
“Oh, you have two brothers,” said Mr. Bartholomew.
“No sir,” I said, and then left him standing there looking confused.
CJ shared a room with JC. Josephine Claire was three years older than us. She had her whole life mapped out. She was going to be a nurse like her mother and her two oldest sisters. Then she was going to get married and have six babies. She knew their names already. JC was really into babies.
CJ rolled her eyes when JC wasn’t looking. CJ would never talk about such a thing.
“Where do you think your father is?” she asked straight out, as soon as JC was asleep. Like she’d been wanting to ask it forever.
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Do you miss him?” She must have seen me looking at her father. My cheeks flushed so hot in the dark that I thought she might see me glow.
I tried to choose my words carefully.
“Not really,” I said. “It’s different than missing him.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“I just don’t want to forget him,” I said.
There was no way to explain it to someone who didn’t have a father fading like an old polaroid photograph. Peter Lenard Spink was all in parts, he was oily hair, he was a belt buckle, he was a nicotine finger stain.
We lay in silence for a while, both of us thinking.
“Guess what, Lenny?” CJ said at last. “I have something mysterious to tell you.”
“What?” I said. I hoped it was about the bug catcher.
“Sometimes I can hear music everywhere, even in my heartbeat.”
“Really?” I said. It was mysterious.
“I’m going to be a drummer,” she said. “When I grow up.”
“Huh?” I said.
Everyone in CJ’s family was a nurse or going to be a nurse. CJ’s mother was a nurse. CJ’s grandmother was a nurse. Her two oldest sisters were nurses or training to be nurses. Her three middle sisters wanted to be nurses. She belonged to a great nursing dynasty.
“I’m going to get a junior drum kit for Christmas,” said CJ.
CJ was already in the school band. She was the youngest member. Mr. Marcus had encouraged it because she was always tapping her feet. She played the triangle with fierce concentration.
“You can get brown or blue or orange,” she said.
“Wowee,” I said.
“Phew,” she said. “I thought you wouldn’t like me.”
“Of course I would like you,” I said. “I’m going to be a coleopterist.”
“A whaddy-whoody?” said CJ.
“A beetle expert,” I said.
“Oh, now I understand,” she said. She exploded out of bed and was down on her knees. I thought she was praying and she was.
“Dear Lord, help me be a drummer and help my best friend Lenny not forget her father and be a bug expert,” she said, but she was rummaging too, scratching under the bed. She pulled a box out and I heard a sound like marbles hitting the floor. “And, dear Lord, let my junior drum kit be blue. Amen.”
She leapt back into bed and thrust her bug catcher into my arms.
It wasn’t just an ordinary bug catcher. It was the Rolls Royce of bug catchers. It was so big I could keep a whole darklingbeetle farm inside it. I don’t know how someone who didn’t even like beetles ended up with such a thing. By the glow of her night-light, she smiled her CJ smile, a wrinkled nose, too much gum. It was very good to have a friend like CJ.
December 13, 1975
Apartment 15, 762 Second Street
Grayford, Ohio 44002
Dear Martha,
I’m writing in regard to my letter dated September 27th to which I have not received a reply. I won a prize and that prize was a Build-It-at-Home-Encyclopedia set. Now I cannot build it because I do no
t have the volume covers. My son Davey has had blood tests to check his hormones. They want to find out why he is growing so fast. We might even have to go see a special doctor in Chicago. All this and I’m raising two children alone. Davey loves the birds entry but he sure is looking forward to the eagles entry even more. I look forward to your speedy and honest response regarding a resolution to this matter and I know you will do the right thing, Martha.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs. Cynthia Spink
* * *
E:
Eagles
6 years 5 months
5’ 1”
DECEMBER 1975
It was a pretty honest letter, considering she was a professional letter-writing liar. Davey did love the birds entry but he was more excited about eagles, which would be coming soon.
Davey did go to the doctor again. He did have his blood tested. We went in Mr. King’s Ford Gran Torino. Mr. King had been to dinner five times. Meatloaf, pot pie, spaghetti, and meatloaf again times two. Mr. King must have thought we lived on meatloaf. But he always said, “Cindy, you make the best meatloaf in the world.”
