B07FRVD7VN

by Karen Foxlee

  “She’s going to marry Mr. King,” I said. I had to say it. I could see Mother faltering. I could see it and Davey needed to know it. That would be our life. Mr. King would live in our apartment. He would sit in a chair in our living room and be waited upon and stare with disdain at our encyclopedia set. It would all mean nothing to him. The depths of the ocean and the thundering impala and the map of the moon. He would laugh at our mother’s worries. I knew it. The way Peter Lenard Spink had. He would say, You worry too much, has always been your problem, just the same way. He would negate her every thought, until she was nothing, just something light and flimsy. A scrap of Cindy Spink.

  “Len-neeeeeee,” moaned Davey quietly. “Don’t say it.”

  “North Dakota,” I whispered. “When we’ve built the log cabin, we’ll send word to her. All she’ll need is another one-way ticket.”

  I let him digest that. He was thinking of our clearing. Timothy the golden eagle. Then the shower turned off and I thrust the money into my bathrobe pocket and put the jar back. We went and sat on the couch and smiled when Mother came out.

  “Oh God, what are you two up to now?” she asked.

  On the phone Nanny Flora said, “Your mother says he’s growing again, that right?”

  “Sure is,” I said.

  “Is he growing a lot?”

  “Yes, he’s growing pretty fast.”

  “Well, I just don’t like to hear that,” said Nanny Flora, and her voice did sound pained, like she’d just seen a fly on food and she needed fly spray to kill it. “Oh dearie me,” she said. “That doctor will know what to do, I’m sure. He’ll fix him up in no time.”

  “Yes,” I said. And I was just a Lenny Spink robot answering her questions because I was thinking about our running-away plans. I was thinking, what if Davey needs a doctor in the Northwest Territories? I felt sick with that thought. I was thinking, what if he needs new glasses? What if he grows too big for his clothes, and they split off him in the clearing like the Incredible Hulk’s clothes and he has to wear pants made out of rabbit fur? Maybe it wouldn’t matter. His being big wouldn’t matter up there among all the air and mountains. Everything would just be normal. I’d need a sewing needle and thread and I’d make those rabbit fur pants. I would.

  “You there, Lenore?” said Nanny Flora. “Put your mother on, honey.”

  På Gensyn (Goodbye in Danish)

  5’ 10”

  MID-FEBRUARY 1977

  Pcontained Puerto Rico, pearls and pelicans. We read these things but we were distracted. A mile-wide flock of passenger pigeons that took three days to pass and blocked out the sun, but mostly we thought of our journey. The Panama Canal. Satchel Paige: greatest pitcher in the world. Twenty-five pages on painting. We read these things but all they did was make us sad. We wouldn’t see Q. Even though we hadn’t set a date, we knew it. If we went before Davey’s trip to Professor Cole then we wouldn’t see Q. Or R or S or T. Or all the exotics UVWXYZ. Our mother would need to open those pages alone. It was more than sad. A speechless emotion. “Don’t,” said Davey, when I went to say it. The words were not even formed on my tongue but he knew, the way certain brothers and sisters do. He held up his hand. “Don’t.”

  Setting a date seemed wrong. We’d go when we needed to go. The first of the buses we’d have to catch was the eleven-fifteen p.m. to Fargo and it left right across the road. We watched it and it was always half-empty. Buying a ticket would be no problem. We’d go when Mother worked the night shift, that was as much as we knew. We practiced getting ready. Clothes on, then pyjamas on top of clothes. We’d leave our blankets in the stairwell while Mother had her shower. We’d stuff our sandwiches in our waistbands. These are the things that we tried to think through. It seemed hard to even get out of the apartment, let alone all the way to Canada.

  Davey had a terrible headache at school again. It came on suddenly while he was taking a spelling test and all the way to the nurse’s office I could hear him bellowing. “Hush, Davey,” I said when I got there. “It’ll pass. They always pass.” But I looked at him lying there and wondered about doing that in the log cabin alone. Now I needed Tylenol as well as a sewing needle and thread to make his rabbit fur pants. My list was growing. I needed to write it down.

  That night I took a piece of paper and sat on the edge of his bed. Money, I wrote. “Where can we get more money?” I asked.

  “Len-neeeeeee,” he said. “We can’t steal any more.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “But we have to go soon and what will we eat on the way? We only have money for the fare.”

  “We can make some sandwiches,” he said. He had his arm across his eyes.

  “Is your head still hurting?”

  “No,” he said. But I knew it was.

  Clothes, I wrote. Added warm.

  “An axe,” said Davey.

  “We can’t take an axe,” I said. “People will notice an axe.”

  “How are we going to build a log cabin without an axe? Maybe we can buy one in Yellowknife. Or we’ll meet someone who will lend us one.”

  Our plans diverged here. In my great escape we were on the run from everyone. We were hiding from everyone. In Davey’s great escape he was talking to lumberjacks and borrowing axes.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t take the bus,” I said. “That way we’ve got money for food.”

  We’d walk out of the city. We’d walk out to where the new suburbs ended and the fields began. The places we had seen from the bus window where the sky was big. We’d leave the highway. We’d follow the little roads so we wouldn’t be seen. We’d sleep through the day and walk at night. We’d sleep in barns and sheds and beneath shady trees. We’d drink from streams. We’d steal from vegetable patches. It wasn’t like no one had ever done it before. A thousand feet had walked that way. We’d follow the Mississippi awhile, then the North Skunk River. What Cheer, New Sharon, Eldora, St. Cloud, Rainy Lake, Regina.

  “Lenny,” he said. “That would take forever, you know it. We’d be walking for a year.”

  “So?” I said.

  He took his arm from across his eyes and looked at me very, very sadly.

  We did it on the night Mother spoke to Mr. King on the phone. The phone rang and she said, “Who could that be?” but she knew, we could tell she knew. The way she always knew when bad things were going to happen. Mr. King was a very bad thing. She was cool with him. “Hi,” she said, like it was nothing. Like he’d never stamped out of our apartment and said, You’ll be sorry for this. “Yes,” she said. “I wish you’d stop sending them.” But he must have been trying really hard because I saw her blush. He must have told her he loved her. He must have started crying. He must have said she was a princess and he’d always treat her like one. He must have said, I’ll give you flowers every day of your life, because her face turned foolish. She said, “Oh, Harry, I don’t know.” Davey looked up from peregrine falcons and frowned. I don’t think I ever saw him look so confused.

  She got ready for her night shift after she put the phone down. I made a signal with my hand. I nodded my head. It meant, tonight!

  “Will you do it?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He lumbered after me into our room. We took our pyjamas off and put clothes on, then put our pyjamas on over the top, just like we’d practiced, only this time I felt so scared I thought I’d throw up.

  We needed sneakers then. Sneakers were a problem we hadn’t thought of. We couldn’t go all the way to Canada in our slippers. I took Davey’s jacket and made him put it on. I thrust our sneakers up inside. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t complain. He was too frightened to complain. I made him sit on the sofa in his sneaker-stuffed jacket while I took our rolled-up blankets and hid them on the stairs to the top floor, opening and shutting the door as quietly as I could.

  The shower stopped just as I finished making our sandwiches. I stuffed them and the fruit in a brown paper bag and only had time to secrete them away beneath the sofa before
she came out of her bedroom. How we would get them out again was another matter. Perhaps we’d have to starve. Davey sat on the sofa, looking suspicious.

  “Are you okay, Davey?” said Mother.

  “Yes,” said Davey, clutching the F volume to his stuffed jacket.

  “Why are you wearing your jacket?”

  “It’s cold,” Davey said.

  “Have you got a fever?” asked Mother and she touched his forehead.

  “I’m really cold too actually,” I interjected. I put my jacket on and yawned.

  “What is going on?” said Mother.

  She shook her head and went into the kitchen and in a blink of an eye I had the sandwich bag up inside my coat. The dollar bills were in my pocket.