I didn’t like the way he said Cindy, like my mother’s name was a lollipop and he was rolling his tongue around it. I didn’t like the way he said meatloaf, like it was a delicacy from a far-off land that he stuffed in under his bristly moustache.
I didn’t like the way he looked at our encyclopedia issues, stacked high and volume-coverless. “They always scam the ladies,” he said about our encyclopedia. “They will do anything to make a buck.” He asked us what letter we were up to. We were still lost in the drudgery of the Ds, but there was a hint of E on the wind. We lay awake in bed at night listing the wondrous things E might contain. Emerald pythons, for instance. Electric eels. Eclipses. Eagles. There was no point explaining it to Mr. King.
Mr. King’s name was Harold. Mother called him Harry when we weren’t there. I heard her when I was in my bed. We had to go to bed straight after dinner when Mr. King came for meatloaf. Mr. King couldn’t wait for us to go to bed so he could pop his eyes out all over our mother. They stayed up in the living room, talking and laughing and calling each other by their first names. He said Cindy. She said Harry. It sounded stupid.
They stayed up and watched Kojak and we lay in bed listening until we heard the front door and the goodnights and then Mother in her bedroom making her normal Mother noises, brushing her teeth and her long fair hair. When Mr. King was gone, I could breathe easy again.
Pot pie and spaghetti and three times meatloaf and now the Ford Gran Torino. Davey and I sat in the back among the various jackets and paper bags. Davey smiled at me.
“How fast can this baby go?” he said. It was a line from Starsky & Hutch.
“Hush, now,” said Mother. Outside snow fell. We puffed out our breath in front of us while Mr. King tried to start his car. I concentrated on the grey sidewalk trees, strung with icicles. The engine roared to life and made Mother jump. Mr. King did go fast and Mother got dreadful anxious and told him to stop so we could get out and walk. I hoped more than anything that no one saw me in Mr. King’s Gran Torino. It would be the most embarrassing thing in the world. He dropped us right in front of the doctor’s office, and when we got out people stared, especially at six-year-old Davey, nearly as tall as a teenager, his pants sitting just above his ankles, his hair slicked down, leaning to one side, smiling.
Mr. King didn’t come in with us. He didn’t offer. He couldn’t wait to get away in his Ford Gran Torino. Davey waved at him. He said, “Do it!” which was another line from Starsky & Hutch.
“Stop it right now,” said Mother. She was in a prickly mood. She was ready to do battle with Dr. Leopold.
“I just don’t want to be told I’m worrying over nothing,” was the first thing she said, even before hello. “You said he’d settle down and he was big for his age but I couldn’t get a kindergarten to take him and now he’s in first grade and has to sit right at the back so he doesn’t block anyone’s view. There might be big people in my family tree but quite frankly I don’t care. The school nurse said he should have a blood test. That’s what she said. That’s why I’m here.”
Mother could have washed Dr. Leopold out the door and down the street with her flood of words and there was more, I knew it.
“And he is nearly five two and that is just not right. And every time I turn around he’s grown some more and there must be something wrong somewhere. They said something about hormones. I have to work two jobs just to keep buying new clothes.”
Dr. Leopold tried to get some words in.
“Well, now …” he said.
“So if you’ll just write that down on a piece of paper, I’ll give it to them. That’s what I need. A little form, one of those little forms you write the blood test on and a letter and I’ll take him somewhere that specializes in this kind of thing because I don’t know but maybe there is a pill or something and they’ve been talking to me about growth hormones and I don’t understand but maybe there is some kind of medicine to slow it all down.”
“Mrs. Spink,” said Dr. Leopold. He motioned Davey up from his chair and put him against the tape measure stuck to the door frame. “You are absolutely right. He was tall before, but now he’s really off the chart. We’ll do exactly that. We’ll get a blood test. That will be our first step.”
Dr. Leopold patted Davey on his hard helmet of Brylcreem.