  “It isn’t that cold,” I heard her say. “I’m not cold. You’re both sick. That’s all I need. And Mrs. Gaspar might catch it.”

  “It’s just cold,” I said. “Mrs. Gaspar always has her heating up. We’ll take our coats off there.”

  She looked dubious. She looked like she was going to argue. She looked like she was going to demand we take our coats off then and there but then she looked at the clock.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she said and she flung her handbag over her shoulder and we rushed behind her out the door.

  “What? They are having fevers!” cried Mrs. Gaspar.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on,” said Mother. We bustled past her in our coats to the bathroom and relieved ourselves of shoes and sandwiches.

  “Are you sick?” she called after us.

  “Just a pain in my belly,” I shouted back. “And Davey too.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Gaspar,” I heard Mother say.

  But then we were back out in our pyjamas, smiling.

  “I feel better,” I said. “Do you feel better, Davey?”

  “I feel better,” said Davey.

  Mother shook her head. “I don’t know what has gotten into you both but it is time for bed.”

  “I’m so tired,” I said.

  Davey started to cry. It was so sudden I thought he was going to tell but he didn’t. He just cried and hugged Mother, her little blonde head nestled against his chest.

  “What is wrong, can someone tell me?” she asked. Pleaded.

  “Nothing,” we both said.

  After she was gone, we tried not to think that it would be the last time we would see our mother for a long time. Until the log cabin was built and we could send word to her. I was surprised at how well Davey was doing. He got the pillows ready on the sofa and I got my little cot set up. Mrs. Gaspar fussed around us. She must have come in and out of her room at least ten times.

  “Tummies goot?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “No fevers?” she asked.

  “No fevers,” said Davey.

  We lay in the dark counting the minutes until we heard her snore. Longing for the snore, dreading the snore. We sat up like children possessed, slowly, pale-faced, staring at each other in the dark.

  “We have to go,” I said. The bus left at a quarter past eleven. We had tickets to buy.

  We stood quietly, jettisoned our pyjamas. They would be a terrible thing for Mrs. Gaspar to find. She would never forgive herself. We put on our sneakers, listening all the time for noise in Mrs. Gaspar’s bedroom. In our experience, she slept soundly once she took her little pills. I took the dollar bills from my sleeve and divided them, half to Davey, half to me. Davey picked up his F volume and we left Mrs. Gaspar’s apartment, silent as thieves.

  With the rolled-up blankets on our backs, we went down the stairs. I had keys in my pocket. The key to our apartment, the key to Mrs. Gaspar’s. Keys we would never need again. Keys, blankets, sandwiches and an apple each. I should have left the keys behind. I touched them in my pocket with my finger tip. They were like a talisman, those keys in my pocket. I tried to ignore them.

  They had magical powers.

  They said, you can always come back home.

  We opened the front door out onto the street and the cold night rushed up at us. It stung our cheeks. Somewhere in the darkness Mother was on the number twenty-eight with her whole night stretched out in front of her and no idea that we were disappearing.

  Just that thought and I stopped. I was like Peter Lenard Spink. Davey too. We were disappearing. Davey rustled the bills in his pocket. There was a siren far away and then men walking in uniforms, and two women in high heels clattering past us and an old man pushing a cart piled up with bags. We didn’t know there were so many people on the Grayford streets so late at night. We were in our jeans and jackets but I still felt cold. We needed warmer clothes. We’d need warmer clothes the farther north we went. As though agreeing, the night breathed a great windy breath at us, and it ruffled our hair and hurt our eyes.

  The keys in my pocket called.

  They said, Come home.

  “Come on,” I said angrily, and we started walking toward the bus station. We joined the small line at the ticket window. Just like that. Like we did it every day. I counted my money. I didn’t make eye contact with Davey. I knew if I looked in his eyes, we’d be finished. He started to cry. It was his opened-mouthed cry, no sound.

  I tried to ignore it. I shivered in the cold. I counted my money again. Twenty-six dollars exactly. He made a small jerking sound. I knew he was about to wail.

  The keys in my pocket said, It’s not too late, Lenore.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  We got out of the line. I could feel all the people staring at us. The two kids without luggage. One as tall as a grown man, crying.

  “You’re such a baby,” I said to him, as we walked home.

  Q:

  Quicksand

  5’ 11”

  LATE FEBRUARY 1977

  The bus tickets to see Professor Cole were purchased. We didn’t speak of that night again. We closed up all the bus stops. All the long roads, all the forests, all the night-gleaming lakes. We folded up the quintillion stars above our campfire and stowed them away.

  Quintillion was a billion billion. We read it in the Qs. Quicksand too. We memorized how to escape from quicksand. Float on your back, arms stretched at right angles, not panicking, rolling gently when you come close to the edge of your quicksand mire. I told CJ. She asked where quicksand was found, looking around her nervously. “In places like Queensland, Australia,” I told her, which made her relieved. “Tropical places,” I said. “Rainforests.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’ll go to Queensland,” she said.

  “But you never know,” I said. “We’re not grown-up yet. We might go anywhere.” An ache in my heart the size of Great Bear Lake.

  I told Matthew Milford. I said, “Matthew, I want to tell you something.”

  “W-w-w-w-w-w-w-what, Lenny?”

  He never stuttered on Lenny. Not ever. Not once.

  “I know how to get out of quicksand and I want you to know too, I mean, in case it happens.”

  “H-h-h-h-h-ow?” he asked.

  I lay on the concrete in front of him and performed a demonstration. He watched. He looked interested but something else crossed his face. Something that confused me. He looked at me the way I saw all the boys look at Tara Albright, like she was a doll wrapped in cellophane that everyone wanted to touch but no one dared. Now, I knew that could not be. I must be getting it wrong. I did the demonstration again, just to see.

  I was in a denim overalls with red tights, and frayed sneakers.

  “What?” I said angrily, when I saw that look cross his face again.

  “N-n-n-nothing,” he said and smiled. “J-j-j-just …”

  “What?” I said. I was still on my back, grass in my hair.

  “You’re c-c-c-c-c-c-cool,” he said, and smiled and blushed and stood up and got busy packing his book into his bag.

  I frowned at him, lying there, and I felt suddenly new in my eleven-year-old body.

  Besides quicksand, the Q volume, a slim one, contained
quasars, queens, quaking aspens, quartz. A two-page spread on quilting. I wondered what else I could demonstrate.

  The truth is I was glad we didn’t run away. I didn’t admit it to Davey in words but he understood. He said, “The Qs are everything I was hoping for.” And I knew exactly what he meant. We’d get to see all the letters now and he’d get to go to see Professor Cole, which he really needed. His head ached and he puffed on the way to school, not the way Mrs. Gaspar puffed, a more exhausted puff. Once, we had to sit down at the bus stop near Mr. Kelmendi’s shop. His feet hung over the bed now and even with his new glasses he had trouble seeing.

  “What do you mean, you can’t see?” cried Mother. “Those are brand-new glasses!”

  But she was the main reason that we were both glad we didn’t run away. Two days after we nearly did run away, Mother, Davey and I ran into Mr. King on the street outside of our building and something wonderful happened.

  Mr. King was walking from his fruit shop toward us and there was no time to cross the road. He was there and we were stuck. He had a bunch of flowers in his hand and he looked at them and then Mother.

  “Cindy,” he said. He looked tired. He looked worn out with all his trying. He was lovesick. Or he looked lovesick, he feigned lovesickness, because he knew that Mother was a sucker for sick and injured things. He looked like he thought he had her. This was it.

  “Mr. King,” said Mother very kindly.

  We stood on either side of her, Davey and I.

  He didn’t look at us. Just Cindy Spink. Seeing if she would break. I didn’t know which way it would go. I tried to feel her vibes. I couldn’t feel her anxiety, which was strange. I felt something else but I didn’t know what it was.

  “I don’t want any more flowers,” she said.

  I could have cheered right there but I didn’t. I examined the sidewalk, the cement, the cracks.

  “I’ll do anything,” he said.