“What do you think of that plan, young man?”
“I think it’s a great plan, Stan,” said Davey.
“Hush now, Davey,” said Mother.
While we waited for the blood results Mother’s dark heart feelings grew. Not just Davey dark heart feelings but others too. She worried I didn’t eat enough. She worried that Davey ate too much. She worried that the holy trinity of warts on my knee was contagious. She worried that Davey didn’t clean his teeth well. She worried that he needed glasses. I was glad that worry had passed on from me. She worried about money. She worried about food. She worried about clothes. She worried about weather. She was jangly with worries.
“Something’s not right,” she said to herself.
She jumped each time the phone rang.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I said.
It was only ever the Golden Living Retirement Home asking her to do an extra shift or Mrs. Gaspar with a Mr. Petersburg spotting or Mr. King downstairs asking if we needed a box of bananas.
“A box of bananas,” shouted Mrs. Gaspar. “Who does he think he is? The king of the jungle? Oh, Cyn-thi-a! Mrs. Spink! He uses these bananas to get up the stairs into your house. You must not let that bad wolf in.”
“Oh, he’s just a friend, Mrs. Gaspar,” said Mother. “He’s not too bad, is he, children?”
She looked at us so hopefully that Davey couldn’t help himself.
“He’s a really nice guy,” said Davey, staring at the first E issue, which contained eagles. Eagle statistics, life cycle of an eagle, four colour plates containing all the eagles of all the continents, including the golden eagle. He was almost drooling.
I refused to say as much. I flipped through my E issues slowly.
Eggs. Egypt. The Eiffel Tower.
Electricity. Elephants and elevators.
“His fruit is full of worms,” said Mrs. Gaspar under her breath when Mother was out of the room. I nodded in agreement and smiled at her. I could tell she had dreams inside her that she wanted me to know.
Mother even jumped when the phone rang and it was Nanny Flora. Even though Nanny Flora was a regular event, once a month, on a Sunday.
“How’s things, Lenore?” asked Nanny Flora.
“Not too bad,” I said. But they weren’t. What if I told her about Mr. King?
“How’s Davey, then? He still growing?”
“Yes,” I said. Sometimes Davey just went to the bathroom and he came out taller. “But he had a blood test to see what’s causing it. Maybe some hormones.”
“Hormones?” said Nan
ny Flora. She said hormones like it was a dirty word. I glanced at her photograph on the hutch. She wouldn’t tolerate vermin or germs or hormones.
“Put your mother on,” she said.
Dr. Leopold phoned five days before Christmas. It was afternoon and the snow had stopped and Davey was reading the comic Space Family Robinson.
“What does this say?” he whispered to me. He whispered because Mother said we were too loud. We were the loudest kids she’d ever met. We needed to learn to be quiet.
I said, “A laser-spouting warship zeroes in on Tim and Tam.” He looked pretty happy with that.
“Wow,” he mouthed quietly. I could tell he wished he was Tim and that I was Tam. I just knew it. It was the kind of thing Davey wished for.
He wished he had the book of 101 magic tricks, which was located amid the comic book’s advertisements. The Barlow knife too, the atom pistol, the sneezing powder. He wished he had the snowstorm tablets. All we needed was the lit end of Mrs. Gaspar’s cigarette and we’d have a room full of snow. He wished he could join the Junior Sales Club of America and sell greeting cards and win a portable typewriter or a transistor radio or a complete archery set. He wished he could win the intercom telephones or a full-sized wooden guitar or a giant telescope with an optical finder.
He wished for Sea-Monkeys.
“Sea-Monkeys aren’t real,” Mother said to him one thousand times.
But they were there, a whole family on the centre spread: “A Bowl full of Happiness. Only $1.00.”
On the day the phone rang, Davey had just made it to his Sea-Monkeys. He was gazing at the happy family gazing at their bowl full of happiness. I was watching him gazing and I too was wishing they were real. That they actually did grow that way, like a little miniature family with a castle to live in. A mother, a father, and a boy and a girl.
Our wall phone rang